The Yezidis form a considerable community numbering in all some 150,000; for about 500 villages own allegiance to their Mira,[42] and there are many detached colonies[{90}] residing in alien towns. These villages are widely distributed—isolated for the most part singly among the surrounding Kurds and Christians. Some are as far west as Aleppo; some as far north as Tiflis (where all the town scavengers are Yezidis); some as far east as Teheran. Their nucleus is in the Sinjar mountains, in the desert south-west of Mosul; where they are secured from invasion by the barricades of rock, and the waterless wastes which environ them. But the central shrine of their faith, the Jerusalem of their vows and offerings, is the cryptic Temple of Sheikh Adi, hidden just within the fringe of the northern mountains which overlook the great Mosul plain.
It was late on an autumn evening that we neared the last stage of our journey thither. We had quitted the plains about mid-day; and our course had lain for some miles along a sparsely cultivated valley, tucked in behind the outermost ripple which the mountains fling down upon the wold. On our right lay this barbican ridge, from the crest of which one might look forth across all the plain of Tigris; while on our left the hills rose higher, more rugged and more precipitous—a second, but still a subordinate, breastwork of the lordly Oberland behind.
Here and there the solitude was punctuated by a squalid Kurdish village whose inhabitants were thriftily using the tents which had served for their camps all the summer, to hood in their stacks of fodder against the expected winter snows. And one of these—Ain Sufni “Shipwell,”—perched on a traverse of high ground which is piled right across the valley is pointed out by Yezidi tradition as being the building place of the Ark. Here the main valley still trends forward; but, as we descended from the village, our guides doubled back to the left and dived into a masked ravine which had hitherto lurked invisible behind a shoulder of the heights.
Wide should be the gate and broad the way which leadeth to—the shrine of MELEK TAÜS; but the glen in question is shaggy and narrow and tortuous, tangled with clumps of tamarisk, and cumbered with water-worn boulders the jetsam of the winter floods. Since noon the sky had been overcast, and now a dreary drizzle had smudged all the[{91}] landscape into a grey monochrome. Our jaded beasts sprawled and stumbled disheartedly over the wet and slippery stones.
Soon our path began edging up towards a col in the ridge to the right of us, where a little Kurdish village hung limply over the saddle, and a curtain of lowering clouds trailed its ragged fringe across the gap. But just as we started the ascent, we perceived that the true end of the valley lay round an elbow in the opposite direction; and at its head, conspicuous against the dark hillside above the trees which lay matted in the hollow, rose the tall pale cone of a remote and isolated building—the “Great Mascot” of the Yezidis.[43]
How effectively the stage was set for that last mile of our Black pilgrimage! Not the least detail seemed lacking to enhance the eeriness of the scene. The dusk was rapidly lowering, the gorge grew narrower and deeper; and the gnarled boughs which overhung the pathway turned the twilight almost into night. A sodden carpet of fallen leaves muffled the clatter of the horse-hoofs; and no sound was heard but the bubbling of the rivulet, and the steady plash of the bloated raindrops that had gathered on the twigs of the trees. High overhead on our right towered the wan gaunt walls of the Satanic monastery: but not a voice nor a glimmer of light bespoke the presence of any inmates; and as we stumbled up the broken stairs, between crumbling walls and under ruinous arches, we felt like Sintram in his goblin valley or Childe Roland approaching the Dark Tower.
By the time we had reached the further angle of the building we had risen to the level of its terraces; and as we wheeled into the little fore-court, the general uncanniness of our surroundings received its finishing touch. The gates stood closed before us, and nowhere was there a sign of any living creature—but in every niche and crevice there flickered a tiny fairy lamp! The wandering tourist in County Wicklow who was taken to task by an infuriated landlord for trespassing in the “Devil’s Glen,” pleaded in[{92}] extenuation that he “had never expected to meet the proprietor;” but to us at this particular juncture, the apparition of “The Proprietor” would have seemed the most natural event in the world!
Our retinue appeared less affected. Perhaps they were not so impressionable; or more probably they confided in our superior magic, and argued a La Española that we “knew a point more than the Fiend.” Our henchman strode boldly to the gates and hammered upon them lustily. For some time he woke only the echoes: and when at length a voice answered, the owner thereof was evidently none too anxious to open. In this land it is rarely an angel that one entertains unaware after dark![44] The magic word Ingiliz, however, proved a veritable “Open Sesame.” “Ingiliz!” repeated the unseen janitor in a tone of delighted amazement. In a minute the gates creaked open; and a couple of priests in dirty white gaberdines with scarlet turbans and sashes, grinning all over their bearded faces, were amiably beckoning us in.
There is indeed good sound policy in the readiness with which the subject races of Turkey are disposed to welcome a European visitor. His presence under their roof will certainly secure them from raiding for that one night at any rate; and the suspicion that they have influential foreign friends will “increase their name” permanently among their truculent neighbours, and serve as a sort of protection for several weeks to come.
A steep and crazy stone staircase turned down just inside the gateway; but our long-suffering mountain-bred beasts tripped down it as neatly as rope-dancers. Through a door on our right, as we passed, we caught a glimpse of the interior of a big vaulted guard room, where a party of Yezidi men and women were grouped around a blazing bonfire. The ruddy glare of the flames and the murky smoke-wreaths eddying overhead, suggested forcibly that these minions[{93}] of Lucifer were sampling a model Inferno; but we slipped past their Malebolge unobserved. Our conductors led us along the lower terrace, and assigned us lodgings in a tower abutting on the wall of the temple—the chamber (as they informed us) which was always reserved for the use of the High Priest of their sect, Ali Beg himself, whenever he paid one of his periodical visits to his tribal shrine.