The Zab, at the point where we struck it, is a broad, deep, rapid, river; and fording is out of the question either for man or beast. The Sheikh usually maintains a horse[{137}] ferry, of the type we used on the Euphrates; but this was temporally hors de combat, being reported to have sprung a leak. We found it beached on the further shore, and it certainly seemed to us that a little human ingenuity and two or three gallons of tar were all that it needed to make it seaworthy; but all parties seemed quite content to put up for a time with the keleg—a little wattle hurdle buoyed up on four inflated skins.
The keleg could only carry two passengers at a time, or alternatively a very small cargo; and the beasts had all to be unloaded, and induced (most reluctantly) to swim. Thus it took a long time to transport us; but presently we were all loaded up again and proceeded about an hour’s march up a little lateral valley, till we reached the village of Barzan at the foot of the great flanking hill.
Barzan is rather larger than an average Kurdish village, but boasts no distinguishing feature to suggest its importance in the land. Most of even the less powerful chiefs are housed in defensible “castles”; but the Sheikh of Barzan “dwells among his own people,” and his palace is just an agglomeration of several ordinary houses joined in one. It possesses no outer door at all (or none that we have ever discovered), and we entered it by the simple process of stepping on to the roof, and walking across to the summer reception room, a rude belvedere on the farther side. The Sheikh, it appeared, was absent. He had gone on a visit to Amadia, and was expected back the day after to-morrow; but as we were journeying westward we should certainly meet him next day. Meanwhile we were made warmly welcome by his old major-domo the Imaum[81] (an old friend of some of our party), by his young mollah or domestic chaplain, and by several truculent-looking duinhewassels who formed part of his regular following.
We could not, of course, be allowed to pass by the house without eating; but we specially begged of our hosts that (as we were anxious to push forward) they would only give[{138}] us such food as they could quickly and easily prepare. And we hold it a genuine proof of their friendliness that they actually did as we asked them, bringing eggs, bread, honey, and tea. A big man, who wishes to do you honour formally, would consent to no such curtailment. He would probably keep you waiting for hours while he killed and dressed a sheep.
When we arose to depart the imaum and mollah went with us to a certain tree beyond the village in order to “pour us on our road.” All important houses in these parts have some recognized point on the approach to them, whither the owner proceeds to welcome and dismiss his guests. It is recorded that on one occasion only (in order to meet the British Consul) the Sheikh rode out in person as far as this statutory tree.
Our hosts had provided us with an armed escort—a “Boy of the Belt” in a red turban, indicating that he belonged to the Sheikh’s personal body-guard. And under his guidance we proceeded for a day and a half up the valley, a journey somewhat comparable to the progress of a beetle across the ridges and furrows of a ploughed field. The hills are too stony for cultivation; but here and there a fan of good soil has spread itself out from the mouth of one of the gullies, and has been terraced into grain plots by the inhabitants of the village hard by. These villages (judged by local standards) may be called fairly prosperous-looking, for the Sheikh is a merciful over-lord: but the “roads” are consistently villainous; the “Far Cry” was an asset at Lochow!
In our eyes the first of these symptoms is the one to determine our sympathies. We can forgive much in this country to a chieftain who does (as a rule) honestly exert himself to keep order; who has realized that it pays him better to protect his vassals than to oppress them; and who can be trusted to administer some sort of “Jeddart Justice” in fairly equable fashion to Kurd and Christian alike. But by Turkish officials generally we fear he is less appreciated. The Old Turks hate him with an A because he is Able, and the Young because he is Autocratic: and we cannot pretend[{139}] to deny that he is sometimes “a bit of a handful,” and that his methods of administration are rather ingenuously Draconian.
As recently as in 1909 he was at open war with the Government, and in this particular quarrel he was not very greatly to blame. The chief sinners were Sabonji Pasha and some of the corrupt gang who were running the administration at Mosul. They coveted some of the Sheikh’s villages, and the Sheikh refused to part.[82] Accordingly they trumped up a charge that he was conspiring against the Hukumet; a charge which could readily be made plausible, for there is not a chief in the province but lets his tongue loose against the Government at times. The true test of serious disaffection, however, is the courting of Russian assistance; and the prominent Russophiles hereabouts are the Sheikh’s particular bêtes noirs.
At any rate the charge won credence. The Sheikh’s friends were arrested and imprisoned. An army was marched into his territory; his villages were seized and occupied, and his wives carried off to Mosul. The Sheikh himself for some months was a homeless fugitive in the mountains; and it was then that he reaped the fruit of his good treatment of his villagers, for not a man, Christian or Moslem, ever dreamt of betraying him to his foes. Then, too, we first made his acquaintance, disguised in mean raiment and attended by a single follower, lurking in some of the Christian villages just beyond the limits of his domain.
But the scoring was not all on one side. Vich Ian Vohr boasted that the race of Ivor would seldom take the field with fewer than five hundred claymores; and the Sheikh of Barzan can muster certainly five thousand, and possibly twice that force. These levies were no more discommoded by the destruction of their “base of operations” than a swarm of the local red hornets whose nest has been demolished by a stone. Three of the seven regiments mobilized against them were captured en bloc among the crags,[{140}] with arms, ammunition, and artillery; and no commensurate losses were ever inflicted on the mountaineers.[83] Mosul was denuded of troops in order to maintain the struggle and the inhabitants were in a frenzy of terror lest the ubiquitous highlanders should swoop on the defenceless town. But that the Sheikh shrank from a step which would be bound to make the breach irreparable, it is indeed highly probable that these would have proved no empty fears. He is said to have declared roundly that if matters went much farther he intended to capture the place and make it over to the British Vice-Consul! That gentleman was by no means desirous of receiving so inconvenient a gift!