One of the gorges of the Chokh range was the scene of a strange episode during the Armenian massacres of 1896. A party of Armenians, mostly women and children, were endeavouring to escape by this route, in the early spring. At that season frequent avalanches descend from the upper slopes to the bottom of the defiles, choking them for hundreds of yards on end. The streams of course make their way under the snow, winding through caverns which no man dare enter; for the water nearly fills the tunnel, and the roofs are constantly collapsing as the melting proceeds.[{232}] As the party approached one of these caverns, making their way along the track on the hillside above it, they found their pursuers close behind. “Let us fall into the hands of God rather than into those of the Kurds,” said their leader; and wading into the stream, they entered the snow-cave. As they did so another avalanche thundered down the slope behind them blocking the entrance of their refuge and burying them under the snow. “They have gone to their deaths,” said the pursuers, and halted where they were. But, as a matter of fact, the refugees were just within the cavern when the avalanche fell. This naturally dammed back the ice-cold torrent for a while, and they were able to crawl down the empty bed to the lower end of the passage. Here they emerged, hidden from their enemies by the curvature of the valley, and so escaped!
It may well be recorded too that at least one man of this district, Agha Zohar of Zirnek, sheltered the Armenians who fled to his country for refuge in that black time. When the slaughterers came in pursuit, and said that it was the order of the Sultan that the Armenian dogs should die, he replied proudly that he knew of no order of any Sultan that could constrain a gentleman to surrender his guests to the sword! The refugees had brought some few cattle with them, and these they offered as a reward to their protector. He not only refused to accept them, but gave them pasturage with his own herds till it was safe for the men to return to their homes.
The best type of Moslem gentleman is unsurpassed in any land.
The half-way house between Bashkala and Van is the city of Khoshab, which boasts the one castle of our acquaintance, which really embodies the dreams of Gustave Doré. As we give a picture of it, we may spare the reader any attempt at a description; but may say that though the main part of the architecture is Seljuk in style and date, it presents some features that are of European character, and support the local tradition that its real designer was a “Frank” of Italian birth—though whether a captive or an adventurer is left uncertain. The same tradition says also that the[{233}] castle was built by the illustrious Saladin, the only Kurd whom history is able to mention with esteem. The place may perhaps have been part of his family property, but as he was born in Egypt, he can hardly have dwelt in it himself. Certainly there was a stronghold here long before the days of either Saladin or Mohammed, for the masonry of the lower courses of one of the great towers cries aloud that it is Urartian. It was built, that is, by the men of that ancient kingdom whose capital was at Dhuspas, (which is Van), in the days when Tiglath-Pileser ruled at Nineveh; and which disputed the sovereignty of Asia with the might of Assur itself. That subject, however, belongs to another chapter.
In the neighbourhood of Khoshab there is one monument that was probably venerable even when the Urartian foundations of that grand castle were laid; and that is one of the finest “ziarets” that we have seen in Kurdistan. A great isolated hill, Boshet Dagh by name, stands up in the vicinity; rising to 11,000 feet, and commanding one of the grandest views in the country, from Ararat in the north to Shamsdin in the south. It is yet so easy of ascent that a horse can easily be ridden the whole way up; and it forms an ideal “High Place,” like those of the Old Testament.
Here, the men of old time (and how old one is afraid to say) constructed a Temple of the orthodox Semitic pattern, such as once stood at Jerusalem, and still remains at Baalbek. It comprises a court for worshippers, where sacrifice can be offered; an outer sanctuary; and an inner shrine. All is rudely built of course, but all the essential features are there; even to the detail of “ceremonial pillars,” like the “Jachin and Boaz” of Solomon’s temple, which are here represented by a round score of rough dwarf columns. What these stood for in the mind of their builders it is hard to say. They are a witness, perhaps, of a covenant between man and God, like those which Jacob set up at Bethel. In any case, there they stand; a token of how thoroughly the most primitive form of Semitic religion is a living reality to-day. No fossiliferous strata preserve the forms of past ages more thoroughly than does the corporate mind of the[{234}] living East; though it is often hard to extract the fossils, and harder to ascertain their true significance.
An easy road takes us from Khoshab to Van, down a valley that should bear a large population; but where to-day nothing but a chilly wind wanders, that makes living unpleasant, and is said to blight wheat. “There were Armenian villages here once,” said a Nestorian to us, “but when the Kurds turned them out, this wind came, and now none can live here. It is the breath of the curse of the dispossessed upon their oppressors.” And so the fertile Havatsor plain lies empty, though villages abound upon its borders; and though a prosperous little town stands where the road begins to climb the low pass leading over the last range to the gardens and orchards of Van.[{235}]
CHAPTER XII
A SLOUGH OF DISCONTENT
(VAN AND THE ARMENIANS)
WE enter a new world as we come up from the south to the land which is never called Armenia officially, but where the Armenians dwell. The great plain of Mesopotamia, the wild gorges of the range of Taurus, are left behind; and the traveller emerges on to a lofty plateau, averaging 6000 feet above the sea, and dotted with the cones of one of the great volcanic fields of the world. Sipan and Ararat are both magnificent peaks, though the crater of the latter has been weathered away. Nimrud Dagh offers the student of eruptive phenomena such a field for his study as can hardly be matched in the world; and the lava flows from Mount Etna, which are out and away the most magnificent in Europe, are not to be compared for a moment with the twenty miles square of “black glacier” that have streamed from the fissures of Tendurek Dagh. These mountains, as already related, are grouped around the site which tradition has assigned to the Garden of Eden; and it is on the peaks of Niphates, the Hakkiari mountains to the southward, that Milton has pictured Satan alighting to wreak his vengeance on God’s new creation Man.
One of these great lava flows, that of Nimrud Dagh, forms the dam that holds up the large salt lake of Van; a body of water of about the size of the lake of Geneva, but carrying almost as much mineral matter in suspension as does the companion lake of Urmi. In this case, however, the mineral is not ordinary salt, but borax (bi-borate of sodium, to be accurate); so that the water is pleasanter to swim in, and not so absolutely fatal to animal life.[{236}]