Near by was a more interesting crowd. Our steamer brought the mail from Constantinople and fifty or sixty citizens of Rizeh were gathered in a compact body around the steps of the post-office, while some gentleman read the news aloud to them. We were told it was a regular practice every time a mail came in. Most of the population are illiterate, but they are intensely patriotic and partisan, and keep close tab on political events at Constantinople and elsewhere.
They must be very superstitious, also, judging by the precautions they adopt to protect their houses and fields from the evil eye and other uncanny influences. The skull of a goat or a sheep, with a bunch of red peppers attached to it, was hanging from the corner of the eaves of almost every dwelling. We saw similar amulets in the gardens, orchards, and fields to protect the fruit and the crops. An old shoe and a bunch of garlic are equally efficacious, we are told, if you haven’t the skull of a sheep. The peasants in the country believe in miraculous cures, in witchcraft, and all such things, and often sacrifice animals at the shrines of saints to fulfil vows they have made in times of danger or distress. On a certain day in summer they splash water over each other; in the spring every woman releases a pigeon she has kept during the winter, and in some places the women go out to welcome the storks which fly in here at a certain time of the year. A new baby is always passed over a flame and young girls leap through fire to insure good husbands.
The patriarchal system prevails very generally among the farmer peasants, and the father, or after his death the eldest son, is the head and dictator of the family. A newly married couple always go to live in the house of the groom’s father, and the bride is condemned to perpetual silence in the presence of the family until her first child is born or until another marriage takes place in the same house. A young wife is not permitted to speak to any one save her own husband, and to him only when they are alone. But after her first baby is born she is considered worthy of sufficient respect to be recognized as a member of the household.
Although this practice doubtless would not be encouraged by the Daughters of the Revolution or the suffragettes, nevertheless, every one will admit that it has its advantages. I have read the wise comments of a certain Baron Haxthausen, a learned German who spent some time in that country forty or fifty years ago and saw many things to approve. The herr professor must have had some painful matrimonial experience, for he commended this custom as tending to increase the peace of a family as well as conjugal devotion. He is very positive that its adoption in other countries would reduce the business of the divorce courts and promote the peace and happiness of mankind.
Group of Lazis, Armenia, ready for a dance
“Imagine five or six women living together in the same house,” he says, “and a new member added to the company with the pride and vanity which are usually felt by a bride. Should we not anticipate continued dissension which the authority in the head of the family is unable to prevent? Much unhappiness and quarrelling arise from the use of women’s tongues, and what is so certain a cure as silence? It is only in the rarest cases that a bride submits gracefully to the opinion and the authority of her mother-in-law. She usually enters the family with a disposition to assert her independence, and if her freedom of speech is restrained, this cannot be done to an extent that will be offensive. Indeed, I cannot imagine a more wholesome custom than that which restrains the conversational powers of a young woman entering a new family.”
It must be distinctly understood that the above opinions are in quotation marks, and those who do not agree with them are not compelled to act upon the recommendations. And, notwithstanding these precautions, you will remember that the prison at Rizeh is full of murderers. How many of them are women and how many are brides is not stated.
These people are called Lazis, and this part of Armenia is known as Lazistan. They belong to the Georgian race and came there from Georgia, which lies a little farther along, west of the Caucasus Mountains, in order to escape persecution from their neighbours because they accepted the Mohammedan faith. It sounds refreshing to hear that a Mohammedan has been persecuted on religious grounds. It is the first case of the kind I have ever known, and the Lazis showed their good sense by coming over into a Mohammedan country after accepting that religion. And they are said to be very fanatical about it, as converts often are, and will stab a man for a difference of opinion on theology, as soon as cut his throat for his purse. At the same time, they are the most highly skilled gardeners in all the Ottoman Empire and are conspicuous, under ordinary circumstances, for their quiet, orderly behaviour, for their industry, honesty, and fair dealing. We can testify to the last fact, because we always made a bargain with the boatmen who took us ashore from the steamer at every port we stopped, and those at Rizeh are the only ones that did not demand more money than they had agreed to accept.
With all these virtues, they have been known to dodge their religious obligations. During the Mohammedan Lent, which is called Ramazan, every faithful member of that faith is bound to abstain from all kinds of nourishment, stimulants, and pleasures between sunrise and sunset; but the Lazis continue to smoke all day long on the pretext that tobacco was unknown to the prophet Mohammed, and therefore its use could not have been forbidden by him.