Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Volume 1 (of 2)

Abdul Rahim took me to see carpet-weaving, a process carried on in houses, hovels, and tents by women and children. The "machinery" is portable and marvellously simple, merely two upright beams fixed in the floor, with a cross-beam near the top and bottom, round which the stout cotton or woollen threads which are the basis of the carpet are stretched. The wools are cut in short lengths and are knotted round two threads, according to the pattern, which, however elaborate, the weaver usually carries in her head. After a few inches have been woven in this simple way the right side is combed and the superfluous length cut off with rough scissors. Nothing can be more simple than the process or more beautiful than the result. The vegetable dyes used are soft and artistic, specially a madder red and the various shades of indigo. A soft turquoise blue is much used, and an "olive green," supposed to be saffron and indigo. The dull, rich tints, even when new, are quite beautiful. The women pursue this work chiefly in odds and ends of time, and in some cases make it much of a pastime. Men being present they were very closely veiled, and found great difficulty in holding on the chadars and knotting the wool at the same time.

After taking tea in the pleasant upper room of the carpet-weaver's house, we visited the large barracks and parade ground. The appearance of the soldiers could not possibly impress a stranger favourably. They looked nothing better than "dirty, slouching ragamuffins," slipshod, in tattered and cast-off clothes of all sorts, on the verge of actual mendicancy, bits of rusty uniform appearing here and there amongst their cotton rags. The quarters are not bad. The rank and file get one and a half pounds of bread daily and five rupees a month nominally, but their pay is in arrears, and they eke it out by working at different trades. These men had not been drilled for two months, and were slovenly and unsoldierly to a degree, as men must be who have no proper pay, rations, instruction, clothing, or equipments.

The courtesy of the host leaves nothing unthought of. In returning from a long stroll round the city a wet place had to be crossed, and when we reached it there were saddle-horses ready. On arriving at dusk in the bazar several servants met us with lanterns. The lantern is an important matter, as its size is supposed to indicate the position of the wearer. The Persian lantern has a tin or iron top and bottom, between which is a collapsible wired cylinder of waxed muslin. The light from the candle burning inside is diffused and soft. Three feet long and two feet wide is not an uncommon size. They are carried close to the ground, illustrating "Thy Word is a lamp unto my path," and none but the poor stir out after dark without a lantern-bearer in front. Our lanterns, as befits the Vakil's position, are very large.

There is something Biblical in the progress of Abdul Rahim through the streets, always reminding me of "greetings in the market-place," and "doing alms to be seen of men," – not that I think our kind host sins in either direction. "Peace be with you," say the people, bending low. "To you be peace," replies the Agha.

A wish having been expressed to visit the rock-sculptures of the Takt-i-Bostan, a winter picnic was quietly arranged for the purpose. There was a great snowstorm on the night we arrived, succeeded by intense frost and clear blue skies, – glorious Canadian winter weather. Outside the wall an English landau, brought in pieces from Baghdad, awaited us, with four Arab horses, two of them ridden. There were eleven outriders and some led horses, and a Turki pipe-bearer rode alongside the carriage with two cylinders of leather containing kalians in place of holsters, on one side, behind a leather water-bottle, and on the other a brazier of lighted charcoal hanging by chains much below the horse's body. Another pipe-bearer lighted the kalian at intervals and handed it into the carriage to his master. Some of the horsemen carried rifles and wore cartridge-belts.

Reaching the Karasu river we got out into deep mud, were ferried over in a muddy box hauling on a rope, and drove to the Takt-i-Bostan, where several tanks of clear water, a house built into the rock, a number of Kurds on fine horses, the arched recesses in the rock which contain the sculptures, and the magnificent range of the Jabali-Besitun formed a very striking scene.

Sir H. Rawlinson considers these sculptures the finest in Persia, and regards them as the work of Greek artists. The lower of the two bas-reliefs at the back of the main recess is a colossal figure of a king on horseback, "the staff of whose spear is as a weaver's beam." On the sides of the recess, and, like the equestrian figure, in very high relief and very much undercut, are scenes from the chase of a most spirited description, representing a king and court mounted on elephants, horses, and camels, hunting boars, stags, and other animals, their enthusiasm in the pursuit being successfully conveyed by the art of the sculptor. In the spandrels of the archway of the main recess are carved, winged female figures. In the smaller arch, also containing a bas-relief, is a Pehlevi inscription.19

There is a broad stone platform in front of the arch, below which flows direct from the mountain a great volume of water, which replenishes the tanks. The house, which also contains a tank fed by the same living water, the mountain and its treasures, the tanks, and some miles of avenues of willows, have been bought by the Vakil, and his son laughingly says that he hopes to live to see a time when Cook will give "tourist excursion tickets" by rail to the Takt-i-Bostan!

Coffee and kalians were served to the Kurds in the arch, and mounting the horses we rode to a country house belonging to our host in the midst of large rose gardens, and with a wonderful view of the magnificent Besitun range, of the rolling snowy hills on which Kirmanshah and its plantations lay like a black splotch, and of this noble plain, six miles long from north to south, and thirty from east to west, its absolutely unbroken snow gleaming like satin, and shadows lying upon it in pure blue. Many servants and a large fire awaited us in that pleasant bungalow, as well as coffee and sweetmeats, and we stayed there till the sinking sun flushed all the surrounding hills with pink, and the gray twilight came on.

I rode a splendid Arab, with a neck "clothed with thunder," a horse to make one feel young again, with his elastic stride and pride of bearing, but indeed I "snatched a fearful joy," for the snow was extremely slippery, and thirteen Arab horses in high condition restrained to a foot's pace had belligerent views of their own, tending to disconcert an unwary rider. We crossed the Karasu by a deep and devious ford up to the girths, and had an exhilarating six miles' ride by moonlight in keen frost, the powdery snow crackling under the horses' feet. It was too slippery to enter the town on horseback, but servants with lanterns awaited us at the gates and roaring fires and dinner were ready here, after a delightful expedition.

I dined alone with our host, Hadji, who understands and speaks English fairly well, acting as interpreter. Abdul Rahim at once plunged into politics, and asked very many intelligent questions about English politics and parties, the condition and housing of our working classes, and then about my own family and occupations. He is a zealous Moslem, and the pious phrases which sit so oddly on Hadji come very naturally from his lips. In reply to a sketch of character which I gave him he said: "What God does is good. He knows, we submit. He of whom you speak laid up great treasure for another life. Whoso loves and befriends the poor is acceptable to God. One day we shall know all. God is good." He said he had been too busy to learn English, but that he understands a great deal, and added, with a roguish gleam lighting up his whole face, and a very funny laugh, "And I hear what M – says." He has seen but very few English ladies, and it shows great quickness of apprehension that he should never fail in the respectfulness and quiet courteous attentions which would be shown to a lady by an English host.

Even after India, the quantity of servants employed in such a household as this is very impressive. Besides a number who are with the Vakil in Tihran, there are the nazr or steward, who under the master is supreme, cooks and their assistants, table servants, farāshes, who are sweepers and message-runners, in any number, pipe-bearers, coffee and ice-makers, plate-cleaners, washermen, lamp-cleaners, who are also lantern-bearers, a head groom, with a groom for each horse under him, and a number more, over forty in all, receiving, if paid at the usual rate of wages in Kirmanshah, which is a cheap place, from sixty krans a month down to twenty, the kran being now about 8d. These wages do not represent the actual gains of a servant, for he is entitled to perquisites, which are chiefly in the form of commissions on things bought and sold by his master, and which are regarded as legitimate if they do not exceed 10 per cent. It is of no use to fight again this "modakel," or to vex one's soul in any way about it. Persians have to submit to it as well as Europeans. Hadji has endeavoured to extract from 50 to 80 per cent on purchases made by him for me, but this is thought an outrage.

This modakel applies to all bargains. If a charvadar (no longer a katirgi) is hired, he has to pay one's servant 10 per cent on the contract price. If I sell a horse, my servant holds out for a good price, and takes his 10 per cent, and the same thing applies to a pair of shoes, or a pound of tea, or a chicken, or a bottle of milk. The system comes down from the highest quarters. The price paid by the governor of a province to the Shah is but the Shah's modakel, and when a governor farms the taxes for 60,000 tumans and sells them for 80,000, the difference is his modakel, and so it goes on through all official transactions and appointments, and is a fruitful source of grinding oppression, and of inefficiency in the army and other departments. The servant, poor fellow, may stop at 10 per cent, but the Shah's servant may think himself generous if he hesitates at 50 per cent. I have heard it said that when the late Shah was dying he said to the present sovereign: "If you would sit long upon the throne, see that there is only one spoon among ten men," and that the system represented by this speech is faithfully carried out.

I. L. B.

LETTER VI

Kirmanshah, Feb. 2.

On January 28 there was a tremendous snowfall, and even before that the road to Hamadan, which was our possible route, had been blocked for some days. The temperature has now risen to 31°, with a bitter wind, and much snow in the sky. The journey does not promise well. Two of the servants have been ill. I am not at all well, and the reports of the difficulties farther on are rather serious. These things are certain, – that the marches are very long, and without any possibility of resting en route owing to mud or snow, and that the food and accommodation will be horrible.

Hadji is turning out very badly. He has fever now, poor fellow, and is even more useless than usual. Abdul Rahim does not like him to interpret, and calls him "the savage." He does no work, and is both dirty and dishonest. The constant use of pious phrases is not a good sign either of Moslem or Christian. I told him this morning that I could not eat from so dirty a plate. "God is great," he quietly answered. He broke my trestle bed by not attending to directions, and when I pointed out what he had done, he answered, "God knows all, God ordains all things." It is really exasperating.

It is necessary to procure an additional outfit for the journey – a slow process – masks lined with flannel, sheepskin bags for the feet, the thick felt coats of the country for all the servants, additional blankets, kajawehs for me, and saddle-horses. The marches will frequently be from twenty to thirty miles in length, and the fatigue of riding them at a foot's pace when one cannot exchange riding for walking will be so great that I have had a pair of kajawehs made in which to travel when I am tired of the mule. These panniers are oblong wooden boxes, eighteen inches high, with hoops over them for curtains. One hangs on each side of the mule on a level with his back, and they are mounted, i. e. they are scrambled into from the front by a ladder, which is carried between them. Most women and some men travel in them. They are filled up with quilts and cushions. The mule which is to carry them is a big and powerful animal, and double price is charged for him.

Horses are very good and cheap here. A pure Arab can be bought for £14, and a cross between an Arab and a Kurdish horse – a breed noted for endurance – for even less. But to our thinking they are small, never exceeding fifteen hands. The horses of the Kirmanshah province are esteemed everywhere, and there is a steady drain upon them for the Indian market. The stud of three horses requires a groom, and Abdul Rahim is sending a sowar, who looks a character, to attend us to Tihran. A muleteer, remarkable in appearance and beauty, and twelve fine mules have been engaged. The sowar and several other men have applied to me for medicine, having fearful coughs, etc., but I have not been fortunate enough to cure them, as their maladies chiefly require good feeding, warm bedding, and poultices, which are unattainable. It is pitiable to see the poor shivering in their thin cotton clothes in such weather. The men make shift with the seamless felt coats – more cloaks than coats, with long bag-like sleeves tapering to the size of a glove but with a slit midway, through which the hands can be protruded when need arises. The women have no outer garment but the thin cotton chadar.

I have tried to get a bed made, but there is no wood strong enough for the purpose, and the bazars cannot produce any canvas.

Sannah, Feb. 5.– Yesterday we were to have started at nine, but the usual quarrelling about loads detained us till 10.30, so that it was nearly dark when we reached the end of the first stage of a three weeks' journey. From the house roof the prospect was most dismal. It was partly thawing, and through the whiteness of the plain ran a brown trail with sodden edges, indicating mud. The great mass of the Jabali-Besitun, or Behistun, or Behishtan, though on the other side of the plain, seemed actually impending over the city, with its great black rock masses, too steep to hold the snow, and the Besitun mountain itself, said to be twenty-four miles away, looming darkly through gray snow clouds, looked hardly ten. Our host had sent men on to see if the landau could take me part of the way at least; but their verdict was that the road was impassable.

After much noise the caravan got under way, but it was soon evident that the fine mules we had engaged had been changed for a poor, sore-backed set, and that the fine saddle-mule I was to have had was metamorphosed into a poor weak creature, which began to drop his leg from the shoulder almost as soon as we were outside the walls, and on a steep bridge came down on his nose with a violent fall, giving me a sharp strain, and fell several times afterwards; indeed, the poor animal could scarcely keep on his legs during the eight hours' march.

Hadji rode in a kajaweh, balanced by some luggage, and was to keep close to me, but when I wanted to change my broken-down beast for a pannier he was not to be seen, then or afterwards, and came in late. The big mule had fallen, he was bruised, the kajawehs were smashed to pieces, and were broken up for firewood, and I am now without any means of getting any rest from riding! "It's the pace that kills." In snow and mud gallops are impossible, and three miles an hour is good going.

An hour from Kirmanshah the road crosses the Karasu by a good brick bridge, and proceeds over the plain for many miles, keeping the Besitun range about two miles on the left, and then passes over undulating ground to the Besitun village. Two or three large villages occur at a distance from the road, now shut in, and about eight miles from Besitun there are marble columns lying on the ground among some remains of marble walls, now only hummocks in the snow.

The road was churned into deep mud by the passage of animals, and the snow was too deep to ride in. My mule lost no opportunity of tumbling down, and I felt myself a barbarian for urging him on. Hills and mountains glistened in all directions. The only exception to the general whiteness was Piru, the great rock mass of Besitun, which ever loomed blackly overhead through clouds and darkness, and never seemed any nearer. It was very solitary. I met only a caravan of carpets, and a few men struggling along with laden asses.

It was the most artistic day of the whole journey, much cloud flying about, mountains in indigo gloom, or in gray, with storm clouds round their heads, or pure white, with shadows touched in with cobalt, while peaks and ridges, sun-kissed, gleamed here and there above indigo and gray. Not a tree or even bush, on them or on the plain, broke the monotony after a summer palace of the Shah, surrounded by poplars, was passed. There is plenty of water everywhere.

As the sun was stormily tinging with pink the rolling snow-clouds here and there, I halted on the brow of a slope under the imposing rock front of Besitun to wait for orders. It was wildly magnificent: the huge precipice of Piru, rising 1700 feet from the level, the mountains on both sides of the valley approaching each other, and behind Piru a craggy ravine, glorified here and there by touches of amber and pink upon the clouds which boiled furiously out of its depths. In the foreground were a huge caravanserai with a noble portal, a solitary thing upon the snow, not a dwelling, but offering its frigid hospitality to all comers; a river with many windings, and the ruinous hovels of Besitun huddled in the mud behind. An appalling view in the wild twilight of a winter evening; and as the pink died out, a desolate ghastliness fell upon it. As I waited, all but worn out by the long march, the tumbling mule, and the icy wind, I thought I should like never to hear the deep chimes of a Persian caravan, or see the huge portal of a Persian caravanserai any more. These are cowardly emotions which are dispelled by warmth and food, but at that moment there was not much prospect of either.

Through seas of mud and by mounds of filth we entered Besitun, a most wretched village of eighteen hovels, chiefly ruinous, where we dismounted in the mixed snow and mud of a yard at a hovel of three rooms vacated by a family. It was a better shelter than could have been hoped for, though after a fire was made, which filled the room with smoke, I had to move from place to place to avoid the drip from the roof.

Hadji said he was ill of fever, and seemed like an idiot; but the orderly said that the illness was shammed and the stupidity assumed in order not to work. I told him to put the mattress on the bed; "Pour water on the mattress," he replied. I repeated, "Put – the – mattress – on – the – bed," to which he replied, "Put the mattress into water!" I said if he felt too ill for his work he might go to bed. "God knows," he answered. "Yes, knows that you are a lazy, good-for-nothing, humbugging brute" – a well-timed objurgation from M – , which elicited a prolonged "Ya Allah!" but produced no effect, as the tea and chapatties were not relatively but absolutely cold the next morning.

The next day dawned miserably, and the daylight when it came was only a few removes from darkness, yet it was enough to bring out the horrors of that wretched place, and the dirt and poverty of the people, who were a prey to skin diseases. Many readers will remember that Sir H. Rawlinson considers that there are good geographical and etymological reasons for identifying Besitun with the Baghistan, or Place of Gardens of the Greeks, and with the famous pleasure-grounds which tradition ascribes to Semiramis. But of these gardens not a trace remains. A precipitous rock, smoothed at its lower part, a vigorous spring gushing out at the foot of the precipice, two tablets, one of which, at a height of over 300 feet, visible from the road but inaccessible, is an Achæmenian sculpture portraying the majesty of Darius, with about a thousand lines of cuneiform writing, are all that survive of the ancient splendours of Besitun, with the exception of some buttresses opposite the rock, belonging to a vanished Sasanian bridge over the Gamasiab, and some fragments of other buildings of the Sasanian epoch. These deeply interesting antiquities have been described and illustrated by Sir H. Rawlinson, Flandin and Coste, and others.

It has been a severe day. It was so unpromising that a start was only decided on after many pros and cons. Through dark air small flakes of snow fell sparsely at intervals from a sky from which all light had died out. Gusts of icy wind swept down every gorge. Huge ragged masses of cloud drifted wildly round the frowning mass of Piru. Now and then the gusts ceased, and there was an inauspicious calm.

I rode a big mule not used to the bit, very troublesome and mulish at first, but broken in an hour. A clear blink revealed the tablets, but from their great altitude the tallest of the figures only looked two feet high. There is little to see on this march even under favourable circumstances. A few villages, the ruined fort of Hassan Khan, now used as a caravanserai, on a height, the windings of the Gamasiab, and a few canals crossed by brick bridges, represent its chief features. Impressions of a country received in a storm are likely to be incorrect, but they were pleasurable. Everything seemed on a grand scale: here desolate plateaus pure white, there high mountains and tremendous gorges, from which white mists were boiling up – everything was shrouded in mystery – plain prose ceased to be for some hours.

The others had to make several halts, so I left the "light division" and rode on alone. It became dark and wild, and presently the surface of the snow began to move and to drift furiously for about a foot above the ground. The wind rose to a gale. I held my hat on with one half-frozen hand. My mackintosh cape blew inside out, and struck me such a heavy blow on the eyes that for some time I could not see and had to trust to the mule. The wind rose higher; it was furious, and the drift, not only from the valley but from the mountain sides, was higher than my head, stinging and hissing as it raced by. It was a "blizzard," a brutal snow-laden north-easter, carrying fine, sharp, hard-frozen snow crystals, which beat on my eyes and blinded them.

After a short experience of it my mule "turned tail" and needed spurring to make him face it. I fought on for an hour, crossed what appeared to be a bridge, where there were a few mud hovels, and pressed on down a narrower valley. The blizzard became frightful; from every ravine gusts of storm came down, sweeping the powdery snow from the hillsides into the valley; the mountains were blotted out, the depression in the snow which erewhile had marked the path was gone, I could not even see the mule's neck, and he was floundering in deep snow up to the girths; the hiss of the drift had increased to a roar, the violence of the storm produced breathlessness and the intense cold numbness. It was dangerous for a solitary traveller, and thinking that M – would be bothered by missing one of the party under such circumstances, I turned and waited under the lee of a ruinous mud hovel for a long, long time till the others came up – two of the men having been unhorsed in a drift.

In those hovels there were neither accommodation nor supplies, and we decided to push on. It was never so bad again. The wind moderated, wet snow fell heavily, but cleared off, and there was a brilliant blue heaven with heavy sunlit cloud-wreaths, among which colossal mountain forms displayed themselves, two peaks in glorious sunlight, high, high above a whirling snow-cloud, which was itself far above a great mountain range below. There were rifts, valleys, gorges, naked, nearly perpendicular rocks, the faces of mountains, half of which had fallen down in the opposite direction, a snow-filled valley, a winding river with brief blue stretches, a ruined fort on an eminence, a sharp turn, a sudden twilight, and then another blizzard far colder than the last, raging down a lateral ravine, up which, even through the blinding drift, were to be seen, to all seeming higher than mountains of this earth, the twin peaks of Shamran lighted by the sun. I faced the blizzard for some time, and then knowing that Hadji and the cook, who were behind me, would turn off to a distant village, all trace of a track having disappeared, I rode fully a mile back and waited half an hour for them. They were half-frozen, and had hardly been able to urge their mules, which were lightly laden, through the snow, and Hadji was groaning "Ya Allah!"