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

Here, for a rarity, the Seigneur lives a stately life among those who are practically his serfs in good old medieval fashion. Large offices are enclosed within an outer wall, and are inhabited by retainers. Rows of stables sheltered a number of fine and well-groomed horses from the sun. Bullocks were being brought in from ploughing; there were agricultural implements of the best Persian type, fowls, ducks, turkeys, angora goats; negroes and negresses, grinning at the stranger; mounted messengers with letters arriving and departing; scribes in white turbans and black robes lounging – all the paraphernalia of position and wealth.

It was nearly nine, and the great man had not risen, but he sent me a breakfast of tea, kabobs, cracked wheat, curds, sharbat, and grapes. The courtyard is entered by a really fine gateway, and the castle is built round a quadrangle. The andarun and its fretwork galleries are on one side, and on another is what may be called a hall of audience, where the Sartip hears village business and decides cases.

He offered me a few days' hospitality, paid the usual compliments, said that no escort was needed from thence to Sujbulāk, where my letter to the Governor would procure me one if "the roads were unsettled," hoped that I should not suffer from the hardships of the journey, and offered me a kajaveh and mule for the next marches.

A level road along the same prosperous alluvial plain leads to Kashava, a village of 100 houses embosomed in fruit trees and surrounded by tobacco and cotton. It has an old fort, a very fine spring, and a "resident proprietor," who, as soon as he heard of my arrival, sent servants with melons and tea on silver trays, stabled my horse, and provided me with a strong guard, as the camping-ground was much exposed to robbers. Such attentions, though pleasant, are very expensive, as the greater the master the greater are the expectations of the servants, and the value of such a present as melons must be at least quadrupled in bakhsheesh.

While halting the next day the horses eagerly ate the stalks and roots of a strongly-scented bulb which lay almost on the surface of the ground, and were simultaneously seized with a peculiar affection. Their hair stood out from their bodies like bristles, and they threw their heads up and down with a regular, convulsive, and apparently perfectly involuntary motion, while their eyes were fixed and staring. This went on for two hours, Boy following me as usual; but owing to this most distressing jerk, over which he had no control, he was unable to eat the dainties which his soul loves, and which I hoped would break up the affection – a very painful one to witness. After the attack both animals perspired profusely. The water literally ran off their bodies. The jerks gradually moderated and ceased, and there were no after effects but very puffy swellings about the throat. Both had barley in their nose-bags, but pawed and wriggled them off in order to get at this plant, a species of allium.

When Boy was well enough to be mounted we descended into an immense plain, on which were many villages and tracks. This plain of Hadji Hussein is in fact only another part of the alluvial level of the Jagatsu, which, with a breadth of from four to ten miles, extends for nearly forty miles, and is fertile and populous for most of its length. At the nearest village all the men were busy at the threshing-floor, and they would not give me a guide; at the next the ketchuda sent a young man, but required payment in advance.

After crossing the plain, on which villages occur at frequent intervals on gravelly islands surrounded by rich, stiff, black soil, we forded the broad Jagatsu and got into the environs of, not an insignificant village, as I expected, but an important town of 5000 people. A wide road, planted and ditched on both sides, with well-kept irrigated gardens, shaded by poplars, willows, and fruit trees, runs for a mile from the river into the town, which is surrounded by similar gardens on every side, giving it the appearance of being densely wooded. The vineyards are magnificent, and the size and flavour of the grapes quite unusual. Melons, opium, tobacco, cotton, castor oil, sesamum, and bringals all flourish.

Miandab is partly in ruins, but covers a great extent of ground with its 1000 houses, 100 of which are inhabited by Jews and twenty by Armenians. People of five tribes are found there, but unlike Sain Kala, where Sunnis and Shiahs live peaceably, the Mussulmans are all Shiahs, no Sunni having been allowed to become a permanent inhabitant since the Kurdish attack ten years ago, when Sunnis within the city betrayed it into the hands of their co-religionists.

It has several mosques, a good bazar with a domed roof, a part of which displays very fine copper-work done in the town, and a garrison of 100 men. I saw the whole of Miandab, for my caravan was lost, and an hour was spent in hunting for it, inquiring of every one if he had seen a caravan of four yabus, but vainly, till we reached the other side, where I found it only just arrived, and the men busy tent-pitching in a lonely place among prolific vineyards. Sharban had lost the way, and after much marching and counter-marching had reached the ford of the Jagatsu, which I had been told to avoid, where the caravan got into deep strong water which carried the yabus off their feet, and he says that they and the servant were nearly drowned. Mirza had to go back into the town to obtain a guard from an official, as the camping-ground was very unsafe, and it was 11 p. m. before dinner was ready.

The next day I was ill, and rode only twelve miles, for the most part traversing the noble plain of Hadji Hussein, till the road ascends by tawny slopes to the wretched village of Amirabad – seventeen hovels on a windy hill, badly supplied with water. Partly sunk below ground, this village, at a short distance off, is only indicated by huge stacks of the Centaurea alata and tall cones of kiziks, which, being neatly plastered, are very superior in appearance to the houses which they are intended to warm.

The western side of the great plain was studded with Ilyat camps of octagonal and umbrella-shaped tents with the sides kept out by stout ribs. Great herds of camels, and flocks of big fat-tailed sheep, varying in colour from Vandyke brown to golden auburn, camels carrying fodder, and tribesmen building it into great stacks, round which, but seven feet off, they place fences of a reed which is abundant in swampy places, gave life and animation. Ilyat women brought bowls of milk and curds, and offered me the hospitality of their tents.

As I passed through a herd of grazing camels, an ancient, long-toothed, evil-faced beast ran at Boy with open mouth and a snarling growl. Poor Boy literally gasped with terror (courage is not his strong point) and dashed off at a gallop; and now whenever he sees camels in the distance he snorts and does his best to bolt to one side, showing a cowardice which is really pitiable.

It was very cold when I left Amirabad the next morning at 6.30, and hoar-frost lay on the ground. The steadiness with which the mercury descends at this season is as interesting as its steady ascent in the spring, and its freedom from any but the smallest fluctuations in the summer. The road to Sujbulāk passes over uplands and hill-slopes, tawny with sun-cured grass, and after crossing some low spurs, blue with the lovely Eryngium cæruleum, descends into a long rich valley watered by the river Sanak. This valley, in which are situated Inda Khosh and other large villages, is abundantly irrigated, and is cultivated throughout. Well planted with fruit trees, it is a great contrast to the arid, fiery slopes which descend upon it.

Long before reaching Sujbulāk there were indications of the vicinity of a place of some importance, caravans going both ways, asses loaded with perishable produce, horsemen and foot passengers, including many fine-looking Kurdish women unveiled, and walking with a firm masculine stride, even when carrying children on their backs.

A few miles from the town two sowars met me, but after escorting me for some distance they left me, and taking the wrong road, I found myself shortly on a slope above the town, not among the living but the dead. Such a City of Death I have never seen. A whole hour was occupied in riding through it without reaching its limits. Fifty thousand gravestones are said to stand on the reddish-gray gravel between the hill and the city wall, mere unhewn slabs of gray stone, from six inches to as many feet in height, row beyond row to the limit of vision – 300,000 people, they say, are buried there. There is no suggestion of "life and immortality." Weird, melancholy, and terribly malodorous, owing to the shallowness of the graves, the impression made by this vast cemetery is solely painful. The tombs are continued up to the walls and even among the houses, and having been much disturbed there is the sad spectacle of human skulls and bones lying about, being gnawed by dogs.

The graveyard side of Sujbulāk is fouler and filthier than anything I have seen, and the odours, even in this beautiful weather, are appalling. The centre of each alley is a broken channel with a broken pavement on each side. These channels were obviously constructed for water, but now contain only a black and stagnant horror, hardly to be called a fluid, choked with every kind of refuse. The bazars are narrow, dark, and busy, full of Russian commodities, leather goods, ready-made clothing, melons, grapes, and pop-corn. The crowds of men mostly wore the Kurdish or Turkish costume, but black-robed and white-turbaned Seyyids and mollahs were not wanting.

Sujbulāk, the capital of Northern Persian Kurdistan, and the residence of a governor, is quite an important entrepôt for furs, in which it carries on a large trade with Russia, and a French firm, it is said, buys up fur rugs to the value of several hundred thousand francs annually. It also does a large business with the Kurdish tribes of the adjacent mountains and the Turkish nomads of the plains, and a considerable trade in gall-nuts. It has twenty small mosques, three hammams, some very inferior caravanserais, and a few coffee-houses. Its meat bazar and its grain and pulse bazars are capacious and well supplied.

It has a reputed population of 5000 souls. Kurds largely predominate, but there are so many Turks that the Turkish Government has lately built a very conspicuous consulate, with the aspect of a fortress, and has appointed a consul to protect the interests of its subjects. There are 120 Armenians, who make wine and arak, and are usurers, and gold and silver smiths. The Jews get their living by money-lending, peddling drugs, dyeing cotton goods, selling groceries, and making gold and silver lace. There is a garrison, of 1000 men nominally, for the town and district are somewhat turbulent, and a conflict is always imminent between the Kurds and Turks, who are Sunnis, and the small Persian population, which is Shiah. The altitude of Sujbulāk is 4770 feet. Here I have come upon the track of Ida Pfeiffer, who travelled in the Urmi region more than forty years ago, when travelling in Persia was full of risks, and much more difficult in all respects than it is now.

The Sanak, though clear and bright, is fouled by many abominations, and by the ceaseless washing of clothes above the town; there are no pure wells, and all people who care about what they drink keep asses constantly bringing water from an uncontaminated part of the river, two miles off. Even the Governor has to depend on this supply. Sujbulāk looks very well from this camp, with the bright river in the foreground, and above it, irregularly grouped on a rising bank, the façade, terraces, and towers of the Governor's palace, the fort-like Turkish consulate, and numbers of good dwelling-houses, with balakhanas painted blue or pink, or covered with arabesques in red, with projecting lattice windows of dark wood, and balconies overhanging the water.

This shingle where I am encamped is the Rotten Row of the town, and is very lively this evening, for numbers of Kurds have been galloping their horses here, and performing feats of horsemanship before the admiring eyes of hundreds of promenaders, male and female, most of the latter unveiled. As all have to cross the ford where the river is some inches above a man's knees, the effect is grotesque, and even the women have no objection to displaying their round white limbs in the clear water. The ladies of the Governor's andarun sent word that food and quarters had been prepared for me since noon, but I excused myself on the plea of excessive fatigue. This message was followed by a visit from the Governor's foster-mother, an unveiled jolly woman, of redundant proportions, wearing remarkably short petticoats, which displayed limbs like pillars. A small woman attended her, and a number of Kurd men, superbly dressed, and wearing short two-edged swords, with ebony hilts ornamented with incrustations of very finely-worked filigree silver. These weapons are made here. The lady has been to Mecca, and evinces much more general intelligence than the secluded women. She took a dagger from one of the attendants, and showed me with much go how the thrusts which kill are made.

All were much amused with Boy's gentle ways. He had been into the town for supplies, and, as usual, asked me to take off his bridle by coming up and putting his ears under my chin, when, if I do not attend to him at once, he lifts his head and gives me a gentle push, or rubs his nose against my cheek. The men admired his strong, clean limbs, which are his best points. Last night I heard snoring very near me, and thinking that the watchmen were sleeping under the flys, I went out to waken them, and found the big beast stretched out fast asleep in the verandah of the tent, having retired there for warmth. I accompanied my visitors to the ford, followed by Boy, to their great amusement, as it was to mine to see the stout lady mount nimbly on a Kurd's back, and ride him "pickaback" through the water!

This has not been a comfortable afternoon. The Governor has been out all day hunting, and his deputy either at the bath or a religious function. Milk can only be got in the Jewish quarter, where smallpox is prevailing; the Sanak water is too foul to be used for tea, and no man will go two miles so late for a pure supply. Johannes, who is most disobedient as well as incompetent, has brought no horse food, and poor Boy has been calling for it for two hours, coming into my tent, shaking the bag in which the barley is usually kept, and actually in his hunger clearing the table of melons and grapes. These, however, are only among the very small annoyances of travelling.

9 p. m. – The Governor has returned, and has sent a guard of twenty-five soldiers, with an invitation to visit the ladies before I start to-morrow.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXVI

Turkman, Oct. 6.

Rising very early on Friday morning to keep my appointment with the ladies of the Governor of Sujbulāk, as well as to obtain a letter from him, I reached the palace entrance a little after sunrise, the hour agreed upon. The walls and gateway are crumbling, the courtyard is in heaps, the glass windows of the façade and towers are much broken, the plaster is mangy – a complete disappointment. The Kurdish guard slept soundly at the entrance; only a big dog, more faithful than man, was on the alert. The Governor was not yet awake, nor the ladies. It would be an "intolerable crime," the sentry said, to waken them. He looked as if he thought it an "intolerable crime" that his own surreptitious slumbers had been disturbed. It is contrary to Persian etiquette to waken persons of distinction till they please. I waited at the entrance for half an hour and then reluctantly departed, very sorry not to give the ladies the opportunity they ardently desired of seeing a European woman. They had sent word that they had only once in their lives seen one!

The march to the poor village of Mehemetabad was over uninteresting low rounded hills and through a valley without habitations, opening upon a fine plain, at the south-east end of which the village stands. The camping-ground was a green fallow near some willows and a stream. After marching for some hours under a glittering sky and a hot sun over scorched, glaring yellow soil, a measure of greenness just round the tent is most refreshing to eyes which are suffering from the want of the coloured glasses which were ground under a yabu's hoofs a fortnight ago.

The Khan of the village was very courteous, and sent a tray of splendid grapes, and six watchmen. Buffalo bulls of very large size were used there for burden. Buffaloes are a sure sign of mitigated aridity, for they must bathe, i. e. lie down in water three times daily, if they are to be kept in health, and if the water and mud are not deep enough for this, boys go in along with them and pour water over them with a pannikin. In these regions they are almost exclusively used for burdens, draught, and milk, and everywhere their curved flat horns and sweet, calm, silly faces are to be seen above the water of the deep irrigation ditches. The buffalo, though usually mild enough to be driven by small children, has an uncertain temper, and can be roused to frightful ferocity. In Persian Kurdistan, if not elsewhere, this is taken advantage of, and in the spring, when the animals are in good condition after the winter's rest, the people have buffalo fights, in which cruel injuries would be inflicted were it not for the merciful provision of nature in giving these animals flat incurved horns.23

As I sat at my tent door a cloud of dust moved along the road towards the village, escorting an indefinite something which loomed monstrously through it. I have not seen a cart for nine months, and till the unmistakable creak of wooden wheels enlightened me I could not think what was approaching. Actually every village on these plains has one or more buffalo-carts, with wooden wheels without tires, and hubs and axles of enormous size and strength, usually drawn by four buffaloes. A man sits on the front of the cart and drives with a stick, and a boy facing backwards sits on the yoke between the two foremost beasts. He croons a perpetual song, and if this ceases the buffaloes stop. For every added pair (and on the next plain I saw as many as six yoke) there is an additional boy and an additional song.

This apparition carried a light wooden frame, which was loaded to a preposterous height with the strong reeds which are used to support the mud roofs, heavily weighted as these are with stacks of fodder.

One would think one was in the heart of the Bakhtiari country and not on a caravan route, from the difficulty of getting any correct guidance as to the road, distance, safety, or otherwise, etc. Sharban has never been this way, and is the prey of every rumour. Between his terror of having to "eat wood" on his return, and his dread of being attacked and robbed of his yabus, he leads an uneasy life, and when, as at Mehemetabad, there is no yard for his animals, he watches all night in the idea that the guards are the "worst robbers of all." I think he has all the Mussulman distrust of arrangements made by a woman! Hitherto the guards have been faithful and quiet. I always ask them not to talk after 8 p. m., and I have not once been disturbed by them; and when I walk as usual twice round the camp during the night I always find them awake by their big watch-fires.

The village Khan, an intelligent man, spent some time with me in the afternoon. The fields of his village are not manured at all, and the yield is only about tenfold. Willows are grown for the sake of the osiers, which are a necessity, and not for fuel, and the whole of the manure is required for cooking and heating purposes. He said that his village becomes poorer annually owing to the heavier exactions of the officials and the larger sums demanded to "buy off robbers." The latter is a complaint often made in the villages which are near the Turkish frontier, a boundary which from all accounts needs considerable "rectification." The people say that Kurds cross the border, and that unless they bribe them they drive off their sheep and cattle and get over it again safely, but I doubt the truth of these statements.

I got away at sunrise for a march of nominally fourteen miles, but in reality twenty-four. Sharban not only stated the distance falsely but induced others to do the same thing, and when he passed me at midday, saying the halting-place was only two miles ahead, he went on for twelve miles, his desire being to rejoin that bugbear, the "big caravan," which he heard had reached Urmi. The result is that I have had to rest for two days, and he has gained two days' pay, but has lost time.

After some serious difficulties in crossing some swampy streams and a pitiable display of cowardice on Boy's part, we embarked on the magnificent plain of Sulduz, where Johannes, with a supreme self-confidence which imposed on me, took the wrong one of two tracks, and we rode west instead of east, to within a few hours' journey of a pass into Turkey through the magnificent range of the Zibar mountains, which even at this advanced season are in some places heavily patched with last winter's snow.

To regain the caravan route we had to cross the greater part of this grand plain, which I had not then seen equalled in Persia for fertility and population. It possesses, that crown of blessings, an abundant water supply, indeed so abundant that in the spring it is a swamp, and the spring sowing is delayed till May. It has several large villages, slightly raised and well planted, a few of them with the large fortified houses of resident proprietors overtopping the smaller dwellings. Evidences of material prosperity meet the eye everywhere, a prosperity which needs to be guarded, however, for every shepherd, cowherd, ploughman, and buffalo-driver goes about his work armed.

Large herds of mares with mule foals, of big fat cattle, and of buffaloes, with plenty of mud to wallow in, stacks of real hay and of fine reeds, buffalo carts moving slowly near all the villages carrying the hay into security, grass uncut and unscorched, eighteen inches high, a deep, black, stoneless soil, impassable at certain seasons, towering cones of animal fuel, for export as well as use, an intensely blue sky above, a cool breeze, and the rare sight of cloud-shadows drifting over waving grass and flecking the cobalt sides of the Zibar mountains, combined to form a picture I would not willingly have missed, impatient as I was for the first view of the Sea of Urmi.

Beyond there are low stony hills, which would be absolutely bare now but for the Eryngium cæruleum and the showy spikes of a great yellow mullein, a salt lake, most of which is now a salt incrustation, mimicking ice from beneath which the water has been withdrawn, but with an odour which no ice ever has, then a gradual ascent to a windy ridge, and then – the Dead Sea of Urmi or Urumiya.

Dead indeed it looked from that point of view, and dead were its surroundings. It lay, a sheet of blue, bluer even than the heavens above it, stretching northwards beyond the limits of vision, and bounded on the east, but very far away, by low blue ranges, seen faintly through a blue veil. On the west side there are mountains, which recede considerably, and descend upon it in low rounded buff slopes or downs, over which the track, keeping near the water, lies. There was not a green thing, not a bush, or house, or flock of sheep, or horseman, or foot passenger along the miles of road which were visible from that point. The water lay in the mocking beauty of its brilliant colouring, a sea without a shore, without a boat, without a ripple or flash of foam, lifeless utterly, dead from all time past to all time to come. Dead, too, it is on closer acquaintance, and its odour, which can be discerned three miles off, is that odour of corruption known to science as sulphuretted hydrogen. Now and then there is a shore, a shallow bay or inlet, in which the lake, driven by the east wind, evaporates, leaving behind it a glaring crust of salt, beyond which a thick, bubbly, blackish-green scum lies on the blue water. In such places only the expressive old-fashioned word stench can describe the odour, which was strong enough nearly to knock over the servants and charvadars. No description can give an idea of the effluvium which is met with here and there beside this great salt lake, which has a length of eighty miles and an average breadth of twenty-four.