Kurd

“ How many among them even know their own age? or have any idea of what is outside Kurdistan? They learn swiftly enough, given the opportunity, and the Kurd learning is as rapacious for knowledge, as robbing he was for loot. ”

“ And since that time it has been Kurdistan, home of wild races speaking a language the purity of whose ancient forms is one of the best proofs of the occupation by the Kurds of their great mountains ever since the Aryan horde started from its “land of the Dawn” to people Persia, Media, and part of Europe—of which we ourselves are the descendants, through the Saxons, and so kin to the Kurd, who has never mixed his blood with that of the Arab or Turk, but kept it as pure as his unmixed speech. ”

“ You could not do anything worse when you know the police are seeking us. Do not do that, Kurd! Even if I were set free, it would delay me. My children are suffering. They are dying of hunger. For God’s sake, Kurd,—brother, neighbor, let me go!” The Kurd was unshakable. ”

“ So the merry game goes on, and up amongst the snows of Kurdistan Persian and Kurd and Turk kill each other on the slightest pretext, and often for no ascertainable cause.
The Kurd is always well armed, and usually well mounted—often at the expense of some lowland Persian villager. He invariably affects the national costume, which is an abbreviated coat and enormous baggy trousers, with a capacious Kamarband of coloured silk in which he carries pipe, knife, and odds and ends.
Ten armed Kurds riding into Bijar, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, would start a panic in the Bazaar. ”

“ Have you Kurds? and do they not rob these trains of carriages?”
“No, there are no Kurds, nor Arabs, nor Turks, nor are any of these tongues understood there.”
“La allahu ill’allah!” he exclaimed, “what a land! and yet God made all men, brother, and all countries, in which are ever good and bad, and I trust that thou art of the better. What matter if man be Christian or Islam. Can he not follow the laws of his own prophet, and the ordinances of God? And thou, too, art a stranger, far from thy people, and it behoves both Turkoman and Kurd to treat such an one as his own brother.” ”

“ Cochrane has had many and curious dealings with the Kurds, the dreaded inhabitants of the mountains which overhang the beautiful plain of Urmi, and a Kurd, who appears to be in perpetual "war-paint," is the gatekeeper at the Dispensary. One of the most singular results of the influence gained over these fierce and predatory people by the "Missionary Hakīm" 225 occurred in 1881, when Obeidullah Khan, with 11,000 Kurds, laid siege to Urmi. ”

“ It is characteristic of even the fiercest Kurds that their captives always are fed. The Kurds will rob and terribly mistreat their victims, especially the women of the Christians, but they will not steal their food. When their captives have no food they will even share with them. The Kurd is more of a child than the Turk, and nearly all the wickedness of these bandits of the desert is inspired by their Turkish masters. ”

“ When summer comes the annual migration to the recesses of the mountains has taken place, and whatever Kurds are not detained in the lowland villages, which are fairly numerous in spite of the aversion of the tribal Kurd to a life within walls, have already ended their brief sojourn in the country of the Arabs and are stretching their goat-hair tents upon the upland pastures. Streams of cattle, sheep, horses and goats obstruct the passes; the shepherds have doffed their felt cloaks and clamber over the boulders, their women beside them, mounted or on foot. ”

“ Later, I discovered that the predatory Kurd, the more wealthy he becomes, insists ever more upon clean clothing—a feature peculiar, I should imagine, to the Kurd of these parts—not that the race can be called dirty, as the standards of Persia go. ”

“ As early invaders of a transition land the Kurds have intermingled extensively with both highland and lowland populations. [240] The Kurd varies therefore according to region, the inhabitants of the elevated sections being stocky and of massive build, while the tall and sallow Semitic type appears among those on the southern plains. [241]
The Kurds, particularly in the semi-nomadic state, are noted freebooters. Travel in the districts they occupy is generally unsafe. Armenians and other Christians find them an inexorable foe. ”

“ Nor has the Kurdish nation, popularly supposed to be so obscure and savage, been deficient in supplying eminent men to the Government and army of Turkey. Probably few people know that the famous Saladin was a Kurd, or that Edrisi, the minister of the Sultan Selim, was of the same race.
As to their part in military affairs, the instinct of the race has given its members pre-eminence wherever as leaders they have sought it, and Turkey has counted among its bravest generals several Kurds of the north. ”

“ The fighting Kurd is, like the Highlander of old, looking about him ever for the enemy, always on the defensive, and the character developed by these circumstances, coupled with the wild and terrible country in which the northern Kurd lives, has gone to make that character, composed of suspicion, bravery, an intense alertness, and highly developed faculty of observation. ”

“ Kirkuk is thus a collection of all the races of eastern Turkey—Jew, Arab, Syrian, Armenian, Chaldean, Turk, Turkoman, and Kurd—and consequently enjoys considerable freedom from fanaticism, besides being strongly governed by a Turkish governor who possesses sufficient military strength to keep in order almost every element, the Kurds being the only difficult section of the population, with their contempt for all rule and order that does not emanate from their own khans. ”

“ They are none too loath to prey even on Turks, although as a rule the latter obtain immunity in return for the lenient dealing of the government in cases of Kurdish depredations on non-Moslem communities. The strong arm of an organized police alone will end the lawlessness with which their name is coupled in Turkey.
Good qualities are not wanting among them. A Kurd is generally true to his word. The rude code of honor in vogue among their tribes is rarely violated, and, whenever disposed, the Kurd can become as hospitable as his Arab neighbors. ”

“ A KURD OF THE OLD TYPE.
48The number of the Kurds is very uncertain. Neither Sultan nor Shah has ever attempted a census of them; and as they are very indifferent taxpayers, the revenue tables—wilfully distorted for political purposes—are quite unreliable. From the estimates of British consular officers there appear to be about one and a half million Turkish Kurds, of whom about 600,000 are in the vilayets of Erzroom, Van, and Bitlis, and the rest in the vilayets of Harpoot, Diarbekir, Mosul, and Bagdad. This is a very liberal estimate. There are also supposed to be about 750,000 in Persia. ”

“ The true feudal spirit is strong in the race. Devoted to the mountains, to his own clan, intensely proud of being a Kurd, the northerner will take to arms at the word of his chief, never asking to hear his reason. Fraser, a traveller in the early part of the 19th century,394 observes: “The similarity between these Kurds as they are, and the Highland (i.e. Scottish) clans as they were not many centuries ago, is wonderfully strong.” ”

“ It is most difficult to get away. The Julamerik muleteers are afraid of being robbed on the route I wish to take, and none of them but a young Kurd will undertake my loads, and though he arrived last night the zaptiehs I applied for have failed me. They were to have been here by daylight this morning, and the loads were ready, but nine o'clock came without their appearance. I wanted to take armed men from Kochanes, but Mar Shimun said that twelve Christians would be no protection against the Kurds, and that I must not go without a Government escort, so things were unpacked. ”

“ Travellers are scarcely safer from robbery among them than among the Kurds, but fierce, savage, and quarrelsome as they are, 317 and independent both of Turk and Kurd, they render a sort of obedience to Mar Shimun, who rules them, through their maleks. ”

“ All this alpine country between the edge of the tableland and the plains of Mesopotamia, which is watered by the numerous constituents of the Tigris, is the original and natural home of the Kurdish people, the true Kurdistan or Kurd-land. ”

“ Here I rested awhile, passing the time in conversation with the woman of the house, a good-looking Kurd of not more than thirty years, who by the sensible custom of Kurdistan is free to go about unveiled, and hold all her dealings with men as if she were a reasoning being, conducting all her affairs herself, a type of the only Middle Eastern race whose women are almost as free as the women of Europe, their only restriction269 being that they shall not go to the bazaar, or if they do, they must cover their heads. ”

“ A Kurdish chieftain who lived near Bitlis had recently written to the Sultan, offering him the services of 20,000 men, in the event of a war between Turkey and Russia. His offer was accepted, and the loyal Kurd's heart had been gladdened by the present of a magnificent silk turban and a sword.
The mountaineers near Kotoor could all be relied upon by the Turks. But there was reason to mistrust the sincerity and good faith of the Kurds in the neighbourhood of Moush and Aleshkert. They were said to have recently received large sums of money, besides arms, from Russia. ”

“ These caravans travel very slowly and by short stages, and stop whereever there is thorn for the camels, never putting up at a village. They are thus always met with in deserted places, and, as the Arabs are unpopular with the Kurds, and vice versa, one of the former may pass from Bagdad to Kirkuk and Sulaimania without ever seeing a Kurd at close quarters, or ever exchanging a word with him. ”

“ Nowadays, when Mosul is a city fairly well kept in order, when street murders are of not more than weekly occurrence, the place is full of the Turk, who seeks a post in a city where the hostile Kurd and nomad Arab cannot offend his dignity by their disrespect, nor menace his person with their ever-ready rifles. The language of the place is Arabic, but Turkish is understood, as is also Kurdish, for Kurdistan is not far away, and the wild characters one meets sometimes in the bazaars tell of the proximity of the tribes. ”

“ Those who live in the mountain districts pay no taxes to Turkey or Persia, but those residing in the villages of the plains are required to pay taxes the same as other citizens. Great numbers of them residing in the mountains and deserts are nomads, traveling where they will with their herds and flocks. A Kurd is very wild and independent in spirit. He would rather live in a cave under a projecting rock and be unmolested, than to dwell in a palace and be subject to higher authority. ”

“ Adopting Kurdish dress and habits it was almost impossible to tell them from the hereditary mountaineers, with whom they lived upon the best of terms. Inaccessible as were their villages and castles, the Turks were forced to leave them independent, though they nominally admitted the Sultan as lord of the soil they inhabited. It was not till 1839 that the Turkish Government officials encouraged the revengeful spirit of Nurullah Bey, a Hakkiari Kurd, who was at blood-feud with some Chaldeans, and Badar Khan Bey, who was better remembered than the greater man. ”

“ Those gloomy hill-sides have looked down upon the broken armies of all the greatest Eastern nations, Assyria only excepted, and watched them as they crawled away, to the south and west, relinquishing all hope of penetrating the dread country of the fierce Gordyene, forbear of the not less fierce Kurd of to-day. Strange it is that this sturdy nation, whose name has stood for55 rebellion, bravery, and untamable spirit, should never have taken rank among the more transitory peoples who never subdued it. ”

“ The Kurd is a picturesque and welcome presence among these solitudes, and it is only when he has been severed from his natural surroundings that he becomes odious and an enemy of the human race.
Of the principal communications across Taurus with the tableland of Armenia I have already glanced at those connecting Diarbekr with Kharput and Erzerum through Arghana, and with Erzerum through Haini. The latter is a direct and, in spite of the great elevation of the country which it traverses between the plain of Altun and the northern capital, nevertheless a promising route. ”

“ They themselves claim Arab origin, a pretension not unusual among some of the smaller Kurdish tribes, and unsupported by any evidence for, and contradicted by much against, its possibility. For some years past they have allowed the Kurdish shaikh, or religious leaders, of the Qaradagh, their district, to attain a great ascendancy, and these have, by continual urging and exhortation, achieved their end of saddling the tribe with an iron-bound habit of religion quite foreign to the real Kurd of the mountains. ”

“ At the same time the kingdom was on the northern marches of Mesopotamia, and always being in a position of a frontier state between Roman and Parthian, Arab and mountaineer—either Armenian or Kurd, though it is not48 known if the Kurds had spread so far west—was subjected to the fury of all its neighbours in wars, and played traitor to each on many occasions. ”

“ This old man has kept up the time-honoured traditions of the Kurds. While rich and powerful, he does not separate himself in any way from the lives of his people, nor count himself socially greater than they. As a consequence he is in closest touch with their sentiments, and what is more, aware of their every action. While we sat there, a rider arrived from Halabja in haste, and producing from a saddle-bag a basket, presented it to the pasha. ”