Kurdistan

“ Kurdistan is scarcely a "geographical expression," and colloquially the word is used to cover the country inhabited by the Kurds. They are a mysterious people, having maintained themselves in their original seats and in a condition of semi-independence through all the changes which have passed over Western Asia, though they do not exceed numerically two and a quarter millions of souls. Such as they were when they opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand they seem to be still. War and robbery are the business of Kurdish life. ”

“ Whether the Kurds are, or are not, the descendants of those first-class fighting men of long ago who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the bleak mountain passes of Kurdistan, they undeniably are imbued with a certain pride of ancestry which manifests itself in various little ways. ”

“ And if the Kurdish nomad is reckoned unfit and not sufficiently intelligent to know what is best for him, what then of the Turkish peasant, an oaf of the understanding of a cow, and as inferior to the Kurdish peasant in wits as the sloth is to the horse. Thus these Kurds argued, and argued truly, making yet a very good case for despotic government in Eastern Asiatic Turkey and Kurdistan. ”

“ It is distinctly remote from the beaten tourist track. Russian and German travellers and scholars have nibbled at the ethnological and philological problems which it presents, and, much more recently, our own Major Soane in his remarkable book, "Through Kurdistan in Disguise," draws aside the veil a little, and we are able to take a peep at Kurdish life and manners naturally portrayed.
Kurdistan cannot be said to possess either natural or political boundaries, for it embraces both Persian and Turkish territory, and in it live people who are not racially Kurds. ”

“ This plain, the richest in Kurdistan, is also most beautiful. In winter a frozen morass, it is not dry enough for sowing till May, and even June. This accounts for the lateness of the harvest. The Jelu mountains, the highest in Central Kurdistan,—a mass of crags, spires, and fantastic parapets of rock, with rifts and abysses of 282 extraordinary depth,—come down almost directly upon it. There is no wood. The villages are all alike, surrounded just now by piles of wheat and straw on their threshing-floors, with truncated cones of fodder, and high smooth black cones of animal fuel. ”

“ Natives of Halabja and the district were there; two stray Hamavands, on goodness knows what business, sat there silent and awkward, dark-featured, wild-looking men, who kept their rifles in their hands and their alert eyes ever on the glance this way and that, from sheer force of habit. A black-browed priest from Pava, a village in Persian Kurdistan, three peasants from Sina, and various merchants, went to make up a collection of all sorts of southern Kurds. Every one, even to the shopkeepers and the priest, carried the large Kurdish dagger. ”

“ It was ill-fortune that sent me to the East, and an execrable stroke of bad luck that landed me here among the savages of Kurdistan. It is now thirteen years that I languish here, and I have lost the power, did I possess the means, to go back to Europe, which I have forgotten, and whose customs and language I only remember as one remembers a beautiful dream. Ah, sir, what folly induced you to leave civilisation and comfort and trust yourself among these cut-throats, these brigands? ”

“ Kurdistan (2,250) , a stretch of plateau and mountain land in Turkish, Persian, and Russian Trans-Caucasian territory, consisting of grassy plains and lofty ranges through which rivers like the Zabs, Batman-su, and Euphrates force their way; is inhabited by a partly nomad, partly agricultural people of ancient stock, who export wool, gum, and hides; the Kurds retain their old customs and organisation, are subject to their own chiefs, impatient of the rule of the Porte and the Shah; predatory by instinct, but brave and chivalrous ”

“ One great interest of this journey is that it lies through a country in which Kurds, Turks, and Armenians live alongside each other—the Kurds being of two classes, the tribal, who are chiefly nomads, owning no law but the right of the strongest; and the non-tribal or settled, who, having been conquered by Turkey, are fairly orderly, and are peaceable except in their relations with the Christians. The strongholds of the tribal Kurds are in 373 the wild mountains of Kurdistan, and especially in the Hakkiari country, which is sprinkled with their rude castles and forts. ”

“ Now, if you are resolved to go, I will give you letters to Khwaja Salim, my agent in Kirkuk, and to Matlub in Bagdad. But I place upon you an obligation, by your soul! that you will not, with the European clothes, put off the thoughts and remembrances of Kurdistan, nor let our names slip from your memory. For we are rough and savage, our ways are not yours—though you know ours, and follow them here like ourselves—what we deem comfort you deem savagery, and the European (I know this, for I have been in Beyrout and Aleppo and met the European) ever scoffs at the Eastern land ”

“ The district of Sert and the Gavar (or rock) district of Kurdistan is one of the most inaccessible of the many sealed corners of this mountain country, and it was here that the descendants of the Chaldeans and Assyrians fled before the hordes of the Tatars in the early fifteenth century, finding an asylum among the Kurdish tribes.
Here in the beautiful valleys of Sert they settled, and many became Musulman among the Kurds. ”

“ II. Kurdistan. I do not understand the difficulties of Marsden, followed by Lazari and Pauthier, which lead them to put forth that Kurdistan is not Kurdistan but something else. The boundaries of Kurdistan according to Hamd Allah were Arabian ’Irák, Khuzistán, Persian ’Irák, Azerbaijan and Diarbekr. (Dict. de la P. 480.) [Cf. Curzon, Persia pass.—H. C.] Persian Kurdistan, in modern as in 85mediæval times, extends south beyond Kermanshah to the immediate border of Polo’s next kingdom, viz.:
III. Lúr or Lúristán. ”

“ In the distance, more particularly to the north, are54 the sullen, frowning masses of the Kurdistan mountains, at this time of the year half hidden in black clouds, and before and behind apparently limitless plains rising gradually to the east, till at the highest point one looks down over the undulating desert with a curious feeling of being left out in the desolation of utter abandonment, unsheltered from wind, rain, and snow, and lost in the immensity of a silent death-like solitude of infinitely sinister aspect. ”

“ South of Kurdistan is the Turkish province of Mesopotamia, lying between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which was once the centre of the world and as important to mankind as London or New York is to-day. Somewhere there the Garden of Eden is supposed to have been located, although it is very far away from anything like a paradise now. It is a sandy waste, producing very little vegetation, supporting a few goats, sheep, and camels and practically uninhabited except by roving tribes of half-savage Kurds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Jaf tribe is an ancient one, and has from the earliest history of Kurdistan been powerful, and renowned for the manner in which its chiefs agree and hold together. This trait of character—coherency—so rare among the greater Kurdish chieftains, has won for the tribe wealth and power, so that now various chiefs own such important towns as Panjwin, Halabja, and Qizil Rubat, besides numerous villages and lands, which they have acquired by purchase. ”

“ Thus, in Kurdistan the Kurds were ready to clear out of “Christian lands” that they had actually occupied and tilled; in Persia, the Mussulmans were ploughing the Assyrian village sites, and building houses on the vineyards, in their readiness to face any loss and labour, if only all trace of the Christians could be obliterated.
The British authorities declared that they could not repatriate men of Urmi. Every individual would receive a “capitation grant” similar to that given to others, and every family would be given lands, in Irak, if they would accept them. ”

“ I can understand that in Kurdistan proper with the lowlands about the course of the Tigris the shepherd problem presents some difficulty; it must always be a task of some magnitude to control a people whose migrations extend over so wide an area and whose country conceals within its countless recesses such inaccessible retreats. On the tableland the case is quite elementary: the pastoral Kurd belongs to a village, and that village is situated in the neighbourhood of the pastures from which he is driven by the winter snows. ”

“ These Tyari men come from one of the wildest and most inaccessible valleys of Central Kurdistan, and belong to those Ashirets or tribal Syrians who, in their deep and narrow rifts, are practically unconquered by the Turks and unmolested by the Kurds, and maintain a fierce semi-independence under their maleks (lit. kings) or chiefs. They are wild and lawless mountaineers, paying taxes only when it suits them; brave, hardy, and warlike, preserving their freedom by the sword ”

“ In Kirkuk, as in all Kurdistan, the chief occupation of the inhabitants is that of drapers and mercers, the cotton cloth and print trade is entirely in their hands; in fact so far have their co-religionists of Bagdad progressed, that the cottons of Kurdistan are supplied from Manchester by Bagdad Jews settled there. ”

“ Their southern neighbours are a more famous race in modern times, and have played a more important part in Persian history than have the Mukri. These are the Beni Ardalan, whose capital is the beautiful little town of Sina, in the province known in Persia as Kurdistan—the Kurdistan par excellence of Persia. Here in the province of Ardalan ruled a noble and gifted family, which was founded, so it is said, in the 14th century, before which the old Ardalan chiefs reigned. The family claims descent from no less a person than Saladin himself, a Kurd of the Hasan Kaif, sub-tribe of the Hakkari. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Assyria, that conquered its world, found in these people of the mountains a more difficult problem than any they had yet encountered. We are told78 that there is no reason to believe, although the Assyrians passed through the Zagros (the mountains par excellence of the Kurds) that they subdued any but the people immediately upon their route, a characteristic of Kurdistan and the attempts to invade it so like the tales of modern Persia and Turkey, that it might be the story of any of the sultans and shahs of the last two centuries. ”

“ The population seems for the most part Kurd, wild men of great stature, from the north and east, with high felt hats, like those of the ancient Persians of the Sasanian sculptures, their zouave jackets of sheepskin with the hair outside, the scarlet shoes forming parts of a distinctive costume. The fierce look that a Kurd invariably acquires, the thin bony face, the long stride, mark the hillman, who walks in these peaceable, if noisy, streets with a hand on his rifle and dagger. ”

“ This Shahr-i-Zur, whose mounds are full of the coins of Sasanian Persia and the tokens of Assyria, was till a few decades back the old sub-province of Gulambar,60 “The Amber Flower,” from all reports one of the most beautiful of all the beauties of Kurdistan. ”

“ Another people strongly resembling the Lazes in appearance, but inhabiting the mountainous regions to the south of them, all the way up to and into Persia, are the Kurds, of whom you have probably heard a good deal in connection with the Armenian massacres. Their country is called Kurdistan, and is drained by the tributaries of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Several of its mountains rise to the height of 6,000 to 7,000 feet. Kurds are also to be found in all the hilly districts of Armenia and Mesopotamia. ”