Kurgan

“ N.W. of Hamadan, in 35° 15 ́ N., 47° 18 ́ E., at an elevation of 5300 ft. The city has a population of about 35,000 and manufactures great quantities of carpets and felts for the supply of the province and for export. Some of the carpets are very fine and expensive, rugs 2 yards by 11⁄2 costing £15 to £20. Post and telegraph offices have been established since 1879.
KURGAN, a town (founded 1553) of West Siberia, in the government of Tobolsk, on the Siberian railway, 160 m. E. of Chelyabinsk, and on the left bank of the Tobol, in a wealthy agricultural district. Pop. ”

“ Grain is raised on the steppe and exported to Samarcand and Katty-kurgan ; the crop is estimated to produce annually six thousand four hundred hundredweights of wheat, and three thousand two hundred hundredweights of barley ; rice is not cul- tivated, because of want of water. The bekdom of Guzar also is rich in wheat, and especially in cattle, which is bred on the hilly part of the bekdom. More than four thousand head of cattle may be seen at once in the weekly fairs of Guzar. ”

“ In East Siberia, and especially in the Lake Baikal region, Leder found extensive tracts strewn with kurgans, many of which have already been explored, and their contents deposited in the Irkutsk museum. Amongst these are great numbers of stone implements, and objects made of bone and mammoth tusks, besides carefully worked copper ware, betraying technical skill and some artistic taste in the designs. In Trans-Baikalia, still farther east, with the kurgans are associated the so-called Kameni Babi, "Stone Women," monoliths rough-hewn in the form of human figures. ”

“ The steppes of the upper Yenisei have been inhabited from a very remote antiquity, and numberless kurgans, or burial mounds, graves, rock inscriptions and smelting furnaces of the successive inhabitants are scattered all over the prairies of Abakan and Minusinsk. [2] The present population exhibit traces of all their predecessors. Numerous survivals of Turkish and Samoyedic tribes are found in the steppes and in the Sayans ”

“ Now this was the army of Jamrkan who, espying the host of the Kafirs and seeing them as a surging sea, called a halt; so his troops pitched the tents and set up the standards, calling upon the name of the All-wise One, the Creator of light and gloom, Lord of all creatures, Who seeth while Him none see, the High to infinity, extolled and exalted be He! There is no God but He! The Miscreants also halted and pitched their tents, and Kurajan said to them “Keep on your arms, and in armour sleep, for during the last watch of the night we will mount and trample yonder handful under feet!” ”

“ The Kurram Valley.—The Kurram Valley, which is drained by the Kurram river and its affluents, lies to the south of the lofty Safed Koh range, and reaches from Thal in Kohát to the Peiwar Kotal on the borders of Afghán Khost. It has an area of nearly 1300 square miles and in 1911 the population was estimated at 60,941 souls. Though under British administration, it does not form a part of any British district. The people are Patháns of various clans, the predominant element being the Turís, who are Shias by religion and probably of Turkish origin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The language of the Yezidis, in common with the Kurds, is Kurdish, which belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic stock. This Kurmanji possesses a number of dialects not differing much from one another, except the zaza dialect, which is spoken in eastern Mesopotamia by the Kurds, called Ali Alla. The main characteristic of the Kurmangi are the great brevity of its words and the simplicity of its grammatical forms. It is fairly rich in vowels, and richer in deep guttural sounds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the frontier risings of 1897 the inhabitants of the Kurram valley, chiefly the Massozai section of the Orakzais, were infected by the general excitement, and attacked the British camp at Sadda and other posts. A force of 14,230 British troops traversed the country, and the tribesmen were severely punished. In Lord Curzon’s reorganization of the frontier in 1900–1901, the British troops were withdrawn from the forts in the Kurram valley, and were replaced by the Kurram militia, reorganized in two battalions, and chiefly drawn from the Turi tribe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Assyria, in the Hebrew everywhere Asshur, was properly the province now called Kurdistan, lying on the western slope of the Zagros Mountains, and extending across the Tigris to the Sinjar hills and the border of the Mesopotamian desert. The mountains separate it from Armenia; and the line of division from Elam, on the southeast, was near the place where the Tigris and Euphrates approach nearest before their separation. The land was occupied by people of various races, of which the Semitic were predominant. ”

“ The crew of the raft was composed of two Kurds, little men of the Zaza, a tribe that lives in the high mountains round the upper Tigris valley and headwaters. These people are different in appearance and manners from nearly all other Kurds. They are short men, of a shy, quick temperament, very sharp, and excellent workers, speaking a dialect which, while Kurdish, denotes by its form a very high antiquity. It is possible that these are lineal descendants of the hill-tribes that the Assyrians had so much trouble in controlling, and whom the Parthians and Romans of a later age never subdued. ”

“ 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 rocky parapets and gloomy valleys appear to extend from basin to basin, at right angles to the axis of the chain. West of the crags about us, and isolated from them, rose a shapely mass with black but snow-streaked sides. Darkness was falling when we descended from this lofty position into one of the valleys of the southern slopes. In its recesses we came upon a little Kurdish settlement, which seemed to promise shelter during the night.
Kurtler—Kurds! No sooner have we crossed the frontier than we find ourselves in their midst. The mountains of Kurdistan are more than 100 miles distant ”

“ At Kurma we put up in the house of a doctor, an acquaintance of Phurchung, who had brought him a quantity of medicines the amchi had the year past commissioned him to buy at Darjiling. Our supply of meat being exhausted, Ugyen bought a sheep’s carcass (pagra) . When the sheep get very fat, the people, for fear of losing any of the fat by skinning them, roast the whole as they would a pig.71 [43]
December 7.—Leaving Kurma early in the morning, we arrived at Iago72 by 6 p.m., where we got accommodations in the house of a rich farmer, paying him a tanka as room-rent (nala) . ”

“ The race of Kurds is so little known, and so maligned when mentioned, that some idea of their origin and history, as well as an attempt at a vindication of their character, is not out of place here. Within recent years they have probably never come before the eye of the British public except in their traditional character of rapacious and furious fiends, fantastic figures of savagery pouring out from impregnable mountains and carrying desolation before them, slaying Christian and Musulman alike, resisting all efforts by princes and powers to subdue or even coerce them. ”

“ We are blind guides, we know nothing, and our people are as sheep lost upon the mountains. When they go down into the darkness of their graves we know not how to give them any light, and so we all perish."
This request was made in one of the large semi-subterranean dwellings, which serve for both men and beasts in Kurdistan. The firelight flickered on horses and buffaloes, receding into the darkness, and the square mud-platform on which we sat was framed by the long horns and curly heads of mild-eyed oxen. ”

“ Population.—The total Kūrd population probably exceeds two and a half millions, namely, Turkish Kūrds 1,650,000, Persian 800,000, Russian 50,000, but there are no trustworthy statistics. The great mass of the population has its home in Kūrdistān. But Kūrds are scattered irregularly over the country from the river Sakarīa on the west to Lake Urmia on the east, and from Kars on the north to Jebel Sinjar on the south. There is also an isolated settlement in Khorasan. The tribes, ashiret, into which the Kūrds are divided, resemble in some respects the Highland clans of Scotland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were about twenty-five years of age, attired in the costume of the highlands, and imbued with true highland contempt for the dwellers in cities and plains. Outwardly there is little to distinguish them from the Kurds among whom they are domiciled; but the fact of their speaking a different language proves that they must ultimately be derived from a totally different stock; for Kurdish is akin to Persian, and is consequently an Aryan language; but Syriac is Semitic, and is the nearest{112} modern equivalent of that Aramaic which was spoken in Palestine during the lifetime of our Lord. ”

“ To approach it from any side except Diarbekr, by river, one must pass several days of the almost waterless desert road. Only to the south-east is the land fertile, and one understands why it is in that direction that Assyria proper lay. To-day the distant Zagros Mountains and their unknown and feared Kurds form a barrier as unconquerable as ever the ancients found them; and to them it was my purpose to go.
We put up in an upper room of a khan or caravanserai called Hamad Qadu, and as our ways lay together, at least as far as Erbil, we thought to continue in companionship. ”

“ 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. ”