'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎16r] (31/72)

In the afternoon the rain came down, the K4im Makam and his following started off
back again, and towards dark the tents were pitched in black cotton soil, beside a Kurdi
hamlet.
Next day (November 13th) a short march over an open and cultivated but singularly
Sulim&nia. uphill and downdale country led to Sulimclnia, where, as
at Kirkuk, the kdfila was met outside the town first by a
civil, and then a military escort. In acknowledgment of this, rode straight to townhall,
where was received in politest manner by His Excellency the Governor, Muhammad Rauf
Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. . Then to the barracks, and made the acquaintance of K^im Mak^m Ali Jazzar,
commanding the five or six hundred soldiers in garrison. More distinctly than at Baghdad,
official society in Sulimania seemed abreast, through Constantinople, with passing events
in Europe and even India. Thus the situation in Ireland often came up, as did the recent
passages in Burmese history. There is no question as to the prestige which a masterful
policy commands in every corner of the East, provided always it is a visible success. It
was amusing to hear the late Afghan war criticised purely from a soldier's view point, and
the smallness of the force employed made answerable for the non-accomplishment of what
no one for a moment doubted had formed the object, the annexation of the country ! During
a four days halt daily opportunities of conversing with the civil and military officials
occurred. The small Kabul tent (much admired by the military) was seldom clear of visi
tors ; and His Excellency the Governor was good enough one evening to give a dinner-
party, at which many officials, including the Persian Charge d^Affaires, were present.
More important than the Osmanli stratum on the surface is the indigenous, that is Kurdi
population, of which SulimS.nia, though in itself less than a hundred years old, forms a
centre. The origin of the Kurds is as obscure as that of the ancient Britons, but our
knowledge of them goes much further back. At the very dawn of history we find them
located among the mountains overhanging the great Assyrian empire on the Tigris. Gutu
(meaning warrior), Gardu, Kardu, were among the names then borne by them, and they
were one of the tribes which Cyrus, the Persian, had to subdue before descending upon
Babylon. Successive waves of Macedonian, Parthian, Sassanian, early Muslim, and lastly
Turkish, or Persian domination have only partially succeeded in destroying their autono
my, or obliterating their tribal organisation. Not to go back to the earlier days of their
power, when several of the Chiefships founded by them rose almost to the rank of dynasties,
"up to a recent period," in the graphic words of Sir H. Rawlinson, "there was no more
picturesque or interesting scene to be witnessed in the East than the court of one of these
great Kurdish Chiefs, where, like another Saladin, the Bey ruled in patriarchal state, sur-
rounded by an hereditary nobility, regarded by his clansmen with reverence and affection,
and attended by a body-guard of young Kurdish warriors, clad in chain armour, with flaunt
ing silken scarfs, and bearing javelin lance and sword as in the time of the Crusades/' The
affinity already noticed between Kurdi and Persian shows itself more in some than in others
of the many dialects into which the former runs. But it is in Arabic grammar and Islamitic
lore, rather than native literature, that the Kurdi Ulima of the day excel. Though not con
taining more than three thousand houses, if so many, Sulimania is a perfect hive of Sunni
Mullahs and schoolmasters. The most remarkable is a certain Kdka Ahmad, a very old man,
head of an order of Darweshes, and the spiritual father of innumerable disciples. If ever a
non-Muslim power set foot in Kurdist&n it may depend on finding this old man, or others
on whom his mantle has fallen, ready to re-enact the part of Mushk-i-Alam of Kabul. An
ancestral endowment of ten villages enables him and his five grandsons to devote their
days and nights to religious exercises and studies. His abode, as may be supposed, forms
a kind of academy and place of resort for devotees from every quarter. Thus is kept up
among the Kurds that primitive type of Islamism under which six words of the Kur&n,
passing like a fiery cross from man to man, will efface the most elaborate treaties, and
outweigh mule-loads of treasure, after of course the latter have been carried off. And yet
the break with Paganism has been even more incomplete among them than among man
kind generally, and an account of their crude ceremonies and esoteric doctrines would
form a useful contribution to the science of religion.
The whole district of Surchin4r, of which Sulimania now forms the capital, is a perfect
mine of antiquities. This is true indeed of all Kurdist&n,
Archaeology. taking the word at its widest, from the Turkish Pashalik
of Didrbakr towards the north to the Persian provinces of Ardelcin and KirmS.nshS.h on the
south. If ever the Porte should revise its present policy in the matter of excavation, a
party with head-quarters at Sulim&ma, working, for example, among the tumuli overhanging
C