“What do you know?” said the master.
The black-eyed morsel answered without a shadow of hesitation: “I know Elohim.” And while I was wondering how much of the eternal secret had been revealed to that small brain, he began to recite the first list in the lesson-book, which opened with the name of God: “Elohim, Allah”—I do not remember how it went on, neither did he remember, without M. Sidi’s prompting. Elohim was what he knew.
Over against Môṣul lies Nineveh. The pontoon bridge that spans the Tigris had been swept away by the floods; the masonry arches on the further side stood out into the river, but where the causeway dips down to meet the bridge of boats it met nothing but the swiftly-flowing stream. We crossed therefore by a ferry, and so rode up to the mound of Ḳûyûnjik, where Xenophon saw the ruins of Nineveh and thought them to be a city of the Medes. His description of the immense area they covered scarcely seemed incredible as we stood upon the mound. The line of the walls ran out far to the north, far, too, to the south, embracing the neighbouring mound of Nebî Yûnus, which is the site of one of Jonah’s many tombs. The corn grew deep on Ḳûyûnjik, and the blue bee-eaters flew in and out of Layard’s excavation pits; across the fertile plain rose the towers of Môṣul; the broad Tigris ran between, which Saladin sought to turn from its bed when he laid siege to Nûr ed Dîn. His imperious folly is as forgotten as the splendours of Sennacherib—
“And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as this summer time o’erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city....”
Had the poet been dreaming of Nineveh when he wrote Love Among the Ruins?
“Shut them in
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest....”
We rode from Nineveh through blazing heat for four hours across a plain where the peasants were harvesting the barley while the locusts harvested the green wheat, which was not ripe enough to save. The sun beat so fiercely upon us that I sought refuge in the house of the village sheikh at ’Amrḳân, and ate in his guest-chamber a lunch which was made more palatable by the sour curds which he set before us. An hour and a half further we came to Mâr Behnâm, and found the tents pitched upon the slopes of a mound above a deep round pool. On the one side of our camp lay the monastery of Mâr Behnâm, on the other the shrine that covers his grave.
The monastery has the appearance of a small fort. Its outer walls have been many times ruined and repaired, and the interior buildings, all except the beautiful church, are modern. The doorways leading from the porch into the church and from the nave and aisles into the sanctuaries are covered with lacework patterns, interspersed with small figures of angels, lions and snakes, together with Arabic and Syriac inscriptions. In the porch, between the two doors, there is a small niche worked with arabesques, the very counterpart of a Moslem miḥrâb. There are square chambers leading out of the aisles, roofed with pointed domes which are elaborately worked with stucco ornaments. Upon the east wall and on one of the piers of the nave are two stucco plaques, one representing St. George on horseback, the other a full-length figure of a saint. On both there are traces of colour. I paid my respects to the saint’s tomb in company with a number of pilgrims from Môṣul who were spending the night in the monastery. At dusk the villagers assembled under the mound, which marks the spot as some small suburb of Nineveh, and watered their flocks at the pool; I watched them from my tent door and thought that the scene must have changed but little in the past three thousand years.
We rode next day in two and a half hours to Ḳaraḳôsh, where there are no less than seven churches. Three of them stand outside the village, each surrounded by its fortress wall, which usually encloses one or two small living-rooms besides the church. They reminded me forcibly of the walled Coptic monasteries of Egypt, but the monastic buildings were smaller. Between them stretched fields of barley wherein the villagers, standing in line, were pulling up the crops to the strains of the bagpipes. The churches were oriented almost at haphazard, and provided with the smallest doors, and windows to correspond. The interiors were so dark that I abandoned all hope of photographing the ornaments upon the inner doors, though I made a rapid sketch of the lintel over the sanctuary door of Mâr Shim’ûn (Fig. 175). Above it was a slab bearing a floral Persian pattern incised upon the stone. Inside the town several of the churches had recently been repaired, or were in process of reparation. A young priest, Kas Yûsef, showed me the work, and gloried in the replacing of old and ruined churches by new and brand-new edifices. New lamps for old, but it was the old lamp that could summon the genius, and I realized the sound moral of the fairy story as I watched the refurbishing of ancient walls at Ḳaraḳôsh; but I did not impart my impression to the Syrian priest, whose ardour it would have been unkind to damp. The Syrians have annexed most of the larger churches, so said the worthy Jacobite father who brought me the key of Mâr Shim’ûn, and he told his tale not without a touch of bitterness. Yet it would have been folly to blink the fact that he was no match for Kas Yûsef, who was young and eager, and had been trained in a French school at Môṣul. Twenty minutes beyond Ḳaraḳôsh we came to the ruined church of Mâr Yuhanna Deleimoyya (St. John the Deleimî), which no one has troubled to repair, though it had beautiful carved lintels and domes adorned with plasterwork. Thence we rode for an hour through cornlands to Bârtallâ, and saw Bâ’ashikâ at the foot of the hills. They were real hills which lay before us, not the bare desert ridges which were all the heights we had seen since we crossed over Lebanon on the way to Aleppo. Here were the buttresses of mightier ranges than Lebanon, the alps of Kurdistân which end the land of the two rivers. As we climbed upwards, the corn grew greener, the grass deeper, the flowers more brilliant along the edge of trickling streams. But my companions paid no heed to these marvels. Jûsef’s thoughts were busy with the great cities he had seen since he set forth on his travels, and especially with Môṣul, last and therefore fairest in his memory. He rehearsed its advantages to the Môṣul zaptieh, and ’Abdullah was well pleased to listen to such talk.
“Not even in Aleppo,” said Jûsef magnanimously, “do you find better bread.”
“However many places there may be in the world,” pronounced ’Abdullah, “there is none where the bread is so good.”
“It is sweet,” assented Jûsef.
“And if you take tobacco from Môṣul to Baghdâd,” ’Abdullah pursued, “it rots there. The air of Baghdâd is not like the air of Môṣul.”
“Wallah, no!” said Jûsef the much-travelled, weighing city against city in the finest judicial manner.
We rode through exquisite meadows, and in about five hours and a half from Ḳaraḳôsh crossed a mountain stream that rippled between banks rosy with oleander—Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed in robes so softly flushed. Beyond it my camp was pitched upon a swelling slope below the steep rocks of Jebel Maḳlûb, wherein, placed high among the hills, stood the monastery of Mâr Mattai, a grey wall hanging over a precipice. I left my horse at the camp, and taking ’Abdullah with me, set out on a half-hour’s climb up a narrow gorge, full of the western sun, which was golden now, and clement. Every crevice between the stones was gay with a small starry campanula, gentian-blue, mountain-blue, the full clear colour of an upland flower; and thrusting their strong roots under the rocks, the terebinths hung glossy foliage over the path—I found myself, as I looked once more upon the divine curves of leafy twig and bough, heaping contempt upon the recollection of that leggy vegetable, the palm. A ragged boy opened the monastery gate and conducted us by a long stair to a terrace from which the bishop had watched our progress up the gorge. He bade me go quickly, while the sun still shone, to see the church and the tombs of Mâr Mattai and of Bar Hebræus, but the church had been rebuilt, the inscriptions on the tombs were already known, and my desire turned towards the bishop, and the coffee which he was preparing for us, and the room on the terrace where the cushioned windows o
pened on to the Assyrian plain. The bishop was old and very garrulous; the monastery, high set above the world, was beyond the reach of mundane intelligence, the only monk had gone down to Môṣul, and in the Jebel Maḳlûb men were still uncertain under which lord they served. Was it indeed true, asked the bishop, that Muḥammad Reshâd was Sultan of Turkey? and he rejoiced greatly when we confirmed the rumour. But his thoughts wandered back to older histories, and hearing that we had come from Mâr Behnâm, he began to instruct us in matters pertaining to that shrine.
“My daughter, listen,” said he, and I lay back upon the cushions and watched the light redden and fade over the plains of Assyria, while the sweet mountain silence fell more closely in the gorge, and the bishop’s rambling tale filled the idle hour like some voice out of the past. ’Abdullah sat cross-legged upon a pile of carpets at the end of the room, rolling cigarettes and nodding his head in approval as the venerable weaver of romance unfolded his chronicle. “Senherib, king of Assyria, king of kings,” he began, “to him a son was born whose name was Behnâm. And it happened upon a day that the Amîr Behnâm was hunting, and he lost his gazelle and night came upon him while he pursued her. And being weary with the chase he fell asleep beside a fountain. Then in his sleep an angel appeared unto him and bade him hearken to one whom he should meet next day upon the road. And when he had journeyed but a little way he met Mâr Mattai. And Mâr Mattai stopped him and said: ‘Oh prince, why do you worship idols that have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, lips that speak not, instead of worshipping the living God, who made heaven and earth, al ins w’al jins w’al jami?’—mankind and different kinds and all kinds. And Behnâm answered: ‘Give me a sign.’ Then said Mâr Mattai: ‘What sign shall I give you?’ And he said: ‘Heal my sister who is sick.’ And they went on their way towards Nineveh, and as they went, Behnâm was full of fear, for he dared not take the saint into his father’s city. But when they reached Bârtallâ, Mâr Mattai was weary and could walk no further. And he said: ‘If I make water to gush out of the rock, will you believe?’ And Behnâm answered: ‘I will believe.’ And the water gushed forth. Then Behnâm returned to Nineveh, and he refused to worship idols that have eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear and lips that cannot speak.”
“It is true,” said ’Abdullah.
“Neither would he worship the sun,” pursued the bishop, “nor the moon, nor the stars, nor anything but the living God, who created heaven and earth, mankind and different kinds and all kinds.”
“It is written in the book,” said ’Abdullah.
“My son,” said the bishop, “it is written.” And Christian and Moslem met on the common ground of scripture. “Then Senherib put him and his sister to death. But the king was old and sick unto death, and he repented of what he had done, for he had no heir to inherit the kingdom. Therefore he sent for Mâr Mattai and entreated him to bring his son to life. And Mâr Mattai answered: ‘Oh king, I will raise him from the dead if you will build me a monastery in the Jebel Maḳlûb.’ And Senherib built the house wherein we sit,” concluded the bishop.
“And who built Mâr Behnâm?” said I, anxious to prolong the recital.
“My daughter,” he replied, “the house of Mâr Behnâm was built by Isḥâk the merchant. For Isḥâk was journeying to Baghdâd, and upon the road he fell ill, and Mâr Behnâm appeared to him and healed him. Verily the Assyrians were idolaters, but they came to know the true God. So the world changes.” The bishop broke off abruptly at this confusing point in the narrative, for even he felt that it would be an anachronism to assert that the Assyrian empire was Christian. But the historical sequence of events was nothing to ’Abdullah.
“God is great,” he assented. “The world changes.” And he rolled another cigarette.
We ran down the path in the dusk and found my dinner-table spread under the moon. Round the camp-fire sat ’al ins w’al jins w’al jami’ and watched the boiling of Ḥâjj ’Amr’s rice-pot.
However many countries there may be in the world there are none so rich in faiths as the mountain frontiers of eastern Turkey. Beliefs which have been driven out with obloquy by a new-found truth, the half-apprehended mysticism of the East, echoes of Western metaphysics and philosophy, illusive memories of paganism—all have been swept together into these hills, where creeds that were outlined in the childhood of the world are formulated still in terms as old as themselves. Islâm, with the lash of its simple, clear-cut doctrine, has herded them into remote places. Cowering there under centuries of persecution they have hidden their sacred things from the eyes of the spoiler, in silence they endure the reproach which dogs the most innocent practices of a secret cult, and each sect awaits, through ages of misery, the reward and the redeemer which its peculiar revelation has promised. These outcast communities make a potent appeal to the imagination and to the sympathy. I have no desire to pry into that which they choose to conceal, neither have they any wish to take me into their special confidence; but their hospitality is unfailing, and whenever I find myself among them I find myself among friends.
We were now entering the country which is the head-quarters of the Yezîdîs, who, from their desire to conciliate or to propitiate the Spirit of Evil, are known to Moslem and Christian as Devil Worshippers. By Moslem and by Christian they have been placed beyond the bounds of human kindness, and while the Mohammadan has been unremitting in his efforts to bring them, by methods familiar to dominant creeds, to a sense of their short-comings, the Christian has regarded the wholesale butchery which has overtaken them from time to time as a punishment justified by their tenets. I had journeyed before among Yezîdî villages, in the mountains of north Syria, and had been struck by the clean and well-ordered look of the houses, and by the open-handed friendliness of the people, as well as by their courage and industry. The Mesopotamian Yezîdîs I knew only through the descriptions contained in Layard’s enchanting books, but I carried a letter to ’Alî Beg, the head of the sect, and proposed to visit him in his village of Bâ’adrî and to see, if he would permit, the most sacred of all Yezîdî shrines, Sheikh ’Adi. ’Abdullah, when he learnt my intention, expressed his entire approval of ’Alî Beg as a man, but he would hear nothing of his religious convictions because they were not founded upon a book.
“Effendim,” he said, “Moslems and Jews and Christians have a book; it is only the infidels which have none, and the Yezîdîs are infidels. They worship the Sheitân.”
“You must not speak of him while we are at Bâ’adrî,” said I, for the Yezîdîs never take the name of the Devil upon their lips and to mention him in their presence is a shameful insult.
“God forbid!” replied ’Abdullah.
We rode over flowery foot-hills that were bright with hollyhock and gladiolus, borage and mullein, and in an hour and a half from our camping-ground we reached the village of Jezarân.
“These are Shabbak,” observed ’Abdullah.
“What are Shabbak?” I asked.
“They are not true Moslems,” he replied. “God knows what they believe. They resemble the Shî’ahs. Effendim, they came with the armies of the ’Ajam, and after the ’Ajam departed, they remained.” The ’Ajam are the Persians, or, roughly speaking, any barbarians.
We went down into a lovely valley where the storks waded wing-deep through grass and buttercups—Chem Resh is its Kurdish name, Wâdî Aswad in Arabic, and both mean the Black Valley. Everywhere I was now given a Kurdish as well as an Arabic name for the villages, and the mother-tongue of the inhabitants was Kurdish, though, as a rule, they spoke Arabic also. Three hours from the camp we crossed a stream in the Wâdî ’Ain Sifneh, and half-an-hour beyond it we rode through the first Yezîdî village, Mukbil. The Yezîdîs, being of Kurdish race, do not differ in appearance from the rest of the population, except in one particular of their attire: they abhor the colour blue and eschew it in their dress, but red they regard as a beneficent hue, and their women are mostly clothed in dark-red cotton garments. The valley in which Mukbil lies is
of uncommon fertility. Rice is cultivated here, and cotton; the emerald green of the grass indicated the presence of swampy ground, and the heavy air was full of the perfume of growing things. I lunched under a fig-tree near a Yezîdî hamlet; the village elders brought me curds and bread unasked, and refused to take payment. Having climbed a green ridge, we dropped into the valley of Baviân, crossed a deep river and rode up its bank till we came, four hours from Mukbil, to the famous rocks which are carved with Assyrian reliefs and inscriptions. Under them we pitched out tents, and a more exquisite camping-ground you might go far to seek. Fattûḥ knew the place. He had been here with one of whom he spoke as Meesterr Keen. This legendary personage appears frequently in Fattûḥ’s reminiscences, and I suspect him to be no other than Mr. King, of the British Museum. “He gazed long upon the men and animals,” observed Fattûḥ, with indulgent recollection, “and many times he photographed them. And then, wallah! he climbed up the rocks, and all the writing he took down in his book. Not many of the gentry are like Meesterr Keen, and your Excellency need not trouble to copy the writing once more.”
I troubled not at all, but looked in amazement at the great figures of gods mounted on lions, and kings standing in adoration which Shalmaneser II had carved upon the cliff (Fig. 176). Behind some of the groups rock-cut chambers have been hollowed out in a later age, their doorways breaking through the figures of the reliefs, and the stream eddies round the feet of winged beasts and bearded men, walking in procession, cut upon huge boulders which have been dislodged from the face of the hill. When I had seen these wonders I wandered up the valley to a point where the cliff bends round and holds the river in the curve of its arm. Here lay a deep still pool, the banks of which were starred with daisies and poppies and the rocks with campanulas and orchids. The water, dyed to a ruddy brown by recent rains, was like a disk of polished bronze in a setting of green and white and scarlet enamel. I sat for a little and listened to the birds singing about their nests in the cliffs, and the river breaking over the stones below the pool, and then I swam in the warm brown water and went upon my way rejoicing.
Amurath to Amurath Page 28