Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates

W.S. Blunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136992698
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This is Volume I of two which looks at the Bedouin tribes of the Euphrates River valley area, Mesopotamia and the western deserts. It was originally published in 1879. This collection has an additional preface in Volume I and chapters in Volume II by the editor.

BEDOUIN TRIBES

OF

THE EUPHRATES.

CHAPTER I.

“Wherein of antres vast and desarts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak.”

                                                                                SHAKESPEARE.

Projects of travel—A visit to the Royal Geographical Society’s rooms—We start for Aleppo—The voyage to Scanderoon—A bagman’s tale of the Euphrates—Aleppo buttons—We land in Asia.

WE left England on the 20th of November, 1877, with the intention of visiting Bagdad, and of spending the winter in some part of Asia, where we should find the climate good and the roads not too much frequented by Europeans. We had already visited more than one Arabic-speaking country, and had acquired a taste for Bedouin life and manners, with a little of the Arabic language, and we were anxious to improve our knowledge of these things by a more serious journey than any we had yet undertaken. There had, indeed, been a sort of progression in our travels, and we had been carried by them always further and further eastwards, passing from Spain to Barbary, and from Barbary to Egypt, and thence to Syria, so that it was natural that the Euphrates valley and Mesopotamia should be chosen as the scene of our next campaign.

When it had come to actually planning our journey, however, a number of difficulties at once began to show themselves. It was surprising how little information was to be got, even from the sources of geographical knowledge most respected in England. Bradshaw, whom we naturally consulted first, held out the golden hope of a regular line of land communications through Aleppo, while on his map a railway route was freely traced; but it was more than doubtful whether all this could be taken literally, and whether the absence of dates and tariffs in the account did not point to the advertisement of some future scheme rather than to a statement of existing facts. At the Royal Geographical Society’s rooms, to which we next turned, we were shown the maps and surveys made by Colonel Chesney in 1836, as the latest on the subject, no traveller connected with the Society having visited the Euphrates valley since that date, unless it might be Mr. Layard or Colonel Rawlinson.

We were recommended to take Constantinople on our way, and to consult the British Ambassador there, or, on second thoughts, we might call on Sir Henry himself, who was in London, and would be sure to pay all possible attention to our inquiries. From his long residence at Bagdad he would be the fittest person to advise us. Sir Henry, to whom Wilfrid sent in his card, received him with courtesy and explained that the Euphrates Valley Railway had not yet been opened; that a land journey by that route was impracticable, owing to the hostile tribes which inhabited certain villages on the river; that the usual road to Bagdad lay through Diarbekr and Mosul, an interesting route, but passing too near the seat of war between Russia and Turkey to be recommended at the present moment. Sir Henry, all things considered, thought we could not do better than take the line of Turkish steamers which made trips weekly from Aleppo to Bagdad. On these we should be safe and comfortable; Messrs. Lynch of Tower Street would give us all particulars, and Messrs. Cook could no doubt supply through tickets if desired. But, though we went away rather crestfallen at so simple an answer from our oracle, Messrs. Lynch could tell us nothing of any steamers but their own, which were on the Tigris not the Euphrates; nor could they suggest any shorter way of reaching Bagdad than by Bombay and the Persian Gulf. The only other person, who gave us information on the subject, was a gentleman who had travelled some years ago in Persia, and who had descended the Tigris from Mosul to Bagdad on a raft. He supposed that something similar might very likely be found on the Euphrates, and described the raft as a pleasant and commodious way of travelling, especially in hot weather, as the passengers sat for the most part with their feet in the water.

Besides this difficulty in the matter of correct information about the country we were going to, there were other obstacles, which at the time seemed even more serious. Kars had just fallen, and Armenia was supposed to be full of disbanded troops, flying from the seat of war. Osman Pasha was invested in Plevna, and every soldier and even every policeman in the Ottoman dominions had been hurried away to Constantinople for the defence of the capital. The newspapers were full of sensational tales of massacre, insurrection and disorder in the provinces, thus stripped of their protectors; and it was asserted that a general outburst of Mussulman fanaticism was imminent. English travellers, especially, might be expected to fare ill, for the feeling in Turkey was growing very bitter against England, who had “betrayed” her. At best the whole country was overrun by deserters from the army and by robbers, who were taking advantage of the disturbed times to set law and order at defiance. One paper asserted that a mutiny was hatching in India, another that the plague had appeared at Bagdad. It did not seem to be the proper moment for going to such a country.

Fortunately however we are too old travellers to be easily impressed by tales of lions and robbers, even supported, as they were in this instance, by the authority of special correspondents of the Times. Wilfrid declared that they were all nonsense, that Aleppo was not in Armenia, and that the last place a beaten army would retreat to would be the Syrian desert; that if the plague existed at Bagdad so did the small-pox in London, and, finally, that we should “know all about it all in due time.” So I was fain to be content with his assurance and to hope for the best; and, as it turned out, no moment could have been more favourable for the journey we were proposing. If the Turks had been victorious they might perhaps have grown insolent and dangerous, but in their misfortune they were only too happy to grasp any hand as a friend’s. The conscription too for the army had taken all the riotous youths away from the country districts, few but old men and women remaining, while, as for the absence of soldiers and police, it was being hailed by all honest men in Syria as a pleasant respite from most of what made life irritating, Besides, no one in Europe can imagine how very slowly news travels in the East, nor how very suspiciously it is received even when at last it comes. We had finished our journey and were coming home long before the news of the Sultan’s disasters was fully known in the desert. It was nevertheless with something like the solemnity of a last farewell that we embraced our friends and finally turned our faces to the East.

The first point for which we were to make (guided by the only definite piece of information we had acquired) was Aleppo, of which the seaport, Alexandretta or Scanderoon, may be reached from Marseilles by a line of steamers which makes its weekly tour of the Levant. I will not describe the twelve days of our voyage further than to notice the occasions on which we received intelligence of the mysterious land which lay before us. The captain, honest man, had navigated the Mediterranean for nearly forty years, but had never before heard of passengers landing at Alexandretta on their way to Bagdad. Aleppo he had heard of. It was a hundred miles inland, and there was no road to it. Tourists gave it a wide berth on account of the button which bears its name, a strange and not very agreeable malady, which attacks all who stay in or even pass through the district. Of this he gave us a most alarming account, which I will repeat, deducting his exaggerations and premising only that we neither of us fell victims to its dangerous presence. The Aleppo button is a swelling which comes upon the face or hands or sometimes upon the feet and breaks into a boil. It lasts for six months or a year and then goes away. Except in the case of children or when aggravated by attempts at treatment, it leaves hardly a scar, but, while it lasts, it is an annoying disfigurement. Any attempt to drive it away makes the evil worse, and nothing can be done beyond keeping the place untouched and waiting till it heals. Children suffer more severely than grown-up people, for it is difficult to keep them patient under the irritation for so long a time; and the consequence is that nearly all the inhabitants of Aleppo are scarred deeply either on the forehead or the cheek. It is not known what causes the button, whether the water or the air; no régime and no care seem able to elude it, neither is there any known remedy. Some ascribe it to the water of a certain stream at Aleppo, but Mosul, Bagdad and indeed all the towns of Upper Mesopotamia are subject to it, under different names and slightly different forms. At Bagdad it is called the “date mark.” There are also terrible stories of travellers being attacked by it years after they had forgotten their danger. “Quelquefois après dix ans,” said the ship’s doctor, “le bouton vous vient.” But enough of this not very pleasant subject.

At Smyrna a commis-voyageur from the Pays de Yaud came on board and added his mite of information. He was “travelling in pills,” he told us, and offered to take anything in exchange for his wares, from a cargo of figs to an ostrich feather. He had seen much and suffered much in the cause of trade, having pushed his fortunes on one occasion so far as Abyssinia and the Blue Nile. He had travelled from Tiflis to Bagdad, and from Bagdad to Damascus with a caravan. It had cost him, he said, £300 and a deal of trouble. He had never heard of any one visiting Bagdad for pleasure, and advised us, if we did go there, to do a little business in silk. It might help to pay our expenses. He had seen the Euphrates. It was a large river like the Rhone, but without steamers on it. The inhabitants were “de la canaille.” He thought we should do better by spending the winter at Beyrout, where there was a French hotel and a café chantant.

More precise, if not more amusing, informants were a Pole in the Turkish service and a French engineer, on their way to Adana. One had bought horses at Deyr, a town on the Euphrates, and the other had taken part in an experimental voyage made by a Government steamer up the river four years before. Neither of these considered a land journey practicable, except by Diarbekr and Mosul, a five-weeks’ march by caravan, and then by raft down the Tigris. Nobody went by the Euphrates, while the other was a post road. “Et fréquentée?” we inquired. “Oui, mais mal fréquentée.” It did not sound assuring.

But, on the 5th of December, our doubts and hesitations, if any we had, were brought to a sudden end by the arrival of the “Alphée” in the bay of Scanderoon; and in the early morning of that day we found ourselves fairly landed in Asia, with our troubles close before us.

CHAPTER II.

“My father, you must know, was originally a Turkey merchant.”

TRISTRAM SHANDY.

The Port of Scanderoon—Relics of the Levant Company—We agree with a muleteer for conveyance to Aleppo—Beylan ponies—We cross the “Syrian Gates”—Murder of a muleteer—Turkish soldiers—Sport on the Orontes—A night in a road-side khan—Snowstorms—A dead horse—The village of Tokát and its inhabitants—A last day of misery—We arrive at Aleppo.

ALEXANDRETTA, or Scanderoon as it was called in the days of the Levant Company, of which, if I conjecture rightly, the elder Shandy must have been a member, is now little more than a collection of hovels by the sea-shore, surrounded by a marsh and backed by the steep slopes of the Amanus hills. Its position, in a land-locked bay possessing good anchorage, the only good anchorage on the Syrian coast, and at the far corner of the Mediterranean where Asia Minor and Syria meet, made it a port of great importance once; and for many years it was the chief station of the English trade with India. But the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope brought Scanderoon its first misfortunes, and the overland route through Egypt its death blow. It is fifty years now since the Levant Company wound up its affairs and disappeared (the East India Company, its imitator and rival, has done so since); and nothing remains in token of its former prosperity in this its principal seaport but a pile of ruins, its “Commercial House,” and the graves of the many Englishmen who lived, made money and died there. It was certainly a melancholy sight, this commercial house, the haunt of bats and frogs; for the marsh had already reclaimed its prey, and the court yard was now some inches under water. It gave one the ague to look at it. Scanderoon, at the present day, boasts neither inn nor mosque, and its bazaar was burnt to the ground some weeks before we arrived; but it is still the nearest seaport for the Bagdad caravans, and if ever the Euphrates railway is more than a project, may again become the rival of Alexandria. The marsh, they say, might easily be drained, and with it the fevers now common would disappear. The town enjoys about the most beautiful view in the world across the bay to the Caramanian hills, just now white with snow.²

We were lodged comfortably at the Vice-Consulate by M. Catoni, a Corsican by birth, and lately appointed British Vice-Consul, as he had previously been Swedish and Greek. English travellers are rare at Alexandretta, and we were most hospitably entertained by him, all trouble being taken off our hands in the matter of arrangements for our journey to Aleppo. Hadji Mahmoud, a respectable carrier of that town, was sent for, and engaged to convey us and our baggage, for four hundred piastres (£3 4s.), and see us safely to our destination. He was a good-looking man, as most of the Syrians are, handsomely dressed in a striped turban, a striped jacket and striped trowsers, with a pair of new red morocco boots, of which he seemed not a little proud. Three mules would be enough for our baggage, and he would provide horses for ourselves. It seemed a reasonable sum for the four days’ journey, as we were in December, and the roads might be expected to be bad. Not that there was any sign of winter yet where we were. Alexandretta with its blue sea and cloudless sky looked the home of an eternal summer; and only the snow, a hundred miles away on the Taurus mountains, showed that winter had begun. We were to take a provision of bread for the road, as none was to be had there; but we should find, it seemed, eggs, and the traditional fowl which waits for travellers in every quarter of the globe. The consular cook went with me to market, and with his assistance I purchased thirty of the flat Arab loaves, just as they were turned out of the oven, some salt, pepper, a flask of oil, a frying-pan and a string of onions. With bread and onions one may travel far.

Thus provided, and with a good bag of beshliks, the base coin of Syria, for immediate needs, and spirits rising at the prospect of fine weather and the new country open before us, we rode out at an early hour on the 6th of December, through the swampy streets of Scanderoon, across the marsh and by a rising road towards what are called the Syrian Gates, the mountain pass of Aleppo. It was a warm morning, and we could have almost been persuaded to leave our heavy cloaks behind us but for an appearance of wind far out at sea. The marsh was full of kingfishers, sitting on the telegraph wires, and now and then pouncing with a splash into the water. Our ponies, ragged little beasts, stepped out at a good pace, and the bells of the leading mule jingled merrily. There was a sense of expectation in the air with the thought that we were at last fairly on our road through Asia, and that mysterious promise of adventure which makes the first day of a journey only less delightful than the last. Our road now left the causeway, which had crossed the marsh, and wound among the ravines and watercourses of the hill side. We had plenty of fellow travellers, riders on mules, horses, donkeys, and camels, and people on foot, (for this is perhaps the greatest high road in Asia). But they passed us without remark or salutation, and only one or two exchanged a nod with Mahmoud. As we turned the shoulder of the hill we were met by a violent wind which nearly blew us back over our ponies’ tails, and sufficiently explained the “white horses” we had seen out at sea, and the enormous capotes into which Mahmoud and his assistant Kasim had built themselves. Two hours’ struggle, however, brought us to a place of shelter and a halt in the town of Beylan,³ the first station on our road, where the consular cavass, who had hitherto led the way on a good-looking white horse with three shoes off and one shoe on, made his salaam and left us at the khan. The khan was a respectable place enough, with a row of empty rooms on an upper floor, bescribbled with the names of sailors and Levantine shopkeepers, mostly French, who had stopped there on their way to or from Antioch; and there we waited half an hour while a kháwaji (coffee seller) fried us some eggs and brought coffee from his shop hard by.

We were now fairly left to our own resources; and these, for the moment, appeared very slender. The few words of Arabic we had picked up in Algeria and in Egypt would not at all pass current with Hadji Mahmoud and his fellows, good honest Syrians, quite unused to guessing the meaning of words in an unknown tongue; for we were far away from the region of dragomans, Jew pedlers, and the nimble-tongued donkey boys, who haunt the steps of tourists in those parts of the East which they have made their own. Here all things were as purely Asiatic as if we had been at Merv or Ispahán. Hadji Mahmoud however was good-natured if not quick...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• CHAPTER I.
• CHAPTER II.
• CHAPTER III.
• CHAPTER IV.
• CHAPTER V.
• CHAPTER VI.
• CHAPTER VII.
• CHAPTER VIII.
• CHAPTER IX.
• CHAPTER X.
• CHAPTER XI.
• CHAPTER XII.
• CHAPTER XIII.
• CHAPTER XIV.
• CHAPTER XV.
• CHAPTER XVI.
• CHAPTER XVII.
• CHAPTER XVIII.
• CHAPTER XIX.
• CHAPTER XX.
• CHAPTER XXI.
• CHAPTER XXII.
• CHAPTER XXIII.
• CHAPTER XXIV.
• CHAPTER XXV.
• CHAPTER XXVI.
• CHAPTER XXVII.
• CHAPTER XXVIII.
• Arab horse-breeding—Obscurity respecting it—There is no Nejdean breed—Picture of the Ánazeh horse—He is a bold jumper—Is a fast horse for his size—His nerve excellent, and his temper—Causes of deterioration—How the Bedouins judge a horse—Their system of breeding and training—Their horsemanship indifferent—Their prejudices—Pedigree of the thoroughbred Arabian horse
• POSTSCRIPT.
• Scheme of a Euphrates Valley Railway.—Of river communication.—The Turkish sytem of government.—Its partial success.—Its failings—A guess at the future