1901.] on Turkish Kurdistan. 643 



cipal author of those outrages ; while Hakkiari, which included 

 Jularuerik until the latter was separated in 1841 by the Turkish 

 Government and assigned to a sixth chief, Suleiman Beg, was ruled 

 by the equally notorious Nurulla Beg from his headquarters at 

 Bashkala. It was not until the year 1847, when the chiefs of 

 Hakkiari and Bohtan contrived to massacre, between them, close on 

 4000 of the Christians of Tiara and Tkhoma, that the protests of the 

 Powers compelled the Turkish Government to recognise the necessity 

 of adopting vigorous measures to put an end to a state of things 

 which, in the course of fifteen years, had led to two serious insurrec- 

 tions against their own authority, and, by the extermination of all the 

 leaders of the most powerful Christian clans, threatened to withdraw 

 the sole remaining counterpoise to the aggressive power of the Kurdish 

 confederacy. Bedr Khan Beg was exiled to Candia, and his over- 

 throw was followed by the gradual suppression of almost all the old 

 hereditary chiefs. The few that survive to-day have either sunk to 

 the position of small private landowners, despised but humoured by 

 the Turks because of the affection and almost superstitious reverence 

 with which their dependants still regard them ; or else their authority 

 is confined within the immediate limits of their own clans, instead of 

 extending, as I shall presently show it once did, over the main section 

 of the Christian community. 



Passing from the Kurds, the next immigrants, if local traditions 

 be accepted, were the Jews, or, rather, the Israelites, whom the 

 Assyrian king transplanted after the fall of Samaria and settled in 

 the districts east of Samaria. Perhaps, like the Kurd militia of 

 Selim I., they were intended to act as a check upon their unruly 

 neighbours, for in the seventeenth chapter of the Second Book of 

 Kings it is expressly stated that the Samaritans were placed in 

 " Halah, Habor, on the River Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes "; 

 and in this connection it is curious to notice the expression " the 

 Hebrew fortress " used by St. Thomas of Marga (ninth century), pro- 

 bably to describe the Jewish colony of Nebi Yunus, near Mosul. 

 Jews are, of course, found in considerable numbers in many of the 

 larger centres of population throughout Asiatic Turkey, but it is 

 remarkable that along the frontier we find them grouped in remote 

 country villages and occupied in those agricultural or pastoral pur- 

 suits for which the majority of their fellow-countrymen elsewhere 

 appear to have lost all taste or inclination. There is a large colony 

 at Akkra ; other settlements occur at Amadiyah, and in the district of 

 Berwari in the west ; Girdi and several villages between Neri and 

 Rowanduz to the east are almost entirely Jewish, and a few are found 

 even as far north as Bashkala. They wear the same dress and speak 

 the same language as the Kurds (though Dr. Badger met some in the 

 Supna who used the Aramaic of the Chaldeans), and the markedly 

 Hebraic features of many of the Kurds themselves in this region 

 attest the large amount of intermarriage which still goes on between 

 the two races. 



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