THE MOUNTAINEERS OF THE EUPHRATES 



By Ellsworth Huntington 



THREE thousand years ago the 

 proud kings of Assyria led their 

 trained armies northwestward 

 into the mountainous region of the upper 

 Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The turbu- 

 lent mountaineers against whom they ad- 

 vanced fled before the civilized soldiers 

 -of the Mesopotamian plain and took ref- 

 uge in inaccessible heights, leaving their 

 rude villages of mud and stones to be 

 destroyed. 



Invariably the kings "claimed to have 

 defeated the wild upland tribes, as boast- 

 ful inscriptions carved in the living rock 

 still prove ; but the defeat was never per- 

 manent. As soon as the soldiers retired 

 the mountaineers reoccnpied their vil- 

 lages, and soon began to plunder the low- 

 lands as lawlessly as ever. 



Centuries later, when Xenophon led his 

 ten thousand Greeks from the lower 

 Euphrates northward across the Arme- 

 nian plateau to Trebizond, the mountain- 

 eers were still untamed. All night they 

 rolled stones down the mountain-side 

 upon Xenophon's army, and were only 

 vanquished by a stratagem. 



Today the great empires of Mesopo- 

 tamia have fallen ; the power of Greece 

 has passed away ; but still, as of old, the 

 mountains breed lawlessness, and the 

 •mountaineers are the unsubdued scourge 

 of the people of the plains. 



The lineal descendants of the Carduchi 

 who opposed the march of Xenophon are 

 the Kurds — a sturdy, strong-featured 

 race of Mohammedan Aryans, allied to 

 the Persians on the one hand and to the 

 Armenians on the other. Their home is 

 in the southern part of the Armenian 

 plateau, among the headwaters of the 

 Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and in the 

 Zagros Mountains, which run southeast- 

 ward from Lake Van to the Persian Gulf 

 and form the boundary between Turkey 

 and Persia. There they tend their flocks ; 

 for the majority are primarily shepherds, 

 although they cultivate the soil so far as 

 possible. 



Although most of the Kurds possess 

 villages, composed of clusters of low, 

 flat-roofed houses of stone or mud, all 

 the tribes are more or less nomadic. The 

 majority live in dark-brown, many-peaked 

 tents of goats' hair during the summer, 

 not wandering far from home, but merely 

 going up into the high mountains, where 

 it is too cold and snowy to dwell in 

 winter. 



A considerable number, however, live a 

 purely nomadic life, wandering hundreds 

 of miles along regular routes between 

 the warm plains of Mesopotamia in win- 

 ter and the cool, grassy uplands in sum- 

 mer. Among the pure nomads society 

 is organized upon a half-tribal, half-patri- 

 archal system, while the semi-nomadic 

 Kurds are either divided into tribes or 

 clans, like those of medieval Scotland, 

 or are ruled by feudal lords, whose power 

 is often absolute. 



Poverty is the rule among the Kurds; 

 their mountain fastnesses are difficult of 

 access, and they themselves are strong 

 and hardy by reason of their life of 

 exertion. The people of the neighboring 

 fertile lowlands, on the other hand, are 

 relatively well-to-do, and are also com- 

 paratively unprotected and averse to war. 

 All these factors combine to make the 

 Kurds a race of plunderers. "No race," 

 says the famous geographer Reclus, "nei- 

 ther Baluch, Bedouin, nor Apache, has 

 developed the marauding instinct to a 

 higher degree than have the warlike 

 Kurd tribes." 



One of the places where they are most 

 lawless is Dersim, a highly mountainous 

 district lying between the two main 

 branches of the Euphrates River. For 

 scores of years the Turkish authorities, 

 like their ancient Assyrian predecessors, 

 have been vainly trying to bring the 

 Knzzilbash Kurds of this region into 

 subjection. Last summer a new oppor- 

 tunity seemed to offer itself. The rainfall 

 of the winter of 1907-08 was unpropi- 

 tious, and the Kurds succeeded in raising 



* This is the first of several articles by Mr Huntington describing little known regions 

 of Asia which will be published in the National Geographic Magazine during 1909. 



