Part 16 (2/2)
On the following morning we crossed this valley to Nourtchouk, at the outskirts of which I was met by the priest at the head of the inhabitants.
A range of low hills now separated us from the plain and lake of Wan. We soon reached their crest, and a landscape of surpa.s.sing beauty was before us. At our feet, intensely blue and sparkling in the rays of the sun, was the inland sea, with the sublime peak of the Subhan Dagh, mirrored in its transparent waters. The city, with its castle-crowned rock and its embattled walls and towers, lay embowered in orchards and gardens. To our right a rugged snow-capped mountain opened midway into an amphitheatre, in which, amidst lofty trees, stood the Armenian convent of Yedi Klissia (the seven churches). To the west of the lake was the Nimroud Dagh, and the highlands nouris.h.i.+ng the sources of the great rivers of Mesopotamia. The hills forming the foreground of our picture were carpeted with the brightest flowers, over which wandered the flocks, whilst the gaily dressed shepherds gathered around us as we halted to contemplate the enchanting scene.
We now descended rapidly towards Wan, and as we issued into the plain, a party of hors.e.m.e.n galloped towards us. I soon recognised amongst them my friend Mr. Bowen; with him were the Cawa.s.s-Bas.h.i.+ and a troop of irregular cavalry, sent out by the Pasha to escort me into the city. Nor did the governor's kindness end with this display of welcome. After winding for nearly an hour through orchards and gardens, whose trees were bending under the weight of fruit, and then through the narrow and crowded streets, we were led to his serai or palace, which, such as it was, had been made ready for our use, and where his treasurer was waiting to receive us. Notwithstanding the fast, an abundant breakfast of various meats and sweet messes, cooked after the Turkish fas.h.i.+on, had been prepared for us, and we soon found repose upon a s.p.a.cious divan, surrounded by all the luxuries of Eastern life.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Kurds of Wan.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
MEHEMET PASHA.--DESCRIPTION OF WAN.--ITS HISTORY.--IMPROVEMENT IN ITS CONDITION.--THE ARMENIAN BISHOP.--THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS.--THE CAVES OF KHORKHOR.--THE MEHER KAPOUSI.--A TRADITION.--OBSERVATIONS ON THE INSCRIPTIONS.--THE BAIRAM.--AN ARMENIAN SCHOOL.--THE AMERICAN MISSIONS.--PROTESTANT MOVEMENT IN TURKEY.--AMIKH.--THE CONVENT OF YEDI KLISSIA.
Mehemet Pasha was living during the fast of Ramazan in a kiosk in one of the gardens outside the city walls. We had scarcely eaten, before he came himself to welcome us to Wan. He was the son of the last Bostandji-Bas.h.i.+ of Constantinople, and having been brought up from a child in the imperial palace, was a man of pleasing and dignified manners, and of considerable information. Although he had never left his native country, he was not ignorant of the habits and customs of Europe. He had long served the Sultan in difficult and responsible posts, and to his discretion and sagacity was chiefly to be attributed the subjugation of Beder-Khan Bey and the rebel Kurdish tribes. His rule was mild and conciliating, and he possessed those qualities so rare in a Turkish governor, yet so indispensable to the civilisation and well-being of the empire,--a strict honesty in the administration of the revenues of his province, and a sense of justice beyond the reach of bribes. From Christians and Kurds we had received during our journey through his pashalic, the highest testimony to his tolerance and integrity.
In the evening I returned his visit, and found him surrounded by the chiefs and elders of the city, and by the officers of his household. I sat with him till midnight, the time pa.s.sing in that agreeable conversation which a well-educated Turk so well knows how to sustain.
I remained a week at Wan, chiefly engaged in copying the cuneiform inscriptions, and in examining its numerous remarkable monuments of antiquity.
The city is of very ancient date. It stands on the borders of a large and beautiful lake, a site eminently suited to a prosperous community. The lofty mountains bordering the inland sea to the east, here recede in the form of an amphitheatre, leaving a rich plain five or six miles in breadth, in the midst of which rises an isolated calcareous rock. To the summit of this natural stronghold, there is no approach, except on the western side, where a gradual but narrow ascent is defended by the walls and bastions. From the earliest ages it has consequently been the acropolis of the city, and no position could be stronger before the discovery of the engines of modern warfare. The fortifications and castle, of a comparatively recent date, are now in ruins, and are scarcely defensible, with their few rusty guns, against the attacks of the neighbouring Kurds.
According to Armenian history, the a.s.syrian queen Semiramis founded the city; it having fallen to decay, it is said to have been rebuilt, shortly before the invasion of Alexander the Great, by an Armenian king named Wan, after whom it was subsequently called. It appears to have been again abandoned, for we find that it was once more raised from its foundations in the second century B. C. by Vagharschag, the first king of the Arsacian dynasty of Armenia, who made it the strongest city in the kingdom. In the eleventh century it was ceded by the royal family of the Ardz-rounis to the Greek emperors, from whom it was taken by the Seljuk Turks. It fell, in 1392, into the hands of Timourlane, who, according to his custom, gave the inhabitants over to the sword. Even in his day, the great monuments of solid stone, raised by the a.s.syrian queen, were still shown to the stranger.
Moses of Ch.o.r.ene, the early historian of Armenia, has faithfully described its position and its antiquities; the isolated hill, rising in the midst of a broad plain covered with flouris.h.i.+ng villages, and watered by innumerable streams; the chapels, chambers, treasuries, and caverns cut in the living rock, and the great inscriptions written, as it were, on the face of the precipice, as pages are written with a pen on wax.
The first traveller who, in modern times, examined the remarkable remains of antiquity at Wan was the unfortunate Schulz. He visited the place in 1827. The cuneiform inscriptions carved on the rock were known to exist long before his day, but he was the first to copy them, and from his copies they have been published by the Asiatic Society of France. Since the time of Schulz, the city has undergone many changes. It was seized by the rebel Kurdish chief, Khan Mahmoud; but after many vain attempts made to recover the place, it finally yielded two years before my journey.
Under the mild rule of Mehemet Pasha it was rapidly rising to prosperity.
The protection he had given to the Armenians had encouraged that enterprising and industrious people to enlarge their commerce, and to build warehouses for trade. Two handsome khans, with bazars attached, were nearly finished. Shops for the sale of European articles of clothing and of luxury had been opened; and, what was of still more importance, several native schools had already been established. These improvements were chiefly due to one Sharan, an Armenian merchant and a man of liberal and enlightened views, who had seconded with energy and liberality the desire of the Pasha to ameliorate the social condition of the Christian population.[164]
Shortly after my arrival, the Armenian bishop called upon me. He was dressed in the peculiar costume of his order,--long black robes and a capacious black hood almost concealing his head,--and was accompanied by the priests and princ.i.p.al laymen of his diocese. On his breast he wore the rich diamond crescent and star of the Turkish order of merit, of which he was justly proud. Although he had been duly elected several years before to his episcopal dignity, he still wanted the formal consecration of the patriarch of his church, owing to difficulties connected with the political position of the patriarch; he was now, however, on the eve of his departure to receive that consecration which was essential to his due admission into the Armenian hierarchy.
The modern town of Wan stands at the foot, and to the south of, the isolated rock. Its streets and bazars are small, narrow, and dirty; but its houses are not ill built. It is surrounded by fruitful gardens and orchards, irrigated by artificial rivulets derived from the streams rising in the Yedi Klissia mountains. It may contain between twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants. The whole pashalic at the time of my visit paid an annual sum of six thousand purses (about 27,000_l._) to the Turkish treasury. In the town there was a garrison of a thousand foot and five hundred horse, and the commander of the troops in the district and in the adjoining province of Hakkiari was at the head of five thousand men.[165]
The old hereditary pashas of Wan, as well as the princ.i.p.al families, were of Turkish origin, and came, I was informed by some of their descendants, from Konia (Iconium), about three hundred years ago. The chiefs, however, of the surrounding districts are Kurds. Two families, named the Topchi-oglus and the Timour-oglus, divided the town into opposite factions, which were continually at war, and carried their b.l.o.o.d.y feuds almost daily into the streets. The Timour-oglus were the most powerful, and it was through their means that Khan Mahmoud possessed himself of the place.
The inscriptions of Wan are of two distinct periods, though all of the cuneiform writing. The most ancient are in a character identical with that on the oldest monuments of a.s.syria. The earliest inscriptions are found on two square stones built into a wall near the western gateway of the city, and immediately beneath the only entrance to the castle. The language of these inscriptions appears to be a.s.syrian, whilst that of all the others is peculiar to Wan. Nevertheless the names of the kings in them can be genealogically connected with those on the other monuments.
But the most important records at Wan are carved on the southern face of the isolated rock, round the entrance to a set of excavated chambers, probably once serving as tombs. As those inscriptions record the victories and deeds of a monarch, it is highly probable that they were placed over royal sepulchres.
A flight of twenty narrow steps cut in the perpendicular face of the precipice, and partly destroyed, so as to be somewhat difficult and dangerous, leads to a narrow ledge, above which the rock has been carefully smoothed, and is still covered with inscriptions in the cuneiform character. Here an entrance, about 7 feet deep, opens into a hall, 34-1/2 feet long, by nearly 21 wide and 12 high, leading by four doorways into as many distinct chambers. Around its walls are window-like recesses, and between them, and on each side of the doorways, are ornamental niches, with holes in the centre, which may have held metal lamps. The floor has been excavated in two places into squares a few inches deep; I cannot conjecture for what purpose.
The door to the left on entering leads into a small chamber, 11 ft. 8 in., by 9 ft. 8 in., surrounded by similar window-like recesses. In it is a second doorway opening upon a well or pit, filled to within a few feet of the mouth with stones and rubbish. There were no means of ascertaining its depth or original use without removing the contents. The three other doors in the entrance hall lead to square rooms, surrounded by niches, but without other ornament. The excavations are sometimes called by the Turks ”Khorkhor Mugaralari,” the caves of Khorkhor, from a garden of that name below them.
The inscriptions on the face of the rock around the outer entrance to these chambers are contained in eight parallel columns, including in all above 300 lines and thirteen consecutive paragraphs. The letters are large and admirably carved, and the writing is divided by horizontal lines.
These rock-tablets are the records of a king whose name, according to Dr.
Hincks, is Arghistis. He invokes the G.o.ds of his nation, and celebrates the conquest of various peoples or tribes, whose names still require to be identified, but who probably inhabited countries to the north of Armenia; he describes the burning of their temples and palaces, and the carrying away of captives and of an immense spoil of horses, camels, cattle, and sheep, the numbers of each being given with apparent exactness. The name of the region in which these conquests were chiefly made, seems to read Mana.
The remaining inscriptions are on the northern face of the rock. They are five in number. The longest and most important contains twenty-nine lines, and is on the side wall to the left on entering an artificial vaulted recess. It has been partly destroyed by a rude cross cut by the Armenians across the tablet. The cave is called the ”Khazana Kapousi,” or the treasure gate, and is held to be a sacred spot by Christians and Mussulmans.
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