“The general features,” he says, “of this tract are high mountains, enclosing fertile valleys and an undulating upland, bounded on the south-west by the Tigris, and intersected at several points by numerous streams having their rise in the northern districts of the Diarbekir pashalic, and emptying themselves into that river. The scenery in the highlands yields to no other portion of Turkey for variety and romantic beauty, while the numerous rivers and streams flow through charming landscapes and thickly wooded valleys, bathing in their course the bases of castles and towns famous in profane and ecclesiastical history.”

To supplement ΔΓr Taylor’s general description, it may be enough to say that there are three principal ranges running from west to east through this portion of Kurdistan :—(1) The Dιijik and Mezoor Dagh (Paryadres and Abus of antiquity, and Mount Simus of Armenian history), a lofty, rugged, and inaccessible range which fills up the entire space between the two arms of the Euphrates, being connected with Λnti-Taurus to the westward, and culminating far to the east in the isolated peaks of the greater and lesser Ararat; (2) The Mudikân range, south of the Murâd-sû, which is a continuation of the true Taurus, aud which is prolonged under the names of Nimrùd Dâgh, Sipân Dâgh, and Alâ Dâgh, till it reaches the Persian frontier to the north-east of Lake Van (in this range all the headwaters of the Tigris rise, flowing south under the names of Debeneh-sù, Ambâr-sù, Batmân-sù, and the rivers of Arzen and Bohtân, and joining the main stream between Diarbekir and Jezireh); and (3) Mount Masius, or Jebel-Tür, an inferior range, south of the Tigris, which divides Kurdistan from the great Mesopotamian desert.

The second or central division of Kurdistan, which may be regarded as extending north and south from Lake Van to Sulimanieh, is of a more exclusively mountainous character. With the exception indeed of the districts of Amadieh, Shekelabâd, and Koi-Sanjâk on the immediate skirts of the Tigris basin, and the open country of Azerbijân beyond the great range to the south-west of Lake Urumieh, where the Kurds of the mountains have overflowed into Persia, there is hardly a square mile of level laud anywhere to be found. The ranges of this division, which preserve a general direction of north-north-west and south-southeast, are throughout much broken up by transverse ridges, and seem to be tossed about in inextricable disorder, a few peaks, such as the Jebel-Jùdi above Amadieh (which almost certainly represents the Ararat of the Bible) and the Gawâr (or Jawâr) Dagh near Julamerik in the Hakkâri country, rising to a stupendous height, and thus dominating the surrounding mountains, while several large rivers, and especially the Khabùr and the Upper and Lower Zâb, running in narrow and precipitous beds, burst at right angles through the gorges of the chain, and descend upon the Tigris valley in a series of cataracts amid scenery of the wildest and most impressive grandeur. The usual elevation of the hills in this part of Kurdistan is not less than 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, while some of the highest peaks reach probably to an altitude of 14,000 or even 15,000 feet.

In the third or southern division of Kurdistan, which includes the Turkish pashalic of Sulimanieh and the Persian provinces of Ardelân and Kirmânshâhân, the mountain chain diminishes both in height and breadth. The average height of the hills is here only about 5000 or 6000 feet, and the loftiest range, that of the Bend-i-Nùh, or Noah’s Hill, which forms the southern barrier of the gates of Zagrus, and upon which, according to the tradition of Babylonia, as opposed to the tradition of Assyria, the ark is supposed to have rested, does not exceed an elevation of 8000 feet. The pass also which traverses the range at this point, and conducts from the lowlands of Holwân to the upper plain of Kirrend, is only 10 miles in length. At the foot of the great range on the western side are the fertile plains of Shahrizor, Zohâb, and Ghilân, where rice is extensively cultivated, while on the Persian side, though rocky ridges run out to the eastward both in Ardelân and Kirmânshâhân, the general character of the country is open, and cereals are everywhere produced in extraordinary abundance.

Population.— There are no means of calculating the total Kurd population with even approximate accuracy, for neither in Turkey nor in Persia has a Government census ever been attempted, and the revenue tables which regulate taxation and conscription, and ought therefore to guide inquiry, are wilfully distorted for political purposes to such an extent as to be quite unreliable. From the materials, however, which have been recently collected by the British consular officers employed in Asia Minor, with a view of testing the relative strength of the Mohammedan and Christian populations, it seems pretty clear that the Turkish Kurds exceed one million and a half in number, while the estimates of travellers who have resided iu Persian Kurdistan give about 750,000 souls for the aggregate of the tribesmen and sedentary Kurds dwelling along the mountains from Ararat to Kirmânshâhân, together with the scattered colonies of the interior. The following rough table, then, has been compiled from the above sources. [table]

Attempts have been made to classify this Kurdish population as sedentary and nomad, and in connexion with the classification to distinguish between tribal and non-tribal communities; but all such divisions are arbitrary and fallacious, and ought not to be admitted in a statistical account of the nation. No doubt the original Kurdish organization was tribal, and the prevailing habits of the tribes have always been nomadic and pastoral; but such habits are ever liable to be modified by local circumstances, and at the present day it is quite incorrect to suppose that the tribal Kurds are universally pastoral and migratory, while the non-tribal Kurds are sedentary and agricultural. In reality the distinction between living in villages as cultivators and living in tents as shepherds mainly depends on the localities where the tribes happen to be established. The Deyrsimlis, for instance, who inhabit the ranges of Dujik and Mezoor between the two arms of the Euphrates, and who number, according to Consul Taylor’s estimate, above 200,000 souls, reside almost exclusively in villages, owing to the severity of their northern climate, while they follow agricultural and pastoral pursuits indifferently. But, on the other hand, the tribes to the south who have easy access to the Mesopotamian plains, prefer a nomadic life, sheltering their flocks and herds in the warm pastures beyond the Tigris during the winter, and driving them up in the summer to feed on the rich herbage of the mountain sides; and the same rule may be held to apply generally throughout Kurdistan, the tribesmen, whose natural instincts lead them to migrate between summer and winter quarters, becoming sedentary only when obstacles, either political or geographical, are placed in the way of their movements. With regard also to the distinction that is sometimes drawn between tribal and non-tribal Kurds, the hypothesis being that the latter, who live in villages and cultivate the soil, are the descendants of the aboriginal peasantry, while the former, who live in tents and support themselves with their flocks, are conquering invaders, the explanation will certainly not hold good. There is in reality no ethnic distinction between the two classes. Tribal Kurds who settle in villages very soon lose their distinctive name, and mix with the peasantry of the neighbourhood, while it constantly happens that a chief of village extraction, either by his individual character or through Government support, founds a new tribe and takes his place among the aristocracy of the nation. It may be added that in respect to the relative importance of the two classes the sedentary Kurds greatly outnumber the nomads, but that they are not so wealthy, nor so independent, nor do they stand nearly so high in popular estimation.

Character.— The Kurds generally bear a very indifferent reputation, a worse reputation, perhaps, than they really deserve. Being aliens to the Turks in language and to the Persians in religion, they are everywhere treated with mistrust, and live as it were in a state of chronic warfare with the powers that be. Such a condition is not of course favourable to the development of the better qualities of human nature. The Kurds are thus wild and lawless; they are much given to brigandage; they oppress and frequently maltreat the Christian populations with whom they are brought in contact, —these populations being the Armenians in Diarbekir, Erzeroum, and Van, the Jacobites and Syrians in the Jebel-Tür, and the Nestorians and Chaldaeans in the Hakkâri country,—but they are not as a general rule either fanatical or cruel. In the Hakkâri country, indeed, they live under ordinary circumstances in perfect amity with the Nestorians, from whom in outward appearance they are hardly distinguishable. It must be added, too, that they are naturally brave and hospitable, and in common with many other Asiatic races possess certain rude but strict feelings of honour. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the Kurdish chief is pride of ancestry. This feeling is in many cases exaggerated, for in reality the present tribal organization does not date from any great antiquity. In the list indeed of eighteen principal tribes of the nation which was drawn up by the Arabian historian Massoudi, in the 10th century, only two or three names are to be recognized at the present day. A 14th century list, however, translated by Quatre mère, presents a great number of identical names, and there seems no reason to doubt that certain families both in Bohtân and Hakkâri, which are extant at the present day, can really trace their descent from the Ommeyide caliphs, while the Babân chief of Sulimanieh, representing the old Sohrans, and the Ardelân chief of Sinna, who also represents an elder branch of the Gurâns, each claim an ancestry of at least five hundred years. There was up to a recent period no more picturesque or interesting scene to be witnessed in the East than the court of one of these great Kurdish chiefs, where, like another Saladin, the bey ruled in patriarchal state, surrounded by an hereditary nobility, regarded by his clansmen with reverence and affection, and attended by a bodyguard of young Kurdish warriors, clad in chain armour, with flaunting silken scarfs, and bearing javelin, lance, and sword as in the time of the crusades.

Language and Religion. — The present Kurdish language which is called Kermânji—a title difficult to explain—is an old Persian patois, intermixed to the north with Chaldaean words and to the south with a certain Turanian element which may not improbably have come down from Babylonian times. Several peculiar dialects are spoken in secluded districts in the mountains, but the only varieties which, from their extensive use, require to be specified are the Zaza and the Gurân. The Zaza is spoken throughout the western portion of the Deyrsim country, and is said to be unintelligible to the Kermânji-speaking Kurds. It is largely intermingled with Armenian, and may contain some trace of the old Cappadocian, but is no doubt of the same Aryan stock as the standard Kurdish. The Gurân dialect again, which is spoken throughout Ardelân and Kirmânshâhân chiefly differs from the northern Kurdish in being entirely free from any Semitic intermixture. It is thus somewhat nearer to the Persian than the Kermânji dialect, but is essentially the same language. It is a mistake to suppose that there is no Kurdish literature. Many of the popular Persian poets have been translated into Kurdish, and there are also books relating to the religious mysteries of the Ali-01Uhis in the hands of the Deyrsimlis to the north and of the Gurâns of Kirmânshâhân to the south. European scholars too have been assiduous of late years in investigating the various Kurdish dialects. The New Testament in Kurdish was printed at Constantinople in 1857. The Rev. Samuel Rhea published a grammar and vocabulary of the Hakkàri dialect in 1872. Lerch, Brugsch, Chodzko, Beresine, Blau, and many others have discussed different branches of the subject in the scientific magazines of the Continent; and quite recently (1879) there has appeared under the auspices of the Imperial Academy of St Petersburg a French-Kurdish dictionary compiled originally by Mons. Jaba, many years Russian consul at Erzeroum, but completed by Ferdinand Justi by the help of a rich assortment of Kurdish tales and ballads, collected by Messrs Socin and Pryne in Assyria. Justi’s preface to the dictionary gives a good account of the present state of Kurdish studies in Europe and Asia.

The religion of the Kurds also furnishes a very curious subject of inquiry. The great body of the nation, in Persia as well as in Turkey, are Sunnis of the Shafe’i sect, but in the recesses of the Deyrsim to the north and of Zagrus to the south, there are large half-pagan communities, who are called indifferently Ali-011ahi and Kizzil-bâsh, and who hold tenets of some obscurity, but of considerable interest. Outwardly professing to be Shi’ahs or “followers of Ali,” they observe secret ceremonies and hold esoteric doctrines which have probably descended to them from very early ages, and of which the essential condition is that there must always be upon the earth a visible manifestation of the Deity. While paying reverence to the supposed incarnations of ancient days, to Moses, David, Christ, Ali and his tutor Salmàn-el-Farsi, and several of the Shi’ah imams and saints, they have thus usually some recent local celebrity at whose shrine they worship and make vows; and there is, moreover, in every community of Ali-Ollahis some living personage, not necessarily ascetic, to whom, as representing the Godhead, the superstitious tribesmen pay almost idolatrous honours. Among the Gurâns of the south the shrine of Baba Yadgâr, in a gorge of the hills above the old city of Holwân, is thus regarded with a supreme veneration, while in the family of a certain Syed who resides in the neighbourhood the attributes of divinity are supposed to be hereditary. Similar institutions are also found in other parts of the mountains, which may be compared with the tenets of the Druses and Ansaris in Syria and the Ismaelis in Persia.

Climate, Productions, Fauna, &c.— In a country like Kurdistan, which extends over five or six degrees of latitude, and ranges in altitude from 1500 to 15,000 feet above the sea, there is of course every variety of climate and produce. In the northern part of this region the hills are covered with pine forest, while the valleys abound with walnuts, sycamores, and planes, and all sorts of fruit trees, and in summer the hillsides and uplands are covered with a luxuriant herbage. The winters are here very rigorous, and the tribes, as far as they can, migrate at that season to the plains. In central Kurdistan the pine forests cease and give way to dwarf oak and elms, the mastic, holly, &c., while further to the south large trees almost disappear, and a rough scrub takes their place. A succinct and graphic description of Turkish Kurdistan is given by Consul Taylor in his notes of travel published in the Geographical Journal for 1865.

“The modern Turkish province of Kurdistan,” he says, “watered by an infinity of noble streams, with a salubrious climate and rich soil, yields to no other province in the empire for the variety and richness of its vegetable and animal produce, while its numerous mountain chains abound in mineral wealth. Among its natural vegetable productions, galls, gum-tragacanth, madder-roots, and the pistachio-nut, from which the natives extract a fine oil used in making soap, are the most important,—the annual value of the export of the former alone being upwards of £35,000. Oleaginous seeds and olive oil are produced in large quantities, and the quality of the former is so superior that it finds its way to many of the northern governments. Sheep’s wool was exported in 1863 to the value of £70,000; and mohair, the produce of the Angorah goats, that thrive so wonderfully in the neighbourhood of Jezireh, was eagerly sought after and bought up by native traders from Kaiserieh and Constantinople in the same period to the amount of £20,000.

‘ ‘ The manufacture of native cotton cloths, shallees made from mohair, and short woollen cloaks is actively pursued; and the shallee, for texture and variety of colour and pattern, shows the extraordinary natural intelligence of the Kurdish workman. Diarbekir is famous itself for its silk piece-goods, similar to those of Aleppo and other parts of Syria, but, from its greater cheapness and durability, more in request among the poorer classes of the mountains between Diarbekir and the Black Sea. Sheep are exported in large quantities from the mountains and desert to Aleppo, Damascus, and Beyrout, and camels, purchased from the Arabs, to Kaiserieh and other parts of Asia Minor. The uplands and hills abound in several species of polecat, martin, foxes, and wolves, whose furs add considerably in value to the sum total of the export list. A beautiful species of spotted lynx may be included among the former, although it is far more scarce than those enumerated. A rough estimate of the whole annual value of the animal and vegetable produce of the pashalic, whether consumed at home or exported (exclusive of food), will amount to more than £700,000 sterling.”

This account is generally applicabis to central and southern Kurdistan as well as to the pashalics of Diarbekir and Erzeroum, but it requires to be supplemented in some particulars. The rice and corn which are grown by the Kurds of the Tigris basin and the Persian plains form a very important staple of export, while the hill forests supply charcoal, wild silk, manna, and gummastic, in addition to the produce noticed in Consul Taylor’s list, to a very large extent; and it may be further noted that along the whole range of mountains from Jezireh to Susa there is an outer ridge of low gypsum hills, which abounds throughout its whole extent with petroleum and naphtha springs. Mineral oils are not at present much appreciated by either Turks or Persians, but in the future of Kurdistan this important source of wealth cannot be left out of account.

With regard to the fauna of Kurdistan a few words must suffice. Neither lions nor tigers are ever found in the mountains, though the former frequent the banks of the Tigris and the latter are common in the Caspian forests. The wild animals of Kurdistan are the leopard and lynx, the wild cat, bear, hyaena, wild boar, wolf, jackal, and fox, the mardi (or red deer), the roe and hog deer (and fallow deer and antelope on the skirts of the hills), the wild goat (or ibex), the wild sheep (or moufflon), together with badgers, hares, many varieties of the polecat or martin, and the ordinary smaller animals. Of game birds the most remarkable are the Kel>k-i-Derv (or large partridge, first brought to the notice of naturalists by Consul Brandt), the grey and red-legged partridge, the Tihoo, quail, woodcock, and snipe, three varieties of bustard, the grey crane, and wild geese and ducks in abundance.

It has not been found possible to compute the amount of revenue which is raised from the Kurds. Consul Trotter remarks on this subject :—

“The Turkish Kurds are found in almost every possible stage, from that of thorough subjection to the Government (as in many of the Diarbekir and Erzeroum villages, where they pay all the regular taxes and are also...