From the Gulf to Ararat
An Expedition through Mesopotamia and Kurdistan
The majority of the photographs which illustrate this book were taken by Captain Brooke, who has kindly allowed me to use them for this purpose ; for a great number of the remainder I am indebted to Mr Wratislaw.
Captain Wilson has been of the greatest help to me in many ways, in particular by lending me his notes on various districts. Finally, I have to thank Mr W. Foster, C.I.E., of the India Office, for enabling me to consult extracts from the early records of the Honourable East India Company, and the Editor of ' The Near East ' for the loan of old files dealing with irrigation in Mesopotamia.
I have acknowledged assistance from other writers in the body of the book.
G. E. H.
CONTENTS
I. THE FRONTIER / 1
II. MARSEILLES TO MOHAMMERAH / 25
III. PRELIMINARIES TO THE START / 42
IV. THROUGH THE LAND OF ELAM (1) / 58
V. THROUGH THE LAND OF ELAM (2) / 76
VI. THE WALI OF PUSHT-I-KUH / 97
VII. TOWARDS BAGDAD / 104
VIII. DAR-EL-KHALIFEH / 121
IX. MESOPOTAMIA IN RETROSPECT / 137
X. ENTERING KURDISTAN / 158
XI. ALONG THE AVROMANS / 174
XII. THE HEART OF KURDISTAN / 192
XIII. KURDISH HISTORY, CUSTOMS, AND CHARACTER / 210
XIV. FROM THE ZAB TO USHNU / 226
XV. THE LAST STAGE / 246
INDEX / 271
PREFACE
I have to preface this book with an apology and, worse still, an excuse. The apology is for venturing to publish at the present time the record of a journey which (except for quite the last stage) took place in that almost prehistoric epoch before the war. My excuse is twofold : firstly, that fifteen months of enforced idleness drove me into writing it ; and, secondly, that subsequent events have contrived to add a special interest which it could not otherwise have claimed.
Although in no sense a "war-book," it deals with countries which have been the scene of two, if not three, campaigns in the present war, and on this fact I rely to justify my temerity.
The first of these campaigns taking them in the order of our journey from South to Northis the British Expedition to Mesopotamia. Its main features are so well known as barely to need repetition : the landing of our force at the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab in November 1914 ; the battle of Fao and the fall of Basra ; the expedition under General Gorringe up the Karun to Ahwaz to safeguard the oil-fields and the pipe-line, ending in the successful "rounding-up" of the Turks at Amara ; the storming of Kurna, the advance up the Tigris, the pitched battles at Kut-el-Amara and Ctesiphon, and, last of all, the gallant stand and ultimate surrender of General Townshend's force. But unless one has been to the country, seen the desert and the marsh and the date-groves lining the Tigris, and known even in its mildest form the heat of those limitless plains, it is impossible to conjure up any true picture of what our British and Indian troops went through, or fully to realise their extraordinary fortitude. I hope, therefore, to supply in the earlier chapters of my book a slight background for this campaign.
Apart from the actual fighting, moreover, a certain degree of interest must centre around the town of Basra, the port of Mesopotamia and the one important place which we occupy and administer. It is an interest, too, which is hardly likely to vanish with the end of the war. Without hazarding any rash guesses into the future, one may well recall in this respect the words of the Viceroy of India to the people of Basra, spoken during his visit to that town in January 1915 : " The British occupation has raised problems which require prompt consideration and settlement. I have come here to see local conditions for myself in order the better to judge what measures are necessary. You are aware that we are not engaged single - handed in this great struggle, and we cannot lay down plans for the future without a full exchange of views with the other great Powers, but I can hold out the assurance that the future will bring you a more benign rule."Coming next to Bagdad, Kasr-i-Sherin, and the Kermanshah road, which form the subject of Chapters VII. and IX., we enter the sphere of quite nother series of operations. This was the route by which the Turkish troops entered Persia last year, hoping by joining hands with the German-led Persian rebels to wreck the influence of England and Russia in that country ; only to retreat again by the same road after successive defeats by the Russians at Hamadan, Kangaver, and Kermanshah. At the time of writing, General Baratoff's troops have reached and taken Kasr-i- Sherin itself.
Finally, the Northern part that is, Azerbaijan. The details of the fighting there are probably less familiar to people in England, but it will be remembered how in the autumn of 1914 the Turks, who were just then making a bold attempt to reach Tiflis, violated the Persian frontier near Urmia. The story of the wholesale massacre of the Christian (Nestorian) population by the Kurdish irregulars who ravaged as far as Tabriz, burning hundreds of villages and driving the weak Russian garrison out of the province for the time being reached us only in scanty paragraphs and an occasional letter or two in the Press. Of the events in the immediate neighbourhood of Urmia, I give a brief account in the last chapter of the book. As the tide slowly turned against Turkey in the Caucasus, and the Russians advanced towards Trebizond and Van, the invaders of Azerbaijan found their position untenable, and by the spring they were back again on their own side of the frontier. Thus have the tentacles of the great world-war reached out to and embraced practically the whole of that remote region of Western Asia which was the scene of the journey described in the following pages.
The substance of this book consists of little more than a record of personal experiences and impressions of the tribes and countries through which we passed. Politics lie outside its scope, and I have condensed within the limits of a single chapter what little I have to say on such general topics as the connection between our own country and Mesopotamia. Even the thrilling adventures which season so many travellers' tales play, I fear, but a small part in my narrative, and the utmost that I can confidently promise the reader is to conduct him (should his patience permit) by littletrodden paths " from the Gulf to Ararat."
MAT 1916
From the Gulf to Ararat
An Expedition through Mesopotamia
and Kurdistan
BY
G. E. HUBBARD
SECRETARY OF DELIMITATION COMMISSION
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1916
