 Riding to the Tigris
Freya Stark
Harcourt & Brace
In Riding to the Tigris Freya Stark returns to the style that made her first book, The Valleys of the Assassins, a classic among travel books. The years and experiences between have deepened and enriched her sensitivity but have not modified her method of traveling: and most of the journey from Lake Van on the high Turkish plateau, through the desolate and mountainous Hakkiari, and down to the River Tigris was achieved on horseback. She traveled alone except for muleteers whom providence provided and chance companions—a young Turkish schoolmaster with his violin, a jester with Iris mad son, and a police escort here and there—who found themselves attached to an unusual traveler, probably the first Western woman to make this journey.
History plays a minor role in this book, for even the greatest movements of people and civilizations have washed round this inhospitable, and till recently dangerous, area which contains the watershed of the Tigris and one of the spots where Noah’s ark is reputed to have touched ground.
Freya Stark has a genius for traveling on her own. It is the unexpected, in events and traveling companions, that brings out the best in her and her powers of most vivid description, whether it be falling ill in a hospital empty except for an old Kurdish woman, or an impromptu stay in nomad tents, or having her luggage searched by Turkish police, or the incongruous elements of old Iraq and modern Turkey, or the dangerous behavior of her horse every time she opened her parasol. Beyond being the story of a remarkable achievement, this book presents a philosophy both of life and travel, and it is clear that for contemplation in desolate places there is nothing like the saddle of a horse. Contents
1. The Hakkiari / I
2. Diyarbekr to Lake Van / 7
3. Van / 11
4. The Great Zab Valley / L6
5. Of Julamerk Which Is Now Hakkiari / 26
6. The Pali's Bezique / 36
7. The Highland Road / 43
8. The Yaila of Soma / 48
9. Night in a Kurdish Garden / 55
10. Ride to Dirahini / 60
11. The Ride to Ulu Dere / 72
12. The Centre of the Mountains / 78
13. The Tigris Watershed / 86
14. Tigris and the Ten Thousand / 92
Note on Place-Names / 105
Bibliography / 107
Index / 109
Illustrations
From Photographs by the Author
Lake Van, looking south / 4
Lake Van, with Ahtamar Island
Road to Zakho
Tell Keif
Road to Bitlis
Yezidis at Sheik ’Adi in Iraq
Sinjar Yezidi
Yezidis at Sheik ’Adi in Iraq
Van. The old and new cities from the rock
The Fortress of Van / 20
Kurdish costume south of Van
The beautiful costume south of Van
Hoshab from the north
Hoshab Castle and Bridge
Hoshab Castle and road to Persia and the Great Zab
Hakkiari. Han
Hakkiari. The unfinished road to Iraq in the Great Zab Gorge
The Vali of Hakkiari / 36
Hakkiari. The Vali’s wife
Hakkiari. Sünbül Dagh
Hakkiari. Above the Great Zab Gorge / 36
End of the road
Above Soma
Soma / 52
Soma shepherd
Soma weavers
A Herki tribesman from Iraq
The tents of Soma
Deri Dagh / 68
Beiteshebab from Deri Dagh Col
Valley below Deri Dagh: Zatkar
Jamhas to Dirahini
Abdullah. Sengeré Valley
Amadiya Kurds (Iraq) / 84
Akra Kurd (Iraq)
Dirahini to Niro
Judi Dagh from Milli Karakol
Zakho Bridge
The Tigris above Jizre
Title Page Wood Engraving by Reynolds Stone TO THE READER
…. But now I may be justly blamed to pretend to give account of …. matters farre above my reach or capacity, but herein I have described what have come within my knowledge either by view or reading, or relation by others which according to my conception have faithfully Rehearsed, but where I have mistaken in any form or subject matter I easily submitt to a correction and will enter such Erratas in a supplement annext to ye Book of some particulars since remarked; and shall conclude with a hearty wish and recommendation to all, but especially my own Sex, the studdy of those tilings which tend to Improve the mind and make our Lives pleasant and comfortable as well as profittable in all the Stages and stations of our Lives, and render suffering and age supportable and Death less fformidable and a future State more happy.’
Celia Fiennes
Copied from the MSS of her Diary, Through England on a Sidesaddle in the time of William and Mary—by kindness of Lord and Lady Saye and Sele.
The Hakkiari
The hakkiari lie, a deep wedge with strong gorges, between the Tigris and Lake Van, with the country of the upper Euphrates above them and the Mesopotamian comlands below. The Niphates of the Ancients, they had haunted me for years.
I had set them apart in my mind as one of those dwindling regions where a four-footed animal is still the only help to locomotion; and I had collected the odd and scanty bits of their history at intervals as I came upon them, though, packed like their geography among the greater highways of the world, there is little enough news to be gleaned.
History, such as it is, mostly washes round the eastern or western edges of this land and is to be found under the headings of other peoples—Urartian, Assyrian, Armenian—and among marching armies of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuk or Ottoman Turks. All these fill the centuries with a confused movement among the great ruins and the steppes of Asia, pushing into our age with the Turco-Russian wars of the nineteenth century along the ancient divide of East and West. The historic line runs north of the Hakkiari massif, where the steppes lift to Ararat (the name is the same as Urartu), or east along the plains that surround the Urmian Lake, or west along the Mesopotamian breaches of Euphrates and Tigris: the mountains remain either impenetrable or unrecorded. ‘The most rugged among the regions of Asia’—Canon Wigram, one of their rare travellers, describes them.
…..
Freya Stark
Riding to the Tigris
Harcourt & Brace
Harcourt, Brace and Company
Riding to the Tigris
Freya Stark
Harcourt, Brace and Company
New York
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-5435
© Freya Stark 1959
First American Edition
Printed in Great Britain By
Cox and Wyman, Ltd., London, Fakenham And Reading
To Sybil Cholmondeley with love and friendship
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