Note 13 — Chapter XXIV · STATISTICAL AND POLITICAL

While the Turkish Government have little reason to be satisfied with the results of their experiments with the Kurds, the effects which derive from their presence on the tableland are disastrous in the extreme. Yet it is not the Mussulmans so much as the Armenians who are afflicted by this scourge. Let us pursue a little further our original analysis. Transplanted from their natural camping-grounds, and obliged through the long months of an arctic winter to provide themselves and their animals with shelter and with food, this pastoral people were quartered on the Armenian villages, but were required by Government to pay an annual tax in return for the accommodation which during winter they received.13 But an arrangement which was based on the just principle of ensuring to the Armenian a fair remuneration for the lodging which he furnished and the fodder which he supplied, was put into practice by the local authorities in a characteristic manner: the proceeds of the tax were committed to their own coffers. In 1842, after the promulgation of the celebrated charter of reforms which is known under the name of the Hatti-Sherif of Gulkhaneh, a beginning was made towards the abolition of the system; the Kurds in the neighbourhood of Mush were allotted certain villages which had been vacated by the Armenian emigrants, and the Armenians of the district were relieved of the heavy burden which they had previously been obliged to bear. At the present day the pastoral Kurds of the plateau have all their own villages, and the old system, except in isolated instances, may be said to have disappeared. Yet even now the Kurds justify their raids upon the Armenians on the ingenious plea of the ancient right of quarter which they consider they are entitled to enforce. Policy also dictates a procedure which their tender conscience has approved. The Armenians are at once the most immediate and the least redoubtable among their neighbours. The courageous Kurd equips himself for the foray with a rifle of modern Russian pattern and belts bristling with cartridges; his victims, by a cruel and cynical provision, have been deprived by Government of all arms. Should the Kurd be caught red-handed and arraigned before the civil authority, he will scornfully defy the civil jurisdiction and claim to be tried by his military superiors as a trooper in the Hamidiyeh Corps. When the civil branch has been successfully thwarted, the military authorities are cajoled, while the injured party is rewarded by the visitation of a fresh injury, which he endures without complaint. I can understand that in Kurdistan proper with the lowlands about the course of the Tigris the shepherd problem presents some difficulty; it must always be a task of some magnitude to control a people whose migrations extend over so wide an area and whose country conceals within its countless recesses such inaccessible retreats. On the tableland the case is quite elementary: the pastoral Kurd belongs to a village, and that village is situated in the neighbourhood of the pastures from which he is driven by the winter snows. It cannot be a matter of great difficulty to follow up the robbers to their homes. It is well within the capacity of the existing authorities to enforce against them the necessary measures of police. But the tribal chiefs are well aware of the consequences which would flow from such a change in Turkish policy towards them, and they exert all the means at their disposal to avert it. Upon the tableland they enjoy a parasitical prosperity. Once prevented from levying their supplies of grain and fodder upon the Armenians, and restricted to the legitimate operations of barter with the peasantry or reciprocal trade, their tribes would gradually melt away, and, while a large number would join the ranks of the agricultural population, a remnant only would remain to continue in Armenia the shepherd calling and the tribal life.