Note 2 — Chapter VI · BITLIS

It is not so very long ago that this door between highlands and lowlands was in the keeping of a line of Kurdish princes. The Merchant in Persia, who travelled in the early portion of the sixteenth century, describes Bitlis as a town of no great size, ruled by a Kurd in only nominal allegiance to the Shah of Persia, and named in the peculiar jargon of these early adventurers Sarasbec. The castle, with its spacious area, high walls, turrets and towers, was occupied by this petty feudal sovereign.2 A century later the Bey of Bitlis impressed Tavernier with his show of power; he could place in the field no less than 20,000 to 25,000 horsemen besides a quantity of good infantry. He resided in the castle, approached by three successive drawbridges; and his private apartments were situated in the last and smallest of three courts through which the visitor made his way on foot to audience. The Bey acknowledged neither the Sultan of Turkey nor the Shah of Persia, and was courted by both on account of the strategical value of his city, barring the communications between Aleppo and Tabriz.3 When the Jesuits founded a mission in Bitlis in the year 1685 they were kindly received by the ruling Bey. But that prince was in nominal subjection to the Sultan, each successive ruler paying to the Porte a small present as a matter of form upon the occasion of his accession.4 In the eighteenth century the padre Maurizio Garzoni, who sojourned for eighteen years among the Kurds in the interests of the Propaganda at Rome, speaks of the dynasty of Bitlis as one of the five considerable principalities which divided between them the Kurdistan of his day. The remainder were respectively located at Jezireh, Amadia, Julamerik and Sulimanieh.5 The last of this old order of princes at Bitlis was a man of many-sided and remarkable character, whose romantic history one peruses with breathless excitement in the dry reports and correspondence of Consul Brant, the eye and ear of the famous Stratford Canning. His name was Sherif Bey; and he built a fortified palace on the heights which confine the valley on the east. The site of his residence I have indicated on the plan, although it has long ago been razed to the ground. After a life of chequered fortune and fox-like resistance to the Turkish power he was finally overwhelmed by the operations of Reshid Pasha and taken a prisoner to Constantinople in 1849. It appears to have been this prince who first deserted the ancient castle, which has now fallen into complete ruin. Since his overthrow Bitlis has been governed by a Turkish pasha, and it forms the capital of a vilayet bearing its name.