To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in disguise

When I descended from the train one dismal morning in Constantinople, in a bleak terminus just like a hundred others of its kind all over the Continent, it was with the intentio...

The weather was not so fond of me as to clear up for the sake of keeping me, for as the day of decision approached it grew steadily worse, and it was in a driving storm of cold...

There are, I believe, no remains in Membich of the temple of Atergatis which Crassus spoiled, and even at Karkhemish there is nothing but a mound unopened and kept closed by the...

Diarbekr at first sight strikes the stranger as a remarkably clean, bright, busy city, with streets unusually broad for the East, enormous bazaars, not roofed as in other Orient...

I suppose it must be the proper thing when writing of Mosul, to expatiate upon the antiquity of Nineveh; but so much has already been written upon this subject ever since Layard...

Reference to a map will show a rhomboidal space of country with natural boundaries upon all sides, of which the Tigris forms the western. From it spring the others, the two Zab...

The course of our narrative will take us on into Kurdistan, and among peoples different to those we have met in our journeyings from the Mediterranean and the eastern border of...

We left Kirkuk soon after daylight one morning, and joined a large caravan going to Sulaimania under the protection of one Shefiq Effendi, an “askar katebi” or military accounta...

Sulaimania, from which the Aoraman range that marks the frontier may be seen, lies actually about sixty miles from the nearest point of Persia, and one hundred from the Aoraman...

After four days’ stay in Sulaimania I rose early one morning, in answer to the summons of a muleteer, and, having packed my belongings and laid in a small stock of bread, mounte...

Next morning with the tea, an individual whom I had not hitherto seen appeared and assisted. He seemed to be a servant, but the garments he wore did but little credit to his emp...

Matti came in early next morning, and with porters we took away the goods and deposited them in the new house, where we found two or three buyers of my merchandise waiting. Thes...

During this time Hama had returned once with a large number of mule-loads of “run” from Halabja, and was great with projects of a journey to Bagdad to buy sugar. The road to tha...

Our caravan was a tiny one, and the muleteer, a long-legged Turkoman known as Ahmad Bash Chaush, was accompanied by a youth and a long-haired darvish, both natives of his town....

At daybreak I woke, and immediately went to look at the rooms, one of which I required to put my things in. Two were locked, a third and a fourth had the roofs fallen in upon th...

“Shedders of blood, raisers of strife, seekers after turmoil and uproar, robbers and brigands; a people all malignant, and evil-doers of depraved habits, ignorant of all mercy,...