Kurdish Life past

by the agency of far the largest area of high-valley and mountaintop pastoralism in the Middle East is that of the Zagros chain in Iran, Turkey and Iraq, and especially in Iran. Four different collections of hardy mountaineers are concerned: the Kurd the Lur the Bakhtiari, and the Qashqai. Like the Berbers, the Kurd are a out and out people in that they include farmers, city dwellers, and nomads and carry upon a variety of occupations. Their abode is the Zagros chain north of Kermanshah, as far as and beyond the Soviet border. Flanking the mountains upon either side is a rank of Kurdish towns, notably Sulaimaniya and Rowanduz upon the Iraq side, and Sanandaj, Saqqiz, and Mahabad upon the Iranian. Kirkuk, the oil center is also largely Kurdish, and many Kurd live in Kermanshah. North of Mahabad the towns flanking the Zagros--such as Rezaiyeh or Shahpur--are inhabited largely by means of Azerbaijani Turks, Assyrians, and Armenians, on the other hand they serve as Kurdish shopping centers

Many of the Kurd are farmers. Those who live upon the slopes of the mountains usually hurl their flocks to the mountaintop pastures in the summer beneath the care of some of their young family In the winter when the snow is down-reaching they stable them in caves. These caves are known by the agency of the number of sheep they can contain; for example, the cave of Tamtama in the Shikak political division which I excavated in 1949 was a four hundred-sheep cave. Another in the hills southern of Rezaiyeh was rated at three thousand. The famous Hazar Merd cave in the Sulaimaniya district upon the 'Iraq side, excavated by means of Dr. Dorothy Garrod, is named for the number of men it can hold--one thousand.

a certain quantity of of the Kurds do not be in possession of villages on the slopes. The whole tribe summer upon the upland grassland and then migrates en masse in the fall. He who travels the Kermanshah-Baghdad highway in the first week of November will diocese a most colorful sight along the road from Kermanshah to the border. upon November 3, 1949, we numbered roughly three thousand people, men women and children, walking, riding upon horseback, mounted on cattle, and bobbing in cradles upon their mothers' backs, Every animal able to carry a load bore single Sheep covered the road and left behind them a half-inch layer of droppings which, beneath the impact of truck and bus tires, shortly turned to a temporary and slippery macadam.

each two or three miles we would diocese a group of men, sum of two units to five in number, unobtrusively carrying rifles and sitting upon heir horses, peering around comer in the stony wall of the canyon, alert for put out of order These were the leader of the tribe and his man, policing the migration, seeing that no tw0- or four-legged creature should be left behind or gain into trouble. Early every afternoon the advance guard would pitch upon a camping place and unload their animals, piling the packs into semicircular enclosings and building fires. By dark greatest in quantity of the stragglers would be in. Animals and men usually could withstand the rigors and fatigue of this journey, omit for the dogs. Even in the middle of the day they plodd along, glassy-eyed, their tongues hanging. by the agency of mid-afternoon some were riding.

These Kurd winter in the stubble of the fields of farmers who till the border of the Tigris plain, and upon the grass which winter rains bring to the wild border. They make arrangements with these farmers, who may be Arabs, Assyrians, or Kurd like themselves, as they do with the villagers near whose abodes they camp on the roads up and back. As a control they do not own their winter pasture, on the other hand lease it. They do possess the land of their summer pasture, however, and this they consider their home

Economically, they show an excess of wool, skins, milk, and mutton. a certain number of of them are able to swell a little grain during the short summer season and to harvest a little fruit and pick more [i]or[/i] less pistachio nuts, which they can also use in trade. The towns are in like manner located relative to the maintain pastures that if a Kurd wants to trade during the summer he can usually reach a market within a six or seven hour's ride. He will start at three or four in the morning and may be back late the same night. He can obtain his tea and sugar, shiny brocaded woven fabric knives and axes, and whatever other he needs in the town. smooth if the sale of firearms is prohibited, he usually knows where to find them.

However, he may not be obliged to leave his upland meadow at all, for itinerant travelling traders move from camp to camp with their wares. more [i]or[/i] less are Kurds, non-tribal or from distant assemblages selling sugar, tea, candles, matches, cigarettes, needle and thread--the usual wares of the small hawker in any land. Others are Mongoloid wanderers from the cities of Russian and Chinese Turkestan; they specialize in repairing shivered porcelain dishes with wire. These, sum of two units the Kurds and the Turkis, draw near as single men. A third assemblage joins the summer herders with entire families, and these are the Qarach, or gypsies, riding upon mules and donkeys and driving with them a not many cows and sometimes sheep.

Like gypsies everywhere, they are viewed with suspicion. The women who wear bright-colored clothing as in Hungary and Spain, count fortunes and sell semiprecious stones guaranteed to bring lover and babies. Like the Kurdish chapmen the male gypsies hawk small wares, but they also sharpen knives and sickles, repair skillets and pans, and mend shoe Along with beneficials and services they bring the Kurd amusement, putting upon acrobatic shows with tightrope walking, and making monkey dance and move round to the beat of the drum