Part 44

Having cowed the disaffected elements in the state, he turned his attention to foreign enemies. The victory of the Venetians off Chios (May 2, 1657) was a severe blow to the Turkish sea-power, which Kuprili set himself energetically to repair. A second battle, fought in the Dardanelles (July 17-19), ended by a lucky shot blowing up the Venetian flag-ship; the losses of the Ottoman fleet were repaired, and in the middle of August Kuprili appeared off Tenedos, which was captured on the 31st and reincorporated permanently in the Turkish empire. Thus the Ottoman prestige was restored at sea, while Kuprili's ruthless enforcement of discipline in the army and suppression of revolts, whether in Europe or Asia, restored it also on land. It was, however, due to his haughty and violent temper that the traditional friendly relations between Turkey and France were broken. The French ambassador, de la Haye, had delayed bringing him the customary gifts, with the idea that he would, like his predecessors, speedily give place to a new grand vizier; Kuprili was bitterly offended, and, on pretext of an abuse of the immunities of diplomatic correspondence, bastinadoed the ambassador's son and cast him and the ambassador himself into prison. A special envoy, sent by Louis XIV., to make inquiries and demand reparation, was treated with studied insult; and the result was that Mazarin abandoned the Turkish alliance and threw the power of France on to the side of Venice, openly assisting the Venetians in the defence of Crete.

Kuprili's restless energy continued to the last, exhibiting itself on one side in wholesale executions, on the other in vast building operations. By his orders castles were built at the mouth of the Don and on the bank of the Dnieper, outworks against the ever-aggressive Tatars, as well as on either shore of the Dardanelles. His last activity as a statesman was to spur the sultan on to press the war against Hungary. He died on the 31st of October 1661. The advice which, on his death-bed, he is said to have given to the sultan is characteristic of his Machiavellian statecraft. This was: never to pay attention to the advice of women, to allow nobody to grow too rich, to keep his treasury well filled, and himself and his troops constantly occupied. Had he so desired, Kuprili might have taken advantage of the revolts of the Janissaries to place himself on the throne; instead, he recommended the sultan to appoint his son as his successor, and so founded a dynasty of able statesmen who occupied the grand vizierate almost without interruption for half a century.

2. FAZIL AHMED KUPRILI (1635-1676), son of the preceding, succeeded his father as grand vizier in 1661 (this being the first instance of a son succeeding his father in that office since the time of the Chenderélis). He began life in the clerical career, which he left, at the age of twenty-three, when he had attained the rank of _muderris_. Usually humane and generous, he sought to relieve the people of the excessive taxation and to secure them against unlawful exactions. Three years after his accession to office Turkey suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of St Gothard and was obliged to make peace with the Empire. But Kuprili's influence with the sultan remained unshaken, and five years later Crete fell to his arms (1669). The next war in which he was called upon to take part was with Poland, in defence of the Cossacks, who had appealed to Turkey for protection. At first successful, Kuprili was defeated by the Poles under John Sobieski at Khotin and Lemberg; the Turks, however, continued to hold their own, and finally in October 1676 consented to honourable terms of peace by the treaty of Zurawno (October 16, 1676), retaining Kaminiec, Podolia and the greater part of the Ukraine. Three days later Ahmed Kuprili died. His military capacity was far inferior to his administrative qualities. He was a liberal protector of art and literature, and the kindliness of his disposition formed a marked contrast to the cruelty of his father; but he was given to intemperance, and the cause of his death was dropsy brought on by alcoholic abuse.

3. ZADE MUSTAFA KUPRILI (1637-1691), surnamed Fazil, son of Mahommed Kuprili, became grand vizier to Suleiman II. in 1689. Called to office after disaster had driven Turkey's forces from Hungary and Poland and her fleets from the Mediterranean, he began by ordering strict economy and reform in the taxation; himself setting the example, which was widely followed, of voluntary contributions for the army, which with the navy he reorganized as quickly as he could. His wisdom is shown by the prudent measures which he took by enacting the _Nizam-i-jedid_, or new regulations for the improvement of the condition of the Christian rayas, and for affording them security for life and property; a conciliatory attitude which at once bore fruit in Greece, where the people abandoned the Venetian cause and returned to their allegiance to the Porte. He met his death at the battle of Salankamen in 1691, when the total defeat of the Turks by the Austrians under Prince Louis of Baden led to their expulsion from Hungary.

4. HUSSEIN KUPRILI (surnamed AMUJA-ZADE) was the son of Hassan, a younger brother of Mahommed Kuprili. After occupying various important posts he became grand vizier in 1697, and owing to his ability and energy the Turks were able to drive the Austrians back over the Save, and Turkish fleets were sent into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The efforts of European diplomacy succeeded in inducing Austria and Turkey to come to terms by the treaty of Carlowitz, whereby Turkey was shorn of her chief conquests (1699). After this event Hussein Kuprili, surnamed "the Wise," devoted himself to the suppression of the revolts which had broken out in Arabia, Egypt and the Crimea, to the reduction of the Janissaries, and to the institution of administrative and financial reform. Unfortunately the intrigues against him drove him from office in 1702, and soon afterwards he died.

5. NUMAN KUPRILI, son of Mustafa Fazil, became grand vizier in 1710. The expectations formed of him were not fulfilled, as although he was tolerant, wise and just like his father, he injudiciously sought to take upon himself all the details of administration, a task which proved to be beyond his powers. He failed to introduce order into the administration and was dismissed from office in less than fourteen months after his appointment.

6. ABDULLAH KUPRILI, a son of Mustafa Fazil Kuprili, was appointed Kaimmakam or _locum tenens_ of the grand vizier in 1703. He commanded the Persian expedition in 1723 and captured Tabriz in 1725, resigning his office in 1726. In 1735 he again commanded against the Persians, but fell at the disastrous battle of Bagaverd, thus emulating his father's heroic death at Selankamen.

KURAKIN, BORIS IVANOVICH, PRINCE (1676-1727), Russian diplomatist, was the brother-in-law of Peter the Great, their wives being sisters. He was one of the earliest of Peter's pupils. In 1697 he was sent to Italy to learn navigation. His long and honourable diplomatic career began in 1707, when he was sent to Rome to induce the pope not to recognize Charles XII.'s candidate, Stanislaus Leszczynski, as king of Poland. From 1708 to 1712 he represented Russia at London, Hanover, and the Hague successively, and, in 1713, was the principal Russian plenipotentiary at the peace congress of Utrecht. From 1716 to 1722 he held the post of ambassador at Paris, and when, in 1724, Peter set forth on his Persian campaign, Kurakin was appointed the supervisor of all the Russian ambassadors accredited to the various European courts. "The father of Russian diplomacy," as he has justly been called, was remarkable throughout his career for infinite tact and insight, and a wonderfully correct appreciation of men and events. He was most useful to Russia perhaps when the Great Northern war (see SWEDEN, _History_) was drawing to a close. Notably he prevented Great Britain from declaring war against Peter's close ally, Denmark, at the crisis of the struggle. Kurakin was one of the best-educated Russians of his day, and his autobiography, carried down to 1709, is an historical document of the first importance. He intended to write a history of his own times with Peter the Great as the central figure, but got no further than the summary, entitled _History of Tsar Peter Aleksievich and the People Nearest to Him_ (1682-1694) (Rus.).

See _Archives of Prince A. Th. Kurakin_ (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1890); A. Brückner, _A Russian Tourist in Western Europe in the beginning of the XVIIIth Century_ (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1892). (R. N. B.)

KURBASH, or KOURBASH (from the Arabic _qurbash_, a whip; Turkish _qirbach_; and French _courbache_), a whip or strap about a yard in length, made of the hide of the hippopotamus or rhinoceros. It is an instrument of punishment and torture used in various Mahommedan countries, especially in the Turkish empire. "Government by kurbash" denotes the oppression of a people by the constant abuse of the kurbash to maintain authority, to collect taxes, or to pervert justice. The use of the kurbash for such purposes, once common in Egypt, has been abolished by the British authorities.

KURDISTAN, in its wider sense, the "country of the Kurds" (Koords), including that part of Mount Taurus which buttresses the Armenian table-land (see ARMENIA), and is intersected by the Batman Su, the Bohtan Su, and other tributaries of the Tigris; and the wild mountain district, watered by the Great and Little Zab, which marks the western termination of the great Iranian plateau.

_Population._--The total Kurd population probably exceeds two and a half millions, namely, Turkish Kurds 1,650,000, Persian 800,000, Russian 50,000, but there are no trustworthy statistics. The great mass of the population has its home in Kurdistan. But Kurds are scattered irregularly over the country from the river Sakaria on the west to Lake Urmia on the east, and from Kars on the north to Jebel Sinjar on the south. There is also an isolated settlement in Khorasan. The tribes, _ashiret_, into which the Kurds are divided, resemble in some respects the Highland clans of Scotland. Very few of them number more than 10,000 souls, and the average is about 3000. The sedentary and pastoral Kurds, _Yerli_, who live in villages in winter and encamp on their own pasture-grounds in summer, form an increasing majority of the population. The nomad Kurds, _Kocher_, who always dwell in tents, are the wealthiest and most independent. They spend the summer on the mountains and high plateaus, which they enter in May and leave in October; and pass the winter on the banks of the Tigris and on the great plain north of Jebel Sinjar, where they purchase right of pasturage from the Shammar Arabs. Each tribe has its own pasture-grounds, and trespass by other tribes is a fertile source of quarrel. During the periodical migrations Moslem and Christian alike suffer from the predatory instincts of the Kurd, and disturbances are frequent in the districts traversed. In Turkey the sedentary Kurds pay taxes; but the nomads only pay the sheep tax, which is collected as they cross the Tigris on their way to their summer pastures.

_Character._--The Kurd delights in the bracing air and unrestricted liberty of the mountains. He is rarely a muleteer or camel-man, and does not take kindly to handicrafts. The Kurds generally bear a very indifferent reputation, a worse reputation perhaps, than they really deserve. Being aliens to the Turks in language and to the Persians in religion, they are everywhere treated with mistrust, and live as it were in a state of chronic warfare with the powers that be. Such a condition is not of course favourable to the development of the better qualities of human nature. The Kurds are thus wild and lawless; they are much given to brigandage; they oppress and frequently maltreat the Christian populations with whom they are brought in contact,--these populations being the Armenians in Diarbekr, Erzerum and Van, the Jacobites and Syrians in the Jebel-Tur, and the Nestorians and Chaldaeans in the Hakkari country.

Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the Kurdish chief is pride of ancestry. This feeling is in many cases exaggerated, for in reality the present tribal organization does not date from any great antiquity. In the list indeed of eighteen principal tribes of the nation which was drawn up by the Arabian historian Masudi, in the 10th century, only two or three names are to be recognized at the present day. A 14th-century list, however, translated by Quatremère,[1] presents a great number of identical names, and there seems no reason to doubt that certain Kurdish families can trace their descent from the Omayyad caliphs, while only in recent years the Baban chief of Suleimania, representing the old Sohrans, and the Ardelan chief of Sinna,[2] representing an elder branch of the Gurans, each claimed an ancestry of at least five hundred years. There was up to a recent period no more picturesque or interesting scene to be witnessed in the east than the court of one of these great Kurdish chiefs, where, like another Saladin, the bey ruled in patriarchal state, surrounded by an hereditary nobility, regarded by his clansmen with reverence and affection, and attended by a bodyguard of young Kurdish warriors, clad in chain armour, with flaunting silken scarfs, and bearing javelin, lance and sword as in the time of the crusades.

Though ignorant and unsophisticated the Kurd is not wanting in natural intelligence. In recent years educated Kurds have held high office under the sultan, including that of grand vizier, have assisted in translating the Bible into Turkish, and in editing a newspaper. The men are lithe,

## active and strong, but rarely of unusual stature. The women do not veil,

and are allowed great freedom. The Kurds as a race are proud, faithful and hospitable, and have rude but strict feelings of honour. They are, however, much under the influence of dervishes, and when their fanaticism is aroused their habitual lawlessness is apt to degenerate into savage barbarity. They are not deficient in martial spirit, but have an innate dislike to the restraints of military service. The country is rich in traditions and legends, and in lyric and in epic poems, which have been handed down from earlier times and are recited in a weird melancholy tone.

_Antiquities._--Kurdistan abounds in antiquities of the most varied and interesting character. But it has been very little opened up to modern research. A series of rock-cut cuneiform inscriptions extend from Malatia on the west to Miandoab (in Persia) on the east, and from the banks of the Aras on the north to Rowanduz on the south, which record the glories of a Turanian dynasty, who ruled the country of Nairi during the 8th and 7th centuries, B.C., contemporaneously with the lower Assyrian empire. Intermingled with these are a few genuine Assyrian inscriptions of an earlier date; and in one instance, at Van, a later tablet of Xerxes brings the record down to the period of Grecian history. The most ancient monuments of this class, however, are to be found at Holwan and in the neighbourhood, where the sculptures and inscriptions belong probably to the Guti and Luli tribes, and date from the early Babylonian period.

In the northern Kurdish districts which represent the Arzanene, Intilene, Anzitene, Zabdicene, and Moxuene of the ancients, there are many interesting remains of Roman cities, e.g. at Arzen, Miyafarikin (anc. _Martyropolis_), Sisauronon, and the ruins of Dunisir near Dara, which Sachau identified with the Armenian capital of Tigranocerta. Of the Macedonian and Parthian periods there are remains both sculptured and inscribed at several points in Kurdistan; at Bisitun or Behistun (q.v.), in a cave at Amadia, at the Mithraic temple of Kereftu, on the rocks at Sir Pul-o-Zohab near the ruins of Holwan, and probably in some other localities, such as the Balik country between Lahijan and Koi-Sanjak; but the most interesting site in all Kurdistan, perhaps in all western Asia, is the ruined fire temple of Pai Kuli on the southern frontier of Suleimania. Among the débris of this temple, which is scattered over a bare hillside, are to be found above one hundred slabs, inscribed with Parthian and Pahlavi characters, the fragments of a wall which formerly supported the eastern face of the edifice, and bore a bilingual legend of great length, dating from the Sassanian period. There are also remarkable Sassanian remains in other parts of Kurdistan--at Salmus to the north, and at Kermanshah and Kasr-i-Shirin on the Turkish frontier to the south.

_Language._--The Kurdish language, Kermanji, is an old Persian patois, intermixed to the north with Chaldaean words and to the south with a certain Turanian element which may not improbably have come down from Babylonian times. Several peculiar dialects are spoken in secluded districts in the mountains, but the only varieties which, from their extensive use, require to be specified are the Zaza and the Guran. The Zaza is spoken throughout the western portion of the Dersim country, and is said to be unintelligible to the Kermanji-speaking Kurds. It is largely intermingled with Armenian, and may contain some trace of the old Cappadocian, but is no doubt of the same Aryan stock as the standard Kurdish. The Guran dialect again, which is spoken throughout Ardelan and Kermanshah[3] chiefly differs from the northern Kurdish in being entirely free from any Semitic intermixture. It is thus somewhat nearer to the Persian than the Kermanji dialect, but is essentially the same language. It is a mistake to suppose that there is no Kurdish literature. Many of the popular Persian poets have been translated into Kurdish, and there are also books relating to the religious mysteries of the Ali-Illahis in the hands of the Dersimlis to the north and of the Gurans of Kermanshah to the south. The New Testament in Kurdish was printed at Constantinople in 1857. The Rev. Samuel Rhea published a grammar and vocabulary of the Hakkari dialect in 1872. In 1879 there appeared, under the auspices of the imperial academy of St Petersburg a French-Kurdish dictionary compiled originally by Mons. Jaba, many years Russian consul at Erzerum, but completed by Ferdinand Justi by the help of a rich assortment of Kurdish tales and ballads, collected by Socin and Prym in Assyria.

_Religion._--The great body of the nation, in Persia as well as in Turkey, are Sunnis of the Shafi'ite sect, but in the recesses of the Dersim to the north and of Zagros to the south there are large half-pagan communities, who are called indifferently Ali-Illahi and Kizjil-bash, and who hold tenets of some obscurity, but of considerable interest. Outwardly professing to be Shi'ites or "followers of Ali," they observe secret ceremonies and hold esoteric doctrines which have probably descended to them from very early ages, and of which the essential condition is that there must always be upon the earth a visible manifestation of the Deity. While paying reverence to the supposed incarnations of ancient days, to Moses, David, Christ, Ali and his tutor Salman-ul-Farisi, and several of the Shi'ite imams and saints, they have thus usually some recent local celebrity at whose shrine they worship and make vows; and there is, moreover, in every community of Ali-Illahis some living personage, not necessarily ascetic, to whom, as representing the godhead, the superstitious tribesmen pay almost idolatrous honours. Among the Gurans of the south the shrine of Baba Yadgar, in a gorge of the hills above the old city of Holwan, is thus regarded with a supreme veneration. Similar institutions are also found in other parts of the mountains, which may be compared with the tenets of the Druses and Nosairis in Syria and the Ismailites in Persia.

_History._--With regard to the origin of the Kurds, it was formerly considered sufficient to describe them as the descendants of the Carduchi, who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains, but modern research traces them far beyond the period of the Greeks. At the dawn of history the mountains overhanging Assyria were held by a people named _Gutu_, a title which signified "a warrior," and which was rendered in Assyrian by the synonym of _Gardu_ or _Kardu_, the precise term quoted by Strabo to explain the name of the Cardaces ([Greek: Kardakes]). These _Gutu_ were a Turanian tribe of such power as to be placed in the early cuneiform records on an equality with the other nations of western Asia, that is, with the Syrians and Hittites, the Susians, Elamites, and Akkadians of Babylonia; and during the whole period of the Assyrian empire they seem to have preserved a more or less independent political position. After the fall of Nineveh they coalesced with the Medes, and, in common with all the nations inhabiting the high plateaus of Asia Minor, Armenia and Persia, became gradually Aryanized, owing to the immigration at this period of history of tribes in overwhelming numbers which, from whatever quarter they may have sprung, belonged certainly to the Aryan family.

The _Gutu_ or Kurdu were reduced to subjection by Cyrus before he descended upon Babylon, and furnished a contingent of fighting men to his successors, being thus mentioned under the names of Saspirians and Alarodians in the muster roll of the army of Xerxes which was preserved by Herodotus.

In later times they passed successively under the sway of the Macedonians, the Parthians, and Sassanians, being especially befriended, if we may judge from tradition as well as from the remains still existing in the country, by the Arsacian monarchs, who were probably of a cognate race. Gotarzes indeed, whose name may perhaps be translated "chief of the _Gutu_," was traditionally believed to be the founder of the Gurans, the principal tribe of southern Kurdistan,[4] and his name and titles are still preserved in a Greek inscription at Behistun near the Kurdish capital of Kermanshah. Under the caliphs of Bagdad the Kurds were always giving trouble in one quarter or another. In A.D. 838, and again in 905, there were formidable insurrections in northern Kurdistan; the amir, Adod-addaula, was obliged to lead the forces of the caliphate against the southern Kurds, capturing the famous fortress of Sermaj, of which the ruins are to be seen at the present day near Behistun, and reducing the province of Shahrizor with its capital city now marked by the great mound of Yassin Teppeh. The most flourishing period of Kurdish power was probably during the 12th century of our era, when the great Saladin, who belonged to the Rawendi branch of the Hadabani tribe, founded the Ayyubite dynasty of Syria, and Kurdish chiefships were established, not only to the east and west of the Kurdistan mountains, but as far as Khorasan upon one side and Egypt and Yemen on the other. During the Mongol and Tatar domination of western Asia the Kurds in the mountains remained for the most part passive, yielding a reluctant obedience to the provincial governors of the plains.