CORRESPONDENCE.
THE ARABS OF MESOPOTAMIA AND THE SYRIAN DESERT.
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.] SIR,—In continuation of my last week's letter, I proceed to notice the actual condition of Mesopotamia and the Syrian Desert. Mesopotamia, as you are doubtless aware, was till twenty years ago almost wholly independent of the Porte. The villages of the Tigris and Euphrates, above Bagdad and as far north as the caravan-road between Aleppo and Mosul, enjoyed till then the advantage of free life on the Arabian model. In the last century, Gibbon, speaking of Anal), the chief town of the Euphrates, calls it "the actual residence of an Arabian Emir," and notices Tekrit, upon the Tigris, as "a fortress of the independent Arabs." Both are now held by the Turks, but it is hardly fifteen years since the military cordon of the Euphrates was made compUte, by a series of block- houses erected along its right bank by the then pashas
of Aleppo and Bagdad. Midhat Pasha, moreover, in 1870 built a fortress of considerable pretension at Rawa, on the opposite shore, from which to overawe the Sham- mar of the Jesireh, or Upper Mesopotamia. The Bedouin Chiefs, who, till the Turkish occupation, exercised protective rights on the riverain districts, were, first, the Ibu Haddals, Sheykhs of the Amarrat. These took tribute of all the oases west of the Euphrates from Kerbela to Deyr. Secondly, the Jerbas, Sheykhs of the Shammar, who held the Jesireh, the villages of the Sinjar, and both sides of the Tigris as far north as Mosul. Thirdly, the Bisshr Sheykhs, better known as the Anazeh, who were paramount on the Upper Euphrates and in the Upper Syrian Desert. All these held the title of " Emir ;" and their descendants, though shorn of the ancestral dignity and dispossessed of their town authority, are still powerful in the Desert. They still levy tr bute from the lesser nomadic tribes and the outlying vil- lages, and are in close communication with the Sheykhs of the towns. The heavy taxation imposed upon all classes by the Imperial Government has made both the town and country Arabs regret their ancient masters ; and, in the event of an abandonment of their military stations by the Turks, the Bedouin Sheykhs would return without dispute to their former position as lords and protectors of the rest. During the last twenty years, the semi-Bedouin tribes of Mesopotamia have, through the ever-increasing exactions of their new masters, diminished rapidly in wealth and numbers; and, though the agri- cultural population in the immediate neighbourhood of Deyr, the Turkish head-quarters, has been increased, no adequate compensa- tion has accrued to Mesopotamia for her pastoral losses. If we may accept as correct the Consular statisticsof 20years ago, the whole Arab population north of Bagdad must have diminished by fully one-third since it came into Turkish hands. The true Bedouin tribes themselves, though out of the reach directly of Imperial taxation, have suffered hardly less than the rest. Hampered in their natural intercourse with the towns, and obliged to pay heavily for the right of trading with them, and cut off, more- over, in great measure from the rivers, their resort in times of drought, they have lost considerably in pastoral wealth, and have been driven more than ever to depend on plunder for their maintenance. At the present moment the settled in- habitants of the rivers are in the predicament that the Turkish Government cannot effectually protect them, nor will it suffer them to protect themselves by acknowledging Bedouin rule.
Miserable as this state of things is, I fear not much is to be hoped for in any combined effort of townsmen and Bedouins on this side of the Desert. The Shammar of the Jesireh have suffered terribly from the late seasons of scarcity, and the Anazeh are divided by intestine feuds. Neither clan possesses a chief of sufficient practical ability to coerce or weld together the various interests of their respective deserts. Faris Jerba, the Shammar Sheykh, though a man of enterprise, has a rival in authority with his people in the per- son of his elder brother, Ferhan, who has espoused Turkish interests, while among the Anazeh there is a singular want of political character among the reigning Sheykhs. The Turks were fortunate enough to rid themselves a few years ago of the only two men in the Northern Deserts of really distinguished ability. Abd-el-Kerim Jerba they captured through the paid treachery of a rival, and banged on Mosul bridge. Still- man ibn Mershid, Sheykh of the Gomussa, they invited to a conference, and despatched more politely with a cup of coffee. Who shall say that they were not wise in their generation ?
The tribes of the north, then, are weak, and if it depended wholly upon them to expel the Turks from their position on the Euphrates, Arabian independence would still have long to wait. Fortunately, there are causes at work on the edifice of Turkish dominion more powerful than these, and behind and above the Jerba and Bisshr Sheykhs stands in the far south a chieftain possessed of a true political idea, and prepared to assert it. Who this chieftain is and. what his idea I will ex- plain in a concluding letter, if you can still spare me your attention.—I am, Sir, &c., WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.
10 Tames Street, Buckingham Gate.
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