Identifier: cradleofmankindl00wigrrich (find matches)
Title: The cradle of mankind; life in eastern Kurdistan
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Wigram, W. A. (William Ainger), 1872-1953 Wigram, Edgar Thomas Ainger, Sir, 1864-1935
Subjects: Kurds Kurdistan -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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t atfour several points along a line of sixty miles, and is prob-ably continuous in other directions also. It is of coursequite unworked at present. Turkish political economyteaches that for so long as the coal is there, it is safe, anda solid national asset. If, however, you dig it up and burnit, it is gone and cannot be replaced. Besides, miningconcessions, or anything else likely to bring in the foreigner,are anathema to the Ottoman and are never granted ifthey can possibly be avoided. The principal landmark in the Sapna valley is the townof Amadia ; a city set on a hill indeed—perched on thesummit of a great isolated knoll which juts out from themountains behind it like a bastion from the curtain of afortress. The slopes of this knoll are surmoimted by acresting of hmestone precipice, so even and continuousround the whole circuit of the level summit that it looksfrom a little distance hke a prodigious artificial wall. Theplace must have been a notable stronghold even in Assyrian
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o7^ X o o > < H OUR ADVENT AT AMADIA 321 days, as a much battered bas-relief on the rock face bythe main gate testifies : but the ramparts which Nature hasgiven it were always sufficient protection ; and, except atthe two entrance gateways, no further defences wererequired. It is now but a group of mean hovels, no morethan a rather large village ; but it ranks in the Sapnavalley as the metropolis of the country-side. Amadia is the only seat of Ottoman Government in theneighbourhood ; and for this reason it was in its vicinitythat a Station of the Archbishops. Assyrian Missionwas established when it was desirable to find some centrereasonably accessible for the mountaineers of Tyari andTkhuma. This establishment caused a most natural flutter-ing of the dovecotes in that respectable and old-fashionedneighbourhood. That the Kurds should feel eminentlydisgusted was only to be expected. Good respectablebrigands as they were, and had been for generations, andhaving a vested interest i

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