Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and BabylonLayard, Austen Henry
History
Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon
Layard, Austen Henry
Babylon (Extinct city); Middle East -- Description and travel; Nineveh (Extinct city); Scientific expeditions
It is customary to regard these old Turkish lords as inexorable
tyrants--robber chiefs, who lived on the plunder of travellers and of
their subjects. That there were many who answered to this description
cannot be denied; but they were, I believe, exceptions. Amongst them were
some rich in virtues and high and noble feeling. It has been frequently my
lot to find a representative of this nearly extinct class in some remote
and almost unknown spot in Asia Minor or Albania. I have been received
with affectionate warmth at the end of a day's journey by a venerable Bey
or Agha in his spacious mansion, now fast crumbling to ruin, but still
bright with the remains of rich, yet tasteful, oriental decoration; his
long beard, white as snow, falling low on his breast; his many-folded
turban shadowing his benevolent yet manly countenance, and his limbs
enveloped in the noble garments rejected by the new generation; his hall
open to all comers, the guest neither asked from whence he came or whither
he was going, dipping his hands with him in the same dish; his servants,
standing with reverence before him, rather his children than his servants;
his revenues spent in raising fountains[1] on the wayside for the weary
traveller, or in building caravanserais on the dreary plain; not only
professing, but practising all the duties and virtues enjoined by the
Koran, which are Christian duties and virtues too; in his manners, his
appearance, his hospitality, and his faithfulness, a perfect model for a
Christian gentleman. The race is fast passing away, and I feel grateful in
being able to testify, with a few others, to its existence once, against
prejudice, intolerance, and so-called reform.
Our host at Guli, Shahan Bey, although not an old man, was a very
favorable specimen of the class I have described. He was truly, in the
noble and expressive phraseology of the East, an "Ojiak Zadeh," "a child
of the hearth," a gentleman born. His family had originally migrated from
Daghistan, and his father, a pasha, had distinguished himself in the wars
with Russia. He entertained me with animated accounts of feuds between his
ancestors and the neighbouring chiefs; and steadily refused to allow any
recompense to himself or his servants for his hospitality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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