It was a prodigious condescension from so great a man that he should have come to the stair head to meet us. Most great chiefs will contrive to be absent from the room when European guests are admitted, that they may not have to rise to receive them, and so seem to admit inferiority. But presently the Sheikh vouchsafed us a still greater honour--one that perfectly staggered his followers--by even condescending to sup with us. To think that a man of his holiness should actually eat with two _giaours_! Abdul Selim, Sheikh of Barzan, is quite a young man of about twenty-eight years of age. Like most mountaineers he is of medium height, with a slight and active figure and a grave but pleasant face. He was dressed in a white fez and turban, white shirt and trousers, a black gown trimmed with red, and a green cloak over all. His retinue consisted of between thirty and forty retainers--"Boys of the Belt," distinguished by their red turbans, and positively festooned with bandoliers. Many of these fellows must have been carrying quite two hundred rounds of ball cartridge, and their rifles--Sniders and Martinis--were piled around the walls of the _belai_. All showed most obsequious deference towards their young chieftain; and it may give some adequate conception of the reverence which they entertain for him to record the fact that he himself, in his own proper person, is a _ziaret_ or place of pilgrimage "within the meaning of the Act." By his own immediate followers his commands are obeyed instantly and without question; and we have not the least doubt that had he ordered us to be shot, instead of entertaining us graciously, the sentence would have been executed unhesitatingly, Europeans though we were. An instructive example of their diligence occurred shortly after our visit. A long-standing feud between the Christians of Tkhuma and some of their Kurdish neighbours had recently blazed into activity; and the latter, rather unsportingly, were endeavouring to persuade their co-religionists to join them in a _jehad_ or "holy war." A _jehad_ is an ugly business: and we were much relieved when the Sheikh of Barzan interfered strongly to quash it; refusing himself to sanction it, and prohibiting his vassals from joining in. He was moved to this action, we verily believe, partly by a wish to oblige us, and partly by his own prejudices in favour of law and order; for he had no particular cause to show favour to the Tkhuma _maliks_, since they had refused to shelter him when he was a fugitive in the war.