It is possible that this is not much more than double the real assessment; still, even so, one would have thought that it might be worth while for the provincial governments to institute a better system; for when that is done in some thirty villages, it really represents a material loss to a Treasury that is perennially empty. However, you may talk to a Turk till you are tired, and represent to him that his system is simply robbery, and stupid robbery too; and that with better methods he would get ten times as much with one tenth the trouble. You are told politely to your face that you are under a misapprehension; though this ignorance of the country is of course pardonable in a foreigner. What is said or thought privately may perhaps be guessed. In feuds anything may happen. Thus Mira Reshid has a standing feud, of twenty years date now, with the men of Tyari; which is said to have commenced with a treacherous murder under trust in the Mussulman's own house. It blazed up fiercely in the summer of 1908; and that not without excuse from the Kurd's point of view, for some Tyari hot-heads (angry at the fact that a proposed reconciliation had not come off) had carried out a raid in Berwar territory, and killed Reshid's own brother. That he should cut the bullet out of the corpse, and send word to the chief of the Lizan valley (whence the raiders had come) that he was keeping it to shoot through his heart, was fair enough; but he certainly went beyond all ordinary rules in proclaiming a _Jehad_ or holy war of Islam against Christianity, on account of what was at the most a mere tribal feud. However, all the neighbouring tribes of Kurds rallied at that call, and he was able to muster 8000 men, armed with modern rifles, against the short 1500 flintlocks that was all that the threatened sub-district of Lizan could produce. It says much for the reputation of the Tyari fighters, that even under those circumstances the Kurds dared no frontal attack, and were content to make a long counter-march through the mountains, to reach the head of that Lizan valley (a tributary of the Zab) which the Christians were defending. Then they marched down it, plundering as they went, while the Christians on the hill above saw their houses go up in smoke one after the other. There was little spoil to take, for the sheep and women had been prudently sent away to the north; but all the usual courtesies of war went by the board that day. Trees were girdled; houses and standing crops were burnt; irrigating channels broken down so as to ruin the crops in other fields; and the conquerors marched down the valley to fulfil an old threat that they would "dance in St. George's Church on St. George's day," and thereafter carry fire and sword up the main valley of Tyari; which was not directly concerned in the feud.