The shaikh family had purchased nearly all the gardens about the town which supply fruit and vegetables, and now, in conjunction with the town authorities, new taxes were instituted upon out-turn and produce. Then the shaikhs commenced a system whereby three hundred per cent. special entry duty was charged upon loads of fruit coming to town. Within two years every cultivator had set fire to his fruit-trees, destroyed his irrigation canals, and fled to Persian soil, there to cultivate tobacco. Subsequent to the events of 1881, when the Hamavands so nearly succeeded in taking Sulaimania and destroying the family, Shaikh Sa’id realised the importance of the tribe and its possible use as a weapon. In order to gain control over it, he, by a series of judicious marriages, bound it to him by ties of relationship, which he strengthened by entering into cordial relations with the priests of Qaradagh. This policy succeeded so well that in 1908 the tribe found itself unable to disobey the shaikhs, when ordered to declare itself in rebellion. For the object of the family was now not only to acquire the wealth of Sulaimania, but to prove their power so great that the Government should be forced to make them the rulers of Sulaimania, in despair of obtaining peace and quiet by any other means. The “coup” at Constantinople of July 1908 had just occurred, Turkey was declared constitutional, and the shaikhs saw the possibility of a loss of their power, and even less pleasant to contemplate--retribution. The Sultan, however, had considerable power--more than the observers in Europe ever suspected--which he hoped to augment, and he was not averse to the outbreak of rebellion, which should increase the difficulties of the reformers’ task. The old power, corrupt as it was, was, notwithstanding, none the less effective, particularly in the remoter parts of Asiatic Turkey, for the Sultan had always on his side that most powerful section that increased for him his revenues through the means of robbery and brigandage,[52] and when the interests of these persons coincided with those of order--as occasionally they did--justice was prompt and effective. [Sidenote: THE SHAIKHS] Needless to say, abandonment of the old _régime_ meant alienation of these forces from the standard of the Constitutionalists, and it was this condition of the situation that at once gave hope to the Sultan and despair to the Majlis, which could not bring enough power to bear upon any anarchy or rebellion, the more that the new Government was no more able to meet the arrears of army pay than Sultan Abdul Hamid had been willing.