Nevertheless the Persians claim Shahr-i-Zur, for it was once theirs, and they conquered it again and again, and to-day it stands upon the strip of land, a debated territory within the borders of which, an international commission has sagely remarked, “the frontier may be assumed to exist.” When Sulaimania was yet under the rule of the descendants of Sulaiman Pasha, Gulanbar was made the seat of a Qaim Maqam, and the necessary three “mudirliqs” were instituted in the plain. So matters went until Uthman Pasha, who is chief of the section of the Pushtamala Jafs, settled in Halabja, and as has been shown, proceeded to make it important. Gulanbar never recovered its ancient importance and prestige, and Halabja began to outstrip its neighbours across the plain, until the Qaim Maqam, now Uthman Pasha, was transferred to Halabja, and Gulanbar was made the residence of a subsidiary “mudir.” At the time of my visit, there were settled in Halabja, besides Uthman Pasha and his wife, Majid Beg and Tahir Beg, sons of the pasha’s former wife. Majid Beg has now succeeded to the chieftainship of the Pushtamala, for the old man died in October 1909 and was buried in Biara, a mountain village reckoned very holy in these parts.[66] [Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE JAF] It is not more than about a hundred and twenty years since Uthman Pasha’s section of the tribe has been settled in Halabja. Originally the Jaf tribe lived in a country to the south-east of Halabja, in Persian territory, called Juanrud. Here they were independent, until the Vali of Ardalan succeeded in capturing the chief, his son, and brother, and executing them. Fighting ensued, and the Jafs, who had made themselves very unpopular with the Ardalan princes, first by the fact of their independence, and second by their arrogance and hostility, were expelled. The nomad section, called the Muradi, fled, some 50,000 people in all, to the pasha of the newly rising Sulaimania, and he conferred upon them the land they now occupy, which extends from Qizil Rubat, in the south, to Panjwin, upon the Persian frontier, in the north. A certain number of sedentary Jafs remained upon the ancestral lands, but suffering under the rule of the son of the Ardalan prince, deserted to the Guran tribe, and became part of them, submitting to their sultans. Certain others remained, undismayed by the defection of their fellows, and still live in Juanrud--Persian subjects who have forgotten that they were ever Jaf Kurds.