In point of numbers the Turks had the advantage, and their weapons were ten-shot Mausers as against Martini carbines, but their shooting must have been of the poorest, for they only succeeded in wounding one Hamavand. Several, too, tried to break away, and were immediately picked off. In a quarter of an hour the “binbashi” fell, shot through the chest, and twelve soldiers, too, were dead, and a score wounded. The remainder cast away their arms, seeing resistance futile, and the Kurds came upon them and stripped the caravan, relieving it of all its rifles and ammunition, carrying away or tearing off the soldiers’ uniforms, and looting the noncombatant passengers. There was an indescribable confusion; soldiers on foot and unarmed strove to escape on all sides, and horsemen with the shouts of a drover to his cattle rounded them up. Squads of Hamavands, driving before them mules of the defeated party, shouted at and encouraged their refractory and frightened captives. As is usual in these cases, everything was being done with the utmost speed, and the Hamavands, infuriated by the resistance they had met with, were more merciless than usual to those whom they stripped. The men they simply denuded, and scared the women with fierce gestures and display of long knives to make sure of their handing over anything they might have concealed. One of the women who had been robbed told me that some of the Hamavands had brought their wives with them, putting them behind rocks while the fight proceeded, and calling them out afterwards to enquire into the dress of the female captives more intimately than a man could have done; for in these Muslim lands even among the wildest Kurds, a man will seldom offend a Musulman woman’s modesty, and the Hamavand is a singularly pious tribe, stopping even its raiding parties to pray in a body at the appointed times. The men they left in little more than a shirt--and at last cleared off, taking with them the wife and daughter of one of the majors, whom they subsequently restored after having placed them in the care of the chief’s womenfolk for a time. The remains of the caravan, twos and threes of half-naked men, and weeping women, proceeded on foot, reaching Sulaimania next day, hungry and ashamed.