It was not unnatural that the possibility of such catastrophes, and their actual occurrence, did a great deal of damage to the Turkish name, and indeed in the coffee-houses opinion was freely expressed. The Turks were jeered at, and their soldiery ridiculed. The shaikhs were rapidly becoming a terror to Sulaimania. Not a night passed without murders occurring, and in every case the assassins were known, and were shaikhs’ men. One night an attempt was made upon the Khan-i-’Ajam, where Matti and my other Christian acquaintances lived. Some of them were sleeping on the roof, when sounds of scraping against the outer wall attracted their attention. They waited for a while, and Habib brought out his old Snider rifle. After some time one of the burglars had nearly succeeded in piercing the thick masonry, and at a certain moment, upon a signal, the occupants of the caravanserai raised a shout and fired a shot into the darkness, at which the robbers fled. They, however, became involved with a caravan just coming into Sulaimania, and a cry was raised among the muleteers. The people round about, sleeping on their roofs, woke at the noise, and in the surprise and confusion of the moment, imagining the Hamavands had at last carried out their threat of raiding Sulaimania, commenced a brisk fire upon the caravan, killing some mules and wounding a couple of muleteers who had not been able to convince the natives of their harmlessness in time. The robbers had taken advantage of the turmoil to get away, and by the time the caravan had once more got under way, half the people were beginning to find out the cause. [Sidenote: TOWN DISORDERS] Such events would take place every night, the shaikhs taking advantage of the time to revenge themselves upon their enemies, and at the same time shout defiance at the Constitutional Government. It was seldom that we could sleep quietly from dark till dawn, for the firing around us, and the bullets that often buzzed overhead, kept us alert.