"تقرير عسكري عن بلاد الرافدين (العراق)" [و‎‎٨] (٢٢٦/٢٠)

road and river. In 1 SJI 1 the cup of their iniquities
having overflowed, Nizam Pasha, then Wali of Baghdad,
sent an expedition against them under his chief of staff,
Hasan Riza Beg. The latter conducted his campaign
with’great skill; the Shammar came to heel at Hatra
without resistance; camel and sheep dues, many years in
arrears, were collected, and the tribe’s right to tribute
definitely laid down. A1 Asi, eldest son of Farhan, was
recognized as paramount Shaikh and made responsible
to the government for the behaviour of the tribe. The
Shammar, while continuing their old ways of robbery
and pillage, avoided open conflict with the Turkish
troops till 1914, chiefly through the astute diplomacy of
Asi.
There were two other centres of contra-government dis
affection in Northern Jazirah—in the Jabal Sinjar,
where the Yezidis lived in periodic but bitter rebellion,
and round Veranshehr, where Ibrahim Pasha of the
Mill! engaged in sporadic attempts to further his ambi
tions of autonomy. The Yezidis, about whose origin there
is a certain mystery but who are probably relics of a
mediaeval Kurdish overflow, inhabit the jabal Sinjar,
which forms its dominant position astride the Dair al
Zor-Mosul and Nisibin-Mosul routes, and is of
primary strategic importance. Ardent followers of a
religion which embraces elements of Islamism, the old
dualistic religion of Persia, Christianity and paganism,
they are bitter enemies of all Moslems, w 7 ho reciprocate
the hatred. Under Hammu Shim, their chief, they
carried out continual raids on their Moslem neighbours,
and the Turks were forced on several occasions to send
military expeditions against them. These expeditions
were carried out with the usual ferocity and callous
indifference of the Turks, and have engendered among
the Yezidis a pitiless hatred of the Ottoman race and
institutions. The Yezidis of the mountains were never
thoroughly subdued, and during the war they not only
manifested pro-British sympathies, but raided Turkish
convoys and posts.
In the north of Northern Jazirah the Kurds, who have
never been thoroughly tractable to the Ottoman yoke,
were, in the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid, brought
under partial control by the establishment of Hamidieh
cavalry. The most important Kurdish chief, Ibrahim
Pasha of the Milli, was animated, however, by grandiose
ideas of an independent Kurdistan governed by himself.
(C2241) B 2