The castle seemed pretty well garrisoned; for plenty of men were in evidence when we dismounted in the courtyard. But it is only constructed of _jess_ work; and the cracks which showed conspicuously in the walls of the _Mira's_ reception room suggested that repairs were getting a bit overdue.
This _diwan khana_ is a good-sized vaulted chamber; and its whitewashed walls were scrawled all over with rough pencil drawings of steam-boats and locomotives; as though the _Mira's_ visitors had been trying to explain to him the nature of these monstrosities, neither of which can be seen within a journey of ten days. The room was empty when we entered, but the _Mira_ appeared almost immediately, and seated us beside him on the dais at the end.
The High Priest of the Devil is a pronounced Anglophil,[58] a fact which will doubtless be deemed significant by our country's continental friends. He is also on terms of traditional amity with Mar Shimun, the Catholicos of the "Nestorian" Christians; for though the Christians abhor the "Devil Worshippers" most piously, both _millets_ are driven into sympathy by the common oppression of the Kurds.
Ali Beg was rather a big man, as men go in the mountain districts; probably about six feet high, and about forty-five years of age. He wore a dark brown _abba_ with gold embroidery round the collar; but we could make out but little of his features, as he kept his face closely muffled in the folds of his red Yezidi turban. This, however, was not to be attributed to any desire to imitate the veiled prophet of Khorassan, but only to the fact that he had a bad cold; an indisposition which had prevented his intended journey to Mosul. His manner was melancholy and depressed, as befitted the chieftain of a persecuted people; but perhaps this also, more prosaically, may be partly attributed to the cold.
He was attended by a Yezidi Sheikh, a very handsome man with a long black beard, wearing a white turban, and a gown and _abba_ of soft dove-coloured brown. The _Sheikhs_ are the second order of the Yezidi hierarchy; the _Cawwals_ or priests forming the third order, and _Pirs_, _Kuchaks_, _Fakirs_ and _Mollas_ being entrusted with various minor rites.
The _Mira_ is virtually the Khalif of his _millet_; absolute both temporally and spiritually--a sort of combination of emperor and pope. No one dreams of questioning any order of his, or of breathing any complaint of him to the Government. The _Mira_ can do no wrong. All his followers' goods are at his disposal. If he claims a woman, she is yielded to him; if he kills a man, nobody objects. Nay, the very fact of the _Mira_ having killed him confers on the victim such holiness that he becomes automatically secure of immediate admission to paradise; and under such desirable conditions who has any cause to object? The office of _Mira_ is hereditary, as such offices are in this country; for the idea of sanctity running in families is common both among Christians and Kurds. Mar Shimun among the former, and the Sheikhs of Barzan and Neri among the latter, may be quoted as parallel cases; and the practice has at least a respectable precedent in the house of Aaron among the Jews.[59]