The remark of an Armenian

Creagh, who visited several Kurdish-populated regions in the late 1870s, was admonished by a wise Armenian to respect the Kurdish mustache:

JOURNEYING alone along the wild mountains between Kars and Bayazid, I first became ac-quainted with the celebrated Koords, whose feudal system of government and aristocratic manners assimilate them to a great extent with the Bosniak Mussulmans, living at the very opposite side of the Ottoman Empire. It appears to me that the modern Koord differs very little from the swarms of light horsemen who resisted so successfully the arms of the Crusaders. He is mounted on a hardy, spirited, and well-bred horse, capable of enduring the ex-tremes of both fatigue and hunger. His saddle is decorated with every imaginable kind of caparison or ornament, which dangles down towards the ground.

His flowing garments of the brightest and most fantastic hues, his voluminous turban of a sombre colour, his long flowing locks reaching half-way down his back, his immense mous-tachios, black and piercing eyes, insolent ex-pression and proud display of pistols, knives, yataghans, scimitars, blunderbuss, long gun, and sword, besides an enormous spear about twelve feet long, ornamented (instead of a flag like that of an European lancer) with a bundle exactly resembling in size and shape an ordinary football, from which several strings or streamers are dependent give him a truculent and aggressive aspect; quite justifying the remark of an Armenian, who, looking after one of them and getting easier as the distance increased between them, said in a very solemn and im-pressive tone: "You may laugh if you please, but were you to meet that fellow alone, all your courage would evaporate."