With the Russian Expedition
with high Ottoman military rank. Whether he still imagines that he will some day establish an independent Khurdistan may perhaps be doubted. But at any rate he looks to Ottoman protection for his national ideals, whatever form they may take.
The territory inhabited by the Khurds may be said to cover almost exactly the region of the Taurus chain, beginning from Cilicia, and passing the region between Kharput and Diarbekr, through Bohtan and the head-waters of the Tigris to the Turco-Persian borderland. Here the Taurus bends south-east, and Khurdish tribes are found over its whole length, and in the plains bordering it as far south as Kasr-i-Shirim. Their chief mode of life is cattle and horse-raising, for which abundant mountain pasturage is necessary: so a very large part of them live as nomads, taking their flocks up to the alpine meadows for the Summer, and retiring in Winter to sheltered valleys in the foothills. Being a strong and very virile race, their numbers are continually increasing, the pressure of population and the insufficiency of pasturage thus making it necessary for them to expand. The deserts of Mesopotamia do not attract them, owing to the absence under Turkish rule of any development of irrigation in the basins of the lower Tigris and Euphrates. On the other hand, to the north in Armenia they find upland plateaux, where industrious Armenian peasants grow corn, while on the Persian table-land fertile oases abound, where rice and the vine flourish. Everything attracts them northward, and this is one of the prime causes of political disorders in Greater Armenia and North-west Persia, and can only be dealt with by development of the irrigated lands of Mesopo-
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