volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

48 The Town Council of Mdsul.
frequently, and each new W41i made as much money as
he could as quickly as possible. Arabs, Kurds, Jews
and Christians all agreed in hating their Turkish rulers,
who seemed to take no interest in the town. Nothing
could be done without bakhsMsh, and the man who gave
most did as he liked. The Town Council, among whom
were many rich Arab merchants, tried to get rid of the
Turk and they lost no opportunity of setting the mob
against the Pasha and his authority. They spent money
freely in forwarding their own plans, and it was commonly
said that their chief object was to lend money to
the Wall and so to get him into their power ; from all
that I heard it seemed that they generally succeeded in
doing so. The administration of justice was very lax,
and the " professional witness " made a good living,
for his fee was increased in proportion to his ignorance
of the case in which he undertook to testify. A single
case in which I was interested will illustrate this statement.
One of the soldiers who had been told off to
patrol Kuyunjik daily, while we were digging, was
coming to the mound one day when he met an officer.
Some words passed between them, and the officer
suddenly seized the soldier's carbine, and raising it in
the air brought the butt end of it down on his head
with a crash ; the soldier dropped and never moved
again. The same day some of the soldier's relatives
came to me and begged me to go to the Wall with them
and demand justice on the murderer, and as I knew
what the exact facts of the case were I did so. The
PashS, received me with great courtesy, thanked me for
my visit, and promised to enquire into the matter.
The next day I went again to the Pasha to see what
had been done, and found that the soldier had been
buried the night before. On the following day the Pasha
sent me a message saying that the officer was to be tried
in his court in the Sar§,yah, and inviting me to be present,
and I went. Many witnesses appeared on behalf of the
ofl&cer, and in different words they all said the same
thing, viz., that it was the private who attacked the
officer with his carbine, and that losing his balance he