Sattara Khanum – and her velvet tresses

This week – something special for my Bakhtiari subscribers.  An extra welcome to you all!

My posting on Bakhtiari poetry recitations mentioned how the people and places in one of the poems on this website (on the battle of the Duraki and Behdarwand) are, according to their translator DLR Lorimer, traceable in Henry Layard’s book describing his adventures living and fighting alongside the Bahktiari in the 1840s.

I especially wanted to know more about Sitara – celebrated in the poem for her velvet tresses and pearls: “none other like her was to be found among the Bakhtiari” – and after 700 plus pages of Layard, at last I’ve found her!

According to Layard, ‘Sattara Khanum’ was the head of nine wives – including “some very pretty young women”, all of whom lived “under the same tent and apparently in good fellowship”.  Jaffer Kuli Khan, Sattara’s husband, was away from home when Layard arrived at the family diz [fortress or natural stronghold], so he was received by Sattara Khanum, who “did the honours, sent me an excellent supper, and gave me an ancient Persian seal, upon which was engraved a king contending with two winged horses beneath the emblematic figure of Ormuzd”.

This ‘telesm’, or charm, was intended to protect Layard and, despite the blood feud between the two families, may perhaps have been in recognition of Layard’s earlier loyalty to Mehmet Taki Khan (whose castle is shown here).  Layard’s fidelity was also apparently the reason for Jaffer Kuli Khan’s acceptance of the outsider.  Jaffer Kuli Khan was generally “exceedingly suspicious of strangers and especially jealous of his stronghold”, but he welcomed Layard and even let him stay on the top of his diz as “proof of my confidence in you; for my own brothers are not permitted to ascend to it – and as for those Turks [the Qajars], they shall never come within sight of it”.

Climbing up from the diwankhana [audience] cave at the base of the diz, where most guests were entertained and then dismissed; Jaffer Kuli Khan “[took] hold of the shawl round [Layard’s] waist with a firm grasp” and dragged him up the perpendicular sides of the diz “evidently much delighted with the impression which this extraordinary hill-fort could not fail to make”.

The lower diz was then a platform, with a “small perennial spring, and several large reservoirs for collecting rain-water, apparently of ancient date, cut in the rock”. Jaffer Kuli Khan and his wives and children lived there in their traditional black goat-hair tents.  The upper diz was only accessible from the lower by the aid of more ladders and ropes and it “consisted of a spacious table-land . . capable of producing about six thousand pounds of wheat, and of supporting a small flock of sheep and goats”.

Layard supplies lots more details about life on the diz, and how Jaffer Kuli Khan was summoned away, first entreating Layard, if the chief was betrayed and held captive, to shoot his wives to ensure they could not be dishonoured.  Layard had “no wish to remain in charge of Jaffer Kuli Khan’s stronghold, nor to find [himself] under the necessity of carrying out his instructions with respect to his wives and children”.  He therefore set off again into the mountains, where he incidentally passed by the grave of  ‘Madani’, “one of the bravest of the Bakhtiyari horsemen”, and perhaps the ‘Mandini’ who was also included in the Duraki / Behdarwand poem.