The illusion of immense achievement, which it was intended thus to create, has often imposed itself on modern critics, and Tiglath Pileser and Sargon are credited with having marched to the neighbourhood of the Caspian, conquering or holding to ransom great provinces, when their forces were probably doing no more than climbing from valley to valley about the headwaters of the Tigris affluents, and raiding chiefs of no greater territorial affluence than the kurdish beys of Hakkiari.
"The Ancient East"
D. G. Hogarth
How, robbed of their original leaders they yet reached the Black Sea and safety by way of the Tigris valley and the wild passes of kurdish Armenia all readers of Xenophon, the Athenian who succeeded to the command, know well.
"The Ancient East"
D. G. Hogarth
He paid the kurdish porter a generous fee, and giving his tiny coin to the tall keeper of the bridge, whose white garments looked whiter in the dawn, he walked on until he was half way over the Golden Horn.
"Paul Patoff"
F. Marion Crawford