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LEISURE TO ASSEMBLING ITS
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TRUSTEES HAS ACQUIRED FOR

THE LIBRARY OF THE
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ROW HOW GOW AION GOW FON GOW GOWMEY  j OUR NEE AY
DOWN THE TIGRISPLATE I.—DETAILS OF THE WEST FACADE IN THE COURT OF THE CHIEF
MOSQUE AT DIYARBEKR.

Frontispiece.MY JOURNEY DOWN
THE TIGRIS - « nar

VOYAGE THROUGH DEAD KINGDOMS
By Dr. S. GUYER, Px.D. (Zuricu)

‘TRANSLATED BY

JOSEPH McCABE

ILLUSTRATED

THE ADELE EPHT COMPANY
NEW YORK 11912) 5PRINTED I)PREFACE

NY MAN WHO HAS been so fortunate as to

travel to Baghdad by river will count 1t

one of the richest experiences of his life.
It is, indeed, impossible to imagine a journey of
greater interest and variety than that which
begins on the raging waters of the Upper Tigris
at Diyarbekr, passes through the wild gorges
of Kurdistan, with their nests of robbers, and
then, when one enters upon the broad plains of
Mesopotamia, is continued for weeks on the
wide and majestically flowing river through the
spacious provinces of Assyria, past the crumbling
ruins of Nineveh, Nimrud, Assur and Samarra,
until at length one sees the domes of Baghdad
shimmering in the sun amidst the nodding crowns
of the forests of palms.

In the journey which I, as a member of the
Samarra Exploration Expedition to Mesopotamia,
undertook in 1910-1911, it was my fortune to
have thus unique experience, and I here attempt

5MY JOURNEY DOWN THE DWeRis

to describe what I saw and felt. It seemed to
me, moreover, desirable that I should tell also
of my voyage across the Mediterranean to
Aleppo and describe my caravan-journey through
the boundless steppes and deserts of northern
Syria and Mesopotamia to Diyarbekr.

In describing the artistic monuments of
northern Mesopotamia I have been particularly
fortunate in the fact that recent exploration in
those regions, in which I had some share, has
yielded important results to art and history.
In this connection the monumental work of
Sarre-Herzfeld deserves special mention, since
it gives a masterly account of the chief Islamic
edifices of the Mesopotamians; and thus in de-
scribing the architectural monuments of Aleppo,
Urfah, Diyarbekr and Mosul I have been
able to follow a sure guide instead of repeating
the vague and frequently fantastic hypotheses
of earlier writers.

The geographical results of my journey in
Mesopotamia, especially my maps, are published
in Petermann’s Geographical Reports. Of my
artistic results in this region, some have been

* Petermann’s Geog. Mitteilungen, 62 Jahrg., 1916, S. 168-174,
204-210, and 292-301. Plates 27, 31-82, and 35-36.

6PREFACE

published in the Repertorium fiir Kunst-Wissen-
schaft,1 and the remainder are included in Sarre-
Herzfeld’s great work.2 My Monuments of
Northern Mesopotamia will be published shortly.

1 ** TDjindeirmene,” Repertorium, Bd. xXxxv, S. 483ff.
‘* Amida,” Repertorium, Bd. xxxviii, S. 1938-237.

2 Archeologische Reise vm Euphrat—und Tigrisgebiet, Bd. li,
Kap. iv: Rusafah.a
Sen

WY

\
YY
WY
Sy
YYCONTENTS

FROM SYRIA TO MESOPOTAMIA

THROUGH THE DJABAL TEKTEK

MARTYRS

THROUGH THE GORGES OF KURDISTAN

THROUGH THE LAND OF THE ASSYRIANS

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINEVEH

PREFACE
CHAPTER

I. EASTWARD BOUND

Il THE CHARM OF ALEPPO
Il.

IV. IN OLD EDESSA

Wie

VI. KARA AMID, THE BLACK CITY
Vile THE CITY OF THE
VIIl.

IX.

xX.

XI. KALACH AND ASSUR

THE LAND OF

CANALS

PAGEILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE
I. DETAILS OF THE WEST FACADE OF THE COURT OF
THE CHIEF MOSQUE AT DIYARBEKR ; Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Yl. BEIRUT ‘ - : A ; ‘ ; ‘ 28

A. THE CHIEF MOSQUE

B. BYZANTINE COLUMNS IN THE MADRASAH AL

HALAWIYYAH AT ALEPPO

III. ALEPPO. THE CITADEL . . ° ° ° ° e

Iv. ALEPPO : : ° ° ‘ ° ‘ °

A. COURT OF THE CHIEF MOSQUE, WITH THE

CITADEL IN THE BACKGROUND

B. NIZIB: KILISEH DJAMI
Vv. URFAH: THE TWO ANCIENT COLUMNS . .

VI. URFAH: THE TOWER AT ABRAHAM'S POOL .

VII. DIYARBEKR : THE WEST FACADE IN THE COURT OF THE

CHIEF MOSQUE . . . . . . .

VIII. FARKIN ° . . . . : ° ° .
A. A CAPITAL IN THE DOMED CHURCH

B. A CAPITAL IN THE BASILICA

IX. FARKIN . . . . ° ° . . °
A. THE DOMED CHURCH

B. PRAYER NICHE IN THE CHIEF MOSQUE

38

60

180PLATE
xX. THE RAFT VOYAGE ON THE TIGRIS

ON THE NIMRUD DAGH.

° = °

B. DJAZIRAH : RUINED BRIDGE

XIMI. NIMRUD: THE TEMPLE MOUND

XIV. A. RUINS OF ASSUR, ON THE TIGRIS

KHARMINA

B. DIYARBEKR: THE KHAN

XVI. SAMARRA: TOWER OF THE CHIEF MOSQUE.

XII. MOSUL: PRAYER NICHE IN THE CHIEF MOSQUE

XV. <A. HISN KEF: RUINS OF BRIDGE AND MOSQUE.

MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

XI. A. RUINS OF A MONASTERY (MAR YAKUB AT URFAH)

B. PRAYER NICHE OF THE MOSQUE AT THE KHAN

 
    
  
   
  
     
        
 
 
    
   
    
 

FACING PAGR

144

166

234.

244.

I must express my warm thanks to the following for their
kindness in lending me some of the above illustrations : Dr. W.
Andrae (Plates XIIa and XIII), Dr. R. Berliner (Plates I and
VII), Dr.C. Preusser (Plate XIb), Professor F. Sarre (Plates XIV
and XV), and Professor M. Sobernheim (Plates IIb and IVa)Move jO.W) RNa
DOWN THE TIGRISIZ
SLA

WY
SN
\\Y
A)MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

CHAPTER I

EASTWARD BOUND

1910 that I took ship at Trieste to set out,

as a member of the Samarra Archeological
Expedition, upon a long, scientific journey to
Mesopotamia. I noticed, idly, that the ship in
which I was to travel, a vessel of the former
Austrian Lloyd line, bore the name of Semiramis,
the famous queen who had invented the hanging
gardens of Assyria, whose native province I was
so soon to visit. Apart from its splendid name,
however, the ship was an old vessel of which
I have little good to say; though the voyage
was as pleasant as is customary on a great liner.
The captain stood at his telephone, the passen-
gers made signals to the shore, the anchor-
chains rattled and groaned, and the friends
ashore wiped the last tear from their cheeks,

15

[: WAS ON A RAW October day of the yearMave O1U RUN Bon. DOW IN: fee tC uRges

while the steam siren gave its shrill accompani-
ment to the departure.

The great ship swung slowly round and crept
out of the harbour, and the heights of Trieste
opened out in a vast amphitheatre behind the
white buildings on the quays, crowned by the
ancient castle and the cathedral of San Giusto.
Soon we left behind us the last ships anchored
at the breakwater; the houses were dwarfed in
the distance, and we headed south along the
coast of Istria. But I did not long remain on
deck, as the weather was cold and raw, the sea
lively, and the sky veiled with gray clouds.

I went down into the cabin, to see a little
more of my fellow-passengers. They were of
many nations. There were correct and reserved
Englishmen (particularly young ladies), ex-
pansive Austrians, and numbers of Italian
business men. The far greater part of the
passengers belonged to wealthy families of the
Levant, who had passed the summer between
Paris and Carlsbad, St. Moritz and Vienna, and
were now returning to their homes by the Nile.
In their general appearance and their clothes
both ladies and gentlemen were so elegant that
Queen Semiramis, whom I had always pictured
to myself as a very luxurious and elegant lady,
16EASTWARD BOUND

would surely have been very pleased with these
modern daughters of Eve; particularly when
they at times attempted the almost impossible
feat of ascending or descending the ship’s steep
and narrow stairways in the hobble-skirts they
were importing from Paris.

I shared my cabin with an Italian Count,
an elderly, splendidly clad, and very superior
gentleman, who had the condescending air which
became his rank, but was very friendly and
gracious with me. Our relations were, however,
rendered somewhat difficult by the circumstance
that we had to communicate by gestures rather
than words. The Count had a very poor
command of French, which was our chief means of
intercourse. It is true that he knew well how
to roll his r’s. He made great use of such words

3

as ‘‘ bonjourr,”’ “‘ prrécisément,” and “ parrfaite-
ment’; and when we walked the deck together
he would look at the passing scene, clap me on
the shoulder, and say with great pathos: “ C’est
un panorrama.” The phrase, however, seemed
to exhaust his knowledge of French.

Next morning I was early on deck. The
weather was still as bad as it had been on the
preceding day. A cold wind, which lashed the
Mediterranean into waves and drove the spray

B LiMoye 7d OU RINE Y DOWN “hh Ee 1G Ras

often on to the promenade deck, blew through
the ship and penetrated through all one’s clothes,
so that one had to button up closely. On our
right we had a seemingly endless strip of grayish
ereen land, punctuated with towns and villages,
which came nearer and nearer as we sped on.
It was the coast of Apulia. Soon one could pick
out the several houses and the moving trains ;
and by mid-day the land lay quite close to us.
Presently the bow of our boat described a great
curve and made straight for the coast. Through
a small canal we reached the sheltered harbour
of Brindisi.

There we remained but a short time. As soon
as we had shipped a couple of Englishmen,
who had come by rail from Milan, and some two
hundred post-bags from Italy, France and Eng-
land, we were again off. From here we were to
sail straight to Alexandria. We, therefore,
stood well off from the Italian coast, and when
night fell we were once more on the open sea,
in the middle of the Straits of Otranto.

With great joy I greeted the next morning,
for I knew that we must pass between the Ionian
Islands, the blessed isles on which Odysseus
and Penelope had once lived. Especially at this
moment, when I was going to spend some time
18EASTWARD BOUND

amongst the boundless deserts and steppes of
Asia, it seemed to me a stroke of luck that I should
be in sight of the land of the Greeks for a whole
day. I had passed this way a few years before,
and it had been like a glorious dream when the
beauty of Greece lay, calm and noble, around
me; the golden-brown, foam-tipped cliffs, the
lofty mountains which rose out of the azure of
the Ionian Sea, the splendid sun of Homer still
shining on the lovely scene.

Now all was changed. The sky was gray.
The waves which, lashed by a strong wind,
made the great ship dance on their surface, were
a grayish blue. The high, rocky mountains
which arose on all sides from the sea, their
summits swathed in mist, were gYray-green.
So inhospitable, so forbidding it all seemed ;
so different from the conception we usually have
of the sunny land of Iphigenia. Yet, as one
continued to gaze over the stormy waters and
at the gray masses of cloud which girt the rocky
Isles, one began to feel that even in this sterner
mood of nature one could perceive something
of the greatness of the Homeric character.
Somewhere in his autobiographical novel Der
Griine Heinrich, Gottfried Keller, the dis-
tinguished Swiss writer, has told us the impression

19DE Ye JOURNEY “DOWN LR Ee 2 Gores

made upon him by his first reading of Homer.
He speaks of the “‘ simple ” and the ‘‘ colossal ” ;
these elements he had, indeed, found there,
though he was unaccustomed to them and could
not long keep them distinct from each other.

The words came to my mind that morning,
for in this part of nature there dwelt something
simple and colossal. There was here nothing
petty, nothing sentimental. Even without the
sun of Greece all was instinct with a massive
grandeur, and I could have gazed long upon the
procession of waves and clouds had not the
coming of other passengers upon the deck dis-
turbed my enjoyment of the scene. Especially
when three smart young ladies from the Levant
appeared and piped aloud in the Greek tongue
like three canaries—three! Let us rather say
a hundred canaries—it seemed to me as if their
chatter must be a desecration of nature. So
that was the speech of Homer! It will be under-
stood that my mood was overcast. And when
the Italian Count suddenly came behind me and,
pointing out the island of Cephalonia, burred
his usual “‘C’est un panorrama,” the last of
the divinities of ancient Greece faded from my
mind.

All day long we sailed amongst the mountain-
20BAS LTWAR DD BOUND

isles of Greece. The weather did not change.
Even when we left behind us the Ionian Islands,
and had the coast of Greece itself on our horizon,
the veil of gloom still hung over the face of
nature. By the third day Greece lay far behind
us. We were on the open sea. Nothing could
be seen on any side save the unbounded expanse
of waters. Once only, toward noon, we caught
a glimpse of the mountains of Crete rising from
the waves in the dim distance. At times we met
a steamer, as we were almost following the line
of vessels which came, through the Suez Canal,
from India and Farther Asia.

Next morning we reached Alexandria at an
early hour. According to our program we ought
to have arrived at five in the morning, but we
were awakened by the stewards soon after two,
to prepare for the medical inspection in view of
possible quarantine. In a very short time the
pilot boat approached us, bringing the quarantine
officials as well as the pilot. They sat in great
state, with some of the ship’s officers, at a table
in the saloon, and the compulsory inspection of
all began. It proved, however, most amusing,
and provided all sorts of humorous scenes. It
was a quaint enough spectacle in itself, as the
scarcely awakened passengers came in all kinds

21MY JOURNEY DOWN THE ZT Res

 

of fantastic sleeping garments, from the smartest
Parisian extravagances of the Levantine young
ladies to the scanty robes of the emigrants,
Everybody, without respect of person or rank,
had, of course, to appear before the officials.
To find out whether any person on board had
an infectious disease the medical man used a
very practical means, the diagnostic value of
which I, not being a physician, cannot say.
Everybody had to stick his tongue out as far as
he could during the solemn moment of inspection.
This naturally gave rise to some indescribably
comic situations. When my Count, who was just
in front of me in lilac-coloured pyjamas, striking
an inimitable attitude, suddenly opened wide
his tightly closed mouth, and the noble tongue
darted out as swiftly as that of a chameleon,
I could hardly contain myself from ejaculating :
‘““C’est un panorrama.” Still, the speed with
which the whole ship’s company were passed
was wonderful. The comedy had begun at ten
minutes to three, and it was only ten minutes
past three when the quarantine doctor concluded
that there were on the whole four hundred tongues
neither marks of plague nor anything else that
threatened the kingdom of the Pharaohs with
harmful microbes.
22EASTWARD EOUND

We were free to enter the port. Naturally,
there was no further question of sleep, and the
remaining hours of the night were taken up
with the customary excitement of disembarking.
We quickly finished dressing, got together our
hand-luggage as speedily as possible, and saw our
trunks brought up from the hold. Breakfast
was hastily swallowed, and then the shrieking
crowd of Arab porters poured over the ship like
a stream of lava.

The journey to Cairo was well arranged, a
special train waiting at the quay. I had already
taken my place in it when I found that I was
not allowed to do so, as it was reserved for
passengers and luggage for Cairo, whereas I
was to change at Benha, the last express-stop
before Cairo, for Port Said, where I was to catch
the steamer for Syria the same evening. At the
last moment, therefore, I had to find a carriage
to take me and my goods to the town station,
and I was particularly lucky in getting it. It
was quite obvious why the other passengers had
preferred the other carriages; but it had the
horses ready in, so that one could expect to
reach the station in good time. My luggage was
quickly thrown on the driver’s seat and into the
interior of the carriage, and the three of us—I,

23MY VOURNEY DOWN THE TIiGRis

the coachman, and a porter who assured me that
he was indispensable—climbed after the luggage.
Then began a wild rush through the whilom
residence of Cleopatra, I straining to hold together
with my hands the tossing and heaving luggage.
Fortunately, we reached the station in time;
and at the last moment I was able to transfer
my luggage, pay off the men, and jump into the
already crowded express to Cairo.

The journey through the fertile garden-like
Delta, with its dense population, has so frequently
been described that it will be enough for me to
say that we reached Benha in two hours, and that
I there caught the train for Port Said. There
were not many people in it, and I was able to
retrieve to some extent the loss of sleep during
the night. When I awoke after a good hour’s
nap, we had left the Delta far behind, and were
crossing the part of Egypt which lies between
the Nile and the Suez Canal. To me, fresh from
Europe, the scenery was entirely new, and
very lovely and characteristic. Not far from us
ran the border-cliffs of the desert, and along the
line were a number of lakes of various sizes
which had in the brilliant Egyptian sun a blue
colour such as I had never seen in the cold north ;
and it was accentuated by the pale yellow of the
24,EASTWARD BOUND

burning sands of the desert. And as palms,
singly and in groups, were often found at the
borders of the lakes, nodding their superb crowns
in the wind, the picture was one of unforgettable
loveliness.

The train reached the Suez Canal at Ismailia,
and from that point onward it ran on the side of
the Canal. But as I had meantime grown very
hungry, I spent the last hour of the journey in the
dining car, where a Nubian, in flowing white
robe, served me with my tardy lunch.

We were on time at Port Said, and so this
time I did not need to hurry in transferring my
luggage to the ship for Syria. It was already
fairly full of passengers. There were a good
many commercial travellers, most of whom were
bound for Haifa, Beirut, or Tripoli, where they
would take trains to the interior. In the main,
however, the passengers were travellers to Pales-
tine, making for Jaffa. Amongst them were
reserved Englishmen and some Americans, who
looked upon the visit to the Holy Land as a kind
of pious sport. The majority were modest
travellers of all races and creeds: EKuropean,
Egyptian, Russian, and Greek pilgrims, who had
apparently devoted the whole of their savings
during many years to this journey to the holy

29Mx) O URN EY (DOWN LEE TfTeRranes

places. We sailed toward evening. Night fell
soon afterwards, and we were in Jaffa when we
awoke the following morning.

The sea was rough, and, as Jaffa has merely an
open anchorage instead of a harbour, the disem-
barking of the pilgrims was extremely difficult.
The work seemed, however, much more terrifying
than it really was; for the Jaffa boatmen are
astonishingly skilful in taking men and luggage
to land even in the severest weather. Their
immense wooden boats, with about ten men
working each boat and shouting incessantly,
came as close as possible to the steamer. This
was not easy, as the waves ran so high that the
boat would be lifted one moment to the level of
the deck of the rolling steamer and plunged the
next moment far below us, rising once more
with a fresh wave. As the boat not only rolled,
but danced about in every direction, and so was
always at some distance from the ship, it will
easily be understood that the unloading of the
cargo, which came first, was carried out under
great difficulties. But with cat-like agility the
boatmen always succeeded, when the heavier
goods were handed to them or lowered by the
crane, in catching the objects just at the right
moment.

26EASTWARD BOUND

The disembarking of the numerous passengers
almost took away one’s breath. For this purpose
another large boat, of quite fantastic appearance,
approached us. About half the boatmen, who
were all Arabs, wore blood-red sweaters on which
could be seen from afar, in gigantic white letters,
the word “Cook”: the magic formula which
was to let us know that these grinning, shrieking
comrades came to us as representatives of a
superior civilisation. Then the work began.
When the tossing boat had come close to us, it
rose upon the next wave to the level of our deck,
and the natives used this fraction of a second
to snatch one of the disembarking passengers
and drag him into the boat below. I still see
with my mind’s eye, a prudish young French
nun who was suddenly grasped and, clinging with
mortal fear round the neck of Cook’s red devil,
was borne by him into the abyss. The boat
rose again at once, and this time one of the
boatmen, in the confusion, seized two of the
passengers. One was a very correct English
minister and the other a struggling Greek pope,
and in a second the man disappeared into the
depths with both creeds.

This intensely exciting scene lasted fully an
hour, and one must, in order to realise it,

27MY JOURNEY DOWN THE Tres

remember that the fury of the storm never abated.
The great waves tossed the boat about like a
nutshell ; the women groaned and whined with
fear: everybody was shrieking and praying
in every tongue and according to every creed.

It was a pity that my Count was not there, for
it was certainly a ‘‘ panorrama.” It seemed to
me extraordinary that no cinema operator has
ever thought of taking the scene. His film
would assuredly secure a full house. Rolling
and pitching heavily, we set out the same
afternoon for Haifa, and before the sun set we
entered the great bay under the shadow of Carmel
and anchored in the water protected—unlike
that of Jaffa—by the mountains. We had a
few passengers to take aboard. From Haifa
there has been for some years, under Turkish
control, a narrow-gauge railway connecting the
coast with the Sea of Gennesaret, the Hedjaz
Railway, and Damascus. This has given some
importance to Haifa, as it now receives a large —
part of the traffic which formerly went to Jaffa
or Beirut. We left it the same evening, and
next morning we were in Beirut.

I much enjoyed the couple of days I spent in
Beirut. I am aware that Beirut is usually
regarded only as a stage in the journey, as it
28PLATE II 4. CHIEF MOSQUE AT BEIRUT.

 

 

 

 

PLATE I1.—B. BYZANTINE COLUMNS IN THE MADRASAH-AL-HALAWIYYAH
AT ALEPPO.

To face p. 28EASTWARD BOUND

has no monuments of importance and no “ holy
places.” Most travellers take train as quickly
as they can for Baalbek or Damascus. But as
I had to buy here a number of things required
for my long caravan-journey, which could not
be obtained further inland, I stopped two days ;
and I have never regretted it. I would, in fact,
advise any person who goes to Syria to devote
a few days to the lovely country round Beirut.
A stay there will be a great joy to all who love
low hills rising from a blue sea and drenched with
sunshine, luxurious gardens and lofty mountains—
in short, the kind of scenery for which we make
pilgrimages to the Riviera, to Naples, and to
Greece. The low cliffs of the Ras Beirut, with
their dove-haunted caves and little rocky islets
in the blue sea, are beautiful; and there are few
pleasanter walks than amongst the rich gardens
of the suburbs, along the coast, or on the slopes
of Lebanon, the higher summits of which remain
covered with snow until late in the summer.

In artistic monuments, it is true, Beirut is
very poor. ‘There is only one building—the chief
mosque (Plate Ila)—ignored by most of the
experts as well as general travellers, which
certainly deserves a visit. Properly speaking,
it is not a mosque, but an ancient church;

29MYT OU RNEY, DOWN TAK Tiers

and it is very astonishing, when you have found
your way through the chaos of crooked streets
of the old town, to find yourself suddenly in a
Romanesque Crusader church. The interior has
three naves, separated from each other by lofty
pillars, and at the far end the noble building
ends handsomely in a semicircular apse. There
is nothing Oriental in the style of the church.
It would be just as much in place in the south of
France, in some town of Provence, or on the banks
of the Garonne.

It was, in fact, the Crusaders who built the
church, and dedicated it to St. John, when, with
a short interruption, they occupied Beirut for
a hundred and sixty years. When it was turned
into a mosque, however, the church had to suffer
a good deal of alteration. For instance, the
handsome stonework of its walls has been covered
with a coat of whitewash. This has blotted out
the crucifix and other Christian emblems, and
passages from the Koran have been painted
on instead. The main point is, however, that
the entire orientation has been changed. To-day
no one looks toward the east, or toward the lofty
apse, which has lost all traces of its former altar.
Instead of this, the mihrab, or Mohammedan
prayer-niche, has been built into the middle of
30EASTWARD BOUND

the southern wall, and the worshippers stand in
long rows in front of this, directing their gaze,
as they pray, toward Mecca.

I was surprised that no difficulty was put in
my way when I visited the mosque, although the
otherwise well-informed Baedeker says that it
is extremely difficult to obtain permission to
visit it. I, in fact, got more than this. When
I took out my measuring instruments to take the
dimensions of the building accurately, some of the
Mohammedans who had come to pray did not
disdain to help the foreign gzaour. I thus suc-
ceeded, with their aid, in making a ground-plan
and taking several photographs of the mosque.

There are important historical monuments of
a very early date at Nar el Kelb (which means
“The Dog River’’), a small elevation some
eight miles north of Beirut, near which a slender
stream issues from a wooded gorge on the slope
of Lebanon. The place is enchanting enough
as scenery alone. On that beautiful August
morning it was a sheer delight to let one’s eyes
wander over the infinite, deep blue sea or turn
toward Lebanon, enshrouded in a purple haze.
Historically speaking, the passage of the Dog
River was of some importance in antiquity
during the time of the Crusades, and it is also in

31Me sO RANGE Yo DIO WN “MAE VEG Rs

modern times, as a number of inscriptions on
the rocks record. Some of them go back to the
ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs, in connection
with the expeditions of Sesostris (Rameses II,
1324-1258 B.c.) and the Assyrian expeditions
of Salmanasar II and Esarhaddon. But the
Greeks and Romans also have left here an
imperishable memory of themselves, and we learn
that the Emperor Caracalla caused a road to
be cut through the rocks of which the traces are
still visible.

I left Beirut, by the narrow-gauge railway to
Damascus, one evening about ten o’clock. It
was a lovely night of full moon when [I set out
to cross Lebanon, yet I cannot say that there was
any poetical flavour about the journey, as the
train was greatly overcrowded. Although I had
reached the station an hour before the train
started, the train was already full of people in
every part. More people came every moment,
and I remember a youth, casting a glance into
our crowded compartment and calling to his
father that there was plenty of room here. So
they crowded in upon us with their entire family,
until it was easy to imagine how sardines are
packed into a sardine-tin.

The reason of the crowd was that we had with
32BAS Tf W AR D:. EO UND

us a large number of young recruits who were
making their way to the garrisons in the interior
of Syria. Fortunately, a great many of the
passengers alighted at the first station, and we
were able to breathe again. There was, it is
true, still no question of lying down and sleeping,
but it was possible to look out of the window
upon the moonlit scenery. The line, which
rises as much as five thousand feet, is adapted
to the ascent by means of cog-wheels. As we
proceeded, I passed the time talking to the young
recruits who sat near me. They were good-
natured young fellows, without much enthusiasm
for their service in the interior. To console
them they had brought a large quantity of sugar-
cane, and they asked me to take a little.

At five in the morning we reached Rayak.
It lies in the Bika’a, the depression between
Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, the ancient Coele-
syria. Rayak is now an important railway
junction, as the line branches there for the north,
Baalbek, and Aleppo; and, differently from the
Beirut-Damascus line, it has a normal gauge.
After a hasty breakfast we went on to Baalbek.
I did not stay there, as I had two years earlier
visited the wonderful ruins of the temple of Zeus,
which are amongst the most remarkable relics

C 33MN OLUGR N Boy) DIOW IN GHEE TG RTs

of ancient architecture. In the gray dawn, it
is true, I saw on our right the huge columns on
the Acropolis ; but we went on to the watershed,
some four thousand feet above sea-level, which
lies beyond Baalbek, and from which the line
continuously descends toward the broad plains
of northern Syria. On the whole, the journey is
rather monotonous, the two chief towns one
passes being Homs and Hama. At five in the
evening I reached Aleppo, after eighteen hours
in the train, and I said good-bye to the railway
and European civilisation. Now for caravan-life
and the boundless steppes of Asia.CHAPTER II

THE CHARM OF ALEPPO

T IS REMARKABLE that the great numbers of

people who go annually to Palestine and

Syria know nothing about Aleppo except its
plague, and know this only from hearsay. As
a result, they entirely ignore this interesting city,
and it is, accordingly, ill provided with hotels.
The only two hotels seem to the man who arrives
from Europe equally poor; it is only to the man
who comes in from a caravan-journey that they
seem an outpost of civilisation.

But it is wrong thus to ignore Aleppo, because
the place has quite a pronounced character of its
own. Beirut is a town which receives its distine-
tion from its position on the intercommunicating
sea, and Damascus is an oasis on the edge of the
desert; but Aleppo owes its character to the
circumstance that it is the centre of commerce
between Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia.
It is the focus of the most important routes of
35MYO. OU RN EY, DOWN THE: TiG Rts

Nearer Asia. One goes over Amanus to Cilicia,
and from there over Taurus to Koniah and
Constantinople. A second goes straight to Iscan-
derun and the Mediterranean; and the third-
passes southward through the Bika’a to Palestine
and Egypt, south-eastward, along the Euphrates,
to Baghdad and Irak, and north-eastward to
Armenia by Urfah and Diyarbekr.

That is the reason also why during the historical
period there has always been a town of some size
in the vicinity of the north-eastern corner of the
Mediterranean. In the Hellenist and the Roman
period, and until the time of the Crusades, it was
Antiochia, the queen of cities. During the
Arabic Middle Ages it was Aleppo, a city which,
in spite of all conquests, earthquakes, and other
hard fates, ever rises again to new life, like a
phoenix, from the dust and ash. And if all the
appearances are not deceptive, Aleppo will, in
the coming era of railways, be called upon to
play the part which Antiochia played in early
times, as it is from here that the great lines,
already partly constructed, radiate in the direc-
tions of Adana—Koniah—Constantinople, Mosul
—Baghdad and Syria.

The population of the town, in spite of its
position in the interior, indicates its character as

36eH i Con ARM On FAL 2 PO

 

a connecting-link. The majority of the people,
the main stem, are Arabs; as the zone of Turkish
speech begins about thirty miles north of Aleppo.
This Arab superstratum opposes itself to the
Turks—who were in 1910 generally officials
and officers, and rather more numerous than in
Damascus—as the aboriginal and superior race.
There are, however, also many Levantines,
especially Greeks; and there are a certain
number of Armenians, Syrians, and a good many
Kuropeans. The latter were here, in fact, in
fairly large numbers as early as the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. At that time Meso-
potamia was much more important than it now is
as a region of transit, because there was then no
Suez Canal, and part of the English trade to India
and the East Indies went this way instead of
sailing round the Cape of Good Hope.

This significance of Aleppo finds expression in
its monuments, which deserve more notice than
they usually get. They are not only interesting
as illustrations of local history, but they rank
very high in the esthetic history of Islam.

The citadel, or at least the central part of it,
goes back to the earliest days of the town. It
stands on a large oval hill about a hundred feet
in height, that dates back to the time of the
37Mie oO Ugh Nek DOWN “Lan tt Gr rs

Hittites. The history of Aleppo reaches into
very early times; even as early as the second
millennium before Christ it is mentioned in Egyp-
tian and Hittite documents, and later in Baby-
lonian and Assyrian. The town is probably
mentioned also in the Old Testament. There
are even monuments of these early days: two
lions carved in basalt belonging to the Hittite
period. Apart from these, most of what the
citadel contains to-day is of the Islamic Middle
Ages; as is, for instance, the mosque Ibrahim
al Khalil, dedicated to the patriarch Abraham,
who is supposed to have reached Aleppo in his
long journey. The founder of the mosque is
said to have been Nur al-Din. But by far the
finest building is the handsome tower through
which one enters the citadel. I know no tower
either in the east or the west, that is finer than
this (Plate III). The moat is crossed by a high
stone bridge, and beyond it is the tower proper.
It has five broken lines, and it used to be closed
by three iron doors.

Inside the town there is a very interesting
building, the Madrasah al Halawiyyah (Plate I1d).*
Travellers of earlier and of modern times refer

1 Reproduced by the author in the Bulletin de l institut
frangais darchéologie orientale, vol. xi.

384

 

 

ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALEPPO,

CITADEL,

III.—THE

ATE

PI

race p.

OTHE “CHARM "OR Alc be oO

to it, and they do not fail to observe that it must
be a very ancient church, built by the Empress
Helena, wife of Constantine the Great. That is
obviously an exaggeration, as in style the building
cannot go back farther than the fifth or sixth
century. However, we have now proved that
in this Islamic Madrasah—we should say
‘* school ’’—we really have a relic of the ancient
Christian cathedral of Aleppo. A square space
under the dome, and adjoining it a semicircular,
apse-like bay, supported by pillars with five
capitals, are all that remain of this once superb
building. The nave of it was probably at one
time surmounted by a whole series of these domes.
It must have resembled the characteristic
Romanesque domed churches of Aquitaine ; and
it is curious that these appeared just after the
first Crusade. There is, therefore, ground to
entertain the theory that the ancient cathedral
of Aleppo was the model of the churches of
southern France. Here again it was Nur al-Din
who converted the old Christian edifice into an
Islamic Madrasah.

Close to the Madrasah al Halawiyyah is the
Djami Zakariyyah, the chief mosque of Aleppo.
The great court of the mosque, in particular, is
wonderfully impressive (Plate [Va). One may,

39MY dO URINE Ys (DOWIN Ton Cf1G Ros

in fact, say that the sight of these mosque-courts
alone is worth a journey to the east. Syria
itself has some splendid examples: that of the
ereat mosque at Damascus, the temple-court
at Jerusalem, and this. Where has our western
art ever constructed so monumental a square ?
The only things one can bring into comparison
are the Piazza San Marco at Venice and the
fora of Imperial Rome. The latter we can only
laboriously reconstruct with the aid of the
imagination, but here the reality lies before us.
When one comes suddenly from the dark confusion
of the old town, out of the deafening noise of the
bazaar, into this spacious quiet court, one has
almost the feeling of entering a stately chamber.
The court of the Aleppo mosque has not, perhaps,
the grandeur of that at Damascus, and the build-
ings around it are modest, but with its marble
paving slabs, its great dimensions, and _ its
sparkling fountain it makes an _ imeffaceable
impression.

The minaret of the mosque dominates the
court as the campanile dominated San Marco
in Venice. Differently from the later needle-
shaped round minarets of Turkish times, the
tower at Aleppo is a massive quadrangular
structure a hundred and eighty feet high. It
40THE CHARM OF ALE PO

plainly owes its birth to early Christian-Hellenic
art. Inscriptions, in fact, give it a precise date :
the year 483 of the Hegira. The mosque, which
has three long naves, recalls the Damascus mosque.
It contains the grave of Zachary, the father of
John the Baptist; which, of course, does not
prevent Samaria and other Syrian towns from
possessing also the grave of Zachary. According
to tradition, the chief mosque occupies the site
of the earlier Christian cemetery, and, in view of
the proximity of the ancient cathedral, the story
is not improbable.

I will not enumerate the many other monu-
ments of the period of the Ayyubidz and the
Mamelukes in the later Middle Ages, especially
as I paid little attention to them. My time
was devoted almost entirely to the equipment of
my caravan.

For my personal servant, to cook for me, watch
my luggage, etc.—as maid of all work, in fact—
I engaged a young Armenian named Garabed.
I kept the man, although he was not exactly a
pearl of the first price, through the whole of my
journey, as far as Baghdad and Samarra. When
he wanted, he could work fairly well ; but, unfor-
tunately, he very rarely wanted, and at times it
needed a good strong philippic to get him into
41MY OUR NEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

action. Above all things in the world he loved
idleness; and he had a rare talent for “* playing
the gentleman.” Fortunately, he had learned
a little French at a Catholic school in Aleppo;
and he had a command of a long vocabulary
of fairly strong German expletives. He had
learned them in accompanying a German commer-
clal traveller for some time in the interior, and
they were the only elements of German kultur
that he had assimilated. He had travelled a
good deal ; though he counted as his most brillant
achievement that he had once, as stoker in a
steamer, crossed the Mediterranean, and visited
the port-towns of Italy and southern France.
As a curious relic of this voyage he wore the
ruins of a blue-velvet lady’s blouse. This he
neatly adjusted as a scarf round his neck
so that it completely hid his shirt; which
had the advantage that he did not need to
bring a second shirt for the whole six months’
journey.

I would not buy horses for this trip, as I
would be compelled to sell them again, at a
great loss, at Diyarbekr, where I was to embark
on the Tigris. I therefore hired four horses :
one to ride myself, one for Garabed, and two to
carry the luggage. The horses were not of the
42TH Kh © H A Rav eb AULE Pye70

highest class, but their “ father ’—their owner—
a horse-dealer named Hassan, who, of course,
came with us, proved thoroughly reliable. He
was an elderly man, about sixty years old, who
had spent his whole life in caravan-journeys
in Syria and Mesopotamia. To urge on his nags,
which were by no means pedigree animals,
though he was greatly attached to them, and to
come to an understanding with them, he used
first to click sharply with his tongue several
times, then follow it up with a sort of groaning
noise from the depths of his interior. As he had
done nothing for fifty years but wander about
the eastern desert clicking and groaning in this
way, it will be understood that he had become
quite a master of his peculiar music. And, just
as the soul of a poet or a painter reveals itself in
his work, so one might recognise Hassan’s soul
in his music. It had no great flights, but it was
quite a good, honest caravan-soul.

As a caravan-servant the good man did his
duty, and it was remarkable to see how he could
spur his horses with the few sounds he made,
and how well they understood. But it was only
when Hassan made the sounds that the proper
effect was produced. When one who, like myself,
was not a horse-father by profession tried the

43MY OU RNa VY  eDOWN “EEE LLG Rs

trick, the animals were not so obedient and
respectful.

I learned this on the second day, when I had
ridden alone to inspect some ruin or other. I
wanted to hurry to catch up the caravan, but my
horse suddenly stopped, and would not budge
an inch. At first I tried the whip on it from
the saddle, then began stroking and coaxing it.
I made not the least impression, so I dismounted
and began to lead it by the rein. But the more
I pulled, the more the horse pulled—in the
opposite direction, of course. Then I had a
sudden inspiration. I stood in front of the
obstinate beast, and I began to click and groan
so soulfully that it seemed to me I ought to
melt the heart of a stone. The horse, however,
would not respond in the least to my siren call.
He pricked up his ears a little, and looked at me
with a superior air, as if he were saying to me:
‘‘ So you imagine that I am going to give in!”
I believe that we should have remained for hours
in the desert 1f Hassan, who was alarmed at my
delay, had not come up. The beast at once
ended its strike and set out in the best of humours.

Our ‘“‘ father of the horses” had, however,
one fault : a fault he shared, it is true, with many
European caravan-souls. He was a veritable

44THE CHAR MW "Or AL EP 2-0

slave of custom. I saw this especially once when
I wanted to make a digression from the recog-
nised route. He would not have it at all. It
was an outrage; it moved him as deeply as when,
in Europe, we request a clerk to work for five
minutes after the lunch-hour has struck. One
could understand it when one tried to penetrate
his simple caravan-soul. For fifty years he had
followed the broad and recognised route of the
caravans, and one could not be angry with him
if he could not see why in the fifty-first year he
should depart from his rule, guaranteed by a
hundred experiences, to humour the whim of
a European. We quarrelled sharply about it,
but in spite of all our conflicts we parted in
a friendly way at Diyarbekr, at the end of
the journey.

In preparing for the journey I had many pur-
chases to make, and I went bargaining with
Garabed in the handsome roofed bazaar-street,
wandering from stall to stall. I knew that we
could get some of our chief food—milk, eggs,
chickens, etc.—in the villages, but all the rest had
to be bought in Aleppo: especially a sack of
rice and some flour, sugar, dried fruit, tea and
coffee. For cooking-fat I had a whole sheep’s
tail roasted, then packed in a metal box and

45Mex so OU nh NEY DOWN “TRE TIGRIS

loaded on one of the pack-horses. After a time
I had to keep a wary eye on it, as I noticed that
my dear companions had a remarkable preference
for the horse which carried the grease-pot; and
the curious rate at which the fat disappeared
showed only too plainly that, when I was not
looking, they would stick their thumbs in the tin
and abstract a little of the fat.

The days thus passed quickly in Aleppo, and
before I had expected it there came the eve of
our departure for the interior. On the last day
I went with a Swiss friend, who had settled as a
merchant in Aleppo and was very useful to me,
to pay my respects to the Vali (Governor-General
of the province). I wanted, especially, to ask
him for a zaptieh (mounted gendarme) to guard
us on the journey, and he cheerfully promised
me one for the following morning.CHAPTER III

FROM SYRIA TO MESOPOTAMIA

T WAS THE DAy of our departure, a warm,
[ core autumn day. In the very early
morning Hassan’s four horses and _ their
‘* father ’’ were at the door, and everybody took a
lively interest in our expedition. The entire staff
of the hotel were afoot, running about, loading the
luggage on the pack-horses. Those who were not
willing to lend a hand at least planted themselves
in the way, in order to show their warm interest
in my going. Garabed gave a fine display in
the first hour of his talent for standing about
and confining himself to issuing orders.
Presently came the zaptieh: a big, heavy
man on a gracefully stepping horse. He had
rakishly tilted his tarbush right to the back of his
head and he held his rifle across his knee; and
he stood like a fortress, quite motionless, amidst
the bustle of our departure. The most remarkable
thing about him, however, was his enormous
black moustache. The ends of it were not turned

47MY O20 RN EY DOWN Lae Tre Ris

upwards, as was the custom in Germany for a
time, and did not reach out sideways. They
described an angle of ninety degrees at the
corner of the mouth and descended as low as
the chest. It was, perhaps, not handsome, but
it was interesting, for it was just thus that I
had, when I was at school, pictured to myself
Jinghiz Khan, Timur, and the other great Mon-
golian conquerors. A few days later it appeared
that Mahmud, as he was named, was not quite
of the same stock as Jinghiz Khan and Timur.
He was of a very pacific and apathetic disposition :
a man who had never hurt a fly. From the
decorative point of view, however, he cut a
fine figure, with his Mongolian features, at the
head of our caravan. He looked entirely lke
an Asiatic Tartar, and one could not ask more
than that of a Turkish zapitveh.

We were presently ready tostart. Hassan, for
the first time, gave his click and groan, which was
to sound in my ears like pleasant music for
the next three weeks, and the animals at once
set out. Mahmud rode first, I second, and the
two pack-horses followed. Garabed brought up
the rear, while Hassan, “‘ the father of the horses,”’
ran about on foot to wherever his services were
required at the moment.

48HROM SYRtA TO MESOPOTAMIA

For the whole of the first day we travelled
eastward. Up and down hill we went all day,
along the sunny and wholly treeless slopes of a
small range that rose on our left. The real charm
of the country was in the prospect which we
had on our right. On that side the undulating
land, shading from a brownish to a greenish oray,
stretched out into almost infinitely remote dim
distances in the direction of the Kuphrates.
Just at one spot an expanse of water, Lake
Sabkhah, gleamed like a mirror amidst the folds
of the land. The scenery was entirely different
from what I had seen for the last few days.
Here we had the far horizon of the boundless
steppes, with no rest for the eye, which lifts all
day toward the infinite distance. This was
really Asia. Nor was it without a thrill that one
recalled that one was following the route which
so many great had followed during centuries,
and even millennia: Alexander, the Roman
Emperors, the prophets, the Crusaders, all im-
pelled onward as if by some invisible force,
drawn toward the mysterious land through which
flowed the two great rivers of fame and legend,
the land that had borne the earliest of civilised
peoples.

From time to time we came to a village, lying

D 49Mie OW RNY DOWN = fat TIGRIS

always, on account of the springs, in some small
depression. These villages all had houses of
the beehive shape which is peculiar to northern
Syria, each section surmounted by a kind of
dome of some three yards in diameter. Bricks
baked in the sun were the building material.
Every house has several of these trough-shaped
domes. Under one is the harem, under another
the reception-room, under a third the stable,
and so on. Thus a village is a collection of these
domes, generally counting a hundred or more
in all.

By evening we reached the oasis of Nahr-al-
Dhahab, the ‘“‘ River of Gold.” The stream
really deserves its name, for it has converted the
narrow valley into a veritable land of gold. The
oasis lies like a jewel in the grim waste of the
environing gray steppe. Pure water sparkles
and flows through small channels, and on all sides
the green verdure flourishes in the gardens which
cover the vale. The oasis is, of course, rather
thickly populated. On its western border is the
town of Bab, which is now the first resting-place
of the caravans that leave Aleppo for the east.
It is a fairly large town, with a bazaar and several
khans, dominated by a hill which bears a very
ancient sanctuary where Nabi Haskil (Ezechiel ?)

50EROM "SYRiA TO MESOPOTA MLA

and Akil ibn Abi Talib, a brother of the Khalif
Ali, are said to have been buried.

Much more important than Bab in the Middle
Ages was the town of Biza’ah, which has degener-
ated into a small village, on the opposite side of
the valley, where we pitched our camp for the
night. A handsome square minaret still rises
above the village, a witness to the early Arab
days. As in the case of the chief mosque at
Aleppo, and quite unlike the slender round
minarets of the Turks, the tower is a massive
quadrangular structure. It is not dated, but
the finely carved cornices, entirely of the ancient
style, enable us to conclude that it is a monu-
ment of the early centuries after the Hegira.
In the small mosque which lies close to it some
Byzantine capitals have been incorporated ; and
this, in conjunction with ancient legends that tell
of another place in the district called Batnae,
Shows that the region was thickly populated
before the Mohammedan period began.

Monotonous desert was the character of the
land through which we travelled the next day,
as is characteristic of the waterless plateau-
scenery of northern Syria. It was remarkable
to find some traces of remote antiquity in nearly
every one of the poor villages through which

olMY TOU RNEM DOWN  LHE BoGR Ls

we passed. At Harim, in particular, one finds
far outspreading the village of to-day the
remains of fine stone walls which indicate an
ancient town of some considerable size; prob-
ably that which is named Thiltauri in the
Peutinger list (and Phaltauri in that of Ravenna).
The land must have been far better cultivated
in those days. We know that in ancient times
the entire stretch of country between the Ku-
phrates and Syria was a continuous province of
cotton and corn. Cotton reached the district
from India as a consequence of the campaign of
Alexander the Great, and it was from here that
it spread to Egypt. One may argue that a pros-
perity which the land has once enjoyed is bound
to return to it at some future date. Already the
Baghdad Railway follows the route along which
I rode, and thus one of the conditions of recovery
has been realised. Another, and not less
important, condition that needs to be realised
is settled political administration. Until the
peasant has a guarantee that the fruits of his
labour will not be taken from him, either by the
swarms of nomad Arabs who scour the region
or by the high-handed action of the tax-gatherers,
projects of irrigation and railway stores are of

no value.
52hyeOoM SVbntA TCO MESO PRP OTA MEA

Toward evening we reached Manbidj, the
ancient Bambyke-Hierapolis. To-day the miser-
able little town is chiefly inhabited by Circassians,
who migrated here after the Russo-Turkish War
of 1877-8, when Turkey was compelled to
surrender the Caucasus to Russia. We spent
the night in the house of one of these. He was
one of the original settlers from the Caucasus.
They have retained their old habits and costume,
and wear still the black Astrachan cap and a belt
of cartridges across the chest.

Our host made every possible effort to entertain
us properly, and, while he had no fatted calf
to kill for us, the well-seasoned pilaf (rice-dish),
the great treat of the Circassians, which he offered
us, was a mark of honour. Thena number of
his friends came in to pass the evening with us,
and they kept on coming until the room was
crowded, and many had to stand in the doorway.
We spent several hours very agreeably thus,
and when, after a time, a large, brilliantly polished
samovar was put on the middle of the stove, and
the teacups circulated, all were stirred still more,
and there was great talk about their lives and
adventures. When I told them that I came
from a country that was full of high mountains,
the eyes of the elders lit up, and they began to

O38Maye J O,U RN ny DOWN Lae LLG es

talk about the snowfields and peaks of their
Caucasian home, which was now so very far
away, and on which their eyes would never
ASAIN. i

When, however, I came next morning to the
ruins of Bambyke-Hierapolis, I was almost a
little angry with my Circassian friends. For it
would be difficult to imagine a more thorough
onslaught on ancient ruins than these Circassians
had accomplished. The remark applies to other
places where the Circassians were settled; for
the Turkish Government always planted them
in the vicinity of ancient ruins—as at Jerash, to
the east of the Jordan, for instance—and they
proceeded to plunder the ancient monuments
without reserve. Sometimes they dug the ancient
masonry out of the ground in order to build their
own houses with it. We can best see the extent
to which this plundering of the Circassians went
when we read in the older works of travel what
impressive ruins were still to be seen before they
came. Maundrell, ‘for. instance, an English
traveller of 1699, tells us that the town was still
enclosed in a great quadrangle of stone walls.
Pococke, who came some forty years later, says
that the towers were still there, and it was possible
to mount to the top of the walls by steps

o4KROM SYRLTA TO MESO PO TAM LA

and take a walk there. Now it is very
difficult to find any trace whatever of these
walls and towers.

It is particularly saddening to stand in the
centre of the circuit of the ancient city. Here
was once the metropolis of the famous cult of
the goddess Atargatis, the Dea Syra, whom the
Greeks called Derketo, and now all that one
finds, besides a few traces of walls, is a miserable
puddle that must be the last relic of the marble-
lined temple lake of long ago. The sacred
fishes which were once dedicated here to the
Syrian goddess have, of course, long since dis-
appeared ; the fishes which were, Pliny tells us,
decorated with gold, and used to come at the
call of their keeper and allow themselves to be
stroked by him.

The great blocks of stone which still peep out
of the soil here and there near the lake must have
been part of the great temple of the Venus
Hierapolis, which contained such treasures that
Crassus, it is said, spent his time plundering it
instead of prosecuting the war against the
Parthians for the ally of the Romans, the
Armenian king Artabazes. As he left the temple
he had a sinister omen. His son stumbled on the
threshold, and the father fell over him; and soon

95Moe Do Onl nh NB yee DIOIW N “LAE hIiG RES

after was the terrible defeat at Carrhae, where
his seven legions were annihilated.

It is still worse in other parts of the ruined
town. Scarcely anywhere is there any trace left
of the monumental buildings. Just at one spot
there are scanty remains which probably belonged
at one time to a stadium and a theatre. During
the later years of the Roman Empire Hierapolis
was the brilliant metropolis of the province of
Euphratesia, and it is repeatedly mentioned in
the history of the Roman wars in the east.
It was here that Julian the Apostate met the
accident which was regarded as a dire portent of
his end. Fifty of his soldiers are said to have
been killed by the fall of a door, and not long
afterwards Julian lost his hfe in the Persian
campaign.

The second period of prosperity of Manbidj
was during the Arab Middle Ages. The town
was for a time in the possession of the Byzantines,
but it was taken by Harun al Rashid, the famous
contemporary of Charlemagne, who made it the
metropolis of the Syrian frontier province.
Through his governor he adorned it with many
fine buildings. In the days of the Atabekes and
the Sultan Saladin, who captured it in 1175, it
was one of the strongest centres of Mohamme-
026FROM, SYRIA TO MESOPOTAMIEA

dan power in northern Syria. All the pottery
and fragments one finds in the area of the ruins
belong to this second period of prosperity of
Manbidj, the Islamic Middle Ages; and there
are various inscriptions recalling the period.
When the Circassians came to seek building
material for their homes, they took all sorts of
relics of the Islamic Middle Ages. I heard quite
casually of one who discovered a_ beautiful
star-shaped fountain of the period, which may
have belonged to the private house of some
wealthy man.

In the afternoon we left Manbidj. I wanted
to make straight for Nizib, which lies at the foot
of the northern range of Mesopotamia. I had
heard that a ruined Byzantine church was still
to be found there. But as we should have to
deviate from the caravan route to do this, we
were vigorously opposed by the father of our
horses. He thought the excursion quite unneces-
sary, and used all sorts of arguments to turn me
from my design. Neither he nor the zaptieh
knew the way ; and we should be certain to lose
ourselves in the mighty desert; and the whole
place was beset by wandering Turcomans who
might rob us. It was very much safer and better
to follow the broad, fine caravan route, along

o7MY JOO RINE XY DOWN, THE “LLGRTsS

which he knew of plenty of beautiful ruins, much
larger and more interesting than any I should
findin Nizib. ‘‘ Fear God,” he said in conclusion,
““and follow the advice of an experienced man.
Take the safe way to the Euphrates, and thou
wilt not regret having followed my advice.”
But, as my Circassian hosts, who knew the district
well, said that the route was not at all dangerous
or difficult, and offered me a Circassian guide,
I took the offer, and Hassan agreed. For some
time, of course, he continued to object, and he
kept up a long monologue, to which I paid no
attention, nearly the whole of the afternoon,
alternately calling God and his horses to witness
that his right of choice had been overruled.

So we started. The country through which
we now passed was quite different in character
from that of the last two days. We had left
the waterless steppe of north Syria for the region
of the western tributaries of the Euphrates.
Here and there we came to a small fertile spot
such as Sadjur, then we once more crossed the
dividing range, which was thinly populated.
We spent the night in a little Turcoman village,
and the people, of whom Hassan had given us
so terrible an account, were extremely friendly
and hospitable. They at once begged us to stay
08EROM SYRIA “LO ME SOP OLAM TA

the night, and we were installed in the noblest
of the Turcoman huts, so that it was unnecessary
to fix up our tent.

Next morning I was awakened very early by
agoat. It had spent the night with other animals
of all sorts in the back part of the house, and
when, in the morning, it found the customary
way out barred by a camp-bed (a thing it had
never seen before) with a European in it, it came
to the desperate conclusion that the only thing
it could do was to leap over the obstacle.

We started early, and soon after we had left
the village we struck the caravan route from
Aleppo to Biredjik. Naturally, this gave Hassan
a fine opportunity to begin again, and I made
peace with him and divided the caravan. He,
under the protection of Mahmud, was to take
the two pack-horses and go straight to Biredjik
and find a lodging for us. I, on the other hand,
with Garabed alone, would make the excursion
to Nizib, and would expect to reach Biredjik
late the same evening. The father of our horses
was delighted with this program, and we were
all in good humour when we said good-bye to
each other.

A few hours later we crossed the small river
on a high, medieval bridge, and we found ourselves

o9MYC) O UCRINGE Yo DOWN Dae Tie Res

 

in the town. It hes in a delightful situation ;
in the centre of a circular valley surrounded by
vineyards and olive groves, on the warm slopes
of the limestone range which rises from the
north-Syrian plain. Tradition has not preserved
the ancient name; but, as the neighbouring
towns Aintab and Biredjik are mentioned even
in the days of the Assyrians, we may assume that
there was a small town here also at the time.
The ruined church of Byzantine age, for the sake
of which I had come, shows that at that time the
place was not inconsiderable (Plate IVb). It
is now called Kuiliseh Jami (the “ church-
mosque’’), and the name tells us that the
Mohammedans converted it into a mosque. For
this reason the Christian paintings had to be
whitewashed out of sight, and everything that
suggested the Christian cult (altar, chancel,
etc.) was abolished. The open space now,
therefore, looks bleak and bald. In itself,
however, 1t must, at the time when it served for
Christian worship, have been rather impressive.
In general plan it consists, like most of the
Byzantine churches of the time of Justinian,
of two intersecting cylindrical vaults, with a
dome at the point of intersection. EHastwards
it ends in the semicircular apse and the adjacent
602 Span en nna nenannnae nae apa melLLnte |
ay f ee
—— a a

eite
cute;
a)
a

PLATE 1V.—A. COURT OF THE CHIEF MOSQUE AT ALEPPO, WITH THE
CITADEL IN THE BACKGROUND.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PLATE IV. B. THE KILISEH, AT NIZIB.

To face p. 60.EROM SVB TA TO. MES OPO TA MLA

side-seats, the diaconicon; that is to say, the
sacristy and the prothesis, the place to which
the offertory gifts were brought. While, however,
the structure is typically Byzantine, the hand-
some freestone-work of the building is entirely
Syro-Mesopotamian in character.

It was getting dark when I had finished my
work and we resumed our journey. Our route
lay at first over the outliers of the mountains
round Nizib, amongst vineyards, but the ground
became more level as we descended upon the
plain. After a time we passed a village, and
not long afterwards a medieval well-house ;
and we increased our pace so as not to be too
late in Biredjik. The mountains were now far
behind us. The desert spread spaciously around
us in the moonlit night. We were on the battle-
field of Nizib, where in 1839 the Egyptians
defeated the Turks, who had declined to follow
the advice of Moltke, then a young officer with
a great admiration of the Turks. A mood
peculiar to itself lay upon the desolate, un-
bounded, brilliantly lit steppe, on the northern
horizon of which were high mountains wrapped
in a silver-gray mist.

Three hours after we had left Nizib we reached
a Turkish cemetery, belonging to Biredjik, and

61MiYo 2 J.0O;UgRIN bey DOW N Lae Treats

we had ridden but a few yards farther when
we suddenly found ourselves at the Euphrates !
Never shall I forget the scene it afforded us.
In front of us came flowing the great river out
of the dark: the river of Paradise, the river
on whose banks mankind had learned its first
steps in civilisation and history. Beyond it
there rose out of the moonlit waters the bold
outline of the old fort, at the foot of which lay
the town, with its white minarets gleaming softly
in the moonlight. Over all glittered and sparkled
the star-strewn heavens. And nothing was to
be heard save the gentle lapping of the waters
and some monotonous sound of Arab songs from
the opposite bank.

We shouted to call attention, and we were soon
heard by Hassan and Mahmud, who were waiting
for us on the other side. They at once got out
one of the large river-boats, which have for
centuries taken travellers across, and came
toward us. Quarter of an hour later we and the
animals were on the waters in our Noah’s ark,
and we crossed safely. We soon reached the
Khan, in which a handsome and, fortunately,
clean-looking room had been reserved for me,
with a wooden-latticed window overlooking the
Euphrates. Presently the soft sound of the river
62EROM, SYR A £O, MESO POA MEA

lulled me to sleep, and so I spent my first night
on Mesopotamian ground.

I devoted the next morning to seeing the sights
of Biredjik, choosing the citadel first. It seems
quite inaccessible as it perches on the top of a
high rock which is built into the walls of the
fort. In places the outer layer of the walls
has crumbled away, but the arches behind it
still seem as solid and immovable as _ rocks.
Moltke, in the last century, declared that the fort
was quite impregnable, and it is very easy to
take the word of the great strategist when you
see the mighty blocks of which the walls are
made and walk amidst the arches and casemates.

The view from above is indescribably fine ;
especially out upon the mighty river, which here
leaves the mountains for the plain, it has real
erandeur and majesty. It was on the opposite
bank that Chesney, nearly a hundred years
ago (1836), who closely studied the whole of the
Euphrates, assembled the parts of the steamer
with which he explored the river. He called the
spot Port William. When Moltke was in Biredyjik,
the natives talked to him about the giaour who had
put together there the parts of his atesh kaik
(fire-ship). When at last he made a trial trip
northward, and saluted the Sultan’s castle with

63MIYeR O20 RN EY DOWN 9 LEE TEE RLS

a round from twenty-one cannon, and the old
fort replied pathetically with the one cannon
that was left in it, the whole of Beredjik lined
the banks and said : ‘‘ Look, there is iron floating,
and it is floating against the stream.”

It is also possible to look down from here into
the tangle of crooked streets of the town, and to
hear the cries which come up like a distant
hum from far below. One sees clearly how
important the town still is as a clearing-house
for Mesopotamian trade. Even the Romans made
a zeugma (a boat-bridge) over the river; and
during the whole of the Middle Ages Biredjik,
with its rock-fortress and its abundance of springs
in the vicinity, was marked out as a centre of
trade. It is not surprising that the Crusaders
in turn gave their attention to the place. In
1099, it is said, Albira, as it was then called,
was taken by the Count of Toulouse, and half
a century later the Counts of Edessa bravely
defended it. Shortly afterwards, however, King
Baldwin II of Jerusalem handed it over to the
Byzantine Emperor. From that time onward
Biredjik has retained its importance as a place
for crossing the Euphrates. Especially in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries everybody
came here, as the districts to the south were
64hHROM SYwrtrA TO] MES OP OLA MITA

unsafe on account of the wandering troops of
Arabs and Kurds.

As to its future one cannot speak optimistically.
The mountains to the east of the town are an
insuperable obstacle to the construction of a
railway, and so the Baghdad line passes a good
deal farther south. It looks as if Biredjik will
eradually decay.

That morning I went to make my greeting to
the kaimakam of the town, especially as Mahmud
said that he must now return to Aleppo, and
that the authorities at Biredjik were responsible
for a further escort as far as Urfah. The kai-
makam was rather a young man who, in spite of
his ignorance, took care to cover the defects of
his education very speciously. As soon as I
entered, he quickly took his feet off the divan
and thrust them underneath, as if to impress
upon me that sitting in the European fashion
(instead of squatting) was a life-habit of his.
He wore Arab garments, it is true ; but over them
he had—though the sun made his office as warm
as a stove—put on a thick European overcoat.
He submitted to this heat-torture cheerfully
in face of his subordinates and the people of
Biredjik in order to make them feel that he was
a Kuropeanised person of a higher order.

E 695Mi vedo Unio N Es DOWN “ar TiG Ris

As soon as the first words of greeting were
over, he began to complain feverishly to me of
the misery of a man of his culture being removed
so far from the civilisation of Constantinople.
But as I felt no particular guilt for his banish-
ment to Biredjik, and could do nothing for him,
I tried to bring the conversation to my own
affairs, and asked for a zaptieh. Unfortunately,
this led to fresh lamentations. All his zaptiehs
except two were in the country, and these two he
was about to send on an important official errand
to Aintab. He then had a brilliant idea. Would
I not like to go to Aintab? It was much finer
there than in Mesopotamia. He clearly regarded
all who came from Europe for research as a
learned species of globe-trotters, whose only pur-

a 99

pose was to “ globe-trot,” in any direction what-
ever, so he made every effort to persuade me to
go westward instead of eastward. I saw that it
was useless to argue further, and I told the
kaimakam bluntly that I greatly regretted that
I was unable to meet his wishes. I abandoned
the idea of getting a military escort from him
and bade him good-bye.

But we had not been long back in the khan,
packing our luggage, when there burst in upon
us a youth who, though he had no horse or

66HR OM Sy REA or@ MESOPOTAMIA

weapon, was decorated with a few odds and ends
of some ancient uniform. He brought a friendly
message from the kaimakam, and said that he
was ordered to accompany me to Urfah instead
of a zaptieh. His name, he said, was Isah
(= Jesus), and he was born in El Kuds (= Jeru-
salem). He would obviously be of little use in
case of attack, but, as I had not the least talent
for robber adventures of that sort, I felt that I
had better give up my idea of military prepara-
tions. So, as Isah looked a smart enough youth,
I received him into our little company, to his
great delight. We quitted the ancient nest of
the Crusaders and, under the escort of Jesus of
Jerusalem, we set out for Urfah.

There are three routes from Biredjik to Urfah.
The northernmost is the Darb-Sultani, the King’s
Way. In earlier times all travellers went by it.
From the travel books of the seventeenth century
it is clear that at that time there was no question
of any other route. But it goes through desolate
and stony country, and is now entirely abandoned.
Instead of it, travellers use the much more
southerly caravan route to Saruj; in fact, this
was not a little used in earlier times, as it is indi-
cated in Isidoreof Charax and in the Peutinger list.

There is, however, a third route which is almost

67Maw eo OR NEY DOWN DRE TLIGRES

midway between the other two, and is really
the shortest from one town to the other. On
that account the active governor. of Uriah
at the beginning of the present century, Edhem
Sabri, had the road well made throughout,
which is the only thing of its kind in Asiatic
Turkey. Curiously enough, this made road has
caused everybody to abandon what is really
the shortest route. To anyone who knows the
condition of Turkey at the time, this is not as
incredible as it sounds. In Turkey—in Turkey
in Asia, at least—the roads are never repaired,
so that this one fell into complete decay. Bridges,
ete., became positive obstacles, instead of serving
any longer the purpose for which they were built.
But in spite of Hassan’s protests I chose the
middle route, because I knew that it passed near
a good many ruins which had never been explored.

First we had, by a steep, winding road, to
mount the hill behind Biredjik. At every step
we took the view became grander and wider.
The view, especially, over the town, river and
fort, upon which we looked down as a bird would,
was extremely picturesque, almost fantastic.
When we reached the summit, the road turned
straight to the east, and from this point to Urfah
the scenery was of much the same character:

68EPROM Shy nh A, LO MES OPO TAM TA

a hilly region, treeless, covered with green
verdure, and strewn with blocks of stone. In
its poverty and bareness it had a striking resem-
blance to the Alpine zone in Europe, as one finds
it above the forest-level, at a height of some
seven thousand feet. There were, it is true, no
glaciers here, and it was only in the far distance
that one saw snow-covered peaks. Yet when
the road wound through a valley, serpentining
up to the heights, one could easily imagine that
one was travelling on a road in the Alps. So
we continued, at times passing through small
valleys, again over the desolate and naked heights,
hot and parching in summer, cold and raw in
winter. It was generally difficult to know the
direction, for, apart from the fact that the maps
of the district are quite wrong, it is not easy to
keep the sense of orientation in this confusing
mass of valleys radiating in every direction.

It was particularly fine when at times we
mounted a hill and were afforded a view of the
great Saruj Plain that lay to the south of us.
This is the granary of northern Mesopotamia.
Large stretches of it are still fairly populated,
and the beehive-shaped houses of the people
surround every ¢ell (mound). This fruitful plain
spreads far to the south, and is continued even

69Moy FOU nRNE. DOWN CHE TIGRIS

where the maps show only a large blank space.
It comes to an end only, after a journey of several
days, at the banks of the Euphrates. I had
myself ascertained this some years before, when
I had, on a warm summer’s night, crossed the
whole region as far as Kal’at al Nejim (the
Castle of the Stars) on the Euphrates.

The mountainous region we were traversing 1s,
on the contrary, very thinly populated. Only
in the small valleys, where water is to be had,
are there a few poor Kurd dwellings ; and these
again are often close to a tell. How different
the country must have looked in ancient, or even
early Christian, times, when the Syrian Church
was at its height ! On nearly every side one still
sees near the villages the remains of monumental
buildings of long ago. Standing to-day, in a good
state of preservation, are ruined churches of
from the fifth to the ninth century which have,
owing to the solidity of their stone-work,
withstood all the ravages of time. Such, for
instance, are Kyzyl Burdj (Red Castle), Boyuk
Keshishlik (the Great Monastery), and other
places.

But the finest are the monastic establishments
on elevated sites with beautiful prospects, hitherto
known only from Syrian Christian literature, which
70EROM SYRIA TO MESOPOTAMIA

were scattered over the whole of the Nimrud
Dagh. Remains of them are found, for instance,
in Mar Ya’kub at Urfah (Plate V), Shabaka,
and at other places. How pleasant it was in
those days to halt by one of these ruins on the
summit of a quiet hill and, sitting on some great
block of stone, enjoy the wonderful view! I
then almost envied a little those monks of the
Nimrud Dagh who spent their idyllic days on
the sunny heights of this mountainous district
fifteen centuries ago. It is true that they must
have had to spend part of the day, in the fashion
of the time, disputing about the dual nature of
Christ (for which J envied them less), but for the
rest of the time they might go outside the gray
walls of the monastery, lie on the short Alpine
herbage, and gaze out upon the beautiful wide
world as far as the snow-covered mountains,
while the white clouds hung motionless above
them in the blue heavens. Generally, also,
life was easier in those days. Scarcity of water,
from which the country now suffers much, was
then unknown; for one almost always finds
near these ruins the remains of large tanks, either
cut out of the limestone rocks, with steps leading
down to them, or solidly built of stone with

vaulted roofs which still in part survive. We
okMy oO U RIN By DOWN Le ESE LEG Rs

also not infrequently find near these places
extensive remains of cave-tombs. At Sary
Maghara there was, according to an inscription
there, the pandocheion, or shelter, of a certain
Aurelius.

Late in the evening of the third day I reached
Urfah alone. As I wanted to visit some of the
ruined places lying at a distance from the road,
and had not dared to ask Garabed, much less
Hassan, to accompany me, I had delighted
them by sending them on with the pack-horses
to Urfah. They were warm in their praise of my
decision. So I went on all day with Isah, who was
more useful in one way or other than the other
two together, wandering from ruin to ruin; and
it took much longer than I had expected. Hence
it was rather late, and dusk was setting in, when
we thought of looking out for the way to Urfah.

For some time we strayed over wide, desolate
plains strewn with black blocks of basalt, making
rather slow progress, as we were both very tired,
having been on the move since early morning
and not having found any opportunity to eat.
I often dismounted from my horse and made
Isah take my place. We came at last to the edge
of a precipitous wadi. This was too much for
Isah. Whether he was overcome by fatigue
72RROM SVL A DO MES OP OLDAM TA

or feared to leave the moonlit plain and climb
down into the dark hole, at all events he sat on
a block of basalt and, a great tear falling over
his swarthy cheek, he told me emphatically
that he intended to spend the night there. It
was fortunate that at the moment we heard a
dog bark in a neighbouring village, so that I
succeeded in persuading the weary youth at least
to come as far as that.

It was a small Kurd village, and I gave
backsheesh to the elder, and he promised to take
care of Isah until the following morning. He
was then to start fresh for Urfah, which was said
to be not more than three hours’ journey off,
while I, against the advice of the villagers, set
out at once. I rode back to the wad, led my
horse carefully by the bridle down the steep
slope, and went straight on down the valley.
It was a very narrow wadi, in some places almost
a gorge, but it seemed to me—not that the maps
are of any use in such details—to lead generally
in the direction of Urfah. The scenery on both
sides was grand, for the farther I went, and the
deeper the valley cut into the environing plateau,
the higher rose the walls on either side. Masses
of moonlit rock towered up to right and left,
and time after time jutting rocks of fantastic

73My wOURNEY DOWN LHE TLERILS

shape blocked my path, and I had to make my
way round them. Thus I rode on, sometimes
at a gallop, for two hours, when the cliffs on e1ther
side suddenly retreated, and I saw the lights of
Urfah scarcely half an hour’s ride beyond. Soon
afterwards, I was under the hospitable roof of

my friend Dr. A. Vischer, physician to the

German Mission to the East.CHAPTER IV

IN OLD EDESSA

HE Two pDAys I spent in Urfah were

extremely pleasant. After the slow, but

very tiring rides over the rocky plains
of northern Mesopotamia I welcomed the rest,
and I was, like a mother on holiday, able to
set aside all concern about my travelling house-
hold, to say nothing of my trials with Garabed.
There were, moreover, many tokens of civilisa-
tion to remind me of Europe. I had a solid
bed to lie in: one that did not groan or creak
or yield every time I turned over. I had a
real chair to sit on, and I ate in civilised
fashion, with cup and saucer, spoon and fork.
Above all, I had the society of dear friends.

In a word, I became once more a normal
central European; and that is a luxury only
appreciated by the man who has missed it for
some time while making a caravan-journey
in Asia. I need not say that I devoted my time

75MOY = OO UR Nena DOWN LHe Pea Ras

particularly to a thorough study of Urfah, the
ancient Edessa; and the town is well worth
the careful investigation which I made of it.

Goethe once said that the first thing one ought
to do in a foreign town is to find an elevated
point from which one can get a view of the whole.
To any person who goes to Urfah I give that
advice very emphatically ; for the citadel in the
south of the town affords a glorious prospect.
It is situated on a peak of the Nimrud Dagh which
stands out from the main body like a great rock
that has been severed, and it is further isolated
and accentuated by the moats, which have been
cut deep in the rocks. From this point one has
a bird’s-eye view, not only of the town, with all
its houses, streets and mosques, but also, to a
very great extent, of the surrounding country.
One realises the situation of Urfah, a point of
juncture of mountain and plain. On one side is
the Harran plain, which is continuous with the
great steppe of north Mesopotamia, and stretches
like a gigantic gorge toward the northern moun-
tains. On the other side the eye ranges over the
desolate, inhospitable ridges of the Nimrud Dagh,
which ends, eastward, in the blue distance, with
the peaks of the voleanic Karadja Dagh. Urtfah
is, as it were, the outpost of the rich plain, just
76ye \ 2 ae
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76.IN OLD CEDES SA

where the roads from Biredjik, Samsat and
Diyarbekr enter it.

On the citadel-hill are the chief landmarks
of the town: two enormous, and still perfect
Corinthian columns, which were raised under
Hellenist influence (Plate V). There is about
them a veil of impenetrable mystery; for we
know not what purpose they served, and even the
imperfectly preserved Syriac inscriptions on them,
which contain the names of princes of the Edessa
dynasty, have not wholly solved the mystery.
It is certain only that they were not connected
with any building, as they are much too large.
Probably we must regard them as memorial
columns. They must have been raised to com-
memorate some victory or other notable event.

Right under the shadow of the citadel-hill
are the two sacred pools. The fishes in them,
which are still regarded as sacred, show that here
also the Syrian goddess, to whom the fishes were
dedicated, must have been worshipped. In
other words, in the old Semitic days, before Edessa
was converted to Christianity, there must have
been round the pools a sanctuary similar to that
at Hierapolis. I had ascertained during a
previous journey that the fishes of Urfah are
still tame in some degree. It was then summer,

fiMey JOR RINE Yo DOWN DHE TIGRIS

and all the males of Urfah used the sacred pool
as a bathing-place. And once, when I also rode
out and bathed under the deep shade of the trees,
the fishes, I recall, at first swam timidly past me,
then came quite boldly and confidently round
me, just as if they were domestic pets. It is,
of course, forbidden to catch these fishes. Pos-
sibly that is the reason of their tameness and,
especially, of their extraordinary increase; for
I never saw so many fishes together as in this
pool at Urfah, where it really seemed as if there
were more fishes than water.

At one of these pools—the one called ’Ain
Ziklah—a coffee-house has been established in
the open air; and there the men sit, under the
tall old trees, all day long, sucking at their water-
pipes, drinking their coffee, throwing a crumb of
bread to the fishes at times—but not saying a
word, and yet thinking it all very fine. But the
northern pool, the Birket Ibrahim, is the more
interesting. Abraham is profoundly venerated
by the Mohammedans of Urfah. Indeed, they
still point out the grotto in which the worthy
patriarch is said to have been born. On the
southern edge of this Pool of Abraham there is,
besides a remarkable and beautiful old cypress,
a very interesting minaret, which is certainly of
78IN OUD EDESSA

great age (Plate VI). Two well-preserved Arabic
inscriptions record that it was built at the
beginning of the thirteenth century ; but in this
case it is not necessary to take literally the words
of the Sultan Malik Ashaf Musa, who set up the
inscriptions. At the most he may have repaired
the tower to some slight extent ; and for this he
very modestly tried to earn the gratitude of
posterity as the builder of the tower, not antici-
pating that there would one day be such persons
as archeologists to expose his fraud. The tower
is really much older. One can see by the style
that it belongs to the early period of Islam, the
time of the Ummayades.

At the opposite edge of the pool is the very
fine Madrasah of the Khalil al-Rachman mosque.
Graceful columned halls, which are reflected on
the surface of the water, surround the court, which
contains tall and slender cypresses. In the
centre of the court there is a small mosque,
surmounted by three domes. The narrow round
minaret, the finely articulated arches, with their
bold changes of level, and the fantastic delicacy
of their curves, breathe the spirit of the earliest
times.

It is here, by the old pools, that the chief
buildings of ancient Edessa must have been

79MY SOURNEY DOWN? LEE PEG Ris

raised ; here in antiquity—to use the common
expression of experts—must have been the monu-
mental city. And, if one may judge by the
literary accounts, these buildings of Edessa cannot
have been inferior in splendour and beauty to
those of the Hellenistic towns of Syria. We are
told, for instance, that there were “ atria’:
ecolumned halls round public squares, such as
there were in the fora of the age of the Roman
Emperors, at Pompeii, Timgad and Rome.
There were also ‘“ porticus”?: which we must
take to be whole streets of columns, such as are
still preserved in the ruins of the great Syrian
towns of later Roman days, like Palmyra and
Djerash. The summer palace, also, of the Kings
of Edessa is said to have been here; and, in the
Christian period, the great cathedral.

One of the most interesting things in Urfah
is incontestably the chief mosque, to the sight of
which I had looked forward with lively expecta-
tions. Previous travellers had said that this
building, which during the Islamic Middle Ages
was counted one of the wonders of the Moham-
medan world, and out of which all unbelievers
were jealously excluded, belonged to the best days
of Urfah, namely, its Christian period, and was
simply the ancient Christian cathedral. The town
80PLATE VI.—THE TOWER AT ABRAHAM'S POOL, URFAH.

To face p. So.IN OLD E DES ws

had been very important in those days, because
in it, to use the words of the ecclesiastical historian
Haase, “Christianity had for the first time
captured a throne,” when the royal house of
Edessa had embraced the Christian faith. This
event had given the town an impulse to develop-
ment which lasted for centuries, and the spiritual
activity, which made Edessa the focus of Syrian
civilisation, made it also the birthplace of the
classical literary language of the Syrians. At
the same time the possession of such invaluable
relics as the treasured letter of Jesus to Abgar

gave the town a guarantee of invincibility.
Hence in those centuries countless monu-
mental buildings arose in Urfah, especially
churches ; and it will be understood that I looked
forward eagerly to my study of the ancient
mosque. For this I had procured an wradeh
(cabinet-order of the Sultan), which gave me the
right to enter and study it. But I had a disillu-
sion. It is true that the walls of the court of
the mosque include a lot of stone-work, and door
and window apertures, which must have been
part of a large Christian church, and here and
there in the court lie capitals and columns which
certainly belonged to the same building. But
the mosque itself is a tasteless, three-naved
F SlMY JS OUR NEY DOWN LHR ThE RIES

edifice ; it may possibly go back to early Arabian
times, but it has no great architectural interest.

The minaret, however, which is larger and
higher than the old tower at the Pool of Abraham,
is worth notice. It has an octagonal form, and
it opens above in arcades or galleries with round
arches. I wished to ascend it, but when I saw
the mutesarif and told him what I wanted, the
only answer I received was a very black look.
He then turned to the cadi and other dignitaries
of Urfah who drank black coffee with him from
early morning until late at night, and, as they
also frowned, he looked at me again, much as
if I had asked him to help me to go up to the
moon. He next gave all sorts of excuses: the
tower was dangerous, and there was nothing to
see above, and a hundred other things. It was
only when I produced my iradeh that he suddenly
changed his tone, and told me that the women of
Urfah would be deeply offended if a geaour were
allowed to look down from a minaret upon the
houses, and even into the harems, of their town.
We had a long argument about it, but at last I
succeeded in convincing them that I was a quite
harmless person, and that my scientific studies
were important; and so the mutesarif gave me
permission to ascend the tower if I were accom-
82IN OLD EDESSA

panied by policemen. Of course, when it came
to the point, I found that the two police officials
who went with me were far too lazy to mount
the stairs with me, and so I was able to make my
investigation at my ease in the airy summit.
Whether such a terrible thing happened as that
my eye fell upon the women of Urfah, I really
do not remember. It is possible that I saw one
or two women, swathed up to the ears, slip across
a court. In any case, the view of the town,
which lay outspread before me as on a map, and
the prospect of the citadel, enabled me to under-
stand better many points in connection with
the ancient topography of Urfah.

838CHAPTER V

THROUGH THE DJABAL TEKTEK

\HERE ARE TWO ROUTES from Urfah to
Diyarbekr. One skirts the volcanic
. Karadja Dagh to the north, the other
to the south. The first is the route generally

 

chosen. There is, however, little of any interest
in it. The district is inhabited, and the road
is monotonous. All the caravans, and most of
the European travellers of the last few decades,
go by it. In a word, it is entirely prosy.

The other route, skirting the Karadja Dagh
to the south, and passing through the Djabal
Tektek, has for decades been avoided by all
travellers. It not only goes a longer way round,
but about a hundred years ago the Turks, fleeing
before the Egyptian army, destroyed all the wells
along the route. Moreover, as the Kurd sheikh,
Ibrahim Pasha, had pitched his camp in the ruined
town of Weranshar along that road, the natives
came to regard it as very unsafe.

84Don O UG as DAB AL Wh Ket hk

Yet I was most anxious to go that way, as it
had been much used in ancient and Byzantine
times. I knew that at Weranshar there were
the remains of one of the most important speci-
mens of Christian architecture, a large round
church, and I heard many rumours about it
which people had from bedouins or followers
of Ibrahim Pasha, whom one still frequently
encounters in the Djabal Tektek.

It will be understood, therefore, that I looked
with great longing toward the fretted outline
of this little-explored and mysterious range. In
the far distance it rose like a dim blue mystery
out of the boundless Mesopotamian plain. I
could gaze at it whenever I wished: by day,
when the glare of noon shrouded the unknown
hills in a veil of haze, or in the evening, when its
rocks faintly glowed, and its outline became clear,
as the setting sun darkened the shadows of
its rifts and gorges. It was at all hours as if
some invisible power were calling and drawing
me toward these wild wastes of stone. The father
of our horses, naturally, was not at all disposed
to listen to my plan. He preferred the solid and
safe ground of a familiar caravan route to any
blue mystery, however dim and alluring. But
when Dr. Vischer expressed a wish to go with

85Maye, SuOnW RONGE Yo = DIO WN: LE LGR ws

me to Diyarbekr through the Tektek, I hesitated
no longer, and we began to prepare for our
departure.

We started from Urfah one afternoon and, with
our faces always toward the Djabal Tektek,
we rode straight across the fertile Harran plain,
passing by a number of villages. The plain
spread on our right like a vast sea, and on every
side one saw, far to the south, countless fells
rising from it, the sole relics of earlier settlements.
It gives one some idea how thickly populated,
how prosperous, and how well tilled this land,
which can now barely support itself, was in
ancient times. Whether the new railway and
new facilities for export will lead to recovery, it
is impossible to say. One thing only is certain,
that there was once civilisation here, and that the
land which now lies fallow and desolate over
ereat stretches must once have bloomed like a
garden of God. It should be possible to restore
this prosperity if the essential condition of it 1s
fulfilled: orderly government and security of
life and property.

That evening we reached the foot of the Tektek
range, and halted in a village—Indjirli—heside
a large tell. At first we pitched our tent amongst
a large resting caravan of camels. The animals

86THROUGH THE DIABAL DEKLE K

had just had their evening meal, and they lay
about on the ground before going to sleep. The
arrival of European travellers, and even the
raising of a tent amongst them, did not seem
to excite them much. They all stretched their
long necks in our direction, and turned their
wise-looking heads toward us, as they ruminated.
They followed our movements with curiosity,
but, apparently, with quite benevolent interest.
Night soon fell, and, as we set about our modest
meal, it became very cold; so cold that at last
we sat, shivering and with chattering teeth,
opposite to each other in our little camp-beds,
and realised that the warm khan, where our men
were, was, for all its lack of cleanliness, far
preferable to the European cleanliness of our cold
tent. So we had our beds and baggage taken
to the khan, and there we spent the rest of the
night with our troop.

Next morning we mounted to the high plateau
of the Djabal Tektek, through narrow, rocky
passes. ‘There was plenty to see even in climbing
the range. Time and again we came upon traces
of the old Roman roads, along which Roman or
Byzantine armies had once come from the west
to Mesopotamia. Not only could we trace the
course of the road itself, cut at times out of the

87VM Yo 3 OURAN hex. DOWN, LEE LG RES

rock as it was, but we repeatedly saw the remains
of small guard-posts, with ruined towers, graves
and cisterns (from one such, roofed with large
stones, one of the stations is still known as
Kapakly—“‘ the place with a lid”’); and the
columns lying about showed that these small
military posts cannot have been quite devoid
of taste. We even found figs which had
grown wild: a clear proof that in former days
fruit gardens were laid out amongst these in-
hospitable rocks.

When we reached the top, we travelled all day,
and far into the night, over the wild plateau,
past a number of small ruins of watch-towers
and traces of ancient settlements, until we came,
at Kal’at albu Khaimah, to a Kurdish camp which
offered us hospitality for the night. The natives
at once prepared for us a bulghur, a cereal food
very common amongst the nomads of northern
Mesopotamia. It is, perhaps, not so pleasant
to the palate as our bread, but it is much the
same in nutritive value.

As we were awakened early next morning by
the crowing of the cocks and the bleating of
the goats, we got up at once from our rickety
camp-beds. We then breakfasted in the airy
Kurdish tent, open on all sides, and we noticed,
88THROwWGH Lan DS ABA wT Eyke dT Es

hardly two hours’ ride away, an isolated peak
crowned by the turreted wall of an ancient castle
—the Kal’at Shamdin. We therefore sent our
two servants and the father of the horses, who
did not need telling twice, with the luggage on
to the khan at Weranshar, our next destination,
and we ourselves rode across the fields to the
ruins.

Kal’at Shamdin is a medieval castle. Its
towers and walls are still well preserved in parts,
and, when one stands on the rubbish-strewn
platform above, one has a very wide view over
the desolate steppes and the rocky wastes of the
Tektek. Rising into the deep blue sky is a long,
white, lightly fretted horizon: the snowy peaks
of the Commagenian mountains beyond the
Euphrates. It was interesting to find that
the castle is built on the site of an ancient
settlement which had its citadel there; for
all round the castle-hill one sees the remains
of graves and cisterns, and there are architec-
tural fragments of late-ancient times on every
side. Thus the isolated castle is a kind of
symbol of the history of this forgotten ancient
land. One sees how the medieval brigand
nobility of small emirs and princelings rose
upon the prosperity of the older life, and how

89Mie gohO ORIN Ey (DOWN LAE “Lire RES

they later abandoned the solid castle of their
fathers and drifted back upon the broad steppes
and plains.

It was rather late in the afternoon when we
left Kalat Shamdin, and, after a long seven
hours’ ride over broad plains, largely strewn
with basalt blocks, we reached Weranshar, where
we fortunately found our men in the khan, late
at night.

If I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget
my astonishment when, the next morning, I
was awakened at Weranshar by the puff-puff-
puff of a crude oil motor! During my journeys
in Asiatic Turkey I had had every sort of experi-
ence, and had seen much that was surprising and
unexpected; but nothing so fabulous as this
had ever before come my way. At first it seemed
to me that I must be dreaming, but, when I
rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, yet the motor
continued its pedantic European melody, I was
compelled to believe in its existence, however
incredible it seemed. And the most interesting
point is that the motor—it was the motive power
of a small mill—did not belong to some enter-
prising industrialist or tradesman from Beirut
or Aleppo, but had been brought to and installed
in Weranshar by that king of the desert, Ibrahim
90"THROUGH LHe DIAS at TEKTEK

Pasha, who was, at least in the east, much talked
about at that time.

He was, in fact, a very interesting personality.
He was a wealthy nomad sheikh, half Kurd and
half Arab in blood, and he had—to tell the truth,
at first by stealing camels—obtained an enormous
number of beasts and become richer and richer :
‘“ oreater than all who dwell in the east.”” This
marauder brought fresh tribes of the district
under his rule every year, and he became the ruling
power in Upper Mesopotamia; as there was
no one there, not even the Sultan, who could
check him. Hence within the Turkish State
he formed one of his own, and it was completely
autonomous and sovereign.

The Government at Constantinople had now
to take action, and, instead of outlawing Ibrahim,
it sought his friendship, and even tried to bring
his armed hordes into some sort of relation to
the Turkish power under the title of Hamidieh
Police. This naturally gave Ibrahim more am-
bitious views than ever, and his power continued
to grow. When the Sultan, in making him a
Pasha, sent him a present of two hundred rifles,
in a very short time—no one knew how—they
orew to ten thousand rifles. It was then that he
selected Weranshar as his residence, and he kept

91My JOURNEY DOWN THE TIERS

a regular court there. Personally I never met
him, but European travellers who visited Weran-
shar in those days tell how he administered
justice—his Solomonic verdicts became famous—
and how he had as executioner a swarthy Moor
who carried out his sentences ; or the ‘“‘ judgments
of God,” as they were in his eyes.

Presently, however, ominous clouds gathered
over Ibrahim’s head. Many of his friends fell
away, and in the end he rode off into the desert.
Now that the lion was dead, the Turkish Govern-
ment had an access of courage, and threw many
of his followers into prison. It was at this point
that I came to Weranshar. The little town
looked very sad and stricken over the fall of its
ruler. No one, however, now professed to be a
friend of his, and only the song of the motor
loudly and edifyingly gave forth the praise of its
creator.

Ibrahim Pasha’s people were not particularly
considerate of theruins of Weranshar. They
were chiefly regarded as quarries, and so the
remains of ancient Constantinopolis—as the town
was called in early times—which were, according
to earlier accounts (by Ainsworth, for instance,
and the Germans Humann and Puchstein), much
richer than they now are, had to pay the cost of
92THROUGH DHE DIABAL TEK TEE

his considerable zeal for building. Of the finest
and most valuable ruin, it is true, the splendid
round church, the eight great central columns and
the outer walls are still for the most part standing.
Even an Ibrahim could not do much injury to
their solid masonry, which has weathered all
storms for fifteen hundred years. This re-
markable central structure is a final witness to
the great prosperity of the town in Byzantine
times, when it had a large garrison and was, for
a period, the seat of the Dux Mesopotamiz.
Its ground-plan, combining a great octagon,
surrounded by a round outer wall, with an
oblong choir, almost reminds us of the solutions
of some of our advanced European architecture.
While I worked in the ruins, Dr. Vischer also
had plenty to do. For there, as in every other
place we visited, our servants at once took care
to spread the news of the arrival of the “ Hakim
Bashi ”’ (the Head Physician), and it was soon the
gossip of the day. So all the weary and laden,
the sick and unfortunate, came up for a consulta-
tion; and amongst them were, naturally, des-
perate cases for which even a Hakim Bashi could
do nothing. Apart from these, every man who
remembered that he had recently had some
pressure or twinge at his breast or stomach made
93VOY J OVU RNG Yo DOWN DHE TTe Ris

good use of the opportunity to get advice from
the famous doctor. The most agreeable feature
of it all was the boundless confidence they all
had in a European doctor. Everybody seemed to
know that he had in his pocket a pill for every
conceivable malady. I have rarely appreciated
as I did during those days the need for the Medical
Mission. Young European doctors might meet
a great want in those parts instead of treading on
each other’s heels at home.

The journey from Weranshar to Diyarbekr
took rather more than two days. It afforded
a great deal of variety and much that was beauti-
ful and interesting, but I will deal briefly with
it. On the second day we saw, in the middle
of the Mesopotamian plain, the Kasr Heleli, a
quite modern feudal castle with a regular keep
and a complete ring of walls, built only two years
before. But when we reached it, all was sad
and desolate, because the owner, one of Ibrahim
Pasha’s followers, had just been taken off to
prison at Diyarbekr. In spite, however, of
this gloom which had settled on all who remained
in the castle, I was almost excited when, going
through the entrance to the tower-apartment
of the marauder, I found a cross and other
Christian emblems neatly chiselled. The reason
94THROUGH Th DIA AL LE KT EK

was that he had brought the stone (!) door
ready made from the ancient Byzantine cemetery
at Weranshar.

Pleasant, again, was the ascent to the hills
which divide the Mesopotamian plain from the
upper valley of the Tigris. It was a very steep
ascent to that picturesque Kurdish nest in the
rock, Darik, in which we spent the night. Then
we rode for a whole day over the plateau, with its
dwarf oaks, from which the eye ranged as far as
the mountains of Armenia beyond the Tigris.
Once we passed a khan which must have belonged
to the days of the Mamelukes. Another time we
saw a ruined fortress, which was, perhaps, one
of those that the Byzantinians raised on their
eastern frontier against the Sassanide.

Never shall I forget the moment when we
suddenly reached the edge of the plateau and I
saw the Tigris for the first time in my life. It
was not the broad, majestic river, flowing through
endless plains, which I had painted in my imag-
ination. Here it was the river that had just
come from the Armenian mountains, still youthful
and charming; it only begins to be navigable
at this point. And in the background, about
two hours’ distance beyond the river, we saw the
walled town of Amida or, as it is now called,

95Maye SoOWeh ENE Yo  “DIOWOIN “ME £ierrs

Diyarbekr. We rode down to the river valley
by a rugged path, and then we followed the
Tigris, on its right bank. A short ride through
the orchards of the town, and we entered by the
Mardin Gate into Diyarbekr, which once was
Amida.CHAPTER VI

KARA AMID, THE BLACK CITY

IYARBEKR IS ONE of the most expressive
and most remarkable towns that I have
ever seen. It is true that natives might
not agree to my description of it. If you ask an
Oriental what is the distinction of Kara Amid
(Black Amida), he will say: “It has black
walls, black dogs, and black hearts.” That 1s
partly true, for the walls of the town, the most
massive and best preserved I have ever seen, are
constructed of black basalt; and even the curs
on the streets seemed to me of a darker shade
than in other Turkish towns. As to the black
hearts, it is possible that at times the population
of the town has displayed a dark fanaticism,
but during the two days I spent there I found
many hearts full of light who did all that they
could to make my stay agreeable.
In any case these three black characteristics
by no means exhaust the sights of Diyarbekr.
G 97MOY OU RNY DOWN THE TiGeis

Apart from the walls, there are in the interior
of the town quite a number of interesting buildings
which carry us back to earlier centuries. There
are, for instance, unfortunately in a very dilapi-
dated condition, several churches of the early
Byzantine period, and they are amongst the most
important structures known to Christian arche-
ology. Most of all, Diyarbekr has one of the finest
mosque-courtyards in Asia, on the four sides of
which masonry of the most diverse periods is
welded into a remarkably expressive whole.

And, when I speak of the sights of Diyarbekr,
I must not forget the incomparable beauty of its
site. Especially when one crosses the bridge over
the Tigris and ascends the heights on the banks
to the east and south, the town presents a most
impressive picture. You see how the river,
coming from the north, waters the green gardens
out of which rise the rocks on which the town is
built. On the edges of the rocks are the great
walls, constructed of tooled blocks of basalt,
with their huge bastions and behind these you
see the domes and towers of the mosques of the
town. Add the snow-capped mountains of Kur-
distan, which glow white on the entire horizon,
and you have an unforgettable picture.

Of the Christian edifices I must first mention
98KARA AMID) THE BrACK City

the Malachite church of St. Thomas, which was
originally, if the appearances are not deceptive,
an oblong building with columns. To-day there
remains only the apse with its richly decorated
choir-arches ; and this is now a separate small
church-enclosure, in which divine service is held.
The Jacobite church was much more important.
Here again, it is true, only the apse has survived
the ravages of time; in earlier ages a small
dome was raised in front of it. When, however,
I examined the walls more carefully, in the
court in front of the church and in the neighbour-
ing houses and gardens, I gradually discovered
the plan of an immense central church. It had
a quadrangular middle space, which opened, on
the one hand, upon the oblong choir, while it was
extended on the other three sides by means of
semicircular, exedra-shaped bays, supported by
pillars: a ground plan which reminds us of San
Lorenzo at Milan, before it was remodelled by
Bramante.

The precious jewel of Diyarbekr’s architectural
treasures is, however, incontestably the sachn
(court) of the chief mosque. It lies in the thick
of the bustle of the busiest streets, yet is, like
all mosque-courts, quite cut off from them ;
so that you pass at once out of the wild tumult

99NY SOLU N EY DOWN THRE eee ers

of Oriental life and business into an island of
tranquillity. It is isolated from the surrounding
world by the mere fact that the floor of it is—
and this is a sign of great age—rather lower
than that of the surrounding streets, which has
been raised in the course of time; so that one has
to go down several steps on entering the gate.
At first the visitor may be disappointed when
he finds that the court has not the spaciousness
of the mosque-courts at Damascus and Aleppo,
and that there is not the same stately rhythm
of the surrounding rooms. ‘The court has, never-
theless, a magic of its own; and not least, I
think, precisely because of the diversity which
at once meets the eye. Different ages have
contributed new features to it, and remoulded,
patched, and improved the old, so that the poorest
patchwork and additions are mingled with the
highest achievements of art at its best. And
the whole is overlaid, so to say, with a film of
gold by the common history through which all
parts have lived: a history stretching back more
than a thousand years in the case of the older
parts.

The court is square, and its northern side is
least in importance. It is a sort of conglomerate,
combining all kinds of elements. The most
100DIYARBEER.

M¢ SQOUE,

PTHE CHIEF

Ok

RT

COT

FACADE IN THE

WEST

VII.—THE

PLATE

100,

To face p.KARA FACED? TA BuACk Cait sy

interesting feature is a row of pointed arches
in which Byzantine capitals—there is a veritable
collection of the various types—are almost
exclusively employed. The southern side is
occupied by the mosque itself, the Ulu Djami.
It is a large three-naved building, and the foun-
dation must go far back into the early days of
Islam.

But the western and eastern sides! They
compel the eye of the observer by the richness
of their decoration. The west fagade (Plates
I and VIII) is particularly notable for its age
and character. It is certainly the most impor-
tant, and at the same time the most mysterious,
architectural monument in northern Mesopotamia.
Whole generations of scholars have despaired of
reducing its artistic details to any recognised
style. And, as the facade is, unfortunately, in
one of the remotest corners of Asiatic Turkey,
nearly every traveller who has visited the spot—
and they have been not a few during the last
few centuries—felt inspired to make some kind
of hypothesis about it: hypotheses which, of
course, were endowed with apostolic infallibility
in precise proportion as the author lacked expert-
ness in the subject. One particularly original
traveller, of the seventeenth century, ventured

101Mey OF RNY DOWN LEE Die rs

to declare that this west facade goes back to
the days of Mohammed.

Every artistic period that is known was invoked
by way of explanation: the Sassanidean, the
early Armenian, the Parthian, the Islamic.
Indeed, only a few years ago the well-known
archeologist Strzygowski attempted, in his monu-
mental work on Amida—for which the Swiss
Arabist Max von Berchem gave his masterly
co-operation in the epigraphic section—to repre-
sent this western facade as a kind of gigantic
theatre-wall of late Roman times. In my own
opinion all these guesses and explanations have
missed the track of the real solution. The west
facade is a piece of Christian art, and is, I believe,
none other than the decoration of the eastern side
of the ancient cathedral of Amida constructed
by Heraclius, which stood on this spot. When
Diyarbekr passed under the power of Islam, this
east facade of the old cathedral became part of
the court of the mosque, and it was enriched by
a monumental inscription-frieze.

If my hypothesis is correct, the west facade
at Diyarbekr belongs, both in style and age, to
the group of Syrian churches suggested by Count
Melchior de Vogué on the model of Antiochia.
But after producing the brilliant facade at
102KARA AMEDD) THE BEACK CLT Y

Diyarbekr this Christian art disappeared, or,
at least, it did nothing further of anything like
the same value. Then Islam came as the heir
to the art. The facade of the desert-castle of
Mschatta, now in the Kaiser Friedrich’s Museum
at Berlin, and the imperfectly studied ruins of the
ereat mosque of Harran at Urfah, are, in my
opinion, in many of their details, a direct continu-
ation of the creative art which expresses itself
in the splendid fagade at Diyarbekr.

I must admit that my theory is _ not
unchallenged. Amongst the works which have
appeared since, and have discussed my views, I
must particularly mention those of Professor
Svoboda of Vienna and Dr. Rudolph Berliner
of Munich. Both agree with me on the main
point, that the date is “later than 600 2 Dut
Berliner thinks rather of an early Islamic building
period. This does not seem to me plausible, as
there are in Diyarbekr no preliminary stages of
such grandiose architecture from the early days
of Islam.

The fourth side of the court, the ‘‘ east fagade,”’
is a poor copy of the western, constructed in the
Islamic Middle Ages.

It would be useless to enumerate here the
various mosques which were built at Diyarbekr

1038MY TOURNEY DOWN THE TErERIS

in later periods ; and I have not space to do so.
I must, however, add that the town has a huge
khan, in which I afterwards passed a night.
It is easy to understand how it came to be built,
as Diyarbekr is the cross-roads for a number of
important routes in Asiatic Turkey: the one
leading from the Mediterranean and Aleppo to
Armenia, and that which connects Constantinople
with Baghdad, which follows the line of the
Turkish overland post.

This khan (an inn for caravans) is said by the
local patriots of Diyarbekr to be the largest in
Asiatic Turkey. It is built in the form of a huge
right-angle. In the centre there is a court, with a
hexagonal dome-covered well. Round the court,
on the ground floor, are the large stables, and the
rooms for travellers are above; and outside—
that is to say, on the street-front—there are
shops for those who are plying a trade. The
whole makes up a fine organic type of structure,
entirely comparable in the symmetry of its
composition and the solidity of the structure with
the large warehouses of modern Europe.

I had, however, to give most of my time in
Diyarbekr to the preparations for my trip down
the river. Before I describe them, let me premise
a few words on this river-voyage. It will be
104KARA SAM ED) THE BRACK sCity

understood that in a country that is entirely
devoid of modern means of transport, and
has not even properly paved roads, travelling
by river is still important. It was, of course,
equally important in earlier times, and we know
that in the remotest antiquity the rafts known as
keleks were used on the Tigris. We have them
represented on Assyrian reliefs which have been
brought to light in the excavations; and they
were of just the same shape as they are to-day.
The construction is quite different from that of
river-rafts in Europe. In the first place, they are
not made of great long pine-trunks; for the
simple reason that in the upper reaches of the
Tigris there are no pine forests. Their place is
taken by poplars, and these are put together
eridiron-fashion, and can be sold at a good price
in the lower and treeless districts.

And as the Tigris, especially in its upper reaches,
has often little depth, on account of the numerous
rapids, a very ingenious means of keeping the
rafts as high as possible in the water was dis-
covered in very early days. Underneath the
crossed poplars were fastened a large number—
fifty to two hundred—of camel-skins filled with
air, and these kept the raft almost at the surface
of the water. Thus they got a light and pliant

105MEY a O20 N DY DOWN LHe TLEGRris

vessel that was ready to meet every kind of
difficulty. Even when the raft gets into a fierce
whirlpool there is no harm done. The waves,
in the worst cases, pass over the raft, and the
next minute it is back at the surface. Even if it
strikes a ledge of rock and some of the camel-
skins are deflated, the remainder suffice to carry
on the raft, and the damaged skins can be easily
repaired at the next evening halt. It is, therefore,
not surprising that these keleks have been much
used by the Turkish army in our own day. Moltke
tells us that sometimes a small raft with fifty
skins was found enough to transport a gun
and its company of men, the horses being tied to
the raft and swimming with it.

These rafts are in the care of a special guild,
the kelekdjis. They convey goods and passengers
down the river, some from Diyarbekr to Mosul,
others from Mosul to Baghdad. When they
reach their destination, they break up the rafts,
sell the poplar-trunks, let the air out of the camel-
skin bags, pack them neatly together, and load
them on an ass. With this they then travel
whole days, even weeks, over the mountains to
their homes.

I opened negotiations with one of these
kelekdjis : negotiations that meant a vast amount
106KARA AMID] THE BuACK City

of conversation and loss of time, in which my
host, an Armenian of the name of Cassabian—-
the good man was afterwards killed in one of the
massacres during the War—took a lively part.
First the services of the kelekdji were described.
The raft was to have proper dimensions for the
conveyance of my luggage, and to leave a little
room for moving about during the day; so the
size was fixed at a hundred and fifty camel-bags.
I declined to have what is called an ark—that
is to say, a hut made out of carpets and roofing—
and said that I would pitch my tent on the raft :
a decision I bitterly regretted afterwards, as it
was often extremely cold.

There was a further long discussion of the
important question whether or no my kelek was
to have aw.c. The kelekdji declared that it was
indispensable. What would the Kurds, the
Yezids, and the Arabs say if a man of my social
standing were without it? So I had to give in,
for the sake of my prestige with these people.
When all these points were settled, we came to
the point which was the most important for the
kelekdji, namely, what I proposed to do for
him. In the end, after a long argumentation,
we agreed upon the sum of fifteen pounds
(Turkish). On the exchange at the time that

107MYO OCW NEY “DOWN LHRE LIGRIS

amounted to about six pounds, ten shillings ;
which was certainly not excessive when one
reflects that the payment has to include the
journey to Mosul and the troublesome journey
back to Diyarbekr over the mountains.

For the next few days the kelekdji worked
very vigorously. In the early morning he was
off to the Tigris with all his men, and the raft was
put together. Then the hundred and fifty camel-
skin sacks were brought; and here began the
most difficult part of the job. From the days
of the Assyrians such things as pumps or other
mechanical arrangements for inflating the bags
have been unknown, and my good kelekdji had
to rely upon his lungs and those of his sons. So
my raftsman and his entire offspring blew
furiously for hours into the hundred and fifty
camel-skins until they were all fully inflated and
bound.

I had a good deal to do myself during these
days. All sorts of things—trice, tea, coffee, ete.—
had to be bought, and I had to take a sack of
charcoal, because on the treeless plains of Assyria,
below the defiles of Kurdistan, fuel could not be
had. On the final day I had a talk with the
Vali, and asked him for a military escort, and
this he promised me for the following day.

108CHAPTER VII

THE CITY OF THE MARTYRS

EFORE I SET OUT upon my raft-journey I

had made up my mind to visit the ancient

Martyropolis: a town which lay about
two days’ sail east of Diyarbekr, and is now
known as Meyafarkin (or, as a rule, simply
Farkin).

It is a town that was very prominent in early
Christian times, yet it is very rarely visited by
European travellers. Besides the Portuguese
Tenreiro, who was there in the seventeenth
century, the only visitors have been Moltke
and Lehmann-Haupt, in the nineteenth century.*
All three agreed that the remains of churches and
mosques in the place were wonderful. I was,
therefore, very strongly attracted to a town
with such rich archeological spoils, and I made
an arrangement with my kelekdji that he should

1 Since then the English explorer and archeologist G. L. Bell

has been to Farkin, where he photographed some of the chief
buildings. He has published the photographs.

109MOYO OR NEY (DOWN WHE “Tia Ris

proceed alone with my luggage for a couple of
days to Salatk6j, which was a day’s journey
south of Farkin, and I would join him there.

The day of my departure from Diyarbekr
came atlast. I had on the previous day conveyed
my luggage to the kelekdji and was ready to
start. But I found that men, as well as animals,
are full of tricks. The mule-driver who had, the
day before, sworn to come in the early morning,
did not appear, and it was necessary to go all over
the town in search of him. They found him
at last in his house, drinking coffee and pulling
at his water-pipe with a number of friends.
Clearly he was of the common Oriental opinion
that haste was invented by the devil. He had
not the least idea of making excuses for his
failure to appear, but told me with the greatest
amiability that, if I wanted him, he was quite
ready to go with me.

After about a quarter of an hour he turned up
with two not very handsome horses. But now
there was a fresh misfortune. The two zaptiehs,
finding the time hang heavy on their hands,
had disappeared in turn, and the righteous
indignation of the mule-driver (who had done the
same thing) did not compensate for the fact
that they were no longer there. But as I had no
110THE CLIiY OF THE MAR TY ERs

idea of looking through the whole town again
for these people, I let them go, and, accompanied
by my host and his friends, who came as far as
the gate of the town, I said good-bye to Diyarbekr.
First we rode down to the river and over the stone
bridge across it: the only stone bridge there is
across the Tigris to-day, as the bridges lower
down, at Djazirah, Mosul and Baghdad, are
boat-bridges. Then we rode along the left bank
on the heights opposite the town.

The two days’ journey from Diyarbekr to
Farkin is monotonous in character. On the left,
the whole way, there is a lofty range stretching
from east to west, the Hazru Daghlary; on
the right the country descends in a steep plain
toward the Tigris. As the route marked on
Kiepert’s map is never mended, and was, in
fact, at the time impassable, it 1s avoided by all
caravans; and we, like they, took the more
northerly bridle-path. It led us alternately
up a slight elevation and down some valley
heading toward the Tigris ; and there was almost
always a little village lying amongst the poplars
planted beside the brook in these valleys.

Toward the south the eye wandered over an
immense distance, as far as the mountains beyond
the Tigris, which form the watershed between

111MY 3:O.U BNE DOWN CHE  LtGr is

the valley of the Tigris and the Mesopotamian
plain. As it was afternoon when we had set out,
and I wanted to make up for lost time, we rode
until late at night; in spite of the continual
protests and arguments of Garabed and my new
horse-keeper. It was nearly midnight when
we drew up in a small village ; and in a peasant’s
cottage we found a place to sleep, amongst men
and children, and beasts of all kinds.

Next morning, in order to gain time and get
to Farkin as early as I could, I left behind the
two zaptiehs (who had ridden after us and caught
us up late in the evening) and Garabed with the
little luggage I had, and rode on alone. When
you have been some weeks on a caravan, it is
a real luxury at times to get away from the others
and be alone. Certainly that morning it was a
ereat joy to ride on quite alone into the unknown,
especially when something mysteriously lurking
in the shadow of the past beckoned me on.
Moreover, a mild, warm autumnal sun had
banished the clouds of the previous day, so that
places which twelve hours earlier had seemed to
me monotonous and dreary were now irradiated
with a new and magic light.

The ridges of the hills south of the Tigris,
which lay on our right, and passed farther east

112FARKIN.

AT

ASILICA

2
2)

|

VIII.—B. CAPITAL IN THE

ATE

PI

RCH

DOMED CHI

THE

CAPITAL IN
FARKIN.

VIII.—A.

ATE

PL

AT

To face p. 112,THE CLL Yy10 F THE MAR TY E'S

into the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan,
no longer rose sharp and clear above the horizon,
as they had done the day before. Everything
was lost in a golden translucent haze which
seemed to move the mountain-tops back into a
remote dreamland, so that one rather guessed
than saw the outline of them.

I met few men during the hours I rode on.
Only here and there I encountered a caravan
that came on, with measured tread, from the
direction of Lake Van. Twice also I passed
through a village, and the inhabitants stared
at the solitary rider. At length, toward mid-day,
I rode across a very deep wadi and up a last hill,
and from there I saw my goal, Farkin, hardly
a quarter of an hour’s ride away, lying in a small
valley. I had a bird’s-eye view of the town, with
its walls, which form a perfect square, its castle-
hill, and its venerable ruins of churches and
mosques; and I could see plainly how the
greater part of the ancient town is now occupied
by tilled fields and orchards, while the houses of
the modern town, amidst which rose the snow-
white round and slender minaret, are crowded
together in a very small part in the south-west.

It did not take me long to descend from my
airy hill to the first houses, and I at once inquired

H 113MY PDOURNEY DOWN THE F®TLERTS

 

for the young Armenian physician to whom I
had received an introduction in Diyarbekr. He
was a young bachelor, and had studied at the
American Medical School in Beirut. He had now
begun practising in this out-of-the-way place,
and he received me with great friendliness.
At once he invited me to share his room, and I
gladly consented. We lived together for several
days and learned to like each other. Many an
interesting thing he told me about his practice,
which often meant a day’s ride; and he was
touchingly eager to anticipate all my wishes
before I could express them.

But I soon set out to have a look at the town
and begin my work. Through the crazy streets
I quickly made my way to the ruins of the great
basilica, which I had seen from the hill, and which
we must certainly count the most important
monument of ancient Farkin. It is a large,
three-naved structure, of massive masonry, ending
in a semicircular apse: a proof of the high pros-
perity Farkin must have enjoyed about the fifth
to the seventh century of the present era, as
the centre of one of the chief bulwarks of the
Byzantine Empire in its struggle against the
Sassanide.

One name stands out luminously in the history
114THe Clim; OFh To hy eMerA Ret ¥oRis

of the time: that of Bishop Marutha, of Farkin,
who won repute especially by collecting the bones
of the innumerable martyrs who had borne
witness to the faith in those parts during the
terrible persecution of the Christians by the
Sassanide. These relics he distributed on all
sides: not only amongst the churches of his
diocese, but much farther afield, even as far as
Byzantium. Naturally, he did not forget the
churches of his own metropolis, but enriched
them very generously with relics of the martyrs.
Thus arose over the graves of the Christians who
had been persecuted the noble churches which
won for the town the name of Martyropolis,
the Town of Martyrs. The extant ruin of the
basilica is a living witness of the zeal for building
at the time, and if it is not due to Marutha
himself—which has been suggested—it cannot
have been built much later than his time. It
is, in fact, possible that in this church we must
recognise the construction of a later ruler of the
Sassanide. We are told that King Khusrau II,
who was an ardent worshipper of St. Sergios,
dedicated a church to that saint in Martyropolis
after that town was given back to the Emperor
Maurice of Constantinople. Who would have
thought at one time that we could connect the

115Mie aO Unk NUE IY DO (WAN, Hehe hl GRws

ruins of Christian churches with the memory of
Sassanid kings !

From the archeological point of view the
structure is important. It is, after the buildings
at Rusafah in the desert south of the Euphrates,
the most perfect example of the Mesopotamian
style in Byzantinian times. Especially, the rich
sculpture which is seen everywhere, on the
arches of the apse, on the dividing arches between
the naves, and on the Corinthian capitals, show a
fineness of detail and a luxuriance of impulse
that can hardly be surpassed. But what
astonishes us most is that the art is thoroughly
Hellenistic in character. It proves that even
in these remote regions the art and culture of
Antioch-Greece were predominant (Plate IX).
We have, therefore, always to bear in mind
that the broad stream of Greek thought and art
that flowed into those remote parts from the
days of Alexander the Great was still fertilising
them far on in the Christian Era. We may even
say—and the best proofs are precisely such
buildings as those at Rusafah and Farkin—
that at a time (Justinian’s time) when the art
of the Mediterranean peoples confronted entirely
new problems such as the dome, here in the
remote wastes of Asia the old Greek canons of
116THE CLhLrey Or Lak MARTY RA

style were much more consistently—we might
also say much more conservatively—observed ;
so that about the sixth century Greek artistic
production in the Mesopotamian region and the
adjoining regions enjoyed a real resurrection, a
sort of renaissance, which makes the period
one of the most interesting episodes of the
transition age from ancient to medieval times.

There is a very interesting arch, in exactly
the same style as those of the basilica, standing
quite alone in a field. As it shows the same
axial direction as the church, it must certainly
have belonged to the same set of buildings.
Possibly it represents the entrance to a large
temenos, or forecourt, surrounding the church.
Where the trees and bushes grow to-day, and the
natives of Farkin plant their melons and quinces,
there must once have been spacious courts,
paved with coloured marble slabs, environed by
magnificent buildings, in which resounded the
singing of Christian hymns and psalms, when,
on feast-days, the bishops and their clergy made
pilgrimage to the graves of the holy martyrs.

In the evening I wandered round the walls of
the town, which are almost entirely preserved.
They form a great square, and they are raised
to double height on the eastern side, because the

117VM es OU RIN Es DOWN  LHRE TiGcris

place was easier to attack on that side. In the
main, they may very well go back to the great
heroic days of ancient Martyropolis; that is to
say, to the time of Marutha and his successors,
when, on account of the strategical importance
of the town in the struggle with the Neo-Persians,
it enjoyed the special favour of the Byzantine
Emperor. But the upper part are the work of
the Islamic Middle Ages, as we gather from the
Arabic inscriptions which are still seen on them.
At their highest point, to the south-east of the
town, the fort stood in former times; and a
Kurd agha, a sort of modern brigand-baron, has
built himself a kind of fortress in the ruins of
it. When I drew near his “ castle,’ he at once
pressed me to enter. He seemed to me, however,
in rather low spirits, as the Turkish Government
had shortly before taken somewhat vigorous
measures to ensure the safety of the roads leading
to Farkin, and so I was not surprised when the
good man complained feelingly to me of the
state of business !

Next morning I visited a very interesting domed
church, which was very close to the castle-hill
I have mentioned (Plate IXb). The dome has
fallen, and there remain only the pillars and
walls—which opened in fine arches, on the
118DHE City OF DHE MAR TY hs

eround floor, upon side aisles, and on the first
floor upon a gallery—and the whole of the outer
wall of the apse and nave. It still belongs to the
Jacobite community, which holds its services
in the sacristy, the only shelter to-day from the
elements. The richly carved capitals and other
parts of the church are very remarkable. Some
of them plainly show how the architects tried to
copy the Hellenistic style of the basilica; but
on the whole they exhibit rather, in their geo-
metrical and basket-work details, the influence
of the Armenian art of the early Middle Ages
(Plate IXb). It was the time when the star of
Antioch was setting, and the Arabs had mastered
all the southern regions.

The next day I took the ruins of the great
mosque, which was assuredly the chief place of
worship in the town during the Mohammedan
Middle Ages. What strikes one most of all is
the fact that it is quite close to the ruins of the
great church, and the orientation is Just the same.
From that we may safely conclude that it has
taken the place of one of the large buildings which
ran round the forecourt of the church. We
may therefore also infer that Islam, here again,
as in Damascus, Aleppo, Diyarbekr, and other
places, immediately after taking the town settled

119Moir OU RNY DOWN: Dae “hilar is

one of its finest and most important squares
near the chief church.

This chief mosque at Farkin does not go back
to the time of the Mohammedan conquests ;
it is really the successor of the oldest mosque.
The present building was erected in 1227. It
consists of an immense central space under a
dome, with three parallel naves adjoining it
east and west. ‘These form the place of worship
proper: the temple in which the faithful pray,
in long rows, on Fridays. The finest thing in
the whole structure is the magnificent carving
on the masonry supporting the dome and on
several of the mthrabs, or praying-places (Plate
IXb). Their rich style associates them entirely
with the Arabic-Medieval style of those parts.
It is very remarkable that in this ancient mosque
there are a number of old columns of red
marble that certainly belong to an earlier period.
We may say fairly definitely that they once
decorated a Christian edifice—either one that
formerly stood on this spot or the cathedral
itself.

An intermezzo that I experienced when I
was doing this mosque must not be forgotten ;
indeed, whenever I think of Farkin, it is this
which comes to my memory. While I was
120THE @GIiTy OF THE MARTY Ras

bustling about the mosque with pencil and sketch
block, rule and camera, assisted by a great crowd
of people—for any man who had the time to
spare came to enjoy the exciting spectacle of
my presence—and a number of the young folk
were trying to help me, one of them suddenly
spoke to me in German ! The astonishment shown
on my features will be easily imagined, when I
thus found myself addressed in my own tongue
in the depths of Kurdistan, in a town which,
for several centuries, had been visited by only
two or three men who spoke German. And what
surprised me most was that the words of the
young man were German spoken in the dialect
of my own country, Switzerland.

The story the youth told—while I continued to
stare at him, in speechless astonishment, with
mouth wide open—was plausible enough. He
was the son of Armenian parents who had been
killed in one of the massacres. He had then been
sent to the Syrian orphanage at Jerusalem, and
had learned German there. Later, he had gone
to Europe, and had worked for a time in Switzer-
land, at Diessenhofen in the Canton of Thurgau.
There he had—here his voice faltered—become
engaged to a German girl, and now she would
not come out to marry him, although he had a

121MY OUR IN Ey DIO WN “WEE Pre rs

good business in honey and other local products
at Farkin, because her parents thought it too
much of an adventure to go so far away to be
married.

Up to that point I had been paralysed with
astonishment, and had scarcely spoken a word.
The sudden appearance of a sort of compatriot
in the ruins of an ancient mosque, in the most
remote parts of Turkey in Asia, seemed to me so
fantastic and incredible that I doubted the story
the youth was fluently telling me. But, as he
said that he had been for some time at Diessen-
hofen, and a friend of mine was a minister in
the neighbourhood, I had an opportunity to check
his statement. So I asked him if he had ever
heard of the Rev. S., of B. “Certainly,” he at
once replied, ** I know him well.”’ And he went
on to give me details which proved that his story
was true.

We decided, since Farkin, being the seat of
a kaimakam, had a post office, to send a common
message of greeting to the Rev. S., of B.; and
we did so the same evening. It was many
months later, when I was at work on the excava-
tions at Samarra, that I received an answer to
our postcard; it was much delayed, as it had
had, before it reached me, to experience an
122THE CITY OF THE MARTYRS

Odyssey which one would hardly think possible
in our time. First it had gone to Samarra in
Russia, and from there it had travelled through
all sorts of countries of Europe and Asia for
several months before I received it. It read as

follows :

DEAR FRIEND,

Yesterday I received your card from Farkin, telling
me that you have met in the interior of Asia a man who
had lived for a time in Diessenhofen and had visited this
parish. It is extraordinary. Everybody to whom I told
it was astonished, and made remarks about the smallness
of the world and the largeness of Diessenhofen.

But I must now tell you something that will astonish
you. Yesterday, as I was preparing my sermon after
receiving your card, I heard a step, and suddenly a buxom
German girl appeared at the door. I told her to come in,
and asked her what she wanted. She sighed and blushed, and
I suspected that she was the betrothed of the young man
you had seen in Farkin. I told her of your eard, and, when
I mentioned the young man’s name, she lit up and blushed
a little, and said: ‘‘ Yes, yes, that’s the man.’ She told
me, further, that her parents had written to the Missionary
Society at X, and that they had been seriously warned
not to let their daughter go to Asiatic Turkey. She herself
greatly desired to make the venture, as she could not advise
her young man to sacrifice his good business. She now
thought that, if her parents received reassuring news from
a Swiss who had visited Farkin, they might, perhaps, give
way and allow her to marry the man. I promised her
that I would write you, and she went away.

I think the little romance is quite charming. And you
have to play a very prominent part init! May I, therefore,

1238Mx SOURN EY DOWN THE Tre Ris

ask you to send me some time a guarantee of the proper
position of a German woman in Kurdistan? In anticipa-
tion, and with kind regards,
I am,
Yours,
R.S.

It will be understood that giving an assurance
of this kind was no light matter. On the one
hand, one could not advise a German girl, whose
marriage would make her a Turkish subject, to
come to Farkin-Martyropolis for that purpose.
But, on the other hand, how could one have the
heart to separate two young people who clung
to each other though seas and continents divided
them ? So I composed a letter which I thought
a very clever piece of diplomacy, because, though
I concealed none of the many difficulties, I warmly
expressed my deep sympathy with this trans-
continental romance. What impression the letter
made on the parents of the young lady I have
never learned; nor do I know if the pair were
ever married.

However, to return to my experiences at
Farkin. It will be understood from what I have
said that my stay there was full of exciting
adventures. I made quite a number of further
acquaintances. The kaimakam and other officials
did all in their power to make my stay as pleasant
124THE (OLD) OR. Eek, MAR yy. his

as possible. We were invited to one place
after another, and even the old brigand-chief
in the castle did me the honour to give me a
splendid banquet. He and all his household
were present, and the chef d’@uvre of the meal
was a huge joint of roast camel. Garabed
especially found our life there extraordinarily
good; for, when we were out together, he knew
that, in virtue of sound Turkish etiquette, the
best and fattest morsels would fall to him.
He was the sort of man who can imagine nothing
finer. The luggage, with the loading and unload-
ing of which he was supposed to have so much
trouble at other times, was floating down the
Tigris far away, while he enjoyed a life such as
is lived only in a paradise of idlers. He was,
therefore, quite alarmed when I began to speak of
departure. Was I not happy enough in this
lovely town ?

But everything good in life comes to an end,
and one has at length to tie up one’s bundle
and depart. On the morning of the fourth
day I told Garabed and my many friends
that I was absolutely determined to leave that
afternoon.

I shall never forget that departure from
Farkin. It was uplifting. Half the town

125MY SOURNEY DOWN LTHE Tiers

assembled at the gate; even the kawmakam
was there to big me good-bye. The postmaster
felt—as I had bought a postcard of him the day
before—that he also must put in an appearance,
and the officer of the gendarmes came personally
to hand over to me the two zaptiehs who were to
accompany me as far as the Tigris. I communi-
cated to the latter two my plan of covering the
ten hours’ ride to the Tigris in one stretch, in
order to arrive there before midnight. But in
this I had reckoned without my host. “ What ! ”’
the bystanders shouted. ‘* You will not spend the
night with the agha of Hadjidjiyyah?” Can-
didly, I had never heard of the man before ;
but to those about me that was incredible, and
it was explained to me that the agha of Hadjid-
jiyyah was the wealthiest village-agha in the whole
district. He was, therefore, a “ great man” ;
when you stood on the roof of his house, and
looked round, everything ‘“‘as far as the eye
could see”’ belonged to him. I saw that my
Farkin friends would not regard me as altogether
normal if I insisted on riding through Hadjid

jiyyah, without stopping at the agha’s house,
so I decided to spend a few hours there and
have supper, then ride on during the night so as
to reach the Tigris at dawn.

126THE CLwiy OF Lae MARE Yous

After a final effort of my friends to detain me,
I set off. First we rode up the hill from the top
of which I had caught my first view of Farkin
a few days before. There I halted for a short
time, waved my last farewells to my friends in
the distance, and took one more look at the
gray walls and towers of the old city of the
martyrs. Then we headed southwards along a
valley. My men were in the best of spirits.
Garabed was eloquent over his recollections of
Farkin, and one could tell from his looks that
he already saw before him the fleshpots of the
agha of Hadjidjiyyah. It was the same with
the two zaptiehs, and so they were in a respectful
and willing condition which I had never before
observed in Turkish gendarmes. In a word,
they were all as merry and good-tempered as
children on Christmas Eve.

Two hours later we were in Hadjidjiyyah,
and I was very much astonished to hear that
this large village, and other villages of the
district, were Armenian. In costume, habits
and speech, however, the inhabitants were Kurds,
only the priest—as I afterwards learned—
speaking a little Armenian.

We soon found the agha’s house. It did not
differ in the least from the other houses, all of

127Mey J1O70 NEY DOWN Lhe Liars

 

which had but one storey and flat roofs. Inter-
nally it consisted of a large court which served
as reception-room, kitchen and stable. There
was no trace whatever of comfort, which we
decadent westerners consider indispensable.
There were, of course, no glazed windows or any
luxuries of that kind. The agha, a big, worthy
old man, with a wavy white beard, met us at the
door, welcomed us cordially, and at once insisted
on ourcomingin. There was a look of uncommon
friendliness and gentleness in his dark brown
eyes. Indeed, his whole attitude was almost
regal, and every movement of his showed that he
was accustomed to rule in his own house.

We took our seats on soft cushions round a
flickering fire near the centre of the court.
Presently came a servant with an enormous
copper jug, with a gigantic spout, and he poured
out excellent hot coffee for each person; and to
us who had been riding it tasted very good.
There was no formal invitation to supper, for
the moment we crossed the threshold of the
agha’s house it was understood that we had our
share in everything just as if we were members
of the household. There was now an eager
light in the eyes of Garabed and the two zaptiehs,
and, when a large dish, more than a yard in
128THE CITY OF THE MARTYRS

diameter, with quite a number of roast chickens,
reposing on a bed of rice and quinces, was
brought in, the three of them fell to with such
effect that one would imagine they had just been
saved from death by starvation. The agha,
of course, took special care that I had every-
thing I wanted; and I still see him vividly
before me as he came to my aid personally
when he saw me struggling heroically to tear a
chicken-bone from the body ; for there were no
knives.

When the whole had been devoured, and all
of the diners lay back on their cushions, freely
eructating—it is a sign of politeness in the east
to do so as a proof that you have had a good
meal—the servant came round again with the
giant-spouted coffee jug and gave everybody a
cup. Cigarettes were distributed, and all were
soon thoroughly comfortable and in the most
jovial of moods. It was so pleasant that, when
you looked into the warm, friendly eyes of the
agha, you felt that you had been taken up to
heaven and were the guest of the patriarch Abra-
ham. So the hours passed; though from time
to time Garabed and the zaptiehs cast anxious
glances at me, as if they feared that I was going
to put an end to their lovely time.

I 129MYO UR NEY DOWN “Len DEC RES

When it struck ten, in fact, I said that we
would go. The agha, supported by the tearful
protests of my men, did his best to dissuade me,
but if we did not start then we should not reach
the Tigris the following morning. So we all
arose and stood in front of the house. It had
erown quite dark, and thousands of stars glittered
in the heavens. It looked, indeed, as if a net
of sparkling diamonds had been drawn over
the sky from horizon to horizon. And as the
patriarchal form of the agha stood before me
in the light of the stars, praying God’s blessing
upon the remainder of my journey, it seemed to
me that this was just how Abraham must have
looked when God came to him and said: ‘‘ Look
now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou
be able to number them.”

We mounted our horses, and the agha,
holding my horse by the bridle, insisted on
accompanying me a little way. Suddenly four
men galloped up to us out of the dark night,
and he said: “I am giving you four of my
servants. They will see you as far as the Tigris,
so that you come to no harm.” Thus we parted,
and I rode on with my troop, which had now
grown to the imposing size of eight horsemen.
At first the men kept up a lively conversation,
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but it gradually died away. In half an hour’s
time the silence of the night was broken only by
the sound of the horses’ feet.

I may have ridden thus for a quarter of an
hour when I suddenly noticed that there were
beneath my saddle two little pouches which had
not been there before. When I explored them,
I found that one was full of raisins, the other of
nuts which were already shelled. The agha had
had them placed there while I was not looking,
and I could only regret that he was not there
to receive my thanks. I was deeply touched
by such cordial hospitality. Where in Europe
would you find a host who would treat you thus if
he had never seen you before and would never see
you again? It is that which makes travelling in
these remote regions so charming and attractive.
One so often meets people like my venerable
patriarch : men whom otherwise one finds only
in ancient history and in the Old Testament, in
whom a real simplicity and a quite royal dignity
are harmoniously blended. Such men one can
never forget; their silent shades haunt one for
the rest of one’s life. From the depths of one’s
heart one wishes well to this beautiful and myster1-
ous land: more security than heretofore of life
and person, more opportunity to advance and

131MY TOURNEY DOWN THE DIGRIS

prosper. Yet, if our modern life with all its
fever and restlessness then entered, would there
be any room left for a single one of these venerable
patriarchs ?

These thoughts were in my mind as I rode on
in silence under the twinkling stars. 1 should
have enjoyed much more deeply the unique
beauty of my journey by night were it not for
the fatigue which made itself more and more
sensible. Any man who has had a similar ride
throughout the night will know how hard it is
to sustain a continuous struggle against sleep.
My eyes closed over and over again, and, if my
good horse had not repeatedly kicked against a
stone, I should almost have fallen asleep and
dropped from the saddle to the ground.
However, I found a very effective ally against
sleep in the ever-increasing cold of the autumn
night. It was not long before my feet became
so cold that I had to dismount and warm them.
For the remainder of the night I alternately rode
and walked.

At last—it may have been about four in the
morning—we clearly heard the bark of a dog,
and it told us that we were nearing a village.
It was Salat K6j, not far from the river. We
rode on, all the dogs of the village barking
182VE Clty OF LHe MARTY HS

furiously at us, past the few huts, and when we
had reached the top of a small hill beyond the
village, we saw, far away, a faint blush reddening
the night sky beyond the high mountains of
Armenia. In front of us, in the depths, the
Tigris flowed through the darkness.

Soon, however, we saw a kelek. It was not
ours, and presently we noticed that there were
a good many rafts. It is customary everywhere
for a number of keleks to join and form a caravan.
In earlier days the voyage down the Tigris through
the land of the Kurds was considered so dangerous
that this precaution had to be taken, and the
custom is still maintained though there is no
longer the same danger. In case repairs to a
kelek become necessary, there are the others at
hand to help. But what surprised me most
was the really angelic patience with which the
dozen or so passengers, including even Turkish
officers, had waited some three days for me in
this miserable spot, without finding eae
extraordinary in the matter.

We soon found my own kelek, and we were
received by the kelekdji with quite unintelligible
delight and cordiality. I found presently, how-
ever, that there was a special reason for it. As
I drew near, I saw that the man had, without my

133Move) OU RN EY DOWN CHAE PEGs

knowledge, taken on quite a large cargo of goods,
and the sacks containing them covered the
entire raft. Moreover, a fantastically shaped
tent, covered with sacks, from which very
clearly audible snoring proceeded, showed the
presence of hidden passengers. It is easy to
imagine how angry I was to find my elegant
private yacht, to which I had so much looked
forward, suddenly turned into a cargo and tramp
ship !

In order to disarm me, the kelekdji opened all
the sluices of his Oriental eloquence. The sacks
which he had taken on were merely filled with
dried apricots from Damascus, and they would
be very useful in giving the raft the stability it
needed. Those over there, he said, pointing to
the spot from which the rhythmic snoring came,
were three worthy old men; poor Shiite pilgrims
from Karput, whom I would assuredly not grudge
this little relief in their several months’ long
pilgrimage. What could I do but yield? I
could not have the apricots from Damascus
thrown into the river; and, as to the pious and
unsuspecting poor pilgrims, I should like to meet
the man who would venture to disturb the pious
trio or put them ashore. So I returned with
dignity to my tent, fortified in the consciousness
134THE CLDny, OF THE MARTY RS

of my cleverness in agreeing. And, whilst the
boatmen unmoored the raft from the shore, and
we sailed out into the middle of the stream, I
slept soundly and undisturbed on the waves
of the Tigris.

135CHAPTER VIII

THROUGH THE GORGES OF KURDISTAN

T WAS WITH PECULIAR FEELINGS that I awoke
fore several hours and felt the gentle heaving

of the river underneath me. ‘‘ You are on the
Tigris,’ I said to myself, suddenly realising my
situation. I did not long remain abed, and was
soon at the door of my tent.

It was an indescribable luxury to sit in a warm
corner in front of the tent under the genial sun
and watch the shore slowly passing by us. In
such gentle turns and bends as the river followed
one looked out upon the beautiful world, while
the other rafts accompanied us, before and
behind. We were passing through a region
of romantic hills, where the Tigris had cut its
way through a high sandstone bluff (Plate X).
Presently the river turned southward and pursued
its way until some new wall of rock obstructed
its progress, when it would turn aside for a time,
then resume its straight course. So we passed,
136THE GORGES Of KURDS TAN

in a majestic winding path, through the forest-
clad hills.

If the slowness of our progress tended to make
one weary, there were from time to time rapids
to relieve the monotony. We perceived them a
long time in advance by the increasing rush of
the waters. When we came near enough, we
saw the raft in front of us suddenly caught in a
whirlpool. It began to dance—a regular Tango
dance—and the dance became more and more
energetic. Then it turned round in a weird way,
and we saw how fiercely it was tossed by the
waves, as, bobbing up and down, it slid down the
cataract ; which was, as a rule, not dangerous.

I need not say that at such times the whole
of my men were greatly excited. The kelekdjis
ran about the raft, to take every measure of
precaution and to get the long poles with which
they have at times to keep the raft in the proper
path. Even Garabed pretended to be very busy ;
while the two zaptiehs and the three pilgrims,
who were intimately associated in their common
dread of the water, climbed upon the highest
heap of the sacks of apricots in order to have,
as it were, a bird’s-eye view of the sensational
spectacle.

As for myself, I first heard underneath me a

1387MY os OO RINE VY DOWN LHe. LEGRirs

remarkable bubbling and gurgling, and then
everything began to sway and twist. We spun
round and round in the giddiest fashion, and,
while the kelekdjis exerted all their strength,
shouting all the time, to guide the raft into the
best passage, we danced wildly on the foaming
waters. It often happened that a cold wave
from the river suddenly broke over the raft, but
it rose again at once, and the next moment it was
making its way calmly below the fall as if nothing
had happened.

Garabed and the two zaptiehs were quite
charmed with our life on the raft. What, indeed,
could be finer than to sit in the sun on a sack of
apricots while the wide world floated gracefully
past you? Garabed was so delighted with the
voyage that, speaking as a well-informed man
who knew the world, he expressed the opinion
that moments of bliss such as these would not
be known again except in paradise.

As to the three Shiite pilgrims, they proved to
be very agreeable and touchingly modest com-
panions, and were quite willing, without being
asked, to lend a hand whenever it was necessary ;
that is to say, whenever Garabed was too lazy,
which means always. Two of them were brothers,
the third was their friend. They were by no
138THE GORGES OF KURDIS TAN

means youthful, but men of about sixty, who
wanted, before it was too late, to make sure of
a really good place in their Shiite heaven by
making this pious pilgrimage to Kerbela and the
other tombs of the holy imams. The eldest of
them, moreover, was good enough to cook for
me, twice a day, on his own charcoal fire, a lovely
and very tasty lentil soup, which he handed to
me while he called down all the blessings of
Heaven upon my head. Especially after the
eternal sameness of my usual soup—it was always
the same except for the label—I greatly appreci-
ated this lentil soup, prepared as it was with so
much affection and real skill. When, here in
Europe, I recall my voyage on the Tigris and
dream of the beautiful scenery and all my varied
experiences, it seems to me always as if the lovely
odour of Ali’s—that was the pilgrim’s name—
soup was wafted from somewhere to my nostrils.
In the afternoon of the second day we came to
the first large town, Hisn Kef. No other place
that I saw during my travels in the east seemed
to me to have so melancholy an air as this. It
may be that the sultry and stormy condition of
the atmosphere helped to put me in this mood,
but, on the whole, it was rather the situation of
the place, in the midst of a great wilderness of
139MY JOURNEY DOWN LAE TLERIIS

rocks, that gave me the impression. From the
side on which we approached it, after dancing
down a couple of rapids, the place looked
extremely fantastic and primitive. Try to
imagine a steep cliff rising from the water and
crowned by a decaying castle, the whole face
of it perforated with cave-dwellings, of a very
early date, in which the present inhabitants
live; and at the end of the cliff a ruined mosque,
with a minaret, from the side of which a grandiose,
and now broken, medieval bridge stretches over
the majestically winding river to the opposite
shore.

We anchored just underneath the old bridge.
It makes a great impression on every traveller
who has visited the spot by the excellence of
its architecture, which harmonises well with the
river and the surrounding ruins. Its great
stone central arch, however, seems to have been
replaced by a wooden construction in the later
Middle Ages, for the Venetian Joseph Barbaro,
who was here in 1437, speaks of a “ bridge of
wooden beams ”’ at ‘‘ Hassanchyph,”’ which could
not have a central support on account of the
depth of the river, so that on both sides it rested
on bridgeheads on the cliffs.

I first visited the very extensive ruins of the
140THE GORGES OE KUR DIS FAN

lower town, all of which bear marks of the Arabian
style. During the Middle Ages the place must
have enjoyed considerable prosperity under the
Sultanate of the Mirwenidz, and there must
then have been, beneath the castle-cliff, and by
the side of the caravan road from the interior, a
large suburb with caravanserais, mosques and
bazaars. Arab writers tell us of its beauty,
and even in its ruined condition to-day it makes
quite a good impression. Externally these ruins
look very different from those of Syria and
northern Mesopotamia. There is no trace of the
massive stone-work which characterises the latter.
One sees only large flints, embedded in thick
mortar, which once formed the walls. A number
of the mosques are still well preserved, and the
inscriptions on them belong to the later Middle
Ages: amongst them is the burial mosque of
the later Ayyubid, some of the minarets of
which are still standing. Very modest by the
side of these is a small Christian church which
was probably built in Byzantine times.

It was near sunset when I decided to pay a
call on the agha in the ruined castle above. On
the northern slope a narrow and steep path
passes between the cave-dwellings, which were
noticed by the Venetian} Barbaro in the fifteenth

141MY JOURNEY “DOWN THE TIGRIS

century, as far as the summit; and it cost me
a good deal of perspiration before I reached
it. The agha’s “ castle,” which later generations
have constructed out of all sorts of fragments of
earlier buildings, was not very imposing. I was
ceremoniously conducted from the dark annexe
into a still darker cavern, without windows ;
and in this the agha, who had been for some time
watching me climb up to his airy seat, received
me very courteously. As we all sat round the
walls in the dark, relieved only by a little light
from the door, and the fierce faces of Kurds were
directed toward me from all sides, it was almost
enough to make one’s flesh creep. I could, in
fact, not help recalling the terrible stories told
by the Byzantine writers. They say that in
the days of the Sassanide the state-prison, or
“ eastle of forgetfulness,” of the Persians was
here on the citadel-hill of Hisn Kef (or Kiphas,
as the Byzantinians called it), and that it was the
scene of the gruesome tragedy of the captured
King Arsaces, who gave his last royal banquet
in prison here and then committed suicide.
However that may be, it is certain that in those
days Justinian fortified the castle-cliff once more
as one of his chief defences against the Neo-
Persians.

142THE GORGES OF KUERDISETAN

It was not long before I left the agha, and, with
a shower of compliments following me, made my
way down the steep hill-path. The agha remained
for a long time on the edge of the plateau above,
looking after his strange European visitor. The
view from the slopes of the hill was magnificent.
Right underneath was the broad river, winding
superbly in its course, with the ruined piles
of the bridge rising out of the water and the
remains of a dilapated mosque with its lofty and
slender minaret. But I soon reached our anchor-
age, and we set off the same evening.

Next day I, unfortunately, saw little of the
country. Ihada touch of fever and had to remain
in bed, merely looking out from time to time
between the covers of my tent. The scenery
was more open than on the preceding day. On
our left the high mountains of the north had
receded far to the horizon, and along the river
itself one saw only low hills covered with oaks.
As far as its character is concerned, the whole
of this district east of Hisn Kef could be very
fruitful, and it is certain that, properly cultivated
and thickly populated, it would give far better
agricultural returns than it is possible for the
inhabitants to secure to-day with their constant
fear of Kurdish brigands. For we know that

143MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TERIS

during the Islamic Middle Ages, at the period
when Hisn Kef was a prosperous town, the whole
district was much more densely populated. The
grapes which grew here, in particular, are often
mentioned by Mohammedan writers.

Toward evening I was able to get about again.
We were just at the point where the swollen
Buchtan, the Centrites of the ancients, coming
down from the Armenian mountains, joins the
Tigris. It cannot have been far from here where
an old acquaintance of mine, Xenophon, crossed
the Centrites with his ten thousand. This and
other experiences of his in Kurdistan—he calls
the country Karduchen—he recorded, after his
return, in his Anabasis; over which I duly
perspired in my youth, as academic education
requires. Little did I then dream that a day
would come when I would myself pass through
the land of Karduchen; still less that, in
describing a voyage on the Tigris, I should be
promoted to the position of colleague of the
illustrious Greek.

Immediately after receiving the Buchtan Tshai,
the Tigris turns southward, heading straight
toward the mountains. It is here that the finest
stretch of the voyage on the Tigris begins. The
river has carved its bed, in wild defiles and
144wom eet

THE RAFT VOYAGE N THE TIGRIS.LHE GORGES OGQh- KURDISTAN

canons, through the very heart of Kurdistan
and the mountains, making for the broad plains
of Mesopotamia. Unfortunately, on this day
we could get as far only as the beginning of the
mountains, because a storm set in and contrary
winds compelled us to lay up and await the next
morning.

By noon of the following day the storm had
blown over and we could think of proceeding.
The country became more and more mountainous,
the great masses rising on every side. Right in
front of us a gigantic bulk seemed to bar our way,
but there was always a channel through narrow
gorges between steep cliffs. Some two hours later
the land opened out a little, and in a small valley
we could see two villages, each dominated by
a small castle on a rock.

But that evening, as we were approaching a
little Kurdish village of cliff-dwellings, a frightful
storm arose. It had been sullen and sultry all
the afternoon, and there suddenly sprang up a
furious wind which prevented us from making
any progress. I still have a vision of a sudden
gust catching my sail-cloth w.c. and causing it
to flap about like a rag in the wind. The raft
had now to be anchored stoutly, as there was a
rapid just below, and if our raft had broken loose,

K 145MiyYe DOU RNEY DOWN THE Cia Rigs

it might have had the most serious consequences.
We had not yet completed this task when a
sudden flash of lightning, followed at once by a
clap of thunder which echoed from all the moun-
tains, lit up the night. At the same time there
was a torrent of rain like a cloud-burst, and, as
we were fastening the ropes to masses of rock,
it wet us through in a few seconds. This was
merely the overture of such a storm as I have
never seen before. The flashes of lightning were
almost continuous, and the thunder roared and
echoed from the mountains like the ceaseless
discharge of batteries of artillery. It was as
if, in the wild chaos of rocks, armies of Titans
had opened a battle to the death against each
other, and were locked in a most furious combat.

It became so bad that at last the whole of us
took shelter in my tent. But one must not
suppose that we were comfortable or well protected
even there! Imagine a space constructed to
hold one single man with all my luggage already
in it and now packed with nine individuals
sheltering from the rain. We lay like herrings
in layers, beside and on top of each other. I
remember only that I was driven by the force of
circumstances to the far end of the tent, which
was half open, and there hail as well as rain lashed
146THE GORGES OF KUR DIS TAWN

my face. I had no power to protect myself,
as my hands were pinned between the legs of one
of the three pilgrims and the butt of the rifle
of one of the zaptiehs. And, whenever I tried to
free myself, other forces were set in motion which
had the effect of making my imprisonment more
secure than ever.

While I was puzzling out a way of putting an
end to my martyrdom and unloosing the Gordian
knot, so that each of the nine men should recover
the use of the limbs which really belonged to him,
the problem was suddenly solved for me. We
heard a fearful cry on one of the neighbouring
keleks, a cry that rose even above the noise of the
storm; and the next minute there was a violent
shock, and we perceived that our raft was loose
and was making for the rapids. It was Albi,
the younger of the two kelekdjis, who had already
on several occasions given proof of the strength
of his character, that realised the danger we
were in. He lay at the bottom of our human
heap, but with one mighty effort he, in a single
second, shook the Gordian knot to pieces.

The next few seconds were crowded with
events. While Garabed poured his whole treasury
of German expletives upon the storm, and the
three pilgrims—who clearly did not welcome the

147MYO OUR INE Yo DO WIN Hn Et EG Ros

opportunity to go straight to the heaven of the
Shiite sect—groaned and lamented, Ali seized
one of the ropes, sprang at one bound into the
river, and, with the water up to his thighs, began
to pull the raft, with all his power, toward the
land. But in spite of tremendous exertions
the raft drifted more and more toward the swifter
part of the stream, and it is unpleasant to imagine
what might have happened if one of the zaptiehs
had not jumped overboard, found a firm foothold
in the bed, and lent his aid to Ali.

At the same time I had myself leaped into the
river to help, but I was not a little alarmed to
find that I had no foothold. So I thus dangled
in the water for some time, and in my anxiety
clung with my hands to the Damascus apricots ;
but at last I succeeded in finding ground and
even reaching the shore. Then, with our united
efforts, we made fast the raft to the bank—rain,
lightning, and thunder playing upon us all the
time—and we transferred the more important
of my luggage to the land. When we had done
this, we made our way to a small Kurdish cave-
dwelling, the firelight of which we had noticed
shortly before.

It must have been a sight for gods and men
when I, in a tropical helmet, dripping with rain
148LHe GORGES OF KURDS LAN

from head to foot, suddenly appeared at the door
of a hut before a large group of Kurds, and
announced myself as a European beg (prince)
who had just been shipwrecked. The Kurds,
who had been talking loudly until the moment
of my appearance, became silent at once and
gazed at me in astonishment; the last thing
they expected at such a time was a visit from a
European. As they showed no sign of inviting
me to take a seat, but stared at me as if they were
turned into stone, I went uninvited to the back
of the cave and sat, as I was half-frozen, next to
the fire, near a man who seemed to me to be
the agha. Presently my men went away to bring
my trunk, and it was really comical for me to
sit amongst these half-savages to whom I could
not speak a single word. To my sincere regret,
this made it impossible for me to ask whether
Kurdish etiquette permitted me to change my
clothes; but, as I was most uncomfortable in
my wet clothes, I took off my heavy woollen cloak
and began to wring it out. As it had absorbed
the whole of the shower, great quantities of water
poured out of it, and this seemed to stimulate

still further the curiosity of my Kurdish hosts.
At first they whispered to each other a little,
and then, when I put the cloak aside, the agha,
149VY SOUR NEY DOWN THE FirierRis

who could no longer restrain his curiosity, took
in his hands the remarkable garment, felt it all
over, and handed it, as I made no sign, to the man
next to him, who seemed to be just as much
interested in it. I then took off, one by one,
all my other clothes, which were saturated, and
they went through the same performance. Each
garment was taken up, touched, examined, and
passed on to the next man. To judge by the
increasing liveliness of their expressions, not
only were my clothes the occasion of a great
sensation and of much innocent joy, but I noticed
that some of my garments were the subject of
violent controversy. I still have a picture of a
youth who held up my woollen pants, and was
clearly, in a very loud voice, advancing some
very bold hypothesis about my underwear;
and from the spirited conversation I gathered
that the others did not in the least agree with
him.

At last—and the last piece of my underclothing
had already made the round—my men appeared
with part of the luggage at the door of the cave.
I could now, I thought, unpack and pick out a
few dry garments. But unfortunately the deluge
of rain had penetrated into my trunk, and it was
not without humour that I found that the first
150LTHE GORGES OF EURDISTAN

dry piece of clothing to come to light was my
bathing suit! So there was nothing to be done
but ask the assistance of our hosts, for my men
were in even worse plight than myself. Our
request was very cordially met, and in a very
short time we were all sitting in best Kurdish
Sunday clothes; which gave great joy and
pleasure to everybody.

Meantime our stomachs had announced their
presence, and Garabed, who was a master in such
things, used every opportunity that presented
itself, at first discreetly, and by insinuation, but
in the end using the flail, to recall to our Kurdish
friends the duty of hospitality. It was still
some time before the seed he had sown took root,
but at last they understood, and they set before
us a large dish of bulghur and a few cups of
yoghurt. As special delicacies they gave us
freshly made bread-cakes, with sheep’s-milk
cheese and nuts. Naturally, our spirits gradually
revived, and we began to feel comfortable.

Meantime the people from the other raft—
the one which had collided with us—had come
up. They had drifted right into the swift
current, and a good many of their camel-skin
sacks had been burst; but they had, with great
efforts, succeeded in saving everything except

151MX OD RNY: DOWN ThE LTTE RIS

one sack of charcoal. So we all sat together
far into the night, drinking coffee and smoking
cigarettes round the fire, until one after the other
fell silent. Only a few of the Kurds went off
to their own dwellings. Most of them remained
with us, and presently they curled themselves
up and went to sleep. And as the fire gently
crackled and glowed, and all that one heard was
the deep breathing of the Kurds and, through
the open door, the rumble of the Tigris and the
receding noise of the thunderstorm, I also fell
asleep.

When I stepped out of the cave on the following
morning, a fresh wind was sweeping the last
clouds from the sky, and the entire wild and
beautiful scene, with its hills and valleys, its
meadows and trees, was steeped in mild, warm
sunshine, yet one saw on all sides the traces of
yesterday’s storm. The swollen streams were
still full of mud and pebbles; the mountains
all seemed, on account of the moisture, near and
gloomy, and a fresh, spicy, odour rose out of the
ground. It was impossible to think of resuming
our journey that day, for when I further examined
my luggage after breakfast, I realised how merci-
less the storm had been. There was nothing to
be done but take out every garment and dry it
152THE GORGES OF KURDISTAN

in the sun. So I spread out all my clothes on
a little meadow; and it need not be said that
this afforded a theatrical display for the whole
Kurdish population. When I had spread every-
thing on the grass, I put one of the zaptiehs
on guard over my shirts and handkerchiefs
with fixed bayonet; and it had a fine military
appearance.
In order not to waste the entire day, however,
I decided to ramble round the district. It is true
that, seeing the condition of my wardrobe, the
question of clothes gave me some trouble. First
I thought of going out in my Kurdish costume.
I said to myself, ‘‘ If there are Berliners who
visit the land of Andreas Hofer in the Tirolese
buam and deandin, why should a Swiss not be
allowed to stroll through the land of the Kurds
in the costume of Karduchen ?”’ On the whole,
however, the idea of the costume was repugnant
to me, and, as I then found my frock-coat, and
discovered that it had been relatively spared by
the deluge of the preceding day, and was nearly
dry, I decided to put it on. To tell the truth, I
must have cut a rather comical figure in my
tropical helmet, frock-coat, and Kurdish trousers ;
but the Kurds seemed to regard the combination
as a quite normal European costume, and I must
153MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TirGRITS

say that I looked very stately as I climbed up
and down the steep cliffs of Kurdistan in a frock-
coat.

So, with the company of Garabed and one of
the zaptiehs, I set out. It was really more in
the nature of a climbing party, for we went a
long distance uphill, then steep down again,
just as is described by the very few writers who
have ever visited these parts. While I thus
mounted from rock to rock, I was reminded
more and more of my colleague Xenophon.
How this Greek, reared under Homer’s sun, and
his ten thousand must have panted and sweated
in this inhospitable land! But one is richly
rewarded for all one’s trouble by the wonderful
scenery of the country. Rarely had I seen
before such wild and chaotic masses of rock.
One might venture to compare the scene with
the higher districts of the Alps, but it is really
quite different. There are no glaciers here;
and in the warm season one only rarely sees a
snow-field gleaming in the far distance. On
the other hand, the contrasts are here brought
much closer together. You scramble over stones
and boulders on the rough surface of some elevated
plateau, you bend underneath a jutting rock,

and all in a moment you see, at a terrifying
154LHe GORGES OF KURD fs TAN

depth below, through some cleft in the rocks,
the broad green ribbon of the Tigris. Then you
toil on between the wild pinnacles of rock and
cliff, so that you imagine yourself to be in the
highest reaches of the mountains, and suddenly
there opens out the prospect of a green oasis in
which everything grows luxuriantly, and imme-
diately afterwards the wilderness begins again
with its serried and jagged rocks. All the time

you simply pass from one surprise to another.
This is the heart of Kurdistan: for thousands
of years the home of the Kurds, the brave and
indomitable race which ever put its freedom
above all things and was never long brought
under the yoke. The Kurd loves this wild and
lovely home of his above everything, with his
whole soul, and he defends it against all invaders.
And the Kurd has never pressed as conqueror
into other regions. What we call Imperialism
has always been quite foreign to his nature.
This, no doubt, was largely due to the fact that
he had quite enough to do at home; for one
prince was always at war with another, one
tribe with a neighbouring tribe, and often enough
it was a war of all against all. Moltke, who
stayed a considerable time in the country and
was full of admiration for the many excellent
155MOU RNY DOWN  LHE TIGRIS

qualities of the Kurds, speaking most appre-
ciatively of their bravery and love of home,
describes their perpetual feuds as their only
material weakness. ‘‘ Were they united, they
would be invincible,’’ he says somewhere. It
is for the same reason that the Kurds, although
they have existed for thousands of years, have
never become a civilised Power; we may, in
fact, say that they have never had a history.

It is very interesting to read in Moltke’s
reminiscences what he has to say about the
war of the Turks against the Kurds. He was
with Reshid and Hafiz Pasha in their campaigns,
when the Kurds were checked with the utmost
care, so that they should not fall upon the rear of
the Turks while they were fighting the Egyptians.
He tells us, for instance, of a Kurdish chief who
retired to his castle high up in the mountains.
It stood upon an inaccessible cliff, and consisted
of a few rooms wedged between two lofty pinnacles
of rock. The Turks had with great trouble
brought up their artillery, and, when they came
near enough, they began the bombardment.
The Kurd sustained it bravely for weeks, without
giving the least sign of being driven out of his
rocky nest by the guns. So they continued,
day after day, to send him friendly greetings
156THE GORGES OF KURDISTAN

from the guns, and it was only after a month
and a half of bombardment, when he could hold
out no longer, that he surrendered. In order to
make an ally of him, the Turkish commander
then nominated him colonel of a regiment ;
though the promotion had, as Moltke says, the
weakness that the regiment did not really exist.
To return to my experiences. In the course
of the day I visited two Kurd sheiks: men
who led more or less the life of brigands in rocky
nests of the type I have described. I remained
with one of them the whole afternoon, as he
invited me very cordially, and I gave him and
his whole band, who gathered round us, a long
lecture on the history of Switzerland. That,
perhaps, sounds strange ; but it was remarkable
with what intelligence and interest these folk
listened to the deeds of the old Swiss Confeder-
ates. They were just such stories as they had
been accustomed to tell each other in the long
winter evenings, and hand on as a legacy from
generation to generation. It was really wonder-
ful what close attention they paid, although my
words had first to be translated by Garabed into
Turkish and then by one of the zaptiehs into
Kurd, and how, especially at dramatic points,
such as when the arrow of William Tell split the
157MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

apple on his son’s head, they became almost
speechless with anxiety and astonishment and
admiration, and could do no more than beat
their breasts and say, “‘ Good God!”

I must confess that in my stories I was guilty
of a few little modifications of the historical
truth. I even dressed up the figure of William
Tell somewhat in order to make him intelligible
to the soul of the Kurds. For instance, as the
main point in the wars of liberation of the Kurds
was to get rid of the Turkish taxes and military
service, I had to make our Swiss heroes act and die
in the cause of the same ideals. The consequence
was that my host at once asked whether it was
true that the Swiss had never paid any further
taxes since the days when ‘“ Walmtall,” as he
called William Tell, had lived amongst them.
That was a very painful question. I reflected a
little, and then thought it best to say, against
my conscience, that in our country every man
had the greatest regard for the ideal of paying
no taxes, but that, unfortunately, we had to
admit that there had at times been occasional
lapses from the ideal. I fear that the final
impression which the good agha had of the modern
Swiss was not altogether favourable. He did

not like this frivolous surrender of their most
158THE GORGES OF -KUR DES TAN

treasured privileges, such as exemption from
taxes. However, it was fortunate that the
voluntary capital levy had not yet been dis-
covered, as that would have brought me little
respect from my host.

I returned to our camp before sunset and we
got everything ready to depart early the next
morning. As the sun had shone all day on our
clothes, they were quite dry, and so we were able
to start in good time. We presently came to a
spot where the mountains opened out a little
and there was a hot spring with a small round-
roofed structure built over it: a kind of well-
house. The stones over which the steaming
water, with a strong odour of sulphur, flows
are tinged green. When we were there we did
not see a single man, but we heard that sometimes
quite a number of invalids came here for a cure.
The spring is well known all over the district,
and is regarded as very medicinal, so that when
a Kurd has gout or some other malady, as is
not uncommon even amongst these hardy people,
he does not hesitate to make the long and difficult
journey over the mountains in order to bathe
in the warm water.

Beyond the spring the valley became narrower
and narrower, and then we entered upon the

159

n= 9 =e erMY JOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

grandest of the gorges of the Tigris, a defile
of incomparable grandeur, in which, for about
five miles, the river has cut a bed straight south
through the hard rocks of Kurdistan. The huge
dark cliffs shot up almost vertically on both sides,
and rose higher and higher. The bed of the river
itself became narrower, and the flow of the
water proportionately more rapid, so that the
kelekdjis had to be constantly on the watch to
prevent the raft from colliding with one of the
innumerable masses of rock. Sometimes also
other fearsome gorges opened, on both sides,
into the main gorge; and, whenever the steep
cliffs were thus broken for a moment, we saw
still loftier mountains beyond them.

At last the gorge expanded a little, and we
came up to the high cliff of the Tur ‘Abdin.
This “ Mount of the Servants of God” (as the
name signifies) is as yet almost unknown except
by name, yet it has quite a number of very ancient
Jacobite monasteries and churches, almost
entirely ignored by modern science until very
recently, which have weathered all the storms of
time until our own day. It is a solitary, out-
standing Christian island in the Islamic world.
I visited the mountain in the spring of 1911,
travelling from village to village and monastery
160THk GonGES OR EUR D IES TAN

to monastery. Possibly I shall find some further
opportunity to relate my experiences during my
sojourn amongst these Jacobite Christians. My
recollection of them is one of the finest and most
interesting memories of all my travels in the
east.

To return to my voyage, at the point where
the Tigris flows against the Tur ‘Abdin it is
compelled to make a sharp turn to the south-
east, and it continues in that direction as far as
Mosul. Once, it is true, soon after passing this
spot, we headed northward for a while, in order
to avoid a mass of rock that rose high out of the
water. It has on it the crumbling remains of
a small town, Kal’at ’Ala al-din. I examined
it through my field-glass and saw that there
remained only a few poor fragments of an ancient
tower; yet in this grandiose environment, with
the Tigris majestically encircling them, they
seemed to me to be the last traces of some royal
castle.

Now the region of the gorges came to an end.
Still on both sides, it is true, we had chains of
high mountains, on our right the Tur ‘Abdin,
and on our left the Buchtan mountains, on the
slopes of which Xenophon and his ten thousand
picked their dangerous way ; but the farther we

L 16]MY OUR NEY DOWN LHe sre Rris

went, the more they receded. When, in the late
afternoon, we reached the little town of Finik, we
felt that we were slowly approaching a warmer
zone. The place lay, hot and steeped in sunlight,
on the southern slope of the bare rocky mountain,
but it was surrounded by a rich subtropical vege-
tation. Unfortunately, as it was already late
in the day, we had not time to visit the Parthian-
Arsakadian rock-reliefs described by Layard.
I had to be content with inspecting a medieval
saint’s grave, with vaulted roof, which lay near
the river. It was already night when the last
ridges of the mountains suddenly diverged from
each other. We now had the mountains of
Kurdistan behind us, and in front of us we already
caught a glimpse of the endless expanse of the
immeasurable plains of Assyria. The town
which we presently reached was Djazirah.———————

CHAPTER IX

THROUGH THE LAND OF THE ASSYRIANS

JAZIRAH, THE KEY to both the highlands

and the lowlands, situated at a point

where the Tigris leaves the mountains for
the plain, seems to be a very ancient town.
Ammianus calls it Bezabde, and it is said that
rivers of blood of Christian martyrs were poured
out here in the days of the Sassanide. We are
told, for instance, that in the fourth century,
when Sapor II began his furious campaign
against the Christians, nine thousand men and
women, together with their bishops, were ordered
to worship the sun in the manner of the Sas-
sanide; and they were all executed except
twenty-five because they obstinately refused to
abandon their faith.

The town seems, however, to have been at the
height of its prosperity in the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries. That is the age to which the
castle and the remains of the town walls—of

163MY SOU RIN EY DOWN LAE TVG RLS

tooled black basalt, as at Diyarbekr—belong.
There is a curious story told about the chief
mosque; it is said to have been built out of the
timbers of Noah’s ark, which is supposed to have
landed on the Djabal Djadi, in this neighbour-
hood. To my regret, I was unable to make any
research into the truth of the legend, but certainly
its fine bronze doors and the rich stucco orna-
mentation of its mzhrab do not go back to the
days of Noah, but belong to the Middle Ages.

Shortly after that, however, Djazirah must
have lost a good deal of its importance, as
travellers of the fourteenth century tell us that
they found the place in a dilapidated condition.
What was left of it was destroyed in the fourteenth
century by the marauding troops of Timur, who
are sald to have carried off whole shiploads of
** treasure ’’? to Mosul. The town never recovered
from this blow, especially as in later times it was
chosen by various Kurd chieftains as their
headquarters. It was from here that they set
out on their brigandage, and, above all,
“controlled”? the whole of the traffic on the
river.

The English traveller, Macdonald Kuinneir,
had an unpleasant adventure when he came here
with. his sick companion Chevasse. The Kurd
164RACE fA ND Of Teh AS Sy, RL AWN) Ss

who lived here promptly put both of them in
a dark prison, where Chevasse died. Kinneir
was not released until he paid the sum of two
thousand piastres which was demanded. When
the money was paid, the Kurd was so gracious
as to receive the English traveller in his ruined
palace. He—the Kurd—complained very bitterly
that travellers so rarely made the journey to
Djazirah, and, to his great regret, the few who
had done so seemed to have no anxiety to return.
In the end Kinneir had to promise that he would
tell the pasha at Mosul how safe it was to go to
Djazirah, and how well one was received there.
Some time afterwards the Turkish Govern-
ment put an end to the escapades of this brigand
by the campaigns of Hafiz and Reshid Pasha,
which Moltke accompanied. Yet before long
another Kurdish chief, Mustafah Pasha, chose
Djazirah as his headquarters, and he ruled there
as absolute monarch and paid no attention
to the Turkish suzerainty. Although to-day—
that is to say, when I was there—the Turkish
Government was represented by a kaimakam,
it will be understood that in the circumstances
the town had little chance of recovering from
its misfortunes.
In spite of its unique position—Djazirah lies
165MY sJOURNEY DOWN LHE -TLGRIS

on a sort of island between two arms of the
Tigris—I have rarely seen a town look so sad
and desolate, so dead and abandoned, as it was.
The impression was borne in upon me the more
deeply because cholera had broken out in the
wretched place, so that hardly a single man was
to be seen on the street. Only the pariah dogs
strayed amongst the half-fallen houses, and, when
I paid my respects to the kaiwmakam, the local
physician had just arrived from Mosul in order
to enforce the regulations for combating the
epidemic. His first act was to advise me to shake
the dust of Djazirah from my feet as speedily
as possible, and so I had to do the sights of the
town—there is an interesting medieval church
as well as the chief mosque—in the rapid and
superficial way of the globe-trotter. I, in the
end, made a more Satisfactory inspection of the
wonderful ruins of a bridge in front of the town
(Plate XI). This also belongs to the Middle
Ages, and it is decorated with handsome reliefs
representing animal life: a quite unique specimen
of Islamic art.

It was on this ruined bridge that Moltke had
an adventure which he has told very well in
his Letters from Asiatic Turkey. As his kelek
approached the bridge, the boatman suddenly
166PLATE XI.—A. RUINS OF A MONASTERY (MAR YAKUB AT URFAH) ON THE
NIMRUD DAGH.

 

     

 
   

i eee ees iene arote
- mtn Ta Oat ent tT

 

 

PLATE XI.—B. RUINED BRIDGE AT DJAZIRAH.

To face p, 166,THE LAND OF THRE ASSYRTANS

noticed, at the last moment, that there was a
strong whirlpool near one of the piles. All his
efforts to avoid the furious waters were unsuccess-
ful, so the raft went right into the vortex and
floated round and round. It was so bad that
once the water rose above the heads of the
terrified officers (!), but the raft came up again
the next moment, and sailed on with perfect
calmness. As, however, both passengers and
luggage were drenched, they had to land near
the ruins of the bridge, undress, and put their
clothes and other articles to dry in the sun on
the bank of the river. Moltke then describes
very humorously how a large flock of pelicans
held a noisy parliament on the opposite side of
the river, for all the world as if they were laughing
at the men who had fallen into the water. The
officers very nearly had a second misfortune.
The kelek broke loose, and, if the boatmen had
not had the presence of mind to seize it, the
victor of 1870 would, as he himself says, have
had to remain in a state of nature on the lonely
island in the Tigris.

The journey from Djazirah to Mosul is through
the birthland of the ancient Assyrians: a region
that has often reappeared in the history of the
world, as, for instance, in the time of Alexander

167MY SOUR NEY DOWN Lee TiGRIrsS

the Great, and in the frontier fights between the
Sassanide and the Romans. It has not, indeed,
the rude magnificence of the highlands of Kur-
distan, yet it has a magic, a special charm, of
its own. The bed of the river is much broader
here, and the waters flow calmly on, carrying
the traveller through the wide plains. But in
places there are small hills which bar the way
of the river and compel it to follow the most
wonderful windings. And to the north one has
a constant view of the lofty chain of the Djabal
Djudi, on the snow-clad summits of which Noah’s
ark is said, by the local legend, to have landed.
It is certain that this legend, which connects
Noah’s ark with the mountains of the Meso-
potamian plain, is very ancient; for we read in
early Christian literature of a ‘“‘ monastery of
the ark situated on the mountains of the Kurds.”
It is said to have been destroyed by lightning
on a festival which the Nestorians used to
celebrate. The monastery and church and all
the people are said to have perished in flames
and been reduced to ashes. Later, the tradition
says, the Mohammedans in turn erected a holy
place there, and to-day all of them—Christians,
Jews and Mohammedans—make pilgrimages to
the holy mountain: which seems perfectly right
168THE TeAUN D JOR Th Ey Ais Shy Rr TAGNES

and proper, seeing that Noah was the father of
the entire human race. Up to the present only
one European has ever been there, and that was
an English lady, Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell.
She describes very pleasantly in her book of
travel the difficulties of the ascent through the
rocky grooves in the steep side of the mountain
—what a descent it must have been for all the
various animals of the ark which were not used
to mountain-climbing !—the Mohammedan sanc-
tuary at the top, and the glorious view on all
sides.

To us, coming from the thinly populated parts
of Kurdistan, the numerous villages along the
river banks were a very welcome sight. On the
northern bank they were generally Kurd and
Yezid; on the southern bank Arab. Sometimes
we halted at one of these villages in the evening,
and, while my men lit the camp-fire and prepared
the evening meal, I generally ascended some little
hill. One did not need to go far to get a view of
the entire country and the noble river flowing
through it. It is true that one needed time to
get accustomed to the new kind of scenery which
we had reached: to realise the peculiar beauty
of it. I almost think that others had the same
experience as myself, for, when we read the old

169NY OU RINE Yo DOWN THE —TreRis

travel books, we notice how this country is
always curtly dismissed as monotonous, without
charm, or unattractive.

It is not altogether surprising, because what
we understand in Europe by the beauty of
scenery is totally different from what we find
here. All that we look for in a ‘‘ beautiful view,”
such as the Bay of Naples or the Alps—vivid
colouring, clear outlines, background, details—
is entirely wanting here. There is no background,
no mountain with characteristic outline which
might impress itself on the memory. We cannot
call mountains the long parallel ridges of rock
which rise, one behind another, to the east
until they become a blue and slightly indented
line on the far horizon. We have rather a sea
of broad lines, repeating themselves over and
over again, until they pass into infinity. And
there are not the distinct colours which we have
in Europe, with our green woods, blue seas,
white, snowy mountains, and their pleasant
contrasts. Here there is only one broad and
vaguely tremulous light in all possible tones—
gray-green, brown-green, blue-green and yellow-
green: a peculiar mingling of all colours. Of
figures or details there are none. There are, of
course, villages and roads, but they are lost in
170THE BAND. OF 7 fe EAS Shy hel ANS

the infinity which dominates the scene and
absorbs allelse. Yet it is precisely the indefinable
something, this spaceless and timeless immensity,
that broods over all and colours all, which appeals
to one and makes the incomparable beauty of
the scene.

When there is something definite, something
plastic, in the scene, whether it be a river, a
building, a solitary tree, or even a flock of sheep,
it is not a mere detail, but it has a broad im-
pressiveness : infinitely broader than in Europe,
precisely because it is isolated and gives its stamp
to the landscape. I remember one evening
seeing on a hill a small saint’s tomb. Architec-
turally it was quite modest and negligible: in
a European landscape it would be a mere idyllic
detail. But here, where it stood upon the summit
of the little hill, with a large winding of the
Tigris round its base as if to protect it, for miles
around it seemed to dominate the view. The tiny
building seemed here to swell to immense—nay,
monumental—proportions. Involuntarily, I found
myself repeating that our architects might learn
here how much might be made of the simplest
building if you know the right place in which to
put it. From what I have said it will be inferred
that, though the Tigris is still not a very large

171MY DT OURNEY DOWN LHE TIGRIS

river at this spot, yet it conveys an impression
of unimaginable majesty when one follows its
course through these abandoned and forgotten
lands.

There is another thing that moves one very
deeply in regard to these Assyrian scenes: their
connexion with a great past. It is very difficult
indeed to imagine that all these broad plains,
which are for the most part mere steppes to-day,
were once the cradle and nursery of one of the
mightiest military forces which ancient history
chronicles, namely, the kingdom of Assyria.
Here were raised the armies of a Salmanasar
or a Sanherib ; there, where the Tigris winds over
the land, must be the spot, somewhere, at which,
hundreds of years afterwards, Alexander, the
darling of the gods, crossed the river with his
army in the course of his victorious campaign.
Farther afield, yonder at the foot of the blue hills,
the ragged line of which indicates the frontier of
Iran, was the dividing line, at Arbela, between
east and west, between Hellas and the Orient. . .

As a rule, the sky was thickly strewn with
stars by the time when I got back tocamp. There
was no great roaring fire, lighting up the darkness
of the night, to greet me on my return, like the
fires we used to have on the wooded slopes of the
172THE LAND (OR DHE ASS YRLANS

southern coast of Asia Minor, where one could
gaze for hours into the eternal play of the tongues
of flame and never grow tired. Now we had only
a modest glow, for we had to be very sparing
indeed with our store of charcoal in this treeless
region, and already we had been forced several
times to go to the villages to beg dried camels’
dung, the common fuel in these parts, if we were
to cook properly the fowl which people sold us.
Round our little fire sat Garabed and the three
pilgrims and a few people from the village who
had stayed in order to see the European beg
—a rare spectacle to them—who had come to
their country to dig up a great treasure
somewhere.

They were very pleasant, these evenings spent
round our little camp-fire on the Tigris, and it
does me good to recall them. After the evening
meal we drew quite close together, and held out
our hands to the glow, and the native people—
they might be Kurds, or Yezids, or Arabs—told
us about their daily life and work, their cares and
troubles. Occasionally they would advise where
it was best to look for treasures, and they would,
in the end, beg me to tell them something about
Europe, the distant land about which they had
heard so many marvellous and strange things.

173Miya OUR Neon. DOWN  LDPHE TTE Ris

But in spite of the soothing coffee we drank and
the glorious star-strewn sky that glittered above
our heads, the increasing cold often drove us
early to bed. Then the native folk went away,
and we retired to our kelek to sleep ; and presently
there was no sound but the gentle lapping of
the water and the howl of a jackal in the distance.

So, day by day, we passed through the Assyrian
region, and I enjoyed to the full the last warm
and sunny days of the late autumn. About
noon of the fifth day we reached the end of this
part of our journey and were at Mosul.

It was a glorious, an overpoweringly impressive
picture that presented itself to us. On our right
the thick tangle of the houses of the town seemed
to rise out of the river, and above them we saw
the lofty minarets and domes of the mosques.
Here and there the crown of some tall palm was
outlined against the blue sky. On our left was
the heap of ruins which was all that was left of
ancient Nineveh, and beyond it, on another hill
that was part of the precincts of the old city,
the mosque of Nabi Yuni, the Prophet Jonah;
who certainly never dreamed that he would
one day became a saint of the Mohammedan
religion. And as we drew near, and the people
on the shore gazed at our rafts, and my little
174TT Hor olay ND Oo) LH Bh) AS say Rep ACNas

company stood with eyes and mouth wide open,
taking in all the glories of the great city, in a
flash there passed before me the shades of all the
men who had made the two cities prosperous and
famous. The kings of Assyria, and the Prophet
Jonah, the great atabekes of Mosul, and even the
lama of Nineveh, were in the great procession
of my dream; and it was as exhilarating as a
draught of wine.

I was awakened from my dream by our landing
at the boat-bridge which connects the opposite
banks. At once I saw amongst the crowd of
people who awaited us a kavass from the German
consulate who had looked out for us for several
days. He came aboard immediately, to help
us to disembark and see to the transport of our
luggage to the town. As the kelekdjis had now
finished with their service to me, and Garabed
was much too superior a person for me to dare
to ask him to see to the transfer of the luggage,
I engaged four hamals (porters) who were to carry
everything on their backs to the German
consulate, where accommodation had been pre-
pared for us some days earlier. These Oriental
hamals have a very skilful way of bearing their
burdens. They bend the body forward at a
right angle until they make a sort of platform

175MY 3.0 Ui Raney  3DiO WON fons TEGO RIS

of their back, and the various articles to be
carried are piled one on top of another on this
platform. They can in this way carry incredibly
heavy loads. Without a word they will take the
heaviest of trunks on their backs and march off
up the streets.

When all my luggage had thus been packed
and corded on the backs of four hamals, we went
off in a very comical-looking procession. In
front, with a horse-whip in his hand, was the
kavass, clearing a way for us through the crowds
that stared at us; then my humble self, like an
African explorer above, as I had on a tropical
helmet, but from the neck downward—as I had
worn my thick winter overcoat on the raft—
clad rather like a Greenland explorer. Garabed
came last, accompanied by the three Shiite pil-
grims ; while the four living towers of luggage
formed a fitting frame for us. Thus we entered
Mosul, ‘‘ the mother and queen of cities.”’CHAPTER X

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINEVEH

WAS MOST WARMLY ENTERTAINED in the
[come consulate, which lies a little outside
the town, to the south. One enters by a
formidable gatehouse and finds oneself in an
inner court, partly paved and partly planted
with trees. The rooms were grouped round this ;
though one of them was replaced by what is
called an ivan—a cool hall opening upon the

court with a large and slender pointed arch.
One of the advantages of the consulate was
that there was no consul, so that I had the entire
house to myself. The consul is represented by a
native merchant, Dabbaghzadah Daud Tschelebi,
a descendant of a very old Mosul family, who gave
the kavasses the necessary instructions from time
to time to ensure my comfort. Whenever I came
to the end of my opulent meal—which the con-
Sulate servants often provided for me quite in
the French style—Daud Tschelebi came to keep
M WAGMY Ss OURNEY DOWN THE Te Ras

me company, over my black coffee, in the ivan,
and to learn my further wishes. Besides the
two kavasses there were two other inmates of
the house, and every day they gave me the
greatest pleasure. They were a pair of gazelles :
marvellously graceful creatures, with such fine,
slender limbs that one would hardly think it
possible for them to sustain the weight of the
beautiful body. But the moment they put them-
selves in the attitude of springing, one saw that
they were all sinew and muscle, springs and
energy.

My first care was to get into communication
with a kelekdji; as I knew that it would take
several days to make a new raft, and as I did not
want to remain very long in Mosul, I had no time
to spare. One was very speedily found, and,
when I came home in the evening after a little
excursion, the man was waiting in the ivan
forme. I went in at once and saw a remarkable
sight: on the floor there squatted a curious
heap of manhood hidden in a mantle made of
an incredible number of pieces. The strange
being did not at first stir, but, when he became
at last conscious of my presence, the small head
of an old man popped up suddenly from the
mantle, and two piercing gray eyes bored into
178a ad
I ED

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NEN EV bo

me. To increase the oddness, several of his
teeth stuck out rather far.

But the most comical thing of all was to hear
how the man who crouched so motionless,
suddenly poured out a continuous and voluble
flow of speech, merely, at the most important
passages, producing two hands from some other
part of the mantle, and with these he gave a
proper emphasis to his words. He began at
first with the blessings of God, so good and
merciful, but he very speedily passed on toa
statement of his business. Very soon the talk
was all about liras, piastres and paras. As he
wanted twelve pounds for the journey from
Mosul to Baghdad, I, in Oriental fashion, offered
him six pounds, or half; and in about five
minutes’ time we had agreed to a payment of
fifteen pounds! How that came about I really
donot know. I know only that I could do nothing
else, as the man was so far beyond me in the
technicalities of the business that I saw it was
best to pretend to understand and give way.

When a few further details had been settled,
this curious creature, who was to be my new
kelekdji, closed the debate with a few pious
Sayings about the good God and the blessings
of heaven. Then the head and the protruding

179Mia) OUSRYNSERY: —D.O WN LHe Tver is

teeth disappeared into the mantle, and the
strange piece of humanity set itself in motion
to take its departure. In front of the consulate
the man met Garabed, and he praised me to the
skies and told Garabed I was a really great man.
So I had at least the satisfaction of knowing
that he was pleased with the issue of the business.

The next day I devoted to seeing the sights :
the wonders “‘ with which Allah has endowed
Mosul.”” But before I speak of them I should
like to premise a few words about the history of
the town.

Differently from most of the other towns of
Mesopotamia, Mosul seems to be of comparatively
recent origin. Something like a bridgehead—to
use an expression that became familiar during
the late war—of the great city of Nineveh,
which lay on the opposite bank of the river,
must have existed here even in the time of the
Assyrians. But it was not until the Christian,
if not the Mohammedan, period that Mosul
seems to have become an important town; and
it was then also the residence of the representative
of the Baghdad Khalif. When the power of this
ruler fell into decay, and all sorts of little kings
and emirs began to be ambitious to have the
pleasure—not very lasting pleasure sometimes—
180nn 8 ail

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NIENEVE FB

of courts of their own, Mosul, before it passed
into the great empire of the Seljuks, had dynasties
of its own: first of all, the Hamdanide.

It is not my intention here to dwell upon the
constantly changing phases of those restless times.
It will be enough to mention the man who raised
Mosul in the twelfth century to real political
greatness. This man was the atabeke (literally
“ tutor ”’—compare the major domus of the
Frankish kings) Imad al-din Zengi (1127-1146).
In him Mosul found a ruler who lifted the city
at once to the position of head of a powerful
State, which stretched as far as Syria. He was
far above all the miserable little States of the
large and petty kings of the entire region. He
was a real empire-builder, bold and ruthless,
crafty when it became necessary. Kiven
physically he is said to have been a man of
extraordinary strength. No effort was too great
for him: comfort was an idea foreign to his
nature. He is said to have taken great care of
his subjects. It is related that once a Jew asked
and obtained his help against one of his most
powerful officers. As another writer says, “ the
evildoers were restrained and the faithful flocked
in crowds.”

He was killed by his own slaves—for some

181MOY JOU REN EY DOWN THE PVG RTS

unknown reason—at the siege of Kal’at Djabar,
on the Euphrates, and his two sons divided his
kingdom between them. Nur al-din, “‘ the Light
of the Faith,” received Syria and resided in
Aleppo, while Saif al-din, “‘ the Sword of the
Faith,’ who remained in Mosul, had the proper
provinces of the nation in the east. Although
the latter had not so strong a personality as his
father and was still further short of the fine
figure of his brother, being, as J. Miiller says
in his History of Islam, too much disposed to
linger over his wine in the harem while others
did his work for him, his heritage was so stoutly
established that Mosul lost none of its importance.

It was in those days that Mosul became the
walled and strongly fortified city which had so
great a repute at the height of the Crusades
and during the whole Middle Ages. Even the
famous Sultan Saladin, the child of fortune, the
renowned enemy of the Crusaders, who actually
recovered Jerusalem, tried in vain to conquer
Mosul. He appeared in person there at the head
of his troops and with all his formidable machines
for siege. He even designed to divert the Tigris
in order to bring the city into subjection by
thirst. But he was twice compelled to retire
without accomplishing his purpose, and it was
182MOSUL AND AN CIENT NIN EV ©

only when he had taken all the other towns of
the region one after another that Mosul had at
length to come to terms with him.

In later years we have a prominent figure at
Mosul in the Regent, Badr al-din Lu’lu (1222-
1259), first minister and viceroy of one of the
descendants of the great atabekes, and afterwards
a prince in his own right. Culturally his reign
must be regarded as the culmination of the history
of Mosul. He adorned the city with wonderful
buildings, of which we will speak presently ;
and to his time belong the remarkable Mosul
bronzes of which we have specimens in the South
Kensington Museum, the Kaiser  Friedrich’s
Museum at Berlin, and other museums.

Even when Mosul had fallen to the Mongolians
—first to Hulagu Khan, afterwards to Timur—
the prosperity of the place seems, if we may judge
by the monuments, to have been maintained
for a considerable time. The Mongolians were
remarkably gracious in their relations with it.
Here they made no pyramids of skulls, such as
we find in other places occupied by them; nor
do we hear of any demolishing of buildings. As
regards the few massacres of Christians, which
are attributed to them, it would seem that
the narratives are grossly exaggerated, for the

1838MY JSOORNE YY DOWN THE TiGRis

majority of the Mosul churches belong precisely
to the period of the Mongols. They showed special
favour to some of the Mohammedan sanctuaries.
Timur is said to have visited the tombs of the
Prophet Jonah and St. George, and to have even
erected new domes over the sanctuaries.

Mosul then came under the dominion of the
Persian Sefewids, and later (1643) under that
of the Osmanli; and, like all Oriental towns,
it fell gradually into decay. Nevertheless, it
retained a certain amount of vitality during these
times, as we find, for instance, when it was
besieged in 1743 by Nadir Shah of Persia. It
made a heroic defence. Nadir Shah had ill
luck from the start. His mines exploded back-
wards instead of forwards; the bombs thrown
into the town either burst in the air or were
not, effective enough to destroy the stout stone
houses : and, in fine, after losing thirty thousand
men, he was compelled to raise the siege.

Thus Mosul has, in spite of all its misfortunes,
maintained a certain importance down to our
own time. It is really not surprising in the case
of a town that lies at a busy cross-roads on the
frontier between the Kurds and the Arabs, is
the market-town of a very extensive agricultural
region, and has always derived a considerable
184a

MOSUL AND ANCTENT NINEVEH

revenue from the trade between east and west.
Since the Suez Canal was opened, it is true, the
trade has greatly diminished, and at the present
moment the people look for their salvation to
the new railway.

My first visit was to the chief mosque, which
is not very accessible. But, thanks to the
services of Daud Tschelebi, I was provided with
the two kavasses of the consulate as guides, and
was able to see it thoroughly. It is not easy to
find the way to it, for I do not believe there is
anywhere else in the world such a labyrinth
of crazy streets as there isin Mosul. The kavasses,
however, went steadily on, turning to right and
left, and then left and right, until suddenly the
lofty minaret of the mosque rose sharply before us
into the blue air across a gap in one of the streets.

It is a round minaret, supported on a fairly
high square base, and its external surface is
coated, right up to the top, with variegated tiles.
It has, moreover, another remarkable feature:
it is not straight. It leans so much that it may
be compared with the church-tower at St. Moritz
or even with the Hanging Tower of Pisa. It
ought, therefore, when the railway-station Mosul-
Nineveh comes into existence on the opposite
bank of the river, to be a great attraction to

185MM SIO UR NEY DOWN DEE TRG Ris

globe-trotters, especially if some energetic adver-
tising agency makes it better known. The reason
for the leaning of the minaret is not a weakness
of the foundations, as in the case of its famous
brother at Pisa. Here the cause assigned is
much more original. It is said that the Prophet
once came to Mosul, and the tower reverently
bowed to do him honour! The act of respect,
however, seems to have been imprudent, for it
has had to remain bending ever since. The legend
is very edifying in the ears of the Moham-
medans, and I am quite aware that in the
east, which has a much better memory for all
sorts of pretty stories than the busy west,
oral tradition often embodies real facts. But
in this case the pious fiction is too transparent ;
for, in the first place, Mohammed certainly
never was in Mosul, and secondly, if he ever
were there, the tower can only have done him
reverence in some pre-existing form, for it can
be proved to have been built about the middle
of the twelfth century.

The mosque itself occupies the site of the old
Christian cathedral of St. Paul.! It has to-day

1 I would observe that I owe nearly all the following details
about the monuments of Mosul, which had hitherto been very
little explored, to the studies of Sarre and Hertzfeld.

186—
ie is y

Se tale
7 t

 

PLATE XII.—PRAYER NICHE IN THE CHIEF MOSQUE AT MOSUL.

To face p. 186.oe Pd

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINE VY oe

a very lamentable aspect. Whole series of its
spacious halls, which were once of such size that
they could hold all the people of Mosul on the
day of prayer, Friday, fell into decay centuries
ago; but in the surviving portion we have, in
the main, the remainder of the structure erected
about the middle of the twelfth century and
decorated by Nur al-din, when he came to Mosul
to arrange the succession to the throne amongst
his nephews. The great octagonal pillars, flanked
by groups of slender columns, and with beautiful
capitals, are still there; only the lofty domes
and vaulting, which once covered the whole,
have in part disappeared.

The prayer niche, now thrust in a rather
step-motherly way into an annexe, but dating
from 1148 and beautifully decorated with rich
arabesques (Plate XII), is a unique jewel of
Mohammedan art, and quite the most valuable
monument in Mosul. At a later period Badr
al-din Luw’lu had the walls of the chief mthrab
adorned with rich stucco-work. There is now
also in the courtyard a badly compacted prayer-
niche which he built. It differs mainly from the
older one in the depth of the mouldings, and is
not for a moment comparable to it in luxuriance

of types of decoration.
187MY JOURNEY DOWN THE Lt GRt's

In the court of the mosque a new fountain
has taken the place of the older, which an ancient
contemporary writer thus vividly describes : ‘‘ In
the courtyard of the mosque there is a domed
structure, and underneath it there is a marble
column, the shaft of which is girt by three twisted
rings. On the top of the column there is an
octagonal marble basin with a powerful JebNOn
water springing from it, and it looks as if it
were a crystal staff. Then it breaks up and
falls upon the floor of the building.”

Of the later princes, Badr al-din Lulu, whom
I have already mentioned, was the most generous
in adorning the town with fine buildings. In
his time the art of Mosul retained its sharp,
pronounced character, so that we are quite
justified in speaking of a ‘‘ Mosul school,” differing
especially from the art of the western region in
very plain fashion. In the west, on account of
the Crusades, there had been a strong orthodox
reaction, and this imposed upon art a severe
and drastic simplicity ; in ornamentation, par-
ticularly, it admitted only geometrical designs.
Here in Mosul, on the contrary, architecture
had a quite inexhaustible wealth of forms and
arabesques, including outlines of parrots and

other birds. Even figures occur with extraor-
188ee aaa a cdc

MOSUL AND ANCLE NT NIN EVE

dinary frequency. Yet this has nothing to do
with Buddhistie influence; it is conceived and
executed entirely as ornamentation. There is
something almost too fantastic or exaggerated
in this art. We can easily understand the
felicitous verdict of a traveller of the seventeenth
century, Thévenoz, who, referring to this rich
stucco decoration, has some very sensible remarks

.

about ‘plaster ornaments,’’? which are “ not
so regular as we have them in Europe, but a
little unusual,’ yet they please the eye by
their “‘ pretty confusion,” and “ give it more
satisfaction in a way than objects of great
beauty.”

We recognise the nature and character of this
art most plainly in Kara Serai, the ‘“ Black
Castle,’ the ruins of which I visited in the after-
noon of the same day. As becomes a royal
castle, it stands out very prominently on the
higher part of the bank of the Tigris in the
northern quarter of the town. Probably, as
Sarre suggests, Badr al-din built this palace when
he acceded to the throne, as a sign of his power
and sovereignty that would impress itself on all.
To-day all that remains of it are two ivans,
which must in former days have adjoined a large
courtyard. The best thing about them is the

189MX TZOURNEN DOwN THE TiG Ras

very rich stucco ornamentation, which at one
time covered the whole of the walls. There are
opulent arabesques, with flowers and_ birds,
splendid decorative inscriptions, and a very fine
frieze of window apertures, in each of which
sits a little human figure.

There are a good many other interesting
buildings in Mosul: two tombs, for instance,
of descendants of Ali, which were probably
erected by Badr al-din Lu’lu on an older founda-
tion, and the tomb of the patron saint of Mosul,
George the Dragon-Killer. It seems to have
been raised on the foundations of a Christian
church, and in later times it enjoyed the special
favour of Timur, who is said to have erected a new
dome over the cenotaph of the saint. As a
curlosity I may mention that Mosul can boast
of having in its possession the tomb of perhaps
the oldest saint in the world: a saint that may
be a few thousand years older than Father
Noah himself, namely, Seth, the son of Adam !

Least interesting, apart from a few doors,
are the walls of the town. Moltke justly observed
that at the most they are capable only of
protecting the town from an attack by marauding
Bedouins. It is difficult to imagine that in
1743 Nadir Shah failed against them, unless
190in -summmammmenmenpannnnnmeiaiiac’

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINE Vo bee

we suppose that they have crumbled away very
much since that time.

There are very few people in Europe who
have any idea that there are a good many
Christians in Mosul and the Tigris region generally.
Still less are there who know that Christianity
took root in these parts at a very early date,
and that many of the sects which are found
there to-day go back to the early times. That
applies especially to the Nestorian Church. It
takes its name, it is true, from Nestorius; but
in reality it existed before his time. It is simply
the ancient Chaldaic Church, which grew again
in spite of many persecutions under the Sassanid
dynasty. It has even been stated that its
members are the purest representatives of the
ancient Assyrian race; if, indeed, we can still
speak of such a thing as race in a land that
has witnessed so many migrations and minglings
of peoples and so many calamities. In the year
431 this Chaldaic Church, at the Council of
Ephesus, severed itself from the west. It did
not, however, vegetate as a small sect after the
separation; it displayed an almost miraculous
power of expansion. It made progress far away
in the east, and sent missionaries to central
Asia, even as far as China. Later, in the four-

191MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TTERTS

teenth century, there was a schism, and one
section of the Nestorians sought unity with
Rome. The latter are the actual “ Chaldaic
Christians.” The other section has retained
its independence to the present day.

Besides the Nestorians, there are also the
Jacobites, the Syrian Monophysites, who were
condemned in the Council of Chalcedon in the
year 451. They are still very numerous, especially
in the remote mountainous parts of northern
Mesopotamia, such as Tur Abdin. From these
also a section, the Catholic Syrians, seceded to
Rome in the course of time.

When people speak in Europe about Oriental
Christians, their remarks are not, as a rule,
very flattering; and it is perfectly true that
superstition and fossilisation have proceeded
to a very great extent amongst them. But
when one approaches one of these Churches
in the historical spirit, one really has to alter
one’s ideas on other matters, apart from history.
One asks oneself, especially, how it was possible
for all these Christian sects, in spite of their
Mohammedan environment—which was anything
but friendly to them at the time of the richest
development of the Abbassid kaliphate—to sur-
vive until modern times. That is, certainly, a
192MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINEVEH
living indication how deeply Christianity must
have taken root in the district of the Tigris.
From time to time, moreover, the Christians of
Mosul have been very influential and respected.
It is noteworthy in this connexion that the
Mongols, who were indifferent to religion, were
much attracted to them, as the many buildings
of the Christians at that time and other evidences
show. There is, for instance, the Turkish inscrip-
tion in the monastery of Mar Behnam at Mosul,
which calls down blessings on the Mongolian
monarch and his house. This was one of the
reasons why the patriotism of the Christians
of Mosul was very pronounced. We see this
especially in the year 1748, when Nadir Shah
besieged the town. It is said that even the wives
and children of the Christians fought in the front
rank, so that afterwards the Turkish Governor
did an unheard-of thing: when the siege was
raised, he restored the Christian churches. It
was quite the proper thing to do, as a matter of
fact, because we are assured that St. George
and even the Prophet Jonah in person (dressed
as a knight) had fought with them against the
Persian monarch !

When, on the second day, I got ready to visit
the Christian churches and to pay my respects
N 193MY SOUR NEY DOWN DHE “TLG Rs

to the heads of the various Christian communities,
I found that my program was a fairly long
one. Besides the Nestorians, Chaldeans, Greeks,
Jacobites, and Catholic Syrians, there are other
Christian communities which are the result of
the Catholic and Protestant missions. It will
be understood, therefore, that in one day I had
a good half-dozen Archbishops, Bishops, and
Patriarchs to see, and in the evening I found it
very difficult to keep my various impressions
from being confused together. I must say,
however, that everywhere I was received with
the greatest cordiality ; in fact, with every mark
of honour.

In particular my reception at the house of
one of these princes of the Church—I think it
was the Jacobite Archbishop—will live for ever
in my memory. When he heard my name, he
abandoned the congregation which had met
for some service, with all his clergy, and left
the people to continue their litanies alone, in
order that he might personally overlook the
arrangements to receive me worthily and be in
his audience-chamber to greet me. When I
arrived, shortly afterwards, the room was full
of people. At one end of it, raised up as if
hovering over the entire gathering, sat the Arch-
194MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINE VET

bishop. He was on a throne that was reached
by several steps and was covered with a canopy.
His priests had taken their places on the divans
which ran along both the longer sides of the room,
and a number of the more prominent members of
the sect stood respectfully at the door.

I was at once presented to the Archbishop,
and he received me very graciously, and invited
me to take my place in a small chair at his feet.
As the clergy stood round me in their rich cere-
monious robes, and I looked up to the prince
of the Church enthroned so high above me
in all his pomp and glory, it seemed to me that I,
on my small chair, was a very poor little person,
a “layman ’”’ in the true sense of the word. I
almost felt as if I had been brought into a solemn
Eeumenical Council, and was, like Nestorius or
some other famous heretic, to undergo examina-
tion. But the feeling did not last long, as the
Archbishop, who knew French, spoke in the most
friendly accents to me from the height of his
throne and, while coffee and cigarettes were
handed round, gave me all sorts of interesting
information about the churches of Mosul. It
made me rather uncomfortable to reflect that
he had interrupted divine service on my account,
and when the ancient Syriac litanies came to

195MY VOURN EY. DOWN “Dae LTE RS

my ears through the open windows from the
church, where the congregation continues to
sing them without their spiritual pastors, I
repeatedly pressed him to return. But he
waved me aside every time, saying: ‘‘ Oh,
cane fait rien! Laissez-les chanter.’’ Itherefore
remained a little longer, but felt, at the end of
another quarter of an hour, that I ought not
further to keep him away from his flock. So
we parted, he stepping down from his high
episcopal throne and warmly shaking hands
with me.

After these visits I made the round of the
churches belonging to the various sects. Some
of them—for instance, Mar-Djirdjis (St. George),
Mar Tuma (St. Thomas), Miryam al-‘Adhra’
(the Virgin Mary), Mar Ya’kub (St. James),
and Mar Shem’un (St. Simeon)—are well worth
seeing. But one sees very little here of the old-
style architecture of the first millennium, as we
find it amongst the sombre ruins of Syria and
northern Mesopotamia. Apart from a few ancient
remains, most of the buildings go back to the
thirteenth century—the time of the Mongolians.
Some are even more recent, and some were raised
only in modern times.

The churches have, as a rule, three naves, all
196- Fee ga 3h eee
ae aeeeeen any eee cass auiaienbeniaemnlicieaepaeniebicicnehieenemeemmnemaementieeninliageenanaemntighiaioamaemmmmneanel = 5

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINEVEH

of which have fine vaulted roofs; and these—as
they prevent an independent illumination of the
central nave—give the whole structure an air of
heaviness. The choir, which has a dome above
its central part, is often separated from the naves
by a massive wall. This wall is pierced by three
doors, corresponding to the three naves, and the
middle door is richly ornamented with carving
in stone. The details of the decoration are
identical with those on the contemporary Moham-
medan buildings ; though I should add that in
the latter—as, for instance, in the chief mosque
or the Kara Serai—the technical and artistic
finish is superior.

Special mention should be made of a room with
relics built into it which is almost always found
beside the northern side-aisle. In one church
there is an iron ring in this room, and it seems
that at one time lunatics used to be bound to it
to recover their sanity. In Mar Ya’kub, again,
there is a very interesting slab of stone, belonging
to the ninth century, with a figure of a cross
in a niche on it, which they put upon the altar.
Herzfeld thinks—and he is certainly right—
that in this altar-stone we have the forerunner
of the Islamic prayer-niche (mihrab), as in size
and shape they are, apart from the cross, just

197MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TTERITS

alike. As a rule there is a courtyard beside each
church, and there are often colonnades along the
sides of it. Thus the ecclesiastical structures
of Mosul confirm in a very interesting way the
impression that we get from reading the history
of Christianity in the town. They show, especially,
that the Christians of the Tigris region were more
important from the cultural point of view than
their brethren in the western part of the Orient:
a fact that is the more remarkable as the
Christians of Mosul were in a land upon which
Europe looks with disdain.

Next day at Mosul was Beiram, the great festi-
val of the Mohammedans, and Daud Tschelebi
came for me at an early hour. He had come
ceremoniously in his frock-coat, with two decora-
tions glittering on his breast, and he at once told
me that to-day there would be a great reception
at the house of the Governor-General, and he was
to go there as a representative of the German
Consulate. It was his opinion that it would be
very fitting if I went with him, in the character
of a European traveller, to pay my respects to
the Vali; and so about noon we set off together.

It was a wonderfully warm and sunny day
in November, and the streets were full of people
in holiday clothes and holiday mood. Especially
198MoS UL FAN D AN CIEN © NIN Poy be

in the square in front of the Serai, to which every-
body was going, there was an immense crowd
and the two kavasses who preceded us had to
force a way through it before we could reach the
entrance. We walked past the guard, dressed
in fine new uniforms and standing very smartly
at attention, and reached the doorway. Here we
passed into a courtyard, and mounted a rather
rickety staircase to the first floor, where there
was a sort of reception going on in a large room.
The kadi, the military commanders, and all the
officials of Mosul were already sitting in long rows
when we entered, and at the end, on a throne,
was His Excellency the Governor-General, an
elderly man, of small stature and rather full
figure. He wore the uniform of a Turkish
General, sprinkled all over with decorations, and
sat on a small and modest velvet-covered chair,
in rococo style, of European make. It seemed
rather out of place in a room which was otherwise
so dignified, with beautiful old carpets.

He said a few friendly words to us in Turkish,
to which Daud Tschelebi replied with great
courtesy, and then I, balancing a cup of coffee
in one hand, made a few suitable remarks about
the good relations which existed between Switzer-
land and Turkey. Soon afterwards there entered

199MY TOURNEY DOWN WHE. Theme

the English Consul, in a white tropical uniform :
a tall, imposing blond man, of the Lohengrin
type. He spoke very little when he came in;
but in the few words he did say, which seemed
to come from the innermost depths of his being,
he gave clear expression to the power and dignity
of the British Empire.

Much more talkative, in harmony with his
temperament, was the French Consul, who came
next: a little, but extremely active man, dressed
in a black frock-coat with gold embroidery, and
holding his hat in his hand. After the customary
salutation he became extremely serious, and
began to make a very voluble complaint. I
cocked my ears, as there was every appearance
of his endeavouring to bring about something of
a nature that the common mortal learns only,
as a rule, from his daily paper: something like
a diplomatic rupture.

He was complaining that the soldiers posted
in front of the Serai had not saluted him properly,
and his words were resonant with the affront
done to the French Republic. But the Vali
was not in the least disturbed. He listened
quietly, half closed his shrewd-looking eyes,
drew up his little legs on the rococo chair in
Turkish fashion, and waited until the Frenchman
200Pes cnimmmmmmmsinmnmmnpcin!

MOSUL AND ANCIENT, NIN BiV fe

had finished. He then explained, in a very
superior tone, that the whole affair was a mis-
understanding. In a word, there had been a
new regulation, ordering a new form of salute.
The Governor then stood up and, to the amaze-
ment of all of us, gave an ocular demonstration
of the old and the new salute, working himself
about in such a fashion that his decorations
became all tangled. But in the end he had the
laugh on his side. So the ominous promise of a
rupture of diplomatic relations was peacefully
averted, and the whole thing ended in gaiety.

It then seemed to me that amidst the general
hilarity I distinguished a sort of horse-laugh
that sounded familiar. I bent down, and looked
in the direction from which the sound came;
and my astonishment will be imagined when I
caught sight of—Garabed! He sat, a cigarette
in his mouth, as coolly amongst all the diplomat-
ists and dignitaries of Mosul as if he had been
accustomed to this sort of thing from birth.
I could not speak to him in the presence of so
many great folk, but I gave him a look which
meant that he was presently to expect a very
serious “‘ diplomatic rupture.” I gave it to him
the moment we left the Serai, and it ended in
solemn promises and good resolutions on the part

201My TOURNEY, DOWN THE TrerRiis

of Garabed ; so there was no fear of any further
adventures of this sort.

The day after this Beiram reception was the
last day but one of my stay in Mosul. It was
to be devoted to the oldest of all the antiquities :
the mound of ruins which once was Nineveh.
It is on the other side of the Tigris, and, to get
there, one has to cross the boat-bridge over the
river. In reality, only half of it is a boat-bridge ;
the other half, which crosses an arm that is dry
at low water, is of stone arches, and the masonry
is said to have been stolen from the ruins of
Nineveh. When you have crossed the bridge
you are in the precincts of ancient Nineveh, the
mighty capital of Assyria during the last century
of its power, which was then at its height. The
son of Sargon, Sanherib (705-681), who destroyed
Babylon, was the re-founder of the city; and
after him Asarhaddon (680-668) and Assur-
banipal ruled in it. It was therefore here that
the Assyrian military monarchy, which could
not sustain the united attack of the Medes and
the Babylonians, came to a tragic end with the
fall of Nineveh.

Anyone who has just come from the magnificent
ruins of the west, from Baalbek or Palmyra, has
a feeling of disillusion when he first sees Nineveh.
202MOSUL AND ANCIENT? NINE VES

Here it is necessary to have the knowledge of
an expert in order to be able to form a just
mental picture of the ancient splendour. For
the walls and the palaces have shrunk into
insignificant heaps of rubbish, in which one can
only trace the outline of parts of the walls by
means of the shafts and pits sunk by Layard
and others. This was not always the case.
Long after the fall of the city (606 B.c.) its
crumbling edifices were still the wonder of
contemporaries. It was only centuries later
that the green herbage so completely covered
the last of the walls that the once great metropolis
became quite unrecognisable. The buildings
must have been at least partially erect even in
the later days of the Roman Empire, and there
must have been men living in them, for the
Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus tells us
that in the year 359 the army of the Sassanide,
during a campaign against the Emperor Con-
stantine, passed by Nineveh, the chief city of
Adiabene, which was once known as “ Assyria ”’ ;
and we know also that at a later date a Christian
bishop was settled at Nineveh.

With the rise of Mosul the superb old palaces
fell into greater and greater decay, but even at
the height of the Middle Ages, in the thirteenth

203MY JOURNEY DOWN THE TEGRIS

century, we hear of a strong castle at Nineveh
in which the atabekes often pitched their camp.
Anyone who has visited the east and has seen
how the Arabs of the Middle Ages sometimes
made their fortresses amongst the ruins of old
towns and palaces will be able to form a good
idea of this castle at Nineveh ; 1t would have on
its walls the old stone-reliefs which are now one
of the chief glories of the British Museum. Even
these last remains gradually crumbled away.
Soil, rubbish, and grass spread over everything,
and the old Assyrian capital, before which at
one time half the eastern world had trembled,
sank into oblivion. So completely was the
memory of it lost, that the large mounds of rubbish
came to be regarded as the remains of the forti-
fications which Nadir Shah made in 1743! For
years the ruins were, therefore, entirely neglected,
and more than one cultivated traveller went
through Mosul and over the very field of the
ruins without having the least suspicion upon
what historic ground he was treading. The ruins
were disinterred from their grave during the
last century, especially by Layard, who studied
the palace of Sanherib and his successors,
and transferred the finest and most valuable
sculptures to England, where one finds them
204i memcivnlennipl
on

MoS Ui AN DD AN CLEN © NIN © VE7e

to-day amongst the choicest treasures of the
British Museum.

The outline of the ancient city is rectangular.
It is bounded on the west by the Tigris, on the
north and south by marshes, and in the east by
a stream, the Khosar, or the Zakapbirata of the
cuneiform inscriptions. One can clearly trace
the whole line of the crumbled walls of the
town by a series of mounds about sixteen yards
high; and they are particularly conspicuous
on the exposed eastern side. Even the position
of the gate can easily be recognised. The length
of the walls is about ten miles. The accounts
in ancient writers like Diodorus, who says that
they stretched sixty miles and that Nineveh
was the largest city the world has ever known,
and the statement in the Book of Jonah that it
would take three days to walk round them,
are gross exaggerations. They show only that
the size of the city must have seemed enormous
and made an overpowering impression in ancient
times.

Most prominent are the large mounds of Kuy- |
yundjik (=the Lamb Mound) and Nabi Yuni,
underneath which are buried the palaces and
temples of the Assyrian kings. The former
lies to the north of the city. Attracted to it

205MY JSOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

by the pottery and fragments of cuneiform
tablets found in it, Botta and Layard made a
careful investigation of it, and succeeded in
tracing the outlines of the large courts and halls
of the palace. It is true that the work was
technically rather amateurish in comparison with
our modern exploration, and it is fairly certain
that the mounds, which have since been examined
by other English archeologists, were not quite
thoroughly searched.

It is interesting to know that even in those
remote days there were a sort of building regu-
lations to ensure some degree of uniformity in
the structures that were raised. One of the
documents found informs us that King Sanherib
had tablets prepared in which the breadth of
~ Kingsway ’”—which was sixty yards wide—
was precisely indicated, so that all might act
accordingly. Transgressors did not render them-
selves lable for a fine, but for another punishment
which, perhaps, seems to us in modern times
rather despotic: ‘‘ When any one of the inhabi-
tants of the city takes down an old house, and
builds a new one in such fashion that its founda-
tion encroaches upon Kingsway, he shall be
hanged on a pole on his house.’ Clearly in
matters of zsthetic rigour the ancient Assyrians
206| ctmnmmmmncnipnlecsipll

MOSUL AND ANCIENT NINEV EE

went far beyond the strictest requirements of
the modern architect !

It is a wonderful experience to stand on the
ruin-mound of Kuyyundjik and see all round
you nothing but desolation: only walls, hillocks
and mounds of rubbish. One can hardly realise
that time has spared so little of the ancient
magnificence. Vividly does it bring to mind the
words of the aged Prophet Zephaniah :

He will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilder-
ness.

And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts
of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall
lodge in the upper lintels of it: their voice shall sing in the
windows: desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he
shall uncover the cedar work.

This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said
in her heart, I am and there is none beside me: how is she
become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!
Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his head.

On the somewhat smaller mound, Nabi Yun,
there is now a little village, picturesquely grouped
round the mosque of the Prophet Jonah, the only
great man of ancient Nineveh to receive reverence

 

to-day! Inside the mosque is his grave—or one
of his many graves—and it is held in veneration
by Christians and Jews as well as Mohammedans.
The latter deem it so sacred that they say that
seven pilgrimages to Nabi Yuni are equal in merit

207Ye OURIN EY DOWN THE LEG Ris

to one pilgrimage to Mecca. Difficulties are put
in the way of Christians who want to visit the
tomb, and until recently no European had been
admitted. During the War, however, Ernst
Herzfeld, accompanying Duke Adolf Friedrich
von Mecklenburg, was allowed to visit the mosque,
and he discovered that it is nothing less than
an ancient and often-restored Christian monastic
church.1 Again, therefore, we have an instance
of the continuity of the place of worship amidst
all the changes of religions; for the temples of
the ancient Assyrians must have been at this
spot. It is interesting that the prayer-niche
at the Jonah mosque is unusually deep, and this
is a proof of great antiquity. The body of the
prophet is in the middle, and there is also a tooth
of the whale which swallowed him !

After a splendid ride, which lasted many
hours, partly along the ancient walls and partly
on top of them, I returned in the dark to Mosul.
It was so late that I found the gate of the bridge
closed, and I had to knock loud and long for the
gatekeeper to come and open it for me.

* Since then another man who was in the War, Dr. F. Moench,
has visited it, and in his From the Tigris to the Shore of the North

Sea (p. 14) he gives photographs of the interior of the mosque
of Nabi Yuni.

208CHAPTER XI

KALACH AND ASSUR

T WAS A BRILLIANT and beautiful December
[ eo when I sailed away from Mosul.
Daud Tschelebi and a number of acquaintances
went with me as far as the landing-stage of the
kelek, where my luggage had, according to the
requirements of the art, been put upon a new
raft : a somewhat smaller raft than the preceding
one. On the other hand, we now had three
kelekdjis instead of two; for from Mosul onward
it is sometimes possible to continue the journey
during the night, and for this reason Machmud—
my new kelekdji—said that we needed a third
man. I saw, however, on the very first day that
he had done a little business for himself in this
arrangement. The other two men that he brought
with us were really passengers, and they knew
as much about the working of rafts as about
higher culture. Machmud stuck a pole in their
hands now and again, but that was merely for
the sake of appearances.
O 209MYO TOURNEY DOWN THE TEGRIS

After a last handshake, and with much waving
of handkerchiefs, we put out from the bridge,
right in the middle of the Tigris, the gentle
flow of which was now to take us to Baghdad
in from ten to twelve days. The country differed
little from that through which we had floated the
few days before we reached Mosul. The banks
seemed to be fairly thickly populated, and beside
and between the Arab villages mounds of various
sizes rose above the plain, telling of the ancient
prosperity. We saw few hills now; and the moun-
tains, which in early times separated Kurdistan
and Iran from the kingdom of the Assyrians,
were now a dim blue line defining the horizon
far away. The river seemed to me to be very
much broader. Here it often breaks into several
arms, and so forms islands, and these are at times
Overgrown with thick vegetation which serves
as protection for pelicans and all sorts of animals.
Next morning, in fact, just after breakfast, we
saw a whole family of wild pigs—papa and
mamma walking very sedately in front, the sons
and a few daughters following very respectfully
and obediently—crossing a spot right in front of
us in order to reach a thicket. These wooded
places on the Tigris have, therefore, been in all
ages a veritable El Dorado for the hunter. Here
210MAT ACH AUN DD AUS) S' Ok

Arabian emirs and Assyrian kings followed the
tracks of the game, even the lion, until their
sharp arrows gave the poor beast a deadly wound,
and, perhaps, as on the well-known relief in the
British Museum, it crept up a tree for its last
cry of agony.

Our first halt was at Hamam Ali, which we
reached in the evening. It is to-day a rather
poor village; but, to judge from the very high
tell, there must have been a town of considerable
size here in ancient times. In the summer there
is plenty of life in Hamam Ali, because it has a
warm sulphur-spring, which is much sought by
the people of Mosul. Hence there is excellent
accommodation—on the Assyrian standard—for
visitors to the health resort. Not only is the
water properly stored, and the bathing pool
covered with a dome, but there are a number of
small houses for entertaining the guests. These,
however, consist only of bare clay walls about
six feet high. Everything else, such as doors
(In case anybody requires such superfluous
matters), furniture, and roof, must be brought
with them by the visitors.

As I knew that we should reach Nimrud—
as is now called the ruin of the Assyrian town
Kalach, which is often mentioned in Genesis—

211Di OUUrREIN HinYs DIO WN Tino TG RSs

I bade them awaken me at dawn, and I was soon
on my feet. When I presently went out of my
tent, a clear, cloudless sky, with the last stars
fading out of existence, arched over our heads.
Almost immediately the sun rose luminously
behind the mountains of Iran, and its first level
rays, flooding the entire plain, revealed a high
tell on the left bank. It was the ruin of the
temple-tower of Kalach. It lay a little inland
from the river, so we disembarked and were soon
on the way.

Half an hour later I came to the ruins; but
before I describe them, let me premise a few
historical details. The city of Kalach was
founded in very early antiquity. It goes back
to King Salmanasar I, who ruled about 1800 B.c.
It was, however, Assurnasirpal III (885-860),
the monarch who secured Assyria in the position
of a great Power in Nearer Asia, that made it a
royal residence. We are told that he rebuilt
the city, which had fallen into decay, and that
for the purpose he used prisoners of war from
subject countries who had to build the great
temples and palaces. Hence the rise of the
Assyrian power is as closely connected with this
city as its fall is associated with Nineveh. When,
however, the centre of gravity of Assyria shifted
212— nuit

KAT ACH AUNe DAS 8) UR

farther north, to Nineveh, the star of Kalach
paled. Xenophon, when he passed by here—
he calls the city Larisa—with his ten thousand,
found only “a large abandoned town.” But
he seems to have seen a good deal of its buildings,
as he speaks of city walls a hundred ells wide ;
which is assuredly a great exaggeration.

During the last century Layard and Botta
did some excavations here, and they discovered
the many treasures which we admire in the
British Museum. The excavations were, however,
rather unsystematic, and the shafts were sunk
especially in the mounds of ruins where the best
results were to be expected. Yet these investi-
gations, quite apart from the very valuable
individual finds, enabled us to form an idea of
some of the chief buildings. There is, in the
first place, the temple of Nebo, then the palace of
Salmanasar II (the successor of Assurnasirpal III,
who selected the place as his residence) in which
was found the famous black basalt obelisk now
in the British Museum, which commemorates the
victory of the King over Syria and Palestine,
and includes the name of King Jehu of Israel.

There are also the palaces of Assurnasirpal III
(885-860) and Sargon II (722-705), both in
the south-western part of the city, in the

213MY SOURNE Y “DOWN THE TLE RIES

palace-quarter, which forms a large square,
where to-day only the xztkkurat (the temple-
pyramid) can be seen (Plate XIII). Botta
and Layard, half a century ago, did the best
part of their work in this palace-quarter, and
one sees on every side the traces of their shafts
and trenches. They have since fallen in to a
great extent and been covered with soil. To-day
they present a very curious spectacle. It is
as if we had before us a very confused and
stormy series of waves, from which emerges,
here and there, an ancient Assyrian head or an
alabaster slab with a cuneiform inscription.

But what most profoundly stirs one’s emotions
is the great silence, the complete solitude. Not
a soul can be seen: only the clouds move slowly
over the face of the dead city. Possibly at times
a flock of fleet gazelles will pass, or a young Arab
shepherd may bring his sheep to feed on the ruin
of the pyramid-temple of Nebo, or between the
walls of the palace of the Assyrian kings. Other-
wise no sound breaks the silence or invades the
solitude. Only the southern sun glows silently
over the dumb remains of what was once the
chief city of the Assyrian kingdom.

Especially when one stands on the slopes of
the zikkurat and looks down upon the dead city,
214Secon =

 

 

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d
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PLATE XIII.—TEMPLE MOUND AT NIMRUD.

To face p. 214.— A I =

KAT ACH AND AS 'S U-R

the sensation is almost overwhelming. It is
the most impressive ruin of antiquity that I
have ever seen. How strange and small I felt
myself as I stood in the presence of all this fallen
greatness! At my feet I saw the walls of the
palaces of Assurnasirpal and Sargon, which
come back to my mind like a great storm-tossed
sea; and I recall how deeply I was moved by
one of the large Assyrian alabaster heads which
emerged from the soil beside me. Once, surely,
it must have adorned the entrance column at
the door of a palace; and one was curiously
moved when one reflected that there was a time
when, with the same indifferent smile, he saw the
kings of Assyria pass by as, at the head of their
armed hosts and the gangs of chained prisoners
of war, they returned laden with booty from their
campaigns. Century after century must this
curious head, with its finely curled beard, have
looked out upon the scene. The storms of history
have swept over him. Kingdoms have risen in
his sight and fallen again. Wind and rain have
swept over his face. Yet he still gazes blankly
at the ruin, and beyond it, over the great plains
at the foot of the mountains of Iran, on which,
long after the fall of Assyria, Alexander the
Great was to shatter the kingdom of the Persians.

215M Y

 

JOURNEY s3DOWN THE TIGRIS

What remains to-day of all these victories ?
It is somewhat vapid, perhaps, to repeat the
old Sic transit gloria mundi, yet that is what
thrusts everything else out of the mind here.
Involuntarily one asks oneself: May not such a
fate befall also our western civilisation ? We are
so proud of what we have done, and we seem
often to forget that some day our civilisation may
perish and our cities disappear. Who can say
that such a state of lost civilisation may not
come upon Europe ?—that in a few hundred or
thousand years our children’s children may not
gaze with astonishment on the ruins of our cities
just as we do on the ruins of those of the
Assyrians ?

It has often been said by archeologists that
the few alabaster slabs and sculptures which
still lie amongst the ruins at Nimrud ought to
be removed and put, for safety, in a museum.
I am assuredly conscious of the value of these
suggestions, for we must recognise that no pains
should be spared to rescue artistic monuments
from the threat of destruction. Yet I have
become convinced more and more that, wherever
the circumstances permit it, we ought to leave the
monuments in the places for which they were
created.

216cma

KALACGCH AND ASS UH

I was particularly confirmed in this conviction
the day I visited the ruins at Nimrud. I had
a few years earlier studied, in London, the finds
of the Assyrian excavations of Layard, and I
erant that they not only added materially to my
knowledge of Assyrian art, but they helped
me to form an immeasurably more vivid idea of
the civilisation of the time. But when, after the
superabundant treasures of London, I saw the
few modest remains which were still left at Nim-
rud, it seemed to me that they were instinct
with a quite other, a mysterious, life. It was as
if they would speak to me; and precisely on
account of their worn condition they seemed to
me to have grown into their environment, to
have become a part of nature itself. They were
one with the rubbish of the ruin-strewn area, with
the whole environing country, even with the
clouds that moved over the scene, as they had
done thousands of years ago; and the whole
formed a picture which was for me a new and
unique experience, and would never henceforth
leave me.

I may be taken for an enthusiast, a romantic
person, but I think that with our shifting of
works of art into museums during the last few
decades we have gone a little too far. We have

217MY JOURNEY DOWN THE DPLG RLS

made our collections so large that the layman,
even the layman with some feeling for art, is lost
in the mass, instead of getting a vivid idea of
artistic creativeness in ancient times. In the
end he is confused and tired, and he turns his
back upon these “mortuaries of art.” Our
museums would do far more good if we put in
them less things, but things entirely characteristic,
So as to convey a more effective picture of a
particular epoch. Then we might, to a creat
extent, leave the artistic monuments on the spot
for which they were made, and in which alone
they have their full effect.

This is true particularly of places like Nimrud :
for if we remove from this field of ruins the
remaining fragments which give one some idea
of its former glory, we rob it of its soul. In
comparison with that, the fear that the few
natives of the district may damage the antiquities
seems to me to be slight. The reader must
forgive this long digression, but it raises a problem
which is now much discussed amongst experts
on art and archeology, and I could not help
but notice it when I had so clear an example
before my eyes.

It was evening when I left the ruins of Nimrud
and made for the little Arab village, a mile or
218KATLACH AND ASSUR

so away, where Garabed awaited me with one of
my supposed kelekdjis. The sheik in whose
primitive home the two had spent the day would
not hear of my going away. Why should I not
spend a few days in Nimrud, where it was so
fine? We would go out together to hunt gazelles
from morning to night, and we could also, if that
sort of thing gave me so much pleasure, look
for treasure and antiques in the ruins. He would
see that I had everything. There could, of
course, be no question of the idle life which the
sheik pictured to me, but he insisted that I must
at least spend the night with him and continue
my journey on the following morning. Garabed
was, naturally, as was to be expected of him,
entirely of the same opinion, and the kelekdjr

 

who, I may say incidentally, had never been
on the Tigris before—suddenly had a presenti-
ment of all sorts of rapids and other grave perils
which we would incur by travelling at night,
especially at a time of new moon.

I should, however, have bravely sustained
all these concentrated attacks and had my own
way, had not Garabed at the last moment
discovered my weakest spot. As I had spent
the day in the highest realms of idealism, and had
been absorbed in Assurnasirpal, solitude, and
219My JOU RINGE Yo oD OW N DHE TLE RTs

similar trifles, I had, as happens to poor human
nature, become extremely hungry. And as
Garabed hinted at preparations, already well
advanced, for some sort of opulent evening
meal, the first breach was made in the strong
citadel of my iron resolutions. I held on bravely,
however, even when the odour of roast lamb
seductively filled the room, and it was not
until Garabed whispered something about truffles
that my infirm nature lowered its weapons and
gave in.

At the same moment Machmud appeared, for
all the world as if he had smelt the roast meat.
Naturally, he merely wanted to know why
I was so long, and at what time we would start.
When, however, he heard of the culinary prepara-
tions he was very pleased; and he congratulated
me, with the eloquence that was peculiar to him,
on the wisdom and excellence of my decision.
Everybody was now in the best of humours ;
and, indeed, could anything be more pleasant
than to sit at the warm fire on soft cushions
amongst all these happy folk and smoke one’s
pipe—the “ wood that does not burn,” as they
wonderingly called it—with the odour of delicious
roast meats pouring in from the background ?

As Garabed had prophesied, the first dish was
220KALACGCH AND AsSSUE

brought in almost immediately. It was an
incomparable delicacy : a truffle-omelette. The
poet says that no mortal can have the joy of life
undisturbed, and it was so with us, for I saw, as
soon as the large round dish was put on the
floor before us, that the choice morsel was to
be paid for; the sheik’s benevolent womenfolk
had, in my special honour, used up an enormous
quantity of fat from the larder, and the delicacy,
which is in itself a food for gods, swam in a
wide, lead-coloured sea of grease. It was fully
half an inch deep, and one had to work one’s
way through it to get at the food. Fortunately,
my European prejudices were not merely not
shared by the others, but they looked upon this
lake of fat as a beautiful gift of the gods, and
fell upon it with enthusiasm. With their hands
they made small spoons out of their slices of
white bread, dipped them deep into the fat,
and greedily stuffed the spoons, full to the brim,
into their mouths; and in a few minutes the
whole glory of it was gone.

I had, with a rather wry face, to lend a hand,
but I was rewarded when it came to the luscious
omelette. Its quality was, of course, lessened
for a European palate through its having been
drenched in fat, and I must say that I preferred

221MY JOURNEY DOWN PBC EGR Ss

the truffles which Garabed often had to cook
for me—they are very common in the Meso-
potamian wilderness—from that time onward.
But the lovely lambs’ tails which were served
next, with an excellent pilaf, put everything
right. We, at all events, did not suffer from
hunger. As we rose from table, Garabed literally
looked like a giant snake which has just been
fed in a zoological garden, and Machmud was so
exhausted with eating that he could only lean
against the wall, where he was soon happily
asleep. As soon as we had finished, the second
sitting began. The servants and children of
the sheik fell upon the dishes, only half of which
we had eaten, and in a few minutes they finished
everything to the last morsel. We lay back on
our cushions, and we spent a few very pleasant
hours talking, smoking, and drinking coffee.
The talk, as is the custom in the east, lasted only
about a quarter of an hour. Then we looked
sagely at one another and enjoyed the beauty
of the moment in blissful silence.

We set off early the next morning, and we soon
reached the spot where the Zab, coming down
from the Persian mountains, rushes tumultuously
into the Tigris. From that point onward one
can see that the river is considerably broader
222KADACH AND ASS'U ER

and fuller. A little beyond the junction must
have been the spot where Xenophon and his
ten thousand crossed the river.

On this stretch there are many rapids, though
at “flood”? time, in the spring, they merely
mean a little foam and eddies in the water.
At the time when we passed, however, they were
often real little cataracts, and we could hear the
noise of them far in advance. It is not certain,
by the way, that these rapids are entirely due
to natural causes. It has often been suggested
that these obstacles to the even flow of the
river are really dams which ‘were made by the
inhabitants of the country in early times,
and served mostly for the purpose of irrigating
the country. The theory may contain a germ
of truth, as a barrier of rock that already
existed may have been modified by man to
suit that purpose.

It was early on a fine, clear December morning
when we got to Kal’at Shirkat, which once was
Assur, the earliest capital of Assyria. At the time
the Exploration Expedition of the German
Oriental Society was working there under the
direction of Dr. Andrae (see Plate XIV). It is
only at a comparatively recent date that we
learned that the old capital of the kingdom of

223

= ee eeMOY JO URN EY DOWN THE TLE Ris

Assyria was here. In fact, one still reads in
Ritter’s Geography: ‘‘ These ruins are, after
those of Nineveh and Babylon, the largest
remains we have of the Assyrian and Babylonian
civilisations of a still mysterious antiquity, yet
history preserves a complete silence about them.”

Thus the ruins at Kal’at Shirkat were then
a profound puzzle. Only the innumerable falcons
and crows dwelt, as Ainsworth says, in the ledges
of the walls of the old pyramid-temple. Then,
at the beginning of the present century, the
great German Exploration Expedition came here,
and the ruins were compelled to yield one secret
after another.

It will be understood what peculiar pleasure
I felt in being able to spend a beautiful day in
the company of Europeans, and especially to
make a thorough study of this very interesting
plece of excavation under the expert guidance
of Dr. Andrae. As soon as I went ashore I saw
the residence of the Expedition: a flat-roofed
edifice, with all the rooms grouped about a large
inner court. There Dr. Andrae and his colleagues
—Jordan, Maresch, Preusser, and Bachmann—
dwelt and pursued their untiring studies. They
are, however, men who maintain a spirit of
cordiality amidst their labours, and I know that
224ee E—ee

 

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everybody who has been there has felt at ease
and comfortable immediately in the society of
the young explorers. Not a little pleasure was
given by the several dozen cats which occupied
the place together with the explorers and their
servants. They were quite at home, in the
strict sense of the word, in this old-world place,
for they came from the district of the Babylonian
ruins. A couple had been brought from there
to Assur, and they did not find it beneath their
dignity to found a dynasty in the new ruins,
though these are two thousand years younger
than those of Babylon.

Turning to the ruins themselves, I should
say that, when one comes here from Nimrud,
one feels that one is in a new world. Instead of
the solitude and the enveloping silence of Nimrud,
crowned by the eternal blue of the Mesopotamian
sky, there is here plenty of life and bustle. Hun-
dreds of labourers move from spot to spot, dig-
ging, picking, and shovelling in their work on the
ancient zikkurat, so that one can almost imagine
oneself assisting at the building of the Tower of
Babel. Instead of walls overgrown with a mantle
of weeds, everything here is exposed to the light.
Every stone is taken out, measured, removed on
light railways, catalogued, and registered. What

P 225MYST OURN EY DOWN LHE. Tre Rts

we call the feeling for romance is, one may readily
grant, not at all in evidence.

This is, of course, quite inevitable: without
this apparently pedantic procedure of accurately
examining everything it would be impossible
to get a really vivid idea of the original state
of things. All this indefatigable labour is carried
on, not for its own sake, or for the credit of
‘* dead science,”’ but in order to enable us to form
a good idea of the life that was once led hetfe.
Still, one may say that, in spite of the exploration
that is carried out on modern principles, a good
deal of the early romance has survived. The
Tigris, which flows majestically by, washing the
walls of the quays of ancient Assur, is the same as
it was in the great old days, when, more than two
thousand years ago, men went about their work
in the streets of the city ; and the general features
of the scene, the waves of hills rising from the
sea of the plain and the broad prospect, are no
different from what they were when the kings
of Assyria ruled here.

The results won by the Expedition out of the
dark soil of Mesopotamia and brought into the
full light of historical knowledge are of great
importance. In order correctly to appreciate
them, one must remember that hitherto the
226KALA CH “AUN OD: “A\S)S UPR

interest in ancient Babylonia had been immensely
greater, and so most of the large expeditions
had gone to work in the southern region. In
Assyria nothing had been explored except Nine-
veh and Kalach by Layard and his colleagues ;
and a French expedition had explored the palace-
town of Sargon (Dur Sarukin, now Khorsabad,
a few miles to the north of Mosul.)

In all these excavations, which had, apart
from those at Khorsabad, been conducted in
a rather amateurish fashion, attention had been
paid almost exclusively to the palace-structures,
and very little notice had been taken of anything
else. Here in Assur, on the contrary, a method
was adopted in keeping with the most exacting
requirements of modern science, and a study was
made of the entire area of the town, with its
walls, streets and squares, its temples and houses,
so as to obtain a good idea of the entire culture
of the period. Assur, moreover, was particularly
interesting because it was the oldest of the capitals
of Assyria, and because it had continued to be
inhabited until the time of the Parthians, so that
a whole series of superimposed strata were found.
This conjunction of such diverse strata of culture
naturally made the work of excavation very
difficult, and I must say that even to an expert

227Mee JOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

the sight of the explored part of the field of
ruins is very confusing. I should not have found
my way so easily if I had not had the skilful
euldance of Dr. Andrae.

The most important point in the city is cer-
tainly the temple of the god Assur, which lies
at the foot of the high zkkurat, and was not
thoroughly explored until after my visit. This
temple remained an object of great veneration
even when the royal residence was transferred
to Kalach and Nineveh. Between it and the
zikkurat there was in Parthian times, on the
model of Hellenistic structures, a spacious court
surrounded by colonnades. The finds that have
been made in this throw a new light on the
hitherto little known art of the Arsacidz, which
is of great importance as a transition from the
Hellenist art-world to the art of the Achaemenids
and Sassanids.

At the time I was there the closest study had
been given to the temples of Anu and Adad. It
is rather remarkable to find two temples, an older
and a later, so close together. The older belongs
to the twelfth century B.c., or a period when
Kalach and Nineveh were not yet in existence.
When it fell into decay, Salmanassar II (whose
victory over Jehu is commemorated on the black
228K AGA CoH ~AON D AS S OR

basalt obelisk in the British Museum) built the
later temple, and it followed the plan of the older
one. From the study of these two temples we
now know what was the appearance of the older
temples of Assyria. It is, for instance, deter-
mined that in their case, differently from the
Babylonian temples, the sanctuary was not a
long room with the entrance on the longer side,
but on the shorter side. Much light is thrown
also on questions of the art of the time in other
places: the famous temple of Solomon, for
instance, which was almost certainly built on
the model of the Assyrian temple.

The walls are still in places very impressive ;
especially at the points where, as in the north,
the city has a steep inclination, they are very
striking. As Xenophon correctly observed at
Kalach in his time, the lower part of these
Assyrian walls was built of loosely fitted blocks
of stone, and the upper part of sun-dried bricks.
The walls have, of course, been much altered and
strengthened in different historical periods.

Amongst the most interesting results of the
exploration was the discovery of private houses.
There is a complete Assyrian Pompeii in the
western part of the city, where one can pass from
the street into each particular house. First you

229MY 3) OURN EY, DOWN THE TREaRis

enter an external guest-court, and from that you
pass into an inner court, round which the dwelling
rooms are grouped. It is remarkable that in
nearly every one of these houses, all of which
belong to the ‘‘modern” Assyrian period, a
large number of terra-cotta sarcophagi were
found ; and from this we may confidently con-
clude that the Assyrians kept their dead in their
own houses.

A special and interesting structure is what is
called the ‘‘ festival house,’’ which lies on the
plain outside the area of the city proper. The
centre of the entire structure is a _ court,
surrounded by two colonnades, in which holes
were hewn in the hard conglomerate rock at
regular distances. It is clear that they must
originally have been filled with earth and have had
trees plantedinthem. In this colonnaded garden,
apparently, the spring sacrifices, at the close of
the winter, were sometimes made.

At night we sat long together after dinner.
I had many questions to ask, and we exchanged
experiences in regard to the journey in the east.
Many of the men present smoked the long
Arabic tschibuks (clay pipes), and in every corner
of the room a group of Babylonian cats and
kittens purred their contentment. One of the
230a A a

KALACH AND ASSURE

cats came up on my lap, and as I stroked its
soft gray fur, it seemed to me, in spite of its
Babylonian origin and its Assyrian environment,
just an ordinary domestic pet that put its comfort
above all the treasures of the world.

I left at about eleven o’clock, and my friends
insisted on accompanying me to the Tigris, where
our raft was ready to resume its journey. So,
after a last cordial thanks and greeting in the
darkness, I set out on the broad river—in search
of the land of canals, Babylonia.

231

SASSCSU CANSCHAPTER XII

THE LAND OF CANALS

HEN I AWOKE, at dawn the next

morning, and quickly dressed myself

and went out of my tent to see the
view, I at once noticed that we had not made
much progress. Behind us I could still quite
plainly see, as if it was only a few miles
away, the zikkurat of Assur rising against the
pale morning sky. When I asked the raftmen
why we had done so little, I gathered from
their contradictory statements that during the
night they had laid up the raft at the shore
for a few hours and enjoyed what they con-
sidered to be a well-earned rest.

It would do very little good to be angry with
them, and would certainly not put us any farther
on our way ; so I decided to take no notice.
After all, we were in a country where haste is
regarded as a child of the devil; and, indeed, the

damage was not very serious, as it enabled us
232THE LAND OF (CAN ALS

to get a view of the splendidly situated Kal’at
al-bint (‘‘ Castle of the Maidens ”’), which goes
back to the time of the Sassanids. We should
otherwise have passed it in the night. It is
enthroned on an outlying ridge of the Djabal
Maklub: one of the ridges which still separated
us from the Mesopotamian lowlands, the land of
canals. Although it is not in itself an important
structure, it is impressive in its unique position
and its environment. Herzfeld has very happily
described the peculiarity of its site in his account
of his travels, when he saw the ruined castle
in the gray light of the early morning: “ The
mountain and the castle stood out like a dark
and dead silhouette. Then the sun rose, and its
level eastern rays made the bluish-white and iron-
red mica of the rock, which the castle crowns in
complete solitude and undisturbed rest, gleam
like real glass. It was a fantastic and fairylike
spectacle.” It was, really, almost a stroke of
luck that, owing to the laziness of my kelekdjis,
I also was enabled to see the lovely Kal’at in
the first rays of the sun, enthroned high above
me, sparkling like a jewel set in the barren
rock.

Barren, bald, and naked this Djabal Maklub

assuredly was: a veritable “ waste and empty
233MY SOURNEY (DOWN THE TVte pws

 

mount,’ in Uhland’s words. And we never
seemed to lose sight of it. From morning until
night we had with us the treeless, bald, inhos-
pitable heights, their jagged crowns themselves
looking like ruins, and their slopes furrowed
like the summits of the higher mountains. Were
these hills high ? Were they low? Who could
say ? They seemed imposing enough, but one
is very easily deceived in such estimates in that
region, for there is no standard of comparison.
Not a single tree or house can be seen. Late in
the afternoon we passed over a few rapids, but
that was almost the only sensation of the day.

I noticed something in this district that had
occurred to me several times since leaving Mosul :
wells of mineral oil. They are found everywhere
in this region. I saw some in the vicinity of
Mosul itself, and larger ones at Hamam Ali,
amongst the ruins at Nimrud, and in other places.
Several of the great Powers profess an interest
to-day in ancient Assyria, but it is not exactly
an affection for the historic past of the country,
still less for the peculiar beauty of its scenery ;
nor is it a concern about the Christian population.
It is mainly connected with oil.

Very often these oil-springs are in the river
itself, and they can easily be recognised. At the
234PLATE XV.—RUINS OF BRIDGE AND MOSQUE AT HISN KEI

 

PLATE XV.—THE KHAN (INN) AT DIYARBEKR.THE HAND OF CANAZS

places where they are found, the oil rises in dark,
fatty rings to the surface. Frequently, however,
there are springs on the banks; oil and water
mixed come out of the soil, and one recognises
at once the iridescent appearance and the odour.
The most characteristic form is in the vicinity of
Kerkuk, a day’s journey to the east, where, as
at Baku, unquenchable fires rise up. It is due
to carbon-dioxide, which rises direct from the
ground and burns with a blue flame. All this
shows that the entire district must have a great
reservoir of oil, naphtha, and similar stuff. Up
to the time of my journey it was exploited
only by the most primitive methods imaginable.
It was not until the War that the Germans
established a large oil-works at Cajara, between
Hamam Aliand Kal’at Shirkat, on the west bank
of the Tigris, with modern mechanical apparatus
and a big refining plant.

Naturally, the natives have long been familiar
with the oil-springs, and they have a very curious
explanation of them. As many of the springs
are found just at the spot where the chains of
the Djabal Maklub and the Djabal Hamlin meet,
where the Tigris enters the Mesopotamian plain,
they say that the two mountain chains were
condemned to wage perpetual war against each

235MY VOURNEY DOWN THE TIGRIS

 

other. The oil pours out of the wounds which
they inflict upon each other in their battles.

It was not until the following morning that
we reached the narrows of al-Fatchah. The
mountains—the Djabal Maklub on the right and
the Hamrin on the left—here approach each
other very closely, and, when one has passed
through the narrows, a new country, the Meso-
potamian plain, Irak, stretches immeasurably
before the eye. This is the land that bore the
oldest civilised peoples of the earth: the centre
of Babylonian, Sassanid, and early Arabian art:
the land in which were born the stories of the
thousand and one nights; the land of which
Omar the Conqueror said that it was “‘ the heart
of the earth,” “ the key of the east and the path
of light, the home of all the delights of life.”

Geographically, the Mesopotamian plain differs
mainly from the country we had come through
in the fact that it is the beginning of the ‘‘ Sawad,”’
as the Arabs call the fertile black soil of the
alluvial lands, which has been laid down here
in the course of centuries by the two great rivers,
the Tigris and Euphrates. The region comprises
in the first place the broad stretches of land
which lie a little farther down in the middle
between the two rivers, then the districts on the
236Pim LAND Ob CANALS

left bank of the Tigris, which are in part watered
by the confluents there. Differently from the
more northern regions of the ancient Assyrians,
the annual deposit is here not sufficient to fertilise
the land. The solar radiation is more intense,
and the rainfall less; the latter is not half what
it is in our temperate climate. The soil 1s,
therefore, very dry, so that irrigation is, and
always was, necessary.

Irrigation was effected in ancient times by a
network of canals; hence the entire region south
of the Hamrin chain is known as “the land of
the canals.” One of the largest of these canals
leaves the river not far from the narrows at
al-Fatchah, near Takrit; it is ealled the Nach-
rawan. According to the investigations of the
English hydraulic engineer Wilcox, it was one
of the main irrigation-arteries of the country
right down to the Islamic period, and it made a
fruitful garden of the whole eastern bank of the
Tigris over an expanse of several hundred miles.
The next most important canals are a little
farther south, between the two great rivers.
Most of them convey the water of the Euphrates
right across the country as far as the Tigris.

Everything depends on these canals. Without
them the country would have little population ;

237Myo OU RN LY = DOWAN THE TLGRIS

it would be a desert, incapable of producing
much, and therefore of no great consequence
in agriculture. But as long as the canals per-
formed their function, the land was a densely
populated garden, and it bore the greatest and
most important cities of the old world : Ctesiphon
and, later, Baghdad. The productivity seems,
to Judge by the taxation lists, to have reached
its highest point under the Sassanidze. When
the Arabs invaded the region, and the Abbassid
Khalifs ruled the world from Baghdad and
Samarra, the revenue began, slowly and surely,
to sink; and the fall continued throughout the
Middle Ages. With the Mongol storms of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the country
sulfered a blow from which it has never recovered.

When the Turks inherited the land in 1638,
it was already steppe and desert, and such it has
remained until our own time. The canals are
in a ruinous condition everywhere: mere wit-
nesses to the former prosperity of the region.
Generally the dams are still there to right and
left for many miles, but no water has flowed into
them for centuries. It is, however, even worse
when they do still receive water, as there is then,
on account of the breakdown of the machinery
of distribution, the danger that the water which
238THE LAND OF CANAZLS

ought, in proper circumstances, to be a blessing
may break through at some weak spot in the
dam and turn whole stretches of country into
impassable swamp. The immense marshes and
swamps of Irak—at Kut-el-Amara and Ctesiphon
and many other places—of which we heard a good
deal during the War, are all due to breaches in
the dams.

In the years immediately preceding the War
there was constantly talk of projects of recon-
structing the irrigation system and restoring
the ancient agricultural prosperity of Meso-
potamia. Many of the papers spoke of fabulous
results, as when it was said that ten million
hectares would be opened up to the plough once
more. This was certainly a great exaggeration,
and a sharp controversy followed, in the course
of which it was proved that only three million
hectares could be irrigated with the available
water. Even that, however, means a country
almost as large as Belgium or the part of Egypt
which is irrigated with the water of the Nile.
It is about three-fourths of the whole superficial
area of Switzerland ; though it must be borne in
mind that in Mesopotamia a denser population is
possible, as ten million people could find food
there as easily as in Egypt.

239MY tOURNEY DOWN THE "TEGRis

The hydraulic engineer Wilcox, who was en-
trusted by the Turkish Government before the
War with the preparatory work in connection
with the restoration of the canals, was much more
cautious in his estimates, and thought only of
the irrigation of an area of a million hectares ;
but these, he calculated, would yield a very
heavy return. It was part of his plan to restore
the Nachrawan canal and several others in the
region lying between the two rivers.

Candidly, the realisation of these plans would
do a great deal of good if the projectors have
taken full account of all sorts of possible dis-
illusions. They should not forget to make an
allowance for the “‘ unforeseen” in estimating
the revenue in any district. It is still an open
question whether there have not been considerable
changes of climate during the historical period,
whether from the general diminution of moisture
or any other cause, and they might have a very
disturbing influence on the plans of irrigation.
It seems to me personally that these apprehen-
sions are exaggerated, for, after all, the age
when these canals were made is not such an
appalling distance from our own; and any man
who travels in Irak will find everywhere that
agriculture pays very well where it is properly
240THE LAND GF CANALS

conducted. Rohrbach, for instance, says that
he frequently saw small fields of barley on the
steppe, and he found that they had been sown
by bedouins who had merely stirred up the soil
a little with the points of their lances.

It is a more serious question whether the
Euphrates and Tigris do not now contain less
water than they used to do. There is no remedy
for this but the reafforestation of the districts
in which they take their rise. But, apart from
the large organisation and capital that would
be required for such an enterprise, it is to be
feared that the immense flocks of sheep and goats
that are found in Asiatic Turkey would destroy
the young trees. To prevent this it would be
necessary to induce the many nomads who wander
over the country with their flocks to settle down.
At all events, it is clear that a good many diffi-
culties would have to be overcome before the
water of the great rivers could flow through the
old canals once more.

When we came to the end of the narrows of
el-Fatchah, I could not resist the temptation to
go ashore and climb up the weathered rocks
of Djabal Maklub in order to survey this mysteri-
ous land of the canals. It was the last hill from
which I could obtain such a prospect, for after

Q 241MY J OU RN EY DOWN -LHE £TLG Ras

that we entered upon the great plain. It was
remarkable how at every step of the ascent the
horizon became wider and wider. I looked over
Babylonia, over the immeasurable plains through
which the Tigris, now a mighty river, ran south-
ward like a broad silver band. At some distance
away it disappeared for a time, then gleamed
again in the sun, and so on, until it was lost in
the shimmering haze of infinity.

To the right and left of it one could clearly
trace the lines of the high-water strand, on the
edge of which, about a day’s ride away, one could
see the walls of Takrit. On the right the view
was particularly characteristic. Nothing could be
seen but endless steppes: a yellow-green, brown-
green, gray-green infinity, with no mounds or
hills. This was the real wilderness—the part
which was formerly irrigated between the rivers
begins only a few days’ ride farther on—the
space that has never known towns or villages,
but has for thousands of years borne only wander-
ing nomads and their flocks. Hills could be seen
only on the left: the Djabal Hamrin, which is a
continuation on the other side of the Tigris, and
the Djabal Maklub, on which I was standing.
This Djabal Hamrin rose steeply for a great
distance until it at last joined with the mountains
242THE LAND’ On GAN AE's

of the Persian frontier, and these continued as
a long blue line on the far horizon.

I remained some time on the hill, and so we
did not make much farther progress that evening.
About an hour before sunset we made a halt at
the Khan Kharnina, two or three miles south of
the narrows. This is the ruin of a medieval
caravanserai, and it looks very lovely amongst
the luxuriant tamarisk bush on the high-water
strand, which here juts out like a cape toward
the east. Like the early Arabian desert-castles,
it is built in the form of a small fort—a large
quadrangle, with round towers rising at the
corners and at regular distances along the sides—
which was meant to afford solitary travellers
protection against robbers. Through the monu-
mental door which has been made in the southern
wall one penetrates to the square inner court,
round which are the vaulted stables, the rooms
for the entertainment of travellers, the halls, etc.

There are here some very fine pieces, especially
the rich decoration of the mihrab in the little
mosque. From the decorative sculpture I should
say that it belongs to the Irak Middle Ages
(Plate XIV). Itis a pity that the whole structure
is badly damaged and in a state of increasing
decay, as it is used by the villages lower down the

243

MAAMYO JOURNEY DOWN THE ThE Ris

river as a quarry for baking-stones. The khan
is a dumb witness to the lively trade that there
was between Irak and Mosul in the Middle Ages.
In it the caravans and travellers spent the night
before resuming their journey northward. These
caravanserais were—sometimes as pious founda-
tions—built along all the great caravan routes
in the east during the Middle Ages. In the
highlands of Asia Minor and Iran, on the plains
of Mesopotamia, and everywhere else, we find
them. This Khan Kharnina is but one example
out of many that tell us what splendid architec-
tural work was then being done in the east.
It occurs to one to wonder if owr caravanserais,
our Grand Hotels, will some day be taken by
later generations as testimonies to our high
culture, as we take this solitary structure on the
Mesopotamian steppe. The comparison, which
is not very flattering for us cultivated folk of
the twentieth century, gives food for thought.

When we went aboard the kelek once more, the
sun flooded the high strand with its last level
rays. The naked rocks of the Djabal Maklub
and the Djabal Hamrin glowed in the light, and
the bare brick walls of the Khan Kharnina were
as if bathed in flame, while the river-valley itself
lay in darkness. Soon, however, the dusk spread
24.4.THE CHIEF MOSQUE AT SAMARRA.

PLATE XVI.—TOWER OF

To face p. 244pH LAND!) Oh) CAIN AvEsS

over all, and only a solitary cloud, sailing over the
sky, swam in the glorious sea of light: for a
short time, then it in turn faded away, and
presently we drifted on under the light of the stars.

We reached Takrit very early the next morning.
It occupies a beautiful position on the steep
cliff of the high-water strand; but otherwise
it is a desolate and miserable nest, lying amidst
the ruins of the ancient city, of which it covers
only about a third.

Takrit has had a great past. Especially in
pre-Mohammedan days the light of Christianity
radiated far over the eastern lands from this
ancient episcopal town. It is now entirely
Mohammedan, but at one time it was mainly
Jacobite, then Nestorian; and various travellers
who came here in former times speak of ruins
of churches and monasteries which they found,
though there is no trace whatever of such to-day.
Now only a few names recall the great Christian
past of the town. There is, for instance, the
Green Church (Kanisat al-Khadra): a large
ruin which must mark the site of what was once
a church. Then there is the al-Arba’‘in, the
“Forty,” a collection of Mohammedan tombs ;
these are certainly the successors of a Church of
Forty Martyrs. On the opposite bank of the

245MY SD O URN EY DOWN, LEE Terris

river there is al-Kana’is (= ‘“‘ The Churches ”’),
a very extensive mass of ruins covered deep in
the litter of bricks. Unfortunately, the destruc-
tion has gone so far that it is now impossible to
recognise the ground-plan; which is the more
to be regretted as, to judge by some of the frag-
ments of ornamentation, we have probably here
some very old monastic buildings of the time of
the Sassanid dynasty. According to Arabian
writers of the Middle Ages, it is a fact that there
were a number of monasteries here until that
time.

Takrit, moreover, was the cradle of one of the
greatest of the sons of the east: a man who
gave the west much trouble. His name was
Ssalach ed-din, ‘‘ the Purity of the Faith,”’ or,
as we generally say, Saladin.

The next day was one to which I had long
looked forward with the greatest eagerness:
the day on which we came to the ruins of Samarra.
Here, in the new year, I was to assist my friend
Professor E. Herzfeld in his excavations. From
morning until night we had on our left, along the
bank, the ruined walls of the great city which
the successor of Harun al-Rashid had built, as
a sort of Versailles, in the ninth century. It was
intended to be his residential town, but after a
246THE LAN DD) OF CANALS

few generations it was abandoned and suffered
to fall into decay.

First we saw clearly, at some distance, the
mosque of Mutawakkiliyah, which was part of
the palace-building that occupied a whole quarter
of the town. It was raised by the most prodigal
of the Khalifs of Samarra, Mutawakkiliyah, and
decorated with fabulous splendour. A few hours
later we passed Bet al-Khalifah, the tower
of the Khalif’s palace rising high above the
river. Soon afterwards there rose out of the
ruins the Malwiyyah: the primitive but majestic
minaret of the chief mosque (Plate XVI). Right
beside this, surrounded by a high wall, was the
modern town Samarra, above which the lofty
domes of the mosques which are so much
venerated by the Shiites were visible at a great
distance. Underneath one of them is buried
the eleventh of the holy vmams. Underneath
the other is the sacred cave through which the
twelfth imam, the Mahdi, went down into the
bowels of the earth, whence he will one day
return to set up his eternal kingdom. But |
will not here betray any further secrets of
Samarra, as I may have to speak of them in a
different connexion.

We spent two long days at Samarra, and the

2A7MY JOURNEY: DOWN THE AGREES

greatly altered character of the place impressed
itself on us more and more. When, the morning
after our departure from Samarra, I came out
of my tent, I saw the first palms: not single
trees, or even groups of them, but whole forests,
now on one side and now on the other side of the
river, waving their incomparably beautiful crowns
in the wind. In these palm-woods, as a rule,
were villages of fearfully primitive mud-huts,
They were very close together, and showed that
the population was much denser than in the
upper reaches.

It was like a picture when the Arab women,
in their long dark-blue robes, carrying large
earthenware vessels or copper jugs on their
shoulders, came down to the river amongst the
lofty palms to draw water; for there is no other
flowing water in Irak, either in the houses or the
village wells. Hence, for the watering of the
fields from the river they use an incredibly
primitive water-drawing apparatus. It consists
essentially of a wooden wheel to which a camel-
Skin bag is attached by a rope and lowered into
theriver. When the bag is full of water, a draught
ox is harnessed at the other end of the rope, and,
with an ear-splitting noise from the primitive
Wheel, the water is drawn on to the shore.
248Dik LAN DO (CeAN Aus

Especially when, late in the afternoon, all these
wheels are working together, on both banks, they
blend in a melody that stirs one to the marrow
of one’s bones. Anyone who is passing on a
kelek has an experience that he will never forget.
On account of the dense population, one meets
a larger number of craft on the river. In fact,
every few weeks a small steamboat comes from
Baghdad to Samarra to bring the many Persian
pilgrims to the tombs of the holy wmams ; and
for them, naturally, the voyage on the filthy little
boat is quite a sensation. We also saw our first
kufahs here. These are round, light boats with
a very high gunwale; and they are coated with
pitch outside and inside to make them thoroughly
waterproof. Although they float very lightly
on the water, they have many advantages. It
requires considerable skill, however, to keep
them going in one direction, as they have no keel,
and the oars cannot be fixed firmly; and for
our European ladies it is extremely difficult
to step aboard them, especially when fashion—
which must be obeyed just as conscientiously
in Baghdad as here—prescribes tight skirts.
I found much more practical the means which
the natives use for travelling on the river. This
is merely a single camel-skin bag! You inflate
249Mie a OU RINE DOWN THE LIiGekis

 

 

it yourself, take off all your clothes down to a
loin-cloth, and get into the water with your
breast on the inflated sack, pushing from behind
with your legs in frog-fashion. Natives often
came to me from the shore in this way, either
to get a closer view of me or to beg a few
cigarettes.

At length the last day of our journey arrived.
It was Christmas morning. No snowflakes were
to be seen, of course, and there was no odour of
pines ; but a white mist lay like a light veil over
the face of the river. The mist was not dense;
the southern sun shone, warm and golden, through
its ethereal texture. On both sides of the river
one saw, through the mist, as through some veil
of light texture, the palm-forests rearing their
majestic crowns, and at one place the lofty golden
domes of the holy tmams of Kazimen glittering
amongst the trees. An hour later the houses
of Baghdad seemed to rise out of the river, and
upon my ear fell the thousand cries from the
streets of what was once the metropolis of the
Oriental world.

We moored at the boat-bridge, and I at once
went up-town to the American Consulate, where
I fortunately met Herzfeld, who had come by
250THE LAND OF CANALS

sea from India. So we enjoyed the fine Christmas
and New Year’s time together. We visited the
few medieval buildings which have survived in
the town, such as the tomb of the Sittah Zu-
baidah, the gate of the Talisman, and the Mustan-
siriyyah. Meantime, we wandered in the bazaars,
making the necessary purchases and getting
everything ready for our stay at Samarra. We
had the pleasure also of enjoying European
society. We even saw a real Christmas tree ;
it was made of palm branches, to be sure, but it
had the correct little candles burning on it. And
I ventured to hire for two days the only landau
that there was in Irak, and went in it to Ctesiphon,
once so rich, and now, alas, so poor in treasure.
How little does one find to-day of the old Bagh-
dad, the city of the Abassid rulers of the world,
of Mansur and Harun al-Rashid! Yet this
great, brilliant, unforgettable time, which hitherto
we knew only from history and the tales of the
thousand and one nights, has been brought
vividly before our minds by the excavations at
Samarra, and I trust that I shall have some future

opportunity to tell of them.

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