FROM THE EUPHRATES TO THE TIGRIS
_We scrutinize the dates_
_Of long-past human things,_
_The bounds of effaced states,_
_The lines of deceased kings!_
_We search out dead men’s words and
works of dead men’s hands._
MATTHEW ARNOLD, “Empedocles on Etna.”
After a delightful but an all-too-short sojourn in Aleppo, made doubly
delightful by our amiable Franciscan hosts and by their charming and
hospitable friends whose number here, as everywhere else in Syria, is
legion, we were once more on the road with our faces turned toward
the mysterious and spell-weaving Orient. Although every hour that
we had spent under the genial Syrian sun had been replete with its
peculiar interest or pleasure, we longed to set foot on the land that
is bounded by the famed rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Our
feeling, indeed, was somewhat akin to that expressed in Kipling’s
_Mandalay_, “If you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’, why, you won’t
’eed nothin’ else.”
Boarding a train of the Bagdad Railway at the station on the site of
the erstwhile camp of the Crusaders under Baldwin, we were soon on
our way towards our first objective, Jerablus on the Euphrates. Our
course lay through the heart of a fertile country strewn with ruins
and dotted with mud-built villages. The puffing locomotive made its
way alternately along fruitful valleys and over rolling uplands whose
state of cultivation showed that this region well deserved the name
of “granary of northern Syria.” And, notwithstanding the advent of
the iron horse, the winding caravans which we frequently passed or
overtook were proof conclusive that the service of the patient camel
is likely to continue for a long time to come.
It was but a few hours after leaving Aleppo that we caught the first
glimpse of the Euphrates as it flowed through arid wastes and washed
barren rocks and hills of sand. Although, like Ulysses, I
_Much had seen and known; cities of men_
_And manners, climates, councils, governments_,
I have seen few things that thrilled me more than my first view of
this famous waterway. For, notwithstanding the fact that I had spent
my early boyhood within a few hundred miles of the Mississippi, I was
familiar with the name of the Euphrates before I had heard of that of
our great “Father of Waters.” And when, after nearly three score years
of waiting, I at length found myself actually walking along the sandy
marge of this stately river--a river that my earliest reading told me
had its source in Paradise--and felt personal contact with it, it was
in very truth an event in my life. It was, indeed, like meeting again a
favorite friend of boyhood days. The emotions which I then experienced
and the memories that were evoked have been expressed in part in the
beautiful apostrophe of the poet Michel:
_All hail, Euphrates! stream of hoary time,_
_Fair as majestic, sacred as sublime!_
_What thoughts of earth’s young morning dost thou bring!_
_What hallowed memories to thy bright waves cling!--_
_The bowers are crushed where Eve in beauty shone,_
_Ages have whelmed, beneath their ruthless tide,_
_Assyria’s glory and Chaldæa’s pride:_
_But thou, exhaustless river! rollest still,_
_Raising thy lordly voice by vale and hill;_
_Sparkling through palm-groves, washing empires’ graves;_
_And gladdening thirsty deserts with thy waves;_
_Mirroring the heavens, that know no change, like thee,_
_A glittering dream, a bright-leaved history!_
No river in the world has played so prominent a rôle in the annals of
our race, and none, not even the Nile, can boast of nobler traditions
or a more illustrious history, or is richer in beautiful myths and
soul-stirring legends. On its fertile banks, it is believed, was
rocked the cradle of mankind and its glistening waters whisper secrets
of long-forgotten dynasties and murmurs the names of peoples of whom
history has no record. It was long the barrier between the contending
powers of the East and the West; between the forces of Persia and
Greece, of Parthia and Rome. Eastern poets never tired in singing its
praises and Arabian geographers loved to dilate on it as one of the
great rivers of the earth.
In the Bible the name of the Euphrates occurs as early as the second
chapter of Genesis. According to scholars of repute the patriarch
Abraham on his way to the Promised Land crossed it at Birejik, but a
few miles north of where it is now spanned by the great steel bridge
of the Bagdad Railway. In the Covenant which God had made with him the
dominions of his posterity were to extend “from the river of Egypt[294]
even to the great river Euphrates.” And, obedient to the command of
the Lord to “go forth from kindred and out of his father’s house ...
Abraham took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son and all the
substance which they had gathered and all the souls which they had
gotten in the land of Haran; and they went out to go into the land
of Canaan.”[295] Crossing, then, the Euphrates near the spot where
we crossed it ourselves they must, in order to find the necessary
sustenance for their flocks and herds, have traversed the same fertile
plain that had so engaged our attention on the way from Aleppo to
Djerabis and probably by one of the sinuous caravan tracks that we
noted from the car window.
But “The River,” “The Great River,” as the Jews called the Euphrates,
was more celebrated in profane than in sacred history. This is
particularly true of that stretch of the stream between the modern
towns of Bir and Rakka. It was at Carchemish, which adjoins Djerabis,
where the Hittites had the great capital and the powerful fortress
which enabled them so long to control the commerce between Assyria and
Babylonia on the east, and Phœnicia and Egypt on the west. It was at
the same famous stronghold that Nebuchadnezzar II won a signal victory
over Pharaoh-Necho and his Greek and Asiatic allies. It was here also
that Chosroes I crossed the river by building a bridge of boats at the
time of his third campaign against the Byzantines as he had crossed it
at Obbanes in his first expedition against Justinian. It was at Bir,
formerly known as Zeugma--the Bridge--that Crassus and Seleucus Nicator
passed into Mesopotamia, where the Roman general met such a tragic
fate. It was at Thapsacus that Xenophon and Cyrus the Younger crossed
the great waterway in the campaign that terminated so disastrously for
the Persian Monarch at Cunaxa. It was here also, nearly a hundred years
later, that Darius crossed “fleeing headlong eastwards with his broken
army after the battle of Issus, with Alexander headlong at his heels.”
It was in the waters of the same famed river that Trajan and Julian
the Apostate slaked their horses’ thirst. It was the same waters that
witnessed the brilliant campaigns of Heraclius, the splendid triumphs
of the Caliphs, and the devastating hordes of Timur and Jenghiz Khan.
Tradition informs us that it was down these tawny waters that a frail
craft carried Herodotus in his memorable visit to Babylon. And long
before this date it was up the Euphrates, that Gisdhubar, the mythical
hero of the great Babylonian epic, proceeded on his homeward voyage
after having “by a suitable sacrifice,” secured the good will of heaven
for his undertaking.[296] But, what has already been said is more than
enough to show that the rolling waters of the Euphrates are, in truth,
“charged with the history of the ancient world.” And, judging by the
railroads and steamer lines that are planned or in operation, and the
great irrigation works that are under construction for restoring to
the vast Babylonian plain its old-time fertility, the day is not far
distant when “The Great River” of the Jews will witness achievements
which shall rival the glories of Babylon and its hanging gardens in the
days of the city’s greatest splendor and power.
We had anticipated spending several days in Djerabis in order that we
might have an opportunity to examine the remains of Carchemish that
have recently been uncovered by the spade of the archæologist. The
great number of sculptures, both in relief and in the round, which
have been unearthed here are destined to throw a flood of light on the
cultural and political histories of the great Hittite empire, and, when
they shall have been thoroughly investigated, they will no doubt cause
us greatly to modify, if not essentially alter, many of the views we
have long entertained respecting one of the most powerful but least
known peoples of the ancient world. Excavators here are fondly hoping
that they may have the good fortune to turn up among these venerable
ruins the long desired bilingual inscription that shall enable them to
decipher the strange Hittite script that has so long baffled scholars.
Such an inscription would supply them with a key to the history of
a nation that was so long a rival of Egypt and Babylonia, and its
discovery would truly mark a red-letter day in the annals of oriental
research and scholarship.[297]
When I first set foot upon Mesopotamia my emotion was almost as great
as when I caught my first view of “The River,” “The Great River,” “The
River of the East,” “The River of Asia,” as the Euphrates is variously
designated in the Sacred Text. I was at last in the Aram-Naharaim
of the Jews--“The Syria of the Two Rivers,” known to the Arabs as
Al-Jezireh--The Island--because it is compassed by the Tigris and the
Euphrates. I was now actually treading the soil of the first country I
had ever read about, and surveying the land which first enchained my
youthful fancy. But it was not the Mesopotamia of my boyhood dreams
that I now beheld; a land of teeming millions of happy shepherds
and contented husbandmen; of smiling fields of grain and attractive
gardens of luscious fruits; of splendid cities with imposing temples
and magnificent palaces. Far from being, as I once pictured it, the
most attractive and flourishing region of the world, it was, as far as
the eye could reach, a land entirely bare of trees and almost devoid
of even the most humble village--a land of utter desolation which
exhibited on every side almost a complete cessation of that exuberant
life which was here once so dominant.
As I contemplated the sandy wilderness before me, it required a special
effort of the imagination to believe that it was once the home of a
powerful race which has long disappeared. It recalled, rather, scenes
I had witnessed in the arid Sahara or in the barren wastes of northern
Chile and southern Peru. The only traces now left here of their once
mighty empire are the numerous tells which dot the wide expanse of
the desert plain. Beneath the superincumbent earth of these frequent
mounds, are all that remains of the homes of the people who inhabited
these parts in the long, long ago. Some of these tells, which rise up
everywhere in this region like islands in the sea, may some day, under
the well-directed work of the archæologist, yield up long concealed
monuments that will be of priceless value to the historian and add
immensely to our rapidly increasing knowledge of the former inhabitants
of this once famous land. Recent discoveries in so many other parts of
Mesopotamia render such a conjecture eminently probable.
We interrupted our journey between the Euphrates and the Tigris by
making a short side trip to Urfa, formerly the great city of Edessa.
It, like Tarsus, was once a celebrated literary center and for that
reason, if for no other, it had, for at least one of our party, a very
special attraction.
Like all the old cities of the East, Urfa is rich in myths and legends
as well as in historic memories both sacred and profane. According
to a Jewish legend which identified it with the Arach of the Bible,
it was founded by Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord.”[298]
Another legend attributes the city’s foundation to Enoch, the Hermes
Trismegistes of the Orientals. Equally fabulous was the tradition about
the tent of the patriarch Jacob, which, it was averred, was preserved
in Edessa until it was destroyed by a thunderbolt in the reign of
Emperor Antoninus. But these and similar tales regarding the antiquity
of Edessa are all based on myths and fables, for its history dates only
from the beginning of the little Kingdom of Osrhoene, which was not
founded until 132 B. C.
There is, however, a legend--one of the most beautiful of the early
Christian Church--which is connected with Edessa and which deserves
more than a passing notice. It was supposed for a long time to explain
why Edessa became, at an early date, not only the first Christian city
of Mesopotamia but also its greatest religious center, and to account
for its preponderating influence in the spread of the Gospel throughout
the Orient. Humanly speaking, such good fortune could not have befallen
so humble a community as that of Osrhoene, which was at first composed
of but a small number of Christians, and which, in the natural course
of events, would have made but slow progress in a pagan or Jewish
environment which, if not openly hostile, was decidedly indifferent.
No, Edessa, it was fondly believed, had been from the beginning
marked by the seal of special privileges, and had been destined by
Our Lord to receive the saving truths of the Gospel directly from His
apostle.[299] This is the meaning of the legend usually known as “The
Legend of Abgar,” which was developed at Edessa towards the middle of
the third century and which for centuries had an extraordinary vogue
in the West as well as in the East, among Mohammedans as well as among
Christians.[300]
According to this legend, the report of the miracles of Our Lord,
having reached Edessa, Abgar, who was King of certain tribes beyond the
Euphrates and was afflicted by an incurable malady, sent to Jerusalem
a messenger with a letter addressed to Our Savior, begging Him to come
to cure him. But Jesus replied that He could not go to Edessa but that
He would, after executing His mission and ascending to heaven, send him
one of His disciples who would effect his cure and at the same time
announce to him the tidings of salvation.
Eusebius of Cæsarea, “The Father of Church History,” is our chief
authority concerning the letters which are said to have passed between
Abgar and Our Lord. They were, the historian assures us, long preserved
in the archives of Edessa.
The copy of the letter of the King to Our Lord reads:
Abgarus, ruler of Edessa, to Jesus the excellent Savior who has
appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting. I have heard the
reports of thee and of thy cures as performed by thee without
medicines or herbs. For it is said that thou makest the blind
to see and the lame to walk, that thou cleansest lepers and
castest out impure spirits and demons, and that thou healest
those afflicted with lingering disease and raisest the dead. And
having heard all these things concerning thee I have concluded
that one of two things must be true: either thou art God, and
having come down from heaven, thou doest these things, or
else thou, who doest these things, art the Son of God. I have
therefore written to thee to ask thee that thou wouldest take
the trouble to come to me and heal the disease which I have. For
I have heard that the Jews are murmuring against thee and are
plotting to injure thee. But I have a very small yet noble city
which is great enough for us both.
To this appealing letter of the King the Savior replied:
Blessed art thou who hast believed in me without having seen
me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen
me will not believe in me and that they who have not seen will
believe and be saved. But in regard to what thou hast written
me, that I should come to thee, it is necessary for me to
fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I
have fulfilled them thus to be taken up again to him that sent
me. But after I have been taken up I will send to thee one of my
disciples, that he may heal thy disease and give salvation to
thee and to those who are with thee.[301]
The letter of Our Lord, as given by Eusebius, was subsequently
amplified as is seen in an apocryphal work known as “The Doctrine of
Addai.” I refer to it because of the concluding sentence of the letter
in which Jesus is made to say to Abgar regarding Edessa, “And thy city
shall be blessed and the enemy shall not prevail against it for ever.”
It was because of this promise of Our Lord, that His letter to Abgar
became doubly precious in the eyes of the King and of his people. For
they regarded it thenceforward as a palladium of their beloved city and
felt sure that they would never again be at the mercy of their foes.
Chosroes, resolved to show to the Edessenes the futility of the promise
on which they so confidently relied, and determined at the same time
to prove the falsity of the Savior’s words, proceeded in the year 544
to lay siege to the place. The besieging Persians pushed their work so
vigorously that the inhabitants of the beleaguered city were almost
in despair. In this extremity, according to the legend, the King of
Edessa went to the gate with the letter of Our Lord and, unfolding it
and holding it aloft, reminded the Savior of His promise, that no enemy
should ever prevail against it. Immediately an impenetrable darkness
enveloped the foe and prevented it from advancing further.
During several months Chosroes blockaded the city without, however,
being able to effect an entrance. In despair the discomfited and
exasperated Chosroes tried to reduce the city to submission by cutting
off its water supply. But no sooner did he achieve his purpose than a
number of magnificent fountains issued forth within the city and his
nefarious design was frustrated. The Persians were thus compelled to
raise the siege.
But this was not the only occasion on which the city was thus rescued
from its foes. For every time thereafter, the story continues, that
the Edessenes were beset by their enemies, it sufficed to produce the
letter of the Savior and read it before their enemies to compel them to
withdraw.
I have selected this as a type--probably the most beautiful type--of
many similar legends that were long current in the Orient. Indeed, not
a few of them retain their old-time popularity not only in the East but
in the West as well. This is particularly true respecting the legend of
Abgar. But what will appear more remarkable to readers of our critical
and skeptical age, is that in every century of the Church, from the
third to the nineteenth, there have been eminent scholars who have
maintained the authenticity of the correspondence between King Abgar
and Our Lord. Among them it suffices to mention such distinguished
authorities as Tillemont in the seventeenth century, Assemani in the
eighteenth and Rinck, Cave, and Cureton in the nineteenth.
It was because of the belief in the genuineness of the letter of Our
Lord to King Abgar that it was during the Middle Ages regarded as a
panacea for disease and as an amulet or talisman against all kinds of
dangers--“against lightning and hail and perils by sea and land, by
day and by night, and in dark places.”[302] It was doubtless because
of this widespread belief in the phylacteric efficiency of this letter
that the custom prevailed in England as late as the last century, and
traces of it still exist to-day, for people to hang up a copy of the
letter in their homes.[303]
Interesting, however, as is the correspondence in question, it is now
pronounced by the general consensus of scholars to be apocryphal and
must, therefore, be relegated to the limbo of many similar fictions
with which the mythopœic East has in every age supplied the credulous
and wonder-loving West.
But fascinating as one may find the myths and legends of Edessa, they
must prove but secondary to its long and eventful history. For, in the
days of its glory it ranked with Nisibis, Damascus, and Antioch as
one of the four great cities of Syria. As a center of trade it was the
rival of Palmyra which was then the great emporium of western Asia.
Through it passed the highly-prized products of India and China on
their way to the marts of Egypt and Rome.[304]
As a literary center, it was, as a recent writer observes, “admirably
situated between the Greek world and the Oriental world. Communicating
on the one hand with Antioch, on which it depended and on the other
with Persia, Greater Armenia, and even with India, the capital of
Osrhoene was well placed to profit both by the culture of Greece and
the powerful originality of the barbarous countries of the East. It
was, as it were, the confluence in which the ideas of two worlds
became intimately blended and where the various nationalities of its
inhabitants as well as the diversity of religious beliefs brought there
by strangers and merchants tended to give the city a physiognomy not
unlike that of Alexandria.”[305]
After suffering greatly from a destructive inundation in the early
part of the sixth century, Edessa was restored by Justinian on such a
magnificent scale that it was reputed to be one of the wonders of the
world. According to Arabian writers there were at one time no fewer
than three hundred convents and monasteries in and around Edessa.
These, like similar institutions in Asia Minor and Europe, were schools
of intellectual culture in which the lover of learning could devote
himself to the acquisition of knowledge in entire peace and security.
One of the most celebrated of Edessa’s homes of learning and culture
was that known as “The School of the Persians,” because its first
students and teachers were chiefly Christian refugees from Persia.
Its foundation was largely due to St. Ephrem, who so eclipsed all his
contemporaries in scholarship that their works soon fell into oblivion.
So voluminous were his works, so widely read were they, and so great
were their authority that their author was acclaimed the “Column of
the Church,” “The Prophet of the Syrians,” “The Harp of the Holy
Spirit.” And in so high esteem were his books held, that they were, as
St. Jerome informs us, publicly read in some churches after the Holy
Scriptures.
It was in the schools of Edessa that the Syriac language and literature
reached their highest degree of development. It was in them that
Syriac was molded into what subsequently became the classic speech of
the Syrians from the Tigris to the Mediterranean and which is seen at
its best in the works of Bardesanes and St. Ephrem, in the Peshito
and in Tatian’s “Diatesseron.” But neither in Edessa nor elsewhere
did the Syrian Church ever produce such eminent scholars and men of
so great literary genius as a Basil or a Eusebius, a Chrysostom or a
Gregory Nazianzus. We are, however, indebted to Syrian scholars for the
translation of many precious Greek works which otherwise would have
been lost, and for thus “having passed on the lore of ancient Greece to
the Arabs” who in their turn were so greatly instrumental in putting it
at the disposal of the scholars of the West.
There is but little in Urfa to-day to show what it was when it was
known as Edessa and when students and learned men flocked to it from
all parts of the East as to one of the greatest seats of learning
in Christendom. There is, it is true, a great castle standing, and
walls and towers that date back to the time when Edessa was a Latin
principality under Baldwin, and evidences of the city’s former
occupation by Romans and Persians and others, but there is little
which will long claim the attention of the serious visitor.
Like all travelers we visited the city’s chief lion--the great
reservoir which, as Pliny informs us, won for Edessa the name
Callirhoe--the city of the beautiful well--spring--_Callirhoen a
fonte nominatam_. From the earliest days to the present, this
reservoir has been held in great veneration. In pagan times it was
consecrated to the goddess Athagartis. To-day it is known as the Pool
of Abraham. The large number of fish with which it is always filled
are sacred in the eyes of the Mohammedans, who consider it a very
meritorious act to supply them with nourishment. The groups that are
sometimes gathered around this pool feeding the sacred fish seem quite
as preoccupied as the crowds that so generously distribute their
supplies of grain to the pampered pigeons of San Marco, Venice.
The only ecclesiastics in Urfa to-day to devote themselves to the work
of the Church which St. Ephrem and his associates served so well, whose
convent was our home during our visit to their famous city, are the
Capuchins. It is now more than two and a half centuries since these
zealous sons of St. Francis inaugurated their missionary labors in
Mesopotamia and the adjoining countries, and these have been centuries
of trial and sacrifice and persecution which would have forced less
heroic men to abandon an undertaking that often seemed impossible.
Everywhere they were confronted by the fanaticism of Mohammedanism,
which was naturally suspicious, and the jealousy of schism and heresy
which were quick to take umbrage at whatever was calculated in any way
to affect their age-long belief and practices.
During hundreds of years the torch of the faith which St. Ephrem had
preached had been extinct in the broad region which the Capuchins
had chosen for the field of their missionary activity. And during an
almost equally long period, all vestige of union between the churches
of Mesopotamia and those of the adjacent regions had completely
disappeared.
It was thus also at Urfa when in 1850 two Spanish Capuchins, Fra Joseph
of Burgos and Fra Angel de Villarubbia, took up their abode in this
city of noble memories and world-famed achievements. They had to face
the same difficulties and fanatical agencies that had been arrayed
against their brethren elsewhere. The old schismatic Greeks, Syrians,
and Armenians joined forces with the Mussulmans, the Jacobins, and the
Nestorians as against a common foe and left nothing undone to render
the undertaking of the new missionaries a failure and to compel them
to leave the country. But the admirable patience of the good fathers,
their great self-abnegation, their abounding charity towards the poor
and the distressed soon won all hearts, and churches, schools, and
asylums sprang into existence as if by magic. And it was not long until
large numbers belonging to the dissident Greek, Syrian, and Armenian
churches began to return to the Church of their forefathers and to
apply for union with the Church of Rome. Nor were the Mohammedans
less impressed than the Christians by the superior virtue of the
missionaries. Their veneration for Father Angel was so great that they
always called the Latin Church “The Church of Father Angel”--_Abuna
Angil Kilisesi_--a name which it still bears.
But the Capuchins were not the only agents of a new spiritual and
intellectual life in Urfa. For in all their works of mercy and reform
they were most ably seconded by the zealous Sisters of St. Francis from
Lons--le Saunier, France. Forbidden by the iniquitous “Association
Laws” from devoting their lives to the poor and the suffering and the
illiterate of their own country they, with rare self-denial, generously
offered to labor in the vineyard of the Lord in far-off Mesopotamia.
As I noted their cheerfulness and enthusiasm in their labors among
the poor and afflicted in Urfa, I could but compare them with some of
their sisters in religion whom I had seen in the leper hospitals of
Hawaii--who, although always in contact with the most repulsive form
of disease, were, I thought, the most buoyant and lighthearted beings I
had ever met--all enjoying an abounding happiness that could come only
from a heroic sacrifice in the service of God and humanity.
On our return to the railway we were greatly impressed by the fertility
of the soil in the vicinity of Urfa. Its orchards and gardens, gay with
flowers and fruit trees of all kinds--oranges and lemons, apricots and
mulberries, figs and pomegranates--were a delight to the eye and formed
a garland around the city, which gave it “the smiling appearance of a
grandiose villa.”
About an hour after boarding the train we found ourselves crossing
the dried-up bed of the Nahr Belikh, one of the most noted streams in
Mesopotamia. It was on its banks--and only a short distance to the
north of our course--that was located the once famous city of Haran. It
has long been in ruins and only a few Arab families now make their home
there.
Haran figures in the earliest chronicles of both the Assyrians and
the Hebrews. For a long time it was the focus of all the roadways of
northern Mesopotamia and a center of great wealth and prosperity.
But a single well-attested fact shows the great change that has come
over the face of the land round about Haran since its first mention
in history. For what is now a sandy desert was then a well-watered
region of remarkable fertility, with a rich flora and a notable fauna.
This is evidenced by undoubted records according to which this part of
Mesopotamia was a favorite hunting ground for the kings of Egypt and
Assyria, for here big game was once as varied and as abundant as it
is anywhere at present in equatorial Africa. Thus the Assyrian King,
Tiglath-Pileser I, 1120 B.C., declares, “Ten powerful bull-elephants
in the land of Haran and on the banks of the Habour I killed; four
elephants alive I took. Their skins, their tusks, with the living
elephants, I brought to my city of Asshur.”[306] To-day no elephants
are to be found in the wild state nearer than far-off India. Their
disappearance from Western Asia, where they formerly roamed as far
westward as the Lebanon range, has long been as complete as is that of
the American bison from the region east of the Mississippi.
According to a tradition based on the book of Genesis, this once
celebrated city was named after Haran, son of Thare, who was the father
of the Patriarch Abraham.
“And Thare took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his
son’s son and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram
his son and brought them out of Ur of the Chaldees to go into
the land of Canaan: and they came as far as Haran and dwelt
there.”[307]
It was here that Abram received from the Lord the command: “Go forth
out of the country and from thy kindred and out of thy father’s house.”
It was thence he went into the Promised Land which was to be the home
of his children and children’s children until the advent of the world’s
Redeemer.
It was to his kindred in or about Haran that Abraham sent his servant
from Canaan to get a wife for his son Isaac and it was in Haran that
he found the fair Rebecca as she was going to a spring with a pitcher
on her shoulder. It was this same region that witnessed that idyllic
episode in the early life of Jacob so beautifully described in the book
of Genesis. It was here that he spent twenty years in the service of
his uncle, Laban--six years for the flocks that his uncle gave him, and
fourteen years for his two daughters--“the tender-eyed Leah” and “the
beautiful and well-favored Rachel.”[308]
What a delight it was in this distant Mesopotamian plain, where
countless lambs still skip about their solicitous mothers, as they
did when Leah and Rachel tended their father’s flocks in the long ago,
to recall the noble fiction of Dante who, in his Terrestrial Paradise,
makes these charming women of humanity’s youth the symbols of the
active and the contemplative life as are Martha and Mary in the New
Testament! And what a pleasure it was to read on this romantic ground
in my well-thumbed _Divina Commedia_ the oft-conned verses:
_About the hour,_
_As I believe, when Venus from the east_
_First lighted on the mountain, she whose orb_
_Seems always glowing with the fire of love,_
_A lady young and beautiful, I dreamed,_
_Was passing o’er a lea and, as she came,_
_Methought I saw her ever and anon_
_Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:_
_Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,_
_That I am Leah: for my brow to weave_
_A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply._
_To please me at the crystal mirror, here_
_I deck me. By my sister Rachel, she_
_Before her glass abides the live-long day,_
_Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less_
_Than I with this delightful task. Her joy_
_In contemplation, as in labor mine._[309]
I am loath to leave this patriarchal Arcady--the once happy home of
Rachel and Leah and Rebecca and those near and dear to them--without
referring to a fable associated with this region, in which oriental
fancy attains its loftiest flight. The thirty pieces of silver for
which Judas Iscariot betrayed his Master, were, it was fabled, coined
by Thare--Terah in the King James Version--and given to his son
Abraham, who gave them to Isaac; “Isaac bought a village with them;
the owner of the village carried them to Pharaoh; Pharaoh sent them to
Solomon, the son of David, for the building of his temple; and Solomon
took them and placed them round about the door of the altar.” They
were taken thence to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave them to some
Persian youths who had been his hostages. These youths then gave the
coins to their fathers who were the three Magi. When Christ was born,
and they saw His star, they, taking the pieces of silver with them, set
out on their journey to Bethlehem. Arriving near Edessa they mislaid
the coins, which were found by some traveling merchants, who spent
them in the purchase of a seamless tunic which an angel had given to
some shepherds. Informed of these extraordinary facts, King Abgar got
possession of the tunic and the pieces of silver and sent them to Our
Lord in grateful recognition for the good He had done him in healing
his sickness. The Savior retained the tunic but sent the pieces of
silver to the Jewish treasury. These were the thirty pieces which Judas
received for delivering his Master into the hands of the chief priests
and which after the traitor had hanged himself, were used for the
purchase of a field for a burial place for strangers.[310]
After leaving what was once the home of the Patriarchs we saw little
of interest until we reached Nisibis. But Nisibis, like Haran, is
interesting rather for what it was in the distant past than for what
it is at present. Like Haran, it was once a busy and commanding mart
between the East and the West. Now, however, like Haran, it is little
more than a mass of ruins which are eloquent witnesses of ancient
power and splendor. This is evidenced by the remaining arches of a
great bridge across the Gargar on which the city was built and by
the crumbling walls and columns of a great cathedral whose florid
Corinthian ornaments remind one of those which so distinguish the
famous temples of Baalbec and Palmyra.
As I contemplated the three or four hundred hovels which make up modern
Nisibis, it seemed difficult to believe that it was once a city of
palaces and schools and the great bulwark of Rome in Mesopotamia
against Persians and Parthians, and that it was for centuries compelled
to endure a constant change of rulers. The Armenians, to begin with,
took it from its founders. Lucullus, after a long siege, captured
it from Tigranes. After the crushing defeat and death of Crassus at
Haran,[311] the Parthians wrested it from the Romans. It next fell into
the power of Trajan and under Septimus Severus became a stronghold of
the Roman colony established in these parts. Sapor I became master
of it in the year 242, but it was soon retaken by the Romans under
Gordianus III Diocletian and Maximian, recognizing the importance of
this strategic point and foreseeing that it would inevitably be subject
to the attacks of the enemy, had it strongly fortified. Ammianus
Marcellinus gives us some idea of the formidable character of its
fortifications when he declares that Nisibis had served the Orient as a
barrier against the invasion of the Persians.[312]
But Nisibis was not only a stronghold of the utmost importance to the
nation that controlled it; it was also a literary center whose fame
extended to Africa and Italy and whose schools were as celebrated
for certain of their courses of study as were those of Rome and
Alexandria.[313] When the famous school of Edessa was closed in 489
by Bishop Cyrus and the Emperor Zeno on account of its Nestorian
tendencies, its teachers and students repaired to Nisibis, where they
became the most zealous advocates of Nestorianism as they subsequently
became its most active propagators in Persia.
The ruins of this old metropolis show what an important city Nisibis
must have been when it was ranked with Edessa and Antioch and
Damascus at the period when they were at the zenith of their power
and greatness. And history tells us of what a fertile and densely
populated region it was once the capital. In the days of its splendor
it was surrounded by marvelously fruitful gardens and grain fields
while the valleys of the Gargar and the Khabur were famous for their
olive groves and their extensive plantations of cotton. Many cities and
towns on the Khabur, which have long been in ruins, were once noted
cotton markets whence this valuable staple was shipped to Mosul and
Chilat in southeastern Armenia, where it was converted into muslin. The
word _muslin_, as is known, is derived from Mosul because this
fabric had its origin there. But both the cultivation of cotton and the
manufacture of muslin have long ceased to be the important industries
they once were in this part of the Orient.
Another feature of this part of Mesopotamia, noted by historians, was
its forests. It was at Nisibis “where good timber was abundant,” that
the Emperor Trajan had a large fleet constructed to be used on the
Tigris.[314] Now the entire country is so treeless that anything larger
than a shrub is rarely seen. So uncommon, indeed, is a tree of any size
that when one occurs, it is deemed worthy of a special name, even as
was “The Oak of Weeping,” under which was buried Debora, the nurse of
Rebecca.[315]
Nor is the desolation which so characterizes the regions round about
Haran and Nisibis exceptional in northern Mesopotamia. It is typical
of the entire country extending from the Euphrates to the Tigris.
But according to the “Peuteringian Table” this vast belt of land
was once studded with cities and towns, of which there are now but
scattered traces. Crumbling walls, remnants of bridges and churches and
reservoirs are all that now remain to attest the prosperity of this
land in the days of Roman grandeur and Byzantine splendor.
At Nisibis we reached the present eastern terminus of the Bagdad
Railway. Thence to Mosul, about a hundred and fifty miles distant, we
journeyed on the backs of dromedaries. I did not, however, regret that
this slower means of locomotion necessitated our spending more time in
a region that recalled Libya’s solitary waste,
_Its barren rocks, parched earth and hills of sand_.
Not at all. I have always loved the desert, its solitude, its
tranquillity, its restfulness. In it,
_Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife_,
I have spent many of the most peaceful and enjoyable days of my life.
I love its diaphanous skies, which are as limpid as the crystal heaven
of Eden. I love its dry, ethereal, stimulating atmosphere which exalts
the spirits, restores the zest of youth, intensifies the joy of living.
Often, while within its quiet confines, I have exclaimed with St.
Bernard and St. Jerome, _O sancta solituto!_ Then I realized, as
never before, its attraction for the hermits of the Thebaid and the
anchorets of the Syrian Chalcis.
It matters not that the desert is as monotonous as the ocean; that
its silence is broken only by the muffled footsteps of our even-paced
camels; that there is a total absence of life--there is not a beast or
bird or insect visible in the broad expanse; that on all sides one sees
nothing but sterility, desolation, and death.
This is all true--very true. But if the desert has the monotony of
the ocean, it also holds within its mysterious solitudes all the awe
and solemnity; all the grandeur and sublimity of the ocean. This
is particularly true at the magic hour of refulgent sunset. Then
its shifting sands and fantastically formed rocks--black asphalts,
brown sandstones, gray and rose granites which are massed like groups
of antediluvian monsters--are illumined by splendors of color and
phantasmagorias of light which transform the most ordinary landscape
into a veritable fairyland.
The flanks and crest of Jebel Sinjar, a picturesque mountain range on
our right, exhibit the same riot of color, the same marvelous contrasts
of light and shade. At the base there is the delicate violet of the
iris, at the summit the glowing red of the poppy, and above all is the
soft, turquoise blue of the deep, steady empyrean.
Then there appears the wonderful, mystic afterglow which completely
transfigures everything on mountain and plain, and lights up the
scene with a light that rarely shines in our cloudy, mist-enveloped
clime. In the clear western sky, the evening star hangs like a
solitaire. Presently there flash-out in rapid succession the stars and
constellations which, in the long ago, were the wonder and the delight
of the shepherds and the priest astronomers of Assyria and Chaldea.
Near our tent the camels, relieved of their burdens, are quietly
browsing on the scanty broom and brushwood which in these parts
constitute their chief sustenance. Their Bedouin masters, seated
in a circle, around an odorous camp fire, entertain one another by
recounting past experiences and adventures and by singing their
favorite songs, most of which are in a minor key and characterized by
the frequent occurrence of the terrible name of Allah, which gives to
their doleful chant a note of sadness that once heard one can never
forget. Amid such scenes of nomadic life, we welcome the hour of sweet
repose, when, beguiled by gentle dreams, we, like the lotus-eaters of
old, soon become quite unconscious of the fleeting passage of time and
of all the world beside.[316]
On the last day of our journey between Djerabis and Mosul, while
contemplating at times the prevailing “abomination of desolation” of
a ruin-covered waste, we continually referred to the novel excitement
which had been ours as we gazed on the hallowed land of the patriarchs
about Haran and viewed in Nisibis the fate of a once splendid home
of letters and culture. Traversing a region of hoar antiquity, whose
annals and legends so captivate the fancy, where turbaned nomads, happy
in their felt tents, enjoy the unrestricted freedom of the desert, ours
was a sensation and a pleasure unknown in the rush and turmoil and
savage energy of our high-pressure civilization of Europe and America.
And while the eye delighted in the marvelous succession of contrasts in
the landscapes--where rugged mountains alternate with endless plains
and “spots of verdure lie strewn like islets amid shoreless seas of
sand”--the mind ever pondered on the whirlpool of vicissitudes which
has made Mesopotamia unique among the regions of the earth--where,
during its long and eventful history, civilization has been succeeded
by barbarism and grandeur by decay and death. But as one surveyed this
land of former glory and present desolation, one loved to think that
“before his eyes the sands of an expiring epoch were fast running out;
and the hour-glass of destiny was once again being turned on its
base.” It was with this reflection that we completed another lap of our
journey and that, travel-worn, we finally arrived at Mosul, the once
famous emporium on the arrow-swift Tigris.[317]