FLOATING DOWN THE TIGRIS ON A KELEK
_When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free_
_In the silken sail of infancy,_
_The tide of time flow’d back with me,_
_The forward-flowing tide of time;_
_And many a sheeny summer-morn,_
_Adown the Tigris I was borne,_
_By Bagdad’s shrines of fretted gold,_
_High-walled gardens green and old._
TENNYSON.--“Recollections of the Arabian Nights.”
The first thing we did on arriving at Mosul--even before we visited
any of the places of interest in the city--was to make arrangements
for our transportation to Bagdad. Had it not been for the late World
War, the Bagdad Railway would have been completed to the famed city
of Harun-al-Rashid and we could then have made the journey from Mosul
to Bagdad in a luxuriously upholstered car or in the latest type
of _wagon-lit_ accompanied by a well-supplied and well-manned
_wagon-restaurant_. In the absence of these we might, had we
sought for one, have found an aviator who would have taken us to our
destination in an aeroplane, for both aviators and aeroplanes were
numerous in this vicinity during the war and there was reason to
believe that there were still here both flying machines and pilots.
But we were not looking either for luxury or rapidity of
transportation. Even if they had been at our disposal we should
not have availed ourselves of these twentieth-century comforts and
time-saving devices by which our western world sets such store. We had
no desire to fly at express-train speed through the historic valley of
the Tigris even if we had had at our disposition all the luxuries and
conveniences of a railway president’s private car. We wished to study
the country and the people and we desired to do so at our leisure.
The usual way to make the journey from Mosul to Bagdad is by land.
Some make it on horseback, but the majority elect to perform it on
the back of an Arabian or a Bactrian camel. A few, however, prefer to
entrust themselves to the capricious waters of the tortuous Tigris.
This route requires more time and offers, besides, a little spice of
adventure. Both of these facts appealed to us and we decided--without
hesitation--that our journey to the city of the _Thousand and One
Nights_ should be by the longest and the slowest and, as we were
assured, the most venturesome way.
We chose also to go by the Tigris because I had always been specially
fond of river travel. It has been my good fortune to navigate from
source to mouth or from mouth to source many of the longest rivers
of the world, and I was grateful for the opportunity to spend a week
or more on one of the largest rivers of western Asia and one of the
most famous in history. Another reason for choosing this route was the
peculiar age-old craft that was to carry us to the famed capital of the
Caliphs.
It was not a boat nor anything that even remotely resembled one. It was
a peculiar kind of a raft which has been in use on the Tigris since the
time of the early Assyrian kings, and which, notwithstanding all our
modern improvements, still holds its own here not only for conveying
the traveler to his destination but also for carrying freight as well.
The raft in question is called a kelek. It is composed of a large
number of inflated goat or sheep skins which are kept united by reeds.
Over these is laid a framework made of saplings or scantlinglike
timbers which are held together by twigs or lianas. No nails or screws
whatever are used. If the skins be continually kept moist and properly
inflated, the framework of the kelek will always remain above water,
even when bearing a considerable load.
Thanks to our good Dominican hosts, the work of constructing our
kelek was specially expedited after the workmen knew exactly the
size and kind of craft we desired. And to our great joy it was ready
for us as soon as we were prepared to start on our journey down the
river. It was fifteen by twenty feet in dimensions and counted a
hundred and seventy-five inflated skins. In the middle of the kelek
we had a good-sized tent in which we had two light cots, three light
folding chairs, a folding writing table, ten pockets, and other
things which occupy little space but which we found by previous
experience contributed immensely to the convenience and comfort of
the traveler whether on land or water. Most of our luggage, as well
as our provisions, was left outside of the tent in care of our good
and faithful Simoun, a middle-aged Chaldean who had been specially
recommended to us by our Dominican friends and who was guaranteed to
give us devoted and intelligent service. He took charge of everything
on the kelek and looked after the kelekgis--rowers--cook, and the
commissary department as well as our comfort and pleasure. Certain
Greeks and Armenians had applied for the position which we gave to
Simoun, but our experience with their countrymen had been such that we
had resolved to entrust ourselves thenceforth to the much abused and
little-understood Chaldean. For honesty, reliability, devotedness, a
Christian Chaldean, like an Osmanli Turk from the interior of Anatolia,
is, in any fiduciary capacity, absolutely unsurpassed.
When we actually found ourselves on our kelek, ready to depart for
Bagdad, we felt as happy as schoolboys starting on a vacation. It meant
at least a week of absolute rest--a rest which, after the strenuous
lives we had been leading since we left Constantinople, was most
welcome.
Besides the good fathers of St. Dominic, whose kindness during our
sojourn in Mosul we can never forget, a number of the people of the
city whom we had learned to know were at the point of embarkation to
bid us Godspeed. We were specially touched by the presence of some
school children with whom, from having frequently met them, we were on
the friendliest terms. “Children,” said I to my companion, “are the
same the world over. Treat them kindly and they will do anything for
you.” I was then specially thinking of the little Indian children whom
I had often met in the wilds of South America, and who, although they
had never come into contact with a white man before, became, after a
little act of kindness, my devoted friends and wished to be always near
me. The Turkish children of Anatolia, the little Arabs of Syria, and
the Chaldeans of Mesopotamia are, when kindly treated, just as loving
and as lovable as the youthful redskins of the broad wildernesses of
Brazil and Peru.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when we finally got under way. The last
words I heard from my friends on the shore were those of a charming
Osmanli youth who in a clarion voice bade us an affectionate good-bye
in the touching Turkish words _Allaha-ismarladiq_--we have
commended you to God. Again how like the fond _adios_ of the good
children of the South American hinterland whose parting words _Vaya
Usted con Dios!_--may you go with God--so often cheered our souls
during our long journeys over the snow-clad summits of the Andes or
through the trackless forests of the Amazon and the Orinoco.
We started on our journey down the Tigris under a cloudless sky. During
the early morning it had been quite chilly, but, as the sun rose in the
heavens, the atmosphere became as balmy as that of a morning in May.
All augured a pleasant voyage; and no sooner had the minarets of Mosul
and Nebi Yunus vanished from our sight than we proceeded to give the
interior of our tent as homelike an appearance as circumstances would
permit. Simoun had decked the opening of the tent with some flowers
that our kind friends had brought us. On our writing table we placed
some of our favorite books. Among these was a small copy in India
paper of the Bible which was in constant use during our journey in the
Orient. Another was a small pocket edition of the _Divina Commedia_
which, for years, had been my companion to the most distant parts of
the world. There were also small editions of the _Soliloquia_ of St.
Augustine and of the select works of St. Teresa. I took these last two
books with me because they, like Dante’s immortal poem, had been old
and cherished friends in other lands and because they seemed peculiarly
appropriate for such a journey as the one we were then undertaking. To
these were added copies of Xenophon’s _Anabasis_, Arrian’s _Anabasis of
Alexander_, and _The Oxford Book of English Verse_. The other books I
had brought with me I left in my trunk, as I expected to spend most of
my time on our way down the river in contemplation of the many objects
of interest with which both banks were everywhere studded.
A great part of the land in the vicinity of Mosul is under cultivation.
Wheat and barley are grown in abundance. Hemp is also cultivated but
more attention is given to cotton, especially along the banks and on
the islands which diversify the river. Melons seem to be as popular
along the Tigris as they are among our dusky population south of Mason
and Dixon’s line.
Much of the land in this region is very fertile and, if irrigated as it
was three thousand years ago, would yield harvests as extraordinary as
ever in the past. But the countless vicissitudes, consequent on wars
innumerable and on inefficient government, through which this ill-fated
region has passed since the fall of Nineveh, have not been conducive to
the development of agriculture nor to the economic growth of what was
once the wealthiest country of Western Asia.
I have been on many rivers but I have never found so much genuine
intellectual pleasure on any of them as on the Tigris. It has not,
indeed, the natural beauties of the Hudson or the Columbia, of the
Rhine or the Danube; but it has something that appealed to me
far more than the attractions for which these famous waterways of
America and Europe are so justly celebrated. Charged with the myths
and the legends, the traditions and the historical associations of
six millennia, it offers to the thoughtful student subjects for
consideration that cannot be found elsewhere.
In contemplating the old classic streams of Greece and Italy, the
Illisus, the Peneus, the Tibur, the Po--I always experience a kind of
admiration bordering on respect. I am impressed not by the volume of
water which they carry to the sea but by their picturesqueness, by
the atmosphere of romance that hangs over them and by the venerable
history in which they all rejoice. But when I gazed on the Tigris and
its ruin-fringed banks, a surge of emotion pervaded my entire being
and I was thrilled as by few other objects on earth. Under the name
Hiddikel it appears as one of the rivers of Eden. To the prophet
Daniel, who crossed it in his journeys to and from Susa, it was “The
Great River,”[380] and on its banks he had some of his most remarkable
visions. It carried on its waters the greatest fleet ever built by an
Assyrian potentate. This was when in 694 B. C., Sennacherib inaugurated
his campaign of devastation in Babylonia and when, with the aid of
seafaring men from Cyprus and Phœnicia, he floated his boats to the
lower Tigris and thence transported them to the Euphrates. It was
during this ruthless war that he applied the torch to the great city of
Babylon and left it with its magnificent temples and palaces and its
splendid works of art--the result of long centuries of labor--a vast,
smoldering ruin. It was along the Tigris that Xenophon and his heroic
Ten Thousand returned homewards after the eventful battle of Cunaxa.
This famous retreat revealed to the Greeks the weakness of the vast
Persian Empire and led to its overthrow by Alexander the Great and to
“the accomplishment of the promises of God, as made in the prophecies
of Daniel, and prepared the way for the third of the great empires
which were to precede the coming of the Savior of mankind.”[381]
As the evening sun was disappearing behind a gorgeous gold and crimson
mountain range of cumulus clouds, we heard, a short distance ahead of
us, the roaring of the Zikr ul Aawaze, a noted cataract about twenty
miles below Mosul and we then knew that we were near the celebrated
ruins of Nimroud. These ruins formerly stood on the left bank of the
Tigris, but, owing to a shifting of the river’s channel towards the
west, are now about two miles inland.
As we desired to visit the great tell of Nimroud the following day, we
here tied up our kelek for the night. Early the next morning we were
on our way to the ruins which, in the annals of Assyrian archæology,
are almost as famous as those of Kuyunjik and Khorsabad. Here Layard
unearthed some of the most prized treasures in the Assyrian department
of the British Museum and here, there are reasons to believe, are still
buried countless other treasures equally valuable.
The ruins of Nimroud occupy the site of Calah mentioned in Genesis as
having been built by Assur, the founder of Nineveh. But the people
living near by are convinced that it was built by Nimrod, “the
mighty hunter before the Lord,” and that it was his favorite place
of residence. Assyriologists, however, declare that it was built by
Salmanassar I who made it the capital of Assyria, a dignity which it
retained until the time of Sargon who removed his residence to the
north of Nineveh where lie the ruins of Khorsabad.
The general aspect of the ruins of Nimroud is not unlike that of
Nineveh. The ruins constitute a platform in the form of a parallelogram
about five hundred feet in width and a thousand in length. At the
northwest corner of this elevation is a conical tower whose height,
according to recent measurements, is one hundred and ten feet above
the surrounding plain. This is all that now remains of the imposing
_zikurat_, or stage tower, that once dominated the great capital
of Salmanassar.
In order to get a good view of the ruins, as well as of the surrounding
country, we lost no time in reaching the summit of the tower. From its
crest we had a view as interesting as it was replete with historic
reminiscences. Our vision ranged over a region in which were enacted
some of the most memorable events of Mesopotamia and Persia. Down
the Tigris passed the famous fleets of Trajan and Sennacherib, and
along its bank marched the vast armies of Esarhaddon, Cyaxares, and
Nabopolassar. Within gunshot were the emerald waters of the Great
Zab rushing to join the tawny current of the Tigris. On its banks
the Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, in violation of a solemn compact,
treacherously seized Clearchus and several of his generals and sent
them to Artaxerxes, who ordered them to be beheaded. It was here
that Xenophon assumed command of the memorable expedition of the Ten
Thousand--an expedition that the distinguished English geographer,
Rennell, has declared was “the most splendid of all the military events
that have been recorded in ancient history.” Eastward was the famous
battlefield of Arbela, where “the greatest battle in the record of the
ancient world had been fought; where the issue of centuries had struck
their balance in a day; where the channel of history for a thousand
years had been opened with a flying wedge”;[382] where Alexander the
Great had completed the work which was begun by his countrymen under
Xenophon when they made the discovery of the innate weakness of the
Persian colossus and thus prepared the public opinion of Greece for
the great campaign against the ancient Persian Empire which once
menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection but which “was
irrevocably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory of
Arbela.”[383]
After exploring the ruins of Nimroud, we returned to our kelek which,
with much creaking and quivering, was soon wrestling with the boiling
waters of the Zikr ul Aawaze. This is a dam or dyke built across the
river and during low water rises a foot or more above the surface. It
produces quite a cataract but our kelekgi conducted our frail craft
over its seething waters without any difficulty. Like other remarkable
works in this neighborhood this dam--some say it was a bridge--is
attributed by the inhabitants to Nimrod. The noted French traveler,
Tavernier, tells us that when he passed down the Tigris, the Zikr ul
Aawaze formed a waterfall twenty-six feet high. He assures us, however,
that his kelek went over this waterfall without mishap.[384] One may
be permitted to suspect that in this statement he was striving, in
recounting travelers’ tales, to emulate his mythical predecessor, Sir
John Mandeville.
About fifty miles to the south of Nimroud, on the right bank of the
Tigris, is the great mound of Kalah Sherghat over which, until a few
years ago, hung as deep a mystery as that which so long enveloped
the imposing tells of Nimroud and Khorsabad. To the Turks, in their
ignorance, it was but a fort made of clay--_Toprak Kale_. Even
so late as 1900 a distinguished German traveler was unaware that the
wonderful tell of Kalah Sherghat, which so excited his admiration,
covered the remains of one of the most noted cities of Assyria.[385]
It was indeed only after Dr. Robert Koldewey and Dr. Walter Andræ, the
eminent explorers of the German Orient Society, had, in 1903, begun
their exhaustive excavations at Kalah Sherghat that it was demonstrated
that its imposing ruins were none other than those of Assur, the first
capital of ancient Assyria. It was here that Asur, the national god of
Assyria, had his favorite sanctuary--a god that was not only supreme
over all the gods of the Babylonian pantheon but was also their lord
and master, “the King above all gods.”[386] King Sennacherib addresses
him as
King of the totality of the gods, his own creation, father of
the gods.
Whose power is unfolded in the deep, king of heaven and earth,
lord of all gods.[387]
As the national deity of the greatest military power of the ancient
world, Asur was preëminently a martial god. For, as is evinced by
cuneiform inscriptions, it is “by the might of Asur” that the nation’s
enemies are vanquished, that towns and cities are razed, that other
lands are brought under the dominion of the invincible Kings of Assyria.
Although I had read with exceeding interest, shortly after their
publication, Andræ’s superbly illustrated reports of his careful and
methodical excavations at Kalah Sherghat, I was not fully prepared for
the wonderful ruins which greeted my vision when I first surveyed them
from one of the imposing zigurats of the great temple of Anu and Adad,
which was rebuilt by Salmanassar III, nearly nine centuries before our
era.[388] As reconstructed by Andræ this temple was, in its day, one
of the architectural wonders of western Asia. But the city of Assur
was more than a thousand years old when Salmanassar placed in the
great temple enclosure a record of his work on it and an account of its
completion. For fully twenty centuries, B. C., Assyria, from Assur as
a center, had begun to extend her dominions northwards and to lay the
foundations of that mighty empire which was for so many generations the
admiration and the dread of the ancient world.
Besides uncovering the temples and palaces of Assur, Dr. Andræ and his
colleagues unearthed a part of its residential quarter. In so doing
they made discoveries of the greatest interest regarding the domestic
life of its inhabitants and their care for the sanitary condition
of their homes. Every house, however small, had suitable sewer
connections, while all the larger homes had rooms for domestics and
dependents.
But to many students of Assyriology the most notable discovery made
here by the German expedition took place not in the temples and
palaces of the venerable city but in the space between its interior
and exterior walls. This consisted in unearthing a large number of
tombs and nearly a hundred and fifty stelae, some of which were made of
sandstone and limestone, while others were fashioned out of basalt and
alabaster. From the inscriptions on these stelae it was evident that no
fewer than thirty-five of them were erected to the memory of rulers of
Assyria.
Among the royal tombs were those of Ashbelkala, Ashurnasirpal III, and
Shamsi-Adad V. The massive sarcophagus of the first-named king was
found to be in almost perfect condition.
Commenting on this remarkable find Dr. Rogers writes:
This discovery of these royal tombs appeals most strongly to
the imagination. Before this, Assyriology had seemed so poor in
comparison with Egyptology which has from the beginning been
able to point to its long series of royal tombs, nay, even to
the mummied remains of the greatest of Egyptian Kings. There
is no probability that Assyrian discoveries will ever be able
to match these, but the reproach that neither Assyria nor
Babylonia had even one royal tomb has been taken away.[389]
More interesting far than any of the royal tombs referred to is one
of the stelæ that were uncovered in the same place. According to the
inscription on it the discovery of this monument was really startling
in its import and marked a most notable event in the romance of
archæology. The legend which this stone pillar bears tells us that it
is:
The stela of Sammuramat
The woman of the palace (that is, the consort of Shamsi-Adad,)
The King of the world, King of Assyria,
The mother of Adadnirari
The King of the world, King of Assyria,
The daughter-in-law of Salmanassar
The king of the four quarters of the earth.[390]
But who was Sammuramat? Surprising as it may seem, she was, as scholars
now concede, none other than Semiramis, the famous legendary queen of
Assyria.
What a marvelous discovery! What a vindication of long suppressed
truth! What an unexpected substitution of reality for fiction, of fact
for fancy, of authentic history for myth and legend!
To no other woman of antiquity have there been attributed so many
brilliant achievements as to Semiramis. Nor has any one of her
sex during the last two thousand years and more, occupied a more
conspicuous position in myth and legend, song and story.
From the time of Ctesias, the physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon, until
the latter part of the last century, there was no question about the
main facts of her marvelous career. During all this time she was
regarded as one of the most notable rulers of antiquity--as a queen of
consummate military ability and exceptional statesmanship; as a ruler
of vaulting ambition and as a conqueror whose dominions embraced the
most flourishing regions of Asia and Africa. So great indeed was her
reputed activity and genius that Strabo tells us tradition attributed
to her all the most stupendous works along the Tigris and the Euphrates
and even those in distant Iran.[391] Alexander the Great, it is said,
found an inscription of hers on the frontier of Scythia, which was then
considered the boundary of the inhabited world. In this inscription the
famous queen declares:
Nature has given me the body of a woman but my achievements
have made me the equal of the most valiant of men. I have ruled
the empire of Ninus which on the east extends to the river
Hinamanes, on the south to the country of incense and myrrh,
and on the north as far as the Sacæ and the land of Sogdiana.
Before me no Assyrian had seen any of the seas; I have seen
four of them which were so distant that no one had ever reached
them. I have forced rivers to flow where I wished them to, and
I have wished them to flow only where they would be useful.
I have rendered the sterile earth fecund by irrigating them
with these rivers. I have erected impregnable fortresses.
With iron I have made roads through impassable rocks. I have
constructed for my chariots highways through places which the
wild beasts themselves had never traversed. And in the midst of
these occupations I have found time for my amusements and my
pleasures.[392]
Zenobia and Cleopatra were distinguished for their beauty, their
genius, and the brilliancy of their achievements, but, according to the
testimony of Ctesias, Diodorus Siculus, and other ancient historians,
they were completely eclipsed by the wonder-working queen of Assyria.
So great, tradition had it, were her abilities as a sovereign that two
thousand years after her time the most eminent female rulers of their
age were named after this extraordinary woman who had so impressed
her personality on the West as well as on the East. Thus it is that
Catherine II of Russia, who was almost the rival of Peter the Great, is
known as the Semiramis of the North, while the same epithet is given
to that remarkable sovereign, Queen Margaret de Valdemar of Norway,
Sweden, and Denmark.
But when, in the second half of the last century, Orientalists began
to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia, the majority
of them soon showed a marked skepticism regarding the historical
character of the renowned Assyrian queen. It was contended that there
was no mention of her name in the Babylonian records during the period
in which she was supposed to have lived and that the silence of these
records respecting a ruler who, according to ancient writers, played
so important a rôle in antiquity was conclusive proof that she never
existed. It was furthermore asseverated that the work of Ctesias,
which for so many centuries had been accepted as sober history, was no
more than a romantic narrative which the progress of Assyrian research
had completely discredited. And Semiramis, it was further averred,
was not a woman of flesh and blood at all but an entirely mythical
character,--merely a creation of Ctesias and having no existence
outside of his elaborate romance which for more than two thousand years
passed as serious history.
But scholars, while denying that Semiramis was the human personage she
was so long believed to be, were unwilling to concede that she was
nothing more than a mere arbitrary creation of the fertile imagination
of a Greek romancer posing as a historian. The assumption that she was
nothing more than a creature of fancy would, in view of her conspicuous
position in the ancient world, be more difficult of acceptance than the
age-old belief that she was really, as so long considered, the great
queen and conqueror of Western Asia.
If, then, she was neither a human being nor a mere figment of the
imagination, what was she? Scholars, and especially Orientalists,
felt the necessity of finding a plausible, if not a satisfactory,
answer to this question which became daily more and more insistent.
To obtain such an answer they ransacked, as never before, oriental
history, mythology, and archæology and with results which, at least to
themselves, seemed beyond question.
Semiramis [declares an eminent Orientalist] is not a human
personage, but a divinity whom legend, as so often happens in
similar cases, transports into the domain of human affairs.
Diodorus says formally that she was adored as a goddess and
declares that her cult had two principal seats, Assyria and
the city of Ascalon in Philistia.... That she was, of a truth,
a goddess is evinced by her being the daughter of Derceto as
well as by the traditions respecting her birth and by her
final metamorphosis, which have all a distinctly mythological
color.[393]
Another distinguished Orientalist is positive that “Semiramis was the
name not of a human queen but of the goddess Istar whose legend was
nationalized by the Persian historians and their Greek followers.”[394]
“The name of Semiramis,” he will have it, “belongs not to Babylonian
history but to Greek Romance.”[395] He accentuates this statement when
he asserts that Ctesias, the creator of Semiramis, who is only the
Greek Aphrodite, based his history in great measure on Persian annals
which “like those of Firdusi or of later Arabian writers consisted
for the most part of mere legendary tales and rationalized myths,”
in which we have to seek “not the history but the mythology of the
Babylonians.”[396]
Another noted scholar writes a learned paper to prove that “Semiramis
is not an historical queen whose legend was enriched in later times
with elements borrowed from a religious myth,” but that “she is
primarily a goddess, and becomes a quasi-historical queen only by
virtues of that euhemerism which in the East is so much older than
Euhemerus.”[397]
For several decades these and other distinguished scholars endeavored
to account for the origin and exploits of Semiramis in a way that would
relieve them from the necessity of conceding that she was either an
arbitrary creation of Ctesias or, as historians so long taught, an
actual Assyrian queen. Insisting that the character of Semiramis is
unmistakably that of the Semitic Ishtar or Astarte, some accounted for
her historical character by assuming that she was but an eastern myth
translated into “the semblance of a history that would be creditable
to the Greeks.” Others maintained that she was the daughter of the
fish-goddess Derceto, while still others quite as vigorously contended
that “the legend of Semiramis originated in Lydia,” whence it found its
way to Persia where Persian imagination transformed the daughter of a
fish-goddess into a Babylonian queen. Then again it was asserted that
the Semiramis legend arose from the commingling of exaggerated accounts
of a royal Assyrian lady named Sammurat and certain myths regarding
the Assyro-Babylonian Ishtar and the Canaanite Astoreth. To this
Semiramis, as to the great Sesostris of Egypt, the Greeks in course of
time assigned most of the stupendous works in Asia Minor which were
of Hittite or Assyrian origin. Smith, as the result of an exhaustive
investigation, comes to the conclusion that “Semiramis is a name and
form of Astarte and the story of her conquests in Upper Asia is a
translation into the language of political history of the diffusion and
victories of her worship in that region.”[398]
But while Orientalists were cudgeling their brains in the vain endeavor
to solve the problem on which they had wasted so much midnight oil, Dr.
Andræ and his associates of the _Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft_
unexpectedly made their astounding discovery among the ruins of Assur.
By a single stroke of the pick they nullified the carefully constructed
theories of nearly a half century and proved beyond peradventure that
the romantic and mysterious Semiramis was neither an Aramæan goddess,
nor the arbitrary creation of a Persian poet, nor the figment of a
Greek romancer, but an actual personality who was closely related
to some of the best known sovereigns of Assyria. As the wife of
Shamsi-Adad V and the mother of Adadinari IV and the daughter-in-law
of Salmanassar III, who reigned over Assyria from B.C. 860 to 826, the
place of Semiramis in history is henceforth as certain and as fixed as
is that of Sargon II or Tiglath-pileser IV, two of the most brilliant
monarchs who ever presided over the destinies of the vast empire of
Assyria when in the apogee of her power and splendor.
That romance has so long been busy with the name of Semiramis as to
leave small space for history; that the myths about Derceto and Astarte
and Ashtaroth were in the course of ages attached to the Assyrian
palace lady who made so great an impression on her contemporaries
is not an exceptional occurrence. Similar myths and romances have
clustered about the names of Alexander the Great, about Charlemagne,
about Harun-al-Rashid, about Frederick Barbarossa, about Dietrich von
Bern, and other notabilities of ancient and mediæval times.[399]
But the veils of myth and legend and romance, which have so long
enveloped the commanding personality of Semiramis, are finally
torn away and reveal a woman, like her namesake of Russia, of rare
ability and forcefulness, and that at a time when and in a land where
participation in public affairs on the part of women was absolutely
taboo.[400]
I have dwelt somewhat at length on the fascinating romance of Semiramis
because it is so interesting an illustration of the extraordinary
progress which the new science of Assyriology has made during the
last few decades; because it illustrates how difficult it is in the
annals of the nations of western Asia to separate myth and legend from
authentic history; because it shows how gradually we are acquiring a
more thorough and exact knowledge of the great empires of Assyria and
Babylonia than was possible for a Berosus or a Herodotus to obtain;
and, lastly, because it exhibits in bold relief the importance of the
work which the Germans, especially the members of the _Deutsche
Orient Gesellschaft_, have for years been quietly accomplishing
in the valley of the Tigris from the source of this storied river in
the highlands of Kurdistan to the alluvial plains of ruin-besprent
Babylonia.
The first two days after leaving Assur we found but little along the
river to attract us from our smoothly-gliding kelek. We encountered, it
is true, occasional eddies, or reaches in the river where the current
was more rapid than usual, or where small islands were so numerous
that navigation was somewhat intricate, but we rather enjoyed this as
it roused our crew from their habitual lethargy and from their chronic
disposition to spend all their time in kaif. We also met with quite a
number of breakers which extended across the river, but none of them
were so violent as that of the Zikr ul Aawaze. Many have maintained
that the largest of these rapids are due to the ruins of bridges that
spanned the Tigris in ancient times, but it seems more probable that
they were caused by the ruins of dams which were constructed by the
ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia “to insure a constant supply of
water to the innumerable canals which spread like a network over the
surrounding country.” This seems clear from what Strabo says of them,
although he himself seems to think that they were built to prevent
hostile fleets from ascending the rivers of Mesopotamia and Susiana.
The Persians [he writes], through fear of incursions from
without and for the purpose of preventing vessels from ascending
these rivers, constructed artificial cataracts. Alexander on
arriving there destroyed as many of them as he could, those
particularly on the Tigris from the sea to Opis.[401] [He
declared that] such devices were unbecoming to men who are
victorious in battle and, therefore, he considered this means
of safety unsuitable for him and, by easily demolishing the
laborious work of the Persians, he proved in fact that what they
thought a protection was unworthy of the name.[402]
A short distance below Assur we passed the embouchure of the little
Zab whose clear mountain waters were in strong contrast with the
flood of the turbid Tigris. Near the confluence of these two rivers
were located the Median villages of Parysatis, the wife of Darius and
mother of Cyrus the Younger. These villages had, according to a Persian
custom, been bestowed upon the queen by the king for her girdle--that
is for the purchase of personal apparel and ornaments. How generous the
Persian monarchs were in supplying their wives with pin money!
The scenery below the Little Zab differed but little from that round
about Assur--an arid plain on the left and a low range of yellow hills
on the right. The Arabs call them mountains--Jebel Hamrin and Jebel
Makhul--but they scarcely deserve such an exalted appellation. In a
recess of Jebel Makhul are the remains of a stronghold that reminds
one of similar ruins along the Danube. It is called Kalat Makhul--the
Castle of the Maiden. According to an Arabian legend, this was the
citadel of the warlike daughter of a giant, who was the terror of all
who sailed down the river. Near by was the citadel--Kalat el Gebbar--of
her giant father. The legend apparently recalls the time when these
strongholds were occupied by bandits who, like the old robber barons
of the Rhine and the Danube, formerly levied tribute on all the
passing keleks or who despoiled their owners of all they possessed.
These brigands are said to have infested certain reaches of the Tigris
as late as a third of a century ago, but, although the traveler is
still warned against them, they seem to have changed their scene of
operations to fields where they would not be so much harassed by
government soldiery.
A few miles below the Giant’s Castle, the river becomes much narrower
and swifter, for it here cuts through the sandstone chain of hills
called Jebel Hamrin which, on the left bank of the Tigris, continues in
a southeasterly direction until it unites with the one of the rugged
spurs which juts out from the mountains of Luristan. This narrow
section of the river through the range of Jebel Hamrin, which is
locally known as El Fatha--the aperture--is interesting because it is
on the boundary between the vilayets of Mosul and Bagdad, and because
it once marked a point on the natural frontier between Assyria and
Babylonia.
Outside of Nimroud and Assur, there is little during the first half of
the journey to Bagdad to claim one’s attention except the numerous Kurd
villages, composed of squalid stone and mud houses and frequent groups
of black tents occupied by various tribes of Arabs. Around the Arabian
encampments one sees occasionally quite large flocks of sheep and, in
the vicinity of the stone and mud villages of the Kurds, one will note
the feeble attempts which its inhabitants make to cultivate the land.
Considering the primitive methods of irrigation that exist here, one is
not surprised to find that the poor husbandman’s return for his labor
is very small. In marked contrast, however, to the unpromising grain
fields on the arid plains were the luxurious fields of Indian corn in
the small islands which dotted the Tigris.
During the entire journey between Mosul and Bagdad one is never long
out of sight of ruins of some kind or other--ruins of old strongholds,
ruins of monuments to Moslem saints, ruins of mosques and minarets,
ruins of towns and cities long since deserted or destroyed by the
ruthless invader. They certainly give the country a most desolate
appearance, but they, at the same time, tell in the most eloquent
fashion how great must have been the wealth and prosperity of this
ill-fated country in the palmiest days of the great Caliphs and during
the reigns of the wise and beneficent monarchs of the Sassanidæ and the
Achæmenidæ.
However rich the flora and fauna may formerly have been along the
Tigris, there is now visible but little of either. Older travelers
speak of the long stretches of woodland along the river. Now one sees
little more than small clumps of Acacia and Glycyrrhiza here and there
and even these seem to be rapidly disappearing.
Wild fowl are said to be abundant, but during the first half of our
journey on the Tigris we saw only a few shy francolins, pelicans,
and cormorants. Farther down the river, however, the number of fowl
appreciably augmented. Among them were some snipe and a beautiful
species of duck with snowy-white plumage. Singing birds were
exceedingly rare.
According to early travelers, large game formerly abounded the whole
way from Nineveh to Bagdad. Thus Jean de Thévenot in his entertaining
work on the Levant assures us that in the vicinity of El Fatha, lions
were as numerous as sheep elsewhere--_des lions--que l’on y voit
en aussi grande quantité que des moutons ailleurs_.[403] He tells
us particularly of an extraordinarily large and powerful lion which
took a man from every caravan--except his own--that ventured to pass
by that terrible place. That his caravan escaped the payment of the
tribute exacted by the ferocious brute from all others, was, he opined,
something glorious--_ce qui devoit être bien glorieux pour la noire
qui ne lui paia point ce tribut_.
Judging by the precautions which, he informs us, he was continually
obliged to take against these feral terrors of the desert, Thévenot
was as much obsessed by them as he was by the hot and poisonous
wind which, he avers, was such a deadly menace in the valley of the
Tigris. This consuming wind is, he declares, the same as the _ventus
urens_--burning wind--mentioned in the twenty-seventh chapter of
the book of Job and prevails during the summer all the way from Mosul
to Surat in distant India and is so fatal that if one inhales it one
instantly drops dead, and his corpse immediately becomes as black as
ink, and, if one touches it, the flesh falls from the bones.[404]
But these are only samples of travelers’ tales that have been current
regarding the East and its scorching atmosphere since the days of
Strabo.[405] It is, therefore, quite evident that Thévenot did not
purpose to allow his predecessors, including his countryman Tavernier,
not to mention others, to enjoy a complete monopoly in the recounting
of wonders and adventures.
In addition to stories about the poison wind--the Samum of the
Arabs--most travelers in the desert have something to say about the
huge, yellow sand pillars that are sometimes seen scudding over the
plain on the wings of the whirlwind. They are at times a positive
menace to travelers and to the natives are objects of terror. According
to Arab superstition they are “Jinnis of the Waste which cannot be
caught, a notion arising,” Burton tells, “from the fitful movements of
the electrical wind-eddy that raises them.”[406]
The first place at which we stopped after entering the vilayet of
Bagdad, which embraces the northern part of old Babylonia, was Tekrit.
Although modern Tekrit is little more than a wretched village, the
Tekrit of mediæval times, as is evinced by the vast area covered
by rubbish and ruins, was a large and flourishing city. Writing of
the modern town, Rich says its atmosphere “seems to be favorable to
prosers, as the saying, ‘To talk like Tekreetli,’ which is common in
these parts, apparently indicates.” To this statement he adds, “If the
women exceed the men in this gift, in the due proportion of the sex, he
is to be pitied who marries a Tekreetli wife.”[407]
The German traveler, Baron von Thielmann, in the account of his
journey down the Tigris, gives his impression of the town in a single
sentence: “As for ourselves we saw nothing worth noticing in this
miserable abode save two solitary palm-trees, the first which we had
met with.”[408] Incidentally, he quotes as a statement of Karl Ritter,
the celebrated geographer, “the striking remark that the furthest
palm-tree in the East always denotes the limit of Arab sway and Arab
life.”
But, if modern Tekrit possesses little of interest for the traveler,
the ancient city, long in ruins, still breathes proud memories of
the distant past. Once known as “Tekrit the Blest,” it was the seat
of the Monophysite metropolitan and a center whence missionaries
of the Monophysite church radiated in all directions. It was also
the birthplace of Saladin, one of the most celebrated of oriental
sovereigns, the famous adversary of Richard Cœur de Lion, the Moslem
warrior whose chivalry and generosity were the admiration of the
Crusaders and whose memory has lived in history and romance from the
appearance of the _Itinerarium Regis Ricardi_ and the masterly
_Historia Hierosolymitana_ of William of Tyre to the days when
Lessing in his _Nathan der Weise_ and Scott in his _Talisman_
gave those matchless portraits of the chivalrous sultan, which
made the name of Saladin a household word throughout the whole of
Christendom. The valley of the Tigris can point to many illustrious
sons, but to none whose achievements were more brilliant than those
of the immortal Kurd who, by reason of his gentleness, courtesy, and
nobility of character, his justice, truthfulness, and generosity has
been signalized in _The Tales of a Minstrel of Rheims_ as “the
best prince that ever was in pagandom,” and who, on account of his
kingly liberality, is given a place by Dante[409] in company with such
illustrious men as Alexander the Great, the good King of Castile, the
good Marchese of Monferrato, the good Count of Toulouse, Bertran of
Born, and Galasso of Montefeltro.” And, although the poet condemns
Mohammed to the frightful punishment meted out to schismatics in the
ninth bolgia of hell, he honors Saladin by placing him in the noble
castle of Limbo where--_senza martiri_--without torments--he
associates with Cæsar and Brutus, Lucretia and Cornelia and other
illustrious heroes and heroines of antiquity.[410]
Although Tekrit is in ruins and has been since it was visited by the
fell destroyer Timur, it will still continue to occupy a place in the
annals of our race because it was here that the baby eyes of Saladin
first opened on the bright, blue sky which canopied the broad lands of
which he was in manhood’s prime to become the humane conqueror and the
wise and beloved sovereign.
Below Tekrit the Tigris gradually widens and deepens, while the
velocity of the river’s current becomes markedly less. Obstructions to
navigation rapidly diminish in number and we are able to sail on an
even keel--if one can say this of a craft that is keelless.
Our progress down the Tigris, as we foresaw before embarking at Mosul,
was exceedingly slow. It rarely exceeded three miles an hour while it
was often less than one. As the fall of the river between Mosul and
Bagdad, a distance of three hundred and sixty miles, is less than seven
hundred feet, there is an average fall of less than two feet to the
mile. The Tigris is said to have been named on account of the swiftness
of its current, from the Persian word for arrow. The Hebrew name of the
river--Hiddekel--also means arrow. Judging, however, from the actual
velocity of the river, this name, if not originally given because of
some of its northern rapids, is a very apparent misnomer.
Although we had four kelekgis--two for the day and two for the
night--their chief occupation was not to propel our kelek, but rather,
by means of their long wooden sweeps, to keep it away from rocks and
sand bars and steer it clear of dangerous currents and whirlpools.
We did not, therefore, row or sail down the river; we simply floated.
Sometimes, when we faced a head wind, we came to an actual standstill.
But no one complained. We were prepared for this and our crew was so
accustomed to it that they would have been surprised if we had not
encountered occasional delays of this kind. It gave us an opportunity
to enjoy _dolce far niente_, as never before, and afforded our
crew the always coveted leisure to make kaif, to smoke and dream at
their sweet pleasure. With the Lotos-Eaters their
_Inner spirit sings_
_“There is no joy but calm!”_
_Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?_
And how natural is it for us to appreciate the point of view of our
calm-loving, rest-seeking boatmen! For hours at a time they sit at
their posts without uttering a word and as immovable as statues.
Whether they arrive at their destination in a week or a month is
apparently immaterial to them. So long as they are allowed to enjoy
their kaif they are supremely happy.
As we gaze on our men at their “dreamful ease,” I recall the verses of
Tennyson’s “Song of the Lotos-Eaters”:
_How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream_
_With half-shut eyes ever to seem_
_Falling asleep in a half dream!_
* * * * *
_How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing slowly)_
_With half-dropt eyelid still,_
_Beneath a heaven dark and holy,_
_To watch the long bright river drawing slowly_
_His waters from the purple hill--_
_To hear the dewy echoes calling_
_From cave to cave thro’ the thick twined vine--_
_To watch the emerald-color’d water falling_
_Thro’ many a wov’n acanthus wreath divine!_
Noiselessly and, at times, almost imperceptibly, we glided down the
majestic Tigris which through the broad desert waste floats
_Changeless to the changeless sea_.
With ever renewed interest we gazed on the silent ruins whose history
was ended before that of Ancient Rome began. The Forum, the Palatine,
the Colosseum, the Mole of Hadrian belong in their splendor to an age
when the more imposing ruins along the Tigris were hoary with the dust
of centuries or long buried under the shifting sands of the desert.
But it is at the hour of sunset that one most completely falls under
the spell of the Tigris and the historic land through which it flows.
For the sunsets of the desert lands of the East exhibit a gorgeousness
of color unknown in our land of fogs and mists. This is probably
owing to the haze produced by impalpable dust in an exceptionally
dry atmosphere. As the sun nears the horizon, the western sky glows
with all the delicate hues of ruby and topaz, emerald and amethyst
and, after it has set, the zodiacal light, rising from where the sun
disappeared, ascends to the zenith with a display of all the delicate
tints of rose and gold and lilac of the aurora borealis.
The glories of a sunset in Mesopotamia are indeed entrancing, but it is
when night comes with her dewy freshness and
_Her starry shade_
_Of dim and solitary loveliness_;
when the moon silvers the river’s wavelets and its ruin-crested banks,
that one loves to linger in this land of a great historic past and
contemplate at leisure
_Those ruined shrines and towers that seem_
_The relics of a splendid dream;_
_Amid whose fairy loneliness_
_Naught but the lapwing’s cry is heard._[411]
How we reveled in those glorious moonlit nights spent on our tranquilly
floating kelek on the enchanting Tigris! “They say that Carl Niebuhr,
the traveler, when old and blind, used to lie and dream over the old
Eastern landscapes and night-skies in his darkened life,--a perpetual
world of enchantment to console him.”[412] How could it have been
otherwise? For how often since our return from the East where we, like
Niebuhr, have spent some of the most delightful days of our life, have
we not also found ourselves dreaming of the eventful days and the
fascinating nights which it was our privilege to spend under the pale
azure skies of the inspiring and enthralling home of our race?
But while, in silent rapture, we were thus enjoying the magnificent
displays of the setting sun and were reveling in the beauties of
the stars,--“the flowers of the sky,” “the poetry of heaven,” “the
forget-me-nots of the angels,”--our crew was totally indifferent to all
these sublime manifestations of nature and completely buried in their
kaif. They were indeed living pictures of what Robert Louis Stevenson
somewhere most aptly calls “the apotheosis of stupidity.” As we noted
in their placid features their rapturous expression of contentment and
happiness we realized as never before the full force of the poet’s
words,
_The heaven of each is but what each desires_.
Never once, during our journey from Mosul to Tekrit were we ever out
of sight of some place or monument of historic or legendary lore. But
the number of these reminders of the hoary past rapidly increased in
our sail between Tekrit and Bagdad. About five miles below Saladin’s
birthplace we came to the little town of Iman Dura. According to
tradition, it was here that King Nebuchadnezzar set up his colossal
golden statue which the Hebrews, Sidrach, Misach, and Abednago, in
defiance of the King’s orders, refused to adore.[413] It was near
Dura that the Roman army under Jovian pitched their tents after the
death of Julian the Apostate and it was here that the Roman Emperor
was forced to conclude an ignominious peace--_necessariam quidem
sed ignobilem_, writes Eutropius--with the Persian King, Sapor the
Great. A short distance below Dura is a small stream which the natives
say was a canal dug by King Solomon. Near it, on the left bank of the
Tigris, begins the ruins of Eski Bagdad--Old Bagdad--“a mighty field of
ruins,” writes Thielmann, “extending some twenty-five miles along the
Tigris.”[414] Situated in this long field of ruins is the little town
of Samara, as celebrated for its romantic history as for its remarkable
monuments which, however, have only in the last decade or two received
the attention on the part of scholars which they so richly deserve.
The ruins of which I have here given a brief account [writes a
well-known archæologist, after a visit to Samara] are of the
first importance for the elucidation of the early history of
the arts of Islam. They can all be dated within a period of
forty years falling in the ninth century, and are, therefore,
among the earliest existing examples of Mohammedan architecture.
They bear witness to the Mesopotamian influences under which
it arose. The spiral towers of Samara and Abu Dulaf are an
adaptation of the temple pyramids and Assyria and Babylonia,
which had a spiral path leading to the summit; the technique of
arch and vault was invented by the ancient East and transmitted
through Sassannian builders to the Arab invaders; the decoration
is Persian or Mesopotamian and almost untouched by the genius
of the West. In the palaces and the mosques of Samara we can
see the conquerors themselves conquered by a culture which
had been developing during thousands of years on Mesopotamian
soil, a culture which had received indeed new elements into
its composition, which had learnt from the Greek and from the
Persian, but had maintained in spite of all modifications its
distinctive character.[415]
The complex of ruined mosques and palaces which here excites the
admiration of the student dates from the time--A. D. 836 to 892--when
Samara was the capital of the Abbassid Caliphate. Mutasim, a son of
Harun-al-Rashid, was the first caliph who made his residence here.
So numerous and magnificent were the edifices which he called into
existence, as by an enchanter’s wand, that the glories of Samara
soon rivaled those of Bagdad in the days of her greatest power and
prosperity. The magnificence of the enlarged and embellished city was
expressed in the official name which was then given it, for, in lieu
of Samara, it was called Surra-man-raa--Who sees it, rejoices. Judging
from the ground plan of the palaces of Samara as given by M. H. Violet,
the distinguished French Academician who, during a visit to Samara,
made a careful study of its imposing ruins, this group of buildings was
not inferior to the royal edifices of Versailles.[416]
According to local tradition Samara, like Sestos and Abydos, had also
its Hero and Leander. As they lived in palaces on opposite sides of the
river, the Samara Leander could see his immorata, who was the daughter
of a sultan, only by breasting the swift-flowing waters of the romantic
Tigris. The lovers were, however, more fortunate than were their
Greek prototypes, for their lives did not end in the tragedy which
overtook the Romeo and Juliet of the Dardanelles but, so the story
runs, terminated in a happy marriage like that of Feramoz and Lalla
Rookh. And the memory of the devoted pair is still kept green by the
names which the Arabs have given to the ruins of their former homes--El
Aschik--the lover--and El Maschuka--the beloved.[417]
Below Samara the number of ruins and places of historic and legendary
interest seemed to increase in proportion as we sailed southwards.
Particularly interesting were the ruins of Opis which was once, next
to Babylon, the most important city in Babylonia. It was to this point
that were floated from the upper Tigris the boats that Sennacherib,
seven centuries B. C., had constructed for use in his celebrated
campaign against the Chaldeans and Elamites. From Opis the boats were
transported by camels overland to the Euphrates, down which they
sailed to the Persian Gulf. How forcibly this achievement of the great
Assyrian monarch reminds one of a similar exploit nearly twenty-two
centuries later, when Mohammed the Conqueror had a part of his fleet
conveyed over the elevated section of land between the Bosphorus and
the Golden Horn preparatory to his capture of Constantinople, May 29,
1453!
Opis is also celebrated as having been visited by Alexander the Great
in his memorable voyage up the Tigris from the Persian Gulf. “In
his voyage up,” as Arrian informs us, “he destroyed the weirs which
existed in the river and thus made the stream quite level.”[418] More
than twenty-one centuries afterwards, in 1839, the English steamer
“Euphrates”--the first steamer ever seen in this region--ascended the
Tigris on its voyage of reconnaissance when it went up the river to the
tomb of Sultan Abdullah near the mouth of the Greater Zab.[419] But
since that date the navigation of the Tigris--at least for commercial
purposes--has terminated at Bagdad. If the country bordering the Tigris
were under a stable and enterprising government, there is no reason
why light-draught and light-tonnage boats should not ply regularly not
only between Bagdad and Opis but between Bagdad and Mosul as well. High
explosives properly applied under the direction of competent engineers,
and possibly a dam or two with suitable locks would solve the problem
and would contribute immensely towards restoring to its former
flourishing condition a country which, as we have seen, is now little
more than a desert overspread with ruins “where kings have paced” and
where
_The gray fox litters safe_
_Under the broken thrones_.
When the Tigris shall have been cleared for steam navigation from
Bagdad to Mosul and the Bagdad Railway shall be completed and in
successful operation through its entire length, we may hope to see the
fertile lands, through which the famous river flows once more the home
of teeming millions as they were when they constituted the richest and
the most flourishing region of Western Asia.
Below Opis we noted a marked change in the aspect of the country. We
were now passing through a rich alluvial plain where not a pebble was
to be seen. There were on both sides of the river broad, verdant fields
enameled with wild flowers and carefully irrigated by the primitive
shadoofs and norias which are still in use here as they are along
the Nile and in all parts of the Levant. Much of this land is under
cultivation or utilized for grazing, as is evinced by the flocks and
herds with which the country is everywhere dotted. As we slowly glided
down the river we observed an ever-increasing number of villages
surrounded by gardens and fruit trees and clumps of date palms. All
these grateful changes in the landscape, especially the beautiful palm
groves which hourly became more numerous and more attractive, and
the little fleets of guffahs filled with commodities and passengers,
told us that we were near our destination. These indications did not
mislead; for a few hours later the domes and minarets of Bagdad hove
in sight and our week’s happy floating on a kelek was at an end. We
were at last within the gates of the world-renowned metropolis of the
Abbasside Caliphs.