BAGDAD
_Romantic Bagdad! name to childhood dear,_
_Awaking terror’s thrill and pity’s tear;_
_For there the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,_
_And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid knelt;_
_Prince of the Thousand Tales! whose glorious reign_
_So brightly shines in fancy’s fair domain!_
_Whose noble deeds still Arab minstrels sing,_
_Who rivaled all but Gallia’s Knightly King._
NICOLAS MICHEL.
We entered Bagdad in the full glory of a Mesopotamian sunset. Her
mosques glowed with amber and light primrose; her minarets with the
most delicate rose and gold. The noble crowns of stately palm trees
cast masses of shade over gardens and fountains and, trembling under
a gentle breeze from Oman’s Sea, played almost mystically in the
quivering and departing sunlight. Throngs of Turks and Arabs, Kurds and
Persians pressed feverishly through the narrow streets. The color notes
of the red and green, blue and white robes of the men and women struck
a pleasant harmony with the drab of the walls and the maroon and olive
green of the fretted bay windows which projected over the gradually
darkening thoroughfares of the picturesque city of Harun-al-Rashid.
We felt ourselves at once in the thrall of the quiet and subtle
spell which the famed home of the Caliphs had cast over us, but,
notwithstanding this, we lost no time in repairing to the home of the
Carmelite Fathers, who had been advised of our arrival and who gave us
a welcome such as is accorded only by the generous and warm-hearted
missionaries of the Orient. Once under their hospitable roof we felt
that we were a member of their religious family. So fully was our
every want foreseen and our every desire anticipated that we saw
at a glance that our sojourn among these devoted fathers would be
fully as pleasant and as profitable as had been our stay among the
whole-souled Capuchins of Urfa and the zealous and scholarly Dominicans
of Mosul. Nor were we mistaken, for every hour we spent with the good
Carmelite priests of Bagdad was replete with pleasure, instruction, and
edification.
The story of the going of the Carmelites to Bagdad and the record of
their labors since their arrival there is as interesting as it is
inspiring. Their formal taking possession of the Mission of Bagdad, the
Carmelites tell us, took place in the first decade of the seventeenth
century, under the most dramatic circumstances. The zealous Father
Paul-Simon, superior of their mission in Persia, who had been sent by
the Shah as an envoy to the Sovereign Pontiff, arrived at Bagdad so
exhausted by the fatigues of a long and trying journey and the inroads
of disease that, when he reached the gate of the city, he prostrated
himself on the ground and gave up the ghost.
A little more than a quarter of a century after this tragic occurrence,
was created the Latin bishopric of Bagdad, usually known as the See
of Babylon. This was due to the progress which the Church had made
in Persia--a progress that was the result of the fruitful missionary
labors in that land of Carmelites, Jesuits, and Dominicans and to
the protection and liberty which had been accorded them by the wise
and enlightened Shah, Abbas the Great. Recognizing the necessity of
a bishop as head of the Persian mission, Abbas, in 1830, sent Father
Thaddée, a Carmelite, to Rome, to request the Holy Father to create a
Latin bishopric in Ispahan, his capital, with a permanent coadjutorship
which should guarantee the new episcopate from too long vacancies. As a
result of the Persian monarch’s interest in the Church, Father Thaddée
was promoted to the new See of Ispahan. He received as coadjutor Father
Perez, likewise a Carmelite, who was given the specially created title
of Bishop of Babylonia, which at that time was a part of the Persian
Empire.
In the meantime, a pious lady of Meaux, France--Marie Ricouard--put at
the disposition of the Holy See six thousand Spanish doubloons for the
creation and endowment of a bishopric in _partibus infidelibus_,
on the double condition that to the donor should be reserved the
presentation of the first titular and that the following bishops should
always be of French nationality.
Pope Urban VIII by his bull, _Super Universas_, decreed in June
1838, that the sum named should be appropriated to the See of “Babylon
or Bagdad,” with the formal stipulation that all future incumbents
of this bishopric should be obliged to reside there personally under
pain of forfeiting all right to the fruits of the Ricouard foundation.
At the same time the Sovereign Pontiff named as the first bishop
of the new see Father Bernard de Sainte-Thérèse, of Paris, who had
been proposed by the donor of the fund mentioned, and ordained that
thenceforth no one should be promoted to this see unless he had been
born in France. This wish of the Pope and of the pious donor has thus
far never been transgressed, and there is no reason to doubt that it
will continue to assure to France the honor of seeing one of her sons
occupy the See of Bagdad.[420]
In the year 1677 a special act, signed at Constantinople by the
Ambassador of Louis XIV, named the superior of the Carmelites in
Basra consul of France, _in perpetuum_. At a later date the
French King gave the title and prerogatives of consul to the Bishop
of Bagdad. This was an immense help to the bishop in his ministry for
it gave him increased power with the civil government and enhanced
immensely his prestige among the Mohammedans. From the time of Francis
I, when a treaty of peace and amnity and commerce was signed by the
French Government and the Sublime Porte, the French had enjoyed full
religious liberty throughout the Ottoman Empire and France continued
for centuries to be with the Moslem the favored nation of Europe.[421]
But, although the consular positions which were held by the Carmelite
superior of Basra and the bishop of Bagdad and, still more, the treaty
of amnity which had been established between the French and Ottoman
governments--especially after the Ottoman Turks gained possession of
Mesopotamia in A. D. 1534--had given the French missionaries in the
Near East increased power and prestige, they still had to confront
difficulties innumerable and sacrifices that were calculated to appall
all but the noblest heroes.
Their difficulties, however, did not proceed from the followers of
Mohammed so much as from lack of material resources and from the
paucity of subjects for the ever-expanding work of the mission. So many
calls were made on their charity by the poor that they were at times
forced to live on only a single piece of dry bread a day, with nothing
to flavor it but a small clove of garlic. Then both priests and bishops
were decimated by the plague while ministering at the bedside of the
stricken members of their flock. On one occasion the Carmelite superior
of Bagdad saw himself without any assistants whatever. Age and disease
had taken them all from him one after another. In this extremity he
wrote letter after letter to his superior general in Rome, conjuring
him to send him men. “I have none, was the general’s answer; if you
want them, come and seek them.”
The superior, Father Marie-Joseph, took the general at his word. Poor
as Job, he borrowed money enough to hire a camel and alone, with
a single Arab and a sack of dates and a leather bottle of water,
he started for Aleppo on the long journey--nearly eight hundred
miles--through the inhospitable Arabian and Syrian deserts. Twice his
alertness and eloquence saved him from bands of marauding Bedouins.
But, finally, after untold difficulties and sufferings he reached
Aleppo and Rome. His superior general in the Eternal City was so
impressed by the magnificent audacity of the zealous missionary that
he found a means of procuring for him the assistants he so much needed
and sent him back to his flock rejoicing. Among these assistants was
Father Damien, formerly a practicing physician, who soon proved to be
a godsend to the suffering poor of Bagdad, whom he gladly treated and
supplied with medicine without any compensation whatever.[422]
As in the missions of Edessa and Mosul, the missionaries of Bagdad are
nobly assisted in their moral and civilizing work by devoted nuns from
France. But the life of these devoted sisters is one of the greatest
self-sacrifice. They may not, as did the Carmelite priests, have
attempted to imitate St. Peter of Alcantara, who took but one repast
and that of the most frugal kind, only once every three days; but the
privations which they for years had to endure would daunt all but the
most courageous souls. Even before they reached the scene of their
missionary activities they had to pass through an experience that, for
delicately reared women as they were, was truly disheartening for any
but those engaged in the service of the Master. This was their long
journey on horseback--in great part--through a wild and forbidding
desert from Beirut to Bagdad. They were twenty-four days in the
saddle. The nights they had to spend in the filthy, noisy, dilapidated
caravansaries which were scarcely fit shelter for the beasts that
carried them. And yet these heroic _religieuses_ always maintained
the same cheerfulness during this long and trying journey as ever
characterizes them in the performance of their arduous labors in the
schoolroom and at the bedside of the sick and suffering.[423]
But the labors of these ardent souls is not without compensation, even
in this world. Notwithstanding all the drawbacks that confront them
they have the comfort of knowing that their sacrifices are not in vain.
The number of their pupils, Mohammedans and Jews, as well as Christians
of all the numerous rites in Mesopotamia, is so rapidly augmenting,
that it is difficult for the good nuns to house them and secure enough
teachers to take care of them. For, in addition to the ordinary
branches of an elementary education, they teach their young charges
various kinds of needlework and the simpler principles of domestic
economy.
“The children of Bagdad are very bright and very eager to learn,” said
one of the sisters to me in answer to a question I had asked, “and
nowhere will you find pupils who are more studious or more grateful for
the opportunities they have of improving their minds. Our great grief
is that our school-buildings are not larger and that we have not more
sisters to meet the constantly increasing demands that are made on us
in our class-rooms. But,” she said, in sweet resignation, “the _Bon
Dieu_ will provide in His own good time.”
Never before did I so much regret that I was not a millionaire as
I did when I visited the schools of these perfervid and laborious
_religieuses_ and saw what splendid results they were achieving
with the very limited resources at their disposal and learned how much
more they could accomplish if they had the necessary means. If the
good and generous people of America could only realize the noble work
which the good Sisters of the Presentation are achieving in Bagdad and
how very worthy they are of assistance, I am sure that many would open
wide their purses for the benefit of both teachers and pupils. I know
of few places where money could be spent to better purpose. When one
remembers that these ardent souls are condemned to perpetual exile by
the atrocious _Association Laws_ of their mother country and that
they frequently lack the ordinary necessities of life because they
are unable to reach a public that would gladly succor them in their
needs and coöperate with them in their admirable work, one cannot help
sympathizing with them and feel that it is one’s duty to help them in
every way possible.
The school for boys under the direction of the Carmelite Fathers is
recognized as the best in Bagdad. It, with the church and monastery of
the Fathers, occupies a capital position in the center of the city and
is pronounced by foreigners to be “a French oasis in the midst of the
desert.”
It will interest the reader to know that the study of French is
obligatory from the lowest to the highest classes of the school. The
result is that many of the pupils speak the language with wonderful
facility and correctness. At the commencement exercises at the end of
the year they exhibit their proficiency before a large audience made
up of the élite of the city by giving a play from Racine. It is in
consequence of their thorough knowledge of the language of Molière and
Bossuet that after leaving school they are given high positions in
the leading houses of commerce and in all the administrative offices
of the government. The traveler is often surprised at the extent
to which French is spoken in the Near East; but when one remembers
that the schools and colleges in the Ottoman Empire, which are under
the direction of French priests, sisters, and laymen are numbered
by the thousand, the wonder ceases. It is for this reason that the
empire is, in the words of Pierre Loti--_presque un pays de langue
française_--almost a country of the French language.[424]
The missionaries in Bagdad--from the Archbishop down to the humblest
nun--are greatly attached to the city in which Divine Providence has
called them to labor and--to suffer. Not the least reason for this
attachment is the glorious position which Bagdad so long occupied in
the history of the world. Until the late war the average reader knew
little about it except that it was in some way associated with the
“Arabian Nights.” And this association was so vague in his mind that he
was not sure whether Bagdad ever had an actual existence or whether it,
like the famous characters in _Thousand and One Nights_, belonged
only to fable land.
For this reason it seems this chapter would be incomplete without some
account of the famous city which, during five hundred years, was the
capital of the Abbasside Caliphs; which, there is reason to believe,
was for a considerable period the largest city in the world; which,
during many centuries bore rule from the Oxus to the Nile and from the
Caucasus to the Gulf of Oman; and which, during a half millennium, was
to Islam what Rome is to Christendom.
Bagdad was founded A. D. 762, by Al-Mansur, the second of the Abbasside
Caliphs. Before deciding on a site for his capital Al-Mansur made many
journeys and carefully examined all the available locations along the
Tigris from Jarjaraya to Mosul. Moslem historians inform us that the
Caliph was finally induced to select the spot on which Bagdad now
stands by the advice of those who had lived there both in winter and
in summer and who assured him that “among all the Tigris lands this
district especially was celebrated for its freedom from the plague of
mosquitoes and that the nights, even in the height of summer, were cool
and pleasant.” “We are, furthermore, of the opinion,” they continued,
“that thou shouldst found the city here because thou shalt thereby live
amongst palms and near water, so that if one district fail thee in its
crops, or be late in its harvest, in another will the remedy be found.
Also thy city being on the Sarat Canal, provisions will be brought
thither by the boats of the Euphrates and by the caravans through the
plains, even from Egypt and Syria. Hither, up from the sea will come
the wares of China, while down the Tigris from Mosul will be brought
goods from the Byzantine lands. Thus shall thy city be safe standing
between all these streams, and thine enemy shall not reach thee,
except it be by a boat or by a bridge, and across the Tigris or the
Euphrates.”
“The practical foresight shown by the Caliph,” in the selection
of the site of his capital, “has been amply confirmed by the
subsequent history of Bagdad. The city called into existence as by an
enchanter’s wand was, during the Middle Ages, second in size only to
Constantinople, and throughout Western Asia was long unrivalled for
splendor. It at once became and remained for all subsequent centuries
the capital of Mesopotamia. Wars, sieges, the removal for a time by
the Caliphs of the seat of government to Samara, higher up the Tigris,
even the almost entire destruction of the city by the Mongols in A. D.
1258, none of these have permanently affected the supremacy of Bagdad
as the capital of the Tigris and the Euphrates country, and now, after
the lapse of over twelve centuries, the new Arabic King of Mesopotamia
still resides in the city founded by the Caliph Al-Mansur.”[425]
Many etymologies, most of them fanciful, have been given of the name
Bagdad. It is said that when Al-Mansur finally selected the site for
his capital he found it occupied by several monasteries, most of them
Nestorian, and that the capital derived its appellation from the Arabic
word _bagh_--garden,--and _Dad_--the name of a certain monk
who had a garden there. Others aver that the name is derived from two
Persian words, _Bagh_--God,--and _Dadh_--founded--signifying
a city founded by God. The official name, however, given, we are told
by the Caliph Al-Mansur himself, was Medina-as-Salam, which signifies
the “City of Peace.” But among the Saracens it was more generally
known as Dar-as-Salam, which also signifies City or Home of Peace. The
Greeks gave it a name--Eirenopolis--which is a literal translation
of the Arabic Dar-as-Salam. But it is by the older and more common
name--Bagdad--which is variously spelt--that the city of Al-Mansur has
generally been known from its foundation to the present day.
It was long thought that the capital of the Caliphs had been founded on
ground which had not previously been occupied by a dense population.
But a discovery made in 1848 by Sir Henry Rawlinson, when the waters of
the Tigris were exceptionally low, disclosed the surprising fact that
Al-Mansur had founded his capital on the site of a city that antedated
the Christian era by at least seven centuries. An extensive facing of
brickwork, which still exists, was then found to line the western bank
of the river, and each brick of this facing bore the name and titles
of Nebuchadnezzar. No less remarkable, in this connection, is a later
discovery in the Assyrian geographical catalogues, belonging to the
reign of Asurbanipal, of a name very similar to Bagdad “which probably
refers to the town then standing on the site afterwards occupied by the
capital of the Caliphs.”
Al-Mansur founded his capital, known from its peculiar form as “The
Round City,” on the right bank of the Tigris, but it was not long until
the palaces of the Caliphs and the government offices were transferred
to the eastern side of the river, where the capital has since remained,
while the part of the city on the western bank, especially the quarter
called Karkh, was given over to markets and merchants, where “every
merchant and each merchandise had an appointed street: and there were
rows of shops, and of booths and of courts in each of the streets; but
men of one business were not mixed up with those of another, nor one
merchandise with merchandise of another sort. Goods of a kind were only
sold with their kind, and men of one trade were not to be found except
with their fellows of the same craft. Thus each market was kept single
and the merchants were divided according to their merchandise, each
craftsman being separated from others not of his own class.”[426]
What greatly contributed towards the rapid development of Bagdad and
towards making it the great emporium of the East, was the admirable
system of canals which intersected the rich alluvial plains of lower
Babylonia and which enabled the inhabitants of this region to utilize
the surplus waters of the Euphrates for irrigating the fertile lands
which lay between this river and the Tigris. Contrary to what is so
often thought, the Arabs, under the Caliphs, gave as much attention to
the canalization of Mesopotamia as had their predecessors, the Persians
and the Babylonians.
But these canals, besides being used for purposes of irrigation,
likewise served for the transportation of merchandise from distant
regions. Thus, to give a single instance of their use for this purpose,
we are informed that “great boats and barges were loaded at Rakkah,
‘the port,’ as it was called, of the Syrian desert on the Upper
Euphrates, there taking over from the land-caravans the corn of Egypt
and the merchandise from Damascus; and these boats, coming down the
great river, and then along the Isa Canal, discharged their cargoes at
the wharves on the Tigris banks at the lower harbor in Karkh.”[427]
To give some idea of the fertility of the irrigated region of
Mesopotamia during the reign of the Caliphs it suffices to quote the
words of an Arabic writer regarding certain cornlands in the vicinity
of Bagdad, where, we are told, “the crops never failed, neither in
winter nor in summer,” and of the report given of a certain mill in
which there were no fewer than a hundred millstones which produced the
extraordinary annual rental of a hundred million dirhams, a sum that
was equivalent to several million dollars of our money.
Marco Polo, that king of mediæval travelers, who, by the vast compass
of his journeys, was better qualified than any man of his time to
express an opinion on the relative importance of the cities of Asia,
declares that Bagdad--which he calls Baudas--is “the noblest and
greatest city of these regions” and that it “used to be the seat of
the Caliph of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the
seat of the Pope of all the Christians.”[428] But the illustrious
Venetian voyager did not visit Bagdad until several decades after the
destruction of the city by the Mongol hordes under Hulagu Khan.
The question now arises, if Bagdad was so great a metropolis only a
half century after it was ravaged by the Mongols, what must it have
been when at the zenith of its power and magnificence? Some authors
estimate that the city counted no fewer than two million souls.
D’Herbelot, the celebrated Orientalist, says that one can conjecture
the number of the inhabitants of Bagdad from a statement made by Arab
historians, who declare that the funeral of Eben Hanbal, a famous
Moslem doctor who died with a great reputation for sanctity, was
attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women.[429]
Then again, Marco Polo tells us that the number of Christians in
Bagdad, shortly before it was sacked by Hulagu, was more than a hundred
thousand.[430] This would indicate that the population of this Saracen
city, of which a very great majority was Mohammedan, must then, in the
days of its decline, have exceeded a million. This seems clear from
what historians tell us about the “horrible butchery of men, women and
children,” which lasted forty days, when the city was sacked by the
Mongols under Hulagu.
Nearly all the inhabitants, to the number, according to
Rashid ud Din, of eight hundred thousand--Makrizi says two
million--perished, and thus passed away one of the noblest
cities that had ever graced the East--the cynosure of the
Mohammedan world, where the luxury, wealth and culture of five
centuries had concentrated.[431]
About the greatness and splendor of Bagdad before it was laid in
ashes by the Mongol invader, there can be no question. The concurrent
testimony of contemporary historians puts this beyond doubt. The walls
which surrounded the city in its infancy were such as to rival those
of ancient Babylon and Nineveh, as described by Herodotus and Diodorus
Siculus. According to the noted Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela,
who visited Bagdad in the second half of the twelfth century, “the
palace of the Caliph of Bagdad is three miles in extent.”
An idea of the magnificence of the Caliph’s palaces may be gained
from an account that has come down to us of the brilliant reception
accorded the Greek ambassadors who were sent to Bagdad, A. D. 917,
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus.[432] Before being introduced to the
Commander of the Faithful, the envoys were conducted in state through
the various buildings within the palace precincts. Each of these
buildings, of which there were twenty-three in number, was a separate
palace.
One of these was the riding academy, adorned with porticoes of marble
columns.
On the right side of this house stood five hundred mares
caparisoned each with a saddle of gold or silver, while on the
left stood five hundred mares with brocade saddle-cloths and
long head-covers; also every mare was held in hand by a groom
magnificently dressed.[433]
After all this, and leading to the very presence of the Caliph, came
the officers of state and the pages of the privy council, all in
gorgeous raiment, with their swords and girdles glittering with gold
and gems. Near them were “the eunuchs and the chamberlains and the
black pages.”
The number of the eunuchs was seven thousand in all, four
thousand of them white and three thousand black; the number of
the chamberlains was also seven thousand, and the number of the
black pages, other than the eunuchs, was four thousand.... On
the Tigris there were skiffs and wherries, barques and barges
and other boats, all magnificently ornamented, duly arranged
and disposed.... The number of the hangings in the palaces
of the Caliph was thirty-eight thousand. These were curtains
of gold--of brocade embroidered with gold--all magnificently
figured with representations of drinking vessels and with
elephants and horses, camels, lions and birds.... The number of
the carpets and the mats was twenty-two thousand pieces; these
were laid in the corridors and courts....[434]
A hundred lions were brought out, every lion being held in by the hand
of its keeper. Among other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was
a tree of gold and silver. The tree had eighteen branches, every branch
having numerous twigs, on which sat all kinds of gold and silver birds,
both large and small. Most of the branches of this tree were of silver,
but some were of gold, and they spread into the air carrying leaves of
divers colors. The leaves of the tree moved as the wind blew, while
the birds, under the action of mechanical appliances, piped and sang.
Through this scene of magnificence the Greek ambassadors were led to
the foot of the Caliph’s throne.
The impression made on the ambassador and his suite at the sight
of such a display of wealth and luxury was, we may well believe,
not unlike that produced on the Spanish Conquistadores at the sight
of the vast treasures of Cuzco and Cajamarca, or on the astonished
ambassadors of foreign powers when they were admitted to the presence
of Abd-al-Rahman III in his gorgeous audience chamber in the famed
palace of Medina-al-Zahra.[435]
But Bagdad has more compelling claims to undying fame than those based
on gorgeous palaces, superb mosques, boundless luxury, and ostentatious
displays of fabulous wealth. This splendid capital of the Caliphs will
always live in history’s page as the seat of numerous and splendid
institutions of charity and education and as the home of Caliphs who
were the most munificent patrons of science and letters of the Middle
Ages.
Among the hospitals of Bagdad was a palatial structure with many rooms
and wards, which were furnished in elaborate style. Here the patients
were gratuitously provided with food and medicine and regularly
visited by the physicians of the city. It was here that Rhazes, the
most celebrated Mussulman physician of his time, gave his lectures and
founded the great medical school which drew students from all parts of
Western Asia. Rhazes is famous not only for his eminence as a physician
but also as a voluminous writer on medicine and for having described
smallpox nearly nine hundred years before Jenner began his noted
investigations on this dread disease.
It was, however, the colleges, of which there were more than
thirty--“each more magnificent than a palace”--that gave Bagdad
its greatest fame in the mediæval world. One of these, called the
Nizamiyah, founded by an eminent vizier who was the friend of the
poet Omar Khayyám, was, on account of its architectural splendor,
and the celebrity of its professional staff, known as the “Mother of
the colleges of Bagdad.” Among its most illustrious lecturers were
Ghazzali, celebrated as a philosopher and a theologian, and Bohadin,
who achieved eminence as a historian, as a statesman, and as the
biographer of the Sultan Saladin. The endowment of the Nizamiyah was
so princely that it sufficed not only to pay the salaries of the
professors but also to pay for the board and tuition of indigent
students.
Completely eclipsing the Nizamiyah College in its architectural
grandeur, sumptuous equipment, and wealth of endowment was the College
of the Mustansiriyah--the ruins of which still exist--which was founded
by the Caliph Mustansir, the father of Mustasim, who was put to death
by Hulago after the destruction of Bagdad. So great was the splendor of
this college that it is said to have surpassed any similar institution
in Islam. It was not only the most notable seat of learning in Bagdad,
but was also its most beautiful and imposing edifice. When one recalls
the many gorgeous palaces of the city--many of them costing fabulous
sums--one can realize what munificent patrons were Bagdad’s Caliph and
men of wealth and how well this fairy capital deserved its reputation
as the Orient’s most famous center of science and letters. It had only
one rival and that was the famous Ommaied metropolis in Spain, so
celebrated for its riches and attractions, its schools and libraries
and scholars--a city which Hroswitha, the gifted nun of Gandersheim,
has so beautifully described in a single distich:
_Corduba famosa, locuples de nomine dicta,_
_Inclyta deliciis, rebus quoque splendida cunctis._
But no description of Bagdad is complete without some account of its
more eminent Caliphs, especially of its immortal Harun-Al-Rashid, who
is “inseparably associated with the most charming collection of stories
ever invented for the solace and delight of mankind.” This brilliant
Saracen ruler has long been ranked among the illustrious men of all
time. For, notwithstanding the fact that from time immemorial legends
have gathered around his name in greater number than about those of
King Arthur, or Charlemagne, or Frederick Barbarossa, authentic history
tells us enough of his character and achievements to make the romantic
life of “Aaron the Just”--to Anglicize his name--one of supreme
fascination and abiding interest.
The Arabians [Sismondi writes] are indebted to him for the
rapid progress which they made in science and literature, for
Harun never built a mosque without attaching to it a school.
His successors followed his example, and in a short period the
sciences which were cultivated in the capital spread themselves
to the very extremities of the empire of the Caliphs. Whenever
the faithful assembled to adore the Divinity, they found in this
temple an opportunity of rendering Him the noblest homage which
His creatures can pay--by the cultivation of those faculties
with which their Creator has endowed them. Harun-Al-Rashid,
besides, was sufficiently superior to the fanaticism which
had previously animated his sect not to despise the knowledge
which the professors of another faith possessed. The head of
his schools and the first director of studies in his empire
was a Nestorian Christian of Damascus, of the name of John Ebn
Mesua.[436]
Christians were the translators of the works of Plato and Aristotle; of
Galen, Hippocrates, and Dioscorides; of Ptolemy, Euclid, and Apollonius
Pergæus.
No Caliph ever gathered round him so great a number of learned
men:--poets, jurists, grammarians, cadis and scribes,--to say
nothing of the wits and musicians who enjoyed his patronage.
Personally, too, he had every quality that could recommend
him to the literary men of his time. Harun himself was an
accomplished scholar and an excellent poet; he was well versed
in history, tradition and poetry which he could always quote on
appropriate occasions. He possessed exquisite literary taste
and unerring discernment and his dignified demeanor made him an
object of profound respect to high and low.[437]
He was, indeed, as described by his biographers, “the most
accomplished, eloquent and generous of the Caliphs,” and the stories
that are told of his lavish generosity towards scholars who frequented
his court proved that he was probably the most munificent patron of men
of science and letters that ever lived.
And yet, sad to relate, there is a dark spot in the career of
Harun-al-Rashid. This is due to his inhuman treatment of the
Barmecides, whose tragic fate at the hands of the Caliph is one of the
most shocking occurrences in oriental annals. One of this ill-fated
family, Yaya ibin Barmek, was Harun’s vizier, who, by his consummate
ability, had contributed more than any other man towards the success
of the Caliph’s reign. It was he, and not the Commander of the
Faithful, who directed the course of events that rendered the reign
of Harun-al-Rashid the culminating point of Islamic history. His son
Jaafer was the most cherished friend of the Caliph and his constant
companion in his nightly _incognito_ wanderings through the city
of Bagdad. “Harun’s attachment to Jaafer was of so extravagant a
character that he could never bear him to be absent from his side, and
he went to the absurd length of having a cloak made with two collars,
so that he and Jaafer could wear it at one and the same time.”[438]
But to wipe out a fancied indignity he did not hesitate foully
to murder his friend and companion, “by far the most lovable and
attractive character of the many that live for us in the _Thousand
and One Nights_.[439] He cast his old and loyal vizier, the father
of Jaafer, into prison. Not content with this barbarous treatment of
men to whom he owed so much, he vented his fury on their family and
did not abate his anger until he had slain more than a thousand of the
Barmecides. So great an impression did Harun’s atrocious treatment
of his best friends make on his contemporaries that it became “the
proverbial example in oriental history of the change of fortune and the
mutability of royal favor.” It is because of this barbarous cruelty
and his revolting treachery that the Harun of history is so unlike the
Harun of legend, in which he is always painted as a merry monarch--the
patron of scholars and the boon companion of congenial friends. And
it is because of this that we must refuse him his long-accorded title
of “The Just” and “The Good,” although, in view of his achievements
as a ruler and his unfailing and generous patronage of men of science
and letters, we cannot deny him the epithet of “The Great.” Were it
not for the stain on his escutcheon, due to his infamous treatment of
the Barmecides, we could, with some semblance of truth, say of this
illustrious Caliph of Bagdad, in the words of Tennyson:
_Sole star of all that place and time,_
_I saw him in his golden prime,_
_The Good Harun-al-Rashid._
One cannot speak of the services rendered to science and literature
by Harun-al-Rashid without referring to his distinguished son and
successor, the Caliph Al-Mamun. Although the power and the greatness
of the empire had suffered a notable diminution after the death of
Al-Rashid, the glory of Bagdad as a center of learning still retained
all its former luster. Some, indeed, will have it that its prestige was
enhanced and that Al-Mamun and not Harun was the father of letters and
the Augustus of the Abbasside Caliphate. For the first thing he did on
ascending the throne was to invite the Muses from their favorite seats
in the Byzantine Empire to the capital of the Caliphs on the Tigris.
Study, books and men of letters almost entirely engrossed his
attention. The learned were his favorites and his ministers
were occupied alone in forwarding the progress of literature.
It might be said that the throne of the Caliphs seemed to
have been raised for the Muses. He invited to his court from
all parts of the world all the learned with whose existence
he was acquainted, and he retained them by rewards, honors
and distinctions of every kind. He collected from the subject
provinces of Syria, Armenia and Egypt the most important
books which could be discovered, and which, in his eyes, were
the most precious tribute he could demand. The governors of
provinces and the officers of administration were directed to
amass in preference to everything else the literary relics
of the conquered countries and to carry them to the foot of
the throne. Hundreds of camels might be seen entering Bagdad
loaded with nothing but manuscripts and papers and those
which were thought to be adapted for the purpose of public
instruction were translated into Arabic that they might be
universally intelligible. Masters, instructors, translators, and
commentators formed the court of Al-Mamun, which appeared to
be rather a learned academy than the centre of government in a
warlike empire. When the Caliph dictated the terms of peace to
the Greek Emperor, Michael the Stammerer, the tribute which he
demanded from him was a collection of Greek authors.[440]
History was but repeating itself, for, as in the days of ancient Rome,
so also in the most brilliant period of Bagdad
_Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes_
_Intulit agresti Latio._[441]
So great during this brilliant literary period was the love of learning
that there were in Bagdad more than a hundred booksellers. How many of
our modern cities could count so great a number? And so large were even
private libraries that we are told of a doctor of Bagdad who “refused
the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, because the carriage of his
books would have required four hundred camels.”[442]
Nor was it in Bagdad alone that the zeal of Harun and Mamun for the
progress of knowledge had stimulated enthusiasm for science and
letters. Under these two illustrious patrons of learning, homes of
science that almost equaled that of Bagdad were established in all
parts of the Caliphate--in Cufa and Basra; in Fez and Morocco; in Cairo
and Alexandria and Damascus; in Balk, Ispahan, and Samarcand--many of
which, in the splendor of their buildings and in the equipment of their
libraries, rivaled the famous Arabian schools of Granada, Seville,
and Cordoba, which were in their heyday “when all that was polite or
elegant in literature was classed among the _Studia Arabum_.” And
it is to be observed that these institutions, created and fostered by
the benign influence of the Caliphs, had reached the acme of their
glory when the greater part of western and northern Europe was in a
condition of comparative darkness.
But in paying this tribute to the Caliphs of Bagdad--especially
Harun-Al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun--I do not wish to appear as
overrating their achievements in science and letters. One may, indeed,
concede that they always held literary excellence in the highest honor;
one may admit that never, not even in the days of Mæcenas and Lorenzo
the Magnificent, did men of letters receive greater encouragement
and rewards; one may acknowledge that for centuries the Saracens
were far in advance of many of the western nations of Christendom in
many branches of science and philosophy, but, granting all this, the
indisputable fact still remains that they were borrowers and not
originators.
All their achievements in philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and
mathematics were due to their Greek masters--to Plato and Aristotle;
to Galen and Dioscorides; to Hipparchus and Ptolemy; to Euclid,
Archimedes, and Eratosthenes. And it must not be forgotten that the
Saracens owed their knowledge of Greek science to Christians, for it
was Christians who translated for them the works which they were unable
to read in the original. Thus it was the Christian scholar Honein, who
was the physician to the Khalif Motowakkel, that translated into Arabic
the “Elements” of Euclid and the “Almagest” of Ptolemy; and it was his
pupils who made the Arabic versions of the greater number of the works
of Galen and Hippocrates.[443] And it was to the celebrated Christian
family, the Boktishos, and to the Nestorian school of Gondisapor, from
which issued so many scholars of distinction, that the Saracens were
indebted for versions of countless other works of Greek science and
philosophy.
Among the many learned men whom the Caliph Al-Mamun invited to his
court and “who contributed far more than his own subjects to the
reputation that sovereign has deservedly gained in the history of
science,” was Leo the Mathematician, who subsequently became the
Archbishop of Thessalonica. The Caliph desired to have made an accurate
measurement of the earth’s orbit and he called this distinguished Greek
to his court to take charge of this important work because “he was
universally recognized to be the superior to all the scientific men of
Bagdad in mathematical and mechanical knowledge.”[444]
But while the Arabs were good borrowers from Greek writers on medicine,
astronomy, and mathematics, they almost completely ignored the great
poets, orators, and historians of ancient Hellas. Never cultivating any
language but their own, they were unable to read the masterpieces of
Greek literature except in a translation, but as there was no demand
by the Saracens for translations of these works into Arabic, none were
ever made. For this reason the matchless poems of Homer and the Greek
dramatists; the orations of Lysias and Demosthenes; the histories of
Herodotus and Trucidides, were for the Saracens as so many closed
books. The noted Syriac author, Bar-Herbræus, does, indeed, mention a
version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ by a Christian Maronite
of Mount Lebanon, but his translation was into Syriac and not Arabic.
These facts show how much the great reputation of the Saracens for
learning was due to their immortal Greek masters and to the literary
activity of their Christian subjects, especially the Greeks of the
Lower Empire. It is true, as Freeman observes, that “the Arabs studied
Aristotle and taught him to the men of western Europe; but it was
surely from the men of eastern Europe that they obtained him in the
first instance. He was read in translations at Samarcand and at
Lisbon, when no one knew his name at Oxford or Edinburgh; but all the
while he continued to be read in his own tongue at Constantinople and
Thessalonica.”[445]
The impulse that Harun-al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun gave to
educational progress by encouraging the translation of the works of
Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and others of the great Greek masters will
always give their reigns a conspicuous place in the annals of science
and civilization. But the successors of these two illustrious monarchs
did not follow in their footsteps. Although the power of the Caliphate
seemed still unimpaired and its splendor was apparently undimmed, the
seeds of decay, which led to ultimate destruction, were already at
work. The vices of sloth and luxury and cruelty which prevailed at the
court and in many of the most important departments of the government
of the Caliphate, slowly but surely entailed their fatal consequences.
Besides these, there were other causes of decay and extinction. Chief
among them were internecine strife and the separation of the remoter
provinces from the central power. Added to these disintegrating factors
the Caliphate had become top-heavy, and under a weak and degenerate
ruler like Al-Mostassem, the last of the Abbassides, its downfall was
inevitable.
In contemplating the fall of the power which was for five centuries
the glory of the Moslem world, one is led to compare the close of the
reign of the last of the Caliphs with that of the last of the Byzantine
Emperors:
The last and weakest of the Caliphs without an effort of arms or
policy to stay his fall, sinks from senseless pride to craven
terror and expires amidst the tortures of a faithless victor.
The last and noblest of the Cæsars, after doing all that mortal
man could do for the deliverance of his city, himself dies in
the breach, the foremost among its defenders. Not Darius in
the hands of the traitor, not Augustulus resigning his useless
purple, not the Ætheling Edgar spared by the contempt of the
Norman Conqueror ever showed fallen greatness so dishonored
and unpitied as did Al-Mostassem Billah al Wahid, the last
Commander of the Faithful;[446] not Leonidas in the pass of
Thermopylæ, not Decius in the battle below Vesuvius, not our own
Harold upon the hill of Senlac, died a more glorious death than
Constantine Palæologus, the last Emperor of the Romans.[447]
Among the names given to Bagdad, as has been said in a preceding page,
was that of Dar-as-Salam, or Medina-as-Salam--City of Peace. In view
of the numerous vicissitudes through which the erstwhile capital of
the Caliphs has passed, the protracted sieges it has sustained, the
frightful destruction it has time and again undergone, the appalling
massacres of its inhabitants at the hands of bloodthirsty invaders, it
would be difficult to conceive a more preposterous misnomer.
We have seen what was the fate of the city when it was given over to
the savage and rapacious hordes of Hulagu Khan. But this reign of
terror was but a prelude to the horrors that befell the ill-fated city
when, less than a century and a half later, the brutal Mongols again
captured and sacked the city; when its streets streamed with the blood
of its defenders and reëchoed with the frenzied shrieks of women and
children, and when, as a climax of all this unutterable carnage,[448]
the Mongol leader, Timur, celebrated his bloody victory by erecting on
the ruins of Bagdad a gruesome pyramid of ninety thousand heads of its
slaughtered inhabitants.[449]
No wonder that the people of the East were wont to declare that
“conquest by Turks or Saracens was a blessing compared with falling
into the jaws of the implacable Mongols.” When word reached the Court
of Byzantium that the Mongols, under Timur, were approaching the city,
so great was the terror which they inspired that “popular rumor
painted the invaders as having dogs’ heads and eating human flesh.”[450]
When, in addition to all these atrocities, one recalls the deeds of
violence and savagery which afterwards followed the successive storming
and occupation of the unfortunate city by Turkomans, Persians, and
Turks, one must conclude that the proper epithet for Bagdad would have
been not Dar-as-Salam--City of Peace--but Dar-al-Harb--City of War.
“But what,” the reader inquires, “of modern Bagdad, of the Bagdad of
to-day”? Since the Muses left the fair capital of the Caliphs, long
centuries ago, little more of interest remains in it than may be found
in any other city of the Moslem East.
My first hurried view of Bagdad was in the parting splendor of sunset,
_When her shrines through the foliage were gleaming half shown,_
_And each hallow’d the hour by some rites of its own._
My eyes were then open only to what was beautiful, romantic,
picturesque.
My second view was on the following morning, from the terrace of the
Carmelite monastery. It was at the hour when the sun, in the words of
Omar Khayyám, was scattering
_Into flight_
_The Stars before him from the Field of Night._
A filmy veil of pearl-gray mist hung over the slumbering city and the
witchery of the scene was even more enthralling than that which so
captivated me the preceding evening. Presently
_The magic of daylight awakes_
_A new wonder each minute, as it slowly breaks;_
_Hills, cupolas, fountains, called forth every one_
_Out of darkness, as if just born of the Sun._
Yes, I was in Bagdad, the fairy city of boyhood’s dreams, the
glittering home of pomp and pleasure, where the fair Zobeide dwelt in a
palace with spangled floors and marble stairs with golden balustrades;
where there was a riot of broidered sofas, damask curtains, silk
tapestry, purple robes from the most famous looms of the East; where a
joyous group of bejeweled dancing girls were wont, to the sound of harp
and lute and dulcimer, to carol away, with voices as melodious as that
of Israfel, the cares and ennui of their pleasure-sated mistress.
Willingly I yielded myself to the hypnotic influence of the _spiritus
loci_. In fancy I saw Aladdin with his wonderful lamp; the one-eyed
calenders as they told their fascinating tales; the fishermen as they
deluded the heavy-witted jinn; Harun-al-Rashid and Jaffer as they
wandered under their double-collared cloak through the somber streets
of the capital; the radiant homes of wealth and luxury, which gleamed
with the subdued light of a myriad of golden lamps and reëchoed with
the heart-easing strains of sweet music and the gladsome voices of
midnight revelry.
But the illusion was of short duration. The mauve-shot veil of tenuous
mist lifted under the ardent rays of the morning sun and the magic
city of Harun and his favorite Zobeide vanished to give place to the
squalid houses, narrow, crooked streets, and crumbling walls of a
time-stricken, war-battered city which is now but a shadow of what it
was in the days of its pristine glory.
As a compliment to our hosts we did not even express a wish to explore
the city, which we had come so far to see, until we had visited their
schools and those conducted by their heroic coworkers, the Sisters of
the Visitation of Tours. After having spent several most delightful
hours with teachers and pupils we sent for a trio of those white
donkeys for which Bagdad is so celebrated. Gentle as they are strong
and hardy, they willingly keep up an easy, ambling gait for hours at a
time without exhibiting the slightest evidence of fatigue. I learned
to value them a third of a century ago when traveling in Egypt and
I was glad to have an opportunity of again availing myself of their
service in the old capital on the Tigris. Here they take the place of
cabs which would not be at all available in the majority of the very
narrow streets of the city.
As the Carmelite monastery is in the heart of the city, we soon found
ourselves in the midst of a colorful scene that could not be surpassed
by anything similar either in Damascus or Stamboul. Such a seething
cauldron of races, such an utter confusion of tongues, such a motley
carnival of costumes from plain white and black to the gay fabrics
of Madras and the tawdry prints of Manchester! Here we meet men of
countless types and creeds and nationalities--Turks, Afghans, Persians,
Arabs, Indians, and Europeans; Jews, Hindus, Christians, Parsees,
Shiites, Sunnites, and Mohammedans of all the seventy-three sects
into which the Prophet of Mecca predicted Islam would eventually be
divided. The languages and dialects number more than a score, for which
reason the traveler in Bagdad would imagine that he hears fully as many
different tongues as were spoken by the builders of the Tower of Babel.
Indeed, not the least of the many difficulties which the British forces
encountered in their recent operations against the Turkish army was, we
are told, “the same which confronted the contractors for the old tower
so many thousands of years ago.”
The appearance of Bagdad, as we wandered through the maze of narrow,
filthy, noisome streets, was quite different from what it seemed when
we first saw it from our lazily moving kelek on the palm-fringed
Tigris, or when we gazed upon it enveloped in the delicate mist of
early morning. Then little was visible except domes and minarets
covered with bright-colored tiles and scintillating mosaics which
appeared to float in the opalescent atmosphere.
As in the case of all other eastern cities, Bagdad is more enchanting
at a distance than when viewed from her somber unsanitary and
intricate thoroughfares. And as we threaded our way through these
dingy streets and byways, flanked on either side by low, dun-colored,
windowless mud houses, we found it difficult to see in them, even in
fancy, the sumptuous homes that adorned the city in the time of Caliphs
and more difficult still to repeople them with the glamouring figures
of _Thousand and One Nights_.
But when one passes from these narrow and gloomy streets, that will
scarcely admit a camel, into the spacious courtyards with which even
the most unpretentious dwellings are provided, one is often surprised
at the magic transformation of the scene. Here one finds a profusion
of beautiful trees and shrubs and plants loaded with flowers of every
size and hue. Among the most conspicuous are the palm, the orange, and
the pomegranate whose bright green foliage is in striking contrast with
the flaming blooms of the hibiscus in which the Bagdadi takes as much
pleasure as do her dusky Hawaiian sisters in far-off Honolulu, with
whom these brilliant flowers are universal favorites.
A peculiarity of the habitations of the well-to-do of Bagdad is the
_serdab_, an underground chamber which is usually eight or
nine feet in height. It is here that the family lives during the
terrifically hot weather that prevails during summer and a part of
the spring and autumn. But, although the temperature is here ten
degrees lower than in the upper part of the house, the intense heat
of mid-summer, which often reaches 120° Fahrenheit in the shade, is
almost unbearable. As so great a part of the people spend much of
their time in the _serdab_, the city seems to be almost lifeless
during a greater part of the day. Towards sunset, however, it begins
to revive. The women then repair to the terraces of their dwellings
where they pass the night in talking, smoking, drinking sherbets, and
trying, when the mosquitoes permit, to get a little sleep. As to the
men, especially the Moslem portion of the population, they endeavor to
find some surcease of misery in the Lethean fumes of their chibouks and
hubble-bubbles. Most of them congregate in the countless coffeehouses
which, during the everlasting dog days of Bagdad, are thronged day
and night with all sorts and conditions of sweltering and par-baked
humanity.
Passing so much time in a state of semi-torpor, it is not surprising
that even the strongest constitutions soon succumb to the enervating
climate. Because of the intolerable heat, Europeans endeavor every
few years to find relief in a change of climate. But when this is not
possible, the majority of the foreign sufferers are short-lived. Thus
I was informed that the average life of the Carmelite missionaries in
southern Mesopotamia is only about nine years. But their premature
deaths do not deter them from continuing the work of charity to which
they are so devoted. As soon as one drops out of the ranks his place is
immediately taken by a zealous _confrère_ who is only too willing
to serve in the cause of the Master where the trials are most severe
and where the dangers are greatest and most imminent.
What with the grilling climate, defective drainage, ignorance and
neglect of the first principles of hygiene, one is not surprised to
learn that the population of Bagdad is periodically decimated by the
plague. Cholera is frequent. It was this dread visitant that carried
off General Maude, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces during the
recent campaign in Mesopotamia against the Turks.
We visited all the places of interest in the city but those in which
we found most local color were the bazaars. As we neared the principal
one of them we found the street crowded with Kurdish hamals bearing
incredible burdens, and quick-stepping white donkeys disputing the way
with awkwardly racking camels which snappishly sputtered or proudly
held aloft their supercilious noses while disdainfully sniffing the
air above the heads of shouting drivers. And round about us was a
vociferating throng that were roughly jostling one another in their mad
rush to force themselves into the alluring bazaars, which were already
filled with all kinds of curious idlers or prospective purchasers.
Although the bazaars of Bagdad are much smaller than those of Damascus
and Constantinople they are more interesting. This is not because of
the attractive wares, but rather on account of the strange and motley
crowd. And what a variety of garbs and what a medley of colors! There
are every type and shade of oriental face; every style of headdress;
every variety of costume one can conceive. Fezes, tarbooshes, keffiehs,
turbans, the brimless hat of the Baktiari, the long felt hats of the
Lurs and the Kurds; the black astrakan caps of the Russians and the
Persians. As to costumes, there is everything imaginable from the
primitive dhotee of the Hindu to the graceful full-flowing aba of the
Arabian mollah and the elaborately embroidered apparel of an Indian
rajah or the closely fitting frock coat of some prodigal nabob from
Europe in quest of strange curios or rare old rugs and tapestries from
Khorassan and Candahar.
The vesture of the women is even more variegated and costly and
resplendent than that of the men. Some are garbed in rich silks of
all the tints of the autumn leaf. Some are veiled, others unveiled,
according as they come from the Moslem, Jewish, or Christian quarter
of the city--but all are gathered around all the booths in which there
is a special display of feminine finery. There is no law in Islam to
prevent women from visiting the bazaars and whenever they desire to
escape the monotony of the harem they start out on a shopping tour
in which they take as much delight as do their sisters in the West.
Frequently they have no more intention of making purchases than have
the _habituées_ of the great department stores of Fifth Avenue or
the splendid jewelry shops of _La Rue de la Paix_.
My attention was directed to the large number of Jews who had shops
in the city and stalls in the bazaars. Many of them were specially
conspicuous on account of their cheap misfit garments from English and
German manufactories, which contrasted sharply with the costly and
elegant robes of some of their customers. For headdress most of them
wore black skull caps or flaming red fezes made in Vienna. But they all
had the same dark, prominent eyes, the same hot and shining looks, like
fanned flames, which so characterize the people of their races in other
parts of Mesopotamia and the Near East.
When I expressed surprise at the number of the descendants of Abraham
that we saw not only in the bazaars but in all parts of the city, one
of my companions informed me that they constituted fully one-fourth of
the population. The exact number of the inhabitants of Bagdad is not
definitely known, but it is variously estimated to be from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred thousand. There are, indeed, few, if any,
other large cities in the Near East in which the children of Abraham
have so great a representation in proportion to that of the adherents
of other religious beliefs.
The majority of the Jews in Bagdad are descendants of those who were
deported from Judæa to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar six centuries
before the Christian era. Others, doubtless, are descended from Hebrew
captives that were a century and a quarter earlier carried to Assyria
by Sargon and Tiglath-pileser III. Still others trace their descent
from those who voluntarily sought refuge in Mesopotamia after the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and after the Holy City, many
centuries later, fell under the sway of Islam.
The favorable conditions under which the Jews of the Captivity lived
during the reign of the Babylonian monarchs, and even during the time
of the Abbasside Caliphs, induced many of their brethren to join them
in the fertile plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates. So satisfactory,
indeed, were the relations of the Jews with their Babylonian rulers,
that when, after they had been seventy years in captivity, Cyrus the
Great gave them permission to return to their native land, but few of
them, comparatively, availed themselves of the proffered opportunity.
The unsettled conditions of Palestine and the sad experiences of those
of their fellow countrymen who had returned to Jerusalem decided the
majority of the Jews to remain in Babylonia where, although nominally
captives, they enjoyed more peace, prosperity, and even more freedom
than it was possible to find in the ravaged and desolate land of their
fathers.
Once fairly settled in Babylonia, where they seem from the first to
have enjoyed a great measure of freedom, the mode of life and fortunes
of the Jews underwent a complete change. In their fatherland their
chief pursuits were pastoral and agricultural. In Mesopotamia also
they followed for a time the avocations of their forefathers. Thanks,
however, to the greater productivity of the soil in the fertile
Babylonian plain, which far surpassed that of the richest fields of
Judæa and to their native thrift and industry and keen eye to business
opportunities, which permitted no chance to escape them, it was not
long before the children of the exiles were living in ease and comfort,
while many of them soon found themselves in a position which, as
compared with that which they occupied in Palestine afforded them, in
Johnsonese phrase, “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams
of avarice.”
From that time most of the Jews of Mesopotamia began to devote
themselves to commercial pursuits, which, more than anything else,
influenced the subsequent fortunes of their countrymen throughout the
world.
But not only did the descendants of the Jews of the Captivity achieve
distinction in the commercial world; they also became celebrated for
their attainments in science and letters. Under the Caliph Ali, in the
middle of the seventh century of our era the Jews of Irak--Southern
Babylonia--were able to organize what was almost an independent state.
Here flourished the great Talmudic schools of Sara and Pumbeditha
and here, in the country of their father Abraham, the Jews loved to
fancy the survival of a prince of the Captivity who had recovered the
scepter of David.[451] This was a period of notable prosperity for
Irak, a period when Bagdad was at the height of its glory; when it
was not only preëminent in science, art, and literature but was the
religious capital of Jewry as well as Islam.[452]
In conclusion, I may here answer a question which I have been often
asked, namely, “What of the future of Bagdad?” “Is there any hope of
its return to its former greatness and splendor?”
This is a difficult question to answer. When one remembers that two
other great capitals--Seleucia and Ctesiphon--once flourished only a
few leagues to the south of the city of the Caliphs and that now but
a vestige of them remains; when one remembers that Babylon, a short
distance to the southwest, was, for nearly two thousand years, the most
magnificent city of the ancient world, but that, under the demolishing
action of man and nature, it so completely disappeared that its very
site was long a matter of controversy, one will hesitate to make
any predictions about anything in a land in which the vicissitudes
of fortune have been so extraordinary and in which the conflicts of
international interests have been so relentless and so destructive.
And yet, when one travels over the matchless alluvial plains on which
stood the famous capitals that once controlled the destinies of
Western Asia, one cannot but feel that there is a brilliant future
in this celebrated region of the two rivers, but only when a stable
and enterprising government shall have been established--a government
whose purpose will be not to exploit the land and the populace for
its own selfish purposes, but a government that shall be willing to
guarantee to the people the blessings of peace and at the same time
honestly strive to secure for them their position in the family of
nations, to which their long and wonderful history gives them so just
a title.[453] Then and then only shall we again see the broad desert
of Mesopotamia blossoming as of old, and witness once more in the
Land of the Two Rivers a metropolis that shall recall the greatness
and the splendor of Babylon and Seleucia and Ctesiphon and of Bagdad
too,--Medinah-al-Salam--as it was in the golden prime of Al Mamun and
Harun-al-Rashid the Great.