CHAPTER II

TELL AḤMAR TO BUSEIRAH

_Feb. 21--March 7_

The water of the Euphrates is much esteemed by the inhabitants of its

banks. It is, I think, an acquired taste; the newcomer will be apt to

look askance at the turgid liquid that issues from the spout of his

teapot and to question whether a decoction of ancient dust can be

beneficial to the European constitution. Fattûḥ, being acquainted with

my idiosyncrasies in the matter of drinking water, accepted without a

murmur the sacrilegious decree that that which was destined for my flask

must be boiled; whereby, though we did not succeed in removing all solid

bodies, we reduced them to a comparative harmlessness. But if it cannot

be described as a good table river, the Euphrates is the best of

travelling companions, and the revolution of the seasons will never

again bring me to the last week of February without setting loose a

desire for the wide reaches of the stream and the open levels of the

desert through which it flows, the sharp cold of nightfall, the hoar

frost of the dawn, and the first long ray of the sun striking a

dismantled camp. “There is no road,” said Fattûḥ, “like the road to

Baghdâd: the desert on one hand and the water on the other.”

Our way next morning took us past Ḳubbeh to Mughârah, which we reached

in three hours. Here we left the river and climbing the low, rocky hill

to the east, found ourselves in a stony and thinly populated country

bounded by another ridge of eastern hill. After twenty-five minutes’

riding we saw the hamlet of Ḳayyik Debû about half-a-mile to the left of

the track, and in another quarter of an hour we reached a few deserted

houses. Four hours from Tell Aḥmar

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--SERRÎN, NORTH TOWER TOMB, PLAN AND ELEVATION

SHOWING MOULDINGS.]

we pitched camp on the further bank of a small stream near the village

of Serrîn, for I wished to examine two towers which stand upon the crest

of a high ridge about half-an-hour to the east. They are called by the

Arabs the Windmills, but in reality they are tower tombs. The more

northerly, which is the best preserved, is 4·20 m. square and two

storeys high (Fig. 20). The walls of the lower storey rise in solid

masonry to a height of about six metres and are crowned by a plain

course of projecting stones, which serves as cornice (Fig. 21). On the

east and west sides, just below the cornice, there is a pair of

gargoyles, much weathered. They represent the head and fore-quarters of

lions. A little below the pair of heads on the west side is a Syriac

inscription, dated in the year 385 of the Seleucid era, _i. e._ A.D. 74,

which states that the tomb was built by one Manu for himself and his

sons.[27] The second storey is decorated with fluted engaged columns,

four on either side, the outer pair forming the angles. The bases of

these columns rest upon a course of masonry adorned with three fasciæ:

it is to be noted that the mouldings are not carried straight through to

the angles, but are returned one within the other like the mouldings of

a door lintel. The Ionic capitals carry a plain Ionic entablature

consisting of an architrave with fasciæ, which are here taken through to

the corners, a narrow frieze and a cyma of considerable projection.

Probably the whole was surmounted by a stone pyramid. There are two

burial chambers, one in each storey. The lower chamber can be entered by

a door in the east wall which was originally closed by a large block of

stone. The entrance to the upper chamber, high up in the east wall

between the columns, was closed in the same fashion, and the block of

porphyry which sealed it is still intact.[28] Pognon, who has given the

best description and illustrations of the monument, mentions five other

examples of tower tombs crowned with pyramids, one of them being the

southern tower at Serrîn. The well-known tower tombs of Palmyra and the

Ḥaurân are not capped by a pyramid, nor is the face of their walls

broken at any point by engaged columns. I believe the type illustrated

at Serrîn to be compounded of the simple tower tomb and the canopy, or

cyborium, tomb.[29] The cyborium tomb exists in an infinite number of

variations in Syria, in the mountain district near Birejik (whence M.

Cumont has supplied me with four examples, three of them as yet

unpublished[30]), in Asia Minor and in the African Tripoli. Sometimes

the columns stand free,[31] sometimes they are engaged in the walls,[32]

sometimes they are represented only by engaged angle piers,[33]

sometimes by free standing angle piers,[34] and occasionally column and

pier have dropped away and the plain wall alone remains,[35] but the

pyramidal roof is an almost constant feature, which, even in the

simplest of these tombs, recalls the original canopy type. In the hill

side near the tower I noticed several rock-cut mausoleums, now

half-choked with stones and earth, and the hill was no doubt the

necropolis of a town lying in the low ground that stretches down to the

modern village by the stream.[36] The second tower, of which only the

south wall remains, is situated on the southern end of the ridge,

half-an-hour’s ride from the first (Fig. 22). It differs slightly in

detail from the other. In the lower storey a shallow engaged pier stands

at either angle, while in the upper storey, in place of the porphyry

block, there is an arched niche between the two central engaged columns.

The fasciæ returned at the corners reappear, but the columns are not

fluted. The hill top commands a wide view over country which appears to

be entirely desert. My guide, who was a Christian from Aleppo, an agent

of the Liquorice Trust for the Serrîn district, said that there was no

settled population to the east of us, and that the few Arab encampments

which were visible upon the rolling steppe were those of the Benî Sa’îd,

a subdivision of the Benî Faḥl. As we sat in the sunshine under the

tower, Jirjî related tales of his neighbours, the Arab sheikhs, for whom

he entertained, as the townsman will, feelings that ranged between

contempt and fear--contempt for their choice of a black tent in the

desert as a dwelling-place, and fear inspired by the authority which

they wielded from that humble abode. But chiefly his simple soul was

exercised by the swift downfall of Ibrahîm Pasha, who for so many years

had been, as the fancy prompted him, the scourge or the mighty protector

of all the inhabitants of northern Mesopotamia, a man with whom the

government had to make terms, while the great tribes stood in awe of him

and the lesser tribes fled at the whisper of his name. Jirjî, like many

another, refused to believe that he was dead, and entertained us with

wild surmises as to the manner of his possible return from the unknown

refuge where he lay in hiding. “God knows he was a brave man,” said he.

“Oh lady, do you see Ḳal’at en Nejm yonder?” And he pointed west, where

across the Euphrates the walls and bastions of the fortress crowned the

precipitous bank. “There he forded, he and eight hundred men with him,

when he hastened back from Damascus to his own country, hearing that the

government was against him. They swam the river with their horses and

rested that night at Serrîn. But the Pasha was grave and silent: God’s

mercy upon him, for he befriended us Christians.” Ḥâjj ’Alî shook his

head. “He wrecked the world,” said he. “Praise God he is dead.”

Somewhere between the two opinions lies the truth. I suspect that though

the way in which his overthrow was accomplished left much to be desired,

the Millî Kurds, of whom he was the chief, had gained under his bold

leadership a pre-eminence in lawlessness which no government was

justified in countenancing. But since he is dead, peace to his memory,

for he knew no fear.

We could not see the river from Serrîn, but next morning I rode down to

it and looked across to the splendid walls of Ḳal’at en Nejm. The

castle, seated upon a rocky spur, encloses the steep slopes with its

masonry until it seems like a massive buttress of the hill, as ageless

and no less imperishable than the rock itself. We turned away from this

stern ghost of ancient wars and rode from the Euphrates up a bare valley

wherein we came upon a great cave, inhabited by a few Arabs. It

contained three large chambers,

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--INSCRIPTION IN CAVE NEAR SERRÎN.]

the opening of which had been fenced in by the latest inhabitants with

screens made of rushes. Upon one of the walls I found a curious

inscription written in characters not unlike those seen by Sachau in a

cave near Urfah[37] (Fig. 23). The Arab women with their children in

their arms clamoured round me, and I distributed among them what small

coins I had with me, without satisfying the claims of all. One scolding

wench ran after us up the valley vociferating her demand that ten paras

should be given to her swaddled babe. We had not ridden far before

Jûsef’s horse slipped and fell upon a smooth stone, dismounting his

rider, who was at no time too certain of his seat. “Allah!” ejaculated

Ḥâjj ’Alî; “it was the woman’s curse that brought him down.” But the

malediction had missed fire, or perhaps it was only ten paras’ worth of

damnation, for Jûsef and his horse scrambled up together unhurt. At the

head of the valley we came out on to a green sward. The rains on this

side of the river had been scanty and the grass had scarcely begun to

grow, but already there were a few encampments of the Faḥl in sheltered

places which later in the season would be set thick with the black tents

of the ’Anazeh, who do not come down to the river until the rain pools

are exhausted in their winter quarters. The thin blue smoke of the

morning camp fires rose out of the hollows and my heart rose with it,

for here was the life of the desert, in open spaces under the open sky,

and when once you have known it, the eternal savage in your breast

rejoices at the return to it. As we rode near the tents a man galloped

up to us and begged for a pinch of tobacco. He was clothed in a ragged

cotton shirt and a yet more ragged woollen cloak, but Ḥâjj ’Alî looked

after him as he turned away and observed, “His mare is worth £200.”

In three hours from Serrîn we caught up the baggage animals at the last

village we were to see until we reached Raḳḳah. Mas’ûdîyeh is its name.

On a mound close to the river Oppenheim found three mosaic pavements,

parts of which are still visible, but the most beautiful of the three

has been almost destroyed and nothing remains of it but a simple

geometrical border of diagonal intersecting lines.[38] Beyond Mas’ûdîyeh

we crossed a long belt of sand, lying in a bend of the river; we left a

small mound (Tell el Banât) a mile to the east, climbed a ridge of bare

hill and dropped down into a wide stretch of grass country, empty,

peaceful and most beautiful. It was enclosed in a semicircle of hills

that stood back from the river, and from out of the midst of it rose an

isolated peak known to the Arabs as Ḳuleib. This land is the home of the

Weldeh tribe, and not far from the Euphrates we found a group of their

tents pitched between green slopes and the broad reaches of sand which

give the spot its name, Rumeileh, the Little Sands. It was the

encampment of Sheikh Ṣallâl, and no sooner had we arrived than the

sheikh’s son, Muḥammad, came out to bid us welcome and invite us to his

father’s tent. The two zaptiehs and I took our places round the hearth

while Muḥammad roasted and pounded the coffee beans, telling us the

while of the movements of the great tribes, where Ḥâkim Beg of the

’Anazeh was lying, and where Ibn Hudhdhâl of the Amarât, and similar

matters of absorbing interest. Sheikh Ṣallâl was in reduced

circumstances by reason of a recent difference of opinion with the

government. His brother had been enlisted as a soldier and had

subsequently deserted, whereupon the government had seized Ṣallâl’s

flocks and clapped the sheikh into gaol, and finally he had sold “the

best mare left to us, wallah!” for £T37 and with the money procured his

own release.

“Eh billah!” said Ḥâjj ’Alî, shaking his head over the confused tale in

which, as is usual in these episodes, the wrongdoing seemed to be shared

impartially by all concerned. “Such is the government!”

“And now, oh lady,” pursued the sheikh, “we have neither camels nor

sheep, for the government has eaten all.”

“How do you live?” said I, looking round the circle of dark, bearded

faces by the camp fire.

“God knows!” sighed the sheikh, and turning to Ḥâjj ’Alî he asked him

what was this new government of which he heard, and liberty, what was

that?

“Liberty?” said Ḥâjj ’Alî, evading the question; “how should there be

liberty in these lands? Look you, they talk of liberty, but there is no

change in the world. In Aleppo many men are murdered every week, and who

knows what they are doing, those envoys whom we sent to Constantinople?”

In spite of his misfortunes Sheikh Ṣallâl designed to entertain me at

dinner and had set aside for that purpose an ancient goat. My attention

was attracted to it by the sound of bleating in the women’s quarters and

I was just in time to save its life, expending myself, however, in

protestations of gratitude. Muḥammad ibn Ṣallâl took me round the

encampment before the light failed and pointed out the foundations of a

number of stone-built houses. Behind my tents the summits of some grassy

mounds were ringed round with circles of great stones, of the origin of

which he knew nothing. I counted five of them; in the largest lay

foundations of small rectangular chambers.

As we walked back to the tents Muḥammad said reproachfully:

“Oh lady, you have not laughed once, not when I showed you the ruins,

nor when I told you the name of the hills.”

I hastened to amend my ways, and thus encouraged he enumerated a string

of ruined sites in the neighbourhood and accepted an invitation to serve

us as guide next morning. He prepared himself for the journey by

slipping on four cartridge belts, one over the other, although our

whole road lay in the Weldeh country, and the worst enemy we

encountered was a raging wind which sent the Euphrates sands whirling

about us and obscured the landscape near the river. In about an hour we

climbed up on to the higher ground of the grass plain at a point called

Shems ed Dîn, where among a heap of cut stones I found fragments of an

entablature carved with dentils and palmettes. Perhaps the ruins were

the remains of a tower tomb. At Tell eẓ Ẓâher, an hour further south, we

saw heaps of unsquared building-stones. Above this site stood Sheikh

Sîn, a steep hill which we ascended, but found no trace of construction

on it. I sent my zaptieh down to stop the baggage and bid Fattûḥ camp at

the mound of Munbayah near the river, and with Muḥammad turned inland to

a hill called by him Jernîyeh, some five miles to the east. Muḥammad

rode across the downs at a hand gallop in the teeth of the wind, and I

behind him, too much buffeted by the storm to call a halt. The immediate

reason for our haste, as I presently discovered, was a couple of pedlars

from whom he desired to buy soap, a commodity of which he stood in great

need. The two men were Turks; they greeted me with effusion as a fellow

alien in those wastes, and at parting pressed upon me a handful of

raisins with their blessings. We galloped on faster than before and

arrived breathless at Jernîyeh which lifts its solitary head a hundred

feet or more above the surrounding plain. On the summit are three large

mounds into which the Arabs had dug and uncovered fine cut stones; I

conjecture that there may have been here watch towers or tower tombs

belonging to the town of which the ruins lie below, to the south of the

hill. These ruins comprise a large low mound ringed round with a wall

and a ditch, and a considerable area covered with remains of buildings

made of unsquared stones. Occasionally the plan of house or court was

marked out upon the grass and Muḥammad showed me several deep

cisterns--altogether a very remarkable ruin field though it is not named

on Kiepert’s map. On our way back to the river we climbed Tell el Ga’rah

and found the foundations of a fort on the top of it. Here we picked up

a much-weathered Byzantine coin and a quantity of sherds of glazed Arab

pottery, blue and green and purple. Munbayah, where my tents were

pitched--the Arabic name means only an elevated spot--has been

conjectured to be the Bersiba of Ptolemy’s catalogue of place names. It

is an irregularly-shaped double enclosure, resting on one side on the

river (Fig. 25). The line of the walls is marked by high grass mounds,

but here and there a bit of massive polygonal masonry, large stones laid

without mortar, crops out of the soil. The outer enclosing wall is not

continued along the north side, but ends in a heap of earth and stones

which looks like the ruins of a tower or bastion. To the south there is

a clearly-marked gate in the outer wall, corresponding with a narrower

opening in the inner line of fortification; another gate leads out to

the north, and facing the river there are traces of a broad water gate,

protected on either side by a wall that drops down the slope towards the

stream (Fig. 26). Twenty minutes further down the bank lies another

mound, Tell Sheikh Ḥassan. There are vestiges of construction by the

water’s edge between the two mounds, and south of Tell Sheikh Ḥassan the

ground is broken by a large stretch of ruin mounds, among which I saw a

rude capital. In another half-hour down stream, at ’Anâb, there is again

an enclosure of grassy heaps strewn with stones. For a distance of about

three miles, therefore, the left bank of the river would seem to have

been inhabited and guarded, though possibly at different dates. Jernîyeh

and Munbayah are by far the most interesting sites which I saw on the

little-known stretch of the river between Tell Aḥmar and Ḳal’at Ja’bar;

it is useless to conjecture in what way, if at all, they were connected

with each other, but in both places I should like to clear away the

earth and see what lies beneath.

If it had been possible to cross the Euphrates I would have examined the

high tell of Sheikh ’Arûd which had been all day the fixed point for my

compass, but though there was a boat to be had, the intolerable wind

continued till nightfall and made the passage impracticable. The mental

exasperation produced by wind when you are living and

[Illustration: PLAN of the Mounds of MUNBAYAH

_Stanford’s Geog^{l} Estab^{t}, London_

FIG. 25.]

trying to work out of doors, passes belief. The blast seizes you by the

hand as you would hold your compass steady, dances jigs with your camera

and elopes with your measuring tape, and when after an exhausting

struggle you return vanquished to your tent, it is only to find your

books and papers buried in sand. Moreover, commissariat arrangements

were complicated by the interruption of communications with the opposite

side of the river. Fortunately I had foreseen that there would be little

food for man or beast on the left bank, where no travellers pass, and

contrary to my habits had laid in a provision of tinned meats, for which

we had reason to be thankful. The baggage animals were lightly loaded

and could carry four days’ corn besides their packs; when this ran short

Fattûḥ went foraging in every Arab encampment, but occasionally the

horses were without their full allowance, for at this time of the year

the Arabs themselves are very scantily supplied. We soon learnt to place

no reliance on assurances, however emphatic, that the next sheikh down

the river would be well furnished, and as our road led us into regions

that had suffered more and more severely from the lack of rain, we gave

up all hope of ekeing out our corn with the grass which never grew that

year. The corn, too, became dearer, until at Baghdâd it touched famine

prices. On the upper parts of the river there is no fuel and we carried

charcoal for cooking purposes; but when the tamarisk bushes began to

appear, about a day’s march north of Raḳḳah, the muleteers boiled their

big rice pot over a fire of sticks and the zaptiehs warmed their hands

in the sharp chill of the early morning at the heap of embers that had

been kept alive all night. The zaptiehs are supposed to feed themselves,

but except on the rare occasions when we were on a high road, they

shared the meals of my servants. I would find them sitting in the dark

round the steaming dish served up by Ḥâjj ’Amr, and with them the Arab

who had been our guide that day, or one who had dropped in towards

supper time to give us information of the road, or any aged person

considered by Fattûḥ to be worthy of our hospitality. We held many a

frugal feast

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--WIFE AND CHILDREN OF A WELDEH SHEIKH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--MUNBAYAH, WATER GATE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--NESHABAH, TOWER TOMB.]

under the stars where the waters of the Euphrates roll through the wild.

During the next day’s ride we followed the course of the river closely,

save where the grassy edge of the desert was separated from the water by

a tract of sand and stones covered in time of flood, and therefore

devoid of all trace of settled habitation. The tents of the Weldeh were

scattered along the banks and occasionally a small bit of ground had

been scratched with the plough and sown with corn. At one point we saw

the white canvas tent of a man from Aleppo who was engaged in

negotiating an amicable partnership with the Weldeh sheikhs. The

majestic presence of the river in the midst of uncultivated lands,

which, with the help of its waters, would need so little labour to make

them productive, takes a singular hold on the imagination. I do not

believe that the east bank has always been so thinly peopled, and though

the present condition may date from very early times, it is probable

that there was once a continuous belt of villages by the stream, their

sites being still marked by mounds. Half-an-hour from ’Anâb we passed

Tell Jifneh, with remains of buildings about it; in another hour and a

half there were ruins at Ḥallâweh, and forty minutes further we came to

a big mound called Tell Murraibet. From this point the grass lands

retreated from the Euphrates, leaving place for a wide stretch of sand

and scrub opposite Old Meskeneh. Kiepert marks two towers on some high

ground to the east, but they must have fallen into ruin since Chesney’s

survey, for I could not see them. Six hours from Bersiba we reached in

heavy rain the tents of Sheikh Mabrûk and pitched our camp by his, so

that we might find shelter for our horses under his wide roof. We were

about opposite Dibseh, which was perhaps the famous ford of Thapsacus.

Mabrûk told me that in summer, when the water is low, camels can cross

the river just above Dibseh; at Meskeneh a ferry boat is to be had, but

at no other point until you come to Raḳḳah.

Next morning a young man from the sheikh’s tent, cousin to Mabrûk (all

the unmarried youths of the sheikh’s family are lodged in his great

house of hair) rode with us to Ḳal’at Ja’bar. He told me of a ruin

called Mudawwarah (the Circle), an hour and a half away to the east: it

may represent one of Kiepert’s towers, but according to Ibrahîm’s

account nothing is now to be seen but a heap of stones. We rode out of

the camp with a troop of women and children driving donkeys into the

hills, where they collect brushwood.

“Last year,” said my companion, “they dared not stray from the tents,

lest the horsemen of Ibrahîm Pasha should attack them and seize the

donkeys. Wallah! the children could not drive out the goats to pasture,

and every man sat with his loaded rifle across his knees and watched for

the coming of raiders. For indeed he took all, oh lady; he robbed rich

and poor; he held up caravans and killed the solitary traveller.”

“Eh wah!” said the zaptieh, “and the soldiers of the government he

killed also. He was sultan in the waste.”

“But now that he is gone,” continued Ibrahîm, “we are at rest. And as

soon as we heard of his death we blessed the government, and all the men

of the Weldeh rode out and seized the flocks that he had captured from

us, and more besides. And behold, there they pasture by the river.” And

he pointed to some sheep grazing under the care of a couple of small

boys.

“Then all the desert is safe now?” said I.

“Praise God!” he answered, “for the ’Anazeh are our friends. We have no

foes but the Shammar, and their lands are far from us.”

Before we reached Ḳal’at Ja’bar we galloped up into the low hills to see

a rock-cut tomb. Through a hole in the ground we let ourselves down into

a chamber 5·10 m. × 7·00 m., with nine arcosolia set round it, each

containing from four to six loculi (Fig. 27). On one of the long sides

there was a small rectangular niche between the arcosolia. Ibrahîm

called the place Maḥall es Ṣafṣâf and assured me that it was the only

cavern known to him in these hills. From here he took me down to a mound

named Tell el Afrai, which lies about a quarter of a mile from the

river. On the landward side

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--MAḤALL ES ṢAFṢAF.]

it is protected by a dyke forming a loop from the Euphrates. At one time

the water must have filled this moat, but the upper end has silted up

and the channel is now dry. Out of the mound, which is unusually large,

the rains had washed a number of big stones, some of them squared. We

were now close to the two towers of Ḳal’at Ja’bar, one being a minaret

that rises from the centre of the fortress, while the other, known to

the Arabs as Neshabah, stands upon an isolated hill to the

north-west[39] (Fig. 28). Of the Neshabah tower nothing remains but a

rectangular core of masonry (unworked stones set in thick mortar)

containing a winding stair which can be approached by a doorway about

four metres from the ground. Below the door there is a vaulted niche

which looks like the remains of a sepulchral chamber. All the facing

stones have fallen away, but the core is ridged in a manner that

suggests the former existence of engaged columns, and I believe that

Neshabah is a tower tomb older than the castle, rather than the outlying

watchtower of an Arab fort.[40] The buildings at Ḳal’at Ja’bar are

mainly of brick, though some stone is used in the walls and bastions

that surround the hill-top (Fig. 29). The entrance is strongly guarded;

from the outer gate-house a long narrow passage, hewn out of the rock,

leads into the interior of the castle. Among the ruins within the walls

are a vaulted hall and parts of a palace composed of a number of small

vaulted chambers. The construction of the small vaults struck me as

having stronger affinities with Byzantine than with the typical

Mesopotamian systems, and I should not assign to them a very early date.

The palace had also contained a hall of some size, but only the south

wall is standing (Fig. 31). It is broken by a deep recess, possibly a

miḥrâb, with a doorway on either side, and the upper part is decorated

with a row of flat trifoliate niches. In the centre of the castle a

round minaret rises from a massive square base (Fig. 30). Towards the

top of the minaret there is a double band of ornamental brickwork with a

brick inscription between. I could not decipher the inscription, owing

to its great height, but the characters were not Cufic, and the round

shape of the minaret makes it improbable that it should be earlier than

the twelfth century. Beyond the minaret is a vaulted cistern. The

shelving north-west side of the hill is defended by a double ring of

brick towers, but on the south-east side, where the rocks are

precipitous, there is little or no fortification. The brick walls of the

buildings above the gate-way are decorated with string courses and bands

of diamond-shaped motives, the diamonds set point to point or enclosed

in hollow squares (Fig. 32).

The history of the castle is not easy to disentangle from the accounts

left by the Arab geographers. An earlier name for it was Dausar, but

even this does not seem to have been applied before the seventh century,

though Idrîsî, writing in the twelfth century, ascribes its foundation

to Alexander. He is the first author who mentions Dausar and he gives no

authority for his statement as to its origin. Opposite Dausar, on the

right bank of the Euphrates, stretches the battlefield of Ṣiffîn, where

in A.D. 657 the Khalif ’Alî met the forces of the Umayyad Mu’âwiyah.

Tradition has it that ’Alî entrusted his ally Nu’mân, a prince of the

house of Mundhir, with the defence of these reaches of the Euphrates,

and that a servant of the latter, Dausar by name, built the castle which

was called after him. It took its present name from an Arab of the

Ḳusheir, from whose sons it was wrested (in A.D. 1087)

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--ḲAL’AT JA’BAR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--ḲAL’AT JA’BAR, MINARET.]

[Illustration: FIG. 31.--ḲAL’AT JA’BAR, HALL OF PALACE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 32.--ḲAL’AT JA’BAR, BRICK WALL ABOVE GATEWAY.]

by the Sultan Malek Shah, the Seljuk.[41] It was held by the Franks of

Edessa during the first Crusade and captured by the Atabeg Nûr ed Dîn

towards the middle of the twelfth century. It passed into the hands of

the Ayyûbids, and in Yâḳût’s time (1225) was held by Ḥâfiẓ, the nephew

of Saladin. Benjamin of Tudela says that he found a colony of 2,000 Jews

settled at Ja’bar, which was then a much-frequented ferry.[42] I did not

observe any signs of habitation outside the castle, except a few caves

in the rocks to the south; but half-an-hour further down the river, on a

bluff called Kahf (Chahf in the Bedouin speech) ez Zaḳḳ, there are

traces of houses which may represent the Jewish settlement. In Abu’l

Fidâ’s day (fourteenth century) the castle of Ja’bar was ruined and

abandoned. The greater part of the existing buildings might well have

been erected by Nûr ed Dîn, and failing further evidence it is to him

that I should ascribe them.

Under Kahf ez Zaḳḳ we found the tents of Ḥamrî, one of the principal

sheikhs of the Weldeh, a sturdy white-bearded man in the prime of age,

with the fine free bearing of one long used to command. He sat in the

sunshine and watched the pitching of our camp, ordering the young men of

the tribe to bestir themselves in our service, one to gather brushwood,

another to show the muleteers the best watering-place on the muddy

river-bank, a third to fetch eggs and sour curds, and when he had seen

to our welfare, he strode back to his tent and bade me follow. The

coffee was ready when I arrived, and with the cups the talk went round

of desert politics and the relation of this sheikh with that all through

the Weldeh camps. The glow of sunset faded, night closed down about the

flickering fire of thorns, a crescent moon looked in upon us and heard

us speaking of new things. Even into this primeval world a rumour had

penetrated, borne on the word Liberty, and the men round the hearth fell

to discussing the meaning of those famous syllables, which have no

meaning save to those who have lost that for which they stand. But

Sheikh Ḥamrî interposed with the air of one whose years and experience

gave him the right to decide in matters that passed the common

understanding.

“How can there be liberty under Islâm?” said he. “Shall I take a wife

contrary to the laws of Islam, and call it liberty? God forbid.” And we

recognized in his words the oldest of the restrictions to which the

human race has submitted. “God forbid,” we murmured, and bowed our heads

before the authority of the social code.

On the following day a dense mist hung over the valley. An hour from

Kahf ez Zaḳḳ the path left the Euphrates at a spot called Maḥârîz where

there are said to be ruins, but owing to the fog I could see nothing of

them.[43] Three-quarters of an hour later we returned to the river and

rode under low cliffs in which there were caves; my guide called the

place Ḳdirân, which is, I suppose, Kiepert’s Ghirân. Here again we left

the water’s edge, and half-an-hour later the fog melted away and

revealed a monotonous green plain with the camels of the Weldeh

pasturing over it. In summer it is a favourite camping-ground of the

’Anazeh. At Billânî, three and a half hours from our starting-point, we

rejoined the Euphrates. Billânî is visible from afar by reason of a

number of bare tree-trunks set in the ground to mark the Arab graves

which are grouped about the resting-place of some holy man. The ancient

sanctity of the place is still attested by numerous shafts of columns

among the graves, but seventy years ago Chesney could make out a small

octagonal temple.[44] It was a fine site for temple or for tomb. The

river comes down towards it through many channels in the shape of a

great fan, gathers itself into a single stream, broad and deep, and so

sweeps under the high bank on which the fragments of the shrine are

scattered, and beyond it round a wide bend clothed with thickets of

tamarisk and thorn and blackberry. Through these thickets we rode for

two hours and a half, and

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--ḤARAGLAH, VAULT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--RAḲḲAH, EASTERN MINARET.]

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--RAḲḲAH, MOSQUE FROM EAST.]

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--RAḲḲAH, ARCADE OF MOSQUE, FROM NORTH.]

then camped under a mound called Tell ’Abd ’Alî, not far from a couple

of very poor tents of the Afâḍleh, with the river a mile away. The night

was exquisitely still, but from time to time an owl cried with a shrill

note like that of a shepherd-boy calling to his flocks.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--ḤARAGLAH.]

Our camp proved to be but two hours’ ride from Raḳḳah. A little more

than half-way between the two places we reached the enigmatic ruin which

is known to the Arabs as Ḥaraglah, a name which may be a corruption of

Heraclea. It consists of a rectangular fortress, almost square, with a

series of small vaulted chambers forming the outer parts of the block

and, as far as I could judge, larger vaulted chambers filling up the

centre (Fig. 33). At the four angles there are round towers. The

building as it now stands is merely a substructure, a platform resting

on vaults, on which stood an upper storey that has disappeared. The

masonry is mostly of unsquared stones laid in a bed of very coarse

mortar mixed with small stones, but the vaults are of brick tiles, and

it is noticeable that these tiles are not laid in the true Mesopotamian

fashion, whereby centering could be dispensed with (_i. e._ in narrow

slices leaning back against the head-wall), but that the double ring of

tiles is treated like the voussoirs of a stone arch and must have been

built on a centering (Fig. 34). This structure would be enough to show

that the work does not belong to the Mohammadan period. The fortress is

ringed round by an outer wall, now completely ruined. Beyond it to the

south runs a dyke, and beyond the dyke, some 500 m. south-east of the

central fort, there is another mound on which I saw cut stones larger

than the stones used at Ḥaraglah. Still further to the south lies a

third mound, Tell Meraish, with a second dyke to the south of it. The

two dykes appeared to be loop canals from the Euphrates and must

therefore have formed part of an extensive system of irrigation;

probably there had once been a considerable area of cultivation under

the protection of the fortress.[45]

So we came to Raḳḳah and there joined forces with the army of Julian,

who had marched down from Carrhæ and the head waters of the Belîkh 1,500

years ago and more--the account of the march given by Ammianus

Marcellinus is, however, irreconcilable with the facts of geography, for

he says that Julian reached Callinicum in one day from the source of the

river Belias, whereas it is at least a two days’ journey. Callinicum was

not the earliest town upon the site of Raḳḳah, though the record of

history does not go back further than to its immediate predecessor,

Nicephorium, which some say was founded by Alexander and others by

Seleucus Nicator. When Julian stopped there to perform the sacrifice due

at that season to Cybele, Callinicum was a strong fortress and an

important market. Chosroes, a couple of hundred years later, finding it

insufficiently guarded, seized and sacked it. Justinian rebuilt the

fortifications, but in A.D. 633, according to Abu’l Fidâ, it fell to the

Mohammadan invaders. In A.D. 772 the Khalif Manṣûr strengthened the

position with a second fortified city, Râfiḳah (the Comrade), built, it

is said, upon the same round plan as Baghdâd, which was another city of

his founding. Hârûn er Rashîd built himself a palace either in Raḳḳah or

in Râfiḳah, and used the place as his summer capital. In the subsequent

centuries the older foundations fell into ruin and the Comrade, which

continued to be a flourishing town, usurped its name, so that in Yâkût’s

day (1225) the original Raḳḳah had disappeared, but Râfiḳah was known as

Raḳḳah. Here is fine matter for confusion among the Arab geographers,

and they do not fail to make the most of it. White Raḳḳah, Black Raḳḳah,

Burnt Raḳḳah, and no less than two Middle Raḳḳahs figure upon their

pages, and it is impossible to determine whether any or none of these

titles stands for Râfiḳah, or which of them denotes the old Raḳḳah. But

by 1321 when Abu’l Fidâ wrote, all the Raḳḳahs were reduced to

uninhabited ruin (perhaps by the Mongol hordes of Hûlâgû), and it only

remains for the traveller to collect the names of sites, which his Arab

guide will furnish with an alacrity that runs ahead of accuracy, and

apply them as he thinks best to the list of recorded towns. And lest I

should fail to add my quota to the tangled nomenclature, I will hasten

to state that at a distance of an hour and ten minutes east of the ruins

that lie about the modern village, I rode over a large stretch of ground

on which there were traces of habitation and was told that its name was

Brown Raḳḳah--(Raḳḳat es Samrâ)--and on further inquiry I learnt that

nearer to the Euphrates there was a similar area called Red

Raḳḳah--(Raḳḳat el Ḥamrâ)--but as I neglected to visit the spot I need

not do more than mention that Kiepert marks Black Raḳḳah--(Raḳḳat es

Saudâ)--at about the place where it must be.

To come to matters less controvertible, the modern Raḳḳah consists of

two villages, of which the westernmost has recently been erected by a

Circassian colony upon high broken ground that certainly indicates the

existence of an older settlement. Beyond it to the east there is a large

semi-circular enclosure, the straight side turned towards the Euphrates

and lying at a distance of about a mile from that river. The walls are

built of sun-dried brick alternating with bands of burnt brick, and set

at regular intervals with round bastions. There are clear traces of a

moat or ditch and of a second, less important, wall beyond it. The Arab

village lies in the south-west corner of this enclosure, near the centre

are the ruins of a mosque with a round minaret, on the east side the

remains of a large building, probably a palace, and at the south-east

corner part of a gate called the Baghdâd gate. Still further east there

is yet another ruin field. Towards the middle of it rises a square

minaret standing in a rectangular space which has been enclosed by walls

of sun-dried brick, no doubt a mosque (Fig. 35). The minaret is of

brick, but it rests upon a square base formed of large blocks of

marble. The brickwork is broken by six horizontal notched rings, the

uppermost surmounting a wide band of ornamental brick. The notches in

the brick were obviously intended to contain some other material,

possibly wood, which has now perished. There are numerous fragments of

columns in the neighbourhood of the minaret. The only other buildings

are, north of the minaret, a small domed ziyârah, which local tradition

would have to be the tomb of Yaḥyâ el Barmakî, who, as well as his more

famous son Ja’far, was vizir to Hârûn er Rashîd, and not far from the

Baghdâd gate a similar shrine, known as the Ziyârah of Uweis el Ḳaranî.

Uweis fell in A.D. 657 in one of the engagements fought on the Euphrates

between ’Alî and Mu’âwiyah, but his tomb is of no great interest except

in so far as it is composed of older materials. Over the doorway is an

inscription which states that “this fortress and shrine were repaired by

Sultan Suleimân, son of Selîm Khân,” who reigned from 1526-1574.[46] It

is obvious that the stone must have been brought from elsewhere, since

the inscription cannot refer to the insignificant structure on which it

is placed. In the adjoining graveyard there are many fragments of

columns, presumably taken from the mosque, and some much battered

capitals, one of them worked with acanthus leaves. I saw, too, a small

marble double column of the type so common in the early Christian

churches of Asia Minor.

It is tempting to suppose that in the eastern ruin field we have the

site of the oldest city, Nicephorium-Callinicum-Raḳḳah, that the columns

were derived from Hellenistic or Byzantine buildings and re-used in a

mosque of which nothing now remains but the square minaret.[47] I think

it not

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--RAḲḲAH, CAPITALS OF ENGAGED COLUMNS, MOSQUE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--RAḲḲAH, PALACE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--RAḲḲAH, DETAIL OF STUCCO ORNAMENT, PALACE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--RAḲḲAH, DOMED CHAMBER IN PALACE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--RAḲḲAH, PLAN OF MOSQUE AND SECTIONS OF PIERS.]

improbable that the semi-circular enclosure represents Manṣûr’s

foundation, Râfiḳah, though it does not follow that any of the existing

ruins, except perhaps parts of the wall, belong to his time. They are

nevertheless of great importance in the history of Mohammadan art. The

mosque is surrounded by a wall of sun-dried brick broken by round

bastions (Fig. 36). In the centre of the ṣaḥn, or court, there is a

small ziyârah recently rebuilt, and in the north-east corner the round

brick minaret springs from a square stone base composed of ancient

materials (Fig. 37). The upper part of the minaret is decorated with

bands of brick dog-tooth ornament. One of the great arcades which

enclosed the ṣaḥn still stands on the south side (Fig. 38).[48] An

inscription over the central arch states that the mosque was repaired by

the Atabeg Nûr ed Dîn in 1166, and I conjecture that the minaret is of

his building.[49] The mosque is of the true Mesopotamian type, of which

the most famous examples are the two mosques at Sâmarrâ and the mosque

of Ibn Ṭûlûn at Cairo. With all these it shows the closest structural

affinities, and it may be assumed that Nûr ed Dîn retained the original

plan when he repaired the building. The stucco capitals of the engaged

columns on the piers belong to the same family as the elaborate stucco

ornaments of Ibn Ṭûlûn, which date from the latter half of the ninth

century, and in both cases the decorative motives employed are probably

Mesopotamian in origin (Fig. 39). Stucco decorations are also the main

feature of the group of palace ruins near the east wall. The most

noticeable of these is a rectangular tower-like structure (Fig. 40),

where the chamber on the ground-floor shows bold stucco ornament on

which are traces of colour (Fig. 41). On the walls of another chamber of

the palace, which was covered with a dome set upon squinch arches, there

is a row of arched niches, the arch being cusped on the inside. Below

the niches is a brick dog-tooth string-course (Fig. 42). The squinches

contain a primitive stalactite motive. There are two other small rooms,

both of which are roofed with an oval dome (3·87 m. × 3·32 m.

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--RAḲḲAH, BAGHDÂD GATE FROM EAST.]

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--RAḲḲAH, INTERIOR OF BAGHDÂD GATE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 46.--ḤALEBÎYEH.]

and 4·02 m. × 2·03 m.); in both cases the dome is very shallow and the

rectangular substructure is adapted to the oval by means of wooden beams

laid across the angles. Everywhere wooden beams were used in conjunction

with brick, and it is to be borne in mind that though the country round

Raḳḳah is now entirely devoid of trees, all the Arab geographers speak

of the well-wooded gardens and groves of fruit-trees that surrounded the

town. In the tower-like building and in the Baghdâd gate bands of wood

were laid in the face of the wall, but the wood has perished, leaving

the space it occupied to tell of its former presence, as in the eastern

minaret. The cusp motive can be seen in the blind arcade on the exterior

of the Baghdâd gate (Fig. 43). In the interior there is a bay to the

south which appears to have been covered by a barrel vault, and may have

been balanced by a similar bay to the north of the doorway, for the

blind arcade on the outside of the gatehouse breaks off abruptly at the

northern end and must certainly have been carried further (Fig. 44).

This would allow for a northern bay corresponding to the bay that still

appears south of the door. The vaulting of the gate has fallen, but from

the indications that are left it appears certain that while the south

bay was covered by a barrel vault the central space was occupied by a

groin (Fig. 45).[50]

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--RAḲḲAH, BAGHDÂD GATE, RECONSTRUCTED.]

The whole of the two areas of ruin are strewn with potsherds of the

Mohammadan period, and over the greater part of the walled city the

ground is honeycombed with irregular holes and trenches, the excavations

of peasants in search of the now celebrated Raḳḳah ware. A few years ago

their labours were rewarded by a large find of unbroken pieces, many of

which made their way through the hands of Aleppo dealers to Europe, and

though such a stroke of good fortune is rare, perfect specimens are

occasionally unearthed, and I saw a considerable number, together with

one or two fragments of exquisite glass embossed with gold, during the

two days I spent at Raḳḳah. In some instances the original factories and

kilns have been brought to light, and it is not unusual to see bowls or

jars which have been spoilt in the baking and thrown away by the potter.

No exhaustive study of Raḳḳah ware has as yet been made, though it is of

the utmost importance in the history of the arts of Islâm. The

fabrication of it must have reached a high state of perfection during

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to which period the pieces which

have been preserved are usually assigned.

At Raḳḳah matters fell out in a way which, if they had not been handled

firmly, might well have wrecked my plans, for a telegram arrived from

the Vâlî of Aleppo directing all whom it might concern to put a stop to

my progress down the left bank of the Euphrates, on account of the

disturbed condition of the desert. The Vâlî commanded that I should be

turned back across the river and conveyed carefully from guardhouse to

guardhouse along the high road. It was the Mudîr of Raḳḳah who was

ultimately responsible for the execution of these orders, and he, honest

man, was much perplexed when he discovered that one side of the

Euphrates was not the same to me as the other, nor was he helped to a

better understanding when I explained that I preferred the Jezîreh, the

Mesopotamian bank, because no one travelled there. The Shâmîyeh, the

Syrian bank, he hastened to assure me, was also chôl (wilderness), if

that was what I desired, and he begged me to believe that I should find

the guardhouses most commodious. Thereupon I took up the question on a

different issue, and called his attention to the fact that the Vâlî, who

was newly appointed to Aleppo, could not have heard how peaceful the

desert had become since the death of Ibrahîm Pasha. The Mudîr admitted

the truth of this observation, and we compromised by sending a telegram

to the Vâlî, asking him to reconsider his decision. But the telegraphic

system of the Turkish empire leaves an ample margin for the exercise of

individual discretion in emergencies, and since upon the third day no

reply had been received, I was spared from showing a direct disregard of

official dictates, while the Mudîr, seeing my caravan set out towards

the Belîkh, wisely made the best of a bad business and sent a couple of

zaptiehs with me. One of them was a Circassian who had little Arabic,

but the other, Maḥmûd by name, proved an agreeable and intelligent

fellow-traveller, well informed, and a keen politician.

It is exactly two hours’ ride from Raḳḳah to the Belîkh. Our path lay

between stretches of marsh, which must always have existed hereabout,

for the word Raḳḳah means a swamp. Where we crossed the Belîkh it was a

muddy brook, almost all the water having been drawn off for irrigation

purposes, and the bridge was merely a few bundles of brushwood laid upon

some poles. I sent the caravan down the bank of the Euphrates and taking

one of my zaptiehs with me, turned slightly inland towards a group of

hills called Jebel Munâkhir, the Nebs. In about two hours we reached a

small outlying limestone tell on the top of which there were traces of

masonry. Jebel Munâkhir, a mile or so from the tell, is an extinct

volcano, and the lava beds extend almost to the tell. We climbed to the

summit of the mountain and found the crater to be a distinctly marked

basin with broken sides. On one of the peaks there is a ziyârah, a

square enclosure made of undressed stones piled together without mortar,

and a small tomb-chamber of the same construction. I looked carefully

for any trace of ancient work, but my search was rewarded only by

finding clumps of pale blue irises growing among the rocks. The west

massif of Jebel Munâkhir, on which we were standing, rises several

hundred feet above the level of the plain, and we had an extensive view

over the unknown desert to the north. About three miles to the east lay

another but smaller block of hill called Jebel Munkhar esh Sharḳî, the

Eastern Neb, and on the horizon, almost due north, we could see some

rising ground which my guide, an Arab of those parts, stated to be Jebel

’Uḳala.[51] Below it there are wells, and another well, Abu Tuṭah, lies

between it and the Belîkh. Between Jebel Munâkhir and Jebel ’Abdu’l

’Azîz (which I could not see) there is a low ridge of hill, Jebel Beiḍâ.

All through this desert country there are small wells of water (jubb is

the Arabic word) sufficient to supply the ’Anazeh, who pasture their

flocks here during the spring; I saw a few of their encampments, but the

greater part of the tribe was still in winter quarters further to the

east and south. The tents along the river were those of the

’Afaḍleh--’Ajeil el Ḥamrî is the chief sheikh of the tribe, but I did

not happen to meet him. An hour’s ride from the hills we reached a large

encampment at a spot called Ḳubûr ej Jebel, near the Euphrates. The name

means the Graves of the Mountain, but I could not hear of any tombs in

the neighbourhood. Our own tents were pitched an hour further down on

some grassy mounds by the river far from any Arabs; Meiḍa, my guide

called the place. In the low ground between Ḳubûr ej Jebel and Meiḍa,

but above flood-water level, we crossed an area ringed round with a

notable deep ditch. Somewhere near my camp Julian must have received his

Arab reinforcements. On leaving Nicephorium, he marched along the bank

of the Euphrates, “and at night he rested in a tent, where some princes

of the Saracen tribes came as suppliants bringing him a golden crown and

adoring him as master of the world, and of their own nations.... While

he was addressing them,” pursues Ammianus Marcellinus,[52] “a fleet

arrived as large as that of the mighty lord Xerxes; ... they threw a

bridge over the broadest part of the Euphrates. The fleet consisted of

one thousand transports bringing provisions and arms, and fifty ships of

war, and fifty more for the construction of bridges....” At this point a

hubbub arose in the servants’ tents; the golden crowns and the

battleships went tumbling on to the grass, and I ran out just in time to

see a troop of little shadowy forms hurrying in the moonlight across the

sands by the water’s edge. They were wild pig, the only herd we

encountered.

It is essential to have a local man by you if you would ascertain local

names (even then the nomenclature is apt to be confusing), and

accordingly I took an Arab with me next morning. We rode in five minutes

to a grassy mound by the river, Khirbet Hadâwî, in another quarter of an

hour to Khirbet ed Dukhîyeh, and in twenty minutes more to Jedeideh. At

none of these places did I see any trace of construction, but at Abu

Sa’îd, ten minutes further, there is an ’Anazeh mazâr with graves round

it marked by fragments of columns and small basalt mills for grinding

corn. It would be interesting to know from what period these mills date;

I saw quantities of them in the burial-grounds between Munbayah and Tell

Murraibet, but none of the Arabs know what they are, and when they find

them they use them as tombstones. At Abu Sa’îd we turned away from the

river and rode inland in a north-easterly direction. The great bare

levels were more than usually enchanting that morning; the hot sun beat

upon them, a sharp little wind, the very breath of life, swept across

them, and all the plain was aromatic with sweet-scented plants.

Presently we passed a few ’Anazeh tents, and I stopped and gave the

aristocracy of the desert a respectful salutation. An inmate of the

tents, hearing my greeting, picked up his spear, mounted his mare and

bore us company for a mile or two; I do not know what dangers he

expected to encounter or whether the spear was merely for sheref

(honour), but when time hangs as heavy as it does in an Arab tent, you

may as well put in the hours by carrying a spear about the countryside

as in any other manner. We engaged in an exceedingly desultory

conversation, in the course of which he called out to me:

“Lady, my mare is sick.”

“God cure her,” said I.

“Please God!” he returned. “It is her mind--her mind is sick.” But I

could suggest no remedy for that complaint, whether in man or beast.

When he left us, the zaptieh and I began to talk of the prospects of

good administration under the new order. Maḥmûd was by birth a Turk, a

native of Kars, whence he had migrated when it fell into the hands of

the Russians. His long acquaintance with the Arabs had only served to

enhance in his estimation the Turkish capacity for government, and the

granting of the constitution had raised it yet higher. “The Turks

understand politics,” said he, “and look you, the constitution was from

them. But as for the Arabs, what do they know of government?” He placed

great confidence in the Young Turks, and said that every one except the

effendis was in favour of the dastûr (the constitution). “The effendis

fear liberty and justice, for these are to the advantage of the poor.

But they, being corrupt and oppressors of the poor, set themselves in

secret against the dastûr, and because of this we have confusion

everywhere. And if one of them is sent to Constantinople as a deputy his

work will not be good, for he will work only for himself. And in the

vilayets there will be no justice unless the English will send into each

province an overseer (mufattish) who will look to it that the dastûr is

carried out. Effendim, do you see my clothes?” I examined his ragged

nondescript attire; save for the torn and faded jacket it would have

been difficult to recognize in it a military uniform. “Twice a year the

government gives us clothes, but they never reach us at Raḳḳah. The

officers in Aleppo eat them, and with my own money I bought what I wear

now.”

“Are you paid?” I inquired.

“The government owes me twenty-four months’ pay,” he answered.

I asked what he thought of the scheme for enlisting Christians.

“Why not?” said he. “The Christians should help the Moslems to bear the

burden of military service.” And then he added, “If there be no

treachery.”

There was no need to ask him what he meant by the last phrase. I had

heard too often from the lips of Christians the expression of a helpless

fear that the new régime must founder in blood and anarchy, after which

the nations of Europe would step in, please God, and take Turkey for

themselves. This forecast was not by any means confined to the

Christians, but they, of all others, should have refrained from putting

it into words, for it did not encourage patriots like Maḥmûd to believe

in their loyalty.

We reached our goal, Tell esh Sha’îr, in two hours and forty minutes

from Abu Sa’îd, but the time in this case represents about twelve miles,

since we were not riding at caravan pace. There were no buildings on the

tell, but a number of large stones had been dug out of it and set up as

a landmark--rijm, the Arabs call such guiding stone heaps. Two shepherds

of the ’Anazeh joined us while we were at lunch, much to their material

advantage, for we shared our provisions with them; from them I learnt

that there had once been a well here, but that it was now choked up.

They knew of no ruins in the desert beyond, and my impression is that

there has never been any settled population in this region, away from

the Euphrates. We struck back to the river in a south-easterly

direction, and in three hours came to our camp, pitched by some Afaḍleh

tents on a mound of which I have not recorded the name. It is the

boundary between the kazas of Raḳḳah and of Deir, and lies about an

hour’s march below a site called by Kiepert the Khân. From our camp we

rode in an hour to the ruins of Khmeiḍah, where there were vestiges of a

considerable town, squared stones, baked brick walls and a stone

sarcophagus. An Arab on a broken-down mare joined us here, and as we

rode together Maḥmûd described to me the nature of the authority

exercised by the government over the tribes, and particularly the

incidence of the sheep-tax.

“Effendim,” said he, “you must know that the government levies the

sheep-tax from each sheikh.” Four piastres per head of sheep is the

amount. “And the scribe having computed the number of sheep that belong

to those tents, he calls upon the sheikh to make good the sum due, and

perhaps the sheikh will have to pay 2,000 piastres. Then he levies from

the men of his tents 3,000 piastres, and to the government he gives

1,800.”

“True, true,” said the Arab beside us. “Wallah, so it is.”

“And then,” pursued Maḥmûd, “another man is sent out by the government,

with his clerk and half-a-dozen of us zaptiehs. And all this costs much

money. And the sheikh levies another 500 piastres, and pays 150

piastres; and so it goes on till the sum is found, but the expenses of

collection are heavy. And as for the tax on cultivated land, the owner

gives a bribe to him who is sent to value it, and he estimates the

produce at less than half the real amount. And so it is with the

sheep-tax. Effendim, do you think that all the sheep are counted? No,

wallah! Last year the cornlands of the Shâmîyeh between Raḳḳah and Deir

paid only £800, and the sheep-tax in the Jezîreh was no more than

£2,000.”

“Eh yes,” said the Arab, “but the government takes much.”

“The sheikhs take much,” returned Maḥmûd. “Oh Ma’lûl, is it not true

that they levy a tax for themselves on every tent?”

“Eh wallah!” said the Arab.

“But if the men of the tents make complaint, the sheikh attacks them and

slays them.”

“Allah, Allah! he knows the truth,” cried Ma’lûl in vociferous approval.

“And they have no protection,” concluded Maḥmûd.

“Eh wah!” responded the Arab, “who is there to protect us?”

So the ancient tyrannies bear sway even in the open wilderness.

Three-quarters of an hour from Khmeiḍah we passed another mound strewn

with potsherds, and thirty-five minutes further down we came upon the

ruins of Abu ’Atîḳ. They lie upon high rocky ground that drops steeply

into an old bed of the Euphrates from which the river has retreated into

a new bed a few hundred yards away. The whole area is covered with stone

and brick foundations, some of them built of great blocks of hewn

basalt, and the site must represent a city of no small importance. Below

it the river is forced into a narrow defile where it flows between steep

hills. A little valley, Wâdî Mâliḥ, joins the main stream half-an-hour

from the ancient town, and it was here that we were overtaken by a

breathless zaptieh from Raḳḳah who was the bearer of the answer to my

telegram to the Vâlî of Aleppo. It was a refusal, politely worded, to

my request that I should be permitted to travel down the left bank of

the Euphrates, and with it came a covering letter from the Mudîr of

Raḳḳah saying that if I did not return he would be obliged to recall the

zaptiehs he had sent with me. I fear that even those who cannot properly

be numbered among the criminal classes catch an infection from the

lawless air of the desert, but whatever may be the true explanation of

our conduct, we never contemplated for a moment the alternative of

obedience, and bidding a regretful farewell to friend Maḥmûd, we went on

down the defile. Maḥmûd came galloping back to give us a final word of

advice. “Ride,” said he, “to Umm Rejeibah, where you will find a ḳishlâ

(a guardhouse), but do not camp to-night in a solitary place, for this

is the country of the Baggârah, and they are all rogues and thieves.”

The Euphrates, gathered into a single channel, flows very grandly

through the narrow gorge. At first the hills slope down almost to the

water’s edge, but afterwards they draw back and leave room for a tract

of level ground by the stream. An hour and a half from Wâdî Mâliḥ the

valley widens still more, and on the opposite bank the great castle of

Ḥalebîyeh lifts its walls from the river almost to the summit of the

hill, a towered triangle of which the apex is the citadel that dominates

all the defile (Fig. 46).[53] Twenty minutes lower down, the

Mesopotamian bank is crowned by the sister fortress of Zelebîyeh. It is

a much less important building. The walls, set with rectangular towers,

enclose three sides of an oblong court; the fourth side--that towards

the river--must also have been walled, and it is probable that the

castle approached more nearly to a square than at present appears, for

the current has undermined the precipitous bank and the western part of

the fortifications has fallen away. The masonry is of large blocks of

stone, faced on the interior and on the exterior of the walls, while the

core is mainly of rubble and mortar. There are six towers, including

the corner bastions, in the length of the east wall, and between the two

central towers is an arched gate. On the north and south sides there is

now but one tower beyond the corner. Each tower contains a small

rectangular chamber approached by an arched doorway. The court is

covered with ruins, and on either side of the gate there is a deep

arched recess. Under the north side of the castle hill there are

foundations of buildings in hewn stone, but the area of these ruins is

not large.

The name Zelebîyeh carries with it the memory of an older title; in the

heyday of Palmyrene prosperity a fortress called after Zenobia guarded

the trade route from her capital into Persia, and all authorities are

agreed that the fortress of Zenobia described by Procopius is identical

with Ḥalebîyeh. Procopius states further that Justinian, who rebuilt

Zenobia and Circesium, refortified the next castle to Circesium, which

he calls Annouca. The Arab geographers make mention of a small town,

Khânûḥah, midway between Ḳarḳîsîyâ (Circesium) and Raḳḳah,[54] and the

probable identity of Annouca and Khânûḳah has already been observed by

Moritz.[55] But I think it likely that the flourishing mediæval Arab

town was situated not in the confined valley below Zelebîyeh but at Abu

’Atîḳ, where the ruin field is much larger. It may be that there was a

yet older settlement at Abu ’Atîḳ, and that the stone foundations there

belonged to the town of Annouca which stood at the head of the defile,

while the castle of the same name guarded the lower end.

We struck across the barren hills and so came down in an hour and half

to Ḳubrâ, a ziyârah lying about a quarter of a mile from the river.

There were no tents to be seen, whether of the Baggârah or of any other

tribe, and no man from whom we could ask the way; by misfortune we

happened to be that day without an Arab guide, and mindful of Maḥmûd’s

parting injunctions, we began to look eagerly ahead for the ḳishlâ.

Some way lower down, the Euphrates swept close under a low ridge which

we were obliged to climb, and once on the top we espied Ḳishlâ el

Munga’rah nestling under the further side of the slope. It had taken us

two and a half hours to reach it from Zelebîyeh. The ḳishlâ, which was

built ten years ago and is already falling into ruin, was garrisoned by

eight soldiers. They gave us an enthusiastic welcome and helped us to

pitch our tents under the mud walls of the guardhouse; visitors are

scarce, and the monotony of existence is broken only by episodes

connected with the lawless habits of the Baggârah. I never came into

contact with the tribe, but I was told that, alone among the river

Arabs, they had been the allies of Ibrahîm Pasha and were consequently

gôm (foes) of the ’Anazeh and their group. Enmities of this kind are

usually accompanied by overt acts, and the Baggârah had their hand

against every man.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the isolation of the guardhouses

which are scattered through remote parts of the Turkish empire. The

garrisons receive but a scanty allowance of their pay, and a still

scantier of clothing; frequently they are left unchanged for years in

the midst of an ungrateful desert where the task assigned to them is too

heavy for them to perform--eight men, as the soldiers at Munga’rah

observed, cannot keep a whole tribe in check--and where there is no

alternative occupation. Often enough I have contemplated with amazement,

in some lonely ḳishlâ or ḳarâghôl, the patient Oriental acceptance of

whatever fate may be allotted by the immediate or the ultimate

authority; and many an hour has passed, far from unprofitably for the

understanding of the East, while a marooned garrison has shown me, with

a pitiful and childlike eagerness, its poor little efforts to while away

the weary days--here a patch of garden snatched from the wilderness,

where only a hand-to-hand struggle with the drifting sand can keep the

rows of wizened onions from total extinction; there a desultory

excavation in a neighbouring mound, in which if you dig far enough a

glittering treasure must surely lie; a captive quail for snaring,

warmly pressed upon me for my evening meal, or the small achievements in

what may, for want of an exacter term, be called carpentry, with which

the living-room is adorned. If you will reckon up the volume of

unquestioning, if uninstructed, obedience upon which floats the ship of

the Turkish State, you will wonder that it should ever run aground.

The relaxation of the men of Munga’rah was taken among the ruins that

covered the top of the hill. Umm Rejeibah is a large area enclosed in a

wall, clearly marked by mounds, with a ditch beyond it. On the north

side an old channel of the river sweeps under the hill, and before the

water left this course, it had carried away a part of the ground on

which the city stood. The walls break off abruptly where the hill has

fallen away, and it is therefore difficult to determine the exact shape

of the enclosure. It appears to have been an irregular octagon. Towards

its northern extremity the hill-top is seamed by the deep bed of a

torrent draining down to the present channel of the Euphrates; it cuts

through the ruins and reveals in section what is elsewhere hidden by an

accumulation of soil. On the slope of its bank the soldiers had observed

traces of masonry, and by digging a little way into the hill had

disclosed a small circular chamber with brick walls and a white

tesselated pavement. Just above the ḳishlâ, in an Arab graveyard, there

are fragments of columns and basalt flour mills.

The oldest, raggedest and most one-eyed of the garrison accompanied us

to Deir: I had not the heart to refuse his proffered escort, since it

would enable him to spend a night in the local metropolis. The road was

entirely without interest. About an hour from Deir cultivation began on

the river bank in patches of cornland irrigated by rude water-wheels;

jird is the Arabic word for them. We reached the ferry in six hours. The

road from Aleppo to Môṣul crosses the Euphrates at Deir, and some ten

years ago it was proposed to replace the ferry by a bridge. The work was

actually put in hand and has advanced at the rate of one pier a year,

according to my calculations; but it can scarcely be expected that this

rate of progress will be maintained, since the point has been reached

where the piers must be built in the bed of the stream, and construction

will necessarily be slower than it was when the masons were still upon

dry ground. We pitched our camp upon the left bank and there spent

thirty-six hours, resting the horses and laying in provisions. The

bazaars are well supplied, but Deir is not in other respects remarkable.

It is first mentioned by Abu’l Fidâ, in A.D. 1331,[56] and contains, so

far as I know, no vestiges of older habitation. It is built partly upon

an island; the gardens of this quarter, exactly opposite my camp, were

rosy with flowering fruit-trees. None but the richer sort, and such as

have flocks to bring over, cross the river in the ferry boats; more

modest persons are content with an inflated goat-skin. I had not seen

this entertaining process, except on the Assyrian reliefs in the British

Museum, and I watched it with unabated zest during the greater part of

an afternoon. You blow out your goat-skin by the river’s edge, roll up

your cloak and place it upon your head, tuck your shirt into your

waistcloth and so embark, with your arms resting upon the skin and your

legs swimming in the water. The current carries you down, and you make

what progress you can athwart it. On the further side you have only to

wring out your shirt, don your cloak and deflate your goat-skin, and all

is done.

The Mutesarrif of Deir had recently been removed and the new man had not

yet arrived, but I paid my respects to his vicegerent, the Ḳâḍî, a

white-bearded old Turk, who did not regard my visit as an honour, though

he promised me all I wanted in the matter of zaptiehs. The interview

took place while he was sitting in the seat of judgment and was

presently interrupted by a case. It was a dispute concerning a debt

between a merchant and an Arab Sheikh. The sheikh came in dressed in the

full panoply of the desert, black-and-gold cloak, black kerchief and

white under-robe; his skin was darkened by the sun, his beard

coal-black. The merchant was a shaven, white-faced townsman in a

European coat. The pair were, to my fancy, symbolic of the East and the

advancing West, and I backed the West, if only because the merchant had

the advantage of speaking Turkish, and the Ḳâḍî was anything but

proficient in Arabic. After a few moments of angry recrimination they

were both dismissed to gather further evidence; but the Ḳâḍî called the

sheikh back and shook his finger at him. “Open your eyes, oh sheikh,”

said he. Asia, open your eyes!

I have some friends in Deir, Mohammadan gentlemen of good birth and

education; to them I went for information as to passing events, no news

from the outer world having reached me for a fortnight. They told me

that the Grand Vizir, Kiamil Pasha, had fallen, which was true; and that

the Mejlis had quarrelled with the Sultan and were about to depose him,

which was only prophetic. They made me realize how different an aspect

the new-born hopes of Turkey wore on the Bosphorus, or even on the

Mediterranean, from that which they presented to the dwellers on the

Euphrates: I had already passed beyond the zone that had been quickened

by the enthusiasm of European Turkey into some real belief in the advent

of a just rule. One of my friends had received an invitation to join the

local committee, but he had refused to do so. “I am lord over much

business,” said he, “but they are the fathers of idle talk.” All

thinking men in Deir were persuaded that a universal anarchy lay before

them; the old rule was dead, the new was powerless, and the forces of

disorder were lifting their heads. “Yes,” said another, “revolution

means the shedding of blood--and the land of the Ottomans will not

escape. Then perhaps the nations of Europe will come to our aid and we

shall all have peace.” I replied that the only substantial peace would

be one of their own making, and that good government takes long to

establish. “What benefit have I,” he protested, “if my children’s

children see it?” I asked whether they had heard any rumours of an Arab

movement, and they answered that there was much wild writing in the

newspapers of a separate Arab assembly, and that words like these might

stir up trouble and revolt. “But where is unity? Aleppo hates Deir, and

Deir hates Damascus, and we have no Arab nation.” The financial

position, both public and private, they pronounced to be hopeless. “I

know a man,” said one, “who has land on the Euphrates that might be

worth £15,000 and is worth as many piastres. He dares not put money into

irrigation because he could not get protection against the tribes and

his capital would bring him no return. But indeed there is not enough

capital in all Deir to develop the land.” He complained that the best

land was chiflik, the private property of the Sultan, and this I mention

because it is a grievance that has already been remedied--may it be of

good omen! The conversation left me profoundly discouraged, there was so

much truth in all that I had heard, together with so complete an absence

of political initiative. Thus it is through all the Asiatic provinces,

and the further I went the more convinced did I become that European

Turkey is the head and brains of the empire, and that if the difficult

task of reform is to be carried out in Asia it can only be done from

western Turkey. I believe that this has been recognized in

Constantinople, for the provincial governors appointed under the new

régime have been almost invariably well chosen.

On March 6 we took the road again, still following the left bank of the

Euphrates. The country down these reaches of the river is, as Xenophon

says, exceptionally dull: “the ground was a plain as level as the sea.”

Below Deir the Euphrates has left its original channel and now runs

further to the west, and there was generally a stretch of low ground, an

older bed, between our road and the stream. This alluvial land is thinly

populated and partly irrigated by water-wheels. Along the higher ground,

which had once been the bank but is now touched only by the extreme

points of the river loops, there were occasional mounds representing the

villages of an earlier age. The baggage animals travelled in six and

three-quarter hours to Buseirah, which lies in the angle formed by the

Khâbûr and the Euphrates. The site is very ancient. Xenophon when he

arrived at the Araxes (the Khâbûr) found there a number of villages

stored with corn and wine, and the army rested for three days collecting

provisions. Diocletian made Circesium the frontier station of the Roman

empire. He fortified it with a wall, says Procopius, terminating at

either end on the Euphrates in a tower, but he did not protect the side

of the town along the Euphrates. The stream sapped one of the towers,

the walls were allowed to fall into decay, and Chosroes in his first

expedition had no difficulty in taking possession of the fortress.

Justinian repaired the ruined tower with large blocks of stone, built a

wall along the Euphrates, and added an outer wall to that which already

existed, besides improving the baths in the town. Under the name of

Karḳîsîyâ, Circesium continued to be a place of some importance during

the Middle Ages. Iṣṭakhrî (tenth century) praises its gardens and

fruit-trees, but the later geographers describe it as being smaller than

its neighbour Raḥbah, on the opposite side of the Euphrates, and with

this it fades out of history.

Extensive though not very scientific excavations were being carried on

when I was at Buseirah. The peasants were engaged in digging out bricks

from the old walls, ostensibly to provide materials for a bridge over

the Khâbûr. I was therefore able to see more of the ruins than was

revealed to former travellers, and my conviction is that I saw nothing

that was older than the time of Justinian, while most of the work

belonged to the Arab period. The excavations were so unsystematic that

it was never possible to make out a ground plan, but in one place the

peasants had dug down at least 5 m. below the upper level of the ruin

heaps, and had cleared some small chambers near the northern

fortification wall. The materials used in these buildings were square

tiles in two sizes (42 × 45 × 3 cm. and 21 × 21 × 3 cm.) laid in mortar

as wide as the tiles themselves, and small roughly-squared stones also

laid in thick mortar. The lower parts of the chambers were of large

tiles, the upper parts of stone. From the traces left upon the walls,

the rooms would seem to have been roofed over with barrel vaults, and

there were some remains of brick arched niches below the stonework.

Above these rooms, which were possibly only a vaulted substructure,

there were foundations of upper rooms constructed of the smaller tiles.

The face of the tile walls had been covered with plaster. There were

simple patterns moulded in the broad sides of tiles: [Illustration] At

the south-east angle of the enclosing wall stands a tower, round and

domed and built entirely of the smaller tiles. The dome is slightly

flattened and I believe the structure to be Mohammadan work. The

Euphrates flows at a distance of about a mile from the city enclosure,

but in all probability its course was once immediately under the wall,

and the bed has made the same change here as it has done immediately

above Circesium. The modern Buseirah must be the site of the ancient

city, and I conclude that in Diocletian’s time the Euphrates flowed

under the mound and that this was the side which was not fortified until

Justinian’s day.

In the Arab village, which has sprung up near the south-west corner of

the ruins, there are portions of a large building which the natives call

the church. It is surrounded on three sides by a very thick wall,

roughly built of brick and rubble, with round towers at the angles.

Within the wall there are remains of a niched structure which, so far as

I could judge, consisted of two domed octagonal chambers. The masonry is

of brick and rubble, plastered over, and both this ruin and the outer

wall seem to have been built out of older materials pillaged from other

parts of the town and mixed indiscriminately together. Finally there is

a substructure of brick, octagonal in plan and covered by a much

flattened brick dome. The flattened dome is typically Mohammadan: I do

not remember any instance where it can be assigned with certainty to an

earlier period, and I am therefore led to the conclusion that the whole

building cannot be older than the time of the khalifs. The area of the

city is strewn with potsherds, by far the greater proportion being

unmistakably Arab and closely related to the coarser sorts of Raḳḳah

ware. Almost all the coins that were brought to me were Arab.

My tents were pitched outside the city wall, at the extreme limit of the

Roman empire, a frontier line which you must travel far to find. Did

Julian, with the ominous news from Gaul in his hand, feel any misgiving

when he ordered the building of the bridge over which his army was to

pass to the irrevocable destruction that Sallust predicted in his

letters? “No human power or virtue,” says Ammianus Marcellinus, “can

prevent that which is prescribed by Fate.” Impending disaster, long

since fallen, leapt again from his pages and stood spectral upon the

banks of the Khâbûr.