CHAPTER III

BUSEIRAH TO HÎT

_March 7--March 18_

At Buseirah we were confronted with one of the difficulties that awaits

the traveller in the Jezîreh. Since there is no traffic along the left

bank of the river, there are no zaptiehs to serve as escort; my two

zaptiehs from Deir were to have been relieved at Buseirah, but there was

only one available man there, and he feared the return journey alone,

and was therefore extremely reluctant to come with us. We solved the

question by carrying off Muṣṭafâ, one of the men from Deir, whereupon

Ḥmeidî, the Buseirah zaptieh, consented to bear him company. Both were

to return from Abu Kemâl, three days’ journey lower down. This plan

suited Ḥmeidî well, for he was a doubly married man, and while one of

his wives remained at Buseirah, the other dwelt at Abu Kemâl. His beat

was between the two places. “And so,” he explained, “I find a wife and

children to welcome me at either end.”

“That is very convenient,” said I.

“Yes,” he replied gravely.

We crossed the Khâbûr in a ferry-boat so badly constructed that loaded

animals could not enter it, and in consequence all the packs had to be

carried down to the river and re-loaded on the other side. I pitied

Cyrus from the bottom of my heart, and regarded Julian’s bridge with

feelings very different from those that had been conjured up by the moon

of the previous night. The level ground on the opposite side was covered

with potsherds, most of them blue and green glazed wares, and all, so

far as I saw, Mohammadan. An hour later we passed over another small

area strewn thickly with the same pottery, and while I was acquainting

Ḥmeidî with the nature of the evidence it supplied, I took occasion to

confide to him my belief that the ruin at Buseirah which they call the

church dates from the Mohammadan period.

“Effendim,” he replied, “what you have honoured us by observing is quite

correct. The origin of that church is Arab. It was doubtless built by

Nimrod, who lived some years before Hârûn er Rashîd.”

“That is true,” said I, with a mental reservation as to parts of the

statement.

Between the Khâbûr and the Euphrates, Kiepert marks an ancient canal and

names it the Daurîn. According to the map it leaves the Khâbûr at a

point opposite to the village of Ḥöjneh and joins the Euphrates opposite

Ṣâliḥîyeh.[57] The existence of the canal cutting is well known to all

the inhabitants of these parts (they call it the Nahr Dawwarîn), but

they affirm that its course is much longer than is represented by

Kiepert, and that it touches the Euphrates at Werdî. My route on the

first day lay between the canal and the Euphrates, at a distance that

varied from an hour to half-an-hour from the river, and though I did not

see the Dawwarîn, its presence was clearly indicated by the line of

Ḳanâts (underground water conduits) running in a general southerly

direction--NNW. to SSE. to be more accurate--across ground that was

almost absolutely level. The whole of this region must once have been

cultivated, and it had also been thickly populated.[58] Twenty-five

minutes’ ride beyond the potsherds where Ḥmeidî had sketched for me the

history of Buseirah, we passed some foundations constructed out of the

smaller sort of tiles which I had observed in the town. A quarter of an

hour further there was a low mound called Tell el Kraḥ, covered with

tiles and coloured pottery--indeed the pottery was continuous between

the one patch of broken tiles and the other, and Nimrod had evidently

been very busy here. The villages represented by these remains had been

supplied with water from the Dawwarîn. In another hour and five minutes

we reached a considerable mound, Tell Buseyiḥ; it formed three sides of

a hollow square, the side turned towards the river being open. We were

now close to the Euphrates and could see, about half-a-mile away, a long

tract of cultivation and the village of Tiyâna on the water’s edge. We

turned slightly inland from Buseyiḥ and in fifty minutes came to the

mounds of Jemmah where, so far as identification is possible on a hasty

survey, I would place Zeitha. “Here,” says Ammianus Marcellinus, “we saw

the tomb of the Emperor Gordian, which is visible for a long way off.”

Jemmah consists of a large area surrounded by a wall and a deep ditch;

beyond the ditch lies broken ground where, at one point, the Arabs had

scratched the surface and revealed what looked like a pavement of solid

asphalt; still further away there is an Arab graveyard strewn with

fragments of the smaller tiles. Except in the graveyard there are no

tiles and very little pottery, none of it characteristically mediæval

Mohammadan. The ditch had been fed by a water channel coming from the

north-east, no doubt an arm of the Dawwarîn if it were not the canal

itself. We rode from Jemmah to the Euphrates in an hour and ten minutes

and found the camp pitched immediately below the village of Bustân. The

baggage animals had been six hours on the march from the Khâbûr. The

climate was changing rapidly as we journeyed south. The last cold day we

experienced was March 2, when I had ridden out to Tell esh Sha’îr; on

March 7 when we camped at Bustân the temperature at three o’clock in the

afternoon was 70° in the shade, but the nights were still cold.

A strip of irrigated land and numerous villages lay along the river for

the first two hours of the succeeding day’s march. We were forced to

ride outside the cornfields that we might avoid the water conduits, but

I do not think we missed anything of importance, for every twenty or

thirty years the Euphrates rises high enough to submerge the

cultivation, and the floods must have destroyed all vestiges of an older

civilization. The low-lying fields cannot have been, within historic

times, a former bed of the stream, as was the case above Buseirah; an

occasional mound near the river showed that the bank had long been

inhabited. We passed on the high ground a tell that looked like the site

of an ancient village which had received its water from the Nahr

Dawwarîn. An enormous amount of labour is expended upon the irrigation

of the cornfields; sometimes there is a double system of jirds, those

nearest the river watering the lowest fields and filling deep channels

whence the water is again lifted by another series of jirds to the

higher level. In the lower ground the peasants grow a little corn and

clover for early pasture and sow a second crop when the spring floods

have retreated. After two hours’ riding we entered a long stretch of

sand heaped up into little hills which were held together by tamarisk

thickets; it is apt to be submerged when the river is high, and we saw

more than one overflow channel filled with pools of stagnant water. On

the Syrian side the Euphrates is hemmed in here by hills whereon stands

the castle of Ṣâliḥîyeh. In this wilderness we came upon some Arabs who

were ploughing up a desolate spot in search of locusts’ eggs.

“Are there many locusts here?” said I, for locusts are not accustomed to

lay their eggs in sand.

“No,” they answered, “there are none here; but, as God is exalted! there

are thousands lower down.”

“Then why do you plough here?” I asked, with the tiresome persistence of

the European.

“The government ordered it,” said they, and resumed their task.

In another hour we reached Tell ech Cha’bî (el Ka’bî?) where there is an

Arab cemetery, the graves covered with unglazed potsherds. Ḥmeidî told

me that when the Arabs bury their dead in such places they dig into the

mound and extract broken pottery to strew upon the graves; the Bedouin

use no pottery, their water-vessels being of copper or of skin. While we

sat upon the top of the tell lunching and waiting for the caravan, which

was delayed for nearly an hour in the loose sand, Ḥmeidî gave me his

views on politics.

“Effendim,” said he, “we do not care what sultan we have so long as he

is a just ruler. But as for ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd, he keeps three hundred women

in his palace, and, look you, they have eaten our money.” Wherein he

wronged the poor ladies; it was not they who scattered the revenues of

the State.

In thirty minutes we came to Tell Simbal, a small sandy mound; in one

hour and fifteen minutes more to Tell el Hajîn, with a village by the

river, and after another hour and twenty minutes to Tell Abu’l Ḥassan,

where we camped, seven and a quarter hours from Bustân. Abu’l Ḥassan is

marked in Chesney’s map as “mound.” It is a very striking tell rising

fifty feet above the river; upon the summit are Arab graves strewn with

coarse pottery and with undressed stones dug out of the hill, and for a

distance of a quarter of an hour’s walk to the north and east there are

fragments of brick upon the ground. The graves are those of the Jebbûr,

who, said Ḥmeidî, left this district thirty years ago and migrated to

the Tigris, where I subsequently saw them. Nearly all the Silmân have

also gone away, and though their camping grounds are marked by Kiepert

on the Euphrates, their present quarters are on the Khâbûr. The Deleim

and the Ageidât, a base-born tribe, together with the Bu Kemâl, now

occupy the Euphrates’ banks, and the ’Anazeh come down to the river in

the summer. There was no living thing near our camp except an enormous

pelican, who was floating contentedly on the broad bosom of the stream.

Our advent roused in him the profoundest interest, and as he floated he

cast backward glances at us, to see what we were doing in his

wilderness.

A pleasant four hours’ march, mostly through tamarisk thickets that were

full of ducks, pigeons and jays, brought us to the ferry opposite Abu

Kemâl. When we had pitched our tents near the reed-and mud-built village

of Werdî, Fattûḥ and Selîm went across to buy corn and Ḥmeidî to report

our arrival and ask for fresh zaptiehs. The village of Abu Kemâl has

recently been removed to a distance of about a mile from the right bank,

because the current has undermined the foundations of the original

village, which now stands deserted and in ruin. But it is chiefly on the

left bank that the river has played tricks with the land. Within the

circuit of a great bend in the channel, the ground for three miles or so

is extremely low, and is partially submerged when the stream comes down

in flood. The low ground is bounded on its eastern side by a rocky ridge

which crosses the desert from a point a little to the south of the

Khâbûr, passes behind what I suppose to be the course of the Dawwarîn,

and terminates in the bold bluffs of Irzî above the Euphrates, at the

lower limit of the Werdî bend. When the river is exceptionally high it

covers the whole area up to the hills; my informant, one ’Isâ, an Arab

of the Bu Kemâl, remembered having once seen this occur; but in ordinary

seasons it merely overflows a narrow belt and fills a canal that lies

immediately under the eastern hills. The canal is fed by two branch

canals from the river and joins the Euphrates under the bluff of Irzî.

The river rises “at the time of the flowering of pomegranates,” said

’Isâ, “for unto all things is their season,” that is, about the middle

of April; but the big canal under the hills was still half full of water

when I saw it in March, and the crops were irrigated from it by jirds.

It is known locally as the Werdîyeh, but I was informed that it was in

fact the lower end of the Dawwarîn which joins the Euphrates here and

not at Ṣâliḥîyeh.[59] The site of Werdî is generally believed to be that

of Xenophon’s Corsote, “a large deserted city which was entirely

surrounded by the Mascas.” The river Mascas was a plethron (100 ft.) in

breadth; the army of Cyrus stayed there three days and the soldiers

furnished themselves with provisions.[60] By the Mascas, Xenophon is

understood to have meant a loop canal, and I think it probable that the

canal was not merely a small loop enclosing the bend of the river, but

that it is represented to this day by the Dawwarîn and the irrigation

system connected with it.

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--IRZÎ, TOWER TOMB.]

But if Werdî be the descendant of Corsote, at least one other town must

be placed between these two in the genealogical table. The bluff at the

lower end of the river bend is covered with the ruins of Irzî, which

have been remarked by every traveller who has passed by, either on the

river or on the west bank. Balbi, who descended the Euphrates in 1579,

says that the ruins occupied a site larger than Cairo and appeared to be

the massive walls and towers of a great city. So far as I know no one

has examined them closely, and when I climbed up the hill I found, not

the bastioned walls that I had expected, but a number of isolated tower

tombs. They stand in various stages of decay round the edge of the bluff

and over the whole extent of a high rocky plateau which cannot be seen

from below. There are no traces of houses, nor any means of obtaining

water from the river, nor any cisterns for the storage of rain. Balbi’s

city is a city of the dead; it is the necropolis of a town that stood,

presumably, in the irrigated country below. The towers were all alike

(Fig. 47). They are built of irregular slabs of stone, the shining

gypsum of which the hill is formed, laid in beds of mortar. Each tower

rests upon a square substructure, about 1·70 m. high; in this

substructure are the tombs, hollowed out of the solid masonry, irregular

in number and in position. In the best preserved of the towers I could

see but one tunnel-like grave opening on the west side (Fig. 48), while

there were two or three to the north and east. The tombs are covered by

a small vault made of two stones leaning against one another. Above the

substructure the walls are broken by corner piers of small projection,

with two engaged columns between them. The columns are crowned by

capitals made of a single projecting slab, above which a slightly

projecting band of plaster forms an entablature. Then follows a plain

piece of wall about a metre high upon which stands an upper order of

engaged columns, half as large as those below, so that there was place

for five between the corner piers, if these were repeated on the upper

part of the tower. A door between the corner pier and one of the engaged

columns opens on to a winding stair which leads to the top of the tower.

No rule was observed as to the direction of the compass in which the

doors were placed. The towers cannot be as old as Xenophon’s time; they

are more likely to date from the first or second century of the

Christian era; therefore the town to which they belonged must have been

later than Corsote, and Corsote, it will be remembered, was deserted

when he saw it. It is easy to understand that a city lying in the low

ground might have been destroyed by inundations, and to imagine that a

region so favourably situated for purposes of cultivation, and provided

with an elaborate system of irrigation, should have been repopulated in

a later age. And this is the explanation which I offer.[61]

The practice of burying the dead above “the common crofts, the vulgar

thorpes,” is still observed by the Arabs. All their graves lie loftily

upon the nearest height, even if it should be only a mound by the river.

From my camp I watched one of their funeral processions making its slow

way from the village of Abu Kemâl towards some barren hills. Three or

four miles the dead man was carried across the desert to find his

resting-place among the graves of his ancestors, and no tribesman would

have been content to lay him at the village gates, like a Turk or a town

dweller. They carried him to the hills and so performed, as in the days

of the Irzî city, their final service.

Fattûh and Selîm returned after nightfall, and reported the zaptieh

problem to be still unsolved. Even at Abu Kemâl there was but one man,

and we were forced once again to commandeer Muṣṭafâ, who saw himself

dragged further and

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--IRZÎ, TOWER TOMB.]

[Illustration: FIG. 49.--NAOURA OF ’AJMÎYEH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--THE INHABITANTS OF RAWÂ.]

further from his home at Deir. We promised that he should return from

Ḳâyim with ’Abdullah, the zaptieh from Abu Kemâl, and Muṣṭafâ agreed

with alacrity to this arrangement. All zaptiehs of my acquaintance enjoy

travelling, with its contingent advantage of a regular daily fee from

the effendi whom they escort. But neither he nor ’Abdullah knew the way

along the left bank. “We have never heard of any one who wished to go by

this road, wallah!” Moreover, they stood in considerable fear of the

tribes whom we might encounter. I therefore engaged as guide ’Isâ, the

affable, ragged person who had conducted me to Irzî, but since we were

fully loaded with corn, we could not mount him and he marched smilingly

for seven hours through a temperature of 83° in the shade. We rode over

the Irzî bluffs and dropped by a steep and rocky path into the plain on

the farther side, between the hills and the meandering river. To the

right the village of Rabâṭ, with a long stretch of corn, lay near the

water’s edge, and though our path lay only through tamarisk thickets,

traces of numerous irrigation canals showed that the ground must once

have been under cultivation. The plain is known as the Ḳâ’at ed Deleim,

the land of the Deleim, and the tents of that tribe were to be seen on

the banks of the Euphrates. It did not take me long to discover that we

should reach Ḳâyim, or rather the point opposite to it, for it lies on

the right bank, in about five hours from Werdî, and my heart sank to

contemplate another long delay while we crossed and changed zaptiehs;

therefore I refused to go down to the Euphrates and cut straight across

a bend over high stony ground. So it happened that we never went near

Ḳâyim, and the two kidnapped zaptiehs were embarked before they knew it

on the road to ’Anah. We touched the river again seven hours from Werdî,

where we found an encampment of the Jerâif, and since we were completely

ignorant of what lay ahead, we pitched our tents there, opposite an

island which Kiepert calls Ninmala. I found it almost impossible to get

at any names for the numerous islands in these reaches of the Euphrates.

The generic word for them is khawîjeh, and they bear no other title in

the local speech. The Jerâif or Jerîfeh is a tribe which belongs

properly to the right bank, but a few tents had come over on account of

the terrible drought, there being always more pasture in the Jezîreh

than in the Shâmîyeh. They are usually, so ’Isa explained, gôm to his

tribe, the Bu Kemâl, but a truce had recently been patched up and he was

received as hospitably as any of us.

There lies below ’Ânah and to the west of the Euphrates a region of

desert through which few travellers have passed. The track of Chesney’s

journey of 1857 skirts it to the west; Thielmann crossed it nearly forty

years later a little further to the east; Huber, following the Damascus

post-road, touched its northern edge. So said Kiepert, and with this

meagre information as a base I questioned that night the Arabs gathered

round Fattûḥ’s cooking fire as to the north-west corner of the Sasanian

Empire. Among them was an aged man who had been to Nejd, in Central

Arabia, and had brought back thence a bullet which was still lodged in

his cheek; he knew that country, and if I would give him a horse he

would take me to all the castles therein, Khubbâz, ’Amej, Themail,

Kheiḍir....

“Where is Kheiḍir?” said I, for the name was unknown to me or to

Kiepert.

“Beyond Shetâteh,” answered a lean and ragged youth. “I too know it,

wallah!”

“Is it large?” I asked.

“It is a castle,” he replied vaguely, and one after another the men of

the Jerâif chimed in with descriptions of the road. The sum total of the

information offered by them seemed to be that water was scarce and raids

frequent, but there were certainly castles; yes, in the land of Fahd Beg

ibn Hudhdhâl, the great sheikh of the Amarât, there was Kheiḍir. I made

a mental note of the name.

The region which we had now entered is particularly lawless. The

government makes no attempt to control the Bedouin, and according to

their custom they are occupied exclusively in raiding one another and in

harrying the outlying property of the inhabitants of Rawâ, the town

opposite to ’Ânah. In addition to the depredations of the local tribes,

the country is swept by armed bands of the Shammar from far away to the

east, and of the Yezîdis, whom the Mohammadans call Devil Worshippers,

from the Jebel Sinjâr. Accordingly when we asked for a guide, we were

told that there was no one who would come with us alone, lest he should

be attacked on his solitary return by blood enemies from half the world

away. We took with us, therefore, two horsemen, ’Affân, of the sheikhly

house, and Murawwaḥ, the one armed with a rifle and the other with a

rusty sword, and for the better part of the day we discussed the

observance of blood feud. The old man with the bullet in his cheek, who

was on his way to Baghdâd and proposed to travel with us as far as

possible, served as an illustration of the text. It had a purely

objective interest, for in spite of the fears exhibited by the Jerâif,

there was very small risk of our meeting with a foe; the season for

raiding is the summer, but the spring is a close time. ’Affân was

eloquent in describing the long rides across the desert in the burning

heat: “Lady, I have ridden four days with no water but what I could

carry; that was when we bore off cattle and mules from the Jebel

Sinjâr.”

“Eh billah!” asseverated Murawwaḥ, and felt for the hilt of his rusty

sword.

We had not gone far before my mare shied out of the path and there swung

up beside us a jovial personage mounted on a blood camel with his

serving-man clinging behind him. He proved to be a sheikh of the Amarât,

who are a branch of the ’Anazeh, and indeed he was own brother to Fahd

ibn Hudhdhâl. His appearance suited his high birth. He was wrapped in a

gold-bordered cloak, a fine silk kerchief was bound about his head, and

his feet were shod with scarlet leather boots; he was tall and well

liking, as are few but the great sheikhs among the half-fed Bedouin. He

related to me the business which had brought him so far from his own

people. One of the Jerâif had murdered a man of the Amarât, and the two

tribes being on friendly terms, Sheikh Jid’ân (such was his name) had

crossed the river to demand the summary execution of the murderer or the

payment of blood money. He was hunting the man down through the Jerâif

tents.

“Shall you find him?” I asked.

“Eh wah!” he affirmed and laughed over his task.

Him too I questioned concerning Kheiḍir. “Go forward to ’Ânah,” he said,

“and there any man will take you to Kheiḍir. And if you come to my

tents, welcome and kinship.” So we parted.

In thirty-five minutes from the camp we passed the mound of Balîjah with

Arab graves upon it; then for three hours we saw nothing of interest

until we came to the mazâr of Sultan ’Abdullah, a small modern shrine.

Somewhere near it are the ruins of Jabarîyeh, but they must lie closer

to the mazâr than Kiepert would have them. I rode on looking for them

for half-an-hour, and when I questioned ’Affân he replied: “Jebarîyeh?

It is under the mazâr. When you turned away I thought you did not wish

to see those ruins.” It was too hot to go back. We were now opposite

Ḳal’at Râfiḍah, a splendid pile upon the right bank of the Euphrates,

and here we left the caravan with Murawwaḥ to guide it and followed the

course of the river to Ḳal’at Bulâḳ, which the Arabs call Retâjah, an

hour and a quarter’s ride in blazing sun. We found there a small square

fort with round towers at the angles, the whole built of sun-dried

brick. Though it is in complete ruin, I believe it to be modern,

probably a Turkish ḳishlâ, but I saw some fragments of stone and mortar

building which are, at any rate, older than the mud fort, and the site

is so magnificent that it can scarcely have been neglected in ancient

times. The hill on which the ruins stand is all but converted into an

island by an abrupt turn of the river, which washes the precipitous rock

on three sides. The current is gradually undermining the high seat of

Retâjah and the greater part of the older stone building has fallen into

the stream. We had a hard gallop to catch up the caravan, and a long

pull over rocky ground before we sighted the river again, flowing in

wide and tranquil curves under the sunset. On either side the banks were

lined with naouras, the Persian water-wheels. The quiet air was full of

the rumble and grumble of them, a pleasant sound telling of green

fields and clover pastures, but there were no villages or any other sign

of man. As I looked, I knew that we had passed over an unseen frontier;

whether the geographers admitted it or no, this was Babylonia.

We rode down wearily to the first naoura and there threw ourselves from

our horses. The river turned the wheel, the wheel lifted the water, the

water raced down the conduit and spread itself out over a patch of corn

and round the roots of a solitary palm-tree, and all happened as if it

were a part of the processes of nature, like the springing of the palm

tree and the swelling of the ears of corn. But it was nature in

leading-strings, and the lords of creation, in a very unassuming guise,

surged up from a hole in the ground roofed with palm fronds and bade us

welcome to their domain--two men and a little boy who watched over the

crops on behalf of a Rawâ merchant. The place has a name, ’Ajmîyeh, and

a history, if only I could have deciphered it in the cut stones and

fragments of wall which the river slowly washed bare and then washed

away. But the immediate present was of greater importance. Before the

moon was up, supper was spread by the naoura, and the watchmen, the boy,

the Arabs and the old man with the bullet were sharing with my servants

and zaptiehs an ample meal of rice. We had marched ten hours.

In the morning I saw that quantities of pottery were washed out of the

bank together with the stones. Much of it was glazed with black upon the

inside, some was the usual coloured Mohammadan stuff, and there were

pieces of the big pointed jars, unglazed, which belong to every age.

Beyond the corn lay masses of similar potsherds; the river bank must

once have been strewn with small villages. When we had ridden for

half-an-hour we met three horsemen of the Jerâif, and ’Affân declared

that he would return with them to his tents, and as for Murawwaḥ he

might cross with us to ’Ânah and go home along the right bank. I had no

objection to raise, and as Murawwaḥ did not demur to the scheme ’Affân

was allowed to leave us. Murawwaḥ was a small man and a lean, mounted

on a half-starved mare, himself half starved, with naked feet, a ragged

cotton cloak thrown over his head to protect him from the sun, and a

rusty sword by his side to defend him from his enemies. We had struck up

a wordless friendship and now that ’Affân was gone we fell into talk. I

asked him whether he had heard of liberty.

“Eh wah!” he answered, “but we know not what it means.”

“It means to obey a just law,” said I, seeking for some didactic

definition. But Murawwaḥ knew nothing of obedience nor yet of just rule.

The zaptieh ’Abdullah took up my word. “Oh Murawwaḥ,” said he, “when

there is liberty in this land, there will be no more raiding and the

Arabs will serve as soldiers.”

“No wallah!” returned Murawwaḥ firmly.

’Abdullah laughed. “Slowly, slowly,” he said, “the government will lay

hands on the desert, and the Arabs will be brought in, for they are all

thieves.”

Murawwaḥ drew himself up on his hungry mare. “Thieves!” he cried.

“Thieves are dogs. How can you compare the Arabs with them? We will not

bow our heads to any government. To the Arabs belongs command.” And he

slashed the air defiantly with his tamarisk switch as he proclaimed the

liberties of the wilderness, the right of feud, the right of raid, the

right of revenge--the only liberty the desert knows.

Three hours and a half from ’Ajmîyeh we stopped at a naoura, Natârîyeh,

to water our horses, and just beyond it we were overtaken by

half-a-dozen angry men from Rawâ, mounted and carrying rifles. The cause

of their ride and of their anger they were not slow to make known to us.

The watchman at their naoura had sent in word to Rawâ that the Deleim

had come down and were pasturing their mares in the corn. “And we went

to the Ḳâimmaḳâm and asked for soldiers to drive them off, and the

Ḳâimmaḳâm answered, ‘Go ask the Vâlî of Baghdâd, for I have none.’ As

God is exalted! there were but two soldiers in the ḳishlâ of Rawâ. And

we took our rifles and mounted our mares and rode out alone, and all

last night we hunted them through the desert until we were so far from

the river that we dared not go on. We are six men, look you, and the

Deleim are counted by thousands. So we returned, and a curse upon the

government that cannot protect our property, and may all Arabs burn in

hell!”

At this point one of them perceived Murawwaḥ, who was riding in discreet

silence by my side. “Listen, you! dog son of a dog,” he cried. “We lay

out our capital and you take the interest; we sow and you gather the

harvest, yes, without reaping, and we may starve that you and your

accursed brothers may fatten. I have a mind to take you as hostage to

Rawâ and hold you till we get our due.” Murawwaḥ, though for a free

child of the desert he was unfortunately placed between zaptiehs and

angry citizens, was not alarmed by the threat. We had changed parts as

soon as we neared civilization, and he now edged nearer to me, knowing

that he was safe under my protection, but for which he would not have

ventured into Rawâ where there were too many reckonings scored up

against the tribes.

We were not to escape without ourselves taking a lesson in the elements

of raiding. Half-an-hour or so from Natârîyeh, Jûsef came riding up from

the caravan, which was behind us, to ask if we had seen anything of the

donkey, the unrivalled donkey purchased in Aleppo, and to our

consternation we discovered that he was missing. There had been a few

Arabs at Natârîyeh, and while we were engaged in watering the baggage

animals, the donkey had strayed away to make acquaintance with some

low-born Bedouin donkeys and had remained behind. Fattûḥ and ’Abdullah

rode back and speedily found him (he was twice the size of the others),

but his pack saddle and other trappings were gone. Thereupon Fattûḥ,

like the merchants of Rawâ, took the law into his own hands, drove off

an Arab donkey together with our own, and declared that unless the Arabs

restored our property to us that night at ’Ânah he would sell theirs in

the open market and keep the money. Thus it was that we turned raiders

like every one else who lives in the desert. Fattûḥ caught me up two

and a half hours later opposite the island of Ḳarâbileh, where I had

stopped to lunch, and we sent Murawwaḥ back to reclaim the pack saddle,

bidding him join us at ’Ânah. He was exceedingly loth to obey this

order, saying that he dared not enter ’Ânah alone, and I never expected

to see him again, in spite of the fact that he had not received his

bakhshîsh. In another twenty minutes we were riding through the fruit

gardens and palm groves of Rawâ--the fruit-trees were all in flower, a

delectable sight for travellers in the wilderness. While the ferry-boats

were being brought up I climbed the hill to the modern citadel (Rawâ, so

far as I am aware, has no ancient history) and thence looked down upon

the long thin line of ’Ânah, houses and palm-trees folded between the

hills and the river, and afar the island that was ancient Anatho,

floating upon the broad waters. The population of Rawâ swarmed up the

hill after me, watching my every movement with strained attention, and

before we were fairly embarked I registered a vow that no caravan of

mine should ever again pass through the town, so exasperating it is to

find two hundred people in your path whichever way you would turn (Fig.

50). When once we had crossed the river we fell into a merciful

obscurity; the post-road runs through ’Ânah, and it matters not a para

to anybody but the khânjî whether one European more or less comes down

it. The khânjî, a friend of Fattûḥ’s, was unfeignedly glad to see us,

and his khân looked good, but better still the patch of ground behind

that stretched down to the water’s edge. Here with the consent of mine

host we pitched our tents, in full view of an exquisite little island,

green with corn and shaded by palm-trees; and whatever love you bear the

desert there can be no doubt that green growing things are pleasant to

the eye, and that the spirit rests comfortably upon the assurance that a

good dinner, not tinned curry, will shortly be forthcoming. Just as it

was ready, behold Murawwaḥ, obedient to the call of hunger--minus his

sword indeed, for he had left it in pawn to the ferryman, but bringing

with him the owner of the donkey we stole, together with the goods that

had been stolen from us. And every one came to his own again. But the

episode has never faded from Fattûḥ’s memory, and in the hour of

reminiscence he is wont to say, “Your Excellency remembers how we raided

the Arabs? May God be exalted! We have travelled much in the desert, and

the only raid we ever saw was one of our own making.”

There was another arrival at our camp that night. Late in the evening

Jûsef inquired whether I would receive a soldier, and thinking it was

to-morrow’s zaptieh, I consented. A grizzled man appeared at the tent

door and sat down on his heels.

“Peace be upon you,” said he.

“And upon you peace,” I answered.

“Effendim,” he said, “I am a man advancing in years.” He made the

gesture of one who strokes a venerable beard, although his chin was

bare. “And for long I have prayed for a son. Praise be to God, this

night God has granted my request.”

“Praise be to God,” said I.

“God give you the reward,” he rejoined. “Effendim, in honour of this

exceptional occasion, will you kindly help with the expenses?”

Now it happened somewhere about the year 1300 B.C. that Hattusil, King

of the Hittites, wrote to the King of Babylon, and among other matters

of international interest, he observed that the reason for the

interruption of diplomatic relations with the court of Babylonia was the

uncertainty of travel caused by the movements of the Bedouin. No other

consideration, he said, should have prevented him from dispatching his

ambassador to the son of so excellent a father. The conditions described

in Hattusil’s letter hold good until to-day. The Bedouin are still

masters of the desert road, and established order is helpless before the

lawless independence of the tribes. The truth is that nomad life and

civilization are incompatible terms: the peaceful cultivator and the

merchant cannot exist side by side with the sheikh, and either the

settled population must drive the Bedouin from out their borders, or the

Bedouin will put progress and the accumulation of wealth beyond the

power of the most industrious. Until we drew near to ’Ânah, our road

had led us through regions which the Arabs hold in undisturbed

possession. No caravans pass down the east bank of the Euphrates; no

towns are built there; save for the spasmodic labours of the half

settled tribes, no fields are cultivated. But with the first naoura of

the Rawâ townsmen the conditions were altered, and when we crossed the

river we plunged into the struggle that has been waged for all time

between the nomad and the State. For four days we followed the high road

to Baghdâd--unwillingly enough, since I was ever looking for a door into

the Syrian desert--and I had opportunity to study the oldest problem of

government.

The town of ’Ânah has been lengthening steadily ever since the sixteenth

century, for Rauwolff says that it is one hour long, and della Valle

two, and I know that it is three. But it was and remains a single street

wide, a Babylonish mud-built thoroughfare, green with palms, murmurous

with naouras and lapped by the swift current of the Euphrates (Fig. 51).

From the hilltop of Rawâ I had already caught sight of the only vestiges

of antiquity that ’Ânah can boast, the ruined castle and tall minaret

upon the island of Lubbâd at the lower end of the town. Here stood the

fortress which, “like many others in that country, is surrounded by the

Euphrates.”[62] Julian, seeing the difficulties of a siege, came to

terms with the inhabitants, who surrendered to him and were treated with

all kindness. But the fortress he burnt. I was determined not to leave

’Ânah without visiting the island, and having settled with Fattûḥ the

length of the day’s march, I left him to buy provisions and load the

caravan, and rode down to a ferry opposite the island. The boat was

commonly used to transport stones from the castle, and when we arrived

it was in course of being loaded on the other side. Much shouting at

length attracted the attention of the ferryman, and we went into a

neighbouring coffee-house to await his coming. A party of citizens had

gathered together over the morning cup; we joined the circle and shared

in the coffee and the

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--’ÂNAH FROM THE ISLAND OF LUBBÂD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--’ÂNAH, A FISHERMAN.]

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--HÎT, PITCH-SPRING.]

talk. The men in the coffee-house entertained no hope that the

constitutional or any other government would succeed in establishing

order.

“Ever since the days of the Benî Ghassân,” said one (and I could have

added “ever since the days of the Hittites”), “the Arabs have ravaged

the land, and who shall stop them? The government does nothing and we

can do nothing. We have no power and all of us are poor.”

“In the last six years,” said another, “we have had fourteen Ḳâimmaḳâms

at ’Ânah. Not one of these gave a thought to the prosperity of the town,

but he extorted what money he could before he was removed.”

“There is a new Ḳâimmaḳâm on his way here,” I observed.

“True,” he replied. “When the telegram came last summer telling of

liberty and equality, the people assembled before the serâyah, the

government house, and bade the Ḳâimmaḳâm begone, for they would govern

themselves. Thereat came orders from Baghdâd that the people must be

dispersed; and the soldiers fired upon them, killing six men. And we do

not know what the telegram about liberty and brotherhood can have meant,

but at least the Ḳâimmaḳâm was dismissed.”

My zaptieh broke in here. “Effendim,” said he, “it fell out once that I

was in Bombay--yes, I was sent from Baṣrah with horses for one of the

kings of India. And there I saw a poor man whose passport had been

stolen from him, and he carried his complaint to the judge. Now the

judge was of the English, and he fined the thief and cut off two of his

fingers. That is government; in India the poor are protected.”

“Allah!” said one of the coffee-drinkers in undisguised admiration.

I knew better than to question the validity of the anecdote, and, with

what modesty I could assume, I accepted the credit that accrued from it.

“But even the English,” pursued another, “cannot hold the tribes.

Effendim, have the Afghans submitted to you? Wallah, no.”

He had laid his finger upon a knotty point, and I took up the question

from a different side.

“Have not you men of ’Ânah sent a deputy to the mejlis?” I asked.

“Eh wallah!” they answered.

“Let him make known in Constantinople the evils under which you suffer,

that the government may seek for a remedy.”

The suggestion was received in silent perplexity.

“For what purpose did you pay the deputy to go to Stambûl?” I pursued.

“The order came,” replied one of my interlocutors. “We do not know why

the deputy was sent. Doubtless he has his own business in Stambûl and he

is not concerned with ’Ânah.”

“His business is yours,” I said; “and if he will not see to it, at the

next election you must choose a better man.”

“Will there be another election?” said they, and I found all ’Ânah to be

under the impression that their representative held a life appointment.

The island is a little paradise of fruit-trees, palms and corn, in the

middle of which is a village of some thirty houses built in the

heaped-up ruins of the castle. From among the houses springs a tall and

beautiful minaret, octagonal in plan (Fig. 56). Its height is broken by

eight rows of niches, each face of the octagon bearing in alternate

storeys a double and single niche, all terminating in the cusped arch

which is employed at Raḳḳah. Some of the niches are pierced with windows

to light the winding stair. The tower rises yet another two storeys, but

the upper part is of narrower diameter, and the windows and niches are

covered with plain round arches. At the northern end of the island the

walls and round bastions of the fortress stand in part, but they are not

very ancient. Ibn Khurdâdhbeh, who is the first of the Mohammadan

geographers to mention ’Ânah, says only that it is a small town on an

island;[63] in Abu’l Fidâ’s time it was still confined to the

island;[64] Rauwolff (1564) notices the town on the island and the town

on the right bank;[65] Yâḳût (1225) speaks of the castle, but the walls

which I saw cannot be as old as his day. The minaret may belong to a

different period, and de Beylié places it in the earliest centuries of

Islâm.[66] I think that there was probably a fortress on the island long

before the first written record which has come down to us, but I was

close upon a generation too late to see the remains of it. From two

informants in ’Ânah I heard that there had been big stone slabs at the

northern end of the island “with figures of men upon them and a writing

like nails,” but they had fallen into the water within the memory of the

older inhabitants and had been washed away or covered by the stream.

This tale of cuneiform inscriptions would not in itself be worth much,

but while I was examining the minaret, a villager brought me a fragment

of stone covered with carving in relief which was unmistakably Assyrian.

I asked him whence it came, and he replied that it had formed part of a

big stone picture which had fallen into the river. I bought from him a

broken bowl inscribed with Jewish incantations of the well-known

type.[67]

The island was once connected with both banks by bridges. There are some

traces of the section that led across to the Jezîreh, and many piers of

the Shâmîyeh bridge stand in the river. Though these piers no longer

serve the purpose for which they were intended, they are still put to

use, for the inhabitants of the island spread nets between them, and the

fish swimming down with the current are entangled in the meshes and so

caught (Fig. 52). We pulled up one of the nets as we passed, and it

produced two large fish which I bought for a few pence. It is curious

that the Bedouin neglect the ample supply of food with which the river

would furnish them; in spite of frequent inquiries we had never found

fish in their tents.

Just below the houses of ’Ânah on the Shâmîyeh bank there were mounds

by the river from which, said my zaptieh, the people get antîcas after

rain, and sometimes small gold ornaments are washed out of them. On the

opposite bank I could see ruins for a distance of an hour’s ride from

’Ânah; they ended at a big mound called Tell Abu Thor, which appeared to

be a natural outcrop of the rock, though there were many small,

seemingly artificial, mounds about it.[68] An hour and a half from ’Ânah

we passed another rocky hill, also called Tell Abu Thor, but I could see

no traces of ruins round it. From the summit of the tell there was a

fine view of the little fortified island of Tilbês, the island castle of

Thilutha, whose inhabitants refused to surrender to Julian. I could see

the bastions of masonry on the upper end of the island, together with

the ruins of a castle on the Jezîreh bank, and if there had been any

possibility of crossing the river I should have gone down to it; but

there was no ferry nearer than ’Ânah. I did not follow the winding

course of the Euphrates from ’Ânah to Hît. Many of the ruins marked in

Chesney’s map deserve a careful survey, but my mind was now set upon

another matter, and we rode on from stage to stage hoping each day that

the next would provide us with a guide into the western desert. My

zaptieh, Muḥammad, lent a sympathetic ear to the scheme which I

developed to him as we rode. The arm of the law, weak enough on the

Euphrates, does not reach into the wilderness, and his duties had taken

him but a little way west of the road; the main difficulty to be

encountered was the lack of water, a difficulty much enhanced by the

drought.

“God send us rain!” he sighed. “Effendim, at this time of the year I am

used to stay my mare at such places as these” (he pointed to the hollows

in the barren ground), “and while I smoke a cigarette she will have

eaten her fill of grass. But this year there is no spring herbage, and

in the season of the rains, forty days have passed without rain. All the

waterpools in the Shâmîyeh are exhausted, and the Arabs are crossing to

the Jezîreh lest they die, for their flocks can give no milk.”

Presently we met a train of thirsty immigrants driving their goats to

the Euphrates. Muḥammad called to them and asked if they would give us a

cup of leben, sour milk. A half-starved girl shouted back in answer:

“If we had leben we should not be crossing to the Jezîreh.”

“God help you! ” cried Muḥammad. “Cross in the peace of God.”

A little further we passed through a number of newly-made graves,

scattered thickly on either side of the road. “They are graves of the

Deleim,” said Muḥammad. “A year ago a bitter quarrel arose within the

tribe, and here they fought together and seventy men were slain. They

buried them where they fell, the one party on one side of the road, and

the other on the other side.”

We travelled fast and in five hours from ’Ânah came down to the river at

Fḥemeh, where we found our tents pitched near a ḳishlâ. The guardhouse

is the only building here, the village of Fḥemeh being in the Jezîreh

about half-an-hour up stream. About the same distance lower down lies

the island of Kuro, which is perhaps Julian’s Akhaya Kala, but I saw it

only from afar and do not know whether there are still ruins upon it. We

had parted at ’Ânah from Cyrus and from Julian; they marched with their

armies down the Jezîreh bank, and our road lost much of its charm in

losing the shadowy pageants of their advance.

We were tormented during the next three days by an intolerable east

wind. It blew from sunrise to sunset, and, for aught we could tell, it

might have issued from the mouth of a furnace, so scorching was its

dust-laden breath. I heard of ruins at Sûs, a place where the Jerâif own

cornfields; but it lay at the head of a peninsula formed by a great bend

of the stream, and I had no heart to go so far out of the way.[69] We

reached Ḥadîthah in six hours from Fḥemeh and camped there, partly

because we were weary of the wind and dust, and partly because Muḥammad

had advised me to seek there for a guide into the desert. The nearer we

came to that adventure, the more formidable did it appear, and I was

beginning to realize that it would be folly to take a caravan across the

parched and stony waste, and to revolve plans for sending the muleteers

to Kerbelâ and taking only Fattûḥ with me to Kheiḍir. At Ḥadîthah we met

an aged corporal, who declared that nothing would be easier than to go

straight thence to Ḳaṣr ’Amej, and for water we should find every night

a pool of winter rain. He had crossed the desert two years ago and there

had been no lack of water.

“But this year there has been no rain,” I objected; “and all the Arabs

are coming down to the river because of the great drought. Where, then,

shall we find the pools?”

“God knows,” he answered piously, and I put an end to the discussion and

turned my attention to the ruins of Ḥadîthah.

The village, like all the villages in these parts, lies mainly upon an

island, though a small modern suburb has sprung up upon the right bank.

At the upper end of the island are the ruins of a castle, not unlike the

ruins at ’Ânah. A bridge had been thrown over both arms of the river,

and a straight causeway across the island had connected the two parts.

Needless to say, the bridge has fallen. Still more remarkable, and quite

unexpected, was a large area of ruins some way inland on the Shâmîyeh

side, hidden from the river village by a ridge of high ground. It must

have been the site of a big town. In one place I saw four columns lying

upon the ground, no doubt pre-Mohammadan, though upon one of them were

four lines of a much-defaced Arabic inscription of which I could read

only a few words.[70] Nearer to the river, and visible from it, are a

number of small mazârs, remarkable only because their pointed dome-like

roofs show the same construction that is to be seen in the famous tomb

of the Sitt Zobeideh at Baghdâd.

From ’Ânah the river landscape is exceedingly monotonous: a few naouras

and a patch or two of cultivation, each with its farmhouse, a small

domestic mud fortress with a tower; an occasional village set in a grove

of palm-trees on an island in midstream. The houses were of sun-dried

brick, the walls sloping slightly inwards, and crowned with a low mud

battlement--line for line a copy of their prototypes on the Assyrian

reliefs. This world, which was already sufficiently dreary, was rendered

unspeakably hideous by the east wind. River, sky and mud-built houses

showed the universal dun colour of the desert, and even the palm-trees

turned a sickly hue, their fronds dishevelled by the blast and steeped

in dust.

An hour and a half from Ḥadîthah we crossed the Wâdî Ḥajlân, in which

there is a brackish spring. Just opposite its mouth are the remains of a

castle on an island, Abu Sa’îd, but the greater part of the island, and

with it the castle, has been carried away by the stream. Below it is the

palm-covered island of Berwân. Twenty minutes further we passed over a

dry valley, Wâdî Fâḍîyeh, where I left the high road and crossed the

desert to Alûs, which we reached in an hour and forty minutes. Kiepert,

following Chesney, calls it Al’ Uzz, but I doubt whether this spelling

can be justified; the Arab geographers knew it as Alûs or Alûsah, and

the name has not changed until this day. The village stands on an

island, but there is also a ruined castle on the right bank of the

river. We rode straight from Alûs to Jibbeh in two hours, though the

zaptiehs reckon it three for a caravan. There was nothing to encourage

us to loiter, inasmuch as our path lay over a horrible wilderness,

stony, waterless and devoid of any growing thing. Rather more than

half-way across we came to the ’Uglet Ḥaurân, a valley which is said to

have its source in the Ḥaurân mountains south of Damascus. At the point

where we crossed it, it was dry, but my zaptieh told me that there were

springs higher up and that in wet years the water will flow down it from

the Ḥaurân to the Euphrates. The wind was so strong that I could not row

over to the village which stands on the island of Jibbeh, though I was

tempted by the tall round minaret that rises from among the palm-trees.

As far as I could see through my glasses, it bears an inscription on its

summit and a brick dog-tooth cornice. On the Jezîreh bank there is a

large and well-preserved fortress. We reached the solitary khân of

Baghdâdî a few minutes later; the caravan was there before us, having

accomplished what is reckoned to be a nine-hours’ stage in eight hours

sixteen minutes. The village of Baghdâdî is an hour’s march lower down,

and the khân by which we camped was only four months old; “Before that,”

said Fattûḥ, “we used to sleep under the sky, and there was no one but

us and the jackals.” I had heard that Fadh Beg Ibn Hudhdhâl had a garden

at Baghdâdî, and I cherished a hope that we might meet there one of his

family who would help us on the way to Kheiḍir; but when we passed by

the garden a solitary negro was in charge, and as the palms were not yet

three feet high, I could not blame Fadh Beg for not having elected to

dwell among them. There was nothing to be done but to ride on to

Hît.[71]

From Baghdâdî the road climbs up into the barren hills. It is no better

than a staircase cut out of the rock, and Fattûḥ admitted that carriage

driving is not an easy matter here. He added that the stage from

Baghdâdî to Hît is less secure than any other, by reason of its being

infested by the Deleim who exact a toll from unguarded caravans. We had

found two zaptiehs at the khân and had taken one on with us when we sent

the Ḥadîthah man back, leaving the khân protected by a single zaptieh,

so limited is the number of soldiers posted along the road. If you are

not a person of sufficient consequence to claim an escort, you must wait

until a body of travellers shall have collected at Baghdâd or Aleppo, as

the case may be, and set forth in their company, since it is not safe

to venture singly over the Sultan’s highroad. We met that morning a

large caravan of people driving, riding in panniers, and walking. No

matter what their degree, all wore the singularly abandoned aspect to

which only the Oriental on a journey can attain, and the shapelessness

of their baggage enhanced their personal disqualifications. About

half-an-hour after the caravan had passed, we came upon five or six

ragged peasants, who stopped us and lifted their voices in lamentation.

They had been held up by five Deleimîs in the valley below; their cloaks

had been taken from them, and the bread that was to have sufficed them

till they reached ’Ânah: “We are poor men,” they wailed. “God curse

those who rob the poor!”

“God curse all the Deleim!” cried Fattûḥ. “Why did you linger behind the

caravan in this part of the road?”

“We were weary and one of us had fallen lame,” they explained. “But have

a care when you reach the valley bottom; five men with rifles are

lurking among the sand-hills.”

Their tale filled me with a futile anger, so that I desired nothing so

much as to catch and punish the thieves, and without waiting to consider

whether this lay within our power, I galloped on in the direction

indicated by the peasants, with Fattûḥ, Jûsef and the zaptiehs at my

heels. We were all armed and had nothing to fear from five robbers. The

valley was a sandy depression with a sulphur stream running through it.

We searched the sand-hills without success, but when we came down to the

Euphrates, there were five armed men strolling unconcernedly along the

bank as though they would take the air. Now, you do not wander with a

rifle in your hand in unfrequented parts of the Euphrates’ bank for any

good purpose, and we were persuaded that these black-browed Arabs were

the five we sought. Probably they had intended to reap a larger harvest,

but finding the caravan too numerous they had contented themselves with

the stragglers. Unfortunately we had no proof against them: the bread

was eaten and the cloaks secreted among the stones, and though we spent

some minutes in heaping curses upon them, we could take no steps of a

more practical kind. The zaptieh, for his part, was in an agony of

nervous anxiety lest we should propose to relieve them of their rifles.

He looked forward to a return journey alone to Baghdâdî, and it is not

good for a solitary man to have an outstanding quarrel with the Deleim.

Finally I realized that we were wasting breath in useless bluster and

called Fattûḥ away. If we were to concern ourselves with the catching of

thieves, we might as well abandon all other pursuits in Turkey.

The town of Hît stands upon an ancient mound washed by the Euphrates

(Fig. 54). Among the palm-trees at the river’s edge rise columns of inky

smoke from the primitive furnaces of the asphalt burners, for the place

is surrounded by wells of bitumen, famous ever since the days when

Babylon was a great city.[72] Heaps of rubbish and cinders strew the

sulphur marshes to the north of the town, and a blinding dust-storm was

stirring up the whole devil’s cauldron when we arrived. It was

impossible to camp and we took refuge in the khân, where we were so

fortunate as to meet with an English traveller on his way back from

India, the first European whom I had seen since we left Aleppo. The

dust-storm rose yet higher towards evening, and though we closed the

shutters of the khân--there was no glass in the windows--the sand blew

in merrily through the chinks, and we ate a gritty supper in a

temperature of ninety-three degrees.

Hît was the last possible starting-point for the Syrian desert, and no

sooner had we arrived than I summoned Fattûḥ and presented him with an

ultimatum. We had failed to get any but the most contradictory reports

of wells upon the road to Kheiḍir and I would not expose the caravan to

such uncertain chances, but if we went alone we could carry enough water

for our needs. It only remained to dispatch

[Illustration: FIG. 54.--HÎT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 55.--HÎT, THE SULPHUR MARSHES.]

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--MINARET ON ISLAND OF LUBBÂD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--MINARET AT MA’MÛREH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 59.--MADLÛBEH.]

the muleteers along the highway and to find a guide for ourselves.

“Upon my head!” said Fattûḥ blandly. “Three guides wish to accompany

your Excellency.”

“Praise be to God,” said I. “Bid them enter.”

“It would be well to see each separately,” observed Fattûḥ, “for they do

not love one another.”

We interviewed them one by one, with an elaborate show of secrecy, and

each in turn spent his time in warning us against the other two. Upon

these negative credentials I had to come to a decision, and I made my

choice feeling that I might as logically have tossed up a piastre. It

fell upon a man of the Deleim, a tribe to whom we were not well

disposed, but since the country through which we were to pass was mainly

occupied by their tents, it seemed wiser to take a guide who claimed

cousinship with their sheikhs. He was to find an escort of five armed

horsemen and to bring us to Kheiḍir in return for a handsome reward, but

we undertook to engage our own baggage camels. One of the drawbacks to

this arrangement was that no camels were to be got at Hît, and I felt

the more persuaded that we had struck a bad bargain when Nâif came back

and said:

“How do I know that you will keep your word? Perhaps to-morrow you will

choose another guide.”

“The English have but one word,” said I; it is a principle that should

never be abandoned in the East. We struck hands upon it and Nâif left us

“in the peace of God.”

Fattûḥ needed a day to complete his preparations, and I to see the pitch

wells of Hît which lie some distance from the town. I did not see them

all, but from the accounts I heard they would appear to be five in

number. The largest is called the Marj (the Meadow); it is an hour and a

quarter north-east of Hît and is said to be inexhaustible. The pitch is

better in quality here than elsewhere, and the peasants can, when they

choose, get 2,000 donkey-loads from it daily. The next in importance is

at Ma’mûreh, but it is not worked. The pitch flows out over the desert

and dries into an asphalt pavement about half-a-mile square. Further

south is a small spring, Lteif, from which they get twenty loads a day,

and near the town there is a fourth well which yields fifty loads a day

(Fig. 53). The fifth well is on the other side of the Euphrates, at

’Atâ’ut; the average yield from it is twenty loads a day.

Near the asphalt beds of Ma’mûreh, about an hour south-west of Hît, lie

the ruins of a village clustered round a minaret (Fig. 57). All the

buildings were constructed of small unsquared stones set in mortar; the

minaret was plastered on the outside and seemed to have been built of

large blocks of stone and mortar, firmly welded together before they had

been placed in position. The round tower, narrowing upwards and

decorated at the top with a zigzag ornament, was placed upon a low

octagonal structure which in turn rested upon a square base (Fig. 58). I

climbed the winding stair that I might survey the country through which

Nâif was to take us. It was incredibly desolate, empty of tent or

village save where to the west the palm-groves of Kebeisah made a black

splash upon the glaring earth. The heavy smoke of the pitch fires hung

round Hît, and the sulphur marshes shone leprous under the sun--a

malignant landscape that could not be redeemed by the little shrines

which were scattered like propitiatory invocations among the gleaming

salts.

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--MA’MÛREH, MINARET.]

About a mile from Ma’mûreh there is a still more remarkable ruin known

as Madlûbeh. It is a large, irregularly shaped area marked off from the

desert by heaps of stones half buried in sand. Standing among these

heaps, and no doubt in their original position, there are a number of

large monolithic slabs placed as if they were intended to form a wall

(Fig. 59). Many of these must have fallen and been covered with the sand

if the enclosure were at any time continuous, and perhaps the heaps are

composed partly of buried slabs. Two stand in line with a narrow space

between like a door (one of them was 5 m. long × 1·3 m. thick, and it

stood 2 m. out of the ground); in another there was a small rectangular

cutting that suggested a window-hole on the upper edge (it was 10 m.

long × 1·3 m. thick, and stood about 3 m. out of the ground). The stones

were carefully dressed on all sides. They may have formed the lower part

of a wall of which the upper part was of sun-dried brick or rubble, but

at what age they were placed in those wilds a cursory survey would not

reveal.

When I returned to the khân, Fattûḥ greeted me with the intelligence

that the Deleimî had broken his engagement. Nâif admitted that for

ordinary risks the money we had offered would have been sufficient, but

Kheiḍir lay in the land of his blood enemies, the Benî Ḥassan, and he

would not go. Perhaps he hoped to force us to a more liberal proposal,

but in this he was disappointed. A bargain is a bargain, and we fell

back upon my boast that the English have but one word. In this dilemma

Fattûḥ suggested that he should see what could be done with the Mudîr,

and having a lively confidence in Fattûḥ’s diplomacy, I entrusted him

with my passports and papers, of which I kept a varied store, and gave

him plenipotentiary powers. He returned triumphant.

“Effendim,” said he, “that Mudîr is a man.” This is ever the highest

praise that Fattûḥ can bestow, and my experience does not lead me to

cavil at it. “When he had read your buyuruldehs he laid them upon his

forehead and said, ‘It is my duty to do all that the effendi wishes.’ I

told him,” interpolated Fattûḥ, “that you were a consul in your own

country. He will give you a zaptieh to take you to Kebeisah, and if you

command, the zaptieh shall go with you to Ḳal’at Khubbâz, returning

afterwards to Hît. And it cannot be that we shall fail to find a guide

and camels at Kebeisah, which is a palm-grove in the desert; for all the

dwellers in it know the way to Kheiḍir. As for the caravan, another

zaptieh will take it to Baghdâd.”

“Aferîn!” said I. “There is none like you, oh Fattûḥ.”

“God forbid!” replied Fattûḥ modestly. “And now,” he proceeded, “let me

bring your Excellency an omelet, for I am sure that you must be hungry.”

But I understood this exaggerated solicitude to be no more than a covert

slur upon the culinary powers of Mr. X.’s servant, who had provided us

with an abundant lunch during Fattûḥ’s absence, and not even so

voracious a consul as I could face a second meal. Fattûḥ retired in some

displeasure to inform the muleteers that they would journey to Baghdâd

and Kerbelâ and there rejoin us, please God.

We explored the village of Hît before nightfall, and a more malodorous

little dirty spot I hope I may never see. “Why,” says the poet,

concerning some unknown wayfarer, “did he not halt that night at Hît?”

and it is strange that Ibn Khurdâdhbeh, who quotes the question, should

have been at a loss for the answer. Possibly he had no personal

knowledge of Hît. On the top of the hill there is a round minaret,

similar in construction to the minaret of Ma’mûreh, but I saw no other

feature of interest. The sun was setting as we came down to the

palm-groves by the river. The fires under the troughs of molten bitumen

sent up their black smoke columns between the trees (Fig. 60);

half-naked Arabs fed the flames with the same bitumen, and the Euphrates

bore along the product of their labours as it had done for the

Babylonians before them. So it must have looked, this strange factory

under the palm-trees, for the last 5,000 years, and all the generations

of Hît have not altered by a shade the processes taught them by their

first forefathers.

THE PARTHIAN STATIONS OF ISIDORUS OF CHARAX

The only modern record of the road along the left bank of the Euphrates

from Raḳḳah to Deir is the rather meagre account given by Sachau; Moritz

travelled down the left bank from Deir to Buseirah, but I know of no

published description of the road from Buseirah to ’Ânah. It has not

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--HÎT, THE BITUMEN FURNACES.]

[Illustration: FIG. 61.--THE EUPHRATES AT HÎT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 62.--THE WELL AT KEBEISAH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 63.--’AIN ZA’ZU.]

therefore been possible hitherto to attempt to place in any continuous

sequence the sites given by ancient authorities. Of these the fullest

list is that of the Parthian stations furnished by Isidorus of Charax

(_Geographi Græci Minores_, ed. by Müller, Vol. I. p. 244). It begins

with the fixed point of Nicephorium (Raḳḳah) and ends with another fixed

point, that of Anatho (’Ânah). Between these two lies Nabagath on the

Aburas. The Aburas may safely be assumed to indicate the Khâbûr, and

Nabagath is therefore Circesium-Buseirah. The following comparative

table shows my suggestions for the remaining stations, combined with

those which have already been made by Ritter and others. The times given

are the rate of travel of my caravan; between Raḳḳah and Deir I had the

advantage of comparing them with Sachau’s time-table. No two caravans

travel over any given distance at exactly the same pace, but the general

average works out without any grave discrepancy. I have often tried to

reckon the speed at which my caravan travels and have come to the

conclusion that it is very little under three miles an hour, say about

two and seven-eighths miles an hour. Isidorus computes his distances by

the schœnus. According to Moritz 1 schœnus = 5·5 kilometres. From

Buseirah to ’Ânah I travelled over Isidorus’s road at the rate of 1

schœnus in 1 hr. 7 min., which would bring the schœnus down to 5·166

kilometres. The section from Raḳḳah to Buseirah is not so easy to

calculate because Isidorus has in two places omitted to give the exact

distance between the stations, but my rate of travel was not far

different here from that noted in the other sections. So much for the

average. The individual distances do not tally so exactly, and in

attempting to determine the sites, the evidence that can be gathered

from the country itself seems to me to weigh heavier in the scale than

the measurements given by Isidorus, especially as his inexactitude is

proved by the fact that the sum of the distances he allows from station

to station do not coincide with the total distances, from the Zeugma

(Birejik) to Seleucia, and from Phaliga to Seleucia, as he states them.

In both cases the sum of the small distances comes to a larger figure

than that which he allows for the totals--

Zeugma to Seleucia 171 sch.

total of distances between stations 174 sch., without the two omitted by

him.

Phaliga to Seleucia 100 sch.

total of distances between stations 120 sch. without one omitted by him.

As regards the second section, Kiepert believed that a copyist’s error

of 10 sch. too much had been made in Isidorus’s table between

Izannesopolis and Aeipolis (the modern Hît), but even this correction

will not bring the totals together (Ritter, Vol. XI. p. 738). The road

from the Zeugma to Nicephorium does not follow the river, and I am

therefore unable to control the statements of Isidorus above Raḳḳah; nor

do I know the section between Hît and Seleucia. I need scarcely say that

my table is of the most tentative character; it begins with the ninth

station of Isidorus, Nicephorium.

* * * * *

The first remarkable site which I saw on the river below Raḳḳah was the

large area surrounded by a ditch, half-an-hour above my camping-ground.

Isidorus’s tenth station from Zeugma is Galabatha. Ritter (Vol. XI. p.

687) observes that it must be above Abu Sa’îd, and the area enclosed by

the ditch fulfils that condition. The eleventh station is Khubana which

I put at Abu Sa’îd, where there are fragments of columns and other

evidences of antiquity. The twelfth station is Thillada Mirrhada; I have

placed it at Khmeiḍah (squared stones, brick walls, a broken

sarcophagus), but the claims of Abu ’Atîḳ are considerable, the extent

of the ruin field at the latter place being much larger than at

Khmeiḍah. But Abu ’Atîḳ is 7 hrs. 5 min. from Abu Sa’îd, and the caravan

time between Khmeiḍah and Abu Sa’îd (6 hrs. 5 min.) is already rather

long for the 4 sch. allowed by Isidorus. The thirteenth station is

Basilia with Semiramidis Fossa. Ritter long ago pointed to the

probability of its having been situated at Zelebîyeh (Vol. XI. p. 687).

-----------------------------+-----------+---------------+-------

Isidorus | | |

--------------+--------------+ Schœni | Modern Sites | Time

Stations | Description | | |

--------------+--------------+-----------+---------------+-------

| | | | hrs.

| | | | min.

--------------+--------------+-----------+---------------+-------

9. | Greek town | -- | Raḳḳah | --

Nicephorium | founded by | | |

| Alexander | | |

10. | Deserted | 4 | Ditch | 6 15

Galabatha | village | | |

11. Khubana | Village | 1 | Abu Sa’îd | 1 30

12. | | | |

Thillada | Royal | 4 | Khmeiḍah | 6 5

Mirrhada | station | | |

13. Basilia | Temple of | | |

| Artemis | ? | Zelebîyeh | 3 40

| built by | | |

| Darius, | | |

| village | | |

| surrounded | | |

| by wall | | |

Semiramidis | Euphrates | | |

Fossa | dam | | |

14. Allan | Walled | 4 | Umm Rejeibah | 3

| village | | |

15. Biunan | Temple of | 4 | Near Deir | 6

| Artemis | | |

16. Phaliga | Village | 6 | ? | --

17. | Walled | Near | |

Nabagath | village on | Phaliga | Buseirah | 7

| Aburas | | |

18. Asikha | Village | 4 | Jemmah | 5 10

19. Dura | Town founded | 6 | Abu’l | 8 20

Nicanoris | by | | Ḥassan |

| Macedonians, | | |

| called | | |

| Europus by | | |

| Greeks | | |

20. Merrhan | Castle and | 5 | Irzî | 6 30

| walled | | |

| village | | |

21. Giddan | Town | 5 | Jabarîyeh? | --

22. | -- | 7 | Ḳal’at | 9 25

Belisibiblada | | | Bulâḳ |

23. Island | -- | 6 | Ḳarâbileh? | --

24. Anatho | Island | 4 | Lubbâd, | 11 50

| | | island |

| | | opposite |

| | | ’Ânah |

25. Olabus | Island, | 12 | Ḥadîthah | 12

| Parthian | | |

| treasure- | | |

| house | | |

26. | -- | 12 | Chesney’s | --

Izannesopolis | | | Ḳaṣr |

| | | |

27. Aeipolis | Bitumen | 16 | Hît | 17 30

| wells | (6?) | |

-----------------------------+-------------+-------------+

Isidorus | | |

--------------+--------------| Xenophon | Pliny |

Stations | Description | | |

--------------+--------------+-------------+-------------+

| | | |

| | | |

--------------+--------------+-------------+-------------+

9. | Greek town | -- | Nicephorium

Nicephorium | founded by | | |

| Alexander | | |

10. | Deserted | -- | -- |

Galabatha | village | | |

11. Khubana | Village | -- | -- |

12. | | | |

Thillada | Royal | -- | --

Mirrhada | station | | |

13. Basilia | Temple of | | |

| Artemis | -- | -- |

| built by | | |

| Darius, | | |

| village | | |

| surrounded | | |

| by wall | | |

Semiramidis | Euphrates | | |

Fossa | dam | | |

14. Allan | Walled | -- | -- |

| village | | |

15. Biunan | Temple of | -- | -- |

| Artemis | | |

16. Phaliga | Village | -- | Phaliscum |

17. | Walled | | |

Nabagath | village on | Villages | -- |

| Aburas | on Araxes | |

18. Asikha | Village | -- | -- |

19. Dura | Town founded | -- | -- |

Nicanoris | by | | |

| Macedonians, | | |

| called | | |

| Europus by | | |

| Greeks | | |

20. Merrhan | Castle and | Corsote | -- |

| walled | | |

| village | | |

21. Giddan | Town | -- | -- |

22. | -- | -- | -- |

Belisibiblada | | | |

23. Island | -- | -- | -- |

24. Anatho | Island | -- | -- |

| | | |

| | | |

| | | |

25. Olabus | Island, | -- | -- |

| Parthian | | |

| treasure- | | |

| house | | |

26. | -- | -- | -- |

Izannesopolis | | | |

| | | |

27. Aeipolis | Bitumen | -- | -- |

| wells | | |

-----------------------------------------+-------------+---------+-----------

Isidorus | | | |

--------------+-------------- | Ptolemy | Ammianus | Zosimos |Herodotus

Stations | Description | | Marcellinus | |

--------------+---------------+------------+-------------+---------+---------

| | | | |

| | | | |

--------------+---------------+------------+-------------+---------+---------

9. | Greek town |Nicephorium | Callinicum | -- | --

Nicephorium | founded by | | | |

| Alexander | | | |

10. | Deserted | -- | -- | -- | --

Galabatha | village | | | |

11. Khubana | Village | -- | -- | -- | --

12. | | | | |

Thillada | Royal | -- | -- | -- | --

Mirrhada | station | | | |

13. Basilia | Temple of | | | |

| Artemis | -- | -- | -- | --

| built by | | | |

| Darius, | | | |

| village | | | |

| surrounded | | | |

| by wall | | | |

Semiramidis | Euphrates | | | |

Fossa | dam | | | |

14. Allan | Walled | -- | -- | -- | --

| village | | | |

15. Biunan | Temple of | -- | -- | -- | --

| Artemis | | | |

16. Phaliga | Village | -- | -- | -- | --

17. | Walled | | | |

Nabagath | village on |Khabura | Circesium | -- | --

| Aburas | | | |

18. Asikha | Village |Zeitha | Zeitha | -- | --

19. Dura | Town founded |Thelda | -- | -- | --

Nicanoris | by | | | |

| Macedonians, | | | |

| called | | | |

| Europus by | | | |

| Greeks | | | |

20. Merrhan | Castle and | -- | Dura | -- | --

| walled | | | |

| village | | | |

21. Giddan | Town | -- | -- | -- | --

22. | -- |Bonakhe | -- | -- | --

Belisibiblada | | | | |

23. Island | -- | -- | -- | -- | --

24. Anatho | Island |Bethauna | Anatha | -- | --

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

25. Olabus | Island, | -- | -- | -- | --

| Parthian | | | |

| treasure- | | | |

| house | | | |

26. | -- |Idicara | -- | -- | --

Izannesopolis | | | | |

| | | | |

27. Aeipolis | Bitumen | -- | -- | Sitha | Is

| wells | | | |

Semiramidis Fossa was no doubt a canal; Chesney saw traces of an ancient

canal below Zelebîyeh. The distance from Thillada to Basilia is not

given by Isidorus. Ritter would allow 5 sch. and Herzfeld 7 sch.

(_Memnon_, 1907, p. 92); according to my reckoning both these distances

are too long. I marched from Khmeiḍah to Zelebîyeh in 3 hrs. 40 min.,

which implies a distance of not more than 3 sch. For the fourteenth

station, Allan, Umm Rejeibah is the only possible site I saw. It is true

that I reached it in 3 hrs. from Zelebîyeh, whereas Isidorus puts it 4

sch. from Basilia, but I cut straight across the hills, and if I had

followed the river (_i. e._ from the mouth of the canal, Semiramidis

Fossa) the time needed would have been considerably longer. The

fifteenth station, Biunan, was conjectured by Ritter to lie opposite

Deir. I saw no traces of ruins upon the left bank, though Sachau speaks

of the remains of two bridges (_Reise_, p. 262), and I should be more

inclined to look for Biunan at a nameless site mentioned by Moritz (_op.

cit._, p. 36). The difference is not in any case of importance, for the

site seen by Moritz is immediately below Deir. He would have it to be

Phaliga, which is doubtless Pliny’s Phaliscum, but that suggestion is

difficult to reconcile with Isidorus’s 14 sch. from Basilia to Phaliga,

which brings Phaliga much nearer to Circesium. Moreover, Isidorus states

that Nabagath is near Phaliga--so near that he does not trouble to give

any other indication of the distance between the two stations--and as

Nabagath on the Aburas cannot be other than Buseirah, Phaliga too must

be close to the Khâbûr mouth. I did not see the site mentioned by Moritz

because I neglected to follow the river closely immediately below Deir;

if it be, as I suppose, Biunan, I cannot attempt to identify the site of

Phaliga. The seventeenth station, Nabagath, is, as has been said,

Circesium-Ḳarḳîsîyâ-Buseirah. The eighteenth, Asikha, I would identify

with the Zeitha of Ptolemy and Ammianus Marcellinus, and with the mounds

I saw at Jemmah. For the nineteenth station, Dura, I know no other site

than the very striking tell of Abu’l Ḥassan, the biggest mound upon

this part of the river. Müller has suggested that the mound may

represent Ptolemy’s Thelda (in his edition of _Ptolemy’s Geography_, p.

1003). Ammianus Marcellinus also mentions “a deserted town on the river”

called Dura. The army of Julian reached it in two days’ march from

Zeitha, at which place the emperor had made an oration to his soldiers

after sacrificing at Gordian’s tomb. Now two days’ march from

Zeitha-Jemmah would bring the army to Werdî-Irzî, which is no doubt the

place called by Xenophon Corsote and described by him as “a large

deserted city.” It is perhaps worthy of observation that, in spite of

its being deserted, Cyrus provisioned his army at Corsote and that

Julian’s army found at Dura, though it too was deserted, “quantities of

wild deer, so that the soldiers and sailors had plenty of food.” My own

impression on the spot was that Ammianus Marcellinus’s Dura must be

Irzî. The tower tombs were certainly erected before the middle of the

fourth century, therefore they were in existence when Julian passed;

moreover, they were far more numerous and conspicuous than they are at

present, since almost all of them have now fallen into ruin. It is

difficult to see how Irzî could have failed to attract the attention of

Ammianus Marcellinus, and Dura is the one place mentioned by him between

Zeitha and ’Ânah. But the Dura of Isidorus, the nineteenth station, has

to be placed at Abu’l Ḥassan, not at Irzî, since his twentieth station,

Merrhan, necessarily falls at Irzî, and I can only conjecture that, as

in Julian’s time both places were ruined and deserted, Ammianus

Marcellinus made a confusion between them, or was wrongly informed, and

transferred the name of Dura (Abu’l Ḥassan) to Merrhan (Irzî). For the

twenty-first station, Giddan, I can offer no suggestion. Jabarîyeh will

scarcely fit, as it is but 13 hrs. 15 min. from ’Ânah, and Giddan was 17

sch. from Anatho, but it must be admitted that all the distances between

the stations from Merrhan to ’Ânah seem to be too long according to my

caravan time. The twenty-second station, Belesibiblada, was placed by

Chesney at Ḳal’at Bulâḳ, and I saw no better site for it, though I took

only 9 hrs. and 25 min. to reach it from Irzî, and the distance given

by Isidorus is 12 sch. Ritter would place at Ḳal’at Bulâḳ Ptolemy’s

Bonakhe. I do not see any way of identifying with certainty the island

station, the twenty-third, which was 4 sch. from ’Ânah. There are many

islands in the stream above ’Ânah. One of them, Ḳarâbileh, is reported

to have ruins upon it; it was about four hours’ journey from ancient

’Ânah, and may therefore be identical with the twenty-third station,

which is placed at a distance of 4 sch. from Anatho. Anatho, the

twenty-fourth station, Isidorus expressly states to be on an island; it

was therefore the successor to the Assyrian fortress which I believe to

have existed on the island of Lubbâd. Xenophon does not mention it; nor

does Ptolemy, unless his Bethanua may be taken for ’Ânah as Ritter

believed (Vol. XI. p. 716). Rawâ may possibly be the Phathusa of

Zosimos, but I would rather place Phathusa on the left bank, opposite

and below the island of Lubbâd, where there are many mounds and ruins. I

did not follow the river below ’Ânah very closely, but the ruins I saw

near Ḥadîthah help to justify the presumption that Olabus was situated

there. Chesney wished to identify Izannesopolis with the ruins of a

castle between Baghdâdî and Hît. I did not go to the spot, and my

caravan time between Ḥadîthah and Hît is therefore rather misleading,

for if I had followed the river so as to visit the ḳaṣr, the journey

would have taken more than the seventeen and a half hours which I have

recorded. Isidorus’s 16 sch. from Izannesopolis to Aeipolis can scarcely

be correct, and Kiepert’s emendation (6 instead of 16) may well be

accepted.