[103] Kiepert calls it Khân eṭ Ṭarniyeh.
[104] Sitace cannot be placed with certainty. Ritter (Vol. X. p. 21) conjectures that the bridge must have lain about four hours above Baghdâd. After the battle of Cunaxa, a field of which the site is not determined, the Greeks pursued the Persians to a village on a mound where they passed the night. Here they learnt that Cyrus was dead. Next day they joined Ariæus and marched in one day to some unnamed Babylonian villages. They then marched through fertile country for a space of time not specified, probably a day, to well-supplied villages, where they stayed twenty-three days. In three days from these villages they reached the Median Wall, under the guidance of Tissaphernes, who must have led them by a tortuous course across Mesopotamia, and in two days more they came to Sitace, which was a populous city lying on an island formed by the Tigris and a canal. Sitace is perhaps Pliny’s Sittace (Bk. VI. ch. xxxi.), though his confused statement would seem to place it on the left bank of the Tigris. Ptolemy mentions a place called Scaphe, which Müller is inclined to connect with the Sablis of the Tab. Peut., but it appears to have been some distance to the east of the Tigris (Ptolemy, ed. Müller, p. 1006). The placing of Sitace depends upon the position of Opis, which is not satisfactorily determined.
[105] There was an earlier Dujeil which started from the Euphrates a little below Hît, crossed Mesopotamia and joined the Tigris above Baghdâd, but by the tenth century its eastern end had silted up. The later Dujeil was a loop canal from the Tigris; it left the river opposite Ḳâdisîyah and rejoined it at ’Ukbarâ. These complicated questions may easily be understood by referring to the first map in Mr. Le Strange’s Baghdâd.
[106] The term is the equivalent of the northern Chiflik. The latter is a Turkish word signifying merely farm, but it designates especially a farm belonging to the Sultan.
[107] ’Ukbarâ was a well-known place in the days of the Khalifate. Muḳaddasî (ed. de Goeje, p. 122.) It lay on the east bank of the Tigris, i.e. on the east bank of the old channel. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 50.
[108] Kiepert marks Wâneh to the south of ’Ukbarâ, whereas I should place it a little to the north. We rode to Sumeikhah in about an hour from the Imâm Muḥammad ’Alî, which would have been impossible from Kiepert’s Wâneh, or for that matter from his ’Ukbarâ. I am relying, however, for the names upon the not too certain testimony of Ḳâsim. Both ’Ukbarâ and Wâneh are mentioned by Muḳaddasî, but he gives no indication of their relative position. He provides us with no more information about Wâneh than its name (ed. de Goeje, pp. 54 and 115), which he spells Aiwanâ. The customary mediæval spelling is Awânâ, and other authorities place the town on the west bank of the old Tigris bed, while ’Ukbarâ lay opposite to it on the east bank (Streck: Die alte Landschaft Babylonien, p. 227). This would correspond fairly well with my itinerary. I rode from ’Ukbarâ in a north-westerly direction and reached Wâneh in forty-five minutes.
[109] Journal of the Geog. Soc., Vol. XI. p. 124.
[110] Anabasis, Bk. II. ch. iv. 25.
[111] Bk. I. 189.
[112] Bk. XVI. ch. i. 9.