[113] Bk. VI. ch. xxxi. Though I believe that the ruins on the east bank seen by Ross and the extensive ruin field on what is now the west bank of the Tigris must represent Opis, the locating of the city is complicated by the fact that Xenophon took four days to reach Opis from Sitace. Now if Sitace is anywhere near Baghdâd it is strange that the Greeks should have marched four days and got no further than a town situated immediately to the north of the ’Aḍêm. The Physcus, which Xenophon crossed by a bridge of boats before coming to Opis, may be the ’Aḍêm, but some have supposed it to be the great Ḳâṭûl-Nahrawân, a loop canal on the east bank of the Tigris. I do not know, however, that there is any record of a canal here before the Sassanian period (Le Strange: Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 57). Chesney tried to solve the difficulty of Xenophon’s march by placing Opis higher up the river at Ḳadsîyeh, but that would leave the great ruin field lower down unidentified, and would, besides, leave too long a time for the march from Opis to the Great Zâb, which occupied the Greeks eleven days. For the site of the Babylonian Opis, see King: Sumer and Akkad, p. 11.
[114] It is probably one of the districts which were ruined by the Mongol invasion.
[115] i.e. “raids and so forth”; the second word is merely a repetition of the first with the initial letter r changed to m. This convenient form is very common in Turkish.
[116] This Ḳâdisîyah must not be confounded with the battlefield near Ḥirah where Khâlid ibn u’l Walîd overthrew the Sassanians.
[117] Sarre thinks it was empty, and holds that the town was never finished or inhabited. He would therefore place here Ḳâṭûl, the site first fixed upon for his capital by the Khalif Mu’taṣim when he left Baghdâd. Finding Sâmarrâ to be better placed, he abandoned Ḳâṭûl before the work there was completed: Ya’ḳûbî, ed. de Goeje, p. 256. Sarre: Reise in Mesop. Zeitsch. der Gesell. fûr Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1909, No. 7, p. 437. Schwartz, however, suggests that Ḳâṭûl may have lain to the north of Sâmarrâ: Die Abbâsiden-Residenz Sâmarrâ, p. 5. Ross thought that Ḳâdisîyah was Sassanian, but I am persuaded that he was in error. (A Journey from Baghdâd to Opis, Journal of the Geog. Soc., Vol. XI. p. 127.) Jones gives a plan: Memoirs, p. 8.
[118] The Malwîyeh can scarcely be any other than the minaret described by Balâdhurî among Mutawakkil’s buildings: Futûḥ ul Buldân, p. 306, Cairo edition of 1901. The ruins of Sâmarrâ have not yet received the detailed study which they deserve, but Professor Sarre and Dr. Herzfeld are about to begin an exhaustive examination of the site. Sketch plans have been published by De Beylié (Prome et Samarra), and at about the same time Herzfeld brought out a small monograph entitled Sâmarrâ. I had this monograph with me, and finding the plans to be incorrect and the drawings inexact (for example, the ornament drawn in fig. 5 gives little idea of the original), I measured and photographed all the ruins over again. Meantime Viollet has published a short account of his journey in Mesopotamia, in which he has given plans of the ruins of Sâmarrâ: Le Palais de Al Moutasim, etc., Mémoires of the Acad. des Inscrip. et Belles-Lettres, Vol. XII. Part II. His attempt to reconstruct the ground plan of the palace of which the Beit el Khalîfah forms part, is of great interest.
[119] Ed. de Goeje, p. 256.
[120] Lands of the Eastern Califate, p. 53. Am. Mar., Bk. XXV. ch. vi. 4.
[121] This is marked in Viollet’s plan.
[122] Herzfeld, Sâmarra, p. 61, places the old quarter of Karkh at Shnâs and Dûr ’Arabâyâ at Eskî Baghdâd. Karkh is the Charcha of Ammianus Marcellinus.