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).

IsidorusSchœni Modern Sites Time Xenophon Pliny Ptolemy Ammianus Marcellinus Zosimos Herodotus
Stations Description
hrs. min.
9.Nicephorium Greek town founded by Alexander — Raḳḳah — — Nicephorium Nicephorium Callinicum — —
10.Galabatha Deserted village 4 Ditch 6 15 — — — — — —
11.Khubana Village 1 Abu Sa’îd 1 30 — — — — — —
12.Thillada Mirrhada Royal station 4 Khmeiḍah 6 5 — — — — — —
13.Basilia Temple of Artemis built by Darius, village surrounded by wall ? Zelebîyeh 3 40 — — — — — —
Semiramidis Fossa Euphrates dam
14.Allan Walled village 4 Umm Rejeibah 3 — — — — — —
15.Biunan Temple of Artemis 4 Near Deir 6 — — — — — —
16.Phaliga Village 6 ? — — Phaliscum — — — —
17.Nabagath Walled village on Aburas Near Phaliga Buseirah 7 Villages on Araxes — Khabura Circesium — —
18.Asikha Village 4 Jemmah 5 10 — — Zeitha Zeitha — —
19.Dura Nicanoris Town founded by Macedonians, called Europus by Greeks 6 Abu’l Ḥassan 8 20 — — Thelda — — —
20.Merrhan Castle and walled village 5 Irzî 6 30 Corsote — — Dura — —
21.Giddan Town 5 Jabarîyeh? — — — — — — —
22.Belisibiblada — 7 Ḳal’at Bulâḳ 9 25 — — Bonakhe — — —
23.Island — 6 Ḳarâbileh? — — — — — — —
24.Anatho Island 4 Lubbâd, island opposite ’Ânah 11 50 — — Bethauna Anatha — —
25.Olabus Island, Parthian treasure-house 12 Ḥadîthah 12 — — — — — —
26.Izannesopolis — 12 Chesney’s Ḳaṣr — — — Idicara — — —
27.Aeipolis Bitumen wells 16 (6?) Hît 17 30 — — — — Sitha Is

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.

CHAPTER IV
HÎT TO KERBELÂ
March 18-March 30

History in retrospect suffers an atmospheric distortion. We look upon a past civilization and see it, not as it was, but charged with the significance of that through which we gaze, as down the centuries shadow overlies shadow, some dim, some luminous, and some so strongly coloured that all the age behind is tinged with a borrowed hue. So it is that the great revolutions, “predestined unto us and we predestined,” take on a double power; not only do they turn the current of human action, but to the later comer they seem to modify that which was irrevocably fixed and past. We lend to the dwellers of an earlier day something of our own knowledge; we watch them labouring towards the ineluctable hour, and credit them with a prescience of change not given to man. At no time does this sense of inevitable doom hang more darkly than over the years that preceded the rise of Islâm; yet no generation had less data for prophecy than the generation of Mohammad. The Greek and the Persian disputed the possession of western Asia in profitless and exhausting warfare, both harassed from time to time by the predatory expeditions of the nomads on their frontiers, both content to enter into alliance with this tribe or with that, and to set up an Arab satrap over the desert marshes. Thus it happened that the Benî Ghassân served the emperor of the Byzantines, and the Benî Lakhm fought in the ranks of the Sassanian armies. But neither to Justin II nor to Chosroes the Great came the news that in Mecca a child was born of the Ḳureish who was to found a military state as formidable as any that the world had seen, and nothing could have exceeded the fantastic improbability of such intelligence.

I had determined to journey back behind this great dividing line, to search through regions now desolate for evidences of a past that has left little historic record, calling upon the shades to take form again upon the very ground whereon, substantial, they had played their part. So on a brilliant morning Fattûḥ and I saw the caravan start out in the direction of Baghdâd, not without inner heart-searchings as to where and how we should meet it again, and having loaded three donkeys with all that was left to us of worldly goods, we turned our faces towards the wilderness. I looked back upon the ancient mound of Hît, the palm-groves, and the dense smoke of the pitch fires rising into the clear air, and as I looked our zaptieh came out to join us—a welcome sight, for the Mudîr might well have repented at the eleventh hour. Now no one rides into the desert, however uncertain the adventure, without a keen sense of exhilaration. The bright morning sun, the wide clean levels, the knowledge that the problems of existence are reduced on a sudden to their simplest expression, your own wit and endurance being the sole determining factors—all these things brace and quicken the spirit. The spell of the waste seized us as we passed beyond the sulphur marshes; Ḥussein Onbâshî held his head higher, and we gave each other the salaam anew, as if we had stepped out into another world that called for a fresh greeting.

“At Hît,” said he, and his words went far to explain the lightness of his heart, “I have left three wives in the house.”