From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

The Persians [he writes], through fear of incursions from without and for the purpose of preventing vessels from ascending these rivers, constructed artificial cataracts. Alexander on arriving there destroyed as many of them as he could, those particularly on the Tigris from the sea to Opis.[401] [He declared that] such devices were unbecoming to men who are victorious in battle and, therefore, he considered this means of safety unsuitable for him and, by easily demolishing the laborious work of the Persians, he proved in fact that what they thought a protection was unworthy of the name.[402]

A short distance below Assur we passed the embouchure of the little Zab whose clear mountain waters were in strong contrast with the flood of the turbid Tigris. Near the confluence of these two rivers were located the Median villages of Parysatis, the wife of Darius and mother of Cyrus the Younger. These villages had, according to a Persian custom, been bestowed upon the queen by the king for her girdle—that is for the purchase of personal apparel and ornaments. How generous the Persian monarchs were in supplying their wives with pin money!

The scenery below the Little Zab differed but little from that round about Assur—an arid plain on the left and a low range of yellow hills on the right. The Arabs call them mountains—Jebel Hamrin and Jebel Makhul—but they scarcely deserve such an exalted appellation. In a recess of Jebel Makhul are the remains of a stronghold that reminds one of similar ruins along the Danube. It is called Kalat Makhul—the Castle of the Maiden. According to an Arabian legend, this was the citadel of the warlike daughter of a giant, who was the terror of all who sailed down the river. Near by was the citadel—Kalat el Gebbar—of her giant father. The legend apparently recalls the time when these strongholds were occupied by bandits who, like the old robber barons of the Rhine and the Danube, formerly levied tribute on all the passing keleks or who despoiled their owners of all they possessed. These brigands are said to have infested certain reaches of the Tigris as late as a third of a century ago, but, although the traveler is still warned against them, they seem to have changed their scene of operations to fields where they would not be so much harassed by government soldiery.

A few miles below the Giant’s Castle, the river becomes much narrower and swifter, for it here cuts through the sandstone chain of hills called Jebel Hamrin which, on the left bank of the Tigris, continues in a southeasterly direction until it unites with the one of the rugged spurs which juts out from the mountains of Luristan. This narrow section of the river through the range of Jebel Hamrin, which is locally known as El Fatha—the aperture—is interesting because it is on the boundary between the vilayets of Mosul and Bagdad, and because it once marked a point on the natural frontier between Assyria and Babylonia.

Outside of Nimroud and Assur, there is little during the first half of the journey to Bagdad to claim one’s attention except the numerous Kurd villages, composed of squalid stone and mud houses and frequent groups of black tents occupied by various tribes of Arabs. Around the Arabian encampments one sees occasionally quite large flocks of sheep and, in the vicinity of the stone and mud villages of the Kurds, one will note the feeble attempts which its inhabitants make to cultivate the land. Considering the primitive methods of irrigation that exist here, one is not surprised to find that the poor husbandman’s return for his labor is very small. In marked contrast, however, to the unpromising grain fields on the arid plains were the luxurious fields of Indian corn in the small islands which dotted the Tigris.

During the entire journey between Mosul and Bagdad one is never long out of sight of ruins of some kind or other—ruins of old strongholds, ruins of monuments to Moslem saints, ruins of mosques and minarets, ruins of towns and cities long since deserted or destroyed by the ruthless invader. They certainly give the country a most desolate appearance, but they, at the same time, tell in the most eloquent fashion how great must have been the wealth and prosperity of this ill-fated country in the palmiest days of the great Caliphs and during the reigns of the wise and beneficent monarchs of the Sassanidæ and the Achæmenidæ.

However rich the flora and fauna may formerly have been along the Tigris, there is now visible but little of either. Older travelers speak of the long stretches of woodland along the river. Now one sees little more than small clumps of Acacia and Glycyrrhiza here and there and even these seem to be rapidly disappearing.

Wild fowl are said to be abundant, but during the first half of our journey on the Tigris we saw only a few shy francolins, pelicans, and cormorants. Farther down the river, however, the number of fowl appreciably augmented. Among them were some snipe and a beautiful species of duck with snowy-white plumage. Singing birds were exceedingly rare.

According to early travelers, large game formerly abounded the whole way from Nineveh to Bagdad. Thus Jean de Thévenot in his entertaining work on the Levant assures us that in the vicinity of El Fatha, lions were as numerous as sheep elsewhere—des lions—que l’on y voit en aussi grande quantité que des moutons ailleurs.[403] He tells us particularly of an extraordinarily large and powerful lion which took a man from every caravan—except his own—that ventured to pass by that terrible place. That his caravan escaped the payment of the tribute exacted by the ferocious brute from all others, was, he opined, something glorious—ce qui devoit être bien glorieux pour la noire qui ne lui paia point ce tribut.

Judging by the precautions which, he informs us, he was continually obliged to take against these feral terrors of the desert, Thévenot was as much obsessed by them as he was by the hot and poisonous wind which, he avers, was such a deadly menace in the valley of the Tigris. This consuming wind is, he declares, the same as the ventus urens—burning wind—mentioned in the twenty-seventh chapter of the book of Job and prevails during the summer all the way from Mosul to Surat in distant India and is so fatal that if one inhales it one instantly drops dead, and his corpse immediately becomes as black as ink, and, if one touches it, the flesh falls from the bones.[404]