But while, in silent rapture, we were thus enjoying the magnificent displays of the setting sun and were reveling in the beauties of the stars,—“the flowers of the sky,” “the poetry of heaven,” “the forget-me-nots of the angels,”—our crew was totally indifferent to all these sublime manifestations of nature and completely buried in their kaif. They were indeed living pictures of what Robert Louis Stevenson somewhere most aptly calls “the apotheosis of stupidity.” As we noted in their placid features their rapturous expression of contentment and happiness we realized as never before the full force of the poet’s words,
The heaven of each is but what each desires.
Never once, during our journey from Mosul to Tekrit were we ever out of sight of some place or monument of historic or legendary lore. But the number of these reminders of the hoary past rapidly increased in our sail between Tekrit and Bagdad. About five miles below Saladin’s birthplace we came to the little town of Iman Dura. According to tradition, it was here that King Nebuchadnezzar set up his colossal golden statue which the Hebrews, Sidrach, Misach, and Abednago, in defiance of the King’s orders, refused to adore.[413] It was near Dura that the Roman army under Jovian pitched their tents after the death of Julian the Apostate and it was here that the Roman Emperor was forced to conclude an ignominious peace—necessariam quidem sed ignobilem, writes Eutropius—with the Persian King, Sapor the Great. A short distance below Dura is a small stream which the natives say was a canal dug by King Solomon. Near it, on the left bank of the Tigris, begins the ruins of Eski Bagdad—Old Bagdad—“a mighty field of ruins,” writes Thielmann, “extending some twenty-five miles along the Tigris.”[414] Situated in this long field of ruins is the little town of Samara, as celebrated for its romantic history as for its remarkable monuments which, however, have only in the last decade or two received the attention on the part of scholars which they so richly deserve.
The ruins of which I have here given a brief account [writes a well-known archæologist, after a visit to Samara] are of the first importance for the elucidation of the early history of the arts of Islam. They can all be dated within a period of forty years falling in the ninth century, and are, therefore, among the earliest existing examples of Mohammedan architecture. They bear witness to the Mesopotamian influences under which it arose. The spiral towers of Samara and Abu Dulaf are an adaptation of the temple pyramids and Assyria and Babylonia, which had a spiral path leading to the summit; the technique of arch and vault was invented by the ancient East and transmitted through Sassannian builders to the Arab invaders; the decoration is Persian or Mesopotamian and almost untouched by the genius of the West. In the palaces and the mosques of Samara we can see the conquerors themselves conquered by a culture which had been developing during thousands of years on Mesopotamian soil, a culture which had received indeed new elements into its composition, which had learnt from the Greek and from the Persian, but had maintained in spite of all modifications its distinctive character.[415]
The complex of ruined mosques and palaces which here excites the admiration of the student dates from the time—A. D. 836 to 892—when Samara was the capital of the Abbassid Caliphate. Mutasim, a son of Harun-al-Rashid, was the first caliph who made his residence here. So numerous and magnificent were the edifices which he called into existence, as by an enchanter’s wand, that the glories of Samara soon rivaled those of Bagdad in the days of her greatest power and prosperity. The magnificence of the enlarged and embellished city was expressed in the official name which was then given it, for, in lieu of Samara, it was called Surra-man-raa—Who sees it, rejoices. Judging from the ground plan of the palaces of Samara as given by M. H. Violet, the distinguished French Academician who, during a visit to Samara, made a careful study of its imposing ruins, this group of buildings was not inferior to the royal edifices of Versailles.[416]
According to local tradition Samara, like Sestos and Abydos, had also its Hero and Leander. As they lived in palaces on opposite sides of the river, the Samara Leander could see his immorata, who was the daughter of a sultan, only by breasting the swift-flowing waters of the romantic Tigris. The lovers were, however, more fortunate than were their Greek prototypes, for their lives did not end in the tragedy which overtook the Romeo and Juliet of the Dardanelles but, so the story runs, terminated in a happy marriage like that of Feramoz and Lalla Rookh. And the memory of the devoted pair is still kept green by the names which the Arabs have given to the ruins of their former homes—El Aschik—the lover—and El Maschuka—the beloved.[417]
Below Samara the number of ruins and places of historic and legendary interest seemed to increase in proportion as we sailed southwards. Particularly interesting were the ruins of Opis which was once, next to Babylon, the most important city in Babylonia. It was to this point that were floated from the upper Tigris the boats that Sennacherib, seven centuries B. C., had constructed for use in his celebrated campaign against the Chaldeans and Elamites. From Opis the boats were transported by camels overland to the Euphrates, down which they sailed to the Persian Gulf. How forcibly this achievement of the great Assyrian monarch reminds one of a similar exploit nearly twenty-two centuries later, when Mohammed the Conqueror had a part of his fleet conveyed over the elevated section of land between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn preparatory to his capture of Constantinople, May 29, 1453!
Opis is also celebrated as having been visited by Alexander the Great in his memorable voyage up the Tigris from the Persian Gulf. “In his voyage up,” as Arrian informs us, “he destroyed the weirs which existed in the river and thus made the stream quite level.”[418] More than twenty-one centuries afterwards, in 1839, the English steamer “Euphrates”—the first steamer ever seen in this region—ascended the Tigris on its voyage of reconnaissance when it went up the river to the tomb of Sultan Abdullah near the mouth of the Greater Zab.[419] But since that date the navigation of the Tigris—at least for commercial purposes—has terminated at Bagdad. If the country bordering the Tigris were under a stable and enterprising government, there is no reason why light-draught and light-tonnage boats should not ply regularly not only between Bagdad and Opis but between Bagdad and Mosul as well. High explosives properly applied under the direction of competent engineers, and possibly a dam or two with suitable locks would solve the problem and would contribute immensely towards restoring to its former flourishing condition a country which, as we have seen, is now little more than a desert overspread with ruins “where kings have paced” and where
The gray fox litters safe
Under the broken thrones.