From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

At Konia, anciently Iconium, we reached the junction of the Anatolia and the Bagdad Railways. From an economic and military standpoint, both roads are of supreme importance to the Ottoman Empire. They supply commerce with long needed means of communication between the interior and the seaboard, and enable the Sultan to conduct the administration of his extensive territory with far more efficiency and despatch than was before possible. Politically, however, the Bagdad Railway is incomparably still more important. No great railroad has ever attracted more attention; none has ever owed so much to its name; none has ever so fired the imagination of Germans and Ottomans; and none has ever so exhausted the resources of diplomacy or provoked greater struggles for its control. Historically both roads have a special interest to the student and the historian not only on account of the classic lands through which they pass but also on account of the long and strenuous efforts which several rival nations made to obtain from the Sublime Porte the authorization to build and operate the great road which was to unite the West and the East.

So greatly has the Bagdad Railway modified the Near Eastern Question, so completely has it changed the data and the consequent solution of the problem, and so perfectly does its history dovetail into the narrative of our journey, that a brief account of the origin and struggling beginnings of the road is necessary to a clear conception of many things that shall be said in subsequent chapters.

Many and diverse, as the ambitions of those who gave them birth, have been the projects to unite by rail the superb capital on the Bosphorus with the mysterious city of Harun-al-Rashid on the distant Tigris.

Two-thirds of a century ago there were few projects which were proposed with more insistence to the British Cabinet and to the House of Commons as well as to English capitalists than that which had for its object the construction of a railway which, starting from a point on the Mediterranean, should cross Mesopotamia in the direction of India.

The original plan called for an overland route which would connect the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf. It was based on an elaborate survey of the Euphrates valley, which had been made by an English officer, Colonel Chesney, in 1835–1837. The primary object was to shorten the journey from England to India, which was then made across the Isthmus of Suez, or round the Cape of Good Hope.

The preliminary survey of this contemplated line was made by order of the British Government which voted £20,000 for expenses. Materials for two armed steamers were, under the direction of Colonel Chesney, transported with almost insuperable difficulties from the mouth of the Orontes to the Euphrates. This gallant officer had under his command a well-equipped staff of engineers and men of science, and the work which the expedition set out to execute was performed, as the official reports show, in the most thorough manner. More than two years were devoted to the task of exploring the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the region through which they flowed, and the enthusiastic commander felt sure his labors were to issue “in the consolidation and perfection of the overland communications between Great Britain and India.”[151]

But how quickly and completely his illusions were dispelled!

When I returned from the East in 1837 [he wrote long after] it was with the full belief that a question of such vast importance to Great Britain—nationally, politically and commercially—would be at once taken up warmly by the Government and the public. The way had been opened—difficulties which at one time had looked formidable had been overcome; the Arabs and the Turkish Government were favorable to the projected line to India. But thirty-one years have since passed, and nothing has been done.[152]

In 1851 a company was organized in England for realizing Colonel Chesney’s plan for connecting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf. A firman was obtained from the Porte and everything was ready for beginning work—except cash. As the enterprise was not supported by the government, English capitalists considered participation in it too hazardous to justify investment. The company’s concession lapsed for lack of the necessary funds.

The question was again taken up in 1872 and referred to a Parliamentary commission. But, although Colonel Chesney’s plan of building a road along the Euphrates was favorably received, it was again abandoned—this time in favor of the Suez Canal, a large interest in which had been purchased for England by her astute premier, Disraeli, who was quick to perceive the paramount value of this passageway between England and her possessions in the Orient.[153]