Niebuhr next visited the ruins of Kufa, and Meshed Hussein, and then returned to Hillah, near which are found the misshapen ruins of Babylon. We must not, as he justly observes, expect to find among the remains of this city any thing resembling the sublime magnificence which cast a halo over the ruins of Persian and Egyptian cities. Babylon, like modern London, was a city of bricks, prodigious in extent, mighty in appearance, but calculated, from the nature of its materials, to give way, when war or time laid its giant hands upon its towers. Its very site is now become an enigma, “a place for the bittern, and pools of water.” Modern travellers, however, have since visited this celebrated spot, and described it so frequently, that it is unnecessary to pause and repeat what they have written, particularly as no two agree upon any one point.
His stay at Babylon was brief, and on the 5th of January, 1766, he left it to proceed towards Bagdad, where he remained until the 3d of March, awaiting the departure of a caravan for Syria. At length, finding no better companions, he departed with a kafilah composed wholly of Jews, from one of whom, who had travelled much in the country, he expected to derive considerable information. He still possessed the sultan’s firman, which he had procured at Constantinople, and had likewise provided himself with a passport from the Pasha of Bagdad. He therefore anticipated no interruption on the way. In proceeding from Bagdad to Mousul, he traversed the plain on which the great battle of Arbela, which reduced Persia to a Macedonian province, was gained by Alexander. Ruin and desolation have since that day been busily at work in these countries. Among the vagabonds who now roam over or vegetate upon these renowned scenes, are a strange people, accused by many writers of worshipping the devil; I mean the Yezeedis, who, though suspected by Niebuhr of being an offshoot from the Beyazi sect of Oman, appear to be rather the descendants of the ancient Manichæans, or a remnant of the Hindoo population, worshippers of Siva, hurled into this obscure haunt by the storms of war.
At Mousul, where he found numerous Catholic and Nestorian Christians, he was received with extreme scorn, because his worthy coreligionists learned that he did not fast during Lent. However, by allowing himself to be defrauded a little by a Dominican father, a dealer in coins and physic, he quickly regained his character, and, during the remainder of his stay, was reputed a very good Christian. From this city he departed with a numerous caravan, bound partly for Aleppo, partly for Mardin, Orfah, or Armenia. The whole number of the travellers, including a guard of fifty soldiers, and about three or four hundred Arabs, amounted to little less than a thousand men. Yet, notwithstanding their numbers, the slightest report of there being a horde of Kurds in their neighbourhood threw these gallant warriors into consternation, and, upon one particular occasion, their confusion was so extreme that, like the honest knight of La Mancha, they mistook a flock of sheep for an army. The robbers on this road are exceedingly expert in their vocation; and one of the merchants of the caravan, who had often travelled by this route, amused Niebuhr with an anecdote illustrative of their skill, which deserves to be repeated:—He was one night encamped, he said, on the summit of a steep hill, and for the greater security had pitched his tent on the edge of the precipice. He himself kept watch until midnight, at which time he was relieved by his servant, who, as it would appear, soon fell asleep. On awaking about daybreak he observed a robber in the tent. He had already fastened the hook, with which he meant to perform his feat, in a bale of merchandise; but sprang out of the tent, upon perceiving he was discovered, still holding fast the cord of his hook. The merchant, however, immediately detached the hook from the bale, and fastened it in the clothes of his slumbering domestic, who, as the robber continued tugging violently at the cord, was soon roused. The robber pulled, the servant rolled along like a woolsack, and the master had the satisfaction of seeing him tumble down to the bottom of the hill, that he might in future be somewhat more careful of his master’s property.
Niebuhr himself, whose cautious temper generally defended him from danger, had on this journey a trifling adventure with an Arab sheïkh. It entered into the head of this fiery young Islamite that it would be amusing to have a frolic with a Giaour, and for this purpose he deprived our traveller of his bed and counterpanes. Niebuhr complained to the caravan bashi, but could only get a portion of his property restored. Next day, therefore, he applied to the sheïkh himself, who, instead of returning the articles, only jested with him upon his uncharitable disposition, which would not allow him to share his luxuries, even for a few days, with a true believer, who was willing to be condescending enough to sleep on the bed of an infidel. Our traveller, hoping to terrify the Arab, now produced the sultan’s firman, and the Pasha of Bagdad’s passport; but this only rendered matters worse. “Here in the desert,” said the sheïkh, “I am thy sultan and thy pasha. Thy papers have no authority with me!” Some days afterward, however, the Arab returned him his effects, from fear, according to Niebuhr, of the Governor of Mardin; but more probably because he had never intended to retain them.
From this point of his travels he proceeded by way of Mardin, Diarbekr, and Orfah, to Aleppo, where he arrived on the 6th of June. Here he remained some time, during which he acquired the friendship of the celebrated Dr. Patrick Russel, from whom he received much information respecting the Kurds and Turkomans, whose principal chiefs frequently visited our distinguished countryman at his house. His inquiries likewise extended to the Nassaireah and Ismaeleah, who, from the accounts of the Mohammedans and oriental Christians, would appear to have preserved among them the rites and ceremonies of the ancient worshippers of Venus. Nocturnal orgies, in which every man chose his mistress in the dark, and the adoration of the Yoni, in a young woman who exposed herself naked for the purpose of receiving this extravagant reverence, were likewise attributed to them; but, as Niebuhr observes, there is nothing too absurd or abominable to be related by the orthodox and dominant party of a persecuted heretical sect. He, in fact, found that the Roman Catholics everywhere in the East represented their Protestant brethren as persons who lived without hope and without God in the world; while we, on the other hand, look upon them as idolaters, as far removed as the pagans of old from the pure religion of Christ.
After the death of his companions, Niebuhr had applied to the Danish government for permission to extend his journey in the East, and, through the benevolence of Count Bernstorf, his wishes had been readily complied with. He therefore passed from Syria into Cyprus, for the purpose of copying certain Phenician inscriptions at Cittium, the birth-place of Zeno, which had, it was suspected, been incorrectly copied by Pococke. Finding no inscriptions of the kind on the spot to which he had been directed, he, with an illiberality which was not common with him, imputed to Pococke the gross absurdity of having confounded Armenian with Phenician characters; but, as his recent biographer remarks, it is more probable that the stones had, in the interval, been removed.
From Cyprus he passed over into Palestine, visited Jerusalem, Sidon, Mount Lebanon, and Damascus, and then returned to Aleppo. Here he continued until the 20th of November, 1766, when he set out with a caravan for Brusa, in Asia Minor; and in traversing the table-land of Mount Taurus, suffered, says one of his biographers, as much from frosts, piercing winds, and snow-drifts, as he could have done in a winter journey in northern regions. Lofty mountains are everywhere cold. Chardin nearly perished among the snows of Mount Caucasus; Don Ulloa suffered severely from the same cause in the Andes, almost directly under the equator; and the lofty range of the Himalaya, which divides Hindostan from Tibet, is so excessively cold, that Baber Khan, though a soldier and a Tartar, beheld with terror the obstacle which these mountains presented to his ambition; and their summits have hitherto been protected by cold from human intrusion. Upon reaching Brusa, however, he reposed himself for some time, and then set out for Constantinople, where he arrived on the 20th of February, 1767.
Here he remained three or four months, studying the institutions of the empire, civil and military. He then directed his course through Roumelia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia, towards Poland, and on arriving at Warsaw was received with extraordinary politeness by King Stanislaus Poniatowsky, with whom he afterward corresponded for many years. From Warsaw he continued his journey towards Copenhagen, and visited on the way Göttingen and his beloved native place, when the death of his mother’s brother, during his absence, had left him in possession of a considerable marsh-farm. He arrived at Copenhagen in November, and was received in the most flattering manner by the court, the ministers, and men of science.
Niebuhr now employed himself in preparing his various works for publication. The “Description of Arabia” was published in 1772, and although it must unquestionably be regarded as one of the most exact and copious works of the kind ever composed on any Asiatic country, it met with but a cold reception from the public. This, however, is not at all surprising. Written in the old style of books of travels, which appear to have aimed at imparting instruction without at all interesting the imagination, it can never be relished by the generality of readers, who at all times, and especially in these latter ages, have required to be cheated into knowledge by the secret but irresistible charms of composition. Niebuhr, unfortunately, possessed in a very limited degree the art of an author. His style has nothing of that life and vivacity which compensates, in many writers, for the want of method. But those who neglect his works on these accounts are to be pitied; for they abound with information, and everywhere exhibit marks of a remarkable power of penetrating into the character and motives of men, and a noble, manly benevolence, which generally inclines to a favourable, but just interpretation. He understood the Arabs better than almost any other traveller, and his opinion of them upon the whole was remarkably favourable. It is to him, therefore, that in an attempt to appreciate the character of this extraordinary people, I would resort, in preference even to Volney, who, whatever might be the perspicuity of his mind, had far fewer data whereon to found his conclusions.
In 1773 he married, and his wife bore him two children, a daughter and B. G. Niebuhr, the author of the “Roman History.” Next year the first volume of his “Travels” appeared, and was received by the public no less coldly than the “Description of Arabia;” which was, perhaps, the cause why the second volume was not published until 1778; and why the third, which would have completed his “Travels’” history, was never laid before the world, or even prepared for publication. This is exceedingly to be regretted, as, whatever may be the defects of Niebuhr as an author, which it appeared to be my duty to explain, he was, as an observer, highly distinguished for sagacity; and his account of Asia Minor would have been still valuable, notwithstanding all that has since been written on that country.