THE GORGE OF THE ZAB, TYARI
One of the reaches near Tal
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Other armies than Xenophon’s have marched and fought over its ruins. Here, in B.C. 331, Alexander the Great encountered the great army of Darius at the little village of Gaugamela in the angle between the Tigris and the Zab. This was that great “decisive battle of the world” which was to decide the Empire of Asia, and Alexander’s signal victory laid the whole of Persia at his feet. Gaugamela is about equidistant between Nineveh and Arbela, which lies about twenty miles from the battlefield on the further side of the Zab river. But all Darius’ baggage and treasure were parked around Arbela; and as the pursuers poured headlong towards the place where they would find the plunder, it is Arbela and not Nineveh which has given its name to that day.
Here too in A.D. 627, upon the very site of Nineveh, was fought the last battle in the long duel between the Sassanid Persians and the Byzantine Romans. Five years previously the Emperor Heraclius, driven within the very walls of Constantinople, had sallied from his last refuge, and had created in northern Syria the army with which he made his last throw. For five years he had marched and fought among the mountains of Armenia, striking right and left with unerring judgment and with unvarying success, at the armies which hemmed him round. At last Chosroës, brought to bay in his turn, mustered his troops for the final struggle, and met him on the site of Nineveh with an army of (it is said) 500,000 men. The Persians fought with desperation, and “it was easier to kill than to break them,” but once more the skill and good fortune of the warrior-emperor triumphed; and he himself with his own hand slew Rhazates the Persian Commander,[67] in single combat between the armies before the battle was joined. The power of Chosroës was crushed: but the Romans were as much exhausted by the long-drawn struggle as the Persians; and, within a few years, both empires alike succumbed to the onslaught of the Mohammedans.[68]
In a bird’s-eye view from the mountains this country seems all one dead level, with the solitary height of Jebel Maklub rising like an island in the midst. But, to the wayfarer actually traversing it, it is a range of hills and hollows, with marshy valleys[69] intervening between sparsely cultivated downs. A few good-sized villages are passed, the largest being Tel Keif and Tel Uskof—each, as their names imply, grouped round the base of an ancient tel: and after a long day’s journey (performed at the pace of the mules, which is rather slower than walking) we reach the township of Alkosh, placed just at the foot of the hills.
A glance at the map would suggest that it is by no means easy to determine the precise point where the plains end and where the mountains begin. But actually there is no such uncertainty. The breastwork range of the mountains rears itself up like a wall above the minor inequalities of the plateau, and the heights stretch away right and left continuously as though they were toeing a line. Of all the countries of Europe, Spain is the land which is nearest in sympathy with the Orient; and the sudden uplift of the Cantabrian mountains above the basin of the Duero is an excellent reproduction of the rise of the Kurdistan ranges above the plain of Mosul.
Alkosh, at the foot of the steeps, is just an unmitigated sun trap; and the town seems positively sizzling under the blaze that is poured on it from the south. It is a mean little hole; but its synagogue boasts a notable shrine in the tomb of the prophet Nahum, who of course also holds local brevet rank (like Jonah) as a Mussulman saint. Commentators generally assert that the Elkosh of Nahum was in Palestine; but local tradition adheres unshakenly to the claims of the Assyrian Alkosh, and the Jews make an annual pilgrimage in order to visit this shrine. After[{117}] all there is much to be urged for it. Nahum was “of the children of the captivity,” and he certainly knew his Nineveh better than most dwellers in Palestine can have done.