CHAPTER IX
DIYÂRBEKR TO KONIA
_June 4--July 1_
The frontier between the Arabic and the Turkish-speaking peoples is not sharply defined. Through the southern parts of the Kurdish hills it is common to find men acquainted with one or both languages in addition to their native Kurdish; among the Christians of the Ṭûr ’Abdîn a knowledge of Syriac is not rare; in Diyârbekr, where there is a considerable Arab population, Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish are spoken about equally, but north of Diyârbekr Arabic ceases to be heard, and as we journeyed along the road from Kharpût to Malaṭiyah, Kurdish died out also. Fattûḥ, in addition to many other qualifications for travel, speaks Turkish fluently, though in a manner peculiar to himself; the muleteers who were with me had some knowledge of the language, and I have enough to wish that I had more of that singularly beautiful and flexible tongue. Thus equipped we set out to make our way across Taurus and Anti-Taurus on to the Anatolian plateau.
As far as Malaṭiyah we followed the high road which led us at first across a fertile plain celebrated for its gardens ever since the days of Ammianus Marcellinus. Outside the village of Tarmûr[207] we spent the night somewhat uneasily by reason of certain wedding festivities which were there in progress. Not only did the merry-makers keep up their rejoicings until close upon dawn, but the inhabitants of a neighbouring village judged the occasion to be propitious for mule-lifting, and were driven off with rifle shots. Peace was restored by daybreak, and the marriage procession conveying the bride to her husband’s house set off to the strains of fife and drum. We passed it upon the road, a motley crowd, mounted and afoot. The bride was enveloped in a silken cloak of vivid magenta, which will not, I fear, be needed again for many a long day, if her opportunities for the wearing of finery may be measured by the aspect of her future home, for a more poverty-stricken collection of hovels than the bridegroom’s village it would be difficult to picture. We left her in her brief glory to take up her daily task of preventing her husband’s roof from falling about her ears, and rode on to the hill of Arghana, a bold spur of the Taurus mountains, with a village perched among its crags. I sent the baggage animals along the carriage road and climbed with a zaptieh to the village, and thence by a steep path to the Armenian monastery of the Virgin, which stands on the summit of the rocks.[208] We were rewarded by a magnificent view and by a pleasant talk with the prior who informed me, as I drank his excellent coffee, that the monastery was founded in the first century of the Christian era, a tradition which calls for weightier confirmation than any which he advanced. Be that as it may, the existing house must have been largely rebuilt in the Middle Ages, perhaps towards the fourteenth century--I hazard this date on the evidence supplied by the decoration of the church which had the character of Mohammadan work of about that period. We led our horses down the north side of the hill, by a stony
path that ran between bramble hedges enclosing fruit gardens, rejoined the carriage road and crossed the Ma’den Chai, which is the local name for the main arm of the Tigris, by a bridge near Kalender Khân. We had now fairly entered into the mountains, and our road took us over high bare ridges and down again to the Ma’den Chai at the village of Arghana Ma’den, the mines of Arghana. On a shelf of the opposite hill-side the smoke drifted perpetually from the smelting furnaces of the richest copper mines in Turkey (Fig. 210). The metal, smelted on the site, is cast into disks, two of which go to a camel load, and sent across the hills to Diyârbekr and Cæsarea, Sivâs and Tokat. The valley of the Ma’dan Chai, where the village lies, is so narrow that it offers no camping-ground; we lodged, therefore, in a charming khân above the village by the water’s edge--but for the fact that it was innocent of furniture I could have fancied myself in an English country inn by the side of a rushing trout stream. The rain fell heavily in the night, and we rode for the greater part of the next day through an alternate drizzle and downpour, and were unable to determine which we enjoyed the most. The river cuts here through a deep rocky gorge, and the road climbs up by the side of the stream. The mists, clinging to the precipitous slopes, added to the sombre grandeur of a pass which opened at its upper end on to an exquisite little fertile plain, set like a jewel among the hills. Through its cornfields the infant Tigris, a rippling brook, wandered from willow clump to willow clump; we parted from it two hours from its source, and set our faces towards the hills which divide it from its mightier brother, the Euphrates. At their foot lies the Little Lake, Göljik, encircled by peaks, of which the northern slopes were white with snow patches (Fig. 211). It is slightly brackish, and its waters have no outlet. We turned aside from the carriage road and took a bridle path along the northern side of the lake, and up the hills beyond it. Before we reached the crest of the slopes we struck the road again and by it crossed the water parting, and saw below us the rich and smiling plain of Kharpût bounded by mountains, through which wound the silver streak of the Euphrates. We camped that night at the foot of the pass in the Armenian village of Keghvank, our tents being advantageously placed in a grove of mulberry-trees, loaded with ripe fruit.[209] Kharpût, or rather the lower town, Mezreh,[210] which is the seat of government of the vilayet of Ma’mûret el ’Azîz, lies three hours from Keghvank. The plain between is exceedingly fertile; it is scattered over with villages about half of which are inhabited by Armenians, who suffered cruelly in the massacres of 1895. At Kezerik, half-an-hour to the south-east of Mezreh, two finely-cut inscriptions, commemorating the expedition of Domitius Corbulo in A.D. 65, are built into the walls of a ruined church. They are well known, but I, coming from far beyond the limits of the Roman empire, turned aside with pious enthusiasm and read the high-sounding titles of Nero, as one who glories in their achievements of his own people: Nero Claudius Cæsar Augustus Germanicus Imperator Pontifex Maximus, the words rang out with greater splendour from those remote stones than from any lying within the walls of Rome.
Kharpût is set upon the summit of the hills beyond Mezreh. The castle, standing upon the highest crag, guards a shallow ravine wherein is stretched the greater part of the town, but the houses climb up on to the rocky headlands overhanging the plain and, from below, the mountain seems to be crowned with a series of fortresses (Fig. 212). The streets are so narrow that a cart can hardly pass along the cobbled ways; very silent and peaceful they seemed, the shops heaped with cherries, the cool breezes stirring the vine tendrils that wreathed together overhead. The castle, for all its frowning walls and bastions, is nothing but a heap of ruins within. I looked in vain for the dungeons in which Sukmân, the son of the Turkman officer Ortuḳ, founder of the Ortuḳid dynasties, imprisoned Baldwin of Edessa and Jocelyn of Courtney in the early years of the twelfth century. The Crusaders, gathering together their forces, seized the fortress in 1123 and held it until Balak, Ortuḳ’s grandson, recaptured it and threw the garrison over the battlemented rock into the plain below.[211] On an inner wall, not far from the gate, there are traces of an Arabic inscription, together with two stones carved in relief, the one bearing a lion and the other a ram, memorials, I make no doubt, of the Ortuḳid rule. The walls are of many periods of building. The masonry of one of the eastern towers is laid in alternate stripes of red and white stone. The eastern side of the hill drops steeply into a deep valley filled with houses which are terraced one above the other. Here there is a Jacobite church of ancient origin, its plan repeating the old scheme of the parochial church of the Ṭûr ’Abdîn. The priest assured me that it dated from the first century, and in proof of his assertion showed me a couple of curious oil paintings, a Crucifixion and a Virgin and Child, Byzantine in type, so far as I could make out through the dust of ages.[212]
My tents were pitched on the plain near Mezreh. There in the evening I received the Vâlî, a cheerful Cretan, and the Mu’âvin Vâlî,[213] and after they had departed, several other visitors. Their conversation left me groping my way through the intricate labyrinths of the Oriental mind, and even more bewildered than usual. Kharpût and Mezreh and the villages of the plain had felt yet more sharply than Diyârbekr and the Ṭûr ’Abdîn the wave of panic that had emanated from Cilicia. Three days after the first outbreak at Adana, the Kurdish peasants had trooped into the Christian villages and announced their intention to kill, while in Mezreh the Vâlî was besieged by demands that he should give the signal for massacre. To his credit be it recorded that he held out against these appeals, though the abject terror of the Armenians did much to increase the danger of the situation. When the news of ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd’s deposition reached the vilayet, the agitation went out like a candle in the wind; the Kurds returned peaceably to their houses, and the fears of the Christians were allayed. This was strange enough, but that which followed was stranger still. The district had suffered during the spring from lack of rain and the drought became at length so serious that the whole harvest was threatened. The leading mullah of Mezreh called upon the people to assemble in a neighbouring village, where there was a much-respected Mohammadan shrine, that they might raise a common supplication for rain. The population answered his call to a man; Christian and Moslem, who but five weeks before had with difficulty been restrained from leaping at each other’s throats, stood side by side and listened to the sermon which the mullah delivered to them. All, said he, were brothers, all were children of one God, all alike were in danger of perishing from the drought, and it behoved all to pray together for the beneficent rain which would save them from famine. His eloquence reduced the assembled audience to tears, and for three days their united orisons rose to heaven. And then the miracle came to pass. The rain fell abundantly, that same rain over which we had rejoiced in the Tigris gorge, without knowing that we owed it to the prayers of the Moslems and Christians of Kharpût, nor yet how many fevers it was assuaging, more fatal than the sun-fever in our veins; for it was admitted that this most fortunate coincidence would do more to bring about amity than the fall of many sultans.
I sat long into the night and gazed upon the shattered crags of Kharpût and the hollow plain, clothed in abundance of fruits, and sheltered by its ring of noble hills. What is it that leads to massacre? whence does that sudden frenzy spring, whither vanish? Like a tornado it bursts over the peaceful earth, blots out the daily life of town and village, destroys, uproots and slays--and passes. My thoughts were still busy with these unanswerable problems when we rode upon our way next morning. One of my muleteers was a Moslem, a ḥajjî, a Mecca pilgrim. I had known him for many years and he had served me well during months of hard travel. When the road was long he had not wearied; when the sun was hot he had not complained; when the wind blew cold he drew more closely about him the duffle coat which I had given him in Aleppo, and every evening after the tents were pitched and the horses picketed, I had seen him building up the fire under the big rice-pot and stirring the savoury mess on which my camp was to sup. To-day as I looked into his simple honest face, I wondered what unexpected ferocity lay behind its familiar wrinkles.
“Ḥâjj ’Amr,” I said, “in the day of slaughter, would you kill me?”
“My lady, no,” he replied, “not you. I have eaten your bread.”
“Would you kill Fattûḥ and Selîm and Jûsef?” I asked.
“No, no,” said he, “not them. We are brothers.”
“But other Christians you would slay?”
“Eh wallah!” he answered; “in the day of slaughter.”
I ceased my questionings and rode on, but the subject was to come up again. It happened in this manner.
We had journeyed over the plain to Khân Keui and climbed on to a low spur of the hills. Having crossed it, we rode down a long valley with high hills on either hand.[214] It chanced that Fattûḥ and I and a zaptieh were on ahead, and as we went we fell into talk. Now Fattûḥ is a Catholic Armenian, and in the old days we have experienced many a difficulty over his teskereh, owing to the ominous word Armenian which is inscribed upon it. At the end of the last journey he had vowed that he would change his faith, which does not sit very heavy upon him--Fattûḥ being a philosopher touching the finer distinctions of creed--and I now asked him whether he had carried out this determination.
“Effendim,” he replied, “two years ago, when I returned to Aleppo, I told the bishop that I would become Brotestant or Latîn (Protestant or Roman Catholic). And he argued with me and said he would send a priest to pray with me. But I said No, for I and my family are Brotestant.”
“And are you a Protestant?” said I.
“God knows,” replied Fattûḥ. “On my teskereh I am still written down a Catholic Armenian, but that I cannot be, for I refused to let the priest come into my house to pray. Therefore I belong to no religion but the religion of God.”
“We all belong to that religion,” said I.
“True, wallah,” said the zaptieh.
Presently there came up the road towards us a train of loaded camels.
“These are men of Ḳaisarîyeh,” said Fattûḥ. “I know them by their dress.” And as the first string of camels drew near, he shouted to the man sitting half-asleep upon the leading animal: “Are you from the port, the port of Beilân?”
“Evvet, evvet,” he answered drowsily, and his body rocked with the long rocking of the camel’s stride as they plodded past.
“Nasl Kirk Khân?” cried Fattûḥ. “How does Kirk Khân?”
Kirk Khân is a Christian village at the foot of the Beilân Pass, between Aleppo and Alexandretta.
The next cameleer had come up with his string and he answered the question.
“The giaour are all killed,” he answered, taking Fattûḥ for a Moslem.
“And how are the houses, the houses of the giaour?” Fattûḥ called out. The leader of the next string answered--
“They are all burnt.”
“Praise God,” said Fattûḥ, and the zaptieh laughed.
When the camel-train had passed I said:
“Why did you call the people of Kirk Khân infidels?”
“Because the camel-driver called them so,” Fattûḥ replied.
“And why did you praise God?”
“Effendim, they praised God when they saw Kirk Khân in ashes, and they rejoiced to tell the tale--what else should I say?” He rode on silently for a few minutes, and then he added: “All the men of Kirk Khân were my friends. Every time I drove my carriage from Aleppo to Alexandretta, I stopped to eat with them, and they, when they were in Aleppo, came to my house. Now they are dead--God have mercy on them.”
His sorrowful acceptance of an outrage which the Western mind, accustomed to regard the protecting of human life as the first obligation of society, refused to contemplate, revealed to me the magnitude of the gulf which I had been attempting to bridge, and as I followed the channel of Fattûḥ’s thought, I saw Fate, in the likeness of a camel-train, moving, slow and heavy-footed, towards the inevitable goal.
Our road climbed over a bluff and dropped again into a ravine at the lower end of which stands Kömür Khân, an old, red-roofed caravanserai, stately in decay. Near to it flows the Murad Su, which is the Euphrates, and though we were now far from its Mesopotamian reaches, it was already a great river whose waters had received the tribute of many snows. Below Kömür Khân it enters a narrow gorge where the hills fall sheer into the water, and above the khân, carved upon a slab of rock, a Vannic inscription bears witness to the high antiquity of the road.[215] The ferry is a couple of hours further up stream, but we reached it late in the afternoon and were too weary to cross that night. We pitched our tents on the bank--it was our last Euphrates camp--opposite the village and great mound of Iz Oglu.
The next day’s ride took us over hill and dale to Malaṭiyah.[216] The road was planted with mulberry-trees that dropped their ripe fruit at our feet; the swelling slopes were deep in corn, and water-loving poplars stood in the meadows at the valley bottoms--I do not think that we broke the record of travel upon this stage: there were too many temptations urging us to loiter. Modern Malaṭiyah occupies the site of Azbuzu, a village which was once the summer quarters of the parent city. In 1838, during the war between Turkey and Egypt, Azbuzu became the head-quarters of the Turkish general, Ḥâfiẓ Pasha. Old Malaṭiyah, which is situated about two hours to the north-west, was at that time in great part destroyed for the enlarging of Azbuzu, and has since lain deserted and almost uninhabited. Moltke, who joined the Turkish army in 1838 and remained with it for a year, describes the wonderful luxuriance of the gardens of Azbuzu in his enchanting volume of letters, the most delightful book that has ever been written about Turkey, with the sole exception of _Eothen_. The gardens are no less exquisite now than they were in his time, and as we rode down the hill-side the houses were scarcely to be seen through their screen of fruit-trees. Even upon a nearer view the walnuts and mulberries are far more striking than the buildings of Malaṭiyah, which are constructed, as Moltke says, out of exactly the same material as that with which the swallows make their nests. We camped in the midst of poppy-fields by one of the many streams for which Malaṭiyah is famous, and I spent the afternoon exploring the town, but could find nothing of interest in it, except some Hittite reliefs which had been brought from Arslân Tepeh.[217] I had already determined to visit old Malaṭiyah, and the sight of these stones sent me round by the mound from which they had come. We rode for half-an-hour through gardens to Ordasu, itself buried in gardens, and thence to a ruined monastery, a quarter of an hour up the hill-side. A small chapel has been patched together in the north aisle of the original church. Slabs carved with Latin crosses, or
with the Greek cross encircled by a victor’s wreath, lay about among the ruins or were built into the walls, and upon the piers of the old nave the capitals were roughly carved with acanthus. None of this work seemed to me to be earlier than the eighth or ninth centuries, but I saw in the grass-grown court finely-moulded column bases which were of earlier date. They may have been brought from the city of Melitene, which was the forerunner of old Malaṭiyah.[218] An hour’s ride from the monastery stands the big mound of Arslân Tepeh surrounded by gardens and poppy-fields. Without the evidence of the reliefs it might have been conjectured to represent a Hittite city. The wide fertile valley in which it is placed, the backing of hills, the open plain stretched out beyond it, combine to make Arslân Tepeh one of the typical sites chosen by the old people, and excavation might prove it to be the mother-city of the townships, represented by mounds, which were scattered over the lower ground. From Arslân Tepeh we rode for fifty minutes to Old Malaṭiyah, which has moved rapidly towards complete decay since it was deserted seventy years ago (Fig. 214). The walls and bastions are dropping piecemeal into the poppy-fields that fill the moat; of the streets little or nothing remains: the ruined mosques and tall minarets rise out of a sea of silvery poppy flowers. The Ulu Jâmi’ is still used for prayer, but its door was locked and the key was not to be procured. I climbed by its carved and half-ruined gateway on to the roof, and peering through the windows of the dome, saw that the interior was beautifully decorated with tiles and inscriptions. A rich store of fine Mohammadan work remains to be studied there.
It was a five hours’ ride across the plain to Elemenjik, where our camp was pitched.[219] Elemenjik is a great breeding farm, the property of the late Sultan, who owned most of the pasture lands about Malaṭiyah. The population were in some distress at the prospect of a change of masters and the abolition of the privileges attached to a royal estate, and the government was confronted with a difficult problem with regard to the disposition of these domains. Few private persons could afford to pay the full price for the large breeding stables on the Sultan’s farms, and the properties will lose much of their value when they lose the military guard that watched over the security of the royal mares. The solitude that will be a drawback when Elemenjik comes into the market, was a delightful advantage to our camping-ground, and the people of Kharpût must have been at their prayers again, for the rain fell in refreshing torrents and, clearing away, left the broad plain and the unexplored peaks of the Dersîm mountains shining in the sunset.
Next morning we passed by another of the Sultan’s farms, nestled among poplar-trees in the midst of carefully hedged fields, and in three hours we came to Arga, where we called a halt while we changed zaptiehs. I was well pleased at the delay, for it gave me opportunity to examine some elementary excavations which had been carried out by the Turkish government. They had uncovered the foundations of a church with a tesselated marble pavement, fragments of round columns and moulded bases of excellent workmanship; that it was indeed a church I took on trust from the zaptieh, who acted as showman, for the aims of the excavators had not included the revelation of a plan; but the slabs carved with crosses bore out the official view.[220] When he had exhibited all that was to be seen, he handed me over to one of his colleagues, who was to accompany us to Derendeh, with the parting injunction that he was to guide me to every ruin in the hills. “This khânum,” he observed, “likes ruins.”
“Effendim, olour,” replied his interlocutor, “it shall be.”
But it was not. Perhaps there are no ruins where we crossed the Akcheh Dâgh, or perhaps in the excitement of the road the zaptieh forgot them as completely as I did. Our path would have done credit to the most sensational of journeys. It led us over wild and rocky hills and down into gorges incredibly deep and narrow, and when we stopped to draw breath at the bottom of one of these breakneck descents, we saw the track in front of us climbing mercilessly up the opposite precipice. We came to the bottom of the first valley at 11.45, about an hour from Arga; Deveh Deresi is its name. At the top of the next ridge the splendid gorge of the Levandi Chai opened at our feet. With many warning cries to the baggage animals and much tugging at the taut bridles of our own mounts (for these passages had to be performed on foot) we reached the stream at 1.20 near to the Kurdish village of Levandiler. A steep climb brought us in another hour to the high village of Chatagh; a quarter of an hour beyond it we topped the pass and rode down by easy gradients to Levent. Here, surrounded by magnificent rocky hills, we pitched camp. Our hosts were men of the Kizil Bâsh, a sect whose head-quarters are in the Dersîm. Their creed, which is much contemned by the Moslems--and not in words alone--is said to waver between Paganism, Christianity, Manichæanism and Shî’ism, touched with some memories of ancient Anatolian cults. I did not attempt to unravel these mysteries during the evening I spent at Levent, but contented myself with inviting the headmen of the village to a coffee-party, on which simple human basis relations of the most cordial nature were established. The night was sharply cold, and we set out next morning, with numb fingers, to scramble down into the valley below Levent and up to the opposite ridge, which we reached in one hour. Above us towered the rocky plateau of the Ḳal’ah Dâgh, flanked on every side by cliffs, and below lay the wide and fertile valley of the Tokhma Su (Fig. 215). The caravan pursued its way westward, but I turned east, by Kurd Keui and Saman, and touched the river at Ozan, four hours from Levent, where my zaptieh had promised me a ruin. “Ishté bu,” said the headman of the village, pointing across the poppy-fields, “here it is;” and he turned away to gather us a dish of ripe mulberries, while I stood in amazement before the Ionic columns and carved garlands of a little tomb that might have graced the Appian Way (Figs. 216 and 217). There are no inscriptions upon it, nor anything to tell whose bones were laid within the vaulted chamber; I sent a greeting across the ages to the shade of him who had brought
into this remote and inaccessible valley the arts of the West, and journeyed on.
In four hours’ ride, by an easy path up the right bank of the Tokhma Su, we reached our camp, pitched near the village of Kötü Ḳal’ah, which takes its name from a small ruined fort on the rock above it,[221] and another four hours brought us next morning to Derendeh.[222] The town is scattered among gardens for close upon an hour’s ride along the valley. Towards the upper end a ruined castle stands upon a bold promontory of rock overhanging the stream.[223] A staircase, hewn in the precipice, gave the defenders access to the water; on the further side the hill slopes down more gently, and the ruins of a former Derendeh lie about its foot. We marched three hours further and camped at Yazi Keui, upon the grassy margin of the stream. The bare valley, with its ribbon of cultivation along the water’s edge, gave us delightful travelling, but of archæological interest there was nothing to be found, and when a native of Yazi Keui brought us information of ruins at some distance from our path, I engaged him joyfully to conduct us thither on the following morning. He led us into the hills to the north of the river by a fairly good road (it is the direct caravan road from Sivâs to Albistân, and much frequented) and on to a wide pasturage, an hour and a half from Yazi Keui. The snows of Nurshak Dagh, south-east of Albistân, were visible from the huts of this alpine yaila. At its northern end we found a considerable quantity of shapeless ruins, mere heaps of unsquared stones, and among them three small tombs, half-buried in the earth (Fig. 219). They varied from 2 to 2·50 m. in length, by 1·20 to 2·20 m. in width, and were built of carefully dressed stones. Each had a door in one of the short sides, and each had been covered by a stone vault. In another hour and a half we came down to the Tokhma valley opposite the village of Tikmin; we passed through Telin and reached the khân of Görün in two hours more. There we halted to pick up fresh zaptiehs, and were greeted by the news that the zaptiehs were not ready and that the caravan had gone on unescorted. I had no mind to be parted from my tents upon an unknown road, and, abandoning my intention of visiting a Hittite inscription in the gorge above Görün, I posted after the muleteers with Jûsef at my heels. The path leaves the valley here and crosses some high ground, upon which, after an hour’s hard riding, we caught up the caravan and were ourselves caught up, while we paused to lunch, by the zaptiehs. After we had passed a large chiflik belonging to the Sultan, we descended once more into the valley of the Tokhma Su at Osmândedelî.[224] We pitched camp above the village in a flowery meadow, through which hurried the Tokhma Su, a tiny flashing brook. On a rocky point above us were the ruins of a fort with a Greek cross in a wreath cut upon the fallen lintel of its door.
We had now before us the roughest stage of our journey, for we had reached the hills that part the waters tributary to the Euphrates, from those that are tributary to the Saiḥûnthe Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean. I cannot recommend the way we took across them, except for the beauty of the high and desolate pass.[225] As soon as we had climbed out of the valley of Osmândedelî we found ourselves on a wide upland, swept by cold airs and ringed about with mountains. The wheat was scarcely up, the grass sodden with newly melted snow, the peaks all white. In the midst of these fields lay Küpek Euren, a small hamlet near a mound which was covered with the building stones of an earlier time, while upon the slopes that closed the western end of the plateau was the village of Bey Punar. Having passed the latter, we climbed into the hills by a shallow gorge down which flowed the head-waters of the Tokhma Su. Our way was decked with flowers. Daphne and androsace, veronica and dianthus grew among the rocks, and purple primulas edged the channel of the stream. The gullies were still full of snow. So we came to the water parting, 2,040 to 2,070 metres above sea-level, according to Kiepert, and bidding farewell to the last source of the Mesopotamian rivers, rode down into the basin of the Mediterranean. The long gently-sloping meadows were rich in grass, but no flocks grazed there, and no summer villages were to be seen among the juniper-bushes. The lonely beauty of these alpine pastures, where nature spreads out her fairest bounty, _e beata si gode_, fell upon us like a benison, and once again I offered up praise to all mountains. The water-runnels gathered together into a small clear stream which rippled away from its birthplace in the green hollows and plunged, we following it, into a pine-clad valley. The path grew steeper and more rocky as we descended, the valley narrower, until there was no place left free from pine and berberis and juniper but the boulder-strewn bed of the river. At length we were able to pull our horses up an exceedingly steep track through the pine-woods, by which we emerged on to a grassy hill-side. Here by good fortune we found a party of Circassians, who were hauling their bullock wagons, heavily loaded with timber, over ways which we reckoned to be hard going even for our baggage animals. They directed us to Boran Dereh Keui. Before we had gone far we rounded a spur and the snowy peaks of Mount Argæus swam into our ken, set in the midst of the Anatolian plateau.
Boran Dereh Keui is a Muhâjir village, that is to say, it is peopled by Circassian immigrants from the Caucasus. They have filled the valley of the Zamantî Su, and though they are not liked by the indigenous population, their coming has raised very sensibly the level of civilization. Forty years ago the Zamantî valley was innocent of any settled habitation; the nomad Avshars drove their flocks up to it in the summer, sowed scanty crops, and left before the first winter snows. Now it is all under the plough, and the Circassian villages, with their osier beds and neat vegetable gardens, are scattered thickly along it. Nomad life dies out in a cultivated country, and the Avshars are settling into villages, though their houses are not so well built, nor their gardens so well kept as those of the Circassians. The chief town of the district is ’Azîzîyeh. There we changed zaptiehs, and I sat in the konak while the necessary arrangements were being made and drank coffee with the officials. Presently there appeared one who was half a negro and told me his tale in the strong, guttural Arabic of the desert. He was a native of the Ḥejâz; he had wandered up into this country before there were any villages in it and had remained as a merchant.
“It is very beautiful here,” said I.
“Yes,” said he, “but the desert is different. I have not seen it for forty years.” And I understood what was in his heart.
Behind the konak a plentiful spring bursts out from under the cliffs. I walked up to it and saw men digging up old walls in quest of cut stones. Fragments of columns and rude mouldings pointed to the former presence of a church, and perhaps an earlier shrine hallowed, in true Anatolian fashion, the abundant source.[226] From ’Azîzîyeh we turned our faces to Mount Argæus and travelled along a well-laid road to Ekrek.[227] Among the hills at some distance to the right of the road stands the castle of Maḥmûd Ghâzî, magnificently placed upon a peak. My zaptieh told me that in spite of its name it was a Christian fortress, for he had seen crosses carved upon the lintels, and only the distaste for further excursions that follows upon long stages of mountain travel, prevented me from going up to it. I have a shrewd suspicion that it must be the Tsamandos of the Byzantine historians.[228] Ekrek, where we pitched camp, is built in the bottom of one of the deep valleys which are typical of the district about Argæus. The lava with which the plain is covered forms a sharp cliff on either lip of these gorges, and in places the formation of the volcanic beds is so distinct that the lava can be seen lying like a solid pavement upon the soil, broken off at the edges of the valley and scattered down the slopes in huge slabs. Before I got into camp I turned off to see a small ruined church of no very great interest, and within the town there are several larger churches, all remodelled by the Armenian inhabitants.[229] The early Christian architecture of the eastern side of Cappadocia was unknown to me except from books, and finding myself in St. Basil’s own country, I seized the opportunity of visiting some of the buildings which sprang up with the monastic impulse which he implanted. Instead of making straight for Cæsarea I rode next day under the slopes of the Köleteh Dâgh to the ruins of the Panagia above the village of Köpekli,[230] and so to Tomarza, where there is one of the finest of the Cappadocian ruins (Fig. 220). Both these buildings exhibit the Anatolian type of the domed cruciform, which was already familiar to me, but the decorative details, the engaged pilasters upon the outer walls, the elaborate mouldings, the string-courses carved over doors and windows, are not to be found in the churches that lie further to the west. I sat that night in the Armenian monastery where I was lodged, and pondered over the artistic tradition which these things revealed, and the mingling of occidental with oriental themes which they implied. Not far to the south-east of Tomarza stands among the hills the famous shrine of Comana, sacred to the goddess Ma. With its ancient Asiatic cult and its temples constructed or reconstructed in the Imperial period, Comana was one of the great meeting-places of the culture of East and West; its buildings must have exercised a strong influence over the architecture of eastern Cappadocia, and I determined to seek among its ruins evidences of the age that had preceded the early Christian.
The Armenian priest, whose guest I was, was eager to relate to me the anxieties through which he and his congregation had passed during the last two months. Tomarza lay just beyond the zone of the recent outbreak, but at Shahr, the village which occupies the site of Comana, there had been a “masaleh” (an incident), though he did not enter into particulars as to its character. It was evident that he regarded my interest in antiquities as a mere cloak wherewith to cover a political purpose, and since I was not at the pains to undeceive him--if indeed it had been possible to make my aims clear to him--the announcement of my intention to visit Comana gave him yet stronger grounds for his conviction. By all Tomarza I was regarded as an itinerant missionary collecting evidence with regard to the massacre. The proximity of missionary schools was attested in varying degrees by the acquirements of the population. As I walked through
the streets I was met by a young man who accosted me in French.
“Vous parlez français?” said he.
“Mais oui,” said I.
“Vous parlez bien?” he continued.
“Très bien,” I answered unblushingly, and he was obliged to take my word for it, for when I inquired whether he were a native of Tomarza, he could not understand until I repeated the question in Turkish.
My next interlocutor was a boy who spoke English, which he had learnt, and learnt well, in an American college where he had taken his degree. He asked if he might know my name, and when I had obliged him in this particular, he begged that he might be told my object in coming to Tomarza. But I, being at the moment too busy with the ruins of the church to answer so many questions, replied that I had no object, and reduced him to a discomfited silence. The springs of action are different in American colleges.
We left Tomarza at ten o’clock and journeyed into the hills by way of Suvagen, which we reached at 12.40. Almost immediately after we had left the village, we entered a gorge, and our path climbed up through the pine-woods to Kokur Ḳayâ, a small yaila near the top of the pass known as Ḳara Bel. Here we pitched camp at five in the afternoon, close under the snow-wreaths that clung to the northern side of a rocky chain of peaks. Until sunset the clear fresh notes of a cuckoo filled the alp, and all that he had to say was worth hearing; but I wondered whether he enjoyed the society of his brother the kite, whose thin rippling cry dropped down from the rocks above him. I did not take my camp over the pass to Comana, but set out next day with Fattûḥ and a zaptieh and such simple provisions as might enable us to spend a night away from our tents if we found it necessary. Before we started I covenanted with the zaptieh, who was unusually pious, that prayers should be suspended for the day, the previous day’s journey having been seriously upset by the occurrence of the ’aṣr (the hour of afternoon prayer), though every one knows that there is a special dispensation with regard to travellers.
The long grassy pass opens on to a confused prospect of desolate mountains and hardly less deserted valleys; the gnarled and twisted pine-woods clinging to the rocks, the flowering hawthorn and regiments of yellow mullein that lined the lower course of the stream, gave to our road a memorable beauty, and if the going was not so good as might have been desired, why, we had seen worse. In the midst of these wild solitudes, five hours from Kokur Ḳayâ, we came upon a ruined shrine. It was a temple-mausoleum, and in this respect the true forerunner of the memorial churches of the Anatolian plateau (Fig. 226); nor did the connection between the Christian and the Pagan work cease here. The shallow engaged pilasters, broken by a moulding into two storeys, which are found in the churches, were present in the temple; if the string-courses did not yet form a continuous band over the window arches, it was easy to see how obvious the transition to the later type would be, and the character of the profiles was the same here as in the churches (Fig. 227). The lower part of the temple contained a vault filled with loculi; the eastern end of the upper floor was ruined and overgrown with thick brushwood, but I have no doubt that it could be disengaged and planned without difficulty. Some clearing away of earth and shrubs would be required before it would be possible to make out the nature of a building, indicated by masses of dressed stones and broken columns, which was placed immediately to the south of the temple, but the ruins standing above ground were an exceedingly instructive link in the chain of Cappadocian architecture, and I rode down to Shahr full of hope. The village lies in the heart of a valley cut out by the Gök Su, a tributary of the Saiḥûn. Its sheltered fields were covered with corn, its
gardens planted with fruit-trees, but the streets and houses were no less ruined than the temples of the Great Goddess. The hot breath of massacre had passed down the smiling vale and left Shahr a heap of ashes. I found the inhabitants huddled together on a bluff where half-a-dozen of their dwellings had escaped destruction. A young school-master from the American college of Tarsus told me the story in my own tongue. He was himself a native of Shahr, and chance had brought him back to his home shortly before the outbreak at Adana and Tarsus. Of this disaster, which began upon April 14, the people of Shahr had received no information until, on April 20, the Kurds, Turks and Circassians from the neighbouring Moslem villages appeared in arms and announced that they did not intend to leave a single Christian alive. The villagers of Shahr had eighty rifles among them. Thus armed they defended the bluff, on which stand the ruins of the chief shrine of Ma, for nine days, at the end of which time tardy help arrived from ’Azîzîyeh. They had not lost a life, but they had been powerless to prevent the destruction of the village in the valley. Every house was looted and burnt; of the bazaars nothing remained but blackened foundations; the charred beams of the bridge had fallen into the stream, and the only wall that yet stood in the low ground was a splendid fragment of ancient masonry facing the river.
“Why,” said I, gazing upon the ruin heaps that had once been the school-master’s house, “did they spare the fruit-trees and the corn?”
“They thought that we should be dead before the corn was ripe,” he answered, “and they meant to reap it for themselves. Also the fruit-trees they looked on as their own. Besides these we have nothing left, and we are so much troubled by hunger.”
They were as much troubled by the thought that they could not offer me a fitting hospitality. The oda (the village guest-chamber) was in ashes, and the few houses on the bluff were crowded with women and children. But there was nothing to detain me. The ancient buildings had suffered with the modern; the inscribed stones and acanthus capitals, relics of a golden past, which had decked the streets of the bazaar, lay blackened and half buried among the ruins, and after I had made a brief survey of the site, I handed over to the school-master the little money that was in my purse, and turned back across the hills.[231] The dusk gathered about us as we climbed up to the pass, but the road that we had followed so gaily in the morning was full of darker shadows than those of night. “Nature, red in tooth and claw with ravine,” cried out from riven crag and blasted pine; mountain and valley joined in her chorus, strophe to antistrophe. Mercilessly she creates and destroys; the fury of the storm, the sharp blade of the frost, the senseless passions of mankind, are alike of her ordering.
The ruins of Shahr were the sole evidence which I saw with my own eyes of the far-reaching havoc wrought by the outbreak at Adana, but before I reached Konia I had opportunity to judge of its lasting effect. In Cæsarea trade was paralyzed by the economic annihilation of the rich province of Cilicia, as well as by the fear of further disturbances. The massacres had struck terror into the heart of Moslem and of Christian; they extinguished for a time the new-born hopes of peace, and roused once more the hatred between creed and creed which the authors of the constitution had undertaken to allay. Every section of the community suffered from a destruction of confidence which is even more disastrous than the destruction of wealth, though the Armenians suffered incomparably the most. But the fact that they bore a penalty out of proportion to their fault does not acquit them of blame. They had helped to bring upon themselves the calamity that overwhelmed them; by wild oratory they had laid themselves open to the accusations of conspiracy which were brought against them; they had kindled the flames of discord by preaching in their churches the obligation of revenge. The criminal folly of their utterances stirred up vague alarms in the breasts of an ignorant and fanatical population, and from whatever side came the incitement to outrage, it came to ears sharpened by anxiety. But it must be remembered that in several instances catastrophe was averted by the prompt action of the officials who controlled the threatened districts. In Cæsarea the Mutesarrif, rather than allow a repetition of the Adana tragedy, ordered his soldiers to fire upon the Moslem crowd, who clamoured about the serai for arms on the plea that their lives were in danger from the Christians, and his uncompromising attitude brought the town to order; the Ḳâimmaḳâm of Eregli patrolled the streets night after night during a week of panic; the Mutesarrif of Kozan drove back the armed bands of Circassians who had marched down from the mountains bent on slaughter. Wherever it became evident that the government was not on the side of disorder, disorder was nipped in the bud, and I heard of one example where a handful of Turkish soldiers held in check many hundreds of Kurds, and the Christian village which they had assembled to destroy escaped untouched. I believe that no great massacre has taken place in Turkey without the encouragement of the central authority, or a passivity which amounts to connivance on the part of the local officials; a strong Vâlî backed by an enlightened government would keep peace in the most fanatical province of the empire.
On our way back to Tomarza we passed a large encampment of Avshars. The tents of these Turkish nomads are of a pattern which is common to nearly all the tribes of central Asia, but entirely different from that of the Arabs (Fig. 229). They are round, with a domed roof of felt supported on bent withes, and the sides are of plaited rushes over which a woollen curtain is hung when the nights are cold.[232] We did not sleep a second night at Tomarza, but marched a couple of hours further upon the road to Cæsarea, and camped at the village of Mardîn, which lies in a cleft of the lava beds under the twin peaks of Mount Argæus. Next day we skirted the flanks of the great volcano, passing by the ruined Sarî Khân and under the small peak of ’Alî Dâgh, which is (so I was credibly informed by my zaptieh) nothing but a stray boulder dropped by ’Alî ibn abi Tâlib when he was engaged in helping the Prophet to pile up the huge mass of Argæus.[233] Not only the geographical features of the land, but also the physical and moral qualities of the inhabitants of Cæsarea came under our consideration as we rode.
“If a serpent bites a man of Ḳaiṣarîyeh,” observed Fattûḥ, “the serpent dies.”
“Jânum!” exclaimed the zaptieh (who was not a Cæsarean). “My soul! they can outwit the devil himself. Have you not heard the tale?”
“I have not heard,” said Fattûḥ.
“This it is,” said the zaptieh. “Upon a day the devil came to Ḳaiṣarîyeh. ‘Khush geldi,’ said the people, ‘a fair welcome,’ and they showed him the streets and the bazaars of the city, the mosques and the khâns, all of them. When he was hungry they set food before him till he was well satisfied, but when he rose to depart, he looked for his cloak and belt and they were gone. The devil is not safe from the thieves of Ḳaiṣarîyeh.”
“God made them rogues,” said Fattûḥ.
“What can we do?” observed the zaptieh philosophically. “Dunya bîr, jânum--the world is all one.”
“Great travelling they make,” continued Fattûḥ. “In every city you meet them.”
The zaptieh was ready with historic evidence on this head also.
“There was a man,” said he, “who lived some time in Cæsarea, and having had experience of the people, he found them to be all pigs. Therefore he resolved to journey to the furthest end of the earth, that he might escape from them. And he went to Baghdâd, which is a long road.”
“It is long,” admitted Fattûḥ.
“And then he entered the bath and demanded a good ḥammâmjî to knead the weariness out of his bones. And the owner of the bath called out: ‘Bring the lame Cæsarean!’ Then said the traveller: ’A Cæsarean here and he lame!’ and he fled from Baghdâd.”
Fattûḥ is innocent of any sense of humour. “Oh Merciful,” said he gravely.
I do not know whether it was the effect produced by these
tales which prevented me from lodging in Ḳaiṣarîyeh, or whether the prospect of two days spent in the society of people of my own speech and civilization would not have proved too strong a temptation, even if the Cæsareans had shone with every virtue; at any rate I went no further than Talas, and there remained as a guest in the hospital of the American missionaries. And if I saw little of the famous city of Cæsarea, I passed many hours in the hospital garden at the feet of men and women whose words were instinct with a wise tolerance and weighted by a profound experience of every aspect of Oriental life.
Ḳaiṣarîyeh was the end of the caravan journey. In two days we had sold our horses (“One for us to sell and one for them to buy,” said Fattûḥ), and packed our belongings into the carts which were to take us to the railway at Ereglî. I rode down from Talas to conclude these arrangements and to visit the citadel which stands on Justinian’s foundations. The interior is now packed with narrow streets, the houses being built partly of ancient materials (Fig. 230). The fragments of columns and the weather-worn capitals which are imbedded in the walls of the houses were derived either from the early Christian town which occupied the site of modern Ḳaiṣarîyeh, or from ancient Cæsarea, which lay upon the lower slopes of Mount Argæus. A few foundations outside the limits of the present town are all that remain of the churches that adorned the greatest ecclesiastical centre of the Anatolian plateau, the birthplace of St. Basil, but the memory of the Seljuk conquerors, who gave it a fresh glory during the Middle Ages, is still preserved in many a decaying mosque and school.
We set out from Ḳaiṣarîyeh a diminished party, Ḥâjj ’Amr and Selîm having found work with a caravan of muleteers and returned with them across the mountains to Aleppo. The first day’s drive took us round the foot of Argæus to Yeni Khân, a solitary inn, not marked in Kiepert, which lies two hours to the north of Ḳaraḥiṣâr. The mighty buttresses of Argæus, rising out of the immense flats of the Anatolian plateau, are as imposing as the flanks of Etna rising from the
sea, and its height, over 13,000 feet, is scarcely less from base to summit than that of the Sicilian volcano.[234] The second day brought us to a khân by the roadside, half-an-hour from the village of Andaval; upon the following morning we reached, after three-quarters of an hour’s drive, the church of Constantine, of which the foundation is attributed by legend to the Empress Helena,[235] and in two hours more we came to Nigdeh, where I halted for a few hours to see the Seljuk mosques and tombs for which the town is famed. Of these the most beautiful is the so-called mausoleum of Havanda, the wife of ’Ala ed Din.[236] It is in ground plan an octagon, but above the windows the number of faces is doubled, the additional angles being built over projecting brackets, finely worked with stalactite ornaments (Figs. 232 and 233). The spandrils above the windows are decorated with pairs of sphinxes (Fig. 234), and the door is framed in a delicate tracery of lace-like patterns. Beyond Bor we came into a well-known country dominated by the twin peaks of Ḥassan Dâgh, the Lesser Argæus, which I greeted with a respect mingled with the familiarity born of an intimate acquaintance with its rocks. Three hours from Nigdeh we reached Emîr Chiflik, where there is a khân unnamed by Kiepert, and next morning we drove into Bulgurlû, the present terminus of the Baghdâd railway. But the art of modern travel accords ill with the habits of the East; the baggage wagon missed the daily train and we were obliged to wait for it at Ereglî.
“Your Excellency does not wish to see the pictures of the Benî Hît?” said Fattûḥ suspiciously as we stepped out upon the platform. We had never before passed through Ereglî without visiting the great Hittite relief in the gorge of Ivrîz. But I reassured him: we had seen enough.
One more expedition lay, however, between us and Konia. It was to be accomplished in light order; indeed, we might have ridden up to the Ḳara Dâgh without possessions, for there was no man in all the mountain who would not have been proud to offer us a lodging. Fattûḥ and I shone there with a reflected glory that radiated from the Chelabî, whose fame is not confined to the Ḳara Dâgh, though few perhaps of his colleagues in the Scottish Academe which he adorns would recognize him under his Anatolian title. Had we not spent weeks under his direction in grubbing among old stones, to the delight and profit of all beholders? Had we not consumed innumerable hares and partridges at twopence a head, and offered a sure market for yaourt and eggs? And when the regretted hour of departure arrived, what store of empty tins and battered cooking pots was left behind to keep our memory green! Our renown extended even to Ḳaramân, where we alighted from the train on the following evening. The khânjî was a trusted friend, the shopkeepers pressed gifts of rose jam upon us, and when the hiring of horses presented a difficulty, I had only to step out into the streets and explain our needs to the first acquaintance whom I met. He happened to be a ḥammâl (a porter) who had done a couple of days’ work for us in the Ḳara Dâgh, and he was intimate with an arabajî (a carriage driver), who would without doubt place his horses at our disposal; and if I would come in and drink a cup of coffee the matter should be settled. I accepted the invitation and was introduced triumphantly to the ḥammâl’s wife: “This is the maid I told you about--she who worked with the Chelabî.” On our way back to the khân we chanced to pass by the exquisite Khâtûnyeh Medresseh,[237] and since the mullah was standing under the carved gateway, I stopped to bid him a good-evening. In the tomb chamber that opens out of the cloistered courtyard I remembered to have seen fragments of a fine inscription of blue tiles: scarcely a tile was left upon the walls and I knew how they had vanished, for I had found one of them in the hands of a Konia dealer and bought it from him. This incident I related to the mullah.
“You did very wrong,” said he. “You have stolen one of our tiles and carried it away.”
“I did not steal it,” I pleaded weakly. “I found it at Konia.”
“It is all one,” he replied. “You should give it back.”
But as we went out through the cloister I noticed that the columns which supported it were double columns of a type peculiar to Christian architecture. They had in all probability been removed from a church.
“Mullah Effendi,” said I, “we are equal. I have taken a tile out of your Moslem tomb, and you the columns from our Christian church.”
The mullah’s indignation vanished in a flash. “Âferîn!” he cried, with a jolly laugh. “Bravo!” and he clapped me on the back.
The ḥammâl’s confidence in the arabajî had not been misplaced; we set out next morning for the Ḳara Dâgh, and every mile was full of delightful reminiscence. The yellow roses dropped their petals in familiar fashion over the mountain path, mullein and borage spread their annual carpet of blue and gold between the ruins, and the peak of Mahalech, on which I had found a Hittite inscription and a Christian monastery, stood guardian, as of old, over the green cup wherein had lain an ancient city. The sturdy Yuruks came striding down from their high yailas to bid us a joyful coming and a slow departure; many were the greetings that passed round the camp fire, and it was well that Fattûḥ had laid in a good provision of coffee at Ḳaramân.
So on a hot morning we struck our last camp and rode down the northern slopes of the mountain to rejoin the railway by which we were to travel to Konia. And as we crossed the level plain Fattûḥ observed with satisfaction:
“The cornland has increased since two years ago. Effendim, there is twice as much sown ground.”
“Praise God!” said I. “It is the doing of the railway.”
“Wherever it passes the corn springs up,” said Fattûḥ. “Mâshallah! Konia will become a great city.”
“It has grown in our knowledge,” said I. “But this year we shall find it much changed, for all our friends have left.”
“Where have they gone?” inquired Fattûḥ.
“Riza Beg is in Salonica,” said I, mentioning one who had eaten out his heart in exile for ten weary years. “He has gone back to his wife and child.”
“He would make haste to join them,” assented Fattûḥ.
“And Meḥmet Pasha is in Constantinople. I saw his name among those who helped to depose the Sultan.”
“He has risen to high honour,” said Fattûḥ. Meḥmet Pasha was another of the proscribed.
“And Suleimân Effendi is deputy for Konia, where he was so long in exile. Oh Fattûḥ, we shall be strangers there now that our friends have gone.”
“Your Excellency will meet them in other cities,” said Fattûḥ. “And they will be free men.”
INDEX
Abbâsid Sâmarrâ, 242
Abu ’Atiḳ, ruins of, 66, 68, 110
Abu Bekr, tekîyeh of, 10, 15
Abu Dulâf, minaret of, 211, 213, 214; mosque of, 243 _and note_^{1-46}, 246 _note_^{1}
Abu Ḥanîfah, shrine of, 188
Abu Jîr, ruins of, 123, 124, 125, 127
Abu Kemâl, village of, 77, 81-82, 84, 85
Abu’l Ḥassan, tell of, 81, 111, 112-13
Abu Sa’îd, 63, 65, 101, 110, 111
Abu Tuṭah, 61
Aburas (Khâbûr), the, 109
Adana, massacre of Christians at, 251, 252, 302-3, 331-32, 349
’Aḍêm, the, 204 _and note_^{5}
Aeipolis (Hît), 110, 111, 114
Afâḍleh, the, 53
Ager Romanorum, the, 307
’Ain el ’Aṣfûrîyeh, 124
’Ain el ’Awâsil, 124
’Ain et Tamr, oasis of, 135, 139; history, 156, 157
’Ain Nakhîleh, village of, 26
’Ain Tâb, 32
’Ain Tell, Spring of, 9
’Ain Za’zu’, spring at, 118-19, 122
’Aiwir, ruin of, 118
Ajmîyeh, 89, 90
Akcheh Dâgh, the, 339 _and note_^{1}
Akhaya Kala, island of, 99
Ala Klisse, decoration in, 155
Albistân, 342
Aleppo, saddlers of, 1-3; politics and religion, 3-8; municipal income, 8-9; works of Seif ed Dauleh, 9, 11-12; Christians of, 9-10; antiquity of, 10-11; the Jâmi’ el Ḥelâwîyeh, 11; mosque of Firdaus, 12; the Jâmi’ esh Shaibîyeh, 12; shrine of Ḥussein, 12-13; architecture, 13-14; the Bîmâristân El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, 14; the citadel, 15-16; the road to Baghdâd, 126; gateway of the citadel, the serpent motive, 15, 190; news of massacre, 317; distances from, 334, 335
Alexandretta, port of, 334, 335
’Alî Dâgh, 353
’Alḳâmî, the, 164 _note_^{1}
Alḳôsh, 274, 281, 282
Allan, 111, 112
Alûs, 101
Al’ Uzz (Kiepert), 101
Amadîyeh, 288
Amârah, 184, 194
’Amej, castle of, 86, 121
’Amr, mosque of, Cairo, 56 _note_^{2}
’Amrḳan, 262
’Anâb, 44, 47
’Ânah, 85, 87, 88, 89, 113; the road to, 92-93; the castle and minaret, 94-96; history, 96-98
Anatho (’Anah), 92, 109, 111, 114
Andaval, village of, 356
Anderîn, barracks at, 121 _note_^{2}
Annouca, castle of, 68
Anthemusia, 22
Anti Taurus, 327
Antioch Gate, Aleppo, 11, 15
Antioch on the Orontes, 10
Anu and Adad, temple of, 223
Apamea (Strabo), 204
Arabissus, 339 _note_^{1}
Ararat, mountain of, 289
Araxes, the (the Khâbûr), 73
Arba’, village of, 303 _note_^{1}
Arba’în, shrine of the, Tekrît, 217
Arbela, 221, 228
Arca, _see_ Arga
Arga, 338, 339 _note_^{1-40}
Argæus, Mount, 344, 345, 353-54, 355
Argæus the Lesser, 356
Arghana, the monastery of the Virgin, 328 _and note_^{1}
Arghana Ma’den, Khân of, 328 _note_^{1}, 329, 330 _note_^{1}
Ariarathia, 344 _note_^{1}
Arîmeh, village of, 20
Ark of Noah, 291-95
Arnâs, 317-18
Arslân Tepeh, mound of, 336, 337
Artemis, Temple of (Darius), 111
’Ashiḳ, the, Sâmarrâ, 235 _and note_^{4-39}, 242
Asia Minor, tower tombs, 37
Asikha, 111, 112
’Asîleh, 130, 132
Asshur, mound of, 221, 222; temple of, 222-24, 229
Assyrian temples, construction, 223
Atargatis, pool of, 21-22
’Atâ’ut, pitch well at, 106
Atesh Gah of Jur, 246 _note_^{2}
Awânâ, _see_ Wâneh
Aywân Kisrâ, the, 181 _note_^{3}
Azakh, 302-3
Azbuzu, 336
’Azîzîyeh, 339 _note_^{1}, 344 _and note_^{1}, 345 _note_^{2}
Bâ’adrî, village of, 269-70, 273; ’Alî Beg, 273-74; Sa’îd Beg, 274, 280; the summer festival, 280; underground village near, 299 _note_^{1}
Bâ’ashikâ, 265
Bâ Dibbeh, 309
Bâ Sebrîna, village of, 303 _and note_^{1-4}; monasteries of, 304-5; construction in, 315
Bâb, 17, 18 _and note_^{3}
Bâb el Ḥadîd, Aleppo, 15
Bâb el Maḳâm, Aleppo, 14
Bâb el Wuṣṭânî, 191
Bâb eṭ Ṭilism, Baghdâd, 190
Bâb Kinnesrîn, the, Aleppo, 11
Bâbil, mound of, 168, 173
Babylon, 22, 164; Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, work of excavation, 168-71; temple of Ishtar and the Ishtar Gate, 171; the Via Sacra, 171-72; temple of Marduk, 172; the theatre, 172-73; mound of Bâbil, 173; construction in, 223
Baghdâd, 3, 32, 46, 54; the railway, 34, 356; the road to, 94, 160, 167; tomb of the Sitt Zobeideh, 100; justice in, stories of Rejef Pasha, 175-77; story of the cannon, 183, 192-93; entry by the Ḥilleh road, 184; the British Residency, 184; the irrigation system, 185; the new régime in, 185-87; the Jews and military service, 187; Manṣûr’s Round City, 187 _and note_^{1-88}; the Kâẓimein, 188-90, 198; tomb of Sheikh Ma’rûf, 189-90; Bâb eṭ Ṭilism, 190-91; traces of the ancient city, 191; the Bâb el Wuṣṭânî, 191; Mustanṣirîyeh College, 191-92; the Khâṣakî Jâmi’, 192; Khân Orthma, 192; the arsenal, 193-94; mosque and tomb of ’Abdu’l Ḳâdir, 195; a visit to the Naḳîb, 195-96; the tekîyeh for pilgrims, 195-96; Catholics in, 197; road to Kerkûk, 206; mosque of Manṣûr, 235 _note_^{2}; stories, 354
Baghdâdî, 102, 114
Baghût, 202
Bahurasîr, 181 _and note_^{2}
Baisampse, 38 _note_^{4}
Balad, village of, 205
Balîjah, mound of, 88
Bâlis, 18, 24 _note_^{2}
Bambyce, 22
Bar Hebræus, tomb of, 266
Barâd, tower tombs of, 38 _note_^{2}
Barbalissos, 24 _note_^{2}
Bardawî, mound of, the fortress, 136-37
Bârtallâ, 265, 267
Basilia, 110, 111, 112
Baṣrah, 95, 160, 163
Bathnæ, 18
Bathnæ in Osrhœne, 23
Baviân, valley of, 271-72; rock carvings and rock cut chambers, 272 _note_^{1}, 275
Bazaar Euren, 345 _note_^{1}
Beilân Pass, 334
Beit el Khalîfah, Sâmarrâ, 237, 240 _and note_^{1-42}
Belesys, palace of, 18
Belias River, the, 54
Belîkh, the, 54, 61
Belisibiblada, 111, 113
Belḳâ, the, 303
Bergland Tulaba (Kiepert), 61 _and note_^{1}
Berœa, 10; acropolis of, 11
Bersiba (Munbayah), 44, 47
Berwân, island of, 101
Bethauna, 111, 114
Bêtmanîn, 293 _note_^{1}
Bey Punar, 343 _and note_^{1}
Beyrout, 4; vilayet of, 7
Bezabde, 296 _note_^{1}
Billânî, graves of, 52
Bîmâristân of El Malik eẓ Ẓâher, Aleppo, 14
Birejik, bridge at, 22-23; tower tombs, 37; distances from, 109
Birs Nimrûd, 173
Bisheh, 202
Biunan, 111, 112
Bombay, justice in, 95
Bonakhe, 111, 114
Bor, 356
Boran Dereh Keui, 343 _note_^{1}, 344
British Museum, Assyrian reliefs, 71; the Black Obelisk, 223
Bulgurlû, 356
Buseirah, 111, 112; excavations at, 73-75; the ruined church, 75-76, 78
Buseyiḥ, Tell of, 79
Bustân, 79, 81
Buzâ’â, 18
Cadesh on the Orontes, 10
Cæciliana, 23, 24
Cæsarea, 302, 329; caravan road, 335 _note_^{1}; effect of the massacre in, 352-53; stories of, 354
Cairo, examples of leaf motives, 12 _note_^{2}; mosque of Ibn Ṭûlûn, 58, 246 _and note_^{3}
Calah (Nimrûd), 227, 228; city of Calah, 229
Callinicum, 54, 111
Cappadocia, 345
Carchemish on the Euphrates, 10, 26, 31; the northern mound, 33-34
Carduchian Mountains, 300
Chaghullah, 333 _note_
Chalcedon, œcumenical council of, 256
Chalcis, 10
Chaleb (Aleppo), 11
Charcha (Ammianus Marcellinus), 212 _note_^{1}
Chat, 27
Chatagh, 340
Chem Resh, valley of, 270
Cholak Ushagî, 333 _note_^{1}
Cilicia, the outbreak in, 302-3, 323, 331, 352
Circesium, 68, 74, 75, 109, 111, 112
Cloister of the Ark, 292
Comana, shrine of, 346; inscriptions, 350 _note_^{1}
Constantine, Church of, 356
Constantinople, situation in, 73, 96, 186, 204, 217, 222, 227; justice in, 162; the museum, 229; accession of Muḥammad V, 251-54, 359
Corsote, 82, 84, 111, 113
Ctesiphon, 200, 255; (construction at), 153 _and note_^{1}, 154, 155, 156, 160, 180; the road to, 174-75; foundations, 179 _and note_^{1}; Mohammadan conquest, 180; the White Palace of Chosroes, 181; the hall, 240
Cunaxa, battle of, 200 _and note_^{1}
Cyrrhus, the ziareh of Khoros, 37 _note_^{3}
Dadar, 290
Dalanda, 341 _note_^{2}
Damascus, 16, 101; the post road to, 117, 121
Dandaxina, 339 _note_^{1}
Daphne, 18
Dâr el ’Ammeh, the, 240 _note_^{1}
Dara, 301, 307
Dardes, the, 18
Daurîn, _see_ Dawwarîn
Dauser, Castle of, 50-51
Dawwarîn, the, 78, 79, 80; junction with the Euphrates, 82
Deheb, valley of the, 17
Dehûk, 283
Deir, mutesarriflik of, 8; boundary, 65; the ferry, 70-71; bazaars, 71; the Ḳâḍî, 71-72; passing events, 72-73; the road to Buseirah, 108
Deir Bar Sauma, 303 _note_^{1}
Deir el ’Amr, 313 _note_^{1}
Deir el Kahf, 121 _note_^{2}
Deir el Khiḍr, 263 _note_^{1}
Deir Mâr Gabriel, 315
Deir Mâr Shim’ûn, 303 _note_^{1}
Deir ’Umar, 315, 316 _note_^{1}
Denshâwî, the incident at, 196
Dereh Gechid Chai, 327 _note_^{1}
Derendeh (Dalanda), 339 _and note_^{1}, 341 _and note_^{2}
Dersîm, the, 338, 340
Deveh Deresi, 340
Devil Worshippers, 269
Diacira, Castle of, 102 _note_^{1}
Dibseh, 18; the ford at, 47
Diyârbekr, 32, 206, 250, 301, 317, 327 _note_^{1}, 329; gates of, 13, 324 _and note_^{2}; the Vâlî at, 321; the situation in, 321-24, 331; arsenal, 324-25; the Ulu Jâmi’, 325-26; language in, 327
Domitian, palace of, on the Palatine, 180
Dujeil, the, 201 _and note_^{1}, 203; lower course, 202
Dûmat ej Jandal, 156-57
Dûmat el Ḥîrah, 156-57
Dumeir, 118
Dûr, village of, 190 _note_^{2}, 214; shrine of the Imâm Dûr, 214-16
Dûr ’Arabâyâ, 212 _note_^{1}
Dura, 111, 112, 113
Dura (Isidoris), 113
Dura Nicanoris, 111
Durnakh, 289
Edessa [now Urfah], 23, 24
Egypt, English rule in, 196
Ekrek, 339 _note_^{1}, 345
El ’Awâṣim, province of, 25
El Khiḍr, 263 _note_^{1}
El Malik eẓ Ẓâher, Medresseh of, 12
Elemenjik, the situation in, 338
Emergal, 345 _note_
Emîr Chiflik, 356
Ephesus, council of, 255 _note_^{1}
Ephesus, caravan road to, 335 _note_^{1}
Er Radâf (El ’Asîleh), 131
Ereglî, 353, 355, 357
Eṣ Ṣâliḥîn, mosque of, 13
Eskî Baghdâd, 212 _note_^{4}, 213
Eskî Serûj, 22 _note_^{2}
Eskishehr, 338 _note_^{1}
Eugenius, St., monastery of, 310-12
Euphrates, passages of the, 22-23, 24 _note_^{2}, 27-28, 31-32, 47; waters of the, 35; the Jezîreh and the Shâmîyeh, 60-61, 66, 77; Julian’s march, 62; the river at Wâdî Mâliḥ, 67; below Deir, 73-74; inundations, 79-82; tribes on the, 81; islands, 85-86; the piers of the bridge at ’Ânah, 97; ’Ânah to Hît, 98; landscape at ’Ânah, 101; the road from Buseirah to ’Ânah, 108-9; the division above Museiyib, 164 _and note_^{1}; bridge of boats near Kerbela, 167; the Murad Su, 335; tributaries, 342-43
Europus, 24 _note_^{2}, 33, 111
Evler, village of, 296
“Father of Asphalt,” the, 125
Festhaus, the, at Ḳal’at Shergat, 225
Fetḥah gorge, the, 220
Fḥemeh, village of, 99, 100
Finik, 296 _note_^{1}, 301; castles, 297-98; rock dwellings, 298-99
Firdaus, mosque of, Aleppo, 12-13
Firûzâbâd, Sassanian Palace of, 153, 156
Galabatha, 110, 111
Ga’rah, 118
Garârah, 183
Ga’rat ej Jemâl, 123, 124
Gelîyeh, village of, 306, 308
Gerik, village of, 290
Geurmuk, 290
Ghazil, the, 293 _note_^{1}
Ghirân (Kiepert), 52
Giddan, 111, 113
Gilead, the road to Moab, 303
Gök Su, the, 348
Göljik, 329, 330 _note_^{1}
Gordian, tomb of, 113
Görün, 339 _note_^{1}, 342 _note_^{1}; khân of, 342
Grê Pahn (Tell ’Arîḍ), 283
Great Zâb, the, 204 _note_^{3}, 228
Günesh, 343
Gurgurri Gate, Ḳal’at Shergat, 224
Ḥadîthah, ruins of, 99, 100 _and note_^{1}, 111, 114, 190
Ḥaleb (Aleppo), 10-11
Ḥalebîyeh, Castle of, 67
Ḥallâweh, ruins at, 47
Ḥammâm ’Alî, sulphur springs of, 230
Ḥandak, 302 _note_^{3}
Ḥaraglah, ruin of, 53-54, 54 _note_^{1}
Ḥarnik, 333 _note_^{1}
Ḥarrân (Carrhæ), 24 _note_^{2}
Ḥasanah, village of, carved relief, 287 _note_^{2}, 290-91, 294
Ḥasanîyeh, _see also_ Zâkhô, 287 _notes_^{1-2}, 293 _note_^{1}
Ḥassan Dâgh, 356
Ḥasua, the khân of, 175
Ḥâtim Ṭâi, Castle of, 306-8
Hatra, Parthian Palace at, 31; work of Dr. Andrae, 222
Ḥaurân, the, tower tombs, 37
Havanda, mausoleum, 356
Ḥeizil Sû, the, 289, 293 _note_^{1}
Ḥejâz, 344
Heshtân, 293
Hierapolis, _see also_ Manbij, 10, 16, 20, 24; the pool of Atargatis, 21; mosque of ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd, 21-22; history, 23, 24; shrine of Sheikh ’Aḳil, 25-26
Ḥilleh, 164, 167
Hindîyeh swamp, the, 164-65; canal, 164 _note_^{1}; the Nahr Hindîyeh, 164 _and note_^{1}
Ḥîrah castle, 141, 142 _and note_^{1}, 160
Ḥiṣn Keif, rock-hewn chambers, 299 _note_^{1}
Hît, the town of, 102, 104, 111, 114, 201 _note_^{1}; pitch wells, 104-6; the minaret, 108; distances from, 110; women of, 116-17
Ḥöjneh, village of, 78
Ḥussein, mosque of, Aleppo, 12-13; tomb of, Kerbela, 160
Ḥuweiṣilât, ruins of, 239, 242
Ibn Ḥanbal, tomb of, 188
Ibn Ṭûlûn, mosque of, Cairo, 58
Idicara (Ptolemy), 102 _note_^{1}, 111
Imâm Dûr, shrine of, 214-16
Imâm Yaḥyâ, tomb of, 259, 260
Irmez, 303 _note_^{1}
Irzî, 111, 113, 114; ruins of, 49 _note_^{2}, 83-84; bluff of, 82, 85
Is, 104 _note_^{1}, 111
Ishtar Gate, Babylon, 171
Island, 111, 114
Ispileh, 353 _note_^{2}
Ivrîz, gorge of, 357
Iz Oglu, mound of, 333 _note_^{1}, 335 _and note_^{2}
Izala, Mount, 301 _and note_^{1}; monastery of Mâr Augen, 310-17
Izannesopolis, 102 _note_^{1}, 110, 111, 114
Jabarîyeh, ruins of, 88, 111, 113
Ja’deh, hamlet of, 30
Jâmi’el Ḥelâwîyeh, the, Aleppo, 11
Jâmi’el Ḳaṣr, Baghdâd, 191 _note_^{2}
Jâmi’el Maḳâmât, Aleppo, 14
Jâmi’ esh Shaibîyeh, the, Aleppo, 12
Jebel ’Abdu’l ’Aziz, 62
Jebel Alḳôsh, 282-83
Jebel Beiḍâ, 62
Jebel Dehûk, 282-83
Jebel el Abyaḍ, ruined fortress, 285
Jebel el Ḥamrîn, the, 220-21, 243
Jebel el Ḥaṣṣ, 17-18
Jebel Ḥaurân, 131
Jebel Jûdî, 289
Jebel Maḳlûb, 266, 268
Jebel Munâkhir, 61, 62
Jebel Munkhar esh Sharḳî, 61
Jebel Muzâhir, the, 119
Jebel Sim’un, 273, 280
Jebel Sinjâr, the, 87, 275, 280, 301, 308
Jebel ’Uḳala, 61
Jedeideh, 63
Jelîb esh Sheikh, 124
Jemmah, mounds of, 79, 111, 112
Jerâblus, 24 _note_^{2}, 32, 33 _and note_^{1}
Jernîyeh, hill of, 43
Jerusalem, tomb of Absalom, 37 _note_^{5}; construction in, 223
Jezarân, village of, 270
Jezîreh, the, 295, 296 _note_^{1}, 297
Jezîret ibn ’Umar, 287 _note_^{2}, 296-97
Jibbeh, island of, 101
Jisr Manbij, 24 _note_^{2}
Jôf in Nejd, 144
Jonah, tombs of, 262
Jûdî Dâgh, ridge of, 289, 291 _note_^{1}, 293
Jûdî, Mount, the Cloister of the Ark, 291-95
Ḳâ’at ed Deleim, 85
Kadi Keui, 328 _note_^{1}
Ḳâdisîyah, battlefield of, 160, 201 _note_^{1}, 204 _note_^{5}, 207 _note_^{1}; ruins of, 207-8, 210
Kahf ’Alî, 202
Kahf ez Zaḳḳ [Sheikh Ḥamri], 51-52
Ḳâim, town of, 208, 210; tower of, 239
Ḳaindîjeh, 343 _note_^{1}
Ḳaiṣarîyeh, 334, 354, 355
Ḳal’ah Dâgh, plateau of the, 340
Ḳal’at Abu Rayâsh, 219 _note_^{1}
Ḳal’at Bulâk (Retâjah), 88, 111, 113-14
Ḳal’at ej Jedîd, pass at, 308-309, 309 _note_^{1}
Ḳal’at en Nejm, 23, 24 _note_^{2}, 39
Ḳal’at Ḥâtim Ṭâi, 309 _and note_^{1}
Ḳal’at Ja’bar, 44, 48, 51; towers of, 49 _and notes_-50
Ḳal’at Khubbâz, 107
Ḳal’at Lûlû, Môṣul, 260
Ḳal’at Râfiḍah, 88
Ḳal’at Shergât, work of Dr. Andrae, 221, 222; temple of Asshur, 222-23; the fortifications, 224-26
Kalender Khân, 329
Kalender Koprüsi, 328 _note_^{1}
Kalka, 308
Ḳara Bel, the, 347, 350 _note_^{1}
Ḳara Dâgh, 357-58
Ḳara Kazâk, mound of, at Tell Aḥmar, 30
Ḳara Khân Chai, 327 _note_^{1}
Ḳarâbileh, island of, 92, 111, 114
Ḳaraḥiṣâr, 355
Ḳaramân, 357, 358
Ḳarkh, mound of, 212 _note_^{1}, 323
Ḳaraḳôsh, inscriptions, 264 _note_^{1}; the seven churches, 264; Mâr Shim’ûn, 264-65; churches of, 279
Ḳarḳîsîyâ (Circesium), 68, 74
Karnak, inscriptions at, 104 _note_^{1}
Kars, 63
Kâs i Fir’aun at Sâmarrâ, 235
Ḳâsim Khân, 330 _note_^{1}
Ḳaṣr ’Amej, 100, 118
Ḳaṣr el Abyaḍ, 121 _note_^{2}
Ḳaṣr et Tâj, Baghdâd, 191 _note_^{2}
Ḳaṣr Ghellî, rock carvings, 298
Ḳaṣr-i-Shîrîn, 156
Ḳaṣr Khubbâz, 118
Ḳasṭal, 121 _note_^{2}
Ḳâṭûl, 207 _and note_^{2}, 209
Ḳâṭûl-Nahrawân, the, 205 _note_^{5}
Kavak, _see_ Köpekli
Kayden Keui, 328 _note_^{1}
Ḳâyim, 85
Kayyik Debû, hamlet of, 35
Kâzimein, Shi’ah sanctuary, Baghdâd, 188-90, 194
Ḳdirân, 52
Kebeisah, 106, 107, 116-17, 117 _note_^{1}, 122; sulphur springs, 118
Kefr Zeh, 315, 317-18
Keghvank, 330 _and note_^{1}
Kerbelâ, 100; the road, 140, 206; distances from, 142; the caravan at, 143-44; impressions, 159-60; tomb of Ḥussein, 160; shops, 161; appointment of officials, 161-62; the mutesarrif, 162; the tower, 162; the Hindîyeh swamp, 164-66; pilgrims to, 166-67
Kerkûk, 251
Kernaz, 313 _note_^{1}
Kevak Euren, 342 _note_^{1}
Kezerik, inscriptions, 330
Khâbûr, the, 73, 74, 76, 112; the ferry, 77, 78 _note_^{1}; tribes of the, 81; valley of, 286, 287 _and note_^{2}, 288; the bridge above Zâkhô, 289
Khabura, 111
Khâkh, ruins of, 317-19; the Church of the Virgin, 319-20; the robbery at, 320-22
Khân, 328 _note_^{1}
Khân, the (Kiepert), 65
Khân Keui, 333 _and note_^{1}
Khân el Wazîr, Aleppo, 13
Khân es Sabûn, Aleppo, 13
Khân eṭ Ṭarniyeh (Kiepert), 199 _note_^{1}
Khân ez Zebîb, 121 _note_^{3}
Khân Khernîna, 192 _note_^{2}, 219 _and note_^{2}
Khân Orthma, Baghdâd, 192
Khânûḥah, town of, 68
Kharabah ’Aleh, 313 _note_^{1}, 314
Khâranî, 121 _note_^{3}
Kharpût, 327; plain of, 329-30; the Castle, 330-31; the panic in, 331-33
Khâṣakî Jâmi, Baghdâd, 192
Khâtûnyeh, 338 _note_^{1}
Khâtûnyeh Medresseh, the, 357-58
Khawarnaḳ, 141; Castle of, 142, 160
Khawîjeh, the, 85, 205
Kheiḍir, _see_ Ukheiḍir
Kherâb, 135
Khirbet ed Dukhîyeh, 63
Khirbet Hadâwî, 63
Khmeiḍah, ruins of, 65, 66, 110, 111, 112
Khorsabâd, temple of Sargon, 223
Khubana, 110, 111
Khubbâz, Castle of, 86, 117-21, 127, 129
Ḳiḳân, mosque of, Aleppo, 11
Killîz, 32, 289
Kinik, 308
Kinnesrîn, _see_ Chalcis
Kirk Khân, massacre of, 334-35
Ḳizil Khân, 345 _note_^{1}
Kloster Ruine (Kiepert), 32
Kochannes, 255
Kôdakh, village of, 302 _note_^{3}
Kokur Ḳayâ, 347, 348
Koleh, 285
Kôleteh Dâgh, the, 345
Kolosina (Ptolemy), 99 _note_^{1}
Kömür Khân, 333 _note_^{1}, 335
Konia, 3, 352, 359
Köpekli, ruins of the Panagia, 345 _and note_^{4-46}
Kötü Ḳal’ah, village of, 341 _and note_^{1}
Kozan, massacre, 353
Ḳubbeh, village of, 30, 35
Ḳubbet es Ṣlebîyeh, 239
Ḳubrâ, 68
Ḳubûr ej Jebel, 62
Kûfah, Mohammadan town, 142, 160; mosque of, 164
Ḳuleib, 41
Küpek Euren, 343 _and note_^{1}
Kurd Keui, 340
Kurdistân, mountain chains of, 265, 284, 285, 286
Kuro, island of, 99
Ḳuṣeir el Ḥallâbât, 121 _note_^{2}
Ḳusheir, the, 50
Ḳûyûnjik, mound of, 261-62
Lekweir, 240
Levandi Chai, 340
Levandiler, village of, 340
Levent, 340
Lubbâd, island of, 94, 96, 111, 114
Madaḳḳ eṭ Ṭabl, Sâmarrâ, 211
Madâin, 182
Ma’den Chai, the, 328 _note_^{1}, 329
Madlûbeh, ruin of, 106-107
Mahalech, peak of, 358
Maḥall es Ṣafṣâf, 48
Maḥârîz, 52
Maḥawîl, village and canal, 167
Maḥmûd Ghâzî, Castle of, 345 _and note_^{2}
Maḥmûdîyeh, 177
Ma’lathâyâ (Malthai), 287 _note_^{2}
Malaṭiyeh, 327; the modern city, 335 _and note_^{1-36}; Old Malaṭiyeh, 337-38
Malthai, the Assyrian reliefs, 283-84
Malwîyeh, the, Sâmarrâ, 209 _and note_^{1}, 210
Ma’mûreh, asphalt beds and minaret, 106; ruins, 127
Ma’mûret el ’Azîz, vilayet of, 330
Manbij [Hierapolis], 18, 19; ancient churches, 21, 22 _note_^{1}; history, 24-25
Mangâbeh, 26
Mangûb, 227
Manṣûr, founder of Kafiḳah, 54; Round City of, 187 _and note_^{1-88}; mosque of, Baghdâd, 235 _note_^{2}
Mâr Ahudânî, Church of, 257
Mâr Augen, monastery of, 302 _note_^{1}, 310-12
Mâr ’Azîzîyeh at Kefr Zeh, 315, 317-18
Mâr Barsauma, 316 _note_^{2}
Mâr Behnâm, 262 _and note_^{1-63}, 263 _note_^{2}, 268 _and note_^{1}
Mâr Cosmo, 324 _note_^{1}
Mâr Dodo, 304-5
Mâr Gabriel of Kartmîn, 262 _note_^{1}, 314-16
Mâr Girjis, 258
Mâr Hôbel, 316 _note_^{2}
Mâr Ibrahîm, 316 _note_^{2}
Mâr Kyriakos at Arnâs, 317-18
Mâr Mattai, monastery of, 266; story of Mâr Mattai, 267-68
Mâr Melko, 313 _and note_^{1-14}
Mâr Musa el Habashi, 316 _note_^{2}
Mâr Philoxenos, 316-17
Mâr Shim’ûn, Bâ Sebrîna, 303-4
Mâr Shim’ûn, 218, 259; Ḳaraḳôsh, 264-65
Mâr Shim’ûn, Midyâd, 316 _note_^{2}
Mâr Sobo, 319
Mâr Tûmâ, 258 _and note_^{1-59}, 259 _note_^{1}, 260, 263 _note_^{2}
Mâr Yâ’ḳûb, Church of, Ṣalâḥ, 316-19
Mâr Yâ’ḳûb, monastery of, 272, 283
Marde, 301
Mardîn, 218, 301, 311, 353 _and note_^{2}
Mascas, the, 82
Ma’shûk, the, _see_ ’Ashiḳ, the
Masius Mount, 301
Masnik, 335 _note_^{2}
Mas’ûdîyeh, 41
Maxentius, basilica of, 180
Mazâr of Sultan ’Abdullah, 49 _note_^{1}
Mazâr of Sultan Selîm, 49 _note_^{1}
Mdawwî, mounds, 202
Mecca, 158; the well Zemzem, 277
Medâin, 181 _note_^{2}
Medina, 158
Meiḍa, 62
Melekjân, 333 _note_^{1}
Melitene, 337 _and note_^{1}
Merrhan, 111, 113
Meskeneh, 24 _note_^{2}; the ferry, 47
Mesopotamia, antiquities of, 11; fortified khâns, 121 _and note_^{2-22}; history, 156
Mespila-Nineveh, 287 _note_^{2}
Mezîzakh, 316 _note_^{1}
Mezreh, 330 _and note_^{2}, 331, _note_^{1}
Middo, 303 _note_^{1}
Midyâd, Mâr Philoxenos, 316-17
Midyâd, Ḳâimmaḳâm of the, 321
Môṣul, 70, 185, 206, 230-31, 265, 302; the modern bridge, 237; the situation in, 247-49; the affair of 1st January 1909, 249-50; murder of Sheikh Sayyid, 249-50; the League of Mohammad formed, 250-51; fall of ’Abdu’l Hamîd, 251-54; the Church in, 254-57; Church of Mâr Ahudânî, 257; first recorded mosque, 259; tomb of the Imâm Yaḥyâ, 259, 260; the Ḳal’at Lûlû, 260; the Sinjâr Gate, 260; the Jews of, 260-61, 261 _note_^{1}; the high road, 284, 286, 287 _note_^{1}
Mshatta, Palace of, 152, 153
Mu’aẓẓam, village of, 188
Mudawwarah, ruin of, 48
Mügdeh, 341 _note_^{2}
Mughârah, 30, 35
Muḥammad ’Alî, tomb of, at Wâneh, 203
Mukbil, village of, 271
Mullah ’Alî Shehr, 341 _note_^{1}
Munbayah, mound of, 43-44; basalt mills, 63
Munga’rah, Ḳishlâ el, 69
Murad Su, the, 335
Murrât, ruin of, 135
Museiyib, village of, 164, 166-67
Musheidah, 200; the khân of, 199; the Senîyeh, 201-2
Mustanṣirîyeh College, Baghdâd, 191-92
Mutawakkil, mosque of, Sâmarrâ, 209; Palace of, 213
Nabagath on the Aburas, 109, 111, 112
Nahr el Ḳâim, the, 206-8
Nahrawân canal, 213 _and note_^{1}
Nahrwân, bridge of, 182
Naṣrîyeh canal, the, 167
Natârîyeh, 90-92
Nebî Ḥâshil, ziyârah of, 17
Nebî Yûnus, mound of, 262
Nebuchadnezzar, Palace of, work of excavation, 168-71
Nejd, 86, 217
Nejef, ruins, 160, 162
Neshabah tower, the, 49 _and note_^{1}
Nicephorium, 54, 62, 109, 110, 111
Nigdeh, Seljuk mosques, 356
Nimrûd, 224, 227; mound of, 228-29
Nineveh, ruins of, 261-66; story of Mâr Mattai, 267
Ninmala, island of, 85
Nisîbîn, 301
Nisibis, 301
Nu’mân ibn Mundhir, the castle of, 141, 142
Nûr ed Din, 262
Nurshak Dâgh, 342
Obbanes, 24 _note_^{2}
Olabus, 100 _note_^{1}, 111, 114
Old Meskeneh, 47
Opis, 200 _and note_^{1}, 204 _and note_^{5}
Ordasu, 336
Osdara, 339 _note_^{1}
Osherîyeh, 27
Osmândedelî, 339 _note_^{1}, 342 _and note_^{1}, 343 _and note_^{1}
Osrhœne, 23
Ozan, 339 _note_^{1}; tomb at, 340-41, 341 _note_^{1}
Palanga, 341 _note_^{1}
Palmyra, tower tombs of, 37
Parenk, 343 _note_^{1}
Parux Malkha, 102 _note_^{1}
Pehlevî, 305 _note_^{1}
Persia, justice in, 163-64
Persian Gulf, gun-running, 285
Phaliga, 109, 110, 111, 112
Phaliscum, 111, 112
Phathusa, 114
Phœnice-Finik, 296 _note_^{1}, 299
Physcus, the (Xenophon), 204 _note_^{5}
Polat Ushagha, 341 _note_^{1}
Pünoz, Khân of, 330 _note_^{1}
Rabâṭ, village of, 85
Rabbân Hormuzd, monastery of, 255, 281-82
Râfiḳah, history of, 54-55, 57
Raḥbah, 74
Raḥḥâlîyeh, oasis of, 134, 138; water of, 136
Raḥḥâlîyeh-Shetâteh road, the, 136
Raḳḳah, 41, 46, 53, 65, 68, 111; the ferry, 47; history, 54-55, 158; the modern Raḳḳah, 55; shrines, 56 _and note_^{2}; Raḳḳah ware, 59-60, 75-76; distances, 108-10; the Baghdâd Gate, 135 _note_^{2}, 156
Ramâdî, 123, 176, 177
Rawâ, 86-87, 90-92, 94, 114
Retâjah (Ḳal’at Bulâḳ), 88
Rhabdium, 307, 309 _note_^{1}
Risür Chai, 297
Round City, Baghdâd, 187 _and note_^{1-88}
Rumeileh, 41
Sadîr, 141
Sagr, ruin, 202
Saiḥûn, the, 342, 348
St. Simeon Stylites, Church of, 11
Sajûr river, the, 23, 31; the valley, 27
Ṣalâḥ, 314, 316-19
Salakûn, 303 _note_^{1}
Ṣâliḥîyeh, 78, 80, 82
Salonica, 4, 6, 227, 359; the committee, 251; the accession of Muḥammad V, 281
Saman, 340
Saman Keui, 338 _note_^{1}
Sâmarrâ, the mosque of, 58, 231-35, 243 _and note_^{1-46}, 246 _note_^{1}; ruins, 158, 188 _note_^{1}; Mohammadan ware, 204; the Malwîyeh, 206, 209 _and note_^{1}, 210; the choice of Mu’taṣim, 207 _note_^{2}, 209-10; the bazaars, 208; decline of, 208-9; the minaret, 211, 235; Madaḳḳ eṭ Ṭabl, 211; the Kâs i Fir’aun, 235; the palace of the ’Ashiḳ, 235 _and note_^{4-39}, 242; Ṣlebîyeh, 237, 239, 242; ruins of Ḥuweiṣilât, 239, 242; Beit el Khalîfah, 240 _and note_^{1-42}; the Tell ’Alîj, 242-43; Sâmarrâ ware, 243
Samosata, 33
Sapha, 296 _note_^{1}
Saphe, 296 _note_^{1}
Sapolar, 333 _note_^{1}
Sargon temple, Khorsabâd, 223
Sâreh, village of, 305; the Church, 305-6
Sarî Khân, 353 _and note_^{2}
Sarifah (Chesney), 99 _note_^{1}
Sarvistân, 156
Sayyid Aḥmed ibn Hâshim, shrine of, 135
Sayyid Muḥammad, Mazâr of, 205
Scaphe (Ptolemy), 200 _note_^{1}
Scenæ, 22
Scenitæ, country of the, 22
Sefînet Nebî Nûh, 291-95
Seleucia on the Tigris, 10, 22, 109, 110, 179, 181 _note_^{1}; mounds of, 178
Semiramidis Fossa, 110, 111, 112
Serbes, 17
Serrîn, tower tombs of, 36-39
Shabyan, 330 _note_^{1}
Shahr, 346; the temple-mausoleum, 348; story of the massacre, 349-50
Shakh, village of, 296
Shammar, village of, 17
Sham’ûn, castle of, 139
Shandokh, 293, 295
Shawa Keui, 328 _note_^{1}
Shefâthâ (’Ain et Tamr), 156
Shehna Khân, 338 _note_^{1}
Sheikh ’Adî, shrine of, 269, 272; description, 274-78; account of the Saint, 278-79; Yezîdî practices, 279-80
Sheikh Khuḍr, shrine of, 118
Sheikh Najar, 17
Sheikh Sîn, hill of, 43
Sheikh Ziyâd, 17
Shems ed Dîn, 43
Sheramîyeh, 220
Shetâteh, 86, 140; Assyrian remains, 134, 135; palms of, 139; distances from, 142; Bedouin of, 143
Shilbeh, 327 _note_^{1}
Shnâs, 212
Ṣiffîn, battlefield of, 50
Sinjâr Gate, Môṣul, 260
Sisara, _see_ Sisaurana
Sisaurana (Procopius), 309 _note_^{1}
Sitace, 200 _and note_^{1}; position, 204 _note_^{5}
Sitha, 111
Sitt Zobeideh, tomb of, 100, 190 _and note_^{2}, 215
Sivâs, 329, 342
Ṣlebîyeh, 237, 239, 242
Sophene, 331 _note_^{2}
Stambûl, 96, 230
Suleimânîyeh, 249, 250
Sumeikhah, village of, 203 _and note_^{1}
Sûs, ruins at, 99
Suvagen, 347
Syria, fortified khâns, 121 _and note_^{2}
Takhtalî, 345 _note_^{1}
Talas, 353 _note_^{2}, 355
Tarandah, 341 _note_^{3}
Tarmûr, village of, 327 _and note_^{1}
Tarsus, American College, 349
Tâṣir, 202
Taurus Mountains, 325, 327, 328
Tekrît, Ḥmeidî Beg ibn Farḥân, 216-17; the road to Môṣul, 216-17; the castle, 239
Telin, 342
Tell ’Abd ’Alî, 53
Tell Abu Thor, 98
Tell Aḥmar, 23, 24 _note_^{1}, 26-28, 34, 44; the Hittite stela, 29-30
Tell ’Alîj, 242-43
Tell ’Arîḍ, 283
Tell Bada’ah, 28 _note_^{1}
Tell Batnân, 17
Tell Bshairah, 202
Tell ech Cha’bî, 80
Tell edh Dhahab, 204, 205
Tell el ’Abr, 31
Tell el Afrai, 48-49
Tell el Banât, 41
Tell el Ghânah, 28 _note_^{1}
Tell el Ga’rah, 43
Tell el Hajîn, 81
Tell el Ḥâl, 17
Tell el Kraḥ, 78
Tell el Kumluk, 31
Tell esh Sha’ir, 65, 79
Tell eẓ Ẓahir, 43
Tell Gayârah, 226, 227
Tell Ghazab, 204
Tell Hir, 204
Tell Jifneh, 47
Tell Kobbîn, mound and village, 289
Tell Maḥmûd, 333 _note_^{1}
Tell Manjûr, 204
Tell Meraish, 54
Tell Murraibet, 47, 63
Tell Sheikh ’Arûd, 44
Tell Sheikh Ḥassan, 44
Tell Simbal, 81
Thamânîn (Heshtan), 293 _and note_^{1}
Thapsacus on the Euphrates, 18, 22, 24, 33, 47
Thelailah, 302 _note_^{3}
Thelda, 111, 113
Themail, castle of, 86; mound of, 129-30
Thilaticomum, 23
Thillada Mirrhada, 110, 111, 112
Thilutha, island Castle of, 98
Tigris, the, junction with the Euphrates, 164; in flood, 178, 226; the guffahs, 179; bridges on, 183-84; the ṣidd, 198-99; the old bed, 201, 204; the Dujeil, 201; the Khawîjeh, 205; the Jezîreh, 205; the ferry, 205-6, 302 _note_^{3}; the keleks, 206; the Nahr el Ḳâim, 206-7; the bazaars of Sâmarrâ, 208; bridge piers near Jezîret ibn ’Umar, 297; castles of Finik, 297-99; crossing at the Ṭûr ’Abdîn, 300-301; source, 329
Tikmin, 342
Tilbês, island of, 98
Tîmûr, 316
Tîrhân district, the, 209
Tiyâna, village of, 79
Tiyârî, peaks of, 293
Tokat, 329
Tokhma Su, the, 339 _note_^{1}, 340, 341 _note_^{2}, 342-43
Tolek village, 327 _note_^{1}
Tomarza, 345
Tomisa-Iz Oglu, 339 _note_^{1}
Tozeli, 341 _note_^{1}
Tripoli (African) tower tombs, 37
Tsamandos, 345 _and note_^{2}
Tuba, 121 _note_^{3}
Tulkhum, 328 _note_^{1}
Ṭûr ’Abdîn, 262 _note_^{1}, 299, 300-302; absence of streams, 303; Mar Shim’ûn, 303-4; construction in, 304-5; monasteries of the, 310-17
Turkey, use of the vote in, 19-20
Tutli Keui, 333 _note_^{1}
Uch Keui, 327 _note_^{1}
’Uglet Ḥaurân, 101-2
’Ukâẓ, 129
’Ukbarâ, 201 _note_^{1}; mounds of, 202 _and note_^{1}; position, 203 _note_^{1}
Ukheiḍir, the journey to, 86, 88, 100, 131, 140, 141, 142; the Benî Ḥassan, 107; a first sight of, 140-41; water supply, 142, 150; architecture, 143-44, 219; inhabitants of, 144-45; Palace of ---- plans, 146-47; architecture, 147-54; decoration, 154-55; date of the building, 155-58
Ulu Jâmi’, Diyârbekr, 325-26
Ulu Jâmi’, Malaṭiyah, 338
Umm Rejeibah, 67, 70, 111, 112
Urfah, 23, 32; caves at, 40
Useden (Kiepert), 306
Useh Dereh, 306, 308, 309, 310, 313
Vân, 3, 255
Vân, Lake, 218, 293
Wâdî ’Ain Sifneh, the, 271
Wâdî Aswad (Chem Resh), valley of, 270
Wâdî Burdân, 131-32
Wâdî el ’Asibîyeh, 133
Wâdî Fâḍîyeh, 101
Wâdî Ḥajlân, the, 101
Wâdî Ḥaurân, 118, 131
Wâdî Lebai’ah, 131, 141, 142, 150
Wâdî Mâliḥ, 66, 67
Wâdî Muḥammadî, 124, 125
Wâdî Themail, 129
Wâneh, village of, tomb of Muḥammad ’Alî, 203 _and note_^{1}
Wardâna, village of, 26
Wâsiṭ, 159
Weldeh Country, the, 43, 47, 51
Werdî, 78, 81-83, 85
Werdî-Irzî, 113
Werdîyeh, the, 82
White Palace of Chosroes, 181 _and note_^{3}
Wîzeh, 132
Yaḥyâ el Barmakî, tomb of, 56
Yamachlî, 353 _note_^{2}
Yazi Keui, 341, 342
Yeni Khân, 355
Yezîdî villages, 269
Za’ferân, 286
Zâkhô, position, 286-87, 287 _note_^{2}; grave of the Dominican Soldini, 287-88
Za’khurân, 321-22
Zamantî Su, the, 344
Zeitha, 79, 111-13
Zeitha-Jemma, 113
Zelebîyeh, fortress of, 67-68, 110, 111, 112
Zemzem, the well, at Mecca, 277
Zenobia, fortress of, 68
Zeugma (Birejik), the, 109, 110
Ziyârah of Uweis el Ḳaranî, 56
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is dated in the year 545 A.H., _i. e._ A.D. 1150.
[2] The Persian influence had probably filtered through Egypt, for similar leaf motives are to be found in Cairo, for example in a fine bit of woodwork in the Museum: Herz Bey, _Catalogue Raisonné_, fig. 24. The prototype must be looked for in the plaster decorations of Ibn Ṭûlûn.
[3] M. Saladin believes this entrelac to be of Damascene origin. _Manuel d’Art Musulman_, i. p. 115.
[4] Ed. Reinaud, p. 267. He wrote in A.D. 1321.
[5] Anabasis, Bk. I. ch. iv, 10.
[6] _Zur antiken Topographie der Palmyrene_, p. 31.
[7] Mr. Hogarth also noticed that Bâb is marked out of its true place: _Annual of the British School at Athens_, XIV. p. 185.
[8] Plutarch: _In Crass_.
[9] Sachau saw it: _Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien_, p. 148.
[10] Ed. de Goeje, p. 162. He wrote in A.D. 864.
[11] Manbij is the name used in literary Arabic, but it is noticeable that in the colloquial the word approaches more nearly to the earliest form, being pronounced Bumbuj.
[12] Eskî Serûj according to Chapot: _La frontière de l’Euphrate_, p. 306.
[13] _Geography_, Bk. XVI. ch. i. 27.
[14] Ritter: _Erdkunde_, Vol. VII. p. 961.
[15] Procopius makes the same observation: _De Bell. Per._, II. 20.
[16] It is so given in the Antonine Itinerary: Hierapoli--Thilaticomum--Bathnas--Edissa.
[17] Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk. XXIII. ch. ii. 7.
[18] Chapot, _op. cit._ p. 281.
[19] Chapot believes that the passage was effected at a point north of Cæciliana, which would fit in with Tell Aḥmar: _op. cit._ p. 254, note 5.
[20] Mr. Hogarth suggests that the Abbess Ætheria crossed at Tell Aḥmar on her way to Edessa: _loc. cit._ p. 183.
[21] Birejik and the Tell Aḥmar passage (whatever may have been its ancient name) and Thapsacus do not exhaust the number of recorded routes, for Chosroes, in his first expedition against Justinian, crossed at Obbanes, somewhere about the modern Meskeneh, and on his third expedition he built a bridge of boats near Europus, which is perhaps the modern Jerâblus. (Mr. Hogarth doubts the accepted identification of Jerâblus with Europus: _Annals of Arch. and Anthrop._, Vol. II. p. 169.) During the Mohammedan period other points are mentioned. Ibn Khurdâdhbeh, writing in the ninth century, makes the road from Aleppo to Babylon cross at Bâlis, the ancient Barbalissos (ed. de Goeje, p. 74), but Iṣṭakhrî, a hundred years later, says that Bâlis, though it was once the Syrian port on the Euphrates, had fallen into decay since the days of Seif ed Dauleh, and was little used by merchants (ed. de Goeje, p. 62). In the twelfth century, and perhaps earlier, its place had been taken by Ḳal’at en Nejm, where Nûr ed Dîn, who died in 1145, built a great fortress, famous during the wars against the Crusaders. The bridge there was called Jisr Manbij (“the bridge of Manbij”), but it cannot have been constructed by Nûr ed Dîn, for Ibn Jubeir, writing about the year 1185 a description of his journey from Ḥarrân (Carrhae) to Manbij, says that he “crossed the river in small boats, lying ready, to a new castle called Ḳal’at en Nejm” (Gibb Memorial edition, p. 248). In Yâḳût’s day (circa 1225) the caravans from Ḥarrân to Syria always crossed here.
[22] Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk. XXIII. ch. ii. 6.
[23] _The Buildings of Justinian_ (Palest. Pilgrims’ Text Society), p. 66.
[24] A few of these may have preserved a certain importance in a later age: Tell el Ghânah, directly to the east of Tell Aḥmar, has been conjectured to be Thilaticomum (possibly incorrectly: Regling, _Beiträge zur alten Geschichte_, 1902, Vol. I. p. 474) and Tell Bada’ah to be Aniana, the first being mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary and the second by Ptolemy.
[25] Mr. Hogarth (at whose request I visited Tell Aḥmar) has published the carved slabs and the stela in the _Annals of Archæology and Anthropology_, Vol. II. No. 4. He saw them when he was at Tell Aḥmar in 1908.
[26] Jerâblus or Jerâbîs, the names are used indiscriminately. The former is thought by Nöldeke to be an Arabic plural of Jirbâs (mentioned by Yâḳût as opposite Ḳinnesrin, Dictionary, Vol. II. p. 688) and the latter as Arabicized from Europus.
[27] The inscription is given by Pognon: _Inscriptions de la Mésopotamie_, p. 17. The tomb was visited by Oppenheim, and is mentioned by him in _Tell Halaf_ (1st number, 10th year of Der alte Orient), and in his _Griechische und lateinische Inschriften_. (_Byzantinische Zeitschrift_, 1905, p. 7.)
[28] Oppenheim thought it was the end of a sarcophagus, but Pognon’s guide climbed into the upper chamber and found it to be nothing but a block of stone closing the entrance.
[29] For the cyborium tomb, see Heisenburg: _Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche_, Vol. I. ch. xvi.
[30] A photograph of the fourth, the Ziareh of Khoros at Cyrrhus, was published by Chapot in _Le Tour du Monde_, April 8, 1905, p. 162.
[31] Mylasa: published by the Dilettanti Society; Tripoli: _Nouvelles Archives des Missions_, Tome XII. fas. 1; Dana: De Vogüé, _La Syrie Centrale_, plate 78.
[32] Tomb of Absalom, Jerusalem.
[33] Gereme: Rott, _Kleinasiatische Denkmäler_, p. 171; El Bârah: De Vogüé, _op. cit._ pl. 75.
[34] M. Cumont’s monuments are of this type and I have seen a fine example at Barâd in N. Syria, also as yet unpublished except for a photograph given by me in _The Desert and the Sown_, p. 287.
[35] Maden Sheher: published by Sir W. Ramsay and myself in _The Thousand and One Churches_, p. 230.
[36] The name which has been suggested for the site is Baisampse, a place mentioned by Ptolemy. There are a considerable number of cut stones on the mound near the village.
[37] It was re-copied by Pognon and published by him in _Inscrip. de la Mésopotamie_, p. 82. The similarity between some of the characters in the two inscriptions is striking.
[38] It appears in the extreme right-hand top corner of his Fig. 22, _Inschrif. aus Syrien und Mesopot_.
[39] I could not reconcile the topography here with Kiepert’s map. He marks a northern tower, which he calls Nesheib (doubtless my Neshabah) and places there the Mazâr of Sultan ’Abdullah. He has a second tower further to the south-east, and finally the castle itself. The second tower is non-existent, or else it represents the minaret in the castle. The only mazâr which I saw or heard mentioned is that of Sultan Selîm, a small modern building between Neshabah and the castle.
[40] It resembles the tower tombs at Irzî, which will be described later.
[41] This is Abu’l Fidâ’s account, ed. Reinaud, p. 277. He wrote in A.D. 1321. Yâḳût, a century earlier, gives the same story.
[42] Quoted by Ritter, _Erdkunde_, Vol. X. p. 241.
[43] Ainsworth believed this to be the site of Benjamin of Tudela’s Jewish settlement (_Euphrates Expedition_, Vol. I. p. 269), and he speaks of a monastic ruin here.
[44] It is so described in his map.
[45] Sachau thought that Ḥaraglah was of Hellenistic origin (_Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien_, p. 245); Sarre believes that it may be Parthian, and the circular outer fortification gives colour to the suggestion (_Zeitschr. der Gesell. für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, 1909, No. 7).
[46] Sachau (_op. cit._ p. 243) gives the inscription, and my copy tallied with his.
[47] Just as the first mosque in Cairo, that of ’Amr, was built entirely on columns taken from earlier buildings, Muḳaddasî describes one of the Raḳḳah mosques as [Illustration: Arabic script]; it would be satisfactory to imagine that he referred to the columned arcades of the mosque round the square minaret, but the phrase cannot reasonably be twisted into that or any other meaning. The square minaret is the ancient Syrian tower type; Thiersch has recently published an exhaustive study of it in his _Pharos_.
[48] I saw traces of two such arcades on the E., N. and W. sides of the court, and, judging from the vestiges that remain, the arcades must have been three deep to the south. The bricks of the vanished arcades have been dug out and carried away for building purposes. The outer walls are so much ruined that I could not determine the position of the gates with certainty.
[49] Professor van Berchem has published the inscription in his _Arabische Inschriften_, a chapter appended to the work of Professor Sarre and Dr. Herzfeld entitled _Reise in Euphrat-und Tigris-Gebiet_. But the publication has appeared too late for me to do more than refer to it.
[50] M. Viollet has published a short description of these ruins (_Publications de l’Académie des Inscrip. et Belles-Lettres_, 1909, Vol. XII. part 2). He believes the palace to have been erected by Hârûn er Rashîd.
[51] I expect that this is Sachau’s Bergland Tulaba--see Kiepert’s map.
[52] Bk. XXIII. ch. iii. 8.
[53] It was visited and planned by Sarre and Herzfeld in 1907; Sarre, _Reise in Mesopotamien_, in the _Zeitschrift der Gesch. für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, 1909, No. 7, p. 429. Sarre pronounces the greater part of the ruins to date from the time of Justinian.
[54] Ibn Ḥauḳal is, I think, the first to speak of it. Idrîsî says that it had busy markets and that much traffic went through it. They wrote respectively in the tenth and twelfth centuries.
[55] _Zur antiken Topographie der Palmyrene_, p. 39.
[56] The reference is not, however, certain: Moritz, _op. cit._ p. 35.
[57] Sachau travelled up the left bank of the Khâbûr, and should therefore have crossed the course of the canal, but he makes no mention of it.
[58] I should conjecture that on the Euphrates as on the Tigris the disappearance of the settled population dates from the terrible disaster of the Mongol invasion.
[59] I looked carefully for any trace of a big canal opposite Ṣâliḥîyeh and saw none.
[60] _Anabasis_, Bk. I. ch. 5, 9.
[61] With the doubtful contribution made by Ammianus Marcellinus to the question, I have dealt in the Appendix to this chapter.
[62] _Amm. Mar._, Bk. XXIV. ch. i. 6.
[63] Ed. de Goeje, p. 233.
[64] Ed. Reinaud, p. 286.
[65] Quoted by Ritter, Vol. XI. p. 717.
[66] De Beylié: _Prome et Samarra_, p. 68. See, too, Viollet’s memoir presented to the Acad. des Inscrip. et B.-Lettres, quoted above. He, too, was shown the fragment of Assyrian relief and gives an illustration of it, for which reason I do not trouble to publish my photograph.
[67] Pognon: _Inscriptions mandaïtes des coupes de Khouabir_.
[68] Chesney notices that the ruins of the old town lie on the left bank below the present ’Ânah. Quoted by Ritter, Vol. XI. p. 724.
[69] It is, I suppose, Chesney’s Sarifah, which has been conjectured to be the Kolosina of Ptolemy: Ritter, Vol. XI. p. 730.
[70] These ruins give additional weight to Ritter’s suggestion that Ḥadîthah was the Parthian station of Olabus: Vol. XI. p. 731. The Arab town of Ḥadîthah is first mentioned by Ibn Khurdâdhbeh, ed. de Goeje, p. 74.
[71] Julian crossed the Euphrates at Parux Malkha, which cannot be far from Baghdâdî, and captured the castle of Diacira. This castle must have stood at the southern end of the great bend made by the Euphrates below Baghdâdî. Chesney saw the ruins of a fortress there. It is perhaps Ptolemy’s Idicara and the Izannesopolis of Isidorus: Ritter, Vol. XI. p. 737.
[72] Herodotus mentions the bitumen wells and calls the town Is. It has been identified with the Ihi of the Babylonian inscriptions, the Ahava of Ezra, and with the Ist from which a tribute of bitumen was brought to Thothmes III, according to an inscription at Karnak.
[73] Yâḳût mentions Kebeisah as the oasis four miles from Hît upon the desert road. There are, he says, a number of villages there, the inhabitants of which live in the extreme of poverty and misery, by reason of the aridity of the surrounding waste.
[74] The central division wall in the long south chamber is a later addition.
[75] Described by Choisy: _L’Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins_, p. 31.
[76] For example Ḳasṭal (Brünnow and Domaszewski: _Provincia Arabia_, Vol. II. pl. xliv.); Ḳaṣr el Abyaḍ (de Vogüé: _La Syrie Centrale_, Vol. I. p. 69); Deir el Kahf, founded in A.D. 306 (Butler: _Ancient Architecture in Syria_, Section A, Part II. p. 146); Ḳuṣeir el Ḥallâbât, dated A.D. 213 (ditto, p. 72); barracks at Anderîn, dated A.D. 558 (ditto, Section B, Part II. pl. viii.).
[77] Ṭuba with a triple court (Musil: _Ḳuṣeir ’Amra_, Vol. I. p. 13); Kharânî (ditto, p. 97); Khân ez Zebîb (_Provincia Arabia_, Vol. II. p. 78).
[78] The whole area of ruins is known as Kherâb = ruin.
[79] It is not necessarily so late, for the Baghdâd Gate at Raḳḳah has the same arch, and it is certainly earlier.
[80] See Rothstein: _Die Dynastie der Lakhmiden in al Ḥîra_, p. 25. He gives reasons for believing that the art of writing Arabic was first practised at Ḥîrah. The population was largely Christian (the ’Ibâd of the Arab historians); Ḥîrah was the seat of a bishopric, and frequent allusion is made to churches and monasteries in and near the town.
[81] Meissner: “Ḥîra und Khawarnaḳ”, _Sendschriften der D. Orient Gesell._, No. 2.
[82] I have already published the plan in the _Hellenic Journal_ for 1910, Part I., p. 69, in an article on the vaulting system of the palace. Ukheiḍir was visited in the year 1907 by M. Massignon, though this fact was unknown to me until I returned to England in July 1909. He has published an account of it, together with a sketch plan made under circumstances of great difficulty, in the _Bulletin de l’Acad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres_ of March 1909, in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ of April 1909, and in the _Mémoires de l’Institut français du Caire_, vol. xxviii. (The last named has not yet appeared, but he has been so kind as to let me see an advance copy.) Neither to M. Massignon nor to me belongs the honour of discovery; an unknown Englishman had visited the palace in the eighteenth century, and his brief report is given by Niebuhr (_Reisebeschreibung_, vol. ii., p. 225, note): “Ich habe in dem Tagebuch eines Engländers, der von Haleb nach Basra gereist war, gefunden, dass er 44 Stunden Südfost nach Osten von Hit, eine ganz verlassene Stadt in der Wüste angetroffen habe, wovon die Mauer 50 Fuss hoch und 40 Fuss dick war. Jede der vier Seiten hatte 700 Fuss, und in der Mauer waren Thürme. In dieser Stadt oder grossem Castell, findet man noch ein kleines Castell. Von eben dieser verlassenen Stadt hörte ich nachher, dass sie von den Arabern El Khader genannt werde, und nur 10 bis 12 Stunden von Meshed Ali entfernt sei.” I cannot feel any doubt that the “forsaken town” referred to in the diary, the existence of which was confirmed by the Arabs, who spoke of it to Niebuhr under the name of Khader, is our Ukheiḍir. So far as I have been able to discover, the nameless Englishman was the first modern traveller to visit the site.
[83] I wish to call special attention to the presence of this construction at Ctesiphon because Dr. Herzfeld has stated erroneously that it does not exist in Sassanian buildings. (_Der Islâm_, vol. i.