were men of the Benî Ḍafî’ah.” Then with a burst of confidence he added, “But I saw no one.”
“At whom did you shoot?” said I in bewilderment.
“At the Benî Ḍafî’ah,” answered Fattûḥ, surprised at the stupidity of the question.
I gave it up, neither do I know to this hour whether we were or were not raided in the night.
Two days later my plan was finished. I had turned one of the vaulted rooms of the stable into a workshop, and spreading a couple of waterproof sheets on the sand for table, had drawn it out to scale lying on the ground. Sometimes an Arab came in silently and stood watching my pencil, until the superior attractions of the next chamber, in which sat the muleteers and the zaptiehs, drew him away. As I added up metres and centimetres I could hear them spinning long yarns of city and desert. Occasionally Ma’ashî brought me coffee.
“God give you the reward,” said I.
“And your reward,” he answered gravely.
The day we left Kheiḍir, the desert was wrapped in the stifling dust of a west wind. I have no notion what the country is like through which we rode for seven hours to Kerbelâ, and no memory, save that of the castle walls fading like a dream into the haze, of a bare ridge of hill to our right hand and the bitter waves of a salt lake to our left, and of deep sand through which we were driven by a wind that was the very breath of the Pit. Then out of the mist loomed the golden dome of the shrine of Ḥussein, upon whom be peace, and few pious pilgrims were gladder than I when we stopped to drink a glass of tea at the first Persian tea-shop of the holy city.
I do not propose to enter here into a detailed account of the palace of Ukheiḍir, which must be reserved for a subsequent publication, but it is well to give a short elucidation of the plan, and to consider briefly the theories which have been formed with regard to the origin of the building.[82]
The palace consists of a rectangular fortification wall set with round bastions, with larger round bastions at the angles, and of an oblong building surrounded on three sides by a court, together with a small annex in the eastern part of the court (Fig. 79). That part of the oblong building which adjoins the northern fortification wall is three storeys high; the remainder of the palace is one storey high. Outside the enclosing fortification wall there is a structure composed of fourteen vaulted parallel chambers, with a small open court at the southern end. To the west of the small court and of the first five chambers lies a larger court with round bastions on its western side. Between each of these bastions there is a door and either one or two groups of windows, each group consisting of three narrow lights. I noticed foundations of masonry which ran down from near the northern end of this
out-building towards the valley. To the N.W. of the palace there is another small detached building called by the Arabs the Bath (Fig. 80). Near it the surface of the ground is broken by low mounds which may indicate the presence of ruins. The Arabs assured me that by digging here brackish water could be obtained; there is also a well of brackish water in the western part of the palace court, but it is not used for drinking purposes. The water supply of Ukheiḍir is derived from the Wâdî Lebai’ah. It is obtained by digging holes in the sandy bed of the valley.
The fortification wall is arcaded without and within up to two-thirds of its height. These blind arcades support the walls of the chemin de ronde. The outer arcade serves the purpose of a machicoulis, a narrow space between its arches and the outer face of the main wall enabling the defenders in the chemin de ronde to protect with missiles the foot of the wall below them (Fig. 83). The chemin de ronde could be reached from the uppermost floor of the three-storeyed block of the palace, as well as by means of four staircases, one in each of the angles of the court (Fig. 84). Two of these staircases have now fallen completely. The chemin de ronde had been covered by a vault (Fig. 86). Arched doorways led into outlook chambers hollowed in the thickness of the bastions. Arched windows open on to the court. In the centre of each side of the fortification wall there is a gate (Fig. 85), that which stands on the northern side being the most important, since it communicates directly with the palace (Fig. 87). It opens into a passage with a guard-room on either side. The passage leads into a small rectangular chamber, A in the plan, covered with a fluted dome (Fig. 88). From this chamber an arched doorway communicates with a vaulted hall, B, which runs up to a height of two storeys and is the largest room in the palace (Fig. 90). The vault, borne on projecting engaged piers, spans seven metres. Beyond the hall vaulted corridors, C C C C, C´ C´ C´ C´, surround an open
| Fig. 94.—UKHEIḌIR, CUSPED DOOR OF COURT S. | Fig. 95.—UKHEIḌIR, VAULTED END OF P, SHOWING TUBE. |
| Fig. 96.—UKHEIḌIR, CORRIDOR Q. | Fig. 97.—UKHEIḌIR, VAULTED CLOISTER O´. |
court, D, as well as a block of rooms lying to the south of the court. The court D is set round with engaged columns forming vaulted niches (Fig. 91). At the S.E. corner the vault of one of these niches is fluted (Fig. 89). The bracketed setting of these small semi-domes over the angles is to be noted. The block of chambers south of court D is more carefully built than any other part of the palace. It consists of an oblong antechamber, E, leading into a square room, F. On either side of the antechamber there are a pair of rooms, the walls and vaults of those lying to the west, G´ and H´, being finished with stucco decorations and small columned niches. On either side of the square chamber, F, is a room containing four masonry columns which support three parallel barrel vaults (Fig. 92 and Fig. 93). South of room F stretches a cloister, J, which was covered with a barrel vault, now fallen. It opens into an unroofed court, K. The corridor C C´ runs to the south of court K, and still further to the south is another open court, L, with vaulted rooms round it.
To east and west of the corridor C C, C´ C´, lie four courts, M M´ and N N´. To north and south of each of these courts there are three vaulted rooms, but in M and M´ small antechambers in the shape of a narthex separate the rooms from the court, whereas in N and N´ the rooms open directly on to the court. In every case there are traces of a vaulted cloister, O O and O´ O´, between the court and the outer wall (Fig. 97). Behind each block of rooms there is a rectangular space, P P P P and P´ P´ P´ P´, two-thirds of which are vaulted, while the central part is left open (Fig. 95). Similar open spaces are left in the corridor C C, C´ C´, which would otherwise be exceedingly dark.
To return to the north gate. On either side of the small domed chamber, A, long vaulted corridors, Q Q´, lead to the outer court (Fig. 96). A door on the south side of corridor Q communicates with a small court, R, with chambers to north and south of it and vaulted cloisters to east and west. A group of vaulted chambers is placed between court R and the great hall B. West of hall B there is a smaller group of vaulted chambers. In the south wall of corridor Q´, two doors lead into an open court surrounded on three sides by a vaulted cloister, the vault of which has now fallen except for fragments in the south-east and south-west corners. These fragments are adorned with stucco decorations. I have suggested (in the Hellenic Journal, loc. cit.) that this court may be a mosque of a primitive type. (See, too, Der Islâm, vol. i. part ii. p. 126, where Dr. Herzfeld points out that a chamber somewhat similarly placed in the palace of Mshatta may also be a mosque.)
No difficulty will be found in following on the plan the arrangement of the upper floors in the northern part of the palace. In the second storey, the space marked B2 is occupied by the vault of the great hall B (Fig. 81). At A2 three windows open into the hall from the room in the second storey. R2 and S2 correspond with the two courts R and S. In the third storey the rectangular space A3 is unroofed, and the space B3, below which lies the vault of the great hall, is also unroofed (Fig. 82). The eastern part of this storey is completely ruined, but there would appear to have been rooms
round R3 similar to the rooms round R2. The chemin de ronde, T T´, is on a level with this storey.
Between the main palace block and the eastern fortification wall there lies a group of rooms which is clearly an addition to the original scheme. It is interesting to observe that these rooms are in all essentials of their plan a repetition of the group of rooms to the south of court D. Room U corresponds with the antechamber E; room V with the square room F; W with the cloister J; X, Y, and Z to G, H, and T. But the columns in I I´ are not repeated in the small rooms, Z Z´; room V is covered with a groined vault instead of the barrel vault of F, and the court A is not closed with a wall like the court K. I make no doubt that both these groups of rooms, which are so strikingly similar in arrangement, were intended for the same purposes, and I conjecture that they were ceremonial reception rooms. Herzfeld has compared E and F with the throne room of Mshatta (Der Islâm, loc. cit.).
All the rooms and corridors of the palace are vaulted. Some of the finer vaults are built of brick tiles (for example, over the great hall B and over rooms E, F, I, and I´), but as a rule the vaults are constructed with stones set in mortar, the stones being cut into thin slabs so as to resemble bricks as closely as possible. (Cf. the Sassanian palace of Firûzâbâd, Dieulafoy, L’Art Ancien de la Perse, vol. iv.) All the vaults, whether of brick or stone, are built without centering, and all are set forward slightly from the face of the wall. (The same construction is found at Ctesiphon, see below, Fig. 109.)[83] The groined vault occurs seven times in the corridor C C´ (Fig. 98), and it is also found in room V. (See my article in the Hellenic Journal above cited.) The fluted dome over room A is bracketed across the corners of the rectangular substructure (Fig. 88). In several cases where a barrel vault terminates not against a head wall, but against another section of barrel vault, it is adjusted to the angles of the substructure by means of squinch arches (Fig. 99). A noticeable feature of the vault construction of Ukheiḍir is the presence of masonry tubes running between the parallel barrel vaults (Fig. 100). The structural purpose of these tubes is to diminish the mass of masonry between the barrel vaults. Whenever two barrel vaults lie parallel to one another, a tube will be found between them, and similar tubes exist between the vault of the cloister O O and O´ O´ and the outer wall. (See too Fig. 95, which shows a tube between a barrel vault and a straight wall.) Over the vaults of the rooms of the annex in the eastern part of the court, and also over the vaults of the fourteen parallel chambers outside the enclosing wall to the north, a false roof is laid (Fig. 103). It serves as a protection against the heat of the sun. Under the eastern annex there are some much-ruined subterranean chambers. A staircase at the south-eastern angle of court D leads down into similar cellars (serâdîb).
The arches over the doorways are usually of an ovoid shape, sometimes slightly pointed. When the door-jambs take the form of engaged columns, the capitals of the columns, roughly blocked out in masonry, carry an arch slightly narrower in width than the opening of the doorway beneath it. But when the door-jambs are formed merely by the straight section of the wall, the span of the arch is wider than the opening of the doorway (Fig. 102 illustrates both types). This set-back of the arch was doubtless employed in order to facilitate the placing of centering beams. Three wide doorways with round arches, b b´ and c, lead from the main block of the palace building into the surrounding court. The arches are usually characterized by double rings of voussoirs (cf. Ctesiphon and other buildings of the Sassanian and early Mohammadan period), the inner ring laid so as to show the broad face of the stones or tiles, while the narrow end shows in the outer ring. (See the arch in Fig. 102.) The arch construction in the eastern annex is, however, much rougher in style. The outer ring of voussoirs is omitted there, nor is it invariable in other parts of the palace.
The niche plays a large part in the decoration of Ukheiḍir. A row of narrow niches runs along the top of the outer face of the northern enclosing wall, but very little of it is now left (Fig. 87). The southern face of the three-storeyed block bears an elaborate niche decoration (Fig. 91). Here the lowest row of niches forms part of the series already mentioned which runs round court D. Above these, on the second storey, are remains of another row of arched niches, each of which contains three small niches. So far as I know, this feature of a large niche enclosing groups of smaller niches has not yet been observed in Sassanian architecture. It is found, however, in a certain well-known type of early Christian church (see, for instance, Ala Klisse, published by me in the Thousand and One Churches, p. 403). On the third storey of the palace the face of the wall has been left blank, but above the windows there are still traces of a third order of small niches. Pairs of niches flanked by engaged columns are to be seen in room G´. They are set high up in the wall between the transverse arches. On these transverse arches there is a plaster decoration, the same in character as that which occurs in the semi-domes at the ends of the vault in Court S (Fig. 101). The motives there used are the flute (in the squinch arch and in the conical segment of the semi-dome above it), and a pattern which resembles a tiny battlemented motive. Upon the transverse arches the battlemented motive is doubled so as to form diamond-shaped patterns. In the centre of each of these diamonds, and in the centre of the tiny arched niches at the bottom of the vault, and also between those niches, there are small funnel-shaped motives formed of concentric rings. Between the transverse arches there is a boldly worked ribbing. The arch round the eastern of the two doors that leads into corridor Q´ is surrounded by cusps (Fig. 94). (Cf. Ctesiphon, Dieulafoy, op. cit., vol. v. plate 6.) A blind arcade, borne by pilasters, is to be seen in courts M M´ and N N´. In the antechamber U there are shallow niches on either side of the doors.
With regard to the date of Ukheiḍir there are three possible hypotheses. It may belong—
1. To the Sassanian or Lakhmid period prior to the Mohammadan conquest.
2. To the 150 years after the Mohammadan conquest.
3. To the Abbâsid period, i. e. after A.D. 750.
1. In defence of the first theory can be urged the close relationship between Ukheiḍir and other places of the Sassanian age, not only in plan (cf. Ḳaṣr-i-Shîrîn, de Morgan, Mission Scientifique en Perse, vol. iv., part 2), but also in the technique of brick and stone masonry and in the principles of vault construction (cf. Ctesiphon, Firûzâbâd, and Sarvistân, Dieulafoy, op. cit.). But since it is certain that the arts of the early Moslem era were dominated in Mesopotamia by Sassanian influence, these affinities do not offer a convincing proof of a pre-Mohammadan date. Even if Ukheiḍir belonged to the early Moslem age, it might, and probably would, have been built by Persian workmen. At the same time certain architectural features, such as the groined vault and the fluted dome, have not hitherto been observed in any Sassanian building. The earliest Mesopotamian example of the groined vault known to me, besides the groins of Ukheiḍir, is that of which fragments can be seen in the Baghdâd Gate at Raḳḳah.
There is, further, a passage in Yâḳût’s Dictionary which might help to support the theory of a pre-Mohammadan origin (vol. ii., p. 626, under Dûmat ej Jandal). In the accounts given by the Arab historians of the invasion of Mesopotamia in 12 A.H. (A.D. 633-4), by Khâlid ibn u’l Walîd, frequent mention is made of ’Ain et Tamr, which Yâḳût expressly states to be the same as Shefâthâ (Shetâteh is the modern colloquial form of the name). When Khâlid ibn u’l Walîd had taken the oasis, which was inhabited by Christian Arabs, and appears to have been the one place that offered him serious resistance (Teano: Annali dell’Islam, vol. ii., p. 940), he is said to have marched on Dûmat ej Jandal, which he captured, putting to death its defender, Ukeidir ’Abdu’l Malik el Kindî.[84] It is generally admitted that the name Dûmat ej Jandal in this account is an error, and that the fortress which was taken by the Mohammadans in the year 12 A.H. was Dûmat el Ḥîrah. (For the reasons for substituting Dûmat el Ḥîrah for Dûmat ej Jandal in Ṭabarî’s text, see Teano, op. cit., vol. ii., p. 991.) Now Yâḳût gives two conflicting traditions concerning the foundation of Dûmat el Ḥîrah, but he expresses no uncertainty as to its position. It was near to ’Ain et Tamr, and its ruins were known in Yâḳût’s day (thirteenth century). According to the first tradition given by Yâḳût, the Prophet sent Khâlid ibn u’l Walîd in the year 9 A.H. against Ukeidir, who was lord of Dûmat ej Jandal. Khâlid captured Dûmat ej Jandal and made a treaty with Ukeidir, but after the death of Mohammad, Ukeidir broke the treaty, whereupon the Khalif ’Umar expelled him from Dûmat ej Jandal. He retired to Ḥîrah and built himself a palace near to ’Ain et Tamr, which he called Dûmah. This Dûmah, near ’Ain et Tamr, is no doubt Dûmat el Ḥîrah which Khâlid besieged and took in the year 12 A.H. The second tradition is substantially the same as the first as far as the Mohammadan invasion is concerned, but Yâḳût here implies that Ukeidir dwelt in the first instance at Dûmat el Ḥîrah, and was accustomed to resort to Dûmat ej Jandal for the purposes of the chase, and he adds that Ukeidir named Dûmat ej Jandal after Dûmat el Ḥîrah. Prince Teano (op. cit., vol. ii. p. 262) has exposed the improbabilities which attend this explanation, and he concludes that both traditions are equally untrustworthy, and doubts the authenticity of any part of the story of Ukeidir. It does, however, appear to me to be possible that the ruins of Dûmat el Ḥîrah which were standing in Yâḳût’s day were no other than the abandoned palace of Ukheiḍir, though it is not necessary to accept either of Yâḳût’s versions of the story of its foundation.
2. If the palace is to be ascribed to the period immediately succeeding the conquest, it would be a Mesopotamian representative of the group of pleasure palaces which were built upon the Syrian side of the desert by the Umayyad princes (Lammens: La Badia et la Ḥîra, Mélanges de la faculté orientale, Beyrout, vol. iv., p. 91). But whereas it was natural that the Umayyad khalifs should have constructed hunting palaces in that part of the desert which lay on the direct road between their capital of Damascus and the spiritual capitals of their empire, Mecca and Medina, it is difficult to see why they should have selected a site so far from any of their habitual residences as Ukheiḍir. It is true that the Khalif ’Alî made Kûfah his capital for five years. He was assassinated there in A.D. 661. But during those years he was ceaselessly occupied in quelling rebellions, and I dismiss the possibility that he should have found leisure to build or to use the palace of Ukheiḍir.
3. I am not disposed to place Ukheiḍir as late as the Abbâsid period. The Abbâsid princes had lost the habit of the desert which was so strong a characteristic of their Umayyad predecessors. When they moved away from their capital of Baghdâd they built themselves cities like Raḳḳah and Sâmarrâ. Moreover, the architectural features of Ukheiḍir, both structural and decorative, present marked differences from those of the ruins at Raḳḳah and at Sâmarrâ, and on architectural as well as on historical grounds I am inclined to ascribe Ukheiḍir to an earlier age.
Whether that age be immediately before the Mohammadan conquest, or whether it fall shortly after the conquest, during the Umayyad period, I do not think we are as yet in a position to determine. It is to be borne in mind that the ruins of the palace bear witness to two different dates of building. The eastern annex and probably the edifice outside the enclosing wall to the north are an addition to the original plan and must be of a slightly later date.
To travel in the desert is in one respect curiously akin to travelling on the sea: it gives you no premonition of the changed environment to which the days of journeying are conducting you. When you set sail from a familiar shore you enter on a course from which the usual landmarks of daily existence have been swept away. What has become of the march of time? Dawn leads to noon, noon to sunset, sunset to the night; but night breaks into a dawn indistinguishable from the last, the same sky above, the same sea on every side, the same planks beneath your feet. Is it indeed another day? or is it yesterday lived over again? Then on a sudden you touch the land and find that that recurring day has carried you round half the globe. So it is in the desert. You rise and look out upon the same landscape that greeted you before—the contour of the hills may have altered ever so slightly, the hollow that holds your camp has deepened by a few yards since last week, the limitless sweep of the plain was not hidden a fortnight ago by that little mound; but here are the same people about you, speaking of the same things, here is the same path to be followed, yes, even the seasons are the same, and the dusty face of the desert is too old to flush at the advent of spring or to be wreathed in autumn garlands of gold and scarlet. Yet at the end of a long interval composed of periods recurrent and alike, you look round and see that the whole face of the universe has changed.
When we reached Kerbelâ we passed into a world of which the aspect and the associations were entirely new to me. I had set out from an Arab town in North Syria, and I emerged in a Persian city linked historically with the Holy Places, with the first struggles and the only great schism of Islâm. At Kerbelâ was enacted the tragedy of the death of Ḥussein, son of ’Alî ibn abi Tâlib; the place has grown up round the mosque that holds his tomb, and to one half of those who profess the Mohammadan creed it is a goal no less sacred than Mecca. But it was not the golden dome of Ḥussein, though it covers the richest treasure of offerings possessed by any known shrine (unless the treasure in ’Alî’s tomb of Nejef touch a yet higher value), nor yet the presence of the green-robed Persians, narrow of soul, austere and stern of countenance—it was not the wealth and fame of the Shî’ah sanctuary that made the strongest assault upon the imagination. It was the sense of having reached those regions which saw the founding of imperial Islâm, regions which remained for many centuries the seat of the paramount ruler, the Commander of the Faithful. Within the compass of a two-days’ journey lay the battlefield of Ḳâdisîyah, where Khâlid ibn u’l Walîd overthrew at once and for ever the Sassanian power. Chosroes with his hosts, his satraps, his Arab allies—those princes of the house of Mundhîr whose capital was one of the first cradles of Arab culture—stepped back at his coming into the shadowy past; their cities and palaces faded and disappeared, Ḥîrah, Khawarnaḳ, Ctesiphon, and many another of which the very site is forgotten; all the pomp and valour of an earlier time fell together like an army of dreams at the first trumpet-blast of those armies of the Faith which hold the field until this hour. Then came the day of vigour; the adding of dominion to dominion; the building of great Mohammadan towns, Kûfah, Wâsiṭ, Baṣrah, and last of all Baghdâd, last and greatest. And then decline, and finally the transference of authority. This was the story that was unfolded before me as I stood upon the roof of a Persian house and gazed down into the gorgeously tiled courtyard of the mosque of Ḥussein, in which none but the Faithful may set foot. When I lifted my eyes and looked westward I saw the desert across which the soldiers of the Prophet had come to batter down the old civilizations; when I looked east I saw the road to Baghdâd, where their descendants had cultivated with no less renown, the arts of peace. The low sun shone upon the golden dome; the nesting storks held conversation from minaret to minaret, with much clapping of beaks and shaking out of unruffled wings; the Spirit of Islâm marched out of the wilderness and seized the fruitful earth.
There were other lesser things which aroused a more personal if not a keener interest. The oranges were good at Kerbelâ, as Fattûḥ had said. The shops were heaped with them and with pale sweet lemons: I fear I must have astonished my military escort, for I stopped at every corner to buy more and yet more, and ate them as I went along the streets, hoping to satisfy the inextinguishable thirst born of the desert. Side by side with the oranges lay mountains of pink roses, the flowers cut off short and piled together; every one in the town carried a handful of them and sniffed at them as he walked. After night had fallen I was invited to a bountiful Persian dinner, where we feasted on lamb stuffed with pistachios, and drank sherbet out of deep wooden spoons. And there I heard some talk of politics.
Under the best of circumstances, said one of my informants, constitutional government was not likely to be popular in the province of ’Irâḳ. Men of property were all reactionary at heart. They had got together their wealth by force and oppression; their title-deeds would not bear critical examination, and they resented the curiosity and the comments of the newly-fledged local press. Nor were the majority of the officials better inclined—how was it possible? To forbid corruption, unless the order were accompanied by a rise in salary corresponding to the perquisites of which they were deprived (and this was forbidden by the state of the imperial exchequer) meant for them starvation. A judge, for example, is appointed for two and a half years and his salary is £T15 a month, not enough to keep himself and his family in circumstances which would accord with his position. But over and above the expenses of living he must see to the provision of a sum sufficient to engage the sympathies of his superiors when his appointment shall have expired; otherwise he might abandon the hope of further employment. Most probably he would have to defray the heavy charges of a journey to Constantinople, to enable him to push his claim, not to speak of the fact that he might spend several unsalaried months in the capital before his request was granted. “And so it is that out of ten men, eleven take bribes, and, as far as we can see, nothing has come of the constitution but the black fez” (this because of the boycott on the red fez, made in Austria), “free speech and two towers, one at Kerbelâ and one at Nejef, to commemorate the age of liberty.” Under the new régime Kerbelâ had received a mutesarrif whose story was a good example of the mistakes which men were apt to commit when first the old restraints were relaxed. He was of the Aḥrâr, the Liberals, and had begun his career as secretary to the Vâlî of Baghdâd. The people of Baghdâd raised a complaint against him, on the ground that in the fast month of Ramaḍân he had been seen to smoke a cigarette in the bazaar between sunrise and sunset, which showed clearly that he was an infidel, and he was dismissed from his post; but since he was one of the Aḥrâr and had friends in Constantinople, he was presently appointed to Kerbelâ. Now Kerbelâ, being a holy place inhabited mostly by Persian Shî’ahs, is one of the most fanatical cities in the Ottoman Empire, and a mutesarrif who brought with him so unfortunate a reputation could do nothing that was right. Some of his reforms were in themselves reasonable, but he was not the man to initiate them, nor was Kerbelâ the best field for experiments. The town, owing to blind extortion on the part of the government and to neglect of the irrigation system, is growing rapidly poorer and yields an ever diminishing revenue. This revenue is burdened by a number of pensions, and the mutesarrif, looking for a way of retrenchment, found it by depriving all pensioners of their means of livelihood. The pensioners were holy men, sayyids, whose duty it was to pray for the welfare of the Sultan. Some were old and some were deserving, some were neither, but all were holy, and the feelings that were aroused in Kerbelâ when they were left destitute baffle description.
“Yet,” continued my host, “the Turks understand government. There was once in Baṣrah an excellent governor; his name was Ḥamdî Bey. When he came to Baṣrah it was the worst city in Turkey; every night there were murders, and no one dared to leave his house after dark lest when he returned he should find that he had been robbed of all he possessed.”
“So it is now in Baṣrah,” said I, for the town is a by-word in Mesopotamia.
“Yes, so it is now,” he returned, “but it was different when Ḥamdî Bey was governor. For a year he sat quiet and collected information concerning all the villains in the place; but he did nothing. Now there was at that time a harmless madman in Baṣrah whom the people called Ḥajjî Beiḍâ, the White Pilgrim; and when they saw Ḥamdî Bey driving through the streets, they would point at him and laugh, saying: ‘There goes Ḥajjî Beiḍâ.’ But at the end of a year he assembled all the chief men and said: ‘Hitherto you have called me Ḥajjî Beiḍâ; now you shall call me Ḥajjî Ḳara, the Black Pilgrim.’ And then and there he cast most of them into prison and produced his evidence against them. And after a year’s time the town was so peaceful that he ordered the citizens to leave their doors open at night; and as long as Ḥamdî Bey remained at Baṣrah no man troubled to lock his door. And at another time there was a Commandant in Baṣrah, and he too brought the place to order. For when he knew a prisoner to be guilty, yet failed to get the witnesses to speak against him, he would put the man to death in prison by means of a hot iron which he drove into his stomach through a tube. Then it was given out that the man had died of an illness, and every one rejoiced that there should be a rogue the less.”
I made no comment, but my expression must have betrayed me, for my interlocutor added a justification of the commandant’s methods. “In Persia,” said he, “they bury them alive.”
“My soldiers have told me,” said I, not to be outdone, “that in Persia they cut off a thief’s hand, and I think they regard it as the proper sentence, for they generally add: ‘That is ḥukm, justice.’ ”
“It is the sherî’ah,” he replied simply, “the holy law,” and he recited the passage from the Ḳurân: “If a man or woman steal, cut off their hands in retribution for that which they have done; this is an exemplary punishment appointed by God, and God is mighty and wise.”
I had intended to go straight from Kerbelâ to Babylon, but I was reckoning without full knowledge of the Hindîyeh swamp. The history of this swamp is both curious and instructive. A few miles above the village of Museiyib, north-east of Kerbelâ, the Euphrates divides into two channels. The eastern channel, the true bed of the river, runs past Babylon and Ḥilleh and discharges its waters into the great swamp which has existed in southern ’Iraḳ ever since the last days of the Sassanian kings. The western channel is known as the Nahr Hindîyeh; it waters Kûfah, now a miserable hamlet clustered about the great mosque in which the khalif ’Alî was assassinated, and flowing through the great swamp re-enters the Euphrates some way above the junction of the latter with the Tigris.[85] The dam on the Euphrates which regulated the flowing of its waters into the Hindîyeh canal has been allowed to fall into disrepair; every year a deeper and a stronger stream flows down the Hindîyeh, and matters have reached such a pass that during the season of low water the eastern bed is dry, the palm gardens of Ḥilleh are dying for lack of irrigation, and all the country along the river-bank below Ḥilleh has gone out of cultivation. The growth of the Hindîyeh has proved scarcely less disastrous. The district to the west of the canal, in which Kerbelâ lies, is lower than the level of the stream, while the increasing torrents, bringing with them the silt of the spring floods, yearly raise the bed of the canal and add to the difficulty of keeping it within bounds. The Hindîyeh has become an ever-present danger to the town of Kerbelâ, and indeed in one year, when the stream was unusually high, the water flowed into the streets. It was the duty of the owners of the land, a duty prescribed by immemorial custom, to keep up the dykes, in order to save the cultivated country, and incidentally the town, from inundation. Needless to say they neglected to do so. A large part of the land—and here the story takes a very Oriental turn—had been bought up by a rich Mohammadan who proposed to do a good office by the holy city and to take the charge of the dykes upon himself. But as the canal silted up the charge became heavier, until at last the pious benefactor wearied of his task and refused to do another hand’s turn in the matter. Thereupon the mutesarrif sent for him and ordered him to perform his lawful duty. But the landowner was an Indian and a British subject (at this point I realized that I had come once more into the net of our vast empire) and he refused to be bullied by a Turkish official. He pointed out that the floods were largely due to the negligence of the Arab tribes, who draw from the Hindîyeh ten times as much water as they need and let it go to waste upon the land, where it helps to form the redoubted swamp; and since, said he, the swamp was caused not by the will of God, but by the conduct of the Sultan’s subjects, the government would do well to remedy the evil by applying to the dykes the forced labour which it has the right to exact from every man during four days in the year.[86] The mutesarrif replied that the Indian had not cultivated his land for four years and that it was therefore forfeit to the State;[87] the Indian countered him with the rejoinder that the land had been under pasture and had paid a regular tithe. So the matter stood in the spring of 1909; the town of Kerbelâ might at any time be flooded if the river rose, the Hindîyeh swamp was growing day by day, and the road to Babylon was impassable. No one seemed to regard these perils and inconveniences as otherwise than inevitable, and I with the rest bowed my head to the inscrutable decrees of God and took my way to Museiyib.
Museiyib, as I have said, lies on the Euphrates above the point where the Hindîyeh canal branches off from the river. For the last half of the day’s journey we skirted the swamp. It was in reality much more than a swamp: it was a shallow lake extending over a vast area. It had invaded even the Museiyib road, which is the direct road from Kerbelâ to Baghdâd, and we, together with all other travellers, had to make a long détour through the desert. The other travellers were mainly Persian pilgrims, men, women and children riding on mules in panniers. It is the ardent wish of every pious Persian to make the pilgrimage to Kerbelâ once during his lifetime, and still more does he desire to make it once again after his death, that his body may lie in earth hallowed by the vicinity of Ḥussein’s grave. Countless caravans of corpses journey yearly from Persia to Kerbelâ, and the living should bear in mind that the khâns of the towns are insalubrious, to say the least, owing to the fact that they are packed with dead bodies awaiting their final burial. The close connection between Kerbelâ and Persia has been during recent years of considerable political significance. The large Persian community, rich, influential and safely placed under the protection of the Turkish government, has more than once tendered advice to the struggling factions of its native country, and more than once the advice has been in the nature of a command. The European is not accustomed to think of the Ottoman Empire as a haven of refuge for the oppressed, but the Persian, comparing Turkish administration with his own, regards it as an unattainable standard of tranquillity and equity. Turkey must be judged by Asiatic, not by European, possibilities of achievement, and I tried to keep my thoughts fixed upon the pilgrims jogging sadly home to their intolerable anarchy; but it was difficult not to notice the bands of peasants who came wading through the shallow waters of the Hindîyeh floods, their fields submerged, their crops devastated, their houses reduced to mud-heaps and their possessions scattered over the swamp. Six hours from Kerbelâ we reached the Euphrates, a river much smaller than the one we had left at Hît, since a great part of its waters had been drawn off into irrigation canals. To my amazement it was provided with a practicable bridge of boats, by which we crossed, glorifying the works of man. It was the first, and I may add the only bridge over the Euphrates that I was privileged to see. We pitched camp on the further side just beyond the village of Museiyib.
On the following day we turned southwards to Babylon. For two hours we continued to do battle with the waters, not, however, with untamed floods, but with the almost equally obtrusive irrigation canals and runnels which the industrious fellâḥ conducts in all directions across his fields, regardless of road and path and of the time and temper of the wayfarer. At length we reached the high road from Baghdâd to Ḥilleh, beyond the belt of cultivation, and made the rest of the stage dry-footed. We crossed the Naṣrîyeh canal by a bridge near a ruined khân, and five hours from Museiyib we came to the village of Maḥawîl on a canal of the same name, also bridged. There I lunched under palm-trees—there are no other trees in these regions—and so rode on, catching up the caravan and crossing many another canal, now dry, now bringing water to villages far to the east of us. It was a very barren world, scarred with the traces of former cultivation, and all the more poverty-stricken and desolate because it had once been rich and peopled; flat, too, an interminable, featureless expanse from which the glory had departed. I was almost immersed in the rather jejune reflections which must assail every one who approaches Babylon, when, as good-luck would have it, I turned my eyes to the south and perceived, on the edge of the arid, sun-drenched plain, a mighty mound. There was no need to ask its name; as certainly as if temple and fortress wall still crowned its summit I knew it to be Bâbil, the northern mound that retains on the lips of the Arabs the echo of its ancient title. I left the road, hoping to find a direct path across the plain to that great vestige of ancient splendours, but the deep cutting of a water-course, as dry and dead as Babylon itself, barred the way. My mare climbed to the top of the high bank that edged it and we stood gazing over the site of the city. A furtive jackal crept out along the bank, caught sight of Fattûḥ and fled back into the dry ditch.
“The son of retreat,” said Fattûḥ in the speech of the people.
“Chaḳâl,” said I, searching dimly for some familiar swell of sonorous phrases which the word seemed to bring with it. And suddenly they rolled out over the formless thought: “The wolves howl in their palaces and the jackals in the pleasant places.”
For the past twelve years a little group of German excavators has lived and worked among the mounds of Babylon. To them I went, in full assurance of the hospitality which they extend to all comers. The traveller who enters their house, sheltered by palm-trees, on the banks of the Euphrates, will find it stored with the best fruits of civilization: studious activity, hard-won learning and that open-handed kindness which abolishes distinctions of race and country. As he watches the daily task of men who are recovering the long-buried history of the past, he will not know how to divide his admiration between the almost incredible labour entailed by their researches and the marvellous culture which their work has laid bare. “Only to the wise is wisdom given, and knowledge to them that have understanding.”
Within the largest of the mounds, the Ḳaṣr, or castle, as the Arabs call it, lie the remains of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. Another eight or ten years’ work will be needed to complete the ground plan of the whole structure, but enough has been done to show the nature of the house wherein the king rested. It is built of square tiles, stamped with his name and bound together with asphalt. The part which has been excavated consists of an immense irregular area enclosed by thick walls. One of these (it forms the quay of a canal) is called by the workmen “the father of twenty-two,” i. e. it is twenty-two metres across; another reaches the respectable width of seventeen metres, but usually the royal builder was content with five or six metres, or even less. Within the enclosure lies a bewildering complexity of small courts and passages with chambers leading out of them—the more bewildering because in many cases the bricks have disappeared, and the walls must be traced by means of the spaces left behind. For more than a thousand years after the fall of Babylon no man building in its neighbourhood was at the pains to construct brick-kilns, but when he needed material he sought it in Nebuchadnezzar’s city. Greek, Persian and Arab used it as a quarry, and as you climb the stairs of the German house you will become aware of the characters that spell the king’s name upon the steps beneath your feet. The small courts and chambers, which were no doubt occupied by retinues of officials and servants of the palace, formed a bulwark of defence for the king. His apartments lay behind a wide paved court. From the court a doorway leads into a large oblong chamber, in the back wall of which is a niche for the throne. This is believed to be the banqueting hall where Belshazzar made his feast, and on a fragment of wall facing the throne you may see, if you please, the fingers of a man’s hand writing the fatal message. How this hall was roofed is an unsolved problem. No traces of vaulting have been found, yet the width from wall to wall is so great that it is doubtful whether it could have been covered by a roof of beams. If there were indeed a vault it would be the earliest example of such construction on so big a scale. Behind the banqueting hall are the private chambers, and behind all a narrow passage leading to an emergency exit, by means of which the king could escape to his boat on the Euphrates in the last extremity of danger.
Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar, had built himself a smaller, but still very considerable, dwelling which occupied the western side of the mound. This Nebuchadnezzar destroyed; he filled up the walls and chambers with rubble and masonry and laid out an extension of his own palace above it. The plan both of the upper and of the lower palace has now been ascertained. Above the Babylonian walls are the remains of Greek and Parthian settlements, each of which has to be carefully planned before it can be swept away and the lower strata studied. I saw work being carried on in a mound which formed one of the most ancient parts of the city; the excavation pits had been sunk twelve or fifteen metres deep to dwelling-houses of the first Babylonian Empire. They passed through the periods of the Parthian and of the Greek, through the age of Nebuchadnezzar and that of the Assyrians, and each stratum was levelled and planned before the next could be revealed. Add to this that the most ancient walls were constructed of sun-dried brick, scarcely distinguishable from the closely-packed earth, and some idea can be obtained of the extreme difficulty of the work. The oldest Babylonian houses which have been uncovered rest themselves on rubbish-heaps and ruins, but deeper digging is impossible owing to the fact that water-level has been reached. The Euphrates channel has silted up several metres during the last six thousand years and the primæval dwellings are now below it. While we were standing at the bottom of a deep pit, a workman struck out with his pick a little heap of ornaments, a couple of copper bracelets and the beads of a necklace which had been worn by some Babylonian woman in the third millennium before Christ and were restored at last to the light of the sun.
The northern part of the palace mound is as yet almost untouched. Here can be seen a sculptured block which used to lie among the earth-heaps until a French engineer built a pedestal for it and set it up above the ruins (Fig. 104). It is carved in the shape of a colossal lion standing above the body of a man who lies with arms uplifted. The man’s head is broken away and the whole group is only half finished, but the huge beast with the helpless human figure beneath his feet could not have been given an aspect more sinister. It is as though the workmen of the Great King had fashioned an image of Destiny, treading relentlessly over the generations