CHAPTER XVI

BAGDAD

_Romantic Bagdad! name to childhood dear,_ _Awaking terror’s thrill and pity’s tear;_ _For there the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,_ _And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid knelt;_ _Prince of the Thousand Tales! whose glorious reign_ _So brightly shines in fancy’s fair domain!_ _Whose noble deeds still Arab minstrels sing,_ _Who rivaled all but Gallia’s Knightly King._ NICOLAS MICHEL.

We entered Bagdad in the full glory of a Mesopotamian sunset. Her mosques glowed with amber and light primrose; her minarets with the most delicate rose and gold. The noble crowns of stately palm trees cast masses of shade over gardens and fountains and, trembling under a gentle breeze from Oman’s Sea, played almost mystically in the quivering and departing sunlight. Throngs of Turks and Arabs, Kurds and Persians pressed feverishly through the narrow streets. The color notes of the red and green, blue and white robes of the men and women struck a pleasant harmony with the drab of the walls and the maroon and olive green of the fretted bay windows which projected over the gradually darkening thoroughfares of the picturesque city of Harun-al-Rashid.

We felt ourselves at once in the thrall of the quiet and subtle spell which the famed home of the Caliphs had cast over us, but, notwithstanding this, we lost no time in repairing to the home of the Carmelite Fathers, who had been advised of our arrival and who gave us a welcome such as is accorded only by the generous and warm-hearted missionaries of the Orient. Once under their hospitable roof we felt that we were a member of their religious family. So fully was our every want foreseen and our every desire anticipated that we saw at a glance that our sojourn among these devoted fathers would be fully as pleasant and as profitable as had been our stay among the whole-souled Capuchins of Urfa and the zealous and scholarly Dominicans of Mosul. Nor were we mistaken, for every hour we spent with the good Carmelite priests of Bagdad was replete with pleasure, instruction, and edification.

The story of the going of the Carmelites to Bagdad and the record of their labors since their arrival there is as interesting as it is inspiring. Their formal taking possession of the Mission of Bagdad, the Carmelites tell us, took place in the first decade of the seventeenth century, under the most dramatic circumstances. The zealous Father Paul-Simon, superior of their mission in Persia, who had been sent by the Shah as an envoy to the Sovereign Pontiff, arrived at Bagdad so exhausted by the fatigues of a long and trying journey and the inroads of disease that, when he reached the gate of the city, he prostrated himself on the ground and gave up the ghost.

A little more than a quarter of a century after this tragic occurrence, was created the Latin bishopric of Bagdad, usually known as the See of Babylon. This was due to the progress which the Church had made in Persia--a progress that was the result of the fruitful missionary labors in that land of Carmelites, Jesuits, and Dominicans and to the protection and liberty which had been accorded them by the wise and enlightened Shah, Abbas the Great. Recognizing the necessity of a bishop as head of the Persian mission, Abbas, in 1830, sent Father Thaddée, a Carmelite, to Rome, to request the Holy Father to create a Latin bishopric in Ispahan, his capital, with a permanent coadjutorship which should guarantee the new episcopate from too long vacancies. As a result of the Persian monarch’s interest in the Church, Father Thaddée was promoted to the new See of Ispahan. He received as coadjutor Father Perez, likewise a Carmelite, who was given the specially created title of Bishop of Babylonia, which at that time was a part of the Persian Empire.

In the meantime, a pious lady of Meaux, France--Marie Ricouard--put at the disposition of the Holy See six thousand Spanish doubloons for the creation and endowment of a bishopric in _partibus infidelibus_, on the double condition that to the donor should be reserved the presentation of the first titular and that the following bishops should always be of French nationality.

Pope Urban VIII by his bull, _Super Universas_, decreed in June 1838, that the sum named should be appropriated to the See of “Babylon or Bagdad,” with the formal stipulation that all future incumbents of this bishopric should be obliged to reside there personally under pain of forfeiting all right to the fruits of the Ricouard foundation. At the same time the Sovereign Pontiff named as the first bishop of the new see Father Bernard de Sainte-Thérèse, of Paris, who had been proposed by the donor of the fund mentioned, and ordained that thenceforth no one should be promoted to this see unless he had been born in France. This wish of the Pope and of the pious donor has thus far never been transgressed, and there is no reason to doubt that it will continue to assure to France the honor of seeing one of her sons occupy the See of Bagdad.[420]

In the year 1677 a special act, signed at Constantinople by the Ambassador of Louis XIV, named the superior of the Carmelites in Basra consul of France, _in perpetuum_. At a later date the French King gave the title and prerogatives of consul to the Bishop of Bagdad. This was an immense help to the bishop in his ministry for it gave him increased power with the civil government and enhanced immensely his prestige among the Mohammedans. From the time of Francis I, when a treaty of peace and amnity and commerce was signed by the French Government and the Sublime Porte, the French had enjoyed full religious liberty throughout the Ottoman Empire and France continued for centuries to be with the Moslem the favored nation of Europe.[421]

But, although the consular positions which were held by the Carmelite superior of Basra and the bishop of Bagdad and, still more, the treaty of amnity which had been established between the French and Ottoman governments--especially after the Ottoman Turks gained possession of Mesopotamia in A. D. 1534--had given the French missionaries in the Near East increased power and prestige, they still had to confront difficulties innumerable and sacrifices that were calculated to appall all but the noblest heroes.

Their difficulties, however, did not proceed from the followers of Mohammed so much as from lack of material resources and from the paucity of subjects for the ever-expanding work of the mission. So many calls were made on their charity by the poor that they were at times forced to live on only a single piece of dry bread a day, with nothing to flavor it but a small clove of garlic. Then both priests and bishops were decimated by the plague while ministering at the bedside of the stricken members of their flock. On one occasion the Carmelite superior of Bagdad saw himself without any assistants whatever. Age and disease had taken them all from him one after another. In this extremity he wrote letter after letter to his superior general in Rome, conjuring him to send him men. “I have none, was the general’s answer; if you want them, come and seek them.”

The superior, Father Marie-Joseph, took the general at his word. Poor as Job, he borrowed money enough to hire a camel and alone, with a single Arab and a sack of dates and a leather bottle of water, he started for Aleppo on the long journey--nearly eight hundred miles--through the inhospitable Arabian and Syrian deserts. Twice his alertness and eloquence saved him from bands of marauding Bedouins. But, finally, after untold difficulties and sufferings he reached Aleppo and Rome. His superior general in the Eternal City was so impressed by the magnificent audacity of the zealous missionary that he found a means of procuring for him the assistants he so much needed and sent him back to his flock rejoicing. Among these assistants was Father Damien, formerly a practicing physician, who soon proved to be a godsend to the suffering poor of Bagdad, whom he gladly treated and supplied with medicine without any compensation whatever.[422]

As in the missions of Edessa and Mosul, the missionaries of Bagdad are nobly assisted in their moral and civilizing work by devoted nuns from France. But the life of these devoted sisters is one of the greatest self-sacrifice. They may not, as did the Carmelite priests, have attempted to imitate St. Peter of Alcantara, who took but one repast and that of the most frugal kind, only once every three days; but the privations which they for years had to endure would daunt all but the most courageous souls. Even before they reached the scene of their missionary activities they had to pass through an experience that, for delicately reared women as they were, was truly disheartening for any but those engaged in the service of the Master. This was their long journey on horseback--in great part--through a wild and forbidding desert from Beirut to Bagdad. They were twenty-four days in the saddle. The nights they had to spend in the filthy, noisy, dilapidated caravansaries which were scarcely fit shelter for the beasts that carried them. And yet these heroic _religieuses_ always maintained the same cheerfulness during this long and trying journey as ever characterizes them in the performance of their arduous labors in the schoolroom and at the bedside of the sick and suffering.[423]

But the labors of these ardent souls is not without compensation, even in this world. Notwithstanding all the drawbacks that confront them they have the comfort of knowing that their sacrifices are not in vain. The number of their pupils, Mohammedans and Jews, as well as Christians of all the numerous rites in Mesopotamia, is so rapidly augmenting, that it is difficult for the good nuns to house them and secure enough teachers to take care of them. For, in addition to the ordinary branches of an elementary education, they teach their young charges various kinds of needlework and the simpler principles of domestic economy.

“The children of Bagdad are very bright and very eager to learn,” said one of the sisters to me in answer to a question I had asked, “and nowhere will you find pupils who are more studious or more grateful for the opportunities they have of improving their minds. Our great grief is that our school-buildings are not larger and that we have not more sisters to meet the constantly increasing demands that are made on us in our class-rooms. But,” she said, in sweet resignation, “the _Bon Dieu_ will provide in His own good time.”

Never before did I so much regret that I was not a millionaire as I did when I visited the schools of these perfervid and laborious _religieuses_ and saw what splendid results they were achieving with the very limited resources at their disposal and learned how much more they could accomplish if they had the necessary means. If the good and generous people of America could only realize the noble work which the good Sisters of the Presentation are achieving in Bagdad and how very worthy they are of assistance, I am sure that many would open wide their purses for the benefit of both teachers and pupils. I know of few places where money could be spent to better purpose. When one remembers that these ardent souls are condemned to perpetual exile by the atrocious _Association Laws_ of their mother country and that they frequently lack the ordinary necessities of life because they are unable to reach a public that would gladly succor them in their needs and coöperate with them in their admirable work, one cannot help sympathizing with them and feel that it is one’s duty to help them in every way possible.

The school for boys under the direction of the Carmelite Fathers is recognized as the best in Bagdad. It, with the church and monastery of the Fathers, occupies a capital position in the center of the city and is pronounced by foreigners to be “a French oasis in the midst of the desert.”

It will interest the reader to know that the study of French is obligatory from the lowest to the highest classes of the school. The result is that many of the pupils speak the language with wonderful facility and correctness. At the commencement exercises at the end of the year they exhibit their proficiency before a large audience made up of the élite of the city by giving a play from Racine. It is in consequence of their thorough knowledge of the language of Molière and Bossuet that after leaving school they are given high positions in the leading houses of commerce and in all the administrative offices of the government. The traveler is often surprised at the extent to which French is spoken in the Near East; but when one remembers that the schools and colleges in the Ottoman Empire, which are under the direction of French priests, sisters, and laymen are numbered by the thousand, the wonder ceases. It is for this reason that the empire is, in the words of Pierre Loti--_presque un pays de langue française_--almost a country of the French language.[424]

The missionaries in Bagdad--from the Archbishop down to the humblest nun--are greatly attached to the city in which Divine Providence has called them to labor and--to suffer. Not the least reason for this attachment is the glorious position which Bagdad so long occupied in the history of the world. Until the late war the average reader knew little about it except that it was in some way associated with the “Arabian Nights.” And this association was so vague in his mind that he was not sure whether Bagdad ever had an actual existence or whether it, like the famous characters in _Thousand and One Nights_, belonged only to fable land.

For this reason it seems this chapter would be incomplete without some account of the famous city which, during five hundred years, was the capital of the Abbasside Caliphs; which, there is reason to believe, was for a considerable period the largest city in the world; which, during many centuries bore rule from the Oxus to the Nile and from the Caucasus to the Gulf of Oman; and which, during a half millennium, was to Islam what Rome is to Christendom.

Bagdad was founded A. D. 762, by Al-Mansur, the second of the Abbasside Caliphs. Before deciding on a site for his capital Al-Mansur made many journeys and carefully examined all the available locations along the Tigris from Jarjaraya to Mosul. Moslem historians inform us that the Caliph was finally induced to select the spot on which Bagdad now stands by the advice of those who had lived there both in winter and in summer and who assured him that “among all the Tigris lands this district especially was celebrated for its freedom from the plague of mosquitoes and that the nights, even in the height of summer, were cool and pleasant.” “We are, furthermore, of the opinion,” they continued, “that thou shouldst found the city here because thou shalt thereby live amongst palms and near water, so that if one district fail thee in its crops, or be late in its harvest, in another will the remedy be found. Also thy city being on the Sarat Canal, provisions will be brought thither by the boats of the Euphrates and by the caravans through the plains, even from Egypt and Syria. Hither, up from the sea will come the wares of China, while down the Tigris from Mosul will be brought goods from the Byzantine lands. Thus shall thy city be safe standing between all these streams, and thine enemy shall not reach thee, except it be by a boat or by a bridge, and across the Tigris or the Euphrates.”

“The practical foresight shown by the Caliph,” in the selection of the site of his capital, “has been amply confirmed by the subsequent history of Bagdad. The city called into existence as by an enchanter’s wand was, during the Middle Ages, second in size only to Constantinople, and throughout Western Asia was long unrivalled for splendor. It at once became and remained for all subsequent centuries the capital of Mesopotamia. Wars, sieges, the removal for a time by the Caliphs of the seat of government to Samara, higher up the Tigris, even the almost entire destruction of the city by the Mongols in A. D. 1258, none of these have permanently affected the supremacy of Bagdad as the capital of the Tigris and the Euphrates country, and now, after the lapse of over twelve centuries, the new Arabic King of Mesopotamia still resides in the city founded by the Caliph Al-Mansur.”[425]

Many etymologies, most of them fanciful, have been given of the name Bagdad. It is said that when Al-Mansur finally selected the site for his capital he found it occupied by several monasteries, most of them Nestorian, and that the capital derived its appellation from the Arabic word _bagh_--garden,--and _Dad_--the name of a certain monk who had a garden there. Others aver that the name is derived from two Persian words, _Bagh_--God,--and _Dadh_--founded--signifying a city founded by God. The official name, however, given, we are told by the Caliph Al-Mansur himself, was Medina-as-Salam, which signifies the “City of Peace.” But among the Saracens it was more generally known as Dar-as-Salam, which also signifies City or Home of Peace. The Greeks gave it a name--Eirenopolis--which is a literal translation of the Arabic Dar-as-Salam. But it is by the older and more common name--Bagdad--which is variously spelt--that the city of Al-Mansur has generally been known from its foundation to the present day.

It was long thought that the capital of the Caliphs had been founded on ground which had not previously been occupied by a dense population. But a discovery made in 1848 by Sir Henry Rawlinson, when the waters of the Tigris were exceptionally low, disclosed the surprising fact that Al-Mansur had founded his capital on the site of a city that antedated the Christian era by at least seven centuries. An extensive facing of brickwork, which still exists, was then found to line the western bank of the river, and each brick of this facing bore the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar. No less remarkable, in this connection, is a later discovery in the Assyrian geographical catalogues, belonging to the reign of Asurbanipal, of a name very similar to Bagdad “which probably refers to the town then standing on the site afterwards occupied by the capital of the Caliphs.”

Al-Mansur founded his capital, known from its peculiar form as “The Round City,” on the right bank of the Tigris, but it was not long until the palaces of the Caliphs and the government offices were transferred to the eastern side of the river, where the capital has since remained, while the part of the city on the western bank, especially the quarter called Karkh, was given over to markets and merchants, where “every merchant and each merchandise had an appointed street: and there were rows of shops, and of booths and of courts in each of the streets; but men of one business were not mixed up with those of another, nor one merchandise with merchandise of another sort. Goods of a kind were only sold with their kind, and men of one trade were not to be found except with their fellows of the same craft. Thus each market was kept single and the merchants were divided according to their merchandise, each craftsman being separated from others not of his own class.”[426]

What greatly contributed towards the rapid development of Bagdad and towards making it the great emporium of the East, was the admirable system of canals which intersected the rich alluvial plains of lower Babylonia and which enabled the inhabitants of this region to utilize the surplus waters of the Euphrates for irrigating the fertile lands which lay between this river and the Tigris. Contrary to what is so often thought, the Arabs, under the Caliphs, gave as much attention to the canalization of Mesopotamia as had their predecessors, the Persians and the Babylonians.

But these canals, besides being used for purposes of irrigation, likewise served for the transportation of merchandise from distant regions. Thus, to give a single instance of their use for this purpose, we are informed that “great boats and barges were loaded at Rakkah, ‘the port,’ as it was called, of the Syrian desert on the Upper Euphrates, there taking over from the land-caravans the corn of Egypt and the merchandise from Damascus; and these boats, coming down the great river, and then along the Isa Canal, discharged their cargoes at the wharves on the Tigris banks at the lower harbor in Karkh.”[427]

To give some idea of the fertility of the irrigated region of Mesopotamia during the reign of the Caliphs it suffices to quote the words of an Arabic writer regarding certain cornlands in the vicinity of Bagdad, where, we are told, “the crops never failed, neither in winter nor in summer,” and of the report given of a certain mill in which there were no fewer than a hundred millstones which produced the extraordinary annual rental of a hundred million dirhams, a sum that was equivalent to several million dollars of our money.

Marco Polo, that king of mediæval travelers, who, by the vast compass of his journeys, was better qualified than any man of his time to express an opinion on the relative importance of the cities of Asia, declares that Bagdad--which he calls Baudas--is “the noblest and greatest city of these regions” and that it “used to be the seat of the Caliph of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians.”[428] But the illustrious Venetian voyager did not visit Bagdad until several decades after the destruction of the city by the Mongol hordes under Hulagu Khan.

The question now arises, if Bagdad was so great a metropolis only a half century after it was ravaged by the Mongols, what must it have been when at the zenith of its power and magnificence? Some authors estimate that the city counted no fewer than two million souls. D’Herbelot, the celebrated Orientalist, says that one can conjecture the number of the inhabitants of Bagdad from a statement made by Arab historians, who declare that the funeral of Eben Hanbal, a famous Moslem doctor who died with a great reputation for sanctity, was attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women.[429] Then again, Marco Polo tells us that the number of Christians in Bagdad, shortly before it was sacked by Hulagu, was more than a hundred thousand.[430] This would indicate that the population of this Saracen city, of which a very great majority was Mohammedan, must then, in the days of its decline, have exceeded a million. This seems clear from what historians tell us about the “horrible butchery of men, women and children,” which lasted forty days, when the city was sacked by the Mongols under Hulagu.

Nearly all the inhabitants, to the number, according to Rashid ud Din, of eight hundred thousand--Makrizi says two million--perished, and thus passed away one of the noblest cities that had ever graced the East--the cynosure of the Mohammedan world, where the luxury, wealth and culture of five centuries had concentrated.[431]

About the greatness and splendor of Bagdad before it was laid in ashes by the Mongol invader, there can be no question. The concurrent testimony of contemporary historians puts this beyond doubt. The walls which surrounded the city in its infancy were such as to rival those of ancient Babylon and Nineveh, as described by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. According to the noted Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Bagdad in the second half of the twelfth century, “the palace of the Caliph of Bagdad is three miles in extent.”

An idea of the magnificence of the Caliph’s palaces may be gained from an account that has come down to us of the brilliant reception accorded the Greek ambassadors who were sent to Bagdad, A. D. 917, by Constantine Porphyrogenitus.[432] Before being introduced to the Commander of the Faithful, the envoys were conducted in state through the various buildings within the palace precincts. Each of these buildings, of which there were twenty-three in number, was a separate palace.

One of these was the riding academy, adorned with porticoes of marble columns.

On the right side of this house stood five hundred mares caparisoned each with a saddle of gold or silver, while on the left stood five hundred mares with brocade saddle-cloths and long head-covers; also every mare was held in hand by a groom magnificently dressed.[433]

After all this, and leading to the very presence of the Caliph, came the officers of state and the pages of the privy council, all in gorgeous raiment, with their swords and girdles glittering with gold and gems. Near them were “the eunuchs and the chamberlains and the black pages.”

The number of the eunuchs was seven thousand in all, four thousand of them white and three thousand black; the number of the chamberlains was also seven thousand, and the number of the black pages, other than the eunuchs, was four thousand.... On the Tigris there were skiffs and wherries, barques and barges and other boats, all magnificently ornamented, duly arranged and disposed.... The number of the hangings in the palaces of the Caliph was thirty-eight thousand. These were curtains of gold--of brocade embroidered with gold--all magnificently figured with representations of drinking vessels and with elephants and horses, camels, lions and birds.... The number of the carpets and the mats was twenty-two thousand pieces; these were laid in the corridors and courts....[434]

A hundred lions were brought out, every lion being held in by the hand of its keeper. Among other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver. The tree had eighteen branches, every branch having numerous twigs, on which sat all kinds of gold and silver birds, both large and small. Most of the branches of this tree were of silver, but some were of gold, and they spread into the air carrying leaves of divers colors. The leaves of the tree moved as the wind blew, while the birds, under the action of mechanical appliances, piped and sang. Through this scene of magnificence the Greek ambassadors were led to the foot of the Caliph’s throne.

The impression made on the ambassador and his suite at the sight of such a display of wealth and luxury was, we may well believe, not unlike that produced on the Spanish Conquistadores at the sight of the vast treasures of Cuzco and Cajamarca, or on the astonished ambassadors of foreign powers when they were admitted to the presence of Abd-al-Rahman III in his gorgeous audience chamber in the famed palace of Medina-al-Zahra.[435]

But Bagdad has more compelling claims to undying fame than those based on gorgeous palaces, superb mosques, boundless luxury, and ostentatious displays of fabulous wealth. This splendid capital of the Caliphs will always live in history’s page as the seat of numerous and splendid institutions of charity and education and as the home of Caliphs who were the most munificent patrons of science and letters of the Middle Ages.

Among the hospitals of Bagdad was a palatial structure with many rooms and wards, which were furnished in elaborate style. Here the patients were gratuitously provided with food and medicine and regularly visited by the physicians of the city. It was here that Rhazes, the most celebrated Mussulman physician of his time, gave his lectures and founded the great medical school which drew students from all parts of Western Asia. Rhazes is famous not only for his eminence as a physician but also as a voluminous writer on medicine and for having described smallpox nearly nine hundred years before Jenner began his noted investigations on this dread disease.

It was, however, the colleges, of which there were more than thirty--“each more magnificent than a palace”--that gave Bagdad its greatest fame in the mediæval world. One of these, called the Nizamiyah, founded by an eminent vizier who was the friend of the poet Omar Khayyám, was, on account of its architectural splendor, and the celebrity of its professional staff, known as the “Mother of the colleges of Bagdad.” Among its most illustrious lecturers were Ghazzali, celebrated as a philosopher and a theologian, and Bohadin, who achieved eminence as a historian, as a statesman, and as the biographer of the Sultan Saladin. The endowment of the Nizamiyah was so princely that it sufficed not only to pay the salaries of the professors but also to pay for the board and tuition of indigent students.

Completely eclipsing the Nizamiyah College in its architectural grandeur, sumptuous equipment, and wealth of endowment was the College of the Mustansiriyah--the ruins of which still exist--which was founded by the Caliph Mustansir, the father of Mustasim, who was put to death by Hulago after the destruction of Bagdad. So great was the splendor of this college that it is said to have surpassed any similar institution in Islam. It was not only the most notable seat of learning in Bagdad, but was also its most beautiful and imposing edifice. When one recalls the many gorgeous palaces of the city--many of them costing fabulous sums--one can realize what munificent patrons were Bagdad’s Caliph and men of wealth and how well this fairy capital deserved its reputation as the Orient’s most famous center of science and letters. It had only one rival and that was the famous Ommaied metropolis in Spain, so celebrated for its riches and attractions, its schools and libraries and scholars--a city which Hroswitha, the gifted nun of Gandersheim, has so beautifully described in a single distich:

_Corduba famosa, locuples de nomine dicta,_ _Inclyta deliciis, rebus quoque splendida cunctis._

But no description of Bagdad is complete without some account of its more eminent Caliphs, especially of its immortal Harun-Al-Rashid, who is “inseparably associated with the most charming collection of stories ever invented for the solace and delight of mankind.” This brilliant Saracen ruler has long been ranked among the illustrious men of all time. For, notwithstanding the fact that from time immemorial legends have gathered around his name in greater number than about those of King Arthur, or Charlemagne, or Frederick Barbarossa, authentic history tells us enough of his character and achievements to make the romantic life of “Aaron the Just”--to Anglicize his name--one of supreme fascination and abiding interest.

The Arabians [Sismondi writes] are indebted to him for the rapid progress which they made in science and literature, for Harun never built a mosque without attaching to it a school. His successors followed his example, and in a short period the sciences which were cultivated in the capital spread themselves to the very extremities of the empire of the Caliphs. Whenever the faithful assembled to adore the Divinity, they found in this temple an opportunity of rendering Him the noblest homage which His creatures can pay--by the cultivation of those faculties with which their Creator has endowed them. Harun-Al-Rashid, besides, was sufficiently superior to the fanaticism which had previously animated his sect not to despise the knowledge which the professors of another faith possessed. The head of his schools and the first director of studies in his empire was a Nestorian Christian of Damascus, of the name of John Ebn Mesua.[436]

Christians were the translators of the works of Plato and Aristotle; of Galen, Hippocrates, and Dioscorides; of Ptolemy, Euclid, and Apollonius Pergæus.

No Caliph ever gathered round him so great a number of learned men:--poets, jurists, grammarians, cadis and scribes,--to say nothing of the wits and musicians who enjoyed his patronage. Personally, too, he had every quality that could recommend him to the literary men of his time. Harun himself was an accomplished scholar and an excellent poet; he was well versed in history, tradition and poetry which he could always quote on appropriate occasions. He possessed exquisite literary taste and unerring discernment and his dignified demeanor made him an object of profound respect to high and low.[437]

He was, indeed, as described by his biographers, “the most accomplished, eloquent and generous of the Caliphs,” and the stories that are told of his lavish generosity towards scholars who frequented his court proved that he was probably the most munificent patron of men of science and letters that ever lived.

And yet, sad to relate, there is a dark spot in the career of Harun-al-Rashid. This is due to his inhuman treatment of the Barmecides, whose tragic fate at the hands of the Caliph is one of the most shocking occurrences in oriental annals. One of this ill-fated family, Yaya ibin Barmek, was Harun’s vizier, who, by his consummate ability, had contributed more than any other man towards the success of the Caliph’s reign. It was he, and not the Commander of the Faithful, who directed the course of events that rendered the reign of Harun-al-Rashid the culminating point of Islamic history. His son Jaafer was the most cherished friend of the Caliph and his constant companion in his nightly _incognito_ wanderings through the city of Bagdad. “Harun’s attachment to Jaafer was of so extravagant a character that he could never bear him to be absent from his side, and he went to the absurd length of having a cloak made with two collars, so that he and Jaafer could wear it at one and the same time.”[438]

But to wipe out a fancied indignity he did not hesitate foully to murder his friend and companion, “by far the most lovable and attractive character of the many that live for us in the _Thousand and One Nights_.[439] He cast his old and loyal vizier, the father of Jaafer, into prison. Not content with this barbarous treatment of men to whom he owed so much, he vented his fury on their family and did not abate his anger until he had slain more than a thousand of the Barmecides. So great an impression did Harun’s atrocious treatment of his best friends make on his contemporaries that it became “the proverbial example in oriental history of the change of fortune and the mutability of royal favor.” It is because of this barbarous cruelty and his revolting treachery that the Harun of history is so unlike the Harun of legend, in which he is always painted as a merry monarch--the patron of scholars and the boon companion of congenial friends. And it is because of this that we must refuse him his long-accorded title of “The Just” and “The Good,” although, in view of his achievements as a ruler and his unfailing and generous patronage of men of science and letters, we cannot deny him the epithet of “The Great.” Were it not for the stain on his escutcheon, due to his infamous treatment of the Barmecides, we could, with some semblance of truth, say of this illustrious Caliph of Bagdad, in the words of Tennyson:

_Sole star of all that place and time,_ _I saw him in his golden prime,_ _The Good Harun-al-Rashid._

One cannot speak of the services rendered to science and literature by Harun-al-Rashid without referring to his distinguished son and successor, the Caliph Al-Mamun. Although the power and the greatness of the empire had suffered a notable diminution after the death of Al-Rashid, the glory of Bagdad as a center of learning still retained all its former luster. Some, indeed, will have it that its prestige was enhanced and that Al-Mamun and not Harun was the father of letters and the Augustus of the Abbasside Caliphate. For the first thing he did on ascending the throne was to invite the Muses from their favorite seats in the Byzantine Empire to the capital of the Caliphs on the Tigris.

Study, books and men of letters almost entirely engrossed his attention. The learned were his favorites and his ministers were occupied alone in forwarding the progress of literature. It might be said that the throne of the Caliphs seemed to have been raised for the Muses. He invited to his court from all parts of the world all the learned with whose existence he was acquainted, and he retained them by rewards, honors and distinctions of every kind. He collected from the subject provinces of Syria, Armenia and Egypt the most important books which could be discovered, and which, in his eyes, were the most precious tribute he could demand. The governors of provinces and the officers of administration were directed to amass in preference to everything else the literary relics of the conquered countries and to carry them to the foot of the throne. Hundreds of camels might be seen entering Bagdad loaded with nothing but manuscripts and papers and those which were thought to be adapted for the purpose of public instruction were translated into Arabic that they might be universally intelligible. Masters, instructors, translators, and commentators formed the court of Al-Mamun, which appeared to be rather a learned academy than the centre of government in a warlike empire. When the Caliph dictated the terms of peace to the Greek Emperor, Michael the Stammerer, the tribute which he demanded from him was a collection of Greek authors.[440]

History was but repeating itself, for, as in the days of ancient Rome, so also in the most brilliant period of Bagdad

_Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes_ _Intulit agresti Latio._[441]

So great during this brilliant literary period was the love of learning that there were in Bagdad more than a hundred booksellers. How many of our modern cities could count so great a number? And so large were even private libraries that we are told of a doctor of Bagdad who “refused the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.”[442]

Nor was it in Bagdad alone that the zeal of Harun and Mamun for the progress of knowledge had stimulated enthusiasm for science and letters. Under these two illustrious patrons of learning, homes of science that almost equaled that of Bagdad were established in all parts of the Caliphate--in Cufa and Basra; in Fez and Morocco; in Cairo and Alexandria and Damascus; in Balk, Ispahan, and Samarcand--many of which, in the splendor of their buildings and in the equipment of their libraries, rivaled the famous Arabian schools of Granada, Seville, and Cordoba, which were in their heyday “when all that was polite or elegant in literature was classed among the _Studia Arabum_.” And it is to be observed that these institutions, created and fostered by the benign influence of the Caliphs, had reached the acme of their glory when the greater part of western and northern Europe was in a condition of comparative darkness.

But in paying this tribute to the Caliphs of Bagdad--especially Harun-Al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun--I do not wish to appear as overrating their achievements in science and letters. One may, indeed, concede that they always held literary excellence in the highest honor; one may admit that never, not even in the days of Mæcenas and Lorenzo the Magnificent, did men of letters receive greater encouragement and rewards; one may acknowledge that for centuries the Saracens were far in advance of many of the western nations of Christendom in many branches of science and philosophy, but, granting all this, the indisputable fact still remains that they were borrowers and not originators.

All their achievements in philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics were due to their Greek masters--to Plato and Aristotle; to Galen and Dioscorides; to Hipparchus and Ptolemy; to Euclid, Archimedes, and Eratosthenes. And it must not be forgotten that the Saracens owed their knowledge of Greek science to Christians, for it was Christians who translated for them the works which they were unable to read in the original. Thus it was the Christian scholar Honein, who was the physician to the Khalif Motowakkel, that translated into Arabic the “Elements” of Euclid and the “Almagest” of Ptolemy; and it was his pupils who made the Arabic versions of the greater number of the works of Galen and Hippocrates.[443] And it was to the celebrated Christian family, the Boktishos, and to the Nestorian school of Gondisapor, from which issued so many scholars of distinction, that the Saracens were indebted for versions of countless other works of Greek science and philosophy.

Among the many learned men whom the Caliph Al-Mamun invited to his court and “who contributed far more than his own subjects to the reputation that sovereign has deservedly gained in the history of science,” was Leo the Mathematician, who subsequently became the Archbishop of Thessalonica. The Caliph desired to have made an accurate measurement of the earth’s orbit and he called this distinguished Greek to his court to take charge of this important work because “he was universally recognized to be the superior to all the scientific men of Bagdad in mathematical and mechanical knowledge.”[444]

But while the Arabs were good borrowers from Greek writers on medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, they almost completely ignored the great poets, orators, and historians of ancient Hellas. Never cultivating any language but their own, they were unable to read the masterpieces of Greek literature except in a translation, but as there was no demand by the Saracens for translations of these works into Arabic, none were ever made. For this reason the matchless poems of Homer and the Greek dramatists; the orations of Lysias and Demosthenes; the histories of Herodotus and Trucidides, were for the Saracens as so many closed books. The noted Syriac author, Bar-Herbræus, does, indeed, mention a version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ by a Christian Maronite of Mount Lebanon, but his translation was into Syriac and not Arabic.

These facts show how much the great reputation of the Saracens for learning was due to their immortal Greek masters and to the literary

## activity of their Christian subjects, especially the Greeks of the

Lower Empire. It is true, as Freeman observes, that “the Arabs studied Aristotle and taught him to the men of western Europe; but it was surely from the men of eastern Europe that they obtained him in the first instance. He was read in translations at Samarcand and at Lisbon, when no one knew his name at Oxford or Edinburgh; but all the while he continued to be read in his own tongue at Constantinople and Thessalonica.”[445]

The impulse that Harun-al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun gave to educational progress by encouraging the translation of the works of Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and others of the great Greek masters will always give their reigns a conspicuous place in the annals of science and civilization. But the successors of these two illustrious monarchs did not follow in their footsteps. Although the power of the Caliphate seemed still unimpaired and its splendor was apparently undimmed, the seeds of decay, which led to ultimate destruction, were already at work. The vices of sloth and luxury and cruelty which prevailed at the court and in many of the most important departments of the government of the Caliphate, slowly but surely entailed their fatal consequences. Besides these, there were other causes of decay and extinction. Chief among them were internecine strife and the separation of the remoter provinces from the central power. Added to these disintegrating factors the Caliphate had become top-heavy, and under a weak and degenerate ruler like Al-Mostassem, the last of the Abbassides, its downfall was inevitable.

In contemplating the fall of the power which was for five centuries the glory of the Moslem world, one is led to compare the close of the reign of the last of the Caliphs with that of the last of the Byzantine Emperors:

The last and weakest of the Caliphs without an effort of arms or policy to stay his fall, sinks from senseless pride to craven terror and expires amidst the tortures of a faithless victor. The last and noblest of the Cæsars, after doing all that mortal man could do for the deliverance of his city, himself dies in the breach, the foremost among its defenders. Not Darius in the hands of the traitor, not Augustulus resigning his useless purple, not the Ætheling Edgar spared by the contempt of the Norman Conqueror ever showed fallen greatness so dishonored and unpitied as did Al-Mostassem Billah al Wahid, the last Commander of the Faithful;[446] not Leonidas in the pass of Thermopylæ, not Decius in the battle below Vesuvius, not our own Harold upon the hill of Senlac, died a more glorious death than Constantine Palæologus, the last Emperor of the Romans.[447]

Among the names given to Bagdad, as has been said in a preceding page, was that of Dar-as-Salam, or Medina-as-Salam--City of Peace. In view of the numerous vicissitudes through which the erstwhile capital of the Caliphs has passed, the protracted sieges it has sustained, the frightful destruction it has time and again undergone, the appalling massacres of its inhabitants at the hands of bloodthirsty invaders, it would be difficult to conceive a more preposterous misnomer.

We have seen what was the fate of the city when it was given over to the savage and rapacious hordes of Hulagu Khan. But this reign of terror was but a prelude to the horrors that befell the ill-fated city when, less than a century and a half later, the brutal Mongols again captured and sacked the city; when its streets streamed with the blood of its defenders and reëchoed with the frenzied shrieks of women and children, and when, as a climax of all this unutterable carnage,[448] the Mongol leader, Timur, celebrated his bloody victory by erecting on the ruins of Bagdad a gruesome pyramid of ninety thousand heads of its slaughtered inhabitants.[449]

No wonder that the people of the East were wont to declare that “conquest by Turks or Saracens was a blessing compared with falling into the jaws of the implacable Mongols.” When word reached the Court of Byzantium that the Mongols, under Timur, were approaching the city, so great was the terror which they inspired that “popular rumor painted the invaders as having dogs’ heads and eating human flesh.”[450]

When, in addition to all these atrocities, one recalls the deeds of violence and savagery which afterwards followed the successive storming and occupation of the unfortunate city by Turkomans, Persians, and Turks, one must conclude that the proper epithet for Bagdad would have been not Dar-as-Salam--City of Peace--but Dar-al-Harb--City of War.

“But what,” the reader inquires, “of modern Bagdad, of the Bagdad of to-day”? Since the Muses left the fair capital of the Caliphs, long centuries ago, little more of interest remains in it than may be found in any other city of the Moslem East.

My first hurried view of Bagdad was in the parting splendor of sunset,

_When her shrines through the foliage were gleaming half shown,_ _And each hallow’d the hour by some rites of its own._

My eyes were then open only to what was beautiful, romantic, picturesque.

My second view was on the following morning, from the terrace of the Carmelite monastery. It was at the hour when the sun, in the words of Omar Khayyám, was scattering

_Into flight_ _The Stars before him from the Field of Night._

A filmy veil of pearl-gray mist hung over the slumbering city and the witchery of the scene was even more enthralling than that which so captivated me the preceding evening. Presently

_The magic of daylight awakes_ _A new wonder each minute, as it slowly breaks;_ _Hills, cupolas, fountains, called forth every one_ _Out of darkness, as if just born of the Sun._

Yes, I was in Bagdad, the fairy city of boyhood’s dreams, the glittering home of pomp and pleasure, where the fair Zobeide dwelt in a palace with spangled floors and marble stairs with golden balustrades; where there was a riot of broidered sofas, damask curtains, silk tapestry, purple robes from the most famous looms of the East; where a joyous group of bejeweled dancing girls were wont, to the sound of harp and lute and dulcimer, to carol away, with voices as melodious as that of Israfel, the cares and ennui of their pleasure-sated mistress.

Willingly I yielded myself to the hypnotic influence of the _spiritus loci_. In fancy I saw Aladdin with his wonderful lamp; the one-eyed calenders as they told their fascinating tales; the fishermen as they deluded the heavy-witted jinn; Harun-al-Rashid and Jaffer as they wandered under their double-collared cloak through the somber streets of the capital; the radiant homes of wealth and luxury, which gleamed with the subdued light of a myriad of golden lamps and reëchoed with the heart-easing strains of sweet music and the gladsome voices of midnight revelry.

But the illusion was of short duration. The mauve-shot veil of tenuous mist lifted under the ardent rays of the morning sun and the magic city of Harun and his favorite Zobeide vanished to give place to the squalid houses, narrow, crooked streets, and crumbling walls of a time-stricken, war-battered city which is now but a shadow of what it was in the days of its pristine glory.

As a compliment to our hosts we did not even express a wish to explore the city, which we had come so far to see, until we had visited their schools and those conducted by their heroic coworkers, the Sisters of the Visitation of Tours. After having spent several most delightful hours with teachers and pupils we sent for a trio of those white donkeys for which Bagdad is so celebrated. Gentle as they are strong and hardy, they willingly keep up an easy, ambling gait for hours at a time without exhibiting the slightest evidence of fatigue. I learned to value them a third of a century ago when traveling in Egypt and I was glad to have an opportunity of again availing myself of their service in the old capital on the Tigris. Here they take the place of cabs which would not be at all available in the majority of the very narrow streets of the city.

As the Carmelite monastery is in the heart of the city, we soon found ourselves in the midst of a colorful scene that could not be surpassed by anything similar either in Damascus or Stamboul. Such a seething cauldron of races, such an utter confusion of tongues, such a motley carnival of costumes from plain white and black to the gay fabrics of Madras and the tawdry prints of Manchester! Here we meet men of countless types and creeds and nationalities--Turks, Afghans, Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans; Jews, Hindus, Christians, Parsees, Shiites, Sunnites, and Mohammedans of all the seventy-three sects into which the Prophet of Mecca predicted Islam would eventually be divided. The languages and dialects number more than a score, for which reason the traveler in Bagdad would imagine that he hears fully as many different tongues as were spoken by the builders of the Tower of Babel. Indeed, not the least of the many difficulties which the British forces encountered in their recent operations against the Turkish army was, we are told, “the same which confronted the contractors for the old tower so many thousands of years ago.”

The appearance of Bagdad, as we wandered through the maze of narrow, filthy, noisome streets, was quite different from what it seemed when we first saw it from our lazily moving kelek on the palm-fringed Tigris, or when we gazed upon it enveloped in the delicate mist of early morning. Then little was visible except domes and minarets covered with bright-colored tiles and scintillating mosaics which appeared to float in the opalescent atmosphere.

As in the case of all other eastern cities, Bagdad is more enchanting at a distance than when viewed from her somber unsanitary and intricate thoroughfares. And as we threaded our way through these dingy streets and byways, flanked on either side by low, dun-colored, windowless mud houses, we found it difficult to see in them, even in fancy, the sumptuous homes that adorned the city in the time of Caliphs and more difficult still to repeople them with the glamouring figures of _Thousand and One Nights_.

But when one passes from these narrow and gloomy streets, that will scarcely admit a camel, into the spacious courtyards with which even the most unpretentious dwellings are provided, one is often surprised at the magic transformation of the scene. Here one finds a profusion of beautiful trees and shrubs and plants loaded with flowers of every size and hue. Among the most conspicuous are the palm, the orange, and the pomegranate whose bright green foliage is in striking contrast with the flaming blooms of the hibiscus in which the Bagdadi takes as much pleasure as do her dusky Hawaiian sisters in far-off Honolulu, with whom these brilliant flowers are universal favorites.

A peculiarity of the habitations of the well-to-do of Bagdad is the _serdab_, an underground chamber which is usually eight or nine feet in height. It is here that the family lives during the terrifically hot weather that prevails during summer and a part of the spring and autumn. But, although the temperature is here ten degrees lower than in the upper part of the house, the intense heat of mid-summer, which often reaches 120° Fahrenheit in the shade, is almost unbearable. As so great a part of the people spend much of their time in the _serdab_, the city seems to be almost lifeless during a greater part of the day. Towards sunset, however, it begins to revive. The women then repair to the terraces of their dwellings where they pass the night in talking, smoking, drinking sherbets, and trying, when the mosquitoes permit, to get a little sleep. As to the men, especially the Moslem portion of the population, they endeavor to find some surcease of misery in the Lethean fumes of their chibouks and hubble-bubbles. Most of them congregate in the countless coffeehouses which, during the everlasting dog days of Bagdad, are thronged day and night with all sorts and conditions of sweltering and par-baked humanity.

Passing so much time in a state of semi-torpor, it is not surprising that even the strongest constitutions soon succumb to the enervating climate. Because of the intolerable heat, Europeans endeavor every few years to find relief in a change of climate. But when this is not possible, the majority of the foreign sufferers are short-lived. Thus I was informed that the average life of the Carmelite missionaries in southern Mesopotamia is only about nine years. But their premature deaths do not deter them from continuing the work of charity to which they are so devoted. As soon as one drops out of the ranks his place is immediately taken by a zealous _confrère_ who is only too willing to serve in the cause of the Master where the trials are most severe and where the dangers are greatest and most imminent.

What with the grilling climate, defective drainage, ignorance and neglect of the first principles of hygiene, one is not surprised to learn that the population of Bagdad is periodically decimated by the plague. Cholera is frequent. It was this dread visitant that carried off General Maude, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces during the recent campaign in Mesopotamia against the Turks.

We visited all the places of interest in the city but those in which we found most local color were the bazaars. As we neared the principal one of them we found the street crowded with Kurdish hamals bearing incredible burdens, and quick-stepping white donkeys disputing the way with awkwardly racking camels which snappishly sputtered or proudly held aloft their supercilious noses while disdainfully sniffing the air above the heads of shouting drivers. And round about us was a vociferating throng that were roughly jostling one another in their mad rush to force themselves into the alluring bazaars, which were already filled with all kinds of curious idlers or prospective purchasers.

Although the bazaars of Bagdad are much smaller than those of Damascus and Constantinople they are more interesting. This is not because of the attractive wares, but rather on account of the strange and motley crowd. And what a variety of garbs and what a medley of colors! There are every type and shade of oriental face; every style of headdress; every variety of costume one can conceive. Fezes, tarbooshes, keffiehs, turbans, the brimless hat of the Baktiari, the long felt hats of the Lurs and the Kurds; the black astrakan caps of the Russians and the Persians. As to costumes, there is everything imaginable from the primitive dhotee of the Hindu to the graceful full-flowing aba of the Arabian mollah and the elaborately embroidered apparel of an Indian rajah or the closely fitting frock coat of some prodigal nabob from Europe in quest of strange curios or rare old rugs and tapestries from Khorassan and Candahar.

The vesture of the women is even more variegated and costly and resplendent than that of the men. Some are garbed in rich silks of all the tints of the autumn leaf. Some are veiled, others unveiled, according as they come from the Moslem, Jewish, or Christian quarter of the city--but all are gathered around all the booths in which there is a special display of feminine finery. There is no law in Islam to prevent women from visiting the bazaars and whenever they desire to escape the monotony of the harem they start out on a shopping tour in which they take as much delight as do their sisters in the West. Frequently they have no more intention of making purchases than have the _habituées_ of the great department stores of Fifth Avenue or the splendid jewelry shops of _La Rue de la Paix_.

My attention was directed to the large number of Jews who had shops in the city and stalls in the bazaars. Many of them were specially conspicuous on account of their cheap misfit garments from English and German manufactories, which contrasted sharply with the costly and elegant robes of some of their customers. For headdress most of them wore black skull caps or flaming red fezes made in Vienna. But they all had the same dark, prominent eyes, the same hot and shining looks, like fanned flames, which so characterize the people of their races in other parts of Mesopotamia and the Near East.

When I expressed surprise at the number of the descendants of Abraham that we saw not only in the bazaars but in all parts of the city, one of my companions informed me that they constituted fully one-fourth of the population. The exact number of the inhabitants of Bagdad is not definitely known, but it is variously estimated to be from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand. There are, indeed, few, if any, other large cities in the Near East in which the children of Abraham have so great a representation in proportion to that of the adherents of other religious beliefs.

The majority of the Jews in Bagdad are descendants of those who were deported from Judæa to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar six centuries before the Christian era. Others, doubtless, are descended from Hebrew captives that were a century and a quarter earlier carried to Assyria by Sargon and Tiglath-pileser III. Still others trace their descent from those who voluntarily sought refuge in Mesopotamia after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and after the Holy City, many centuries later, fell under the sway of Islam.

The favorable conditions under which the Jews of the Captivity lived during the reign of the Babylonian monarchs, and even during the time of the Abbasside Caliphs, induced many of their brethren to join them in the fertile plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates. So satisfactory, indeed, were the relations of the Jews with their Babylonian rulers, that when, after they had been seventy years in captivity, Cyrus the Great gave them permission to return to their native land, but few of them, comparatively, availed themselves of the proffered opportunity. The unsettled conditions of Palestine and the sad experiences of those of their fellow countrymen who had returned to Jerusalem decided the majority of the Jews to remain in Babylonia where, although nominally captives, they enjoyed more peace, prosperity, and even more freedom than it was possible to find in the ravaged and desolate land of their fathers.

Once fairly settled in Babylonia, where they seem from the first to have enjoyed a great measure of freedom, the mode of life and fortunes of the Jews underwent a complete change. In their fatherland their chief pursuits were pastoral and agricultural. In Mesopotamia also they followed for a time the avocations of their forefathers. Thanks, however, to the greater productivity of the soil in the fertile Babylonian plain, which far surpassed that of the richest fields of Judæa and to their native thrift and industry and keen eye to business opportunities, which permitted no chance to escape them, it was not long before the children of the exiles were living in ease and comfort, while many of them soon found themselves in a position which, as compared with that which they occupied in Palestine afforded them, in Johnsonese phrase, “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

From that time most of the Jews of Mesopotamia began to devote themselves to commercial pursuits, which, more than anything else, influenced the subsequent fortunes of their countrymen throughout the world.

But not only did the descendants of the Jews of the Captivity achieve distinction in the commercial world; they also became celebrated for their attainments in science and letters. Under the Caliph Ali, in the middle of the seventh century of our era the Jews of Irak--Southern Babylonia--were able to organize what was almost an independent state. Here flourished the great Talmudic schools of Sara and Pumbeditha and here, in the country of their father Abraham, the Jews loved to fancy the survival of a prince of the Captivity who had recovered the scepter of David.[451] This was a period of notable prosperity for Irak, a period when Bagdad was at the height of its glory; when it was not only preëminent in science, art, and literature but was the religious capital of Jewry as well as Islam.[452]

In conclusion, I may here answer a question which I have been often asked, namely, “What of the future of Bagdad?” “Is there any hope of its return to its former greatness and splendor?”

This is a difficult question to answer. When one remembers that two other great capitals--Seleucia and Ctesiphon--once flourished only a few leagues to the south of the city of the Caliphs and that now but a vestige of them remains; when one remembers that Babylon, a short distance to the southwest, was, for nearly two thousand years, the most magnificent city of the ancient world, but that, under the demolishing

## action of man and nature, it so completely disappeared that its very

site was long a matter of controversy, one will hesitate to make any predictions about anything in a land in which the vicissitudes of fortune have been so extraordinary and in which the conflicts of international interests have been so relentless and so destructive. And yet, when one travels over the matchless alluvial plains on which stood the famous capitals that once controlled the destinies of Western Asia, one cannot but feel that there is a brilliant future in this celebrated region of the two rivers, but only when a stable and enterprising government shall have been established--a government whose purpose will be not to exploit the land and the populace for its own selfish purposes, but a government that shall be willing to guarantee to the people the blessings of peace and at the same time honestly strive to secure for them their position in the family of nations, to which their long and wonderful history gives them so just a title.[453] Then and then only shall we again see the broad desert of Mesopotamia blossoming as of old, and witness once more in the Land of the Two Rivers a metropolis that shall recall the greatness and the splendor of Babylon and Seleucia and Ctesiphon and of Bagdad too,--Medinah-al-Salam--as it was in the golden prime of Al Mamun and Harun-al-Rashid the Great.

##