From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon
Date: 2024-08-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Middle East -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Civilization

The Project Gutenberg eBook of From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

Author: J. A. Zahm

Release date: August 2, 2024 [eBook #74176]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: D. Appleton and company, 1922

Credits: Peter Becker, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM BERLIN TO BAGDAD AND BABYLON ***

FROM BERLIN TO
BAGDAD AND BABYLON

BOOKS BY J. A. ZAHM

(H. J. MOZANS)

FROM BERLIN TO BAGDAD AND BABYLON

THE QUEST OF EL DORADO

THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA’S SOUTHLAND

UP THE ORINOCO AND DOWN THE
MAGDALENA

ALONG THE ANDES AND DOWN THE
AMAZON

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

GREAT INSPIRERS

FROM BERLIN TO
BAGDAD AND BABYLON

BY

THE REV. J. A. ZAHM, C.S.C., Ph.D., LL.D.

(H. J. MOZANS)

MEMBER OF THE AUTHORS’ CLUB, LA SOCIÉTÉ FRANÇAISE DE PHYSIQUE, THE ARCADIA OF ROME, AND OTHER LEARNED SOCIETIES; AUTHOR OF “UP THE ORINOCO AND DOWN THE MAGDALENA,” “ALONG THE ANDES AND DOWN THE AMAZON,” “THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA’S SOUTHLAND,” ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXII

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
THE BEST OF FRIENDS
EVER LOYAL AND INSPIRING

MR. AND MRS. CHARLES M. SCHWAB

IN WHOSE HOSPITABLE HOME EVERY BOOK I
HAVE WRITTEN DURING THE LAST QUARTER
OF A CENTURY HAS HAD EITHER ITS INCEPTION
OR ITS COMPLETION THIS VOLUME

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

PARAPHRASE OF VERSES FROM SHAIKH SADI

By Edwin Arnold

In many lands I have wandered, and
wondered, and listened, and seen;
And many my friends and companions,
and teachers and lovers have been.

And nowhere a corner was there but I
gathered up pleasure and gain;
From a hundred gardens the rose-blooms,
from a thousand granaries grain;

And I said to my soul in secret, “Oh
thou, who from journeys art come!
It is meet we should bear some token of
love to the stayers at home;

For where is the traveller brings not from
Nile the sweet green reed,
Or Kashmiri silk, or musk-bags, or coral,
or cardamum seed?”

I was loath from all that Pleasaunce of
the Sun and his words and ways,
To come to my country giftless, and showing
no fruit of my days:

But, if my hands were empty of honey,
and pearls and gold,
There were treasures far sweeter than
honey, and marvellous things to be told.

Whiter than pearls and brighter than
the cups at a Sultan’s feast,
And these I have brought for love-tokens,
from the Lords of Truth, in my East.

FOREWORD

The following pages are the result of observations made and impressions received during a recent journey between one of the greatest capitals of Europe and the crumbling remains of what was in the long-ago the greatest capital of Asia. The route I followed was that which has been rendered famous by the migrations of the nations from the East to the West and by the march of armies from the days of Asurbanipal, Darius and Alexander to those of Harun-al-Rashid, Godefroy de Bouillon and Kolmar von der Goltz.

The journey in question I made not as a tourist but as a student—as one interested not only in the present condition—social, economic, religious and intellectual—of the peoples of the countries through which I passed, and as one who had had an intense and life-long interest in the history and civilization of the lands which intervene between the headwaters of the Danube and the lower reaches of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The ordinary tourist on pleasure bent would regard most of my journey as having been made through what is usually spoken of as “the unchangeable East.” But to the student who is conversant with the long and eventful past of the Near East the storied belt which connects the Bosphorus with the Persian Gulf has been the theater of more and greater changes in humanity’s development than any other portion of the earth’s surface. It is the fons et origo of the oldest civilization—a civilization whose traditions carry us back to the Garden of Eden. It has witnessed the successive civilizations of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, of the Greeks and the Romans and of the Saracens under the caliphs. And each of these consecutive civilizations has left its monuments of imperial splendor—its temples and palaces and colonnades and its priceless gems of plastic art. Some of these magnificent vestiges of a glorious past, like those of Palmyra, are still standing in the heart of the desert and have long since been abandoned to the roving Bedouin or the rapacious jackal. Others, like those of Ephesus and Pergamum and Nineveh, were long buried under sand and clay and have only recently been unearthed by the pick and the spade of the explorer and the archæologist. But wherever found, whether on the lonely plains and hillsides of Anatolia, or in the solitudes of the Syrian and Mesopotamian deserts, they possess for the studious traveler an attraction that is not offered in the same degree by any other section of the wide world.

Unlike the mysterious ruins in the steaming jungles of Yucatan or on the chilly plateau of Bolivia, which speak of an enigmatic race quite alien to our own, the remains of antiquity everywhere found in the lands between Stamboul and Babylon are of forms and designs with which we have been familiar from our youth and which belong to the same civilization from which our own is derived—the civilization that had its origin in the city-states of ancient Greece and that was subsequently introduced into western Asia by the soldiers of Alexander and Seleucus and firmly maintained there for centuries by the legionaries of imperial Rome.

To the student traveling through the Near East—especially along the route which I selected—the experience is, in many respects, like that of one passing through a vast museum. At every turn he meets something of rare and enthralling fascination. Now it is a remnant of a marble capital or architrave in a nomad’s hut; then it is a forlorn granite column near a squalid Turkish village—all that remains of some stately temple or sumptuous theater of Greek or Roman greatness. Again it is the fragment of a tomb which was erected to the memory of one who played an important rôle in his day, but whose name and achievements have long since been forgotten. And hovering over these crumbling monuments of a misty past are legends innumerable, but all of entrancing human interest—an interest that is accentuated by the discovery of a Greek or Latin inscription carved in a slab of granite or marble or by the finding of a terra cotta tablet covered with cuneiform characters that carry one back to the stirring reigns of Esarhaddon or Sennacherib.

And then there are the people—especially those of Asia Minor—with whom the author always loved to mingle and of whose kindness and hospitality he will ever retain the fondest memories. No people that I know has been less understood and more misrepresented than the gentle, industrious, home-loving Osmanlis of Anatolia. But of these I shall speak at length when relating my experiences in Asia Minor.

Traveling as a student, I have also written as a student and for students. But I have at the same time endeavored to record my observations and impressions so as to make them of interest to the general reader as well. And while I have given prominence to subjects that specially appealed to myself, these will, I trust, not be devoid of value to others who may wish to have in popular form an account of some of the most famous cities and peoples of the Near East when civilization was in its infancy, or when it was in full bloom under the beneficent influence of Helenism and Christianity.

As many parts of this volume are controversial in character, I have not confined myself to giving simply the results of my own observations and impressions, but I have taken pains to corroborate them by the conclusions of eminent scholars and investigators who have devoted to all the more important subjects long and careful study, and whose opinions, therefore, are entitled to special weight. And that the reader, if so minded, may be able to control my statements and deductions I have invariably given references to my authorities.

In the matter of the orthography of Turkish and Arabic proper names I have had the same experience as Howorth refers to when he writes in his History of the Mongols: “There are hardly two authors whom I have consulted who spell the names in the same way, and very often their spelling is so different that it is nearly impossible to recognize the name under its various aspects.” This arises from the fact that there is as yet no generally accepted system among English scholars for the transliteration of Turkish and Arabic names. Scientific accuracy, therefore, is in this respect difficult, if not impossible. My sole aim, consequently, has been to make myself intelligible. I have, accordingly, followed the orthography adopted by our standard English dictionaries and encyclopedias. In doing this I have, I am aware, exposed myself to the criticism of Oriental philologists, but I shall, I trust, have compensation in the satisfaction of being “understanded of the people.”

Immergrün, Lorreto, Pa.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | | PAGE
I. | On the Beautiful Blue Danube | 1
II. | The Euxine and the Bosphorus in Story, Myth And Legend | 35
III. | Roma Nova | 51
IV. | The Hellespont and Homer’s Troy | 76
V. | The Cradle of the Osmanlis | 94
VI. | Home Life of the Osmanlis in Anatolia | 121
VII. | The Bagdad Railway | 151
VIII. | In the Footsteps of the Crusaders | 171
IX. | In Historic Cilicia Campestris | 193
X. | Islam Past and Present | 220
XI. | Along the Trade Routes of the Near East | 253
XII. | From the Euphrates to the Tigris | 278
XIII. | The Churches of the East | 303
XIV. | Nineveh and Its Wonders | 341
XV. | Floating Down the Tigris in a Kelek | 370
XVI. | Bagdad | 402
XVII. | Motoring in the Garden of Eden | 437
XVIII. | Babylon | 471
| Index | 517

FROM BERLIN TO
BAGDAD AND BABYLON

CHAPTER I
ON THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE DANUBE

Wenn ich dann zu Nacht alleine
Dichtend in die Wellen schau’,
Steight beim blanken Mondenscheine
Auf die schmucke Wasserfrau
Aus der Danau,
Aus der schönen, blauen Danau.[1]
Beck

From Ratisbon to Budapest

Berlin to Bagdad! How these words, during the past few years, have stirred the chancelleries of Europe and how they have echoed and reëchoed throughout the civilized world! How they evoke Macchiavellian schemes of rival powers for territorial expansion and recall prolonged diplomatic struggles and countless sanguinary battles for military and commercial supremacy! How they tell of a welter of intrigue, of ambitions foiled, of treaties violated, of nations plunged into the miseries and horrors of the most frightful and most destructive of wars!

No portion of the world’s surface in the entire history of humanity has witnessed so many and so great revolutions as has that narrow strip which connects what was once the palm-embowered capital of Harun-al-Rashid, near the reputed birthplace of our race, with the once proud metropolis of the Hohenzollerns in far distant Niflheim. Across this restricted belt have swept Babylonians and Assyrians, Persians and Greeks, Saracens and Mongols in their careers of rapine and conquest. And across it surged the countless hordes of Huns and Goths, Turks and Tartars, during that protracted migration of nations from the arid steppes of Asia to the fertile plains of Europe. And across it, too, at the head of their victorious armies, forced their way all projectors of world domination from Ashurbanipal and Alexander to Timur and Napoleon.

As a boy no part of the world possessed a greater fascination for me than Babylonia and Assyria. This was, probably, because the first book I ever read contained wonderful stories of the Garden of Eden; of Babylon and its marvelous hanging gardens; of Nineveh and its magnificent temples and palaces; of the Tigris and the Euphrates whose waters were made to irrigate the vast and fecund plain of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. So profound, indeed, was the impression made on me by the reading of this volume that one of the great desires of my life was one day to be able to visit the land whose history had so fascinated my youthful mind and whose people had played so conspicuous a rôle in the drama of human progress.

After many years, when the realization of my dreams seemed no longer possible, events so shaped themselves that I finally found myself, almost as if by enchantment, in a comfortable hotel on the famous Unter den Linden in Berlin making final arrangements for my long journey to

Romantic Bagdad, name to childhood dear,
Where the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,
And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid knelt.

Had I been in haste and been disposed to follow the most direct route, I should have taken the Orient Express which would have delivered me forty-nine hours later in the famed City of Constantine on the picturesque Bosphorus. But that would have been too prosaic and would have prevented me from feasting my eyes on many things which, during previous visits to Europe had given me special pleasure.

Chief among these was that supreme performance of pictorial art, Raphael’s Madonna of San Sisto in the Royal Art Gallery of Dresden. Although I had many times spent hours in silent contemplation of this masterpiece of the great Umbrian artist, I now felt a greater desire than ever to behold again this matchless creation of genius and feel myself again under the spell of its serene beauty and gaze once more on what has been called “the supernatural put into color and form”—“Christianity in miniature”—what Goethe sings of as

Model for mothers—queen of woman—
A magic brush has, by enchantment,
Fixed her there.

Could one have had before one’s mind during long months in many lands a more elevating or a more inspiring image than that of her whom Wordsworth has so truly characterized as

Our tainted nature’s solitary boast?

From Dresden I went to Ratisbon which, according to a venerable tradition, occupies the site of a town founded by the Celts long centuries before the Christian era and which subsequently became known as Castra Regina, an outpost of the Roman empire on its long northern frontier. In few places of Germany is there more to engage the lovers of historic and legendary lore than this ancient city.

The most conspicuous object is the noble Gothic Cathedral with its delicate crocketed spires. As in the case of the cathedral of Cologne, full six centuries elapsed from the laying of the cornerstone to the completion of the towers of this imposing building. And as in the marvelous church of the Certosa di Pavia the architectural and artistic decoration of this magnificent temple passed from father to son. To these rarely gifted artisans and designers one can apply the words of Longfellow about the Cathedral of Strassburg:

The Architect

Built his great heart into these sculptured stones,

And with him toiled his children, and their lives

Were builded with his own into the walls

As offerings to God.

The numerous square towers which are visible in certain parts of the city remind one of similar towers that are so marked a feature in San Gimignano. They date back to a time when the nobility of Ratisbon, like the noble families of Florence in Dante’s time, employed them as defenses against their enemies.

But it is not my intention to describe even briefly the countless objects which have so long rendered this famous old city a favorite object to the tourist. To do even partial justice to its multitudinous attractions and historical associations would require a large volume.

My purpose in coming to Ratisbon was to embark on one of the small boats that here ply on the Danube, with the view of connecting at Passau, further down the river, with one of the larger boats of the Danube Steamship Navigation Company, which would take me to Vienna. Thence I planned to go by steamers of the same company to Budapest, Belgrade and the mouth of the Danube, whence I had planned to sail by the Black Sea and the Bosphorus to Constantinople.

But why, the reader will ask, did I elect the slower and more roundabout route rather than the direct one by rail? I answer in the words of Ovid:

Ignotis errare locis, ignota videre

Flumina gaudebant, studio minuente laborem.[2]

I had always loved the water and traveling by river has always had a peculiar fascination for me. Besides this, I had for years been specially eager to journey by the Danube from its source to its mouth. Having had the good fortune to sail the entire navigable length of many of the world’s largest rivers, I was doubly desirous of sailing down the historic waterway which connects the noted Black Forest with the famed Euxine Sea of antiquity.

In one of his charming travel-books, Victor Hugo declares:

The Rhine is unique: it combines the quality of every river. Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad, like the Loire; encased like the Meuse; serpentine like the Seine; limpid and green like the Somme; mysterious like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and, like a river of Asia, abounding with phantoms and fables.[3]

Hesiod, who first makes mention of the Danube, under the name of the Ister, gives it the epithet of καλλίρέεδρος—the beautifully flowing—and calls it the son of Tethys and Oceanus. Ovid was so impressed with it that he declares in one of his Paitic Epistles, that it is not inferior to the Nile:

Cedere Danubius se tibi, Nile, negat.[4]

Hugo’s brief but graphic description of some of the world’s famed rivers applies with even greater truth to the legendary, the historic, the romantic, the picturesque Danube. No watercourse in the world is tenanted by a larger number of fantastic and mysterious beings; some, like the swan-maidens and the water nymph Isa, making their home in its waters; others, like fairies and pixies and elves, dwelling in the bays, forests, caverns and old dismantled castles on its banks.

According to Pindar, the region about the source of the Danube was a land of perpetual sunshine and teeming with the choicest fruits. It was inhabited by a people who enjoyed undisturbed peace, were immune from disease and lived a thousand years, which they spent in the worship of Apollo. It was from this highly favored land, Pindar tells us, that Hercules brought the olive which, it was averred, grew in profusion about the sources of the Danube.[5]

And, from its headwaters to its entrance into the Euxine, the Danube was as rich in myths and legends as were ever the rivers and mountains and groves of ancient Hellas. According to the great German epic, the Nibelungenlied, it was at Pforring, a short distance above Ratisbon, that the legendary heroine, Kriemhild, bride-elect of Etzel, took leave of her brothers when on her way from the Rhine to far-off Hungary, where she was to join her new husband, the famous Etzel—Attila—king of the Huns, and where she was to consummate her plans of wreaking vengeance upon the murderers of her first husband, Siegfried.

It may here be remarked in passing that the illustrious Albertus Magnus, probably the greatest scholar of the Middle Ages, reputed to be a magician as well as an eminent theologian and philosopher, was bishop of Ratisbon.

About a half hour after leaving Ratisbon, in a cosy little steamer, we find ourselves near the foot of a wooded hill on whose brow

The Walhalla rises, purely white,

Temple of fame for all Germania’s great.

Seen at a distance it appears to be almost a reproduction of the Parthenon, both in dimensions and style of architecture. It is due to the munificence of Ludwig I, of Bavaria, who erected it as a Temple of Fame for those who had in any way signally honored the Fatherland. Some even, whose names are unknown, are duly commemorated in this magnificent edifice. Among them are the architect of the Cologne Cathedral and the author of the great German epic, the Nibelungenlied.

When this temple was solemnly dedicated in October, 1842, Ludwig I, in the course of a stirring address, said, “May the Walhalla contribute to extend and consolidate the feelings of German nationality. May all Germans of every race henceforth feel they have a common country of which they may be proud, and let each individual labor according to his faculties to promote its glory.” It is the use of the word “German” in its broad historic and ethnological sense that explains the existence, in this Teutonic Hall of Fame, of tablets in honor of Hengist and Horsa, Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great.

From Walhalla to Passau, near the Austrian frontier, we had a splendid opportunity, as our little steamer glided along the sinuous Danube, to observe the attractions of the celebrated Dunkelboden, so called from its dark, fertile soil. Much of the country through which we passed was a broad, unbroken plain, dotted with small farmhouses, pretty villages adorned with chaletlike homes, and white churches surmounted by quaint, salmon-colored steeples.

Arrived at Passau I embarked for Vienna on one of the trim and commodious steamers of the Danube Steamship Navigation Company. The appointments and service of these boats are all that could be desired and are fully equal to the best of the excursion steamers on the Hudson or the St. Lawrence. Indeed, for one who desires perfect rest, combined with comfort, while sailing on the most romantic and picturesque waterway in Europe, I know of nothing I can more cordially recommend than a few weeks’ excursion on the Danube.

From time immemorial travelers have sounded the glories of the Rhine. I should be the last to depreciate the many and great attractions of this noble river on which I spent so many happy days, but truth compels me to declare that the Danube, not only in scenic beauty and grandeur, but also in historic and legendary association, far surpasses what the Romans were wont to call Rhenus Superbus.

On the way from Passau to Vienna I spent all my time on deck, as I did not wish to miss any of the countless objects of interest which here make the course of the Danube so famous. What with historic towns and villages, crenelated and machicolated castles—some still inhabited, others long since in ruins—there was much to engage one’s attention.

If the massive walls and somber towers of these moss-covered old castles could speak, what tales could they not tell of love and romance, hate and revenge? What stories could they not tell of wars and sieges when the crossbow, halberd and the broadsword were the chief weapons of offense and defense? And how much would they not have to relate of the lawlessness and cruelty of the robber-barons who sallied forth from these almost inaccessible strongholds to confiscate passing vessels or to pillage the surrounding country. Manzoni, in his vivid pictures of the prepotenti, as portrayed in his masterly I Promessi Sposi, gives one some idea of the insatiable rapacity of the titled brigands of the period which we are now considering. Good old Froissart was right when he denounced them as “people worse than Saracens or Paynims”; as men whose “excessive covetousness quencheth the knowledge of honor.”

Everywhere along the Danube one hears stories about the activities of the Devil in days gone by and of his determined efforts to thwart the works and projects of those whom he regarded as his natural enemies. In Ratisbon is shown a bridge which he is said to have built in exchange for the soul of his employer. Owing, however, to the superior shrewdness of his employer, he lost the remuneration he so greatly coveted.

Further down the river, near Deggendorf, is a great mass of granite which the Devil is said to have brought all the way from Italy in order to destroy the town, because its people were too religious to please his Satanic Majesty. But just as he was about to drop his massive load on the unsuspecting inhabitants, the Ave Maria bell was sounded in the adjacent monastery when the Evil One was forced to let fall his burden before he could compass his purpose. At another point is shown a rock known as the Devil’s Tower, and at still another is a curious mass of rock which, from its peculiar formation, is called Teufelsmauer—Devil’s Wall.

According to a time-honored ballad

There came an old Crusader
With fifty harnessed men
And he embarked at Ratisbon
To fight the Saracen.

These Crusaders and others that followed them down the Danube on their way to the Holy Land so exasperated the Demon that “he plucked up rocks from the neighboring cliffs and pitched them right into the channel of the river, thereby hoping to arrest their progress. But in this he was completely deceived; for after the first rock came plunging down amongst them, every man made the sign of the cross, and uniting their voices in a holy anthem, the fiend was instantly paralyzed, and slunk away without further resistance. So huge, however, was the first stone he threw that for ages it caused a swirl and a swell in this part of the river which nothing but the skill and perseverance of the Bavarian engineers could remove.”[6]

As the Danube moves majestically between ever recurring islets, green with willow and birch, and wooded heights crowned with ruins of castles and monasteries telling of times long past, the veil of romance, with which legend invests everything, seems to become heavier and more variegated. Here are elf-haunted glens and primeval forests which were once declared to be the home of the Erl-King. There is the dark cavern where the lindwurm, like the one slain by Siegfried, lay in wait for his prey, and at still another spot is the lakelet where Hagen met the swan-maidens on his return with the Nibelungs to the lands of the Huns. Further down the stream are the Strudel and Wirbel, the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube, for ages the reputed trysting-place of all kinds of phantoms and monsters.

But here in

Imperial Danube’s rich domain

sober history has far more to recount than saga and legend, for every spot we pass has its story of ambition, intrigue and revenge; of wars involving the loss of thrones and far-reaching changes in the map of the then known world.

At Dürrenstein, further down the river, are the ruins of a great feudal stronghold in which is still shown the dungeon in which tradition says Richard Coeur de Lion, on his return from the Third Crusade, was imprisoned by his inexorable enemy, Duke Leopold of Austria. The legend, telling how the English King’s liberation was finally effected through his devoted minstrel, Blondel, has long been a favorite theme of poets and artists.[7]

It was not far from Dürrenstein that Julian the Apostate engaged a flotilla for his famous voyage down the Danube—the beginning of that long campaign which was to end so disastrously for him and his army on the sun-parched banks of the far distant Tigris.

At a subsequent period Charlemagne and his Paladins descended the Danube on his campaign against the Avars. Later on he was followed by numerous contingents of Crusaders, among them heroic Barbarossa and his valiant band, on their way to Constantinople and the Holy Land.

It is safe to say that no waterway in Europe has more frequently witnessed the march of vast armies or heard more frequently the echoed roll of battle than has the broadly sweeping Danube. In its wide and fertile valley have met in deadly conflict the well-trained legions of a Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Gustavus Adolphus, a Marlborough, a Bonaparte, and on the issue of the battles in which they were engaged were decided the fate of nations and the course of civilization.

Augustus, it was, who made the Danube the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. It extended like a broad and impassable moat from the Schwartzwald to the Euxine, and, like the Rhine on the East of Gaul, served to keep the barbarians of the north confined within their primeval forests. All along the Danube from its source to its delta are still found countless traces of what were once important military outposts, flourishing towns and centers of advancing civilization and culture.

After passing through the picturesque gorge of Wachau, famed for its wild scenery, its haunted castles, its oak-covered heights, its precipitous crags once crowned by massive strongholds which were tenanted by robber knights who were long the terror of the surrounding country, we enter an extensive plain which the branching Danube cuts into a number of willow and birch-covered islands. Soon, on the right, we reach the mouth of the river Traisen, near whose confluence with the Danube stands Traisenmauer, noted in the Nibelungenlied as being the home of Helka, Etzel’s first queen, and the last stopping place of Kriemhild before her arrival at Tulna, where the King of the Huns was awaiting her.

The progress of the brilliant cavalcade, with all its glittering pomp and pageantry, composed of

Good knights of many a region and many a foreign tongue,

from Tulna to Vienna and thence to the capital of the Huns, is best told in the simple words of the Nibelungenlied:

From Tulna to Vienna their journey then they made.

There found they many a lady adorned in all her pride

To welcome with due honor King Etzel’s noble bride.

Held was the marriage festal on Whitsuntide

’Twas then that royal Etzel embraced his high-born bride

In the city of Vienna; I ween she ne’er had found

When first she wed, such myriads all to her service bound.

*****

So court and country flourish’d with such high honors crown’d

And all at every season fresh joy and pastime found.

Every heart was merry, smiles on each face were seen;

So kind the King was ever, so liberal the Queen.[8]

Having been frequently in Vienna before, I tarried this time hardly long enough to refresh my memory regarding certain things and places that always had a peculiar attraction for me. Among these were its admirable museums and art galleries, its delightful drives and sumptuous palaces. But above all I was particularly eager to revisit the imposing Cathedral of St. Stephen, for it is not only one of the noblest specimens of Gothic architecture in Europe, but is also one of the most beautiful temples of Christian worship in existence. Although erected in the twelfth century, it has survived all the sieges to which Vienna has been subject and is still, after seven centuries, the most conspicuous of the many grandiose structures of Austria’s superb capital. As I examined the exquisite carvings of portal and window and delicate crocketed spire of this stupendous fane I realized as never before how the builders of the Ages of Faith wrought the parts unseen by men with the same care as those which were exposed to the gaze of all. For they labored for God, and God sees everything and everywhere.

And then, too, I desired to spend an hour or two at the Glorietta of Schönbrunn, of which, from a previous visit, I had retained such pleasant memories. From this enchanting spot one has a magnificent panorama of the city and the surrounding country—the theater of many sieges and battles in which, during the heyday of Ottoman power, the fate of Europe seemed to tremble in the balance.

In the memorable siege of 1863, the walls of Vienna had already been breached by the thundering guns of the Moslems, whose tents in countless thousands covered the surrounding plain, and only a miracle, it seemed, could save the city from its impending doom. Famine and death and wan despair stalk through the beleaguered capital. One by one the soldiers of the Cross fall from the fast crumbling ramparts. Everywhere are heard the groans of the dying and the wild laments of its dismayed and enfeebled inhabitants, who are no longer able to stem the resistless onrush of the barbaric host. Mothers press their infants to their bosoms and trembling virgins, sobbing as if their hearts would break, are overwhelmed with dread of a fate worse than death itself.

But, behold! The advancing columns of the infidel horde falter, then halt suddenly as if confronted by some horror-inspiring apparition, or, paralyzed by a colossal Medusa. What appalls proud Mustapha’s haughty warriors? What panic has seized his swarthy Janizaries?

The standards of John Sobieski, the scourge and terror of the Moslems, are seen floating from the crest of Kahlenberg. Presently the hero-king, at the head of his resistless cuirassiers, dashes like a thunderbolt against the enemy and the luckless troops of the grand vizier melt like a mist before the morning sun.

Now joy was in proud Vienna’s town;
Brave Starenberg had won renown:
The sweet Cathedral bells were rung
As for a May-day festival,
And Sobieski’s fame was sung
Throughout the lordly capital.

The Cross had again triumphed over the Crescent and Christian Europe had blasted all Moslem hopes of further progress up the Danube. On Vienna’s ramparts might well be inscribed in letters of gold:

Warring against the Christian Jove in vain,

Here was the Ottoman Typhœus slain.

Some twenty odd miles east of Vienna, near Hamburg, are extensive ruins supposed to be remains of the ancient Roman town of Carnuntum. The place is interesting from the fact that Marcus Aurelius spent three years here during his wars with the Quadi and the Marcomanni. Here also he wrote a part of his “Meditations,” which have contributed more to perpetuate his name than all his achievements as Roman Emperor. Here Septimus Severus was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers and here, too, Rome had a station for a part of its Danube flotilla. And the empire had need of many flotillas and many frontier garrisons along the extended Danube to keep in check the barbarians on its northern banks, when the prolific North poured them forth

From her frozen loins to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the south and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.

Augustus and his immediate successors had hoped that this broad waterway would serve as an impassable barrier, but subsequent events showed that they were mistaken. Neither the Danube, nor the Rhine, nor the Limes Romanus—a high stone wall connecting these two rivers—which had been constructed by the Emperor Probus, nor other defenses of the empire, which had been developed by his successors, were adequate to prevent the ever increasing incursions of the barbarians into Roman territory. Among them, besides the Marcomanni and the Quadi, whose warlike activities engaged the attention of Marcus Aurelius during his stay in Carnuntum and Vindobona—Vienna—were the Suevi, the Gepidæ, the Alemanni, the Vindelici, the Heruli, and other peoples of Celtic and Germanic stock. These were followed by Slavs, by the Avars, the Goths, the Huns, the Alani, the Vandals, the Langobardi, who in ever increasing numbers crossed the Danube and laid waste to lands far distant from their original homes, until eventually their impetuous hosts had swept the vast region from the Baltic Sea to the desert of Sahara, from the Caucasus to the Pillars of Hercules, and until Alaric “secretly aspired to plant the Gothic standard on the walls of Rome and to enrich his army with the accumulated spoils of a hundred triumphs.”

Gliding down the tortuous Danube past picturesque towns and villages and through delightful woodlands and sun-kissed vineyards our steamer soon carries us over the short distance which intervenes between Carnuntum and loyal old Pozsony—the capital of Hungary before it was transferred to Budapest. In this cosmopolitan city of historic and traditional lore an incident is recalled which puts in strong relief the bravery and chivalrous character of the Hungarians and shows how quick they are to act when a strong appeal is made to their loyalty and patriotism.

Queen Maria Theresa, finding herself threatened by enemies on all sides, convened the estates of the realm in the throne room of the castle of Pozsony. Here the fair young sovereign, with the crown of St. Stephen on her head and an infant son in her arms, delivered in Latin this brief but stirring address:

The disastrous situation of our affairs has moved us to lay before our dear and faithful States of Hungary the recent invasion of Austria, the danger now impending over this Kingdom and a proposal for the consideration of a remedy. The very existence of the Kingdom of Hungary, of our own person, of our children and our crown is now at stake. Forsaken by all, we place our sole resource in the fidelity, arms and long-tried valor of the Hungarians; exhorting you, the States and Orders, to deliberate without delay in this extreme danger, on the most effectual measures for the security of our person, of our children and of our crown, and to carry them into immediate execution. In regard to ourself, the faithful States and Orders of Hungary shall experience our hearty coöperation in all things which may promote the pristine happiness of this Kingdom and the honor of the people.[9]

The effect of this indirect and impassioned appeal was electrical. The assembled multitude, the élite of Hungary’s nobility, instantly drew their swords and shouted, “Vitam et sanguinem. Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa”[10]—“Our blood and our life. Let us die for our King Maria Theresa.” From this moment the entire nation rallied to the support of their sovereign and her eventual triumph was assured.

This dramatic episode is commemorated by an imposing equestrian statue of Maria Theresa in the Coronation Hill Platz which bears the simple but eloquent inscription—Vitam et sanguinem.

The fact that Maria Theresa and her audience spoke Latin, instead of Hungarian or German, on the memorable occasion referred to is easily explained. For centuries Latin had been in Hungary the language of diplomacy. Lectures in the University were given in Latin and the language of Cicero and Virgil was spoken by the deputies in Parliament. Indeed, until a few decades ago, every man of liberal education was supposed to be able to write and speak Latin with ease and fluency.

“When I was a girl,” a Hungarian countess told me, “the language at table in my father’s house was always Latin. All of us, boys and girls, spoke it as well as our mother tongue.”

I met many Hungarian priests who spoke Latin in preference to their native Magyar. One of them was an orator of exceptional eloquence and could give an extemporaneous address in Latin without hesitating for a word and always in the purest Latinity.

An Englishman who made a journey up the Danube near the middle of the last century tells us that he heard on the steamer a “party of Hungarian priests and a large assemblage of second-class passengers conversing in Latin with as much facility as if it were their native tongue.”[11]

The German traveler, J. G. Kohl, who wrote about the same time as the writer just quoted, gives a part of the conversation he had with a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Tihany during a game of billiards. Those of my readers who understand Latin will be interested in some of the peculiar words and expressions used:

“Ubi globus Dominationis?”—“Where is your Lordship’s ball?”

“Ibi. Incipiamus.”—“Here. Let us begin.”

“Dignetur procedere.”—“Please begin.”

“Dolendum est. Si cærulous huc venisset.”—“What a pity! If the blue had but come this way.”

“Fallit, fallit.”—“It misses, it misses.”

“Nunc flavus recte ad manum mihi est.”—“Now the yellow ball is right to my hand.”

“Bene! Bene! Nunc Hannibal ad portam.”—“Good! Good! Now, look out.”

“Dignetur duble.”—“Please double.”

“Fallit.”—“A miss.”

“O si homo nunquam falleret, esset invincibilis.”—“If one never missed, one would be invincible.”

“Reverende Pater! Nunc tota positio difficilis est.”—“Reverend Father, the position is now very difficult.”

“Nihil video, nisi cæruleum et rubrum percutere velles.”—“I see nothing except a carom on the blue and red.”

“Ah! Ah! Subtiliter volui et nihil habeo.”—“Ah me! I wished to make an extra good play and I have nothing.”

“Bene! Bene! Fecisti. Finis ludi.”—“Good! Good! You have made it. The game is ended.”[12]

After reading the foregoing who will say that Latin is a dead language in Hungary!

From Budapest to the Black Sea

Again the scene has changed and dim descried

A silver crescent marks the Danube’s tide;

Where broad sails glancing o’er the regal stream,

Spread their white bosoms to the morning beam,

With towers that skirt and towns that seem to lave

Their tattled walls in that majestic wave.

From Pozsony to Budapest we passed many places of great scenic beauty and historic interest. Among them was Esztergom, which possesses the most beautiful cathedral in Hungary. It is the birthplace of St. Stephen, patron saint of the country and the see of Hungary’s ecclesiastical primate.

No city in Europe offers a more superb approach than does Budapest to the traveler who enters it on the deck of one of the beautiful steamers of the Danube Navigation Company. As we glide downstream towards the twin city, an immense mass of palatial structures suddenly bursts on our view. Among them is the imposing Royal Palace, which crowns an eminence on the right bank of the many-spired House of Parliament, which stands on the left. Soon we get a glimpse of the beautiful boulevards along the river, which, at the hour of our arrival, are crowded with animated, happy multitudes, who are enjoying their daily promenade and watching the arrival and departure of the numerous steamers and smaller craft which contribute so much to the life of the city.

Hungarians declare that theirs is the most beautiful of all European capitals, and, judging by one’s impression of the city as seen from an arriving steamer, most visitors, I think, will agree with them. Certain it is that neither Paris nor London nor Petrograd can claim such an enchanting river view as that in which Budapest so justly glories.

And they are as proud of their country as of their capital. According to an old Hungarian proverb, “Extra Hungarian non est vita”—“Life is not life outside of Hungary.”[13] “Have we not,” the people here ask, “all that is necessary for our welfare? Our blessed soil provides for all our wants.” And Sandor Petöfi, Hungary’s greatest lyric poet, does not hesitate to declare:

If the earth be God’s crown,

Our country is its fairest jewel.

But it is the people of this fair capital that make the strongest appeal to the traveler. It matters not if he be a stranger. Their proverbial hospitality immediately makes him feel at home. Like the Viennese they have a savoir vivre that is truly admirable. Their courtesy and cordiality are boundless and make one desire to prolong one’s sojourn among them. And one no sooner comes in contact with them than he is conscious of a certain indefinable charm that is found only among people of rare culture and refinement. In leaving them—old friends and new—I experienced in a peculiarly keen manner the sincere regret that I have so often felt in other parts of the world when the hour came for departure from people whom I had learned to admire and love for their exceptional goodness and worth.

From Budapest to Belgrade our course for the greater part of the distance was almost due south. For twenty-four hours we journeyed through the Alfold—the great central plain of Hungary—about which so much has been written during the last few years. In many respects it reminds one of the broad maize lands of eastern Kansas and Nebraska. It is also equally productive and has for centuries constituted one of the most important granaries of Central Europe.

Although to the traveler the Alfold—the Hungarian word for lowland—offers little of scenic interest, the Magyar bard finds in it as much to awaken his muse as does the Arabian poet in the broad expanse of his much-loved desert; and each would recognize as his own the sentiment of Sandor Petöfi, when he sings:

I love the plains. It is only there I feel free.

My eyes can wander as they please, quite unconstrained.

One is not confined by barriers.

Throughout the region which we are now traversing legend still lingers, but it is history that has now most to tell. And how much could it not relate regarding the struggle between the barbarians and the Romans in these parts—of the long contests between Christians and Ottomans. It was at Mohacs that the Turks, under Solyman the Magnificent, achieved, in 1526, the decisive victory which enabled them to hold Hungary in a state of vassalage for a hundred and fifty years. It was at the same place that the Ottoman forces, after being defeated by Sobieski in Vienna, made their final stand before they were forced to relinquish the land which they had so long held in subjection.

Further down the river is Illock, which was for a time the home, as it is the burial place, of St. John Capistran. It was this celebrated Franciscan friar who led an army of Crusaders, which he had collected by his preaching, to the assistance of Hunyady Janos when this renowned warrior compelled the Turks under Mohammed II to raise the siege of Belgrade.

Still further down stream is the little town of Petervarad with its strong fortress, long known as the Gibraltar of the Danube. It is so named because Peter the Hermit here marshaled in 1096 the hosts which he had assembled from far and wide for the First Crusade.

As the tones of the vesper bell of a village chapel are wafted over the peaceful waters, the famed “White City” of Serbia appears in the distance. Situated at the confluence of the Danube and the Save, Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, has for more than two thousand years been a strategic point of prime importance. Occupied by Celts, generations before the Christian era, it became, under the name Singidunum, a stronghold of the Romans, who held it for four centuries. It subsequently belonged to the Byzantine Empire and, later on, was occupied at various times by Avars, Huns, Gepids, Goths, Sarmatians, Turks, Hungarians, Austrians, until in the beginning of the nineteenth century the Serbians made it their capital. The Turks, however, did not relinquish possession of its citadel until 1867.

Few places have passed through more sieges or experienced more frequently the horrors of war than Belgrade. Aside from its historical associations, I found little of interest in the city. The inhabitants had none of the gayety and animation of the people of Vienna and Budapest. Their cheerless faces were like those of a race that has witnessed many tragedies and is living in constant fear of impending disaster.

And what country, indeed, has passed through more and greater disasters than Serbia? For it is not too much to say that during the past twenty-five centuries of its history it has been almost continually in a condition of social unrest and political chaos. Times without number the tides of invasion and devastation have swept over this unfortunate land. The general poverty and intellectual stagnation of the people were aggravated by the follies of their rulers and by dynastic scandals that shocked the civilized world. For generations at a time the administration of the country was little better than organized brigandage. Unscrupulous officials, living in Oriental indolence, prospered on the life-blood of the down-trodden peasantry, for whom justice was but a myth. Blood feuds, political murders and internecine strife were long endemic, and guaranties for life and property were, consequently, impossible.

And this was true not only for Serbia but also for the whole of the Balkan peninsula—for Bulgaria, for Macedonia, for Roumania and for the half-barbarous principalities along the Adriatic. So completely separated were they from the rest of the world that little was known of them in western Europe until less than a century ago, when they began to give stronger evidence of national consciousness than they had previously exhibited, and to manifest a united purpose to liberate themselves from the Ottoman yoke, under which they had suffered for so many centuries.

But it would be contrary to the teaching of history to assert that all the disorders endured and all the cruelties suffered by the inhabitants of the Balkans during the long period when they were deprived of their independence were due to the Turks. Nothing is farther from the truth. The fact is that the various Balkan races—the Greeks and Bulgars for instance—hated one another far more than they—either individually or collectively—hated the Turks.

From the point of view of humanitarianism [as has been well said] it is beyond a doubt that much less blood was spilt in the Balkan Peninsula during the five hundred years of Turkish rule than during the five hundred years of Christian rule which preceded them; indeed it would have been difficult to spill more. It is also a pure illusion to think of the Turks as exceptionally brutal or cruel; they are just as good-natured and as good-humored as anybody else; it is only when their military and religious passions are aroused that they become more reckless and ferocious than other people. It was not the Turks who taught cruelty to the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula; the latter had nothing to learn in this respect.[14]

But, notwithstanding the long and trying ordeal through which the peoples of the Balkans have passed, a new era seems to be dawning for them at last. Education is receiving more attention and law and order are gradually assuring to the masses the blessings of civilized life. When, however, we think or speak of the Balkans and their inhabitants there are, as the distinguished British writer D. G. Hogarth reminds us, certain salutary things to bear in mind, among which is that “less than two hundred years ago England had its highwaymen on all roads and its smuggler dens and caravans, Scotland its caterans and Ireland its moonlighters.”[15]

As I viewed from the citadel the magnificent panorama that unfolded itself before me in the broad valleys of the Save and the Danube, I recalled certain alliterative verses which I was wont to recite in my youth, beginning with

An Austrian army awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade,
Cossack, commander, cannonading come,
Deal devastation; dire destructive doom.[16]

While gazing at the sun-bathed vineyards, ruin-crowned heights and broad, verdant plains which followed one another in rapid succession as our steamer bore us seawards, I was especially impressed by the multiplicity of languages I heard spoken by the passengers. For among my fellow travelers were Germans, French, Turks, Serbs, Croats, Russians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, Greeks, Albanians, Italians, Poles, Slovaks, English, and Americans, and probably several others whom I did not recognize. There was, indeed, a Babel of tongues such as one would scarcely find elsewhere. How the famous polyglot, Mezzofanti, would have reveled in such a gathering where he could have held converse with all of them, as he was wont to do with the students of the Propaganda, in Rome, who came from all parts of the world and with the languages of all whom the illustrious Cardinal was perfectly familiar.[17]

And variety of garb of this motley crowd was almost as manifold as was that of their languages and dialects. From the sedate Englishman in tweed to the animated Roumanian in his Phrygian cap of liberty, the tarbooshed Ottoman dreamily fingering his tespis (string of beads), the sad-faced Serb with his conical Astrakan cap, and the voluble Albanian in a snow-white fustanella, there was every conceivable variety of wearing apparel. And the styles and colors of the dresses worn by the women exhibited even greater diversity. They could be compared only with those of the infinitude of shades and adornments of the feathered songsters of a large aviary or of the multitudinous flowers of a botanical garden.

From Belgrade eastwards Oriental color becomes rapidly more pronounced. This results from the long occupation by the Ottomans of the country through which we are now passing and constant communication between Turkey and the Balkans.

The first objects of note to arrest our attention below Belgrade are the great ruined fortress of Sendria and, further downstream, the ruins of the two castles of Galambocz and Laszlovar. These massive strongholds, located on opposite sides of the river, guarded what was long known as “The Key of the Danube.” They, like the scores of ruins which we have passed on our way from Ratisbon, are rich in historic and legendary associations of the most interesting character.

Near Galambocz is shown a great cavern, in which, legend has it, St. George slew the dragon. When we reflect that practically nothing is known of the patron of chivalry and the champion of Christendom, except that he suffered martyrdom at or near Lydda in Palestine before the time of the Emperor Constantine, it becomes difficult to account for the existence of this dragon-slaying tradition in this spot. Its origin may be due to pilgrims or Crusaders, who brought it from the Holy Land in the same way as they popularized the cultus of the Saint in England as early as the days of Arculph and Richard Coeur de Lion.

But after all, it is no more difficult to account for the contest between St. George and the dragon here than at “a stagne or a pond like a sea,” near Silena in Libya, as we read of it in Caxton’s version of the Legenda Aurea, or, to explain the associations of the martyr-knight with the Order of the Garter, the Union Jack or the white ensign of the British Navy.

Immediately below Galambocz we enter the wildest and grandest scenery along the Danube. The foaming rapids and the towering cliffs of the gorge of Kazan recall the famed cañons of Colorado or Montana, although in magnitude and grandeur it is far inferior to the stupendous gorges of the Arkansas or the Yellowstone.

But far more interesting to me than the gorge itself was an inscription at the lower end which is cut in the solid rock and commemorates the completion of the marvelous roadway which the Romans constructed along the western face of this formidable defile. To me it seemed one of the most extraordinary of all the countless achievements of imperial Rome in the entire length of the Danube valley. The inscription reads:

IMP. CÆS. D. NERVÆ. FILIUS. NERVA. TRAJANUS.
AUG. GERM. PONT. MAX....

But even more noteworthy than the wild Kazan ravine and the wonderful Roman thoroughfare is the celebrated Iron Gate at the confines of Serbia, Hungary and Roumania. This narrow defile long constituted an almost impassable barrier to intercourse between the peoples of the upper and lower Danube. During low water, navigation, except for the smallest craft, was impossible, until the completion, in 1896, of a channel which was blasted out of the living rock on the Serbian side of the seething cataract. This canal guarantees a sufficient depth of water the entire year for steamers of considerable draft and contributes enormously to the importance of the Danube as a highway of international commerce.

Shortly below the Iron Gate we were shown remains of the mammoth stone bridge which was built by Trajan across the Danube. This was even a more astonishing achievement than the construction of the roadway through the gorge of Kazan. I had often admired the wonderful, lifelike reliefs of Trajan’s column in Rome, which represent, among other things, the celebrated campaign of the emperor in Dacia, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to contemplate the remains of the road and the bridge he built during this memorable period of his reign. Dacia, which embraced modern Roumania, is noted as being the only province that the Romans ever possessed north of the Danube. And “the last province to be won, it was,” as Freeman puts it, “the first to be given up; for Aurelian withdrew from it and transferred its name to the Mœsian land, immediately south of the Danube.”[18]

But the remarkable thing about Roumania, as the same eminent historian observes, is that although it has been cut off “for so many ages from all Roman influences, forming, as it has done, one of the great highways of barbarian migration, a large part of Dacia, namely, the modern Roumanian principality, still keeps its Roman language no less than Spain and Gaul. In one way the land is to this day more Roman than Spain or Gaul, as its people still call themselves by the Roman name.”[19]

The Roumanians are not only proud of their Roman origin but take special pleasure in recalling the fact, especially when conversing with foreigners. “We are,” they will tell you, “neither Slavs, nor Germans, nor Turks; we are Roumanians.”

Roumania, they will insist, is a Latin islet in the midst of a Slavic and Finnish ocean which surrounds it. This island when known as Dacia was in reality a new Italy and its inhabitants were the Italians of the Danube and the Carpathians. In a recent speech delivered in Rome, the distinguished Roumanian historian, V. A. Urechia, proudly claimed the capital of the Cæsars as the mother of his country—“Nous sommes ici pour dire à tout le monde que Rome est noire mère.”

A short distance below the ruins of Trajan’s bridge we pass, at the embouchure of the Timok River, the frontier of Serbia and Bulgaria. Thenceforward, until we reach the Black Sea, we have Bulgaria on our right and Roumania on our left. But there is little on either side to arrest our attention, for the history of this part of the world is little more than a chronicle of the horrors of warfare and marauding armies from the time of Alexander the Great. No part of Europe, not even Belgium or northern Italy, can point to so many battlefields in the same limited area, and none of the many peoples inhabiting the vast Danube basin have suffered more than Roumania from the calamities of war—of the long and bloody struggle between the Cross and the Crescent for the mastery of this part of Europe.

As I surveyed the broad plains of Bulgaria, I vividly recalled the thrill of horror that stirred the civilized world when my old friend and schoolmate, Januarius A. McGahan, of Perry County, Ohio, there penned his famous letters to the London Daily News on the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria.[20]

He told the Ottoman authorities that their depredations and carnage would have to cease forthwith or he would have the Russian army across the Danube in six months. They laughed him to scorn. But he was as good as his word. In a brief space of time the Russians, accompanied by their brave Roumanian allies, were in Bulgaria, and at Plevna and Shipka Pass the fate of Turkey in this part of Europe was sealed and the greater portion of the Balkan peoples was at length liberated from the Turkish yoke. The Russians, under their gallant commander, Skobeleff, pushed on to San Stefano, within sight of the domes and minarets of Constantinople. Then, by orders from St. Petersburg, the conquering general was halted in his course just when Russia’s long-coveted goal, the capital on the Golden Horn, was within his grasp.

The chivalrous McGahan, whom his distinguished associate, Archibald Forbes, declared to be the most brilliant war correspondent[21] that ever lived, was stricken with typhus and after a very brief illness died in Constantinople, June 10, 1878, in the early bloom of a glorious manhood. His chief mourner was his bosom friend, the noble Skobeleff, who, with unfeigned emotion, declared at the grave of his illustrious friend, whom he loved as a brother, that his heart was interred with his beloved Januarius and that he had nothing more to live for.

The grateful Bulgarians erected a splendid monument to the memory of McGahan, whom they recognized as their deliverer from the age-long domination of the hated Turks. On this monument were inscribed the words, Januario Aloysio McGahan, Patri Patriæ. Some years later his remains were transferred to his home town, New Lexington, Ohio, and in its modest little cemetery is seen above his last resting-place a plain block of granite which bears beneath the deathless hero’s name the simple but well-earned tribute—Liberator of Bulgaria.

On the left bank of the Danube, slightly northeast of Plevna, is the little town of Giurgevo, which was founded centuries ago by that wonderful commercial metropolis, Genoa. Like its great rival, Venice, it was long celebrated for its commercial and military activities in the Levant and in the Crimea. But that its merchant princes should have extended their trade to the lower Danube in that early period when the navigation of this great river was so difficult and dangerous is indeed remarkable.

From Giurgevo I made a hasty trip to Bukharest. I did not wish to pass “The City of Delight,” as the attractive capital of Roumania is named, without calling on some friends there whom I had not seen in several years. But neither the capital nor the country was what it had been but a few years before. A note of sadness, in consequence of the ravages of the recent war, seemed to dominate the joyful greetings of an erstwhile happy and pleasure-loving people. It will, I fear, be a long time before one can again apply to Roumania the epithet—Dacia Feli—Happy Dacia—which it bore in the days of long ago, when it was one of the most flourishing colonies of the Roman Empire.[22] But the self-reliant people of Roumania are not depressed or discouraged by the present condition of their war-tried country. These descendants of the Dacians, whom the Romans called “the most warlike of men,” have abiding confidence in their recuperative power and their ability to make good their claim to an honorable position among the nations of the civilized world. Their native proverb—Romanul non père—The Roumanian never dies—shows in three words what manner of men they are and what may be expected of them when they shall have rallied from the havoc of war and shall again be free to devote themselves to the stimulating arts of peace.

Among the many things that especially impressed me in Roumania was the large number of gypsies. In no part of the world, it is said, are they so numerous in proportion to the population as among the descendants of the ancient Dacians. The chief reason for this is that these strange, dark-eyed, music-loving nomads from India have met a kinder reception here than in other countries, where they have been regarded as pariahs and often treated with harshness bordering on cruelty.

From Giurgevo to the Black Sea the broad, multi-islanded Danube sweeps majestically through the ever-expanding, reed-covered lowlands—the home of many kinds of water-fowl—and the far extending acres devoted to pasturage and agriculture, which contribute so much to the commerce and wealth of the Balkan Peninsula. Near the village of Rassova, on the right bank of the river, we see what remains of Trajan’s wall, which extends from the Danube to Constanza on the Black Sea. This earthen rampart was constructed during the Roman occupation of the country to prevent barbarian incursions into the colonial possessions of the empire. But, like the wall of Probus, connecting the Danube with the Rhine, it withstood but a short while the ever-increasing onrush of the savage hordes from the north.

Not far from this relic of Roman dominion in this part of the world is the colossal steel railway bridge across the Danube, completed in 1895, and justly regarded as one of the greatest engineering achievements of modern times.

At Braila and Galatz—Roumanians great ports of entry—we were greatly impressed by the activity and enterprise of these flourishing entrepôts of commerce. But I must confess I was here more impressed by what tradition declares to be the spot where Darius Hystaspes built a bridge across the Danube at the time of his famous campaign against the Scythians, more than five centuries B. C.[23]

And what a war-theater this ill-fated land has been since that far-off time! Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Trajan, and countless leaders of barbarian and Turkish hordes have been here or in the vicinity during the twenty-five centuries that have intervened between the advent of Darius and his resistless legions. Certain spots of the earth seem to be perennial battle centers and the land bordering this part of the Danube, as history shows, is one of the most notable of them.

It is in this part of the Danube that one begins to have an adequate idea of the size of this historic waterway and of its transcendent importance in the mercantile life of Europe. It is surpassed by no other European river except the Volga. From its source in the lovely park of Prince Fürstenberg, at Donaueschingen, to where it delivers its mighty tribute to the Black Sea, the length of the Danube is nearly eighteen hundred miles—more than two-thirds of that of our famed Mississippi.

But in the amount and character of the traffic it bears and the number of people it serves, the Danube is incomparably superior to the Volga and even to our great “Father of Waters.” The Volga, like the Mississippi, is only a national river, while the Danube majestically sweeps through many principalities and kingdoms and empires of Europe and assures easy relations between regions widely separated. And, as the Danube in the past has served as the great natural route for the migrations of nations and the warring hordes of Asia and Europe, so it is now, more than ever before, one of the world’s great highways of commerce and industry, and from present indications the day is not far distant when, economically, it will be the greatest.

The reason for this seemingly paradoxical assertion is not far to seek. The importance of rivers is not due to their length and volume of water, but rather to the density of the population on their banks and to the industrial productivity of the peoples who dwell in their vicinity. Thus, the Danube not only passes through some of the most fertile lands in the world, where intensive agriculture is carried to the highest degree of efficiency, but also facilitates the exchange of commodities of all kinds between distant nations and delivers supplies and the necessary raw material to the countless industrial centers of middle Europe.

Of the affluents of the Danube that are navigable, or large enough to float rafts, there are more than sixty, while the number of inhabitants along the course of the Danube alone is more than fifty millions. Add to this the myriads of people who dwell along its numerous tributaries and this immense number will be greatly augmented. It will not only far exceed the number of people who live along the Volga and are benefited by its traffic, but will also far surpass that of the Mississippi basin, if it does not indeed equal that of the entire United States. It was for this reason that Napoleon considered the Danube the king of rivers and Talleyrand declared that “the center of gravity is not Paris nor Berlin but the Mouths of the Danube.”[24]

If these two eminent personages were now living they would have much stronger reasons for entertaining such views than existed a century ago. For, thanks to the genius of modern engineers, the value of the Danube as a great commercial highway has been immensely enhanced. By dredging the canal at the Iron Gate, by jettying the Sulina branch of the delta and by making innumerable other improvements along the course of the river, the European Danube Commission, which has had charge for more than half a century of the betterment of this great international waterway, has eliminated the dangers to navigation which previously existed and has made the river navigable for much larger craft than was before possible. Since the establishment of this International Commission by the Treaty of Paris in 1856, the amount of traffic passing through the mouth of the Danube has increased enormously. According to a recent official report of the Commission, “Sailing Ships of two hundred tons register have given way to steamers up to four thousand tons register, carrying a dead weight of nearly eight thousand tons and good order has succeeded chaos.”[25]

But this is not all. The far-reaching utility of the Danube has been greatly augmented by the construction of such canals as the one which connects it with the Tisza, and still more by the famous Ludwig Kanal which links it with the Rhine. It was a matter of particular pleasure to the late King Charles of Roumania when the Roumanian flotilla of gunboats was able, thanks to the Ludwig Kanal, to steam directly from London to the Black Sea by way of the Rhine and the Danube.

And yet more. When the projected Danube-Salonica Canal, the Danube-Elbe and the Danube-Oder Canals, both under construction, shall be completed, the Danube will tap the greatest industrial centers of middle Europe and will reduce by one-half the trade water route between the Suez Canal and the ports of the North and Baltic Seas as compared with the present water route by way of Gibraltar.[26]

Recalling the days when the Danube was controlled by the robber barons who tenanted the massive castles along its banks, and trade was all but paralyzed; when Genoese and Venetian merchants sailed their small craft down its treacherous waters to collect grain from the fertile fields of Wallachia and hides and furs from the vast plains and forests of Russia; when it was but a Turkish River as the Black Sea was but a Turkish Lake, we can better appreciate its various phases of development during the past and more fully realize the vast expansion of trade which it has witnessed since its navigation was, in 1856, declared to be free to all nations. And looking forward to the time when all the numerous artificial waterways, now projected or nearing completion, shall extend the arms of the Danube to all the commercial and industrial metropolises of Central Europe, we can well believe that historic river will then, from the standpoint of international trade, be not only the most important river in Europe, but also the most important in the world. Then, indeed, will this highway of commerce be, in the words of Napoleon, the king of rivers, and then, too, will be verified the statement of Tallyrand, if it was not justified when he made it a century ago, “Le centre de gravité de l’Europe n’est pas à Paris, ni à Berlin, mais aux Bouches du Danube.”[27]

CHAPTER II
THE EUXINE AND THE BOSPHORUS IN STORY, MYTH AND LEGEND

The Pontic Sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due course

To the Propontis and the Hellespont.

Shakespeare “Othello.”

Our entrance into the Black Sea was through the well-jettied Sulina Canal—a canal which, for a great part of its length, passes through a reed-covered lowland which is so near sea-level that, when the Danube is in flood, vast stretches of it are completely under water. The delta of the Danube, which has an area of about one thousand square miles, has been built up by the immense accumulation of mud and sand which has been brought down by the great river and its numerous affluents from the rain-drenched Balkans and Carpathians and from the far-off snow fields of the Carnic and Rhætian Alps. The rate at which the delta is encroaching on the sea may be judged from the carefully conducted investigations that have been made, which show that the amount of earth discharged at the mouths of the Danube totals several thousand cubic feet a minute. For many leagues out from land the earth-colored water of the Danube is easily distinguished from that of the Euxine. This alone enables one to realize the extent of the erosion going on in the Danube basin and the immensity of the deposit that is daily laid on this part of the bed of the Black Sea.

As myth and legend hover over the Danube from its source to its delta, so do they also linger along the western shore of the historic Euxine. Even before we have left the earth-colored flood which pours into it, we descry in the distance the little island of Fido-Nisi—Serpent Island—so called from the great number of snakes which are said to infest its sea-lashed cliffs and about which, from time immemorial, Russian and Turkish sailors have told the most fantastic stories.

In antiquity it was known as Leuce—

“Leuce, the white, where the souls of heroes rest.”

According to Homer, the ashes of Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, were placed in a golden urn and deposited in a tumulus on the promontory of Sigeum in the Troad. This elevated headland, visible far out on the Ægean, served as a landmark for passing mariners. Later poets, however, inform us that the body of Achilles was snatched from the burning pyre by Thetis, his goddess-mother, and transferred to the Island of Leuce where, with his bosom friend, Patroclus and other heroes,[28] it was speedily worshipped by the Greeks who here erected a temple in the hero’s honor. For this reason Leuce was long known as the Island of Achilles.

The Greek historian Arrian in his Periplus of the Euxine Sea, written in the form of a report to the Emperor Hadrian, says:

Some call this the Island of Achilles, others call it the chariot of Achilles, and others Leuce, from its color. Thetis is said to have given up this island to her son Achilles, by whom it was inhabited. There are now existing a temple and a wooden statue of Achilles of ancient workmanship. It is destitute of inhabitants and pastured only by a few goats which those who touch here are said to offer to the memory of Achilles. Many offerings are suspended in this temple, as cups, rings and more valuable gems. All these are offerings to Achilles. Inscriptions are also suspended written in the Greek and Latin languages. Some are in praise of Patroclus, whom those who are disposed to honor Achilles treat with equal respect. Many birds inhabit this island, as sea gulls, divers, and coots innumerable. These birds frequent the temple of Achilles. Every day in the morning they take their flight and, having moistened their wings, fly back again to the temple and sprinkle it with the moisture, which having performed they brush and clean the pavement with their wings.... It is said that Achilles has appeared in time of sleep both to those who have approached the coast of this island and also to such as have been sailing a short distance from it and instructed them where the island was most safely accessible and where the ships might best lie at anchor. They also say further that Achilles has appeared to them not in time of sleep, or a dream, but in a visible form on the mast, or at the extremity of the yards, in the same manner as the Dioscuri have appeared. This distinction, however, must be made between the appearance of Achilles and that of the Dioscuri, that the latter appear evidently and clearly to persons who navigate the sea at large, and, when so seen, foretell a prosperous voyage, whereas the figure of Achilles is seen only by such as approach this island.[29]

A short sail southwestwardly from the island of Achilles brings us in view, on our starboard, of the important seaport of Constanza. It is located at the eastern extremity of Trajan’s wall and had a special interest for me because its site is near that of Tomi to which the poet Ovid was banished by the Emperor Augustus. The privations which he had to endure on this distant boundary of the Roman Empire and the miseries of his life among the barbarians on the shore of the Euxine are graphically described by the poet in his Tristia and Letters from Pontus.

The climate of this inhospitable place was trying indeed to the disconsolate exile who had just come from the palace of the Cæsars and who had so long enjoyed all the delights of the Roman capital. For here, to his eyes, the fields were without verdure, the spring without flowers, and snow and ice were eternal. The long hair and beards which concealed the visage of the rude Sarmatians, among whom he was compelled to live, clicked with icicles. Wine froze and had to be cut with a sword. According to Ovid’s account the cold was more severe in his time than it was during the memorable arctic winter many centuries later when the temperature fell so low that the Euxine was frozen over for weeks and the ice on the Bosphorus was so thick that people were able to pass on foot from the Asiatic to the European shore.

It was in this cheerless and frigid region, far from home and friends, that one of Rome’s greatest poets spent the last eight years of his life and here it was that he died. Before his death he had expressed a wish that his ashes, enclosed in a modest urn, should be taken to Rome in order that he might not be an exile after death, as he had been during so many years of his life, but his request was not granted.[30] A tradition exists that a tomb was erected to his memory in Tomi, but there is among scholars as much doubt respecting the existence, or location of such a tomb, as there always has been regarding the reason of the poet’s banishment by one who had showered on him so many and so great favors.

According to a legend that Ovid recalls in one of his elegies, Tomi was a place of ill omen, for it was here that Medea murdered her brother and strewed the sea with his carved limbs. And it was from this atrocious fratricide, according to the poet, that the town of Tomi took its name:

Inde Thomis dictus locus hic, quia fertur in illo

Membra soror fratris consecuisse sui.[31]

From the most remote antiquity the Euxine has been noted for the fury of its tempests and for the reputed terrors of its navigation, as well as for the savage character of the inhabitants on its coast. For this reason the ancients called it Pontus Axenus—the inhospitable sea. Subsequently, as if to placate its fury, by an euphemism, it was called the Euxine—the hospitable sea—a name which it has since borne.

But the first name given to this extended body of water was simply Pontos—the Greek word for sea—as if it were the sea par excellence. The noted traveler, Giovanni da Piano Carpini, a Franciscan friar, and Ricoldo da Monte di Croce, a Dominican missionary in the Orient, called it Mare Magnum—the great sea. In the Itinerarium, however, of Blessed Oderic of Pordenone it bears the name Mare Majus—the greater sea—as it does also in I Viaggi of Marco Polo who calls it Mare Maggiore. But this is not all. Friar Jordanus speaks of it as the Black Sea—Mare Nigrum, as likewise does Sir John Mandeville who gives it the name Mare Maurum—Mauros, in Byzantine, as in Modern Greek, signifying black. But there was, probably, no better reason for calling this sea black than there was for giving to certain other well-known seas the epithets of red, white, and yellow. From all this it appears that what we now know as the Euxine or Black Sea has been rich in names as well as in myths and legends.[32]

The Euxine, however, is famed not only for legendary associations but for having been for centuries a section of the great highway between the Occident and the Orient. It was by this route that Fra Oderic of Pordenone, that celebrated missionary of the fourteenth century, made his wonderful journey from Venice to China and other parts of the Far East. It was by the same route that Marco Polo—the most famous traveler of the Middle Ages—returned from his long peregrinations in eastern Asia to his home in the Queen City of the Adriatic. And it was by way of the Euxine that Marco Polo’s father and uncle had preceded him to far-off Cathay where they were most cordially received by the famous Kublai Khan.

It was also for ages an important link in one of the world’s great commercial highways. From time immemorial there were three great trade routes which connected India and China with Europe. One was the Persian Gulf route which ran from the mouth of the Indus to the Euphrates and along this latter river to Zeugma, or Thapsacus, whence it proceeded to Antioch and other ports of the eastern Mediterranean. The second was the sea route which went from India along the Persian and Arabian coasts to Aden, thence by the Red Sea to Alexandria and Tyre and Sidon. The third was the great overland route which started from Bactra—long, like Babylon, a market-place for the races of the world and a great emporium for Indian and Chinese commerce—and reached the West by two roads. One was the caravan route which crossed Parthia and Mesopotamia and ended in Antioch. The other passed down the river Oxus to the Caspian Sea and thence to the Euxine. This is the trade route that has the greatest interest for us at present—a route that served as one of the world’s chief commercial highways for more than two thousand years.

Long before Alexander made Bactra his base for the invasion of India, long before the Greek Skylax of Karyanda made his famous voyage from the mouth of the Indus to Arsinoe on the Red Sea, and many centuries before Hippalus made his epoch-making discovery of the existence of the moonstones of the Indian Ocean, which immensely augmented the ocean-bound traffic between India and Egypt, a very large volume of the luxuries of the Far East found their way to the Occident by the great Oxus-Caspian-Euxine trade route. And while the ships of Tarshish and

Quinquiremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With cargoes of ivory and apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet, white wine,

were bringing to Syria and the Land of the Pharaohs treasures from the coast of Malabar and

The spicy shore

Of Araby the blest,

interminable caravans and countless merchantmen were always busy along the Oxus-Caspian-Euxine route bearing to Byzantium and Athens and Rome silks from China and Bengal; muslin and other stuffs from Benares and Kotumbara; tortoise-shell from the Golden Chersonese; indigo from Sind; drugs, spices, cosmetics, perfumes, pearls, beryls, and precious stones from other parts; costus from Cashmere; pepper from Malabar; gums, spikenard, lycium, and malabathrum from the forests of the Himalayas; and sapphires, rubies, and aquamarines from Burma, Siam, and Vaniyambadi.

What was the volume of this trade between the Orient and the Occident, especially after the establishment of the Pax Romana under Augustus, may be gauged by the fact that the unprecedented demand by the fashionable world of Rome for all kinds of eastern luxuries for a while seriously imperiled the imperial finances. In the single item of aromatics for funerals, the extravagance indulged in seems incredible. At the obsequies of Sulla, before the time of Augustus, more than twelve thousand pounds of precious spices were consumed, while Nero had more expensive aromatics burnt on the funeral pyre of Poppœa than Arabia produced in a year.

When, after the destruction of Bagdad by Hulaku Khan, Tabriz in Persia became the great political and commercial city of Asia, it was by the Euxine that the merchant princes of Venice and Genoa conducted their commerce with the Middle and Far East. Passing through the Hellespont and the Bosphorus, their galleys proceeded to Kaffa in the Crimea which was their chief entrepôt on the Euxine. From this point the enterprising traders continued their course by way of the Sea of Azov, the Don, and the Volga to a port on the Caspian Sea. Thence their caravans started on their long overland journey over lofty mountains and through vast deserts and hostile nations to far distant Cathay in quest of the highly-prized commodities of Chinese kilns and looms. Other traders went directly by sea from Kaffa to Trebizond whence they journeyed over broad, arid plains to Tabriz. Here their numerous caravans were laden with the rich fabrics of Persia and the rare products of India and the Isles of Spicery. From these centers of Asiatic traffic, long lines of patient camels transported their precious burdens to ports on the Euxine where a fleet of Genoese and Venetian galleys was waiting to receive the merchandise collected at so much risk and at the cost of so much labor and which was subsequently distributed among the expectant marts of southern Europe.[33]

Before embarking at Sulina for Constantinople, I almost dreaded the voyage to the Bosphorus. From the time of the Argonauts the tempestuous Euxine has been a byword among mariners and the dread of travelers who have to trust themselves to its storm-lashed waves. In the words of Ovid its fury was inferior only to the turbulence of the fierce barbarians among whom he was exiled. I had prepared myself to endure for a day all the horrors which characterize a rough passage across the English channel. Nor were my fears entirely groundless. The sea was heavy,—the weather was squally. Many of the passengers, unwilling to trust themselves on deck, sought the seclusion of their staterooms. As for myself, I did not feel reassured until we had finally entered the more protected waters of the Bosphorus. Even at the entrance of this famous channel the voyager may, at times, experience great discomfort. Byron states the reason in the well-known stanza of Don Juan:

The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave

Broke foaming o’er the blue Symplegades;

’Tis a grand sight from off “The Giant’s grave”

To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease;
There’s not a sea .....

Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.[34]

Inter utrumque fremunt immani turbine venti.

Nescit cui domino pareat, unda maria.

Nam modo purpureo vires capit Eurus ab ortu;

Nunc Zephyrus, sero vespere missus, adest;

Nunc gelidus sicca Boreas bacchatur ab Arcto;

Nunc Notus adversa praelia fronte gerit.

Tristia, lib. L, Elegia II.

The “blue Symplegades,”—at least what is left of them—to which Byron here refers, are famous for their connection with one of the oldest and most interesting of Greek legends—that of the Argonauts. According to the story which Apollonius of Rhodes has so well developed in his Argonautica, the Symplegades were two floating and ever-clashing rocks, at the junction of the Euxine and the Bosphorus, which were fabled to close upon and crush all ships that attempted to pass between them. When Jason with his fifty-oared ship, the Argos, and his fifty heroes set out for Colchis to fetch back the golden fleece he was obliged to pass between these great colliding rocks. Thanks, however, to the instructions he had received from the seer, Phineus, who had been delivered from the tormenting Harpies by two of the Argonauts, he was able to effect this hitherto impossible passage and to proceed without interruption to his destination.

After this event the eyotlike rocks became fixed in the positions they now occupy. The one, however, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus has, owing to the action of the elements, long since disappeared beneath the waves. The other, on the European side, is also rapidly disintegrating, and soon will litter the floor of the sea. But the story of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece will endure as long as men shall retain a love for the fascinating in myth and legend and the beautiful in art and literature.

Although the Cyanean Islands—as the Symplegades are now called—and the shores of the Euxine are exceptionally rich in places and things of great historic and mythological interest, they are in this respect surpassed by the Bosphorus. Nowhere in the world do myth and legend, traditional associations and historic souvenirs cluster in such numbers and varieties as they do about every rock and bay and promontory of this famous waterway that connects the Euxine with the Sea of Marmora.

Even the names bestowed upon this channel have been manifold. To the ancients it was variously known as the Mouth, the Throat, the Door, and the Key of the Euxine. To-day it is frequently called the Narrows, or the Strait or the Canal of Constantinople. But the appellation which is still the most popular and that by which it is usually designated is that which has its origin in one of the earliest of Greek legends. As expressed in English, the name, which signifies Cow-Ford, or Ox-Ford, seems very prosaic, but the legend on which it is based has always been a favorite with poets and artists.

Io, the beautiful priestess of Hera at Argos, was loved by Zeus and was, in consequence of the jealousy of the goddess, metamorphosed into a heifer. Arriving at the eastern side of the strait, so the fable runs, she plunged into its swiftly-flowing waters and swam to the European shore. And from that time to the present, this famed watercourse has been known the world over as the Bosphorus.

On the promontory of Anadoli Kavak on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, we get a view of the site of Hieron which was long regarded as one of the most sacred places in the pagan world. Covered then with gorgeous temples dedicated to the twelve greater gods it ranked as a place of pilgrimage with Delphi and Olympia. The most imposing and sumptuous of these temples was said to have been founded by Jason and consecrated to Zeus Urius, in thanksgiving for the safe return of himself and his fellow Argonauts from their successful expedition to Colchis. Within it stood a priceless statue of Zeus made of ivory and gold, at the base of which was a slab, now preserved in the British Museum, on which were inscribed the words:

The sailor who invokes Zeus Urius that he may enjoy a prosperous voyage either toward the Cyanean Rocks, or on the Ægean sea, itself unsteady and filled with innumerable dangerous shoals scattered here and there, can have a prosperous voyage if first he sacrifices to the god whose statue Philo Antipater has set up, both because of gratitude and to insure favorable augury to sailors.

But unlike Delphi and Olympia where there is still, thanks to the labors of French and German archæologists, very much to remind one of the past grandeur of these historic places, “not a stone upon a stone” remains on the site of Hieron to attest to its former splendor and majesty. As in so many other parts of the world, the temples of Hieron served as quarries for peoples of a later age who knew not the gods of Olympus, or who had a special interest in consigning them to oblivion. And where, in days of yore, the clouds of incense and the smoke of sacrifice, in the most superb of temples stimulated the fervor of vast multitudes from far distant lands, the traveler to-day finds nothing of the pristine glory of Hieron except what nature gave it—its superb site and its enchanting vistas of the Bosphorus and the Euxine.

After the fall of paganism, Hieron had many vicissitudes. Having been converted into one of the strongest fortresses on the Bosphorus, it was time and again singled out for attack by the enemies of the Byzantine Empire. Among the most celebrated of them was Harun-al-Rashid who led an army the whole way from Bagdad with a view of effecting the conquest of Constantinople and with it of the Byzantine Empire. At a later date Hieron and the stronghold on the opposite side of the Strait fell into the hands of the Genoese. Not long afterwards it was captured by the Sultan Bayazid I, “the Thunderbolt,” and since then it has been in the possession of the Turks.

A short distance to the southwest, on the European shore, is a beautiful valley where the Crusaders are said to have encamped on their way to the Holy Land. A colossal plane tree is here seen which bears the name of “Plane tree of Godfrey of Bouillon,” from a tradition that it was planted by this famous hero of the Christian host.

At Roumeli Hissar, we reach the narrowest point of the Bosphorus and one which is most rich in historical associations. According to tradition, it was here that Xenophon and his immortal Ten Thousand crossed over into Europe after their famous retreat from the heart of Babylonia—a retreat which, revealing, as it did, the military weakness of the Persian Colossus, paved the way for the victories of the Granicus, the Issus, and Arbela and for the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great.

Here, too, it was that Mandrocles of Samos constructed the bridge of boats that enabled the vast Persian army under Darius to cross into Europe at the time of that monarch’s disastrous campaign against the Scythians. Mandrocles was so elated by his achievement that he had it commemorated in the temple of Hera, in his native Samos, by a picture with the inscription:

The fish-fraught Bosphorus bridged, to Juno’s fane

Did Mandrocles this proud memorial bring;
When for himself a crown he’d skill to gain,
For Samos praise, contenting the Great King.

But a large volume would be required to give even a brief notice of the countless myths, legends, traditions, and historical souvenirs which cluster about the shores of the Bosphorus from the Euxine to the Golden Horn. They have been the scenes of tragedies and romances and intrigues without number. From the dawn of history the Bosphorus has been constantly a bone of contention among rival and conflicting interests and an important factor in many of the great wars that have convulsed Asia and Europe. And until a plan shall be elaborated for eliminating international jealousies and harmonizing the antagonistic policies and aspirations of many peoples of divers races and creeds, it is not probable that the future history of this unique waterway will be materially different from that of the past. Altruism among nations has so far been confined to words and, from present indications, the day is far distant when it will be revealed in deeds.

It is not, however, through its legendary and storied past that the Bosphorus makes its strongest appeal to the ordinary traveler. It is rather through its scenic beauty—the enchanting vistas it everywhere offers on both the Asiatic and the European shore. These have for ages been celebrated in song and story and few who have been privileged to gaze on them will say that their praises have been exaggerated. From whatever point the Strait is viewed it is picturesque in the highest degree and exhibits all along its course countless objects of exhaustless interest.

Almost the entire distance from the Euxine to the Golden Horn one sees bordering the Bosphorus an almost continuous succession of kiosks, palaces, chalets, bungalows, mosques, and minarets. There are the imposing homes of ambassadors accredited to the Sublime Porte, the luxurious residences of the wealthy pashas and merchant princes of Stamboul, the superb marble palaces of sultans and sultanas, all surrounded by inviting groves and artistically laid-out parks rich in flowers and trees from many climes. Here and there in shaded glens and verdant dales are picturesque villages and hamlets whose quaint wooden houses form a striking contrast to the magnificent structures which are in their immediate vicinity.

Of the many beautiful valleys that debouch into the Bosphorus is that of the Great Geuk Su—Sweet Water—on the Asiatic side which appealed to me most strongly. Its clumps of balmy pines, somber cypresses, and graceful mimosas and its romantic groves of wide-spreading planes, sycamores, magnolias, and beech trees whose pendent branches dip into the crystal stream present rarest pictures of sylvan charm and loveliness. They forcibly reminded me of similar spots of scenic beauty which, years before, had so fascinated me in the far-famed Vale of Tempe in northern Thessaly. Emptying into the same bay as the Great Sweet Water is the Little Sweet Water and the valleys of these two enchanting streams together with their common bay constitute the so-called “Sweet Waters of Asia.”[35] Their attractive groves and greenswards have long been a favorite pleasance for Ottomans and Greeks as well as for foreign residents of Constantinople.

But what most interested me in this heart-gladdening spot was the countless groups of merry and beautiful children who had been brought here by their mothers and nurses for an outing. They seemed to be everywhere. Running and leaping, laughing and shouting, singing and dancing, vanishing among the bushes and suddenly reappearing in the broad greensward, their little forms were perfect pictures of restless energy and unalloyed happiness. Many of the boys and girls were dressed like children one sees in the Bois de Boulogne and their features were just as fair. Nowhere in the East did I see a more animated or a more charming scene except, perhaps, on the embowered banks of the Sweet Waters of Europe on the upper reaches of the Golden Horn.

And the mothers seemed to enjoy themselves fully as much as their children. Some sat quietly conversing under the umbrageous trees while others were enjoying a pleasant row in their light and gaily decked caiques. Most of them were garbed in the tcharchaff, a cloak and veil of somber color, but a few still retained the graceful feridgi and yashmak which were formerly in almost universal use among the Ottoman women of the well-to-do classes.

To eastern poets the Sweet Waters of Asia are quite as dear as was the Vale of Tempe to the ancient Greeks. For to the poets of the East this spot is a veritable paradise on earth and far surpasses the vaunted attractions of the celebrated groves of Damascus and the sun-kissed meadows of Shaab Beram in Southern Persia. It supplies, in fullest measure, three of the Moslem’s chiefest delights—umbrageous trees, flowing water, and sweet repose.

The poet must have had some such an enchanting spot in mind when he sang:

The land of the cedar and the vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;

Where citron and olive are fairest of fruit,

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;

Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,

In color though varied in beauty may vie.

Space precludes more than a passing reference to the sumptuous palaces which adorn the bay-indented shores of the Bosphorus. Of these magnificent edifices Yildiz Kiosk—Palace of the Star—is noted as having been the favorite place of residence of the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. It is a large structure of white marble and from its commanding site on a grove-clad hill it affords one of the most gorgeous panoramas to be seen anywhere along the matchless Bosphorus.

At the foot of the hill on which stands the palace of Yildiz Kiosk is seen what is undoubtedly one of the most grandiose palaces in the world. It is known as the Serai of Dolma Baghtcheh and was built by the Sultan Abdul-Medjid. His Armenian architect, Balian, was given carte blanche in the matter of expenditure and style of architecture. Only one condition was imposed on him by the Sultan and that was that the completed structure should surpass in magnificence every other imperial palace in the world. Architecturally it is a strange combination of Greek, Roman, Moorish, Turkish, Persian, and Renaissance styles and exhibits both interiorly and exteriorly what is most admirable in the noted palaces of the Louvre, Versailles, the Schönbrunn in Vienna, the Winter Palace in Petrograd, and the imperial palace of the Kremlin in Moscow. With the Ionian-blue Bosphorus as a foreground and the Imperial Park clad in perennial green as a background the snow-white palace of Dolma Baghtcheh, with its delicate lace-like carvings, is, indeed, in the words of an enthusiastic writer, “a pearl placed between a turquoise and an emerald, each jewel multiplied in size and loveliness many million-fold.”[36]

CHAPTER III
ROMA NOVA

The City of the Constantines,
The rising city of the billow-side,
The City of the Cross—great ocean’s bride,

Crowned with her birth she sprung long ages past,

And still she looked in glory o’er the tide

Which at her feet barbaric riches cast,

Pour’d by the burning East, all joyously and fast.

Our journey through the park and palace-fringed Bosphorus had duly prepared us for the culmination of these beauties and wonders, when, as we neared Seraglio Point, the Imperial Capital of the Byzantine Cæsars burst upon our view in all its glory and magnificence.

From the time of Tournefort travelers have vied with one another in their attempts to convey in words their impressions on their first view of the superb capital of the Ottoman Empire. Poets and artists have essayed to depict the splendors of what they regarded as the queen city of the world. There are pen-pictures of innumerable writers who came under the spell of this city of the Cæsars and who were unable to find language which would adequately express their sensations of ecstatic trance and rapturous delight. Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Edmondo De Amicis, Gautier, Gerard de Nerval, Edmond About, the Countess de Gasparm, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Robert Hichens, and Pierre Loti all are overcome with wonder at the marvelous spectacle and despair of finding language to express their surprise and emotion in the presence of such an enchanting spot.

It is at Constantinople [writes Lamartine], that God and man, nature and art have created and placed the most marvelous point of view which the human eye can contemplate on earth.[37]

Chateaubriand expresses almost the same sentiment when he declares “On n’ exagère point quand on dit que Constantinople offre le plus beau point de vue de 1’univers.”[38] But notwithstanding this almost extravagant statement, the distinguished littérateur does not hesitate to add in a footnote, “I, however, prefer the bay of Naples.”

Like Lamartine and Chauteaubriand, I, too, was greatly impressed by my first view of Constantinople when seen from the deck of our steamer as it glided towards the mast-thronged harbor of the Golden Horn, but, as I have stated elsewhere,[39] the prize, for the World’s City Beautiful, must, me judice, be awarded to Rio de Janeiro, the incomparable capital of Brazil.

It is not within the scope of this chapter to give even a brief description of Constantinople. That is rendered quite unnecessary by the scores of valuable books which have been written on this fascinating subject. This, however, does not mean that I was not intensely interested in its countless attractions or that they did not make deep impressions on me and give rise to serious reflections. Far from it. I spent every available hour in visiting its churches, mosques, schools, museums and in contemplating its hoary, lichen-covered ruins, its battlemented walls and ivy-festooned towers which, for long ages, cast their trembling shadows on the glimmering waters of the Sea of Marmora and served, for more than eleven hundred years, as effective bulwarks against the fierce assaults of Avars and Goths, Arabs and Persians, Slavonians and Bulgarians and Mongols. And, as I threaded my way through its narrow and devious streets and inspected the picturesque and tumble-down houses, I found special pleasure in scrutinizing the letters and inscriptions and epitaphs engraved on slabs of marble or on blocks of granite, some of which were in their original position while others had been used in the construction of some now crumbling wall or building. If they could speak, what stories could not these disconnected letters and incomplete inscriptions tell of the shadowy past—stories of dark and strange events connected with sieges and conquests—stories of intrigue and deeds of violence and tyranny in which ambitious eunuchs, heartless pashas, and bloodthirsty sultans were the chief actors—stories, too, of exalted virtue and heroism displayed by noble men and women that time the fanatic followers of Mohammed boastfully announced their intention to plant the Crescent over the Cross and to remove from the devoted city of Constantine the last vestiges of Christian art and culture.

The first object to claim my attention after arriving in Constantinople was the majestic and solemn church, now a mosque, of Santa Sophia. To the Greeks it is known as the church of Hagia Sophia—Divine Wisdom. More frequently, however, it is called ’Η Μεγάλη Εκκλησία—“The Great Church—the church par excellence.”

Exteriorly this masterpiece of Byzantine basilicas has the aspect of a massive, irregular time-worn fortress. Surrounded by all kinds of low, unsymmetrical buildings—shops, storehouses, baths, schools, turbehs—one can have no idea of its original design or external appearance as it came from the hands of its architects, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus.

The beauty of Santa Sophia, like that of so many of the famous churches of the Old World, is within. But even within, the first impression of the ordinary visitor is one of disappointment. But its surpassing beauty and grandeur quickly reveal themselves and then one stands in awe and amazement. Its marvelous harmony of design, its wealth of ornamentation, its lavish display of the finest marbles, porphyries, jaspers, serpentines, granites, alabasters, gold mosaics are bewildering in their effect and one can easily realize what must have been the splendor and magnificence of this august temple when, on the day of consecration, the emperor Justinian exultantly exclaimed: Glory be to God, who has deemed me worthy to accomplish such an undertaking. Σολομὼν, νενíκησá σε—Solomon, I have conquered thee!

And his exclamation of triumph was justified. For never before had the spoils of paganism’s great sanctuaries contributed so much towards the erection and embellishment of any single Christian edifice. Among the massive columns which support the great arches of the basilica are eight of verdantique which were brought from the celebrated Temple of Diana at Ephesus. There are eight of porphyry which belonged to the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek. These were the gifts of the noble Roman lady, Marcia, who, with characteristic piety, offered them, as she expressed it—Υφὲρ τῆς ψυχíκῆς μον σωτηρíας—for the salvation of my soul.

In addition to these splendid monoliths there are columns from the Temple of the Sun, at Palmyra; from the Temple of Jupiter at Cyzicus; from temples in Greece and Italy, Egypt, and the Cyclades. Its floor, walls, piers, arcades are overlaid with precious marbles of every hue—snow-white marble from Paros and Pentelicus, azure marble from Lybia, green marble from Laconia, flecked, rose, yellow, and golden marbles from Marmora, Synnada, Phrygia, and Mauritania. On all sides is a magnificent display of wonderful shafts, capitals, cornices, lintels, and panels of colors as variegated as their provenience is manifold. In them we see grayish marbles from sea-girt Proconnesus, verdantique from Thessaly, cipollino from Eubœa, Pavonazzetto from Synnada, lumachelle from Chios, Brocatel from Spain, Fior di Persico from Dalmatia, Bardiglio from the Apennines, giallo antico from distant Numidia and bianco and nero-antico from the far-off Pyrenees, while from the still-worked quarries of Egypt are marbles of emerald green and imperial purple.

Nor is this all. Besides marbles of every hue and from every clime there are borders of green serpentine, columns and panels of jasper of every shade, bands of oriental alabaster of clear honey color from the land of the Nile, exedras of porphyry from the Thebes of the Pharaohs—all arranged so as to produce the most perfect harmony of color and the most impressive effect on the beholders.[40]

When, even in its present defaced and despoiled condition, Santa Sophia is still one of the greatest, if not the greatest, triumphs of Church architecture, what must it not have been when “its domes and vaultings resplendent with gold mosaic interspersed with solemn figures” made it, what is in many respects the most magnificent temple of worship that the world has yet known.

The Grand Opera House of Paris boasts of the beauty of its interior which is adorned with thirty-three varieties of marble and other ornamental stones. It is indeed beautiful, but it cannot compare with the matchless interior of the Church of Holy Wisdom which is embellished by the spoil of the most superb temples of antiquity and the treasures of the richest quarries of the civilized world.

No other monarch has ever had at his disposition such rare and precious building materials as had Justinian for the construction of Santa Sophia and it is safe to say that no one will ever again have materials of such uniqueness and value. When one, therefore, considers all their richness and the admirable manner in which they have been utilized, we can easily understand how the legend soon arose which declares that while the Church of Holy Wisdom was building, the workmen were specially instructed by an angel from heaven. Nor need we go far for the origin of the story according to which Justinian set up a statue “representing Solomon as looking at the Great Church and gnashing his teeth with envy.” And one is not surprised at the rapturous expressions of Corippus, a poet-bishop of the sixth century, when he declares, “Praise of the temple of Solomon is now silenced and the Wonders of the World have to yield the preëminence. Two shrines founded by the wisdom of God have rivaled Heaven, one the Sacred Temple, the other the splendid fane of Santa Sophia, the vestibule of the Divine Presence.”[41]

But the most striking feature of this magnificent structure is its dome. As viewed from below, it seems, as Madame de Staël says of the dome of St. Peter’s, “like an abyss suspended over one’s head,” or as the Byzantian historian, Nicetas Acominatus, declares “an image of the firmament created by the Almighty.”

The eminent architectural authority, Fergusson, speaking of Justinian’s masterpiece, avers, “Internally, at least, the verdict seems inevitable that Santa Sophia is the most perfect and most beautiful church which has yet been erected by any Christian people. When its furniture was complete the verdict would have been still more strongly in its favor.”[42]

But the Ottomans, in taking possession of this unique sanctuary, removed or destroyed its priceless furniture and decorations and concealed its matchless mosaic pictures—pictures which Ghirlandajo declares are “the only paintings for eternity”—with a layer of white-wash! And although in its present condition, it is still, despite Moslem desecration, the delight of the artists and architects of the world, its interior is as far from exhibiting the glories of its pristine state as is the exterior of the Parthenon, since its mutilation by Lord Elgin—an act of vandalism denounced by Byron as “a triple sacrilege”—from displaying the peerless beauty of the sublime creation of Ictinus and Phidias.

Is it then any wonder that Saint Sophia was, from its completion, regarded as the very heart of the Byzantine Empire—that it has ever held the same place in the affections of the Greeks as St. Peter’s, the Cathedral of Rheims, and Westminster Abbey occupy in the hearts of the peoples of Italy, France, and England? And is it a matter of surprise that,

Though turbans now pollute Sophia’s shrine

the Greeks of to-day still cherish the hope that it will, in the designs of Providence, eventually be returned to them and that Christian worship, with all the pomp of the Grecian liturgy, will again be restored under Santa Sophia’s wondrous dome?

It is related that when Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, took possession of Santa Sophia, he observed an Ottoman soldier destroying the mosaics of the church with his mace. “Let those things be,” Mohammed cried, and with a single blow he stretched the fanatical vandal at his feet. And then, in a lower tone, he added, so the historian avers, “Who knows but in another age they may serve another religion than that of Islam?” God grant it!

Nor have the Greeks ever abandoned the hope of one day regaining possession of the City of Constantinople. They claim it as their heritage, which was lost to them by the fortunes of war, and they patiently await the turn in fortune’s wheel when

The city won for Allah from the Giaour,

The Giaour from Othman’s race again may wrest.[43]

After leaving Santa Sophia, I spent some time in the extensive grounds of the Seraglio,[44] which, since the young Turks have come into power, have been used as a public park. About the buildings and the occupants of the Seraglio much has been written—the greater part of it based on imagination rather than on fact. But I have no desire to dwell on

That spacious seat

Of Wealth and Wantonness,

which, for three centuries, was “the heart of Ottoman history” and which for ten generations was the home of palled votaries of pleasure, but too often, alas! the hated prison of innocent victims who were condemned to pander to the basest passions of heartless minotaurs of lust and crime.

To the south of Santa Sophia is all that remains of the Hippodrome which, in its heyday of splendor, was regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Modeled after the Circus Maximus of Rome, it served as a forum, as a race course, and a museum in which were collected the choicest sculptures of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. Here were statues of Phidias and Praxiteles and other master sculptors of the ancient world. Among them were an exquisite statue of Helen of Troy, “whose beauty of form and feature drove brave men distraught,” and the famed bronze horses of Lysippus—which were carried off by Dandolo to Venice, where they now adorn the cathedral of San Marco—and countless other masterpieces of scarcely less value and beauty.

Besides serving as a race course the Hippodrome, which had, it is estimated, a seating capacity of a hundred and twenty thousand people, was used for every purpose that could attract a large multitude of people. The Spina—a low wall dividing the Hippodrome into two sections—was, in common parlance, “the axis around which the Byzantine world revolved.” It was the favorite place for athletic sports and for the exhibition of wild animals. It was here that distinguished emperors and generals, like Heraclius and Nicephorus and Belisarius, celebrated their victories over the enemies of the empire. It was here that were witnessed not only the pride, the power, and the glories of New Rome, but also its tragedies, its massacres, its decadence, and ruin. In the acme of its magnificence this historic circus, with its forty tiers of marble seats and its superb promenade which surmounted all, was resplendent with the most beautiful works of Greek and Roman art—spoils from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Mauritania.

Of this marvelous Hippodrome only a part of the site is now visible, while of its ornaments but three are still extant. These are a bare column of masonry once covered with bronze plates which caused it “to gleam like a column of light”; an Egyptian obelisk that antedates the time of Moses, and one of the most ancient relics of Greece. This is the Serpent column from Delphi which, with the bronze Wolf of the Capitol in Rome, “may count as the most precious metal relic which remains from the ancient world.” It bears witness to the final defeat of Xerxes at Platæa, the first great triumph of the West over the East. For eight centuries it served as a pedestal for the golden tripod of the priestess of the god, and during long centuries it was for the Greeks an object of pilgrimage. When, nearly two thousand years later, the East, under Mohammed the Conqueror, was victorious over the West, this secular monument was permitted to remain on the base which has supported it for sixteen centuries that it might continue “to bear witness to the link of New Rome with Old Greece” and endure as a vivid reminder of the pomp of Byzantine rule and of the continuity of civilization.

Scarcely less interesting to me than the age-old remnants of the Hippodrome were the massive and crumbling walls that for a thousand years were the city’s palladium against the barbarian hordes of Asia and Europe. What visions crowd upon the memory as one stands upon this hoary rampart and surveys the scene around one! It was thanks to the impregnable walls of Constantinople no less than to the unique strategic position of the city that Roma Nova was able so long to hold her place as the home of art and letters, history and philosophy; that, in spite of desolating wars which everywhere raged in the rest of the world, and which at times carried their ravaging effects to her very gates, she continued to be the world’s one sure refuge of law, justice, and freedom; that, notwithstanding internecine strife, and changes of dynasties, her government was the one that for centuries afforded the greatest security for life and property; the one under which commerce and civilization were most fostered and most flourishing.

If the walls of Constantinople could speak, what thrilling stories could they not relate of the score of sieges to which they were exposed! For vivid color and breathless interest they surpass the siege of Tyre by Alexander, the siege of Carthage by Scipio, the siege of Jerusalem by Godfrey de Bouillon as described in the glowing epic of Tasso. Unlike the last-named sieges, those directed against the city on the Bosphorus “stand out on the canvas of history by the magnitude of the issues involved to religion, to nations, to civilization.” This is particularly true of the sieges by Saracens, Turks, and Mongols, for, if these barbarians and sworn enemies of the Christian name had succeeded in piercing the walls of this greatest bulwark of civilization before the dawn of the reconstructive work of the fifteenth century, the results to learning, art, Christendom would have been disastrous beyond conception, while progress and social order would have been retarded for untold centuries.

Never, probably, in the history of our race has the possession of any city led to more devastating and longer continued wars, to greater international rivalries and contentions than has the fair capital on the Golden Horn. It was in 673—but little more than a generation after Mohammed’s death—when the Moslems under the Saracen Moawiah laid siege to Constantinople, which was then the greatest and the richest city of the known world. They were defeated but not crushed. Knowing the incalculable treasures the city contained and realizing fully its supreme importance as the center of a world empire, they determined never to desist from their purpose until Constantinople was the capital and sovereign seat of Islam. Not until 1453, after eight centuries of deferred hopes, were their aspirations realized.

For a much longer period has Russia had her longing eyes on what she was wont to call “The Sacred City”—the city which had so long been the goal of the nations of Asia and Europe. From the days of Rurik, the reputed founder of the Russian monarchy, the Muscovites have never ceased to look forward to the time when the peerless city of Constantine would be in the possession of Holy Russia, and when the strategic channel which links the Euxine with the Mediterranean would be under her absolute control.

For a thousand years the forces of Russia continued irresistibly to move toward the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. When Catherine II, “The Semiramis of the North,” in 1787, made her magnificent progress through Southern Russia she entered the city of Kherson under a triumphal arch which bore the inscription “The Way to Byzantium.” As still further expressive of her faith in Russia’s ultimate destiny there was a gate in Moscow named “The Way to Constantinople.”

But this was not all. With the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II, she worked out a scheme for a restored Greek Empire, with Constantinople as its capital, the throne of which was to be given to her second grandson. And so sure was she of effectuating her plan that “the boy with sagacious prescience had been christened Constantine; he was always dressed in the Greek mode, surrounded by Greek nurses and instructed in the tongue of his future subjects. That no detail might be lacking which foresight could devise, a medal had already been struck, on one side of which was a representation of the young prince’s head and on the other an allegorical device indicating the coming triumph of the Cross over the Crescent.”[45]

At the famous conference on the raft anchored in the river Nieman, when Napoleon and Alexander I discussed plans for the division of the world’s sovereignty, the Russian monarch demanded, as his share of the partition, the City of Constantinople together with the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. For this he was willing to concede to the French Emperor the most valuable regions on the Mediterranean littoral and to aid him with money and men in his projected conquest of India. But this the ambitious dictator of Europe would not grant. Placing his finger on the map where Constantinople was indicated, he exclaimed with passionate emphasis, “Constantinople! Constantinople! Never. That would mean the empire of the world!” At St. Helena he again gave clear expression to his estimate of the value of Constantinople when he declared “Constantinople est placée pour être le centre et le siege de la dominion universelle.”[46]

Almost exactly a thousand years after the death of Rurik, Russia’s victorious army was at San Stephano within sight of the domes and minarets of the City of Constantine. “At last,” shouted the jubilant soldiers, “we have reached our goal and Czargrad”—their name for Constantinople—“is ours!” Only a few hours more, they fondly believed, and they would see the Greek cross supplanting the Crescent at the dome of Santa Sophia and the dreams of ten centuries finally realized.

But it was not to be. Russia had indeed advanced nearer the goal on which her eyes had been fixed for a thousand years, but the coveted prize, though seemingly so near, was yet far from her grasp. The Treaty of San Stephano had, it is true, established a dominant Slav state in the Balkans which it was intended should be but a simple dependency of Russia and a stepping stone to Constantinople, but the treaty was scarcely signed before England and others of the Great Powers insisted on its revision. This was done at the Congress of Berlin. Here Beaconsfield, in order “to check Russian influence in the Balkans” and to safeguard “the vital requirements of Britain’s Eastern policy,” insisted on the restoration of “the position of Turkey as a European state”—a position which had been practically lost by the treaty of San Stephano.[47]

The Turk is still in Constantinople and is there notwithstanding the loud and reiterated declarations of statesmen from Gladstone to Lloyd George that he was to be cast “bag and baggage” out of Europe for evermore, but, when one remembers that, since the days of Solyman the Magnificent, the imminent downfall of Turkey as a European power has been confidently predicted scores of times; that, since the Osmanlis reached the Bosphorus nearly six centuries ago, no fewer than a hundred plans have been made for the partition of their territory[48] and that recently the English premier, Lloyd George, made the evacuation of Constantinople by Turkey an essential condition of peace—at least until he could have time to change his opportunist mind—one asks oneself how much longer the Sultan will successfully pursue his time-honored policy of divide et impera and how much longer diplomats will continue to insist that the maintenance of the City of Constantine as the capital of the Ottoman Empire is a political necessity, and when, if ever, Russia’s persistent ambition of a thousand years will at last be realized.[49] From present indications there is little likelihood that the jealousies of the more powerful nations of Europe respecting the matchless capital of the Golden Horn will abate or that the traditional ability of Turkey’s astute rulers to play off the Great Powers one against the other will be less marked in the future than in the past.

If, however, there is to be a transfer of Constantinople to some other power than that of the Ottoman Empire, poetic justice seems to require that the aspirations of Greece should receive first consideration. Greek in language and nationality from the days of Byzas until it was lost by the fortunes of war to the followers of Mohammed, this city is claimed by the people that counts among its own a Belisarius, a Pulcheria, a Tribonian, an Anthemius, a Chrysostom, a Gregory Nazienzus—men and women who in eminence and achievement were surpassed by none of their contemporaries west of the Adriatic and who were the glories of the greatest home of art and literature and culture when Russia was yet a land of wild nomads and ignorant barbarians. And this same people claims Constantinople as theirs “by origin and by long possession, a possession which has in some sort gone on both under Frankish and under Turkish rule.”[50]

One of the most interesting and picturesque sights in Constantinople, but of a far different character from those of which I have been speaking, is to be seen on the lower bridge over the Golden Horn. Connecting Galata, the part of the city which is chiefly inhabited by non-Mussulmans, with Stamboul, which is occupied almost entirely by Turks and Moslems of various nationalities, this bridge is frequently crowded with people of every color and from every clime. But what a noisy, jostling, struggling, wrangling, cosmopolitan throng one here encounters! Here one sees representatives from all parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa—bright-turbaned Turks, supple and chattering Greeks, jauntily attired dragomans, gorgeously uniformed kavasses, heavily burdened hamals, round-browed Montenegrins, white-kirtled Albanians, bronzed and sun-dried Bedouins from Arabia, shuffling and high-voiced eunuchs from Nubia and Abyssinia, and high-capped Tartars from the steppes of Russia and Central Asia—all vociferating in a score of languages and dialects, all utterly regardless of those who are round about them.

And such a variety of garbs and partial garbs! And yet they attract no attention in this motley crowd who here, as elsewhere in the East, are accustomed to seeing people appareled in garments of every conceivable style and color. “A man,” as has been observed by one who knows the Orient well, “may go about in public veiled up to the eyes, or clad, if he please, only in a girdle; he is merely obeying his own law”[51]—following a custom which has prevailed among his ancestors through countless generations.

After a tiresome climb I once found myself on the highest platform of the lofty Galata tower. From this point one has probably the best obtainable view of Constantinople and its environment. The panorama which is disclosed is certainly beautiful, superb; but I am not prepared to agree with the enthusiastic writer who declares that “nothing on this globe can surpass it—that it is incomparable in its panoramic variety and sublimity!”[52] I still contend that the palm for enchanting scenic beauty and for magnificent natural panoramas belongs to Rio de Janeiro.

I readily grant, however, that in wealth of legend, romance, and historic associations of every kind New Rome far surpasses the fascinating capital of Brazil. And I am inclined to think that most of those who descant so enthusiastically on the marvelous beauty of Constantinople unconsciously allow their judgments of the city’s present beauties to be colored by the magic and the glamour of the historic past.

Considering the Byzantine capital as the theater of thrilling deeds and notable achievements, it is probably unsurpassed in human interest except by Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. And the views one may have from the height of Galata’s tower are, historically considered, inferior only to those that so impress the spectator who stands on the ruin-crowned summit of the Palatine, the majestic portico of the Parthenon, and the sanctified heights of the Mount of Olives.

As I stood on the dizzy balcony which surmounts the lofty tower and beheld the magnificent vistas that opened up before me on every side, I realized as never before what a unique site was occupied by the City of Constantine. On the north are the cypress and palace-crowned hills of the winding Bosphorus and the delightful Sweet Waters of Europe, which are even more attractive than the rival Sweet Waters of Asia. On the south gleams the silver expanse of the Marmora, in which are mirrored the picturesque Islands of the Princes, over which hover so many morbid and voluptuous memories of the past. On the east across the Strait stand out in bold relief the Maiden’s Tower and the Golden City of Scutari, both wrapped in an atmosphere of heavy and exotic passion and “holding their secrets of the Orient closely hidden from the eyes of Europe.” On the hills laved by the glimmering waters of the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmora, and bounded on the west by the historic plain of Thrace, proudly sits, half veiled by a tremulous amethystine haze, the peerless Queen of the East in all her majesty and shedding on the fascinated beholder a strange sense of mystery—seeming not a living, palpable thing, but rather a brilliant phantasm, or a rainbow dream of mystic remoteness.

Almost within a stone’s throw of where I stood was the Golden Horn sprinkled with hundreds of delicate, pointed caiques and bearing on its sapphire bosom ships of all sizes and flying the flags of all nations. It was up this famous stream that Byzas, the reputed son of Neptune, steered his frail craft nearly seven centuries before our era. And it was on the southern bank of this sheltered haven that the daring navigator, with his doughty Megarans, laid the foundation of Byzantium—named after himself—which was to play such a remarkable rôle in the world’s great drama.

A thousand years later—almost to a day—Constantine the Great abandons the city of Romulus and selects that of Byzas as the capital of the great Roman empire. On foot, with a lance in hand, the Emperor leads a solemn procession, and, under divine command—jubente Deo, as he phrased it—traces the boundary of the future metropolis. His assistants, astonished at the over-growing circumference of the destined capital, ventured to observe that the contemplated area of a great city had already been exceeded. “I shall continue to advance,” replied the Emperor, “until the Invisible Guide who precedes me bids me halt.”

It was across the Golden Horn that “blind old Dandolo”—that marvelous doge of ninety-seven years—led the Venetian forces against Constantinople and awakened the degenerate Greeks from “a dream of nine centuries—from the vain presumption that the capital of the Roman Empire was impregnable to foreign arms.” The marble mausoleum of this remarkable man—whose physical and mental powers were vigorous to the last—occupied a place in Santa Sophia until it was transformed into a mosque, and, even to-day, one may see in one of the galleries of the venerable fane a marble slab bearing in almost illegible characters the name of Henricus Dandolo.

And it was across the Golden Horn that Mohammed II passed when he entered the breached walls through New Rome as conqueror. But he was not able to effect an entrance into the ill-fated city without passing over the lifeless body of its noble defender, the valiant Constantine Paleologus, the last of the Byzantine Cæsars.[53]

For six centuries Constantinople had been an impregnable bulwark against the forces of Islam. For nearly twice that space of time she had successfully resisted the menaces and attacks of the barbarians of the north—Goths, Huns, Avars, Russians, Bulgarians, Chazars—and had proudly defied the power of Chosroes, Timur, Bayazid, Harun-al-Rashid, and other leaders of savage hordes from Persia, Arabia, and Central Asia. Unlike Old Rome, which frequently opened her gates to invaders from the north of the Danube, New Rome never once yielded to her Teutonic and Slavonian foes. Although besieged more than a score of times between the fourth and the thirteenth century[54] she was able to withstand every assault however furious or long continued. And this she did after the vast empire which once extended from the Tigris to the Guadilquivir had been so reduced that little was left of it but the capital itself, which, at the time of its capture by the Turks under Mohammed II, was scarcely more than a besieged fortress.

How the occupation of Constantinople by Mohammed the Conqueror, has complicated the political, military, and economic conditions of Europe for nearly five centuries is a matter of gloomy history. Owing to its matchless position it was long the natural center of the world’s commerce, the clearing house between Europe and Asia. Destined by nature itself to be the seat of two worlds, Constantinople must, as Freeman well observes, “remain the seat of imperial rule as long as Europe and Asia, as long as land and sea keep their places.”[55]

The transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire from the Tiber to the Golden Horn, the foundation of Constantinople in 330 A. D., was one of the master-strokes in the history of civilization—indeed from the material and strategic point of view, I hold it to be the greatest. Rome, Paris, London, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, Berlin, Washington, became capital cities by the gradual acts of the rulers in the course of years. But in ten years Constantinople remade the center of the civilized world. Nothing so stupendous in civic origins has ever been accomplished before or since, for its effects have been maintained with rare and partial breaks for eleven, nay, for fifteen centuries. The foundation of Alexandria by Alexander, of Antioch by Seleucus have some parallels. Mecca, Jerusalem, Cairo, Delhi have had fluctuating histories. Peter’s creation of Petrograd was a splendid mistake, which has ended in hideous failure. But the creation of Constantinople marks Constantine as one of the truly great, beside Julius, Trajan, Charles and Washington.[56]

But more remarkable than anything that has yet been said of the Queen City of the Bosphorus is her marvelous continuity of imperial rule. From the time when Constantine transferred the capital of the empire from the Tiber to the Golden Horn, when, in the works of Dante,

Per cedere al Pastor si fece Greco,[57]

New Rome—notwithstanding all its wars and vicissitudes, all its changes of race and religion, all its changes of laws and customs and institutions—has been the continuous seat of empire for sixteen centuries. This is something that is without parallel in the history of our race.

Rome was the local center of empire for barely four centuries.... The royal cities that once flourished in the valleys of the Ganges, the Euphrates or the Nile were all abandoned after some centuries of splendor, and have long lost their imperial rank. Memphis, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, Alexandria, Syracuse, Athens, had periods of glory but no great continuity of empire. London and Paris have been great capitals for at most a few centuries; and Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg are things of yesterday in the long roll of human civilization.[58]

This exceptional continuity in Constantinople may, it has been asserted, “be ultimately traced to its incomparable physical and geographical capabilities.”

But while I contemplated the capital of Constantine as it lay bathed in the tremulous and ethereal atmosphere of an autumn afternoon and recalled its past history, enveloped in the mist of years—a history which then seemed more like a confused and troubled dream than a veritable record of stirring and vivid actualities—I presently lost sight of the wars and sieges and conquests of which this Castle of the Cæsars has so frequently been the theater and thought of its rather as the erstwhile home of art and literature, as the renowned center of religion and culture.

Among its ecclesiastical rulers were some of the brightest luminaries of the Eastern Church. There was the scholarly St. John Chrysostom, “the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit.”[59] There was the illustrious St. Gregory Nazienzus, whom Villeman calls the greatest Oriental poet of Christendom. There was Photius, “whose learning and width of culture was astonishing and whose library-catalogue is the envy of modern scholars.” And there were those two learned women, the Empress Eudocia and the Princess Anna Comnena, who, as Gibbon phrases it, “cultivated in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy.”[60]

It was in Constantinople that, at the command of Justinian, was framed the famous Code that bears his name—the most important of all monuments of jurisprudence and which, notwithstanding subsequent modifications, is still the basis of all legislation throughout the civilized world.

It was here that Byzantine art took its highest flights. Santa Sophia was but one of the churches of New Rome from which western artists and architects drew their inspiration. We see this in the paintings of Cimabue and Giotto and in the countless Italian edifices which exhibit the evidence of Byzantine influence.

And it was here, in the libraries and monasteries, that was preserved that precious heritage of Greek thought and Greek genius, which, at a later age, was to be transferred to Western Europe, and which, through the activity of Byzantine scholars, was to be the foundation of the Renaissance. During the period immediately preceding the Conquest of Constantinople there was, declares Gibbon, “more books and more knowledge within the walls of Constantinople than could be dispersed over the extensive countries of the West.”[61]

“When the arms of the Turks pressed the flight of the Muses” from the Queen City of the East, Greek learning sought an asylum on the banks of the Arno and the Tiber. Among the first of Greek scholars to find a congenial home in the land of Dante and Petrarch were Janon Lascaris and Manuel Chrysoloras. They were received with open arms in the universities of the Peninsula and lectured with signal success to vast numbers of eager and enthusiastic students of every age and condition. But nowhere were they and others of their countrymen of a later date[62] accorded a more cordial welcome than in the palaces of the Medici and at the courts of Leo X and Nicholas V. Under such illustrious patrons, Greek letters flourished amazingly and quickly prepared the way for the great humanistic movement that culminated in the literary triumphs of Politian, Reuchlin, and Erasmus.

But the fall of Constantinople was epoch-making not only in its relation to the Humanistic Renaissance but also in its effect on the economic and commercial development of Europe. Before the Ottomans achieved the conquest of the Græco-Roman Empire of the East, this region constituted what has happily been designated as “the nerve-center of the world’s commerce.” But no sooner had it passed into the hands of the Ottomans than the great trade routes between the Orient and Europe were completely blocked “by a power inimical to commerce and still more inimical to those Christian nations for whose benefit intercourse between the East and West was mainly carried on.”

It was then imperative for Europe, unless it was prepared to forego its trade with the East, to discover a new route to the Orient, which would be beyond the interference of Ottoman power. This much desired result was accomplished by two of the most decisive events in the world’s history—“the rounding by Vasco da Gama of the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of the New World.” By these far-reaching achievements “the center of gravity, commercial, political and intellectual, rapidly shifted from the south-east of Europe to the northwest; from the cities of the Mediterranean littoral to those of the Atlantic. Constantinople, Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, Marseilles were deprived at one fell swoop of the economic and political preëminence which had for centuries belonged to them” ... and the Mediterranean, which for ages had “been the greatest of commercial highways, was reduced almost to the position of a backwater.”[63]

Among the many names given to the Ottoman capital by the peoples of the East is that bestowed upon it by the Arabs, namely, El Farruch—the Earth-Divider. In view of what has been said in the preceding pages no epithet could be more expressive of the truth. For, since the fall of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, together with its two appanages, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, has constituted the chief line of demarcation between the East and the West, between the Cross and the Crescent.

One of the most difficult and delicate problems which diplomacy has yet to solve—war has been impotent to bring about a solution—is the future status of the historic city of the Bosphorus and the relations between the powers of Islam and the Christian nations of Europe.

As the solution of the problem cannot, apparently, be effected by conquest or by a sordid exploitation of the lands of the East, it seems that the time has now arrived when more unselfish and more Christian methods should be applied than those based on force and international rivalries.

We owe much, very much, to the East. From her, through Greece and Rome, have come our civilization and culture, our art and literature. From her has come the religion that molds the mind and purifies the heart of Christendom. To her, therefore, we owe an immense debt of gratitude, a debt that can be paid only by helping her in her present lethargic state and by aiding her to return to her former condition of vigor and progress. We should, consequently, endeavor to understand the needs of the East in order that we may the more intelligently contribute towards her resuscitation—moral and intellectual, as well as material—and that we may more rationally coöperate with her in regaining, at least in a measure, that position of preëminence which she occupied when she was acclaimed the cradle of civilization and the mother of culture; when Bagdad and Damascus were famed centers of learning; when Saracen scholars made known to the nations of the West the treasures of Greek science and philosophy; when it was said, “In all other parts of the world light descends upon earth, from Holy Bokhara it ascends.”

Is this an impossible task? It is certainly not unworthy of being essayed by the lovers of humanity, who are beholden to the East for the greatest blessings they now enjoy. The welfare of our race and the peace of the world demand the removal of the impassable barriers which have so long separated the Orient from the Occident. Of all the plans now engaging the minds of men for securing permanent peace in the Near East and achieving, at the same time, its spiritual and social regeneration, this seems to be the only one that is likely to have a successful issue—the only one which has a real basis in genuine altruism and Christian righteousness.

CHAPTER IV
THE HELLESPONT AND HOMER’S TROY

Now let
Us fly to Asia’s cities of renown!
Already through each nerve a flutter runs
Of eager hope, that longs to be away;
Already ’neath the light of other suns

My feet, new-winged for travel, yearn to stray.

Catullus, XLVI.

After awaking from a protracted reverie on the summit of Galata’s lofty tower I found, to my surprise, that I had spent much more time there than I had originally intended. Twilight, delicate and ethereal, was beginning to fall and to veil the mosques and minarets and cypress-crowned heights of solemn, crafty, mysterious Stamboul. An animated pageant was slowly wending its way through the Grand Rue de Pera—part of it on its way to popular resorts of amusement and relaxation; part returning from the cares of office and counting-room to the repose of homes on the tranquil banks of the palace-fringed Bosphorus.

But I could linger no longer in the contemplation of such fascinating scenes. The previous day I had made arrangements with a friend to take the steamer that very evening for Chanak Kalesi, on the Dardanelles. One of my long unrealized dreams had been to visit the site of ancient Troy. Several times I had been near it, but pressing engagements had always prevented me from gazing on the spot

Where stood old Troy, a venerable name,

Forever consecrated to deathless fame.

A few moments after our steamer left her moorings in the Golden Horn, she began to round Seraglio Point. Galata and Pera twinkle in the gathering gloom. The domes and minarets of Stamboul rise like dark, shadowy monsters above the somber groups of low, wooden houses by which they are surrounded. Broken stars quiver in the swift-flowing waters of the Bosphorus and, while we are still gazing at the venerable, ivy-mantled walls and towers that so long guarded the City of Constantine, we enter the Sea of Marmora—known to the ancients as the Propontis—the sea before the Pontus or the Euxine of which Herodotus says “there is not in the world any other sea so wonderful.”

Early the following morning we were in the storied channel of the Thracian Hellespont—now more familiarly known as the Dardanelles. Like the Bosphorus, the Hellespont is replete with human and historic interest, and, as I contemplated its rugged cliffs, I recalled Lucan’s words that here

Each rock and every tree recording tales adorn.

This is particularly true of that section of the channel at Fort Nagara, formerly known as the Strait of Abydos. For it was

Here young Leander perished in the flood,

And here the tower of mournful Hero stood.

It was here that the venture-loving Byron swam across the Hellespont. And it was here that Xerxes spanned the Straits with the famous double bridge that enabled his vast army to cross over to the Thracian shore on his way to Greece, where “the barbarian despot sought to repress in the deadly bonds of Persian thralldom the intellect and the freedom of the world.” But the epoch-making victory of Salamis frustrated all his plans of conquest. Accompanied by his counted myriads the Persian invader, sure of his prey, entered Greece with all the wantonness and deadly hostility of barbaric pride; after his defeat by Themistocles, when army, fleet, and treasure were gone, he was forced to flee like the meanest fugitive. The Italian poet, Luigi Alemanni, tells in a single line the fate of the proud organizer of this widely heralded campaign when he writes:

More than a god he came, less than a man he fled.

A century and a half after the flight of Xerxes, Alexander’s army, under Parmenio, crossed the Hellespont at the place where it had been bridged by the ambitious and vainglorious Persian despot. It was at, or near, this spot that Frederick Barbarossa crossed at the head of the Third Crusade. And it was at this same spot that Solyman Pasha, the warlike son of Orkhan, passed from Asia to Europe, where, in 1354, he planted the Osmanli standard and where it has ever since flown as a sign of Moslem faith and of Moslem victory over the hated Giaour.

We disembarked at the town of Chanak Kalesi, which Europeans usually call the Dardanelles. It is noted as being at the narrowest point of the Hellespont—the channel here is about fourteen hundred yards in width—and was until recently the headquarters of the general in command of the Turkish troops in the many forts which defended the Strait.

In the long-discussed plans of Napoleon and Alexander I of Russia, for joint dominion of the world, the Russian monarch always insisted on securing possession not only of the Bosphorus and Constantinople but also of the Strait of the Dardanelles. But the French emperor just as persistently refused to acquiesce in the Czar’s demands. For a while Napoleon seemed disposed to yield the Bosphorus and even Constantinople, but nothing could induce him to consider for a moment the granting to his ally of control of the Dardanelles—the key to the Mediterranean.

Alexander insisted that, owing to its geographical position, the Dardanelles should belong to Russia; that, having Constantinople, he should also hold the key to the Ægean. But Napoleon retorted that, if Russia possessed this important waterway, she would at once become mistress not only of the commerce of the Levant and of India, but she would also be a constant menace to Toulon, to Corfu, and to the commerce of the world.

But the Czar and his advisers would not take a refusal. They realized that they would never again have so good an opportunity of gaining possession of the long-coveted capital on the Bosphorus and of the channel connecting the Euxine with the Mediterranean as when Napoleon was counting on their coöperation with him in his great schemes of conquest in Asia. Negotiations continued without interruption from the conference of Tilsit to that of Erfurt, and nothing stood in the way of their successful issue except the possession by Russia of the narrow strait between the Marmora and the Ægean. In return for this Alexander was prepared to accede to Napoleon’s every wish.

In a letter of Caulaincourt, the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, written to Napoleon in 1808, the envoy declares that Russia, “once mistress of Constantinople and its geographical dependencies, will go with us not only to India, but to Syria, to Egypt, wherever we may judge it useful to employ her fleets and draw her armies. Besides this, she will leave the French Emperor free to organize the south and the middle of Europe as he may elect. Reserving for herself only the affairs of the north, she will abandon to him the direction of all the others, will not interfere with his gigantic operations, will renounce all jealousy and will consent that the partition of the Orient shall in fact become the partition of the world.”

Concluding his letter to Napoleon, Caulaincourt writes:

Let your majesty reunite Italy, perhaps even Spain to France; change dynasties, found kingdoms; demand the coöperation of the Black Sea fleet and a land army for the conquest of Egypt; demand any guarantees whatsoever; make with Austria any exchanges that may be expedient; in one word, let the world change place, if Russia obtains Constantinople and the Dardanelles, we shall, I believe, be able to have her consider everything without uneasiness.[64]

Could anything evince more clearly than this remarkable statement the supreme value which Alexander placed on the Dardanelles as a Russian outlet to the Mediterranean? And could a more tempting offer have been made to Napoleon, who was then the arbiter of Europe and seemed on the point of becoming the dictator of the world, than that which was dangled before his eyes by his ambitious ally? But the compact that Russia so eagerly desired was not to be made. For when both the Czar and the Emperor appeared to be near an agreement on their long-discussed plans of world domination, Spanish valor and patriotism and Austrian diplomacy were concerting to check the Corsican’s vaulting ambition and to prepare for his ultimate downfall at Waterloo.

In a preceding page reference has been made to the Arab name—El Farruch—Earth-Divider—of Constantinople. The same can with equal reason be applied to the Dardanelles. For during long centuries it, with the Bosphorus, has been an effective barrier between the East and the West and has constantly held in check Russia’s aspirations towards the Mediterranean. How much longer will El Farruch continue to keep apart the nations of the earth, and how long will it prove to be the paramount crux of the Near Eastern Question and the occasion of long and sanguinary wars? This is a question that only the future—and, apparently, the very distant future—can answer.

After inspecting the fortifications of Chanak Kalesi and Kilid Bahr and making a visit to the site of ancient Abydos, whence Xerxes is supposed to have surveyed his vast army as it crossed the Hellespont, and whence one has a splendid view of the narrowest part of the Strait, we prepared to continue our journey to the site of ancient Troy.

Our first objective was Eren Keui, a flourishing Greek village, where we purposed stopping over night. This short trip of about three hours we made on horseback. Our road lay along the edge of the Strait over wooded hills, well-cultivated valleys, and picturesque villages surrounded by numerous vineyards and olive groves. From the hills we had splendid views of the Dardanelles, the Thracian Chersonese, the distant Ægean, and “many-fountained Ida” beyond the Trojan plain.

On our way we passed the site of Dardanus—a town also known as Teucris—from which the Dardanelles takes its name. The epithet Hellespont, Sea of Helle—which has also been given to the Strait—is derived from the mythical Helle, who is said to have been drowned near the southern entrance of the channel that bears her name.

From an eminence near Eren Keui, which we reached under an overclouded sky, we were captivated by the fascinating prospect that burst upon our view. For some miles ahead of us, lying in a tremulous azure haze,

We saw the dark outline of the Trojan plain,
Misty and dim, as things at distance seem
Through the fast waning light of summer eve.

We lost no time in reaching the spot which, for me at least, had been one of peculiar and ever-growing interest since, as a youth, I had fallen under the magic spell of the immortal author of the Iliad and Odyssey. And I was not long on the plain of Troy when I realized the full force of Byron’s words when he declares:

It is one thing to read the Iliad at Sigeum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above and the plain and the rivers of the Archipelago around you, and another thing to trim your taper over it in a snug library—this I know.[65]

But there is nothing in this historic region that will appeal to the ordinary tourist. It is a circumscribed plain about eight miles long by four broad, on which he will see little beyond a few bare hillocks and tumuli and occasional hunts or villages of the poor people who here have their home,[66] and hear little as he treads his way through the scattered brakes that cover much of the ground except the voice of a solitary bird which at intervals bursts into song and then is still.

Nor is there anything here to attract those self-satisfied iconoclasts who not only deny that Homer wrote the Iliad but also deny his very existence. Neither is there anything here to impress the followers of Wolf and other so-called atomists who insist that the Iliad is but a collection of ballads composed by a number of rhapsodists.[67] Still less is there here aught to interest those who not only maintain that Homer and his authorship of the Iliad are myths but who also contend that there is no evidence whatever for believing that there was such a place as Troy or for supposing that the traditional Troy was located in this place, or that there ever was such a conflict as the Trojan War, which is so graphically described in the Iliad.

No. To be thrilled by a visit to the well-fought field of Ilium, one must share the sentiments which animated Byron when he contemplated what Catullus so well denominated:

Troia (nefas) commune sepulchrum Asiæ Europæque,

Troia virum et virtutum omnium acerba cinis.[68]

He must share the sentiments of thousands of others—-poets, artists, historians, kings, statesmen, commanders of vast armies—-who, during the past twenty-five centuries, have found on the site of Ilium, once the

City of unconquered men

an inspiration in their work and an incentive to high achievement which they could not find in the same degree in any other place in the wide world.

When Xerxes, with his army, was on the way from Sardis to Greece he stopped at Troy, and “when he had seen everything and inquired into all particulars, he made an offering of ten thousand oxen to the Trojan Minerva, while the Magians poured libations to the heroes who were slain at Troy.”[69]

And the first thing Alexander the Great did on arriving in Asia, previously to beginning his stupendous campaign against the Persians, was to make a pilgrimage to what was once the city of Priam. The famous Macedonian was a credit to his master, Aristotle, both as a scholar and as a philosopher. He was, moreover, a great admirer of Homer and slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. Ascending the acropolis of New Ilium, he, like Xerxes, sacrificed to Minerva and also to the shade of Priam, which he wished to propitiate before starting on his expedition into the heart of Asia. And, as an assumed descendant, through his mother, of Achilles, he offered an oblation on the tumulus of Achilles, beneath which, it was believed, the ashes of the hero, together with those of his friend Patroclus, were preserved in a golden urn. After this he made a careful topographical survey of the Trojan plain. And so convinced was he of all that tradition claimed for it that he promised to enrich and fortify the New Ilium,[70] but was prevented by premature death from carrying his project into execution.

Similarly Julius Cæsar, of the gens Julia, which traced its origin to Iulus, son of Æneas, and was proud of its legendary descent from Trojan stock, lavished honors on Troy,[71] as did also the Consul Livius, who offered sacrifice on the acropolis of Ilium, in the name of Rome, and not only exempted it from tribute but also gave it jurisdiction over that part of the surrounding country known as the Troad.

If then, one would come under the spell of Troy, if one would experience the magic influence of its spiritus loci, one must visit it as did Byron and Cæsar and Alexander—free from the withering doubts raised by modern atomistic criticism and with a reasonable belief not only in the existence of Priam’s city but also in the personality of Homer and in his authorship of the marvelous epic on the Trojan war. And we must remember that for nearly three thousand years there was no question regarding the identity of that Greek whom Dante calls poeta sovrano, the one, he tells us, who was

Of mortals the most cherished by the nine.[72]

We must recall the estimation in which he was held by the ancients, who never wavered respecting the identity of

The blind old man who dwelt on Scio’s rocky isle.

So paramount, indeed, were the reputation and influence of the immortal poet “whose genius had breathed inspiration into the national life of Greece” that it was said, when tradition respecting his sublime achievements was still fresh,

Seven cities now contend for Homer dead

Through which the living Homer begged his bread.

The genius of Homer [declares a recent writer] was worshiped as god-like and temples were erected to his honor at Chios, Alexandria, Smyrna, and elsewhere; games were also instituted in his memory; Apollo and Homer were actually worshiped together at Argos, the one as the god of song, the other of minstrelsy.[73]

Filled with these thoughts and with a life-long love of the poet’s masterpieces, I visited every nook and corner of the Trojan plain and with unrestrained rapture contemplated the places which had so haunted my youthful imagination when I first became acquainted with the sublime pages of the Iliad. For the time being I forgot all about Wolf, Lachman, Hermann, and other advocates of the atomistic theory respecting Homer’s matchless epic and, like a child reading a fairy tale, I loved to picture before my eyes the wonderful events which Homer so vividly describes and which seemed to me almost as real as they were to the actual spectators three thousand years ago.

Still in our ears Andromache complains,

And still in sight the fate of Troy remains;

Still Ajax fights, still Hector’s dragged along,—

Such strange enchantment dwells in Homer’s song.

Fancy was animated as I strolled along the storied Simois, which “sprouted ambrosia-like pasture” for the horses of Hera and Athena, and the serpentine Scamander—“fair-flowing with silver eddies”—which formerly entered a bay upon the shores of which the Greeks hauled up their ships, and as I stood before the reputed tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus, Ajax and Antilochus. But it was more vivacious far when I ascended the hill of Hissarlik, which Schliemann has identified as the site of Homer’s Troy. From the highest point of this elevation one has a view that is truly entrancing. On the north is the Hellespont—the road, as the ancients conceived, to the Cimmerians and the Hyperboreans—with all its myth and legend. To the west are the murmurous waters of the island-studded Ægean. Near the coast line is vine-clad Tenedos, whither the Greek fleet withdrew while the wooden horse was being taken into Troy. Further beyond is Lemnos, where Hephæstus is said to have fallen when he was hurled from Olympus. To the northwest is rock-ribbed Imbros, and further afield is Samothrace, from the towering peak of which Poseidon looked down upon Troy during its investment by the Greeks. To the northeast is the eminence of Callicolone, whence Apollo and Mars, the protectors of Ilium, watched the operations of the contending Greek and Trojan armies. To the eastward is snow-crested Ida—whence Zeus observed the combatants—whose lofty pines and valonas

Wave aloft

Their tuneful, scented, dove-embowering shade,

And ’neath twilight broods as gray and soft
As when of yore the shepherd Paris strayed
With glad Œnone; while their bleating flocks

Grazed the wild thyme bright with ambrosial dew;

And lovers piping ’neath the o’ershadowing rocks

Laded with love the breezes as they flew.

It was on such panoramas that Helen was wont to fix her wistful gaze—fair Helen, who

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars

*****

... launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.

Yes, I dreamed as I had previously dreamed in Sparta, the famed abode of Menelaus and his faithless Helen; as I had dreamed in “gold-abounding” Mycenæ, the home of Agamemnon, “King of men”; as I had dreamed when contemplating desolate Delphi, Corinth, and Olympia, their glory gone and their temples in ruins; as I had dreamed on the summit of cloud-capped Parnassus, haunt of the Muses, and on the banks of the rippling Cephisus, where Plato taught and where

Girls and boys, women and bearded men
Crowded to hear and treasure in their hearts
Matter to make their lives a happiness.

At all these places, as on the site of Troy’s citadel, I loved to recall the Greeks’ love of beauty and the marvelous mythopœic faculty of their poets, and it required no spur to fancy to imagine that I was, for the moment, in actual communion with the thoughts and feelings of the world’s masters of beauty in art and literature.

The plain of Troy [it has been said] has been a battlefield not only of heroes, but of scholars and geographers, and the works which have been written on the subject form a literature to themselves.[74]

This is true. But, however much students of the Iliad may have disagreed about the location of the city of Priam, about the courses of the Simois and Scamander and certain minor details, all have been compelled to recognize the accuracy of the poet’s topographical descriptions and the appropriateness of the epithets which he applies to the most striking features of the enchanting landscape which he so graphically depicts. He does not, of course, give the numbers and distances, as some of his critics would seem to demand, that a civil engineer would require for a contour-line map. This would violate entirely the most elementary canons of poetical treatment. But he does use numbers and distances so far as they are necessary to give reality to the action of the poem. And though his realities are in the highest degree idealized, nevertheless, so fully do they meet the general exigencies of time and place that they prove almost to demonstration that Homer was thoroughly familiar not only with Troy but also with all the surrounding region.[75]

The epithets applied by the poet to the mountains, islands, rivers, and other natural features described in his matchless work show that he must have been intimately acquainted with them, not by hearsay but by personal inspection. Thus when he speaks of the “rapid current” of the Hellespont, of the “broad-flowing” and “eddying” Scamander, of “the peak of lofty Samothrace appearing over the intervening mass of Imbros,” thus enabling Poseidon to look down from its summit on the plain of Troy, we are convinced that the author of the Iliad had carefully examined on the spot the objects he so vividly brings before our view. And so it is in his graphic delineations of “lofty,” “many-fountained” Ida, of “many-crested,” “dazzling”

Olympus, the reputed seat

Eternal of the gods, which never storms

Disturb, rains drench, or snow invades, but calm.

So graphic and exact indeed are the epithets and descriptions of Homer that they far surpass those of the later poets of Greece. In this respect he constantly reminds one of Dante, that consummate master of epithet and of brief but most exact description, who had the rare faculty of expressing the import of a whole sentence in a single word. I was then more than ever before impressed with the truth of Gœthe’s words:

Wer den Dichter will verstehen

Muss in Dichter’s Lande gehen.[76]

As we wandered along the willow-lined Mendere—the “divine” and “flower-fringed” Scamander—and threaded our way through clumps of tamarisk, agnus castus, and odoriferous Artemisia, frequently stopping in our course to admire a beautiful lotus or asphodel and to gaze on “spring-abounding” Ida’s heights, whence swift-footed Iris sped to sacred Ilium at the command of ægis-bearing Jove, the question arose as to the location of the Olympus, whence the “king of gods and men”

Surveyed the walls of Troy, the ships of Greece,

The flash of arms, the slayers and the slain.[77]

The doubt was raised by the fact there are in Greece the islands of the Ægean and in Asia Minor nearly a score of peaks and mountain ranges that bear the name of Olympus, and the further fact that Olympus is almost a generic name in this part of the world for a lofty mountain or chain of mountains. On the confines of Mysia and Bithynia and visible from the summit of Ida, which overlooks the Trojan plain, there is a high mountain which is called Olympus, which many writers have declared to be the one on whose summit mythology placed the home of the gods,

Where Jove convened the senate of the skies.[78]

But a single quotation produced by the Hellenist of our party sufficed to prove that the Olympus which Homer had in view was that located in northern Thessaly—the Olympus on which Hesiod placed the battle of the gods and Titans and on which mythology from the earliest time located “the residence of the dynasty of the gods of which Zeus was the head.” The quotation in question refers to the visit of Here to Zeus, who was then on Mt. Ida observing the belligerents on the Trojan plain, and reads:

But Juno down from high Olympus sped;

O’er sweet Emathia and Pieria’s range,

O’er snowy mountains of horse-breeding Thrace,

Their topmost heights she soared, nor touch’d the earth.

From Athos then she cross’d the swelling sea,
Until to Lemnos, God-like Thoas’ seat
She came.[79]

From Lemnos and Imbros, veiled in cloud,[80] skimming her airy way she passes, to “spring-abounding Ida.” Could anything indicate more clearly than this the relative positions of Olympus and Troy and fix more definitely the position of the home of the Olympian gods as conceived by the sovereign poet of Greece?

Although I had always been specially interested in Greek archæology I felt no inclination, during my short visit to Troy, to indulge my taste for archæological pursuits. I was satisfied to accept the conclusions of Schliemann and Dorpfeld and Virchow respecting the location of Ilium and the bearing of their discoveries on the reality of Homer and the Trojan war. And, as I roamed the plain on which the Greek army was encamped, I could not help hoping that further investigation would prove that the startling discoveries of Schliemann at Mycenæ would remove the last vestiges of doubt regarding the actual existence of Agamemnon and Cassandra.[81] This would be a tangible proof of the reality of at least one of Homer’s heroes. It would, too, be a most interesting contribution to the Homeric question and would be specially gratifying to those who, in spite of certain modern critics, have unfalteringly clung to the views concerning Homer, Troy, and the Iliad which have universally prevailed since the days of Aristarchus and the Homeridæ.

The blind bard of Chios then is to-day, as he always has been, as he always will be so long as men shall love supreme excellence in letters, a living personality whose wonderful epics have exercised a wider and a more potent influence on the intellectual progress of our race than all other epics combined. No books, except perhaps those of the Bible, have been more frequently quoted nor have any received more attention from poets, orators, dramatists, and lovers of the noblest models of literary style.

Another remarkable fact is the gift of immortality which Homer, with Jovelike power, has conferred upon his heroes. Although but the creations of the poet’s genius, they stand forth to-day, men of flesh and blood, in all the vigor and freshness which characterized them thirty centuries ago. And there never have been among the children of men any who are better known, or whose names more frequently occur in song and story than the undying characters of the Odyssey and the Iliad. These facts impress every lover of Homer as he surveys the plain of Troy from the spot on which stood the Pergamus and recollects the achievements of the blind bard’s heroes during the ten long years of the Trojan war.

And, like Achilles and Agamemnon, Priam and Hector, the Troy of Homer also is immortal. Notwithstanding the efforts of a jealous Demetrius or an ill-informed Le Chevalier to transfer the glory of Troy to some other locality, its claims, as Schliemann has shown, still stand on as firm a basis as ever. Yes, of a truth,

Thou livest, O Troy, forever unto men.

*****

All to the magic of that world-sung song,

That god-breathed legend dost thou owe thy fame;

The golden weft the blind man wove so long,
Hath linked to immortality thy name.
His tale to many another’s lyre hath given
Its stirring echoes; and in every age
What story more than of thy woes hath riven
Their hearts who dream upon the poet’s page.

And though for long thou in the dust hast lain,

Still, still the visions of the mighty past,
The memory of thy struggle, and thy pain,
Thy god-built turrets,—these forever last.

CHAPTER V
THE CRADLE OF THE OSMANLIS

Have Time’s stern scythe, man’s rage and flood and fire

Left naught for curious pilgrims to admire?

A few poor footsteps may now cross the shrine,

Cell, long arcade, high altar, all supine;

Bound with thick ivy broken columns lie,

Through low rent circles winds of evening sigh,

Rough brambles choke the vaults where gold was stored,

And toads spit venom forth where priests adored.

Nicolas Michel.

Our next side trip, after visiting Troy, was a short excursion to Brusa which—partly by steamer and partly by rail—is easily accessible from Constantinople. I was especially eager to see this famous place, for its historic associations are numerous and varied. It was to Brusa—anciently Prusa—that Hannibal fled after his defeat by the Romans. There are indeed, some authorities who maintain that the great Carthaginian general was the founder of Brusa. It was from this city, which was once large and prosperous, that Pliny the Younger, while governor of Bithynia, wrote his celebrated letter to Trajan, in which he asked for instructions concerning the policy to be pursued regarding “the stubborn sect of Christians” who were then rapidly increasing in numbers and who, by refusing to offer sacrifices to the gods and by persistently avoiding all pagan rites and observances, had made themselves specially obnoxious to Roman officialdom. This letter[82] is remarkable as being one of the first notices in Roman writers respecting the members of that incipient Church which was eventually to become mistress of the capital of Cæsars.

In Ottoman history Brusa is notable for having been the capital of Orkhan, the second ruler of the Osmanlis and for having long been the favorite resort of Moslem scholars, artists, poets, and dervishes who enjoyed a great reputation among their coreligionists for their reputed sanctity. And even after the transfer of the Ottoman capital to Adrianople and subsequently to Constantinople, Brusa continued to be one of the sacred cities of the Mohammedans. For here were buried the first six Osmanli sovereigns besides more than a score of Ottoman princes and here “more than five hundred pashas, theologians, teachers, and poets sleep their last sleep around their first Padishas.” Among the turbehs which particularly impressed me was that of the Serbian princess who, although the wife of a Sultan, was able to preserve untainted the religion of her Christian parents. Here were erected numerous medresses—colleges—mosques and public buildings whose size and grandeur were for centuries a favorite theme of Moslem poets and historians. In beauty of design, richness of material, and exquisite finish some of the mosques—especially the renowned Green Mosque—are even to-day regarded as the most perfect specimens of Osmanli architecture.

Our visit to Brusa was most enjoyable and was an ideal introduction to our long journey through the Ottoman possessions in Asia. For in this old capital of the sultans we find more strikingly exhibited than in noisy, metropolitan Constantinople those dominant characteristics of most Asiatic cities—apathetic immobility, undisturbed quietude, and dreamy repose.

But before taking the train at Haidar Pasha we spent a day in wandering through Scutari and Kadi Keui which are just across the Bosphorus from Stamboul. Like Brusa both of these places—especially Scutari—are distinctively Oriental in character and are well worthy of a visit. Both of them, too, have played prominent roles in the long, historic past and, although they are now so overshadowed by the great city of Constantine, they, nevertheless, offer many attractions that are well worthy of the attention of the student and the historian.

Scutari was formerly known as Chrysopolis—the Golden City. Its special attractions for tourists are the Howling Dervishes, whose peculiar devotional exercises take place every Thursday, and the Great Cemetery which is celebrated as the largest and most beautiful Moslem of burying places. It is a great forest of cypress trees, more than three miles in length. Each grave has its tombstone, usually a very modest one. Some of the epitaphs I observed were very touching, especially those that terminated with a prayer that a Fatihah—the first chapter of the Koran—might be said for the soul of the deceased.

This chapter [writes Sale, the learned translator of the Koran] is a prayer and held in great veneration by the Mohammedans.... They esteem it as the quintessence of the whole Koran, and often repeat it in their devotions, both public and private, as the Christians do the Lord’s Prayer.[83]

It is an integral part of each of the five daily prayers which are said by every good Mussulman. It is, moreover, recited over the sick, at the conclusion of an action of importance, but it is, above all, the favorite prayer for the repose of the soul of the departed taking, in this respect, the place of the Catholic requiescat. As translated by Rodwell it reads:

Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds!

The compassionate, the merciful!

King on the day of reckoning!

Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help.

Guide Thou us on the straight path,

The path of those to whom Thou has been gracious;—with

Whom Thou art not angry, and who go not astray.

As we wandered along the pathways of this last resting place of so many myriads of Mohammedans—from Constantinople[84] as well as from Scutari—I was impressed by the number of men and women who were here absorbed in prayer for their dear departed,[85] or in tending the flowers which adorned the graves. These quiet mourners, with the countless turtledoves, which make their home in the branches of the funereal cypress trees and which seem to keep up continuously their subdued moan, give to this gloomy necropolis a solemnity and an impressiveness that are almost lacking in such ostentatious cities of the dead as Père Lachaise and the Campo Santo of Genoa.

A short drive from the Great Cemetery brings us to the modern town of Kadi Keui which, like Scutari, is also a part of the municipality of Constantinople. It was formerly known as Chalcedon and was founded seventeen years before Byzantium. By the oracle of Delphi it was designated as “the city of the blind,” because its founders were blind to the superior position of the tongue of land on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, on which the City of Constantinople now stands.

Like most other cities in this part of the world it has witnessed many vicissitudes and has been repeatedly captured and sacked by invading armies from both Asia and Europe. Famed in antiquity for its temple of Apollo and for having been the birthplace of Xenocrates, the most distinguished of Plato’s disciples, its temples and palaces, after its capture by the Ottomans, served the sultans as a stone quarry when they required building material for their mosques in Constantinople.

But, although not a vestige of Chalcedon’s former grandeur now remains, it will always be remembered as the city in which was held in 451 the fourth œcumenical council of the Church, in which was condemned the teaching of Eutyches and the Monophysites respecting the human and the divine nature in Christ. When I recalled the fact that this council, including the representatives of the absent bishops, was attended by six hundred and thirty bishops; that more than six hundred of these belonged to the Eastern Church, and remembered the very small number of the episcopate that is now found in this part of the world, it was easy to understand the present backward condition of civilization and culture in Asia Minor and Syria. What a change, indeed, since the days of those great doctors of the Oriental Church—the Cyrils, the Gregories, the Basils, the Ephrems, the Chrysostoms—whose learning and eloquence have from their time been the admiration and edification of the whole of Christendom.

A short distance to the north of Kadi Keui is the Haidar Pasha military hospital which was the scene of Florence Nightingale’s heroic labors during the Crimean War. The rooms which she occupied while here are still preserved intact and as I passed through them, I recalled Longfellow’s beautiful tribute to her in the verses:

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Philomena bore.[86]

It is but a few minutes’ walk from Florence Nightingale’s hospital to the Haidar Pasha railway station. On the way thither we passed through the well-kept British Cemetery where rest eight thousand British soldiers who died of wounds and disease during the Crimean War. The large granite obelisk here by Marochetti is a conspicuous object and is visible at a great distance. The Haidar Pasha station, the north-western terminus of the Anatolia[87] Railway was, before its partial destruction during the war, a most imposing building and compared favorably with the best of similar structures in Europe.

Shortly after we take a seat in a cozy corridor car our train swings towards the picturesque shore of the Marmora. From the window of our compartment we have the most lovely views of the Princes Islands, and of the quaint little fishing villages which sprinkle the eastern shore of the Marmora and which are so perfectly mirrored in its placid waters. For hours, as our train moves alternately along the verge of lofty cliffs and near the level of the emerald expanse of the Propontis, we have a succession of panoramas that are scarcely less fascinating than those seen along the famous driveway between Sorrento and Amalfi.

The dancing waves of the Marmora, as they gently lap along its curving shore, are as soothing as a lullaby to a cradled child. And all the while they are murmuring the same old story that greeted the ears of the seafaring Megarians as they passed by nearly three thousand years ago and which reached the crews of the trim Venetian argosies whose arms proudly floated on their flags and pennants as they conveyed the treasures of India and China from the ports of the Euxine to the gem-blue haven of the peerless Queen of the Adriatic. The noonday sun, playing over the rippling waters, changes them in rapid succession from the delicate color of the lapis lazuli to the scintillating iridescence of the opal.

Along the coast line one contemplates with ever-increasing delight countless views of entrancing beauty and interest—gray moss-covered rocks which are ever of tender loveliness and reposeful silence; trembling vines and waving figs and olives and oranges; picturesque adobe cottages adorned with graceful creepers; romping children who make the air ring with their joyous shouts; men and women in the most colorful garbs quietly performing their daily tasks and all the while completely immune from the feverish haste that so distracts the toiling millions of Europe and America and converts their life into a long and troubled nightmare. The secret is that the normal Osmanli peasant is satisfied with little. Permit him to cultivate his small plot of ground in peace and to remain undisturbed in the bosom of his family and he is perfectly happy. Under such conditions he would find nothing to envy even in the lot of the denizens of the Happy Valley.

On our arrival at Ismid we were reminded that we were traveling over classic ground. For this small Turkish town was under the Roman Empire one of the largest cities in Asia Minor. It was here that Diocletian had his seat of Government; it was here that he began his sanguinary persecutions against the Christians and it was here that he abdicated the throne. It was in his imperial villa near here that death claimed Constantine the Great and it was in a neighboring castle that Hannibal committed suicide. And Nicomedia was the birthplace of Arrian, the illustrious disciple of Epictetus, who, from notes of his master’s lectures, prepared the famed Discourses of Epictetus. He also wrote the scarcely less celebrated Anabasis of Alexander the Great.

Our first stop, however, was at the little town of Lefke where we found waiting for us an araba which we had ordered the day previously to take us to Isnik—about four hours’ drive from the railroad—which is but a small village of mud houses, but which during Roman and Byzantine times was, under the name of Nicæa, the rival of Nicomedia. Even while in the possession of the Sultans of Rum it was as a center of art, poetry, and science scarcely less renowned than Cordova and Bagdad. And while Constantinople was in the possession of the Latins, after its capture by the Crusaders, Nicæa served as the temporary capital of the Byzantine Empire.

There are few places in Anatolia which make a stronger appeal to the student than the ancient city of Nicæa. Its ivy and fern-covered ruins, walls, baths, theaters, churches, mosques, towers, gates, aqueducts, sarcophagi, bas-reliefs, and inscriptions of all kinds are in the highest degree interesting and offer a mine of most precious material for the antiquary or the historian.

To us Nicæa was a

Relic of nobler days and noblest arts,

and, as we wandered among the ruin-covered streets of the once famous city, we seemed to hear the monitory words

Lightly tread, ’tis hallowed ground.

But my object in visiting this famous place was not knowledge so much as impressions. I was attracted thither by the same magnet that drew me to Troy and Chalcedon. I wished to get the local color and secure a local picture of a place which has filled an important page in history and which for centuries was the goal of contending armies—Asiatics and Europeans, Moslems and Christians. But the predominant reason for my visit to this scene of ruins was the fact that it had been a witness of two of the Church’s most noted œcumenical councils.

The first council which was held here in 325 was likewise the first General Council of the Church. It is noted for its condemnation of Arianism and for the formation of the Nicene Creed which, as subsequently amplified by the Council of Constantinople, has ever since been the symbol of faith used not only by the Catholic Church but also by those Eastern Churches which are no longer in communion with Rome and by many of the Protestant Churches as well.

In the second council of Nicæa, which was the seventh of the Church’s general councils and which convened in 787, was condemned the doctrine of the Iconoclasts, which so long agitated the Eastern Church and which was the cause of so many relentless persecutions throughout the whole of the Byzantine Empire. Even Moslems, who regard every kind of representation of the human form as an execrable idol, could not have been more fanatical and pitiless in their dealings with anti-Iconoclasts than were Leo the Isaurian, who was suspected of favoring Islamism, and his son Constantine Copronymus. During their reigns, not to speak of those of several of their successors, the churches of the Byzantine Empire were as bare of images and statues as were the mosques of Medina and Damascus.[88]

By a peculiar combination of events it fell to the lot of two women—the Empresses Irene and Theodora—to undo the work of the Iconoclastic emperors and to put a stop to the persecutions which had caused the exile, the imprisonment, or the death of countless numbers of the noblest men and women of the empire, whose only offense was fidelity to the faith of their fathers.

Few things in Anatolia are more competent to awaken memories of the past glories of Asia Minor than a visit to the spot that on two momentous occasions witnessed the assemblage of hundreds of bishops from both the Orient and the Occident. What a contrast between the present condition of Nicæa and that at the time when the assembled fathers subscribed to that creed which has ever since been accepted as the symbol of faith of nearly the whole of Christendom!

In Asia Minor alone there were, in the fifth century, no fewer than four hundred and fifty episcopal sees. And an imperial law was enacted that every city should have its own bishop—unaquœque civitas proprium episcopum habeto.[89] But what a change has come over this once flourishing portion of the Christian Church. The famous cities—Nicæa, Chalcedon, and Ephesus—in which four general councils were held and which in Roman times were all capitals of provinces—have long since been reduced to ruins. So completely, indeed, had Ephesus disappeared from sight that little was known even about its topography until the Austrian Archæological Institute began its excavations there but little more than two decades ago.

And so it is throughout the length and the breadth of Anatolia.[90] Great and popular cities, which, in the heyday of the Roman Empire were noted for their splendid temples, baths, gymnasia, colonnades, Greek theaters, and Roman amphitheaters, which were all graced by masterpieces of art in marble and bronze—frequently replicas of matchless Greek originals—are now either entirely deserted or tenanted by a few nomadic shepherds or poor tillers of the soil whose only homes are small mud hovels that barely protect them from the elements.

Cicero’s lament over the desolate cities of Greece may everywhere be reëchoed by the traveler in ruin-covered Anatolia. This is particularly true of that part of the country once known as Ionia. In literature, art, history, philosophy, she long vied with Attica herself. For, among her distinguished sons are Homer Anacreon of Teos, Mimnermus, Apelles, Parrhasius and Herodotus, the Father of History. And in her once flourishing capital, Miletus, whose site is now occupied by the fever-stricken village of Palatia, lived that galaxy of philosophers—Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Here the geographers, Hecatæus and Aristagoras planned the earliest known charts. Here, too, was the birthplace of the rarely gifted Aspasia whose home in Athens, after she became the wife of Pericles, is celebrated in history as the first and most famous salon the world has ever known.[91]

In Ionia originated that brilliant and highly intellectual society which a French writer has happily named le printemps de la Grèce.

For even in the face of recent discoveries in Sparta [writes a distinguished Orientalist], it may be said without hesitation that the Greeks of western Asia Minor produced the first full-bloom of what we call pure Hellenism, that is a Greek civilization come to full consciousness of itself and destined to attain the highest possibilities of the Hellenic genius. Whatever its claim to absolute priority in culture, however, the Ionian section of the Hellenic race from the accident of geographical position served more than any other for a vital link between East and West, and imposed its individual name on Oriental terminology as the designation of the whole Greek people. All who follow the development of free social institutions must regard with peculiar interest the land where the city-State of Hellenic type first grew to adolescence. Students not only of literature, but of all the means of communication between man and man, know that it was in Ionia that the alphabet took the final shape in which the Greeks were to carry it about the civilized world. And who that belongs to, or cares for, the republic of art would ignore that “bel elan de génie duquel est né la statuaire attique”?[92]

Nor were the islands which fringed Ionia less prolific in famous men and women than was the mainland. Suffice it to mention Cos, where Hippocrates, the oracle of physicians and “The Father of Medicine,” first saw the light of day and Lesbos, the birthplace of Alcæus and Sappho, the first of whom stands in the forefront of Greek lyric poets, while the second enjoyed the unique distinction of being called “The Poetess” as Homer was called “The Poet.”

But where Homer, Sappho, and Alcæus lived and labored and where once their immortal works were used as textbooks in the schools of Asia Minor; where Zeuxis and Appelles and Parrhasius were surrounded by crowds of admiring pupils; where Hippocrates and Galen of Pergamon, long the supreme authorities in medical science, were born; where Hipparchus of Nicæa, founder of scientific astronomy, first became famous; where Aristarchus of Samothrace, the most celebrated critic and grammarian of antiquity, began his brilliant career, there is now little more than an intellectual wilderness and but scant knowledge even of the names of those who were once the glory of Hellas, as well as of Anatolia. The erstwhile homes of art, science, and literature in Asia Minor have shared the same fate as Olympia, Carthage, and Syracuse. Only a few broken columns and mutilated statues remain of what were once the great cultural centers of the ancient world.

How often does not the explorer in Anatolia unexpectedly come upon a dead city on a mountain slope or in a hidden hollow, which was abandoned a thousand years ago, whose streets are choked with brushwood, whose palaces and theaters are covered with a tangle of vegetation, whose marble tombs are hidden by brambles, where the only human being ever seen is a wandering shepherd who is absolutely indifferent to these marvelous vestiges of a marvelous past?

And what traveler in Anatolia has not frequently seen mutilated columns and statues built into walls and houses, and beautifully carved friezes and capitals put to the most ignoble uses? Nor is this all. Everywhere in this land of countless Pompeis untold treasures of the most delicately chiseled marbles have been cast into lime kilns—marbles which in the days of the art-loving Greeks and Romans were above price and which, for generations, were the pride of the cities which they embellished and the chief adornment of the superb structures of which they formed a part.

But, if the ruins of Anatolia awake memories of the former grandeur of cities which were once renowned centers of art, science, and letters, they likewise carry us back to the days when the Osmanli chieftains became the heirs of the Eastern Cæsars and when they gained the mastery of that portion of the world which from the dawn of history has transcended all others in human interest; the territory in which were located the proud cities of Tyre and Sidon, Nineveh, Babylon, Thebes, and Memphis, Athens, Carthage, and Alexandria; the lands which witnessed the decisive battles of Greek against Asiatic—Græcia barbariæ lento collisa duello—Salamis, Platæa, Marathon, Arbela; the regions, in a word, in which was enacted nearly all of what is embraced in the term “Ancient History.”

The cradle of the Osmanlis was the small village of Sugut about a day’s ride on horseback to the south of Nicæa and about the same distance to the east of the Mysian Olympus. For it was here that Osman, the founder of the Osmanli dynasty, first saw in 1258 the light of day. The first thirty years of his life was that of a village chieftain of a pastoral community, who lived in peace among his neighbors and whose fighting men did not number more than four hundred. He was then fired with the ambition to extend his boundaries and at the end of ten years he found himself at the head of four thousand warriors and in direct contact with the decadent and moribund Byzantine Empire.

When Osman died in 1326 his emirate of Sugut had been extended to the Marmora and the Euxine and included in the conquered territory the important cities of Brusa, Nicomedia, and Nicæa. This was the beginning of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. The same emir of Sugut was also the founder of a dynasty whose male succession has endured uninterruptedly for more than six centuries and the first ruler of a people in which there is so complete a blending of Asiatic and European blood that they have been called a distinct race.

No other dynasty can boast such a succession of brilliant sovereigns as those who conducted the Ottomans to the height of renown in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. First there was Osman, the originator of a race, next came his son Orkhan, the founder of a state, and then Osman’s grandson, the creator of an empire. These founders of an empire were succeeded by Bayazid who, on account of his rapid movements, was called Ilderim—lightning; Mohammed, who retrieved the losses inflicted by Timur; Murad II, the antagonist of Hunyady and Skanderberg; Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople; Selim I, who annexed Kurdistan, Syria, and Egypt, and Solyman the Magnificent, the victor on the field of Mohacs and the besieger of Vienna. Never did eight such sovereigns succeed one another—save for the feeble Bayazid II—in unbroken succession in any other country; never was an empire founded and extended during two so splendid centuries by such a series of great rulers. In the hour of dismay, as well as in the moment of triumph, the Turkish Sultan was master of the situation.[93]

But not only were the Ottoman Emirs and Sultans of this period eminent as rulers and empire builders. With few exceptions, they, as well as many of their successors, possessed, like Napoleon, the rare faculty of choosing the right men for the right place. This is especially noteworthy in their choice of generals, admirals, and grand viziers who were selected for the high positions, which they filled with such distinction, without regard to their nationality or accidents of birth. Among them were Jews and eunuchs, Greek and Italian, German and Polish renegades.[94] There was the Italian Cicala, the victor of Karestes; the German Mehemet Sli, son of a Magdeburg musician, who commanded the main army in Bulgaria; Omar who from a Croatian clerk became the leader of the Turkish army in the Crimea. Chief among the great admirals were the Italian Ululj Ali, the Greeks Kheyr-ed-din and Urug Barbarossa from the island of Lesbos; Piali Pasha, from Croatia. It was chiefly through the aid of the last three that Solyman the Magnificent, was able to secure control of the Mediterranean and the Arab states of Northern Africa and to extend his devastating raids not only to the coasts of Italy, France, and Spain but even beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, to waylay the argosies which were returning to Cadix laden with the gold and jewels of the Indians.[95]

But more distinguished than the Sultan’s noted generals and his corsair admirals was the long series of men who occupied the Grand Vizierate. The most famous of these were the Abyssinian eunuch Bashir; the renegade Jew, Kiamil Pasha; the Herzegovinan, Mohammed Sokalovich; the Albanian, Mohammed, Kiuprili, who, from a kitchen-boy in the Sultan’s palace, became the most noted grand vizier that ever ruled the great Ottoman Empire. He was succeeded in the Grand Vizierate by his son Ahmed who, as a statesman, was scarcely less celebrated than his father. A short interval after Ahmed’s death, Mustafa Kiuprili, a second son of Mohammed became grand vizier and his rule was marked by the same consummate statesmanship that so distinguished the rule of his father and brother. Their rise is especially interesting for, as observes Von Hammer, “the history of the empires of the Orient offers only four instances of members of the same family succeeding one another in the dignity of the Grand Vizierate.”[96]

In this brief reference to the men who achieved such distinction in building up and extending the Ottoman Empire, we must not forget the women who played so important a rôle in the history of Turkish politics and statecraft. Three of the most notable of these were the Muscovite Roxalana, who passed from a public slave market to the imperial harem to become the wife of Solyman the Magnificent, the greatest of the Ottoman Sultans; the Venetian Safia who at an early age was abducted from her home on the Grand Canal, taken to Constantinople and sold to the Sultan Murad III, by whom she had a son who, after his father’s death, became Sultan Mohammed III; Aimée Dubuc de Rivery, who, like the Empress Josephine, was born in the little island of Martinique and who, in her youth, was an intimate of the future consort of Napoleon Bonaparte, but who eventually fell into the hands of Algerian pirates by whom she was sold in the slave market of Algiers. Thence she was conveyed to Constantinople as a present to the Sultan, Abdul Hamid I, to whom she bore a son who became Mahmud II, the grandfather of the late Abdul Hamid II.

By their beauty, wit, and fascinating manners these three women gained an unbounded influence over the Sultans with whom their lives were cast and, what is more remarkable, they were able, notwithstanding their numerous antagonists in the harem, to retain their ascendancy in the affections of their lords long after the season of youth and beauty had passed. In overweening ambition, diplomatic finesse, unfailing resourcefulness in high resolve, in achieving success in the face of the greatest obstacles, these three Christian captives were worthy rivals of their more fortunate sisters of the West—Bianca Capello, Catherine de’ Medici, and the Marquise de Pompadour.

From the preceding pages, it is clear, as Freeman points out that,[97]

the institution of the tribute children was the very keystone of the Ottoman dominion. They won the empire for the Turk and they kept it for him.... During the most brilliant days of Ottoman greatness the native Turks were well-nigh brought down to the condition of a subject caste. Manumitted bondmen from the East, voluntary renegades from the West, Greek and Slavonic tribute-children directed the councils and commanded the armies of the Sultans. A Grand Vizier or a Captain Pasha born in the faith of Islam was indeed noted as a portent. Never did the craft and subtlety of devil or man devise such a tremendous engine of tyranny. The chains of the conquered nations were riveted by their own hands. Their best blood was drawn away to provide against any degeneracy in the blood of their conquerors. Their strongest and fairest children, the most vigorous frames and the most precocious intellects, those whom nature had marked out as chiefs and liberators of their own race, were carried off to become the special instruments of their degradation. This fearful institution, combined with the possession of Constantinople, and with the marvelous hereditary greatness of the ruling family, preserved the House of Othman from the common fate of Oriental dynasties.

According to a long prevalent opinion, the Osmanlis are a Turkish race who achieved the conquest of Asia Minor before they invaded Europe and before they became masters of the Byzantine Empire. The fact is they had subjugated the entire Balkan peninsula before they obtained possession of more than the northwest corner of Anatolia, and had maintained Adrianople as the Ottoman capital eighty-seven years before Mohammed II, after the conquest of Constantinople, transferred it to its present location on the Bosphorus.

Nor were the Osmanlis, even in their earliest days, composed entirely, as is so often asserted, of Turkish nomads from the East. Far from it. They were welded from the heterogeneous elements—Greeks, Carians, Phrygians, Galatians, the followers of Osman, and other peoples who then inhabited the north-western part of Asia Minor. And, as early as the reign of Orkhan, the son and successor of Osman, this complex blending of peoples became not only a distinct race but a race with a national consciousness.

So far are the Osmanlis from regarding themselves as heirs of the Seljukian Turks or as transformed Turkomans that they have always endeavored to remove this erroneous impression which has so long prevailed concerning their people. The distinguished historian, Mouradja d’ Ohsson, declares:

The Osmanlis employ the word “Turk” when referring to a coarse and brutal man. According to the Osmanlis, the epithet Turk belongs only to the peoples of Turkestan and to those vagabond hordes who lead a stagnant life in the deserts of Khorassan. All the peoples submitted to the Empire are designated under the collective name of Osmanlis from Osman I, the founder of the Monarchy, and they do not understand why they are called Turks by Europeans. As they attach to this word the idea of the most marked insult, no foreigner in the Empire ever allows himself to use it in speaking to them.[98]

The Osmanlis, as we have seen, were of mixed blood, even while still confined to Asia Minor. But after their conquests in Europe and further expansion in Asia they “became in blood the most cosmopolitan and vigorous race the world had known since the days of the Greeks and Romans. Greek, Turkish, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Armenian, Wallachian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian, Tartar, Mongol, Circassian, Georgian, Persian, Syrian, Arabian—this was the ancestry of the Osmanlis, who, under Solyman the Magnificent, made the whole world tremble. In richness of blood the only parallel to the Osmanlis in modern times is the present population of the United States and Canada.”[99] It would, indeed, require an ethnological analyst of superhuman power to determine the percentage of Osmanli blood in the present inhabitants of the western part of the Ottoman Empire.[100]

Nor is this all. From the day of Orkhan and Murad I, the Osmanlis have been classed as raiders like the devastating hordes of Timur and Genghis Khan. Nothing could be farther from the truth. So far indeed were they from being a predatory people like the Mongols and Tartars that they were, from the days of their founder, a race of colonists and empire builders. This was the secret of their success and the explanation of the marvelous development of the Empire of the Sultans, which, as the eminent Austrian historian, Joseph Von Hammer-Purgstall, has declared “was more rapid in its rise than Rome, more enduring than that of Alexander.”

The causes which contributed to the rapid development of the Osmanlis from the four hundred warriors of Osman into the vast armies of his successors and to the achievement of such extraordinary results in so short a period of time were, as the historian Finlay points out, “in some degree similar to those which had enabled small tribes of Goths and Germans to occupy and subdue the Western Roman Empire.”[101]

But there were other contributory causes which enabled the Osmanlis so quickly to become masters of the Byzantine Empire and to make themselves a menace to the whole of Europe. Chief among these were the conflicting ambitions of numerous aspirants to the Byzantine throne and the rivalries of the petty chieftains of the Balkan Peninsula and the commercial jealousies of Venice and Genoa. All these purely secular aims made anything like joint action against the followers of the Crescent quite impossible.

It was Cantacuzenos, a traitor to his empress, the widow of Andronicus II, who introduced the Osmanlis into Europe. After usurping the Byzantine throne, he gave his daughter, Theodora, in marriage to the emir Orkhan in exchange for six thousand soldiers to aid him in his struggle against his legitimate sovereign. By his infamous betrayal of his empress and country he contributed more than any single factor to the ultimate downfall of the Byzantine Empire.

It was the despot Theodore Paleologus who invited the Osmanlis into Greece to support him in his contest with the Greeks and the Franks. It was the Serbian prince Stephen Bukcovitz who formed an alliance with the emir Bayazid to whom he gave his sister as wife and for whom he commanded a contingent in the Ottoman Army—even against his coreligionists. When the Osmanli forces, after their signal defeat by Timur at Angora, were faced with annihilation at the hands of the victorious Tartars, it was the Greeks, Genoese, and Venetians who saved them from destruction by transporting them across the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to Europe where their relentless pursuers were unable to follow them.

But these are only a few instances of the aid which the Ottoman conquerors received from the Christian nations of Europe. “In their conquest of the Balkan peninsula it is remarkable,” declares a recent writer, “that the Osmanlis never fought a battle without the help of allies of the faith and blood of those whom they were putting under the Moslem yoke.”[102] The victories of Bayazid in the region of the Danube were largely due to the coöperation of his Christian vassals. And in his invasion of Hungary he was more beholden to the Wallachians than to his famed corps of Janissaries.[103]

Yet more. For, contrary to a common opinion, he received no assistance whatever from Saracens or Persians, for the simple reason that these peoples did not join forces with the Ottomans until a much later date.

The Osmanlis did not cross the Taurus until more than a century after they had passed the Balkans and did not become “masters of Asia Minor until long after their inheritance of the Byzantine Empire was regarded in Europe as a fait accompli.”[104]

And it is equally true that “whatever they accomplished in Asia was the indirect result of their stupendous successes in Europe. From first to last the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over the Moslems of Asia was by means of a soldiery gathered and war-hardened in Europe, themselves Christian or of Christian ancestry, in whose veins ran the blood of Greek and Roman, of Goth and Hun, of Albanian and Slav.”[105]

Besides the causes just enumerated, there were others of quite a different nature that made for the phenomenal military achievements of Osmanlis in Asia Minor and in the Balkans. They were the same causes which had so greatly favored the ready submission of the peoples of Syria and northern Africa and which had so potently contributed towards the rapid diffusion of Islam in all countries which bordered the eastern and southern Mediterranean. The Byzantine Empire had long been afflicted by incompetent and decadent rulers. The tyranny and the vexations of exarchs had become intolerable. The people were overburdened with taxes and their property was in a large measure confiscated. Under such conditions the Saracens and the Ottomans came as liberators to the long-suffering, down-trodden populations. By embracing Islam, the Christians of the Orient were relieved from the oppressive taxes of Byzantium and entered again into the possession of their sequestrated property. Even when they refused to accept the Koran they recovered their lands by the payment of a moderate capitation tax and were thus enabled to live under the protection of Moslem law which took no notice of the religious controversies of rival Christian sects. This liberal policy of Islam towards its Christian subjects—a policy which safeguarded their persons and property—following as it did on the heels of the odious tyranny of the Lower Empire—was an important factor in the marvelously rapid extension of Islam and in the easy domination of the conquering Ottomans and Saracens. In Asia Minor, particularly, Mohammedanism achieved an easy triumph because it was opposed to Byzantine despotism which was the object of universal execration.

But nothing, probably, contributed more towards the rapid conquest of the Osmanlis than their spirit of tolerance in matters of religion. This will, I know, seem strange to those who, from their youth, have listened to the story of the atrocities of that mythical personage, “the Moslem warrior with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other.”

But [writes one who has made a special study of the subject], whether their tolerance was actuated by policy, by genuine kindly feeling, or by indifference, the fact cannot be gainsaid that the Osmanlis were the first nation in modern history to lay down the principle of religious freedom as the cornerstone in the building up of their nation. During the centuries that bear the stain of unremitting persecution of the Jew [in western Europe] the Christian and the Moslem lived together in harmony under the Osmanlis.[106]

To one who is familiar with the teachings of the Koran and the policy of Islam since the days of Mohammed there is nothing surprising in this tolerance and religious freedom which Osmanlis and Moslems have always accorded their Christian subjects. “Let there be no compulsion in religion,”[107] declares the Prophet, and again it is written, “Wilt thou compel men to become believers? No soul can believe but by the permission of God.”[108]

Nor were these and numerous other declarations of the Koran of similar import ever ignored by the leaders of Islam in their dealings with their non-Moslem subjects. There have been, it is true, frequent outbursts of fanaticism, even of persecution among Mohammedans, which resulted in much suffering on the part of the Christian population and in putting in force against them very intolerant measures. But the persecutions and harsh ordinances were not so much the result of religious antagonism as of political conditions at the time. Not a few of them are traceable to a distrust of the loyalty of Christians towards their Moslem rulers or to the intrigues of Christian nations like Russia whose secret emissaries have been responsible for so much of the agitation in Asia Minor for generations past. Others again may be traced to the bad faith of certain European powers in their dealings with Moslem rulers, or to the “harsh and insolent behavior of Christian officials” in the service of Mohammedan sovereigns.[109]

Neglected as the Eastern Christians have been by their Christian brethren in the West, unarmed for the most part and utterly defenceless, it would have been easy for any of the powerful rulers of Islam to have utterly rooted out their Christian subjects or banished them from their dominions as the Spaniards did the Moors, or the English the Jews, for nearly four centuries. It would have been perfectly possible for Selim I (in 1514) or Ibrahim (in 1646) to have put into execution the barbarous notion they conceived of exterminating their Christian subjects, just as the former had massacred forty thousand Shiahs with the aim of establishing uniformity of religious belief among his Mohammedan subjects. The muftis who turned the minds of their masters from such a cruel purpose did so as the exponents of Muslim law and Muslim tolerance.[110]

“The very survival,” therefore, “of the Christian Churches to the present day, is,” as the same author pertinently observes, “a strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of the Mohammedan governments towards them.”[111]

Ecclesiastical writers of the epoch of the Mohammedan conquest give still another explanation of the rapid progress of Moslem armies, which was quite in accord with the spirit of the time. God wished, they declared, to chastize the Christians for their infidelity and to compel them to do penance for their manifold heresies. In their view it was not the astounding conquests of the Mussulmans that led to the apostasy of such vast numbers of Christians. It was rather the numerous and widespread defections of heretical churches which rendered the conquest of Islam so easy that it surprised the victors as much as the vanquished. Moslem arms, then, according to these writers were but an instrument of divine vengeance, or, as one of them expressed it, peccatis exigentibus victi sunt Christiani.[112]

As one traverses the small territory which was the cradle of the Osmanlis and reflects that the people to whom the insignificant emir of Sugut gave his name were, from their first appearance in history, almost within sight of the City of Constantine, one cannot help admiring their marvelous transformation from retainers of a village chieftain to heirs of the empire of the Cæsars, to masters of vast territories in Asia, Africa, and Europe.[113] From the humblest beginnings they gradually became a people who can boast of the longest continued dynasty in Europe; and who can point in their early history to a rare series of brilliant rulers and a line of sovereigns who have occupied a throne which has been immovable from the days of Mohammed the Conqueror, nearly five centuries ago, and which, notwithstanding menaces from many quarters, seems destined to remain immovable for many long generations to come.

CHAPTER VI
HOME LIFE OF THE OSMANLIS IN ANATOLIA

Truths can never be confirmed enough,

Though doubts did ever sleep.

Shakespeare “Pericles” V. I.

No part of Asia Minor possesses greater interest for the traveler of a studious turn than that which borders the Anatolian Railroads. And this, as the historian well knows, is saying much indeed. For from time immemorial the peninsula of Asia Minor has been the great battlefield between the Orient and the Occident. Topographically it is like a great bridge over which, as has been well said, “the religion, art and civilization of the East found their way into Greece; and the civilization of Greece, under the guidance of Alexander the Macedonian, passed back again across the same bridge to conquer the East and revolutionize Asia as far as the heart of India. Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, have all followed the same route in the many attempts that Asia has made to subdue the West.”[114]

It is the bridge over which passed the famed “Royal Road,” so graphically described by Herodotus, which extended from Ephesus on the Ægean Sea to far-off Susa in southern Persia. To make the journey between these two cities required, according to the same historian, no less than ninety days. And it was the bridge over which the Christian pilgrims were wont to pass on their way from Europe to the Holy Land, and the bridge also which was crossed by the Crusaders under Godefroy de Bouillon, Louis VII of France, and Frederic Barbarossa when they sought to recover Jerusalem from the Mohammedans.

The course of the Anatolian Railroad is, for the most part, the same as that of a great military highway in Roman and Byzantine times from Nicæa to Dorylæum. And the scenery along it, especially between Ismid and Eski-Shehr, is often of rare beauty and grandeur. In places it is much like that of southern Colorado and northern California. There is the same succession of smiling landscapes—emerald valleys dotted with modest homesteads, broad stretches of meadow land sprinkled with sleek herds and happy flocks, noble forests of oak and pine, walnut and sycamore. In some localities the vegetation is almost of tropical luxuriance and the road is fringed by a wild tangle of bramble and brushwood tapestried with clematis and ivy and woodbine in a flaming setting of dog-rose and azalea.

As we approach Bilejik eastward of the snow-capped Mysian Olympus the character of the scenery completely changes. The grade of the road rapidly increases and as we pass along gorges and cañyons, through tunnels and over bridges and describe innumerable curves we realize that we are ascending the famed table-land of Anatolia and are nearing Sugut, the earliest home of the Ottoman Turks.

Eski-Shehr, from which a branch of the Anatolian Railroad runs to Angora, the ancient Ancyra, is a flourishing town and, thanks to its finely equipped railway shops, is the home of a large number of railway employees and their families. Before the world war an excellent school for the benefit of the children of the employees was established here and was well attended. It was conducted on the German system and instruction was given in German. Among the languages taught, besides German, were Greek, French, Turkish, and Armenian. The town is noted for being the chief center of the world’s supply of meerschaum, a commodity from which the Turkish Government derives a handsome revenue. From Eski-Shehr we went to Afium-Kara-Hissar, from which great quantities of opium are annually shipped, and thence to Konia, anciently Iconium, which is the western terminus of the Bagdad Railway.

But more interesting far than its scenic attractions and its historic ruins, its railroads and various industries, are the people of Anatolia. And by the people I mean not the foreign element—the Greeks, Armenians, Circassians, and others, so conspicuous in Smyrna and Constantinople—but the Osmanlis. For it is not in the large cities of Turkey, where there is always such a heterogeneous population, that the Ottoman is found at his best but in the small towns and villages of the interior of the country and particularly in that portion of the Ottoman Empire which formerly constituted the emirates of Osman and Orkhan.

No people in the world, it is safe to say, have ever been more misunderstood or more misrepresented than the Osmanlis. For generations they have been regarded as a nation guilty of every crime and steeped in every vice. But since the Bulgarian agitation, in 1876, when Carlyle wrote “the unspeakable Turk should be immediately struck out of the question, and the country left to honest European guidance,” the Osmanlis have been treated as a nation of pariahs who had not to their credit a single redeeming feature.

They have been denounced as cruel, bloodthirsty, treacherous, dishonest, intolerant, and fanatical in the extreme. They have been pilloried as a nation of gross voluptuaries totally devoid of all moral sense and incapable of any noble sentiment and generous action. They have been stigmatized as a cancer on the body of humanity that should be dealt with in the most drastic manner by the Great Powers of Europe. Gladstone expressed public opinion when, speaking on the Eastern Question, he said, “Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying away themselves.... One and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.”

But what is the truth about the Osmanlis? Are they the vile and abominable people which Carlyle’s epithet would indicate? And are the Christian nations of Europe justified in adopting towards them what the English Conservatives aptly termed “Gladstone’s bag and baggage policy”?

Let us see.

First of all it may be premised that most of the above indictments against the Turks have been made by people who have little or no personal knowledge of them, or by people who have been governed by passion or prejudice or have been actuated by selfish or political motives. And, secondly, it may be asserted as a fact that cannot be gainsaid that those who have lived among the Turks any length of time and have had an opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with them find them to be thoroughly good, gentle, brave, and loyal to the core. And the longer one lives among them and the better one knows them the greater is one’s admiration for them. This is especially true of the real Turk—the Osmanli—particularly those of the peasant and bourgeois class in Anatolia. These are as honest and upright as they are temperate, pious, and religious.

The piety and the devotion of the Moslems, their gravity and solemnity and reverential attitude during prayer, whether in the mosque or elsewhere, are of such character as to make a deep impression on even the least religious. “I have never entered a mosque,” writes Renan, “without a deep emotion, and—shall I say it?—without a certain regret at not being a Mussulman.”[115]

This devout character of the Mohammedans which so profoundly impressed Renan, appealed with equal force to the poet who wrote:

Most honor to the men of prayer,
Whose mosque is in them everywhere!
Who amid revel’s wildest din,
In war’s severest discipline,
On rolling deck, in thronged bazaar,
In stranger land, however far,
However different in their reach
Of thought, in manners, dress or speech,—
Will quietly their carpet spread,
To Mekkeh turn the humble head,
As if blind to all around,
And deaf to each resounding sound
In ritual language God adore,
In spirit to His presence soar,
And in the pauses of the prayer,
Rest, as if rapt in glory there.

Many, if not most of the erroneous notions which have been obtained respecting the Osmanlis have had their origin, at least in the minds of the great majority of people, in the ludicrous conceptions which have long been current regarding the harem life of these much maligned people. When a harem is referred to in Europe or America it is pictured as consisting of a swarthy, fierce, and sensual pasha, seated on a broad divan, garbed in richly embroidered robes, armed with a highly ornate scimitar, and contentedly smoking his narghile while his ever-youthful wives are entertaining him with music and dance and song.

Nothing could be more preposterous, or further from the reality. For monogamy and not polygamy is the rule in the Ottoman Empire especially in Anatolia, and always has been. The Koran does, indeed, permit polygamy but under such restrictions that a plurality of wives is confined to those who are able to make due provision for their support. And even among the wealthy monogamy is daily becoming more prevalent. Thus the late Sultan, Mohammed V, unlike some of his polygamous predecessors, had but a single wife and to her, also unlike his predecessors, he was legally married.

Indeed, so unpopular has polygamy become among enlightened Mussulmans that an eminent authority on the subject declares that “if Mohammedanism had a Pope and a Church, in a word, an authority always living and invested with the right to modify the precepts of the Koran, in order to adapt them to the needs of the age, it is almost certain that polygamy would already have disappeared.”[116]

Much of the prevailing misconception concerning the harem life in the Orient arises from the lamentable ignorance in our western lands regarding the true meaning of the word harem. To many who should know better it is synonymous with a place of debauchery, whereas, it is, on the contrary, the very opposite of this. Derived from the Arabic word harim, Turkish harem, it signifies anything forbidden or a sacred thing or place. Thus the part of a Moslem’s home which is assigned for the exclusive use of his wife and children, for their female servants and friends is called the harem. It is their sanctuary to which no males are admitted except the immediate members of the family. It may be but the half of a Bedouin “House of hair,” or the wing of a marble palace on the Bosphorus but it is still the harem—the sacred abode, the sanctum sanctorum, of the feminine members of the household and women visitors.[117]

In ordinary Ottoman houses the harem occupies the upper story and is the best and most commodious part of the building. The usual term employed to designate the wife’s apartment is haremlik, while that occupied by the husband—his reception room where he receives his male friends—is known as selamlik, and is generally on the ground floor. The women’s apartment is always recognized by its screened windows. The occupants of the haremlik can thus see everything in the immediate vicinity without being seen.

The name harem applies not only to the wife’s part of the home but also to the sections reserved for women on tram cars and steamers, and to the women’s waiting rooms in railway stations and women’s compartments on railway trains. The harem, thus understood, is an institution that has very much to recommend it. It secures its occupants a privacy which, in the estimation of Oriental women, more than counterbalances their apparent loss of liberty.

But, contrary to what is usually thought, the harem is not a Mohammedan institution. It long antedates Islam for, as archæological investigations in the Orient clearly evince, there were separate apartments for women in the buildings of ancient Persia, Assyria, and Babylonia.[118]

Nor do the inmates of the harem consider themselves as imprisoned in their houses like birds in a cage. Far from it. Mrs. Meer Ali, an English lady who married a Mohammedan gentleman and resided twelve years in Lucknow, India, clearly states the Oriental women’s view of harem life when she writes:

To ladies accustomed from infancy to confinement, this kind of life is by no means irksome. They have their employments and their amusements, and though these are not exactly to our tastes, nor suited to our mode of education, they are not the less relished by those for whom they were invented. They, perhaps, wonder equally at some of our modes of dissipating time and fancy we might spend it more profitably. Be that as it may, the Muslim ladies, with whom I have been long intimate, appear to me always happy, contented and satisfied with the seclusion to which they were born; they desire no other, and I have ceased to regret that they cannot be made partakers of that freedom of intercourse with the world we deem so essential to our happiness, since their health suffers nothing from that confinement by which they are preserved from a variety of snares and temptations; besides which they would deem it disgraceful in the highest degree to mix indiscriminately with men who are not relations. They are educated from infancy for retirement and they can have no wish that the custom should be changed which keeps them apart from the society of men who are not very nearly related to them. Female society is unlimited and they enjoy it without restraint.[119]

What has been said of the harem may also be asserted of the yashmak—the veil worn by most Oriental women, irrespective of race or creed. When women appear in public,—and they have great liberty in this respect, if properly veiled—this garb or the tcharchaff, possesses many advantages which Christian as well as Moslem women would be loath to forego. For like the latticed window of the harem it enables them to see without being seen and like the caliph of the story, they can freely move through a crowd without having their identity known. Furthermore, when enveloped in her ferijee—cloak—and yashmak, the person of the Oriental woman is as secure as in the harem and she is thus safeguarded against all the annoyances and insults to which her western sisters, especially those in the larger cities, are so frequently exposed. Some of the Ottoman suffragettes of Stamboul may envy the European women their gorgeous Parisian hats and gowns, but I am quite convinced that many western women would gladly exchange the creations of Worth and Redfern for the tcharchaff or for the ferijee and the yashmak, or for the bash-oordoo and the yeldirmee—which serve the same purpose—and all the immunities and privileges which these kinds of apparel secure to the wearer.

Again much has been said about the cruel treatment which Ottoman women have to endure from their husbands. To judge by the accounts of certain writers who substitute fancy for fact, the average Turkish husband is a Bluebeard who makes his wife’s life one continuous martyrdom. Such reports are as ill-founded as all the fantastic tales that have so long obtained credence respecting the harem and other matters pertaining to the everyday life of the Ottoman Turk. But, as in these things it is impossible for a man to obtain first-hand information, I shall quote from a woman who had exceptional opportunities of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the home life of the Osmanlis of Anatolia and whose conclusions, therefore, are of preponderant value.

This woman is Lady Ramsay, the gifted wife of Sir W. M. Ramsay, the distinguished archæologist of Aberdeen. Professor Ramsay whose investigations in Anatolia extend over a period of thirty-five years is probably the greatest living authority on the history of this part of Asia and on the manners and customs of its inhabitants. As Lady Ramsay frequently accompanied her husband on his expeditions which led him to very nook and corner of the country, she had absolutely unique opportunities for studying the home life of the Ottoman women of Asia Minor. As a result of her observations she does not hesitate to declare that “cases of brutality on the part of a man towards his wife are a hundred times commoner among the lower classes of this country”—Great Britain—“than they are in Turkey.”[120]

Such testimony coming from a witness so competent and so impartial should be conclusive. The reports to the contrary of men who have traveled in Anatolia are of no value whatever, for the simple reason that these men could not possibly get information at first hand. For the harem is everywhere absolutely barred to them, and what information they might get would necessarily be based on idle rumor and therefore quite valueless. Women, however, even when total strangers, are always hospitably received by their Ottoman sisters. And if they are able to speak the language of the country, they have little difficulty in becoming quite familiar with the everyday life of the people. But men, no matter how extensive their travels in Anatolia, will all be forced to confess with a noted English traveler—“throughout our journey, the female sex may be said not to have existed for us at all.”[121]

Much has been said about the divorce evil in Turkey. No doubt this does constitute a foul blot on the social system of Islam but it is not so bad as it is usually represented. The Koran safeguards the rights of the wife in many ways and public opinion is daily becoming more opposed to a man’s arbitrary repudiation of his wife. In spite, however, of the present facile dissolution of the marriage bond the frequency of divorce in Anatolia is far less than in many parts of the United States.

The Turkish wife [writes another English traveler who had spent many years in the Ottoman Empire] has been called a slave and a chattel. She is neither. Indeed her legal status is preferable to that of the majority of the wives in Europe and, until enactments of a comparatively recent date, the English was far more of a chattel than the Turkish wife who has always had absolute control of her property. The law allows her the free use and disposal of anything she may possess at the time of her marriage, or that she may inherit afterwards. She may distribute it during her life, or she may bequeath it to whom she chooses. In the eyes of the law she is a free agent. She may act independently of her husband, may sue in the courts or may be proceeded against without regard to him.[122]

The same author, in referring to the attachment of husband and wife for each other, declares that among the Turkish peasantry “one meets with Darby and Joan as frequently as in England.”[123]

“How far removed are we then,” asks an Ottoman gentleman, “from the seductive odalisques whose pictures, in the East, are only to be seen on biscuit tins.”[124]

But a stranger error than any yet referred to is that which asserts that the Ottomans and Mohammedans generally deny to women the possession of a soul as well as a future existence. How such an opinion originated or gained such wide acceptance is impossible to say. I have never known an Ottoman to hold such a view, and there is certainly no warrant for it in the Koran. And yet in an article on “Woman’s Place in the World,” written but a few years ago by a noted duchess in England, it is explicitly stated that Mohammedanism “consigns woman, as far as psychic qualities are concerned, to the level of beasts, forbidding her forever the hope of salvation.”[125]

A few quotations from the Koran will suffice to show how groundless is this statement. In the twentieth sura—chapter—we read:

O my servants—enter ye into Paradise, ye and your wives, with great joy.

Again the Koran declares:

But he who doeth good works—be it male or female—and believes, they shall enter into Paradise.

In the thirty-third sura it is written:

Verily the Moslems of either sex, and the true believers of either sex, and the devout men and the devout women, and the men of veracity and the women of veracity, and the patient men and the patient women, and the humble men and the humble women, and the almsgivers of either sex, and the men who fast and women who fast, and the chaste men and the chaste women, and those of either sex who remember God frequently, for them hath God prepared forgiveness and a great reward.

According to the teaching of Mohammed, all true Moslems are enjoined to pray for the dead—for the women as well as for the men. This, of itself, is sufficient evidence of Islamic belief in the future life for all mankind, irrespective of sex. There are, doubtless, in Turkey as elsewhere, men who deny immortality to women, but these are confined to that class of Moslems “who, having made shipwreck of their faith,” prefer to class themselves with the beasts of the field by denying that they themselves have souls.

Surprising as it may seem to some, no more beautiful tributes to women can be found than those given in the Koran, or in the Hadith which contains the traditional teachings of Mohammed. In one place the Prophet declares “the world and all things in it are valuable but more valuable than all is a virtuous woman”; in another he asserts that “women are the twin-halves of men.” Again, he tells his followers that “the son gains Paradise at the feet of the mother”; and yet again we have his truly remarkable statement that “Paradise is beneath the ground on which mothers walk.” Are not these amazing words to proceed from the lips of a seventh century Arabian?

One need spend but little time in Anatolia to find that the men among the Osmanlis are a most lovable people. What first impresses one is their good manners. Whether they live in a palace or a hovel they are always self-respecting, courteous, and dignified. In this respect they continually remind one of the people of Spain where courtesy is a national heritage. It was this striking characteristic of the Osmanli that led Bismarck to declare:

In the Orient the only gentleman is the Turk.[126]

Another national characteristic of the Osmanlis is cleanliness. Their homes, however humble, are as scrupulously swept and scrubbed as a Dutch dwelling place.[127] And the same may be said of their coffeehouses and restaurants. In this respect they are in marked contrast with those of the Greeks and Arabs.

Many writers have endeavored to account for the exceptional courtesy and cleanliness of the Osmanlis, but the reasons usually advanced are far from satisfactory. “Their religion,” writes Sir Edwin Pears, “inculcates cleanliness and sobriety; ... it has helped to diffuse courtesy and self-respect among its adherents.”[128]

If this were true it should hold good for the Moslems of Egypt and Morocco which, as all travelers in these countries know, is very often far from the case. When we shall be able to assign a reason for the matchless courtesy of the Castilian hidalgo or for the Dutch hausfrau’s singular love of cleanliness, we shall probably find an acceptable explanation of the seemingly innate courtesy and cleanliness of the Osmanlis of Anatolia.

And contrary to almost universal belief, the Osmanlis, both men and women are a people of very industrious habits. This is particularly true of those who make their living by tilling the soil and by tending their flocks and herds. So far as the men are concerned the traveler has ample evidence of their toilsome lives from the time he leaves the swift-flowing Bosphorus until he arrives at the foothills of the picturesque Taurus. As to the women they are, according to those who know them best, as laborious as the men. A competent witness, one who is himself an Ottoman, who was born and bred in Anatolia and whose testimony regarding the domestic life of his countrymen bears the clearest impress of truth, is the clever and entertaining Halil Halid who, having spent many years in England, writes English as a native.

Speaking of his countrywomen he declares:

No qualities are so much sought after in average marriageable women as the domestic ones. In the provinces the peasant women, besides managing their humble domestic affairs, have to work in the fields, more especially when their brothers and husbands are away discharging their compulsory military service. The daughters of well-to-do people, besides attending to the business of their households, are indefatigable with their needles and are always busy with needle work or embroidery.[129]

It will be understood from the details I have given [he continues], that the popular notion prevailing in this country of the harem and the life of the harem is much mistaken. Women in Turkish harems do not really pass their time in lying on sofas or couches eating sweetmeats and smoking water-pipes all the day long. Of course, they are as fond of sweet-stuffs as most ladies of this country. But to lie down on a couch in the presence of others is considered by Turkish women vulgarity of the most disgraceful kind.

The representations of harem life given in books and on the stage or shown in exhibitions, is either the work of Turkey’s detractors or simply the work of imaginative persons who know nothing about it and whose object is to attract the curiosity of English people by exhibiting grotesque sights and thus to make money.

Many Europeans [writes the same author] who pay a flying visit to the Levant and hasten to sit down and write a book about their experiences, derive all their information from their cicerones and interpreters [worthless and unscrupulous fellows whom our author justly denounces as ignorant and shameless cheats] who are, as a class, of the worst products of non-Mussulman natives of the Levant. Probably it is on account of this that a countryman of mine once remarked: “When we read such books, especially those written in English, about ourselves, we always learn something from them which we never knew or heard of before.”[130]

“But,” it will be asked, “what about the morality of the Turks”? This is a question that is continually asked and about which as many erroneous notions prevail as about the harem. One might answer by saying that, where passion is given free rein, poor human nature is about the same in all parts of the world. I shall, however, reply in the words of the witty and vivacious Lady Mary Montague who, writing from Constantinople where her husband was ambassador, to a friend in England, declares:

As to their morality or good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that it is just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don’t commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now that I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring, either the exemplary discretion, or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts of them.[131]

As to “the infamous vices” of which the Mussulman Orient is said to be the chief theater, it will be sufficient for our present purpose to quote the words of one who has spent many years among the Moslems and who has, probably, as thorough a knowledge of them as any recent writer. “Is it, then, true,” demands the distinguished Count Henri de Castries, “that these vices are more numerous in the Orient than in the Occident? This reputation given to Islam is the result of superficial generalizations without which travelers would have scarcely anything to write. These vices of mature age are, unfortunately, common to all countries. More of them are indulged in Paris, London, and Berlin than in the entire Orient.”

It would be difficult to find people who are more distinguished for natural virtues than are the Osmanlis who have not been debased by oppression or corrupted by power. Their love of the simple life is remarkable. Often their only fare is bread and water. To this they may add a little cheese and fruit and some vegetables. The majority are vegetarians. Of those who are not, their meat diet consists chiefly of mutton and fowl which is usually prepared with rice or with vegetables. Beef they rarely eat and pork never, for its use as an article of food is strictly proscribed by the Koran.

And yet, notwithstanding their frugal fare, they are noted for their health and strength. “As strong as a Turk” has long been a proverb. And when one sees the amazing burdens which the hamals of Stamboul frequently carry, one is ready to admit that the proverb is more than justified.

The chief beverage of the Osmanlis is water, for the Koran absolutely forbids the use of intoxicating drinks of any kind whatsoever. For the Osmanli, therefore, the dramshop does not exist. He does, however, love his little cup of black coffee. Although the Moslem doctors of the law originally interdicted its use as the invention of the devil, the drinking of coffee in Mohammedan countries is now universal.

I know of only one prettier picture of contentment than an Osmanli peasant taking his cup of coffee before going to work in the morning or after the labors of the day, and that is when he indulges in his favorite pastime of Kaif—which is perhaps best expressed by the Italian phrase, dolce far niente. Garbed in his brown shalvar—baggy trousers—blue jacket, red sash, and white stockings, and sitting before his home under a tentlike plane tree, quietly smoking his narghile, with drooped eyelids and rapt countenance, he is the personification of comfort and happiness. Tranquil, immobile, absorbed in an enchanting reverie, how far is he not removed from the unbridled desires and malignant envy of the restless populace of our large cities of the West!

Ah! qu’il est doux de ne rien faire

Quand tout s’agite autour de nous!

What a subject for the brush of a Villegas or a Fortuny![132]

And then the honesty of this quiet peasant of simple tastes and harmless pleasures. He would never cheat you. Even if he be but a poor fruit seller, gaining but a pittance for a day’s labor, he will always add something to the amount called for, for fear of having made a mistake in the amount due the purchaser. If you should be his guest, you may sleep in his home with open doors. Nobody will molest you and your belongings will be as safe as if under lock and key. So great, indeed, is the reputation of the Osmanli for probity and sterling honesty that:

Among men, who do not concern themselves with politics, but whose fortune and interests are bound up in the country, the vast majority prefer the Turk to any other denizen of the land for his integrity and trustworthiness.

The proof of it is that it is to him they confide the care of their property. There are English families that have existed in Turkey for generations, and generations of Turks have served them in positions of trust. These are invariably Turks of the old school, good Mussulmans and simple in their thoughts and lives. A finer type of men no land can show, and happily they are not yet rare.[133]

Nor does one find elsewhere such humane treatment of dumb animals. “Fear God with regard to animals,” enjoined Mohammed, “ride them when they are fit to be ridden and get off when they are tired. Verily there are rewards for our doing good to dumb animals and giving them water to drink.” No Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is needed among the Osmanlis for so strong a sympathy exists between this gentle and tender-hearted people and all domestic animals that anything like cruel treatment would be impossible. Even the dog, which is considered as an unclean animal, is always treated with kindness. An Osmanli will gather together the folds of his garments to prevent his coming in contact with the impure brute but will at the same time gladly divide with it his last morsel of food.

There are few writers who are more familiar with the real Ottomans than the distinguished Academician, Pierre Loti. And this is what he says of them:

Nowhere, so much as among the Turks—the real Turks—does one find solicitude for the poor, the helpless, the aged and for children; such respect for parents, such tender veneration for the mother. If a man, even of mature years, should be seated in one of those innocent little cafés, where alcohol has always been unknown, and his father should unexpectedly enter, he rises, lowers his voice, extinguishes his cigarette, and humbly takes a seat behind him.[134]

Elsewhere the same sympathetic and magnanimous author writes:

Their little towns located in the interior, their villages, their country homes, are the last refuges not only of the calm but also of the patriarchal virtues which are more and more disappearing from our modern world: loyalty and honesty without blemish; veneration of children for parents of a kind that is not longer known to us; inexhaustible hospitality and chivalrous respect for guests; moral elegance and native delicacy, even among the most humble; kindness towards all—even towards animals; unbounded religious tolerance for whomsoever is not their enemy; serene faith and prayer. When arriving among them after leaving our Occident of doubt and cynicism, of noise and scrap-iron, one feels as if suffused with peace and confidence and believes he has remounted the course of time towards some indeterminate epoch, near, perhaps, to the Golden Age.[135]

In Anatolia particularly are applicable the words of the English traveler, Walpole, who, when speaking of the hospitability of the people of Turkey, tells us that “in the East alone now do we find in the Oda Nessafer of the village the guest-chamber of Plato. A sum is set apart by the government for supplying these; though usually the more wealthy traveler repays what he receives, adding a small gratuity.”[136]

In hospitality the Osmanlis of to-day are heirs of the best traditions of the Greeks of old who, as Homer informs us, were wont to say:

For Jove unfolds our hospitable door:

’Tis Jove that sends the stranger and the poor.[137]

One of the most striking instances of Osmanli hospitality of which I have recently heard is an experience of my good Franciscan friend, the Reverend Paschal Robinson, Professor of History in the Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C. Some years ago he had occasion to travel through the greater part of Asia Minor. During the seven months of his journey he was always the guest of the Turks, who were all Moslems. And yet, although he was an entire stranger among them, the generous and courteous Osmanlis everywhere received him with the most cordial hospitality. Not only did they supply him gratis with food and shelter, but they also provided him with the necessary means of transportation from one place to another. And never would they accept the slightest compensation for their services.

My actual traveling expenses during these seven months [Father Paschal assures me] were the equivalent of only seven American dollars. And, although the passport requirements in Turkey have always been exceedingly strict, I never carried a passport and nobody ever asked me for one. My habit which I always wore in Anatolia was my passport.

But for members of his order, Father Paschal’s case is not exceptional. In Moslem lands the Sons of St. Francis are always shown similar kindness and consideration and have been ever since the famous interview of the Poverello of Assisi with the Sultan of Egypt at Damietta eight hundred years ago. Can greater hospitality be found in other lands?

By the hammering reiteration of a tradition which, for most part, had its origin in the reports of imaginative travelers and which has, in recent years, been greatly fostered by a subsidized press bent on forcing the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the Osmanlis have been pictured as monsters of cruelty. To judge by certain propaganda articles and brochures which, within recent years, have been given world-wide currency, the average Ottoman is like the viceroy described in Don Quixote, who “every day hanged a slave; impaled one; cut off the ears of another; and this upon so little animus, or so entirely without cause, that the Turks would own he did it merely for the sake of doing it, and because it was his nature.”[138] People who have lived among the Osmanlis and have learned to admire their gentleness and sense of justice would denounce such a characterization as absurd.

“During the two years I have traversed the country,” writes a French Colonel from Asia Minor, “I have never heard of a murder or a theft.” This is not the evidence of a solitary witness. Innumerable foreigners who have resided in Anatolia could give similar testimony.[139]

Nor does it apply only to the Osmanlis of the present time. History abounds in like testimony regarding them in every century of their history.

It is surprising [writes the historian Finlay] how well the Ottoman government preserved tranquillity in its extensive dominions, and established a greater degree of security for property among the middle classes, than generally prevailed in European states during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This end was obtained by a regular police, and by the prompt execution of a rude species of justice in cases of flagrant abuses and crimes. In the populous cities of the Ottoman Empire, and particularly in Constantinople, which contained more inhabitants than any three Christian capitals, the order which reigned in the midst of a great social corruption, caused by extreme wealth, the conflux of many different nations, and the bigotry of several hostile religions, excited the wonder and admiration of every observant stranger. Perfect self-reliance, imperturbable equanimity, superiority to the vicissitudes of fortune, and a calm temper, compensated among the Ottomans for laws which were notoriously defective and tribunals which were infamously venal.

Knolles says, “You seldom see a murder or a theft committed by any Turk.” European gentlemen accustomed to the barbarous custom of wearing swords on all occasions, were surprised to see Turks of the highest rank, distinguished for their valor and military exploits, walking about even in provincial towns, unarmed, secure in the power of public order and the protection of the executive authority in the State.[140]

But, it is asked, do not the reported atrocities of the Turks in Armenia and the Balkans prove that their reputation for the most frightful deeds of savagery is established beyond peradventure? An adequate answer to this question would lead us too far afield, for the Osmanlis, unlike their enemies, have few champions or political knights-errant, and our information, therefore, respecting the atrocities in question is almost entirely one-sided. To those, however, who are desirous of reading the Ottoman side of the question I would recommend the thoroughly documented work of Pierre Loti entitled Turquie Agonisante.[141] A careful perusal of this work will convince any impartial reader that in this, as in every other question, “the unspeakable Turk” is far from being “the homicide of all human kind” he is so frequently pictured to be.

I would not, however, have it inferred from the foregoing pages that I ignore the corruption and organized bribery and the extent to which the government is made to subserve the interests of those who govern rather than those who are governed. This condition has existed in Turkey from time immemorial, not only in the administration of governmental affairs but in the administration of justice as well. But it is, unfortunately, a condition that exists in all parts of the Orient from Constantinople to Peking.[142]

Nor am I blind to the incalculable miseries to which the peasantry of Anatolia are exposed by the ravenous tax-gatherers who rob them of their little savings and keep many of them in constant penury. The exactions and cruelties of these soulless agents of Turkish misrule are almost incredible. It is these oppressive measures of Turkish maladministration, coupled with the opening of the Suez Canal, which have done much to close the overland trade routes to which Anatolia owed much of its former prosperity. It is to be hoped that the reorganized Ottoman government will succeed in eliminating the crying evils here indicated, but they are of so long standing that statesmanship of the highest order will be required to deal with a situation which is now almost desperate.

In marked contrast to the administrative bribery and corruption which have so long been the bane of Turkey, as well as of so many Eastern countries, is the remarkable spirit of tolerance which distinguishes the Ottoman government. Thus when the members of religious orders—priests and nuns—were cruelly driven from France they were cordially welcomed by Turkey—the reputed home of intolerance and fanaticism—where they were guaranteed full liberty to continue their apostolate of education and charity.[143]

The opposition raised a few years ago by an uncontrollable mob to the passing of a procession in honor of the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of London is still fresh in the memory of all. Contrast this with the attitude of the people of Constantinople to a similar ceremony. The following account of the procession is translated from the Turkish newspaper, the Stamboul:

On Sunday last took place the annual procession—I underscore the word annual—of Corpus Christi. The brilliance of the fête was heightened by the presence of Monsignor Nardi, and all the Catholic colony of the neighborhood assembled in the pretty church to see and hear its first pastor. Towards five o’clock the procession emerged amid a vast concourse of spectators who lined the way on either hand, the sacred cortège marching to the music of liturgical chants and the band of the Salesian Fathers. In front walked the school children, after them the faithful, then the clergy and notables of Makri Keui, while in the rear Monsignor Nardi, surrounded by the clergy, bore the Blessed Sacrament. Perfect order was maintained by the police with a degree of tact which did honor to the force. And for the space of an hour the procession traversed the gayly decorated streets of the quarter, which had been newly graveled for the occasion by the orders of the worthy and ever-courteous president of the municipality, Sherif Effendi. Such ceremonies leave a pleasant impression in a country like Turkey where everyone is free to practice his religion according to the dictates of his conscience.[144]

The same freedom of worship, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, is enjoyed by the Armenians. They are, besides, left perfectly free to have their own schools and to retain their own language. They have not had such liberty in Russia. “For six hundred years the Armenians were contented under the dominion of the Turks,” declared one of their bishops a few years ago, and they would, doubtless, be still living in peace with their old masters were it not for the machination of Russian propagandists and Armenian revolutionists. The proof of this is that “the highroad from Trebizond to Erzeroum ... is dotted with Christian monasteries and churches unmolested for centuries.”[145]

Napoleon I was wont to say that a lie, given twenty-four hours’ start, becomes immortal. But, when lies about the Turks have been repeated for generations in spite of the official denials of the Ottoman government and in spite of the contradictions of men who have long lived among these much misunderstood and greatly misrepresented people, what hope, one may ask, can there be for the final triumph of truth? What can be done to counteract shameless calumnies and official dementis when the greater part of the press is either muzzled or avowedly hostile and when public opinion has been so utterly poisoned by long and constant reiteration of all kinds of vilification and slander that the unfortunate victims are everywhere prejudiced and denied the right of a hearing which the law—not to speak of Christian charity—of all civilized nations accords to even the worst of criminals?

“Professional scribblers,” writes Pierre Loti, “who have never set foot in Turkey, expectorate ‘great historical romances’ on the ‘Tigers of the Bosphorus’ and the ‘Monsters of Stamboul.’”[146] “And they go so far even as to confound the true Turks with that aggregation of sharpers from all the Balkan and Levantine races who put on a fez in order to live among the Anatolians as gnawing parasites, parasites to the bone, whose depredations and usury, ruining entire villages, would almost excuse the worst vengeance of the rude and upright laborers of Anatolia who finally revolted.”[147]

Sidney Whitman, the distinguished English author who knows Turkey so well, is at one with the illustrious Academician when he writes:

In the course of my many visits to Constantinople I have repeatedly been made acquainted with instances of questionable newspaper correspondents who came to the Palace with the scarcely veiled intimation that it was to be a case of pay or slander. During the Armenian disturbances in 1896 a French female journalist went up to the Palace and openly declared that she intended to be paid or write up “atrocities.”[148]

But, notwithstanding the lurid tales that have so long been circulated about the Osmanlis, they have, nevertheless, loyal friends where one would least expect to find them. I have adduced in their favor the testimony of those who from long association among them have learned to know them and admire them for their splendid human qualities. Among these witnesses to the virtues of the Osmanlis are French, English, and American men whose competence is as incontrovertible as their authority is unimpeachable. It were easy to add to the number and among them we should find French, Italian, and German priests and bishops, Sisters of Charity and religieuses of the various teaching orders who have spent long years among the Osmanlis in all parts of the Ottoman Empire and their testimony would confirm that already introduced.

It may, however, be urged that the testimony in question is that of friends and sympathizers. It affords me, therefore, special pleasure to reproduce here the generous appreciation of “The Terrible Turk” which has recently appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette[149] from the pen of a Serbian gentleman who has had an opportunity of knowing him in war as well as in peace. It fully corroborates all that has been stated in the preceding pages and is as great an evidence of the writer’s nobility of soul, as it is a splendid tribute to the character of a whilom foe:

We Serbians are fighting against the Turks with all our might, but we do not wish to be unjust to them. I am perfectly certain that every Serbian soldier, marching now victoriously through Macedonia and Albania, and every wounded Serbian lying somewhere in a hospital, and every Serbian mother, sister, wife, sweetheart, who has lost her son, or her brother, or her husband, or her lover, on one of the many bloody battlefields, would applaud my effort to do justice to our enemy. And, therefore, I do not hesitate to say a good word for the Turk. I do homage not to the Turk, but to truth.

An average Turk—or shall I perhaps call him a normal Turk?—is an excellent man. He believes in God, and prays to God more earnestly and more intensely than an average or normal Christian does. And he persistently and honestly tries to conform his everyday life to the commandments of his great Prophet. He is charitable, honest, trustworthy; he is modest, yet dignified; he is proud, but not vain; he is brave, but not boastful; he is sober, clean, polite; he is generally poor, but always hospitable; and he is patriotic, ready to starve and suffer and die, without a murmur, for his faith and the honor of his country. But this excellent, virtuous, and God-fearing brave man is heavy, slow and somewhat stupid, and in the electrical and aeroplanic twentieth century cannot stand against scientific organizations and quick-firing guns of the clever, sharp-witted Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgars.

The Turk was master of the Balkan nations for nearly five centuries. During all those centuries he consistently refrained from interfering with our national churches and with our village municipal life. From the liberty which the Turk left to our Church and our municipal life in the country, our political liberty was re-born. But, notwithstanding his religious tolerance and his non-interference with our village life, we hated him as long as, and just because he was our master. But now, when our victories have deprived him of his position as master of our countries, we will be pleased to have him for our friend, because—although he is not exactly a “jolly”—he is certainly a good fellow.

How different is this portrait of “The Unspeakable Turk,” painted by one who knew him by life-long association from that of the atrabilious author of Sartor Resartus, whose delineation of him was based on fancy and prejudice, if not on pathetic ignorance!

The great trouble in Asia Minor to-day is an economic one. This is the verdict of those who are most competent to judge—of those who have lived among the Osmanlis for years and have only words of praise for their many natural virtues and their abounding goodness of heart. It is the verdict of men and women to whom the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God are not empty words, of those who believe that the precepts of Christian charity are as obligatory for nations as for individuals, and that it behooves the Great Powers to assist in its economic stress at least this part of the Ottoman Empire and to help it to develop its marvelous natural resources. Were they to do this, Anatolia would again blossom as the rose and flourish once more as it did in the heyday of Greek and Roman splendor. But such altruism is quite alien to the self-seeking policy of the dominant nations of Europe. Acting on the theory that might makes right they coolly proceed to the dismemberment of the empire and endeavor to justify it by alleging, in French diplomatic phrase, the requirements of the action civilisatrice of Western as against Eastern civilization while every one who thinks knows that the real reason is the lust of conquest.

Although I do not hold a brief for the Osmanlis, I would make a plea for more tolerance for a people who have so long exhibited such tolerance toward others. Having myself been among the number of those who unconsciously did grave injustice to them before I came to know them as they are, I feel that I am fully warranted in urging a change of attitude towards them. Equitable statesmanship, as well as Christian charity, demands such a change. We can never hope to remove the barrier between the East and the West, between Islam and Christianity, so long as the age-long misunderstandings and misrepresentations above referred to continue to separate peoples who should live in union and harmony.

CHAPTER VII
THE BAGDAD RAILWAY

In its political and military, not to speak of its commercial, consequences, the securing by Germany of the Bagdad Railway is perhaps the most important event which has occurred in the Old World since the Franco-Prussian War.[150]

André Chéradame.

At Konia, anciently Iconium, we reached the junction of the Anatolia and the Bagdad Railways. From an economic and military standpoint, both roads are of supreme importance to the Ottoman Empire. They supply commerce with long needed means of communication between the interior and the seaboard, and enable the Sultan to conduct the administration of his extensive territory with far more efficiency and despatch than was before possible. Politically, however, the Bagdad Railway is incomparably still more important. No great railroad has ever attracted more attention; none has ever owed so much to its name; none has ever so fired the imagination of Germans and Ottomans; and none has ever so exhausted the resources of diplomacy or provoked greater struggles for its control. Historically both roads have a special interest to the student and the historian not only on account of the classic lands through which they pass but also on account of the long and strenuous efforts which several rival nations made to obtain from the Sublime Porte the authorization to build and operate the great road which was to unite the West and the East.

So greatly has the Bagdad Railway modified the Near Eastern Question, so completely has it changed the data and the consequent solution of the problem, and so perfectly does its history dovetail into the narrative of our journey, that a brief account of the origin and struggling beginnings of the road is necessary to a clear conception of many things that shall be said in subsequent chapters.

Many and diverse, as the ambitions of those who gave them birth, have been the projects to unite by rail the superb capital on the Bosphorus with the mysterious city of Harun-al-Rashid on the distant Tigris.

Two-thirds of a century ago there were few projects which were proposed with more insistence to the British Cabinet and to the House of Commons as well as to English capitalists than that which had for its object the construction of a railway which, starting from a point on the Mediterranean, should cross Mesopotamia in the direction of India.

The original plan called for an overland route which would connect the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf. It was based on an elaborate survey of the Euphrates valley, which had been made by an English officer, Colonel Chesney, in 1835–1837. The primary object was to shorten the journey from England to India, which was then made across the Isthmus of Suez, or round the Cape of Good Hope.

The preliminary survey of this contemplated line was made by order of the British Government which voted £20,000 for expenses. Materials for two armed steamers were, under the direction of Colonel Chesney, transported with almost insuperable difficulties from the mouth of the Orontes to the Euphrates. This gallant officer had under his command a well-equipped staff of engineers and men of science, and the work which the expedition set out to execute was performed, as the official reports show, in the most thorough manner. More than two years were devoted to the task of exploring the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the region through which they flowed, and the enthusiastic commander felt sure his labors were to issue “in the consolidation and perfection of the overland communications between Great Britain and India.”[151]

But how quickly and completely his illusions were dispelled!

When I returned from the East in 1837 [he wrote long after] it was with the full belief that a question of such vast importance to Great Britain—nationally, politically and commercially—would be at once taken up warmly by the Government and the public. The way had been opened—difficulties which at one time had looked formidable had been overcome; the Arabs and the Turkish Government were favorable to the projected line to India. But thirty-one years have since passed, and nothing has been done.[152]

In 1851 a company was organized in England for realizing Colonel Chesney’s plan for connecting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf. A firman was obtained from the Porte and everything was ready for beginning work—except cash. As the enterprise was not supported by the government, English capitalists considered participation in it too hazardous to justify investment. The company’s concession lapsed for lack of the necessary funds.

The question was again taken up in 1872 and referred to a Parliamentary commission. But, although Colonel Chesney’s plan of building a road along the Euphrates was favorably received, it was again abandoned—this time in favor of the Suez Canal, a large interest in which had been purchased for England by her astute premier, Disraeli, who was quick to perceive the paramount value of this passageway between England and her possessions in the Orient.[153]

During many years thereafter this new route between Asia and Europe so absorbed public attention that the Euphrates Railway was almost forgotten. But towards the end of the century numerous projects for constructing the road were taken up by several groups of promoters and financiers of different nationalities.

Among these was the project of an Italian, Sig. A. Tonietti, who, acting in behalf of a company of Italian and English financiers, sought a concession for the construction of a line which should start from Alexandretta on the Mediterranean and which, following the Euphrates to Bagdad and Basra, should terminate at a point on the Persian Gulf. He also sought a concession for building a number of branch lines, one of which was to extend to Khanikin on the Persian frontier. In addition to this he asked for authorization to cultivate the unoccupied government lands along the course of the railroad during the term of the concession. In return for this authorization he agreed to establish an irrigation system which should restore the Euphrates valley to its pristine fertility.

There was also a French group of financiers who, headed by M. Cottard, a distinguished railroad engineer in Turkey, endeavored by all means in their power to secure a concession for building a railway which was to be a prolongation of the Anatolian line to Bagdad and Basra and to follow essentially the same course along the Euphrates as the projected road of Sig. Tonietti.

In addition to the two projects just mentioned was that of the Russian Count Kapist, who proposed to build a line which should start from Tripoli, in Syria, and, passing Bagdad, should terminate at Koweit on the Persian Gulf. Count Kapist and his associates pretended that they were assured of the eventual coöperation not only of English capitalists but also of the British Government.[154]

The applicants for these divers concessions were, however, all doomed to disappointment. Never before had so many, so antagonistic, and so powerful interests made so long and so strenuous efforts to secure the coveted privilege of building a railroad in foreign territory. Never were diplomats more active in Constantinople, never was intrigue more complicated, and never was greater pressure brought to bear upon the Sublime Porte by the rival nations of Europe. France wished to safeguard her interests in the Levant and extend her sphere of influence in the Near East. Russia desired to tighten her hold on Transcaucasia and to prepare for the eventual dismemberment of the Turkish Empire of which she fondly hoped to secure the lion’s share. England, although she had control of the Suez Canal, saw in the Bagdad Railway a menace to her Indian possessions and determined to nullify the danger before it was too late.

France had been on the friendliest terms with the Ottoman Government since the time of Francis I and her financiers naturally felt that the much coveted concession should be awarded to them as citizens of the most favored nation. English capitalists put forward claims which they regarded as deserving greater consideration than those of their competitors.

But French and English as well as Italian and Russian claims were ignored, their projects for connecting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf were rejected and the long and eagerly sought concession was awarded to a group of German capitalists, alias the Deutsche Bank, alias, their opponents contend, the German Government.

What the Germans call Drang nach Osten—Trend towards the East—dates from the time of Alexander the Great. It drove the legions of the Cæsars to the Euphrates and the Tigris and impelled the hosts of the Crusaders to seek glory on the desert wastes of Syria and Mesopotamia. It urged Napoleon to undertake his famous campaign in Egypt and was at the bottom of his alliance with the Czar Alexander I—an alliance that was to carry the combined armies of France and Russia to the heart of India.

As to the Germans, they have never ceased “to dream of the Morgenland since the epic of Barbarossa’s crusade and the legendary disappearance of that great figure of Teutonic battle and romance in the Cilician stream.” When von Moltke, 1835–1839, was assisting the Sultan Mahmud II to reorganize the Ottoman army on the German plan he was greatly impressed with the possibilities offered by Asia Minor as a field for German commerce and enterprise. Others of his countrymen thought it would be good policy to divert the current of German emigration from America to Asia Minor. And, although the Porte had always been opposed to all schemes of German colonization in Turkey, there was reason to believe that the Ottoman Government, after the completion of the Bagdad Railway, would consent to German colonists settling in certain places in Anatolia and Mesopotamia. For, several decades before the Germans had secured the concession to build the Bagdad Railroad, the friendliest relations had existed between Constantinople and Berlin. This was particularly true after the defeat of France in 1870, when Germany was reorganized as the first military power in the world. For thenceforward Turkey not only maintained a goodly number of military students in Germany, but also had many German officers in her army, among whom was the distinguished Field Marshal Goltz Pasha.

It was, however, more than a half century before von Moltke’s idea of developing Anatolia and Mesopotamia was given practical consideration. It was then taken up by Dr. George von Siemens, the distinguished president of the Deutsche Bank, who, like so many of his countrymen, had come under the spell of Germany’s Weltpolitik and, like them, had been caught in the current of the Drang nach Osten.

Dr. von Siemens was not only one of the ablest of the group of eminent men whom the Kaiser had gathered about him, but was also a great favorite of the German War Lord. He not only shared von Moltke’s views regarding the development of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, but, with rare clearness of vision, saw that this development could be achieved only by the construction of a railway through the broad wastes which lay between the Bosphorus and the Persian Gulf. To reclaim for civilization the long-neglected valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris and to restore to their ancient splendor the broad and fertile plains of Anatolia and Mesopotamia—so long the favored home of humanity—became his dominant ambition, and to the achievement of his cherished project he directed for years, with marvelous address and persistency, his indomitable energy and savoir faire. Slowly but surely his dream began to be realized.

Before the Anatolian Railway was completed the Turkish Army was eating bread made from Russian flour; now it is using grain grown in the fertile acres of Asia Minor. And before the advent of the railroad the communications between the interior of Asia Minor and the seaboard were so wretched that the freight on domestic grain was greater than on that imported from Russia or the United States. The result was that the Anatolian peasants then grew only enough wheat for their own needs. Before the advent of the railroad not a single ton of grain from the region traversed by the Anatolian Railroad reached the seacoast for export. After the road was completed the export of wheat and other cereals became, in a very short time, an important item of commerce. The peasantry received “for their harvests from twice to four times the prices formerly paid and the railways brought revenue to the (Ottoman) treasury.”[155]

The cost of the railway was great, indeed, but greater far was its value to Turkey, for it was not only the best but also the only practical means of “bringing the disjointed members of that large empire within reach of control,” and of “bringing security and cultivation, order and civilization, to a country that once had been the most fertile on earth.”[156]

That Germany should have received the concession for building the Bagdad Railway in the face of such strong competitors as Russia, France, and England was a great surprise to those who were not familiar with the relations among the Great Powers and who were not well informed respecting the diplomatic game as it was then played in Constantinople. To those, however, who had an accurate knowledge of the strained relations which existed between the Porte and certain of the western nations and who knew how suspicious Abdul-Hamid II was of all schemes affecting Turkey, which were engineered in Russia or Great Britain, or in behalf of Russian or British interests, the outcome of the long diplomatic game at the Porte was looked upon as a foregone conclusion.

A brilliant French publicist attributes the success of the Germans in securing the concession for the Bagdad Railway to the fact that the era of great ambassadors from France and England at the Sublime Porte was closed at the period in question—that in the year immediately preceding “the publication of the irade of the concession in 1899,” there was then “an utter bankruptcy of great men” at Constantinople from these two countries.[157]

Opposed to the English, French, and Russian Ambassadors, and almost isolated from his colleagues, was the alert and sagacious Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, the noted ambassador from Germany who, according to an anonymous writer in the National Review, “was the most influential of the ambassadors at Yildiz, and, in accordance with the thoroughly sensible and practical cast of German ideas as to the functions of diplomacy, had used his position more actively and successfully than any minister had done before to promote the business interest of his nationals in Turkey.”[158]

Not to speak of the failure of France and Russia to secure the concession for building the Bagdad Railway, it may here be declared that England’s hopes of securing it were doomed from the very beginning. Her control of the Suez Canal and her occupation of Egypt, which was the territory of a Turkish vassal, not to speak of Gladstone’s denunciation of the Sultan as the “Great Assassin,” all predisposed Abdul-Hamid in favor of Germany and as strongly predisposed him against Great Britain.

A writer in the National Review, referring to this subject, declares:

For many years the immobile Turk had never been so likely to go out of his way for any purpose in the world as when an opportunity to do the English Government a discourtesy or English influence a disservice; and it may almost be said that even a bribe worthy of the fabulous wealth of the detested island would not have induced Abdul-Hamid to give to an Englishman what he could give to any one else.[159]

When it was officially announced that the concession for the building of the Bagdad Railway had been granted to a German syndicate, there was great jubilation from the Rhine to the Vistula over what was regarded as a great victory for Teutonic diplomacy and enterprise. The enthusiastic sons of the Fatherland fancied that they already saw the well-equipped trains of the Bagdad Railway “running in the track of Alexander” from the Dardanelles to the embouchure of the Shatt-el-Arab, and exulted in the thought that “where the Mermnadæ, the Achæmenidæ, and the Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Turkish conquerors failed, there Germany had a good prospect of success.”[160]

In Turkey the diplomatic victory of the Germans meant a great exaltation of Teutonic prestige and a corresponding diminution of the credit and influence of the defeated Powers.

In France, the predominant position of power and influence acquired by Germany was interpreted as a complete subversion of the Eastern Question and as an event which made the solution of this long-standing question correspondingly difficult—“ce qui boulverse complètment les données du problème et par consequent sa solution possible.”[161]

France [writes M. Aublé] had long been the disinterested protector of a nation whose moral and material elevation she had constantly sought and had spent in all branches of human activity of that unfortunate country many milliards of francs. What she loved to regard as a second France, she saw with sorrow was about to escape her and come under the influence of a hated rival.[162]

Russia’s attitude toward the Bagdad Railway was no less hostile. It had, for obvious reasons, been her policy since the time of Peter the Great to weaken and eventually dismember the Ottoman Empire. Her objection to the road was that it contributed immeasurably to the financial, political, and strategical strength of Turkey, and that this would completely foil all her well-laid plans for her ultimate partition. She also regarded the road as a menace to Transcaucasia, but, more than this, she feared that it would, in the possession of Germany, halt her further advance into Western Asia and prove, mayhap, a stepping-stone to Germany’s annexation of Asia Minor.

But the resentment of Great Britain was far greater than that of either France or Russia. She had more at stake and greater reasons for serious apprehension for the future. So long as she controlled the Suez Canal and there was no competing line towards India she felt secure. But when, in 1888, Baron Hirsch’s Railroad through the Balkan Peninsula was completed to the Bosphorus and connected Constantinople with Western Europe, and steps were taken to extend this line through Anatolia and Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, alarm, bordering on dismay, took possession of her publicists and statesmen.

The political and military importance of an overland railway from the Bosphorus to the Persian Gulf which could not be reached by a hostile fleet could not be overestimated.

Indeed [as a noted English authority wrote in 1917] so long as the forts of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus remain intact the Sultan and his allies enjoy the advantages of a naval power in a limited area—the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles—without the possession of a fleet. This enables the Sultan and his Germanic allies rapidly to convey troops or foodstuffs from Europe to Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia and vice versa, in the very face of the Allied Fleets, which are powerless to interfere in areas protected by defences which had proved, as one had to expect they would prove, impregnable.[163]

Another English writer saw in German control of the Bagdad Railway the doom of English trade and French enterprise in the Near East.

Is the same fate [he asks] to be meted out to the French railways in Syria as that which has overtaken the non-German railways in Asia Minor? Are they to be absorbed into the Bagdad Railway, or be cut off from any prospects of development? On the further side of the area, are the British communications up the Tigris to be starved into submission, and is the trade of Manchester and our great industrial centers to be placed at the mercy of variable by-laws in the statutes of railway companies owned or largely controlled by Germany? In the present temper of British diplomacy, a German victory of this kind is, I am sorry to say, not outside the bounds of possibility, however momentous may be the consequences, not only to our trade but also to our whole political future. If it be achieved, German enterprise will dominate the countries west of India and will extend along two great arms to the frontiers of Egypt and to the head of the Persian Gulf. Regions lying upon the main line of the maritime communications of the British Empire will gradually, but none the less irrevocably, become invested with a political complexion and bias out of harmony with our vital interests.[164]

But this was not all. Judging by the articles that filled the English press after the concession for building the Bagdad Railway had been granted to Germany, the great fear of many in England was that this concession would lead to a protectorate over Turkey by the Teutonic Powers;[165] that it “would permanently diminish English credit in the East and throughout all Islam” and exalt German prestige at Britain’s expense; that it involved the ousting of England from their “former political and commercial primacy in the Ottoman Empire”; that, to quote a British writer, it would “squeeze us out of Asiatic Turkey,” as the diplomacy of Germany had “succeeded in squeezing us out of East Africa where we surrendered to her territory which was ours by virtue of having been explored by Speke, Grant and Stanley.”[166]

In the meantime the Teutonic Powers were trying to secure the necessary capital for their stupendous enterprise. From the very beginning of their vast undertaking they, under the lead of Dr. Siemens, president of the Administrative Board of the Anatolian Railway, fully realized the difficulties they would encounter in securing the funds requisite to cover the enormous cost of their colossal work. But to achieve success they had recourse to all the methods of shrewd business and sane diplomacy. And they were quick to perceive that the wisest and safest policy would be to work along the line of least resistance. Instead, therefore, of antagonizing their defeated competitors they would invite them to coöperate with them in the construction and operation of the great steel highway. They would, in a word, internationalize it and make it a purely commercial enterprise, whose sole object would be the expansion of western trade and the development of the fabulous resources of the mysterious East.

But, as the concessionaires soon discovered to their surprise and disappointment, this was more easily said than done. The story of their many and long negotiations with foreign capitalists and statesmen is a long one and reveals, as few other things have done, national jealousies, distrusts, and ambitions. Each of the nations concerned desired to have the lion’s share in the building and management of the road, and, when this was impossible, those who had perforce to accept minor parts, or none at all, strove by every means in their power, covertly or openly, to misrepresent the object of the undertaking and damn it in the estimation of those who were counted on to coöperate in carrying the enterprise to a successful conclusion.

Neither the French nor the English government was willing to give the Bagdad Railway project official recommendation. This attitude of the two governments deterred many capitalists from investing in an enterprise which they had been disposed to view most favorably. The French Government went so far as to forbid the securities to be listed on the Bourse.[167]

But the chief opposition to the project came not so much from the governments in question as from the press. This was particularly the case in England.

A letter written in 1903 by the late Sir Clinton Dawkins—one of a group of English capitalists who were eager to coöperate with the Germans in the building of the Bagdad Railway—to Herr Arthur von Gwinner, the successor of Dr. von Siemens as director of the road, leaves no doubt about this whatever.

The fact is [Sir Clinton writes] that the business has become involved in politics here, and has been sacrificed to the very violent and bitter feeling against Germany exhibited by the majority of our newspapers and shared in by a large number of people.

This is a feeling which, as the history of recent events will show you, is not shared by the Government or reflected in official circles. But of its intensity outside those circles, for the moment, there can be no doubt; at the present moment coöperation in any enterprise which could be represented, or, I might more justly say, misrepresented, as German will meet with a violent hostility which our government has to consider.... The anti-German feeling prevailed with the majority; London having really gone into a frenzy on the matter, owing to the newspaper campaign which it would have been quite impossible to counteract or influence.[168]

As a result of an important meeting of Potsdam between the Czar and the Kaiser in November 1910, Russia waived all share in the Bagdad Railway. The reason for this withdrawal was, it is asserted, the willingness of Germany to allow Russia to build a railway in the north of Persia which should eventually connect with a branch of the Bagdad Railway at Khanakin on the Persian frontier.

The reason, therefore, why the Bagdad Railway was not internationalized, as was the desire of Dr. Siemens and his associates, is manifest. The nations constituting the Entente Cordiale were unwilling to accept the offer of the concessionaires, who thereafter proceeded to construct the line without outside assistance.[169]

When the statesmen and financiers of France and England found that internationalization of the Bagdad Railway was impossible and that the Germans were preparing to build it without their coöperation they bethought themselves of killing the enterprise by creating a financial vacuum:

“Let a vacuum of capital be created around the Bagdad Railway,” ironically writes M. André Geraud, who had no sympathy with the methods his countrymen and their English allies had adopted in their dealings with the German concessionaires, “let the Anglo-French air-pump be set in action, and then, as soon as the pecuniary oxygen becomes rarefied, the Bagdad Railway will be seen to languish and die.”[170]

But this method, it was soon discovered, utterly failed to have the desired effect. It neither deprived the railway company of resources nor checked its activity. “The air-pump,” as M. Geraud wittily remarks, “broke down as soon as it was started.”[171]

The time had passed when it could be truthfully said that the Bagdad Railway could not be built by a single power. The same statement had been made regarding the Suez Canal, but France, under the lead of De Lesseps, showed what the enterprise and the genius of her people were capable of accomplishing when they were united in an undertaking that was to reflect on them imperishable glory and redound at the same time to the welfare of humanity.

Confident in their ability to construct the Bagdad Railway unaided, the Germans, under the guidance of able financiers, were not long in demonstrating to the world that their enterprise was in no wise inferior to that which led to the magnificent achievement of the French in the Land of the Pharaohs.

The hostile attitude of the Anglo-French press towards the Bagdad Railway was not allowed to pass unnoticed by the publicists of Germany. From the day that the irade authorizing the building of the great railroad was issued they had been enthusiastic about the enterprise that was, they felt sure, to be of inestimable advantage to the Fatherland. They descanted especially on it as an agency for developing German trade in the Near East, whose commerce hitherto had been almost entirely in the hands of their rivals. They fondly pointed to the day, in the not distant future, when they would be able to exploit the vast mineral riches of Asia Minor, and when Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, as a result of intensive culture under German direction, would be able to supply them with untold stores of grain, wool, cotton, fruit, petroleum, and other commodities; when, thanks to their control of the Bagdad Railway and its branches, they would enjoy a virtual monopoly of near eastern commerce.

The eminent German engineer, Wilhelm von Pressel, who had served the Fatherland so long and so well in the Ottoman Empire,[172] prepared plans for connecting Europe with Asia by a tunnel under the Bosphorus. But his fellow countryman, Siegmund Schneider, insisted that the two continents should be connected by a bridge, which he describes in a dithyrambic fashion which most vividly exhibits the exaltation of the promoters of the great Berlin to Bagdad Railway.

The architectural effect [Herr Schneider writes] of the metallic mass richly gilded, suspended from massive piers, crowned by glittering cupolas and minarets, brilliantly illuminated at night would be fantastic. This bridge would constitute a formidable closure of the enfilade of fortified works with which the Turkish coasts bristle. Its debouches in Asia and Europe would be defended by powerful bridge-heads, its piers would be armed with armored rotary batteries whose long range would infallibly sink any squadron that would venture into the Strait.... The express trains of the future will go directly from Berlin to Babylonia in five days.[173]

German engineers confidently asserted that the day was not far distant when trains de luxe equal to any in Europe or America would cover the distance between Constantinople and Bagdad in sixty-five hours. The time formerly required to make the journey between these two cities by caravan was from fifty to fifty-five days.[174]

Nor was this an empty boast. No road has ever been more carefully or more solidly built than is the Bagdad Railway. Roadbed, culverts, revetments, bridges are of the strongest and most durable materials. The sleepers are of metal, while the steel rails are specially made for sharp curves and fast and heavy trains. German engineers declare that they are the heaviest in existence. At a time when the heaviest rails used in the United States weighed one hundred pounds per lineal yard, those selected for the Bagdad Railroad weighed twenty per cent more. And so it is with the warehouses, the offices, and especially the stations all along the line. So massive are the last-named structures that they are called “German Castles.” Indeed, it is the firm conviction of many that these buildings were so designed that they might serve as strongholds in emergencies, such as sudden uprisings of lawless nomads or fanatical Moslems. Nothing was left to chance. So far as experience and engineering science could forecast the necessities of the future, provision was made for all eventualities—save only such a cataclysm as a world war, which threatened to interrupt the continuity of civilization.

As to the end and aim of the Bagdad Railway we are left in no doubt.

We must [writes Professor Diering] be true to ourselves by emphasizing and cultivating everything German. In all undertakings engineered by German diplomacy and financed with German money the official language must be German. Hence French, which has been the official language on Turkish Railways, must disappear. There must be a German school near every large railway station; and in these schools both the German and Turkish languages must be employed in giving instruction; any other language will be merely taught. Only specially selected and well-educated teachers should be sent to Turkey. Above all, German medical men must be introduced into Turkey’s railway system. They are the best medium for spreading German influence and for awakening esteem and affection for Germany.

On broad lines it is now quite clear what form the future Turkish Empire will assume. From Tripolis across to Persia and on to the ridges of the Caucasus, German energy—without injury to the sovereignty of the Osmanic State—will coöperate in Turkey’s renaissance and in the development of her treasures. But our enemies, together with their money, languages and schools will disappear from the territories which they hoped to divide among themselves.[175]

Equally explicit is another German writer, Herr Trampe, respecting the ulterior object of the Bagdad Railway.

The ancient highroad of the world [he declares] is the one which leads from Europe to India—the road used by Alexander—the highway which leads from the Danube via Constantinople to the valley of the Euphrates, and by northern Persia, Herat, and Kabul to the Ganges. Every yard of the Bagdad Railway which is laid brings the owner of the railway nearer to India. What Alexander performed and Napoleon undoubtedly planned can be achieved by a third treading in their footsteps. England views the Bagdad Railway as a very real and threatening danger to herself—and rightly so. She can never undo or annul its effects.[176]

The increasingly hostile attitude of the Entente Cordiale toward the Bagdad Railway, the violent ebullitions of the press of the rival powers portended trouble. No sooner had the concession for the building of the Bagdad Railway been officially announced than it began to weigh as a nightmare on a great part of Europe. The chancelleries of the Old World began then to realize more clearly than ever before the boundless possibilities of the great oriental highway. English statesmen saw in it the virtual doubling of the German fleet at the head of the Persian Gulf, and then the cry was heard throughout Britain, “Let us have the Russians at Constantinople rather than a great power on the Persian Gulf.”

The Bagdad Railway [declares an English writer] was a damnosa hæreditas, which was due as much to a lack of imagination and effective organization on the part of our business community in the eighties and nineties of the last century, as it undoubtedly was to a mistaken policy in those critical years on the part of the British Government.[177]

Small wonder, then, is it that the Bagdad Railway was from the very beginning of the great World War considered as one of the chief contributing causes of the terrific cataclysm of the second decade of the twentieth century and that, whatever political, economic, and social adjustments may be entailed as a result of the most stupendous struggle of history, it is destined to modify even more profoundly the relations between the Orient and the Occident than did the far-reaching campaigns of Alexander the Great, which introduced Greek people and Greek culture to the East and made known to the West the riches and the wonders of Persia and India and Babylonia.

CHAPTER VIII
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE CRUSADERS

Nations melt

From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt

The sunshine for a while, and downward go

Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt.

Byron “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto IV, 12.

Aside from the interest which attaches to it as the north-western terminus of the Bagdad Railway, Konia, the ancient Iconium, like so many other places in Anatolia, is extremely rich in legendary and historic lore. According to a local myth it was the first spot to emerge from the waters of the Deluge. It is mentioned in the legend of Perseus and the Gorgons. A local legend has it that the name was derived from the Greek word eikon—figure or image—referring to the mud figures, which, when breathed upon by the wind, were converted into living men and women. This is evidently a variant of the old myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha. It was doubtless this pride in their great antiquity and a belief that Phrygian was the primitive language of our race that led the inhabitants of Iconium to claim a Phrygian origin. That Phrygian was really the oldest language they had no doubt. For, it was averred, the Egyptian King, Psametik, had conclusively proved this by showing that “infants brought up out of hearing of human speech spoke the Phrygian language.”

The Ten Thousand Greeks, in the army of Cyrus, halted here on their famous expedition to southern Mesopotamia. Cicero reviewed his troops here when he was proconsul of Cilicia. It was one of the important missionary centers of the early evangelizing activity of St. Paul. It was to this city that, accompanied by Barnabas, he directed his steps after he had been expelled by the Jews from Antioch.

In Roman times Iconium stood at the intersection of several important highways and was designated by Pliny urbs celeberrima—a most celebrated city. According to a venerable tradition, Iconium had for its first bishop Sosipatros, one of the seventy-two disciples, who was succeeded in the episcopal chair by Terentius, likewise one of this chosen body of disciples. Equally noteworthy is the fact that Iconium was the birthplace of St. Thecla, who is said to have been converted to Christianity by the Apostle St. Paul. She is the heroine of the Acta Pauli et Theclæ. From the earliest ages of the Church she was greatly venerated in Asia Minor, where she was known as the “Apostle and Proto-martyr among Women.” In the Greek Church her feast is celebrated on the twenty-fourth of September under the title of “Proto-martyr among Women and the Equal of the Apostles.”

And here, according to a venerable tradition on which oriental geographers set much store, is the tomb of “Plato the Divine,” who, under the name of Eflat, is revered by the local population as a thaumaturgus. The origin of this singular tradition in this part of Anatolia—so distant from the real burying place of the immortal philosopher—is one of the curiosities of Ottoman folklore.[178]

During two centuries—from 1099 to 1307—Iconium was the capital of the Seljuk Sultans of Rum[179] and is still regarded as one of the holy places of Islam. Many of its sultans were patrons of art and literature, and, during the zenith of its splendor, this Seljukian metropolis could boast of nearly as many colleges and students as Bagdad—the far-famed capital of the Abbasside Caliphate.

Its present chiefest title to fame is the tomb of the noted Jelal-ed-din-Rumi, usually known as Mevlana. He was famed for knowledge and wisdom and was the founder of the Dancing Dervishes and the author of the “Mesnevi,” a celebrated poem in Persian verse, in which is instilled the Sufi system of pantheism. His successors, as heads of the Dancing Dervishes, have their residence in Iconium and theirs is the right and the privilege to gird each Ottoman Sultan, on his accession to the throne, with the historic sword of Osman. This imposing function, which is performed in the Mosque of Eyub in Stamboul, has been likened to the coronation by the Pope of the Holy Roman Emperor.

By those who know them best the better class of Dancing, or, more properly, the Whirling Dervishes, are described as being a very tolerant and large-minded people. Thus it is said that “in the dangerous period in the winter of 1895–1896, when religious and national feeling ran high in Turkey, it was mainly owing to the Mevlevis that the softas of Konia were prevented from attacking the Christian population of the town.”[180]

But the orthodox Moslems, as represented by the softas and mollahs, do not regard with sympathy the peculiar ceremonial practices of the various orders of dervishes, especially their use of incense, music, and lighted candles in public worship. To the strict followers of the Koran the characteristic forms of worship of the Mevlevis and Rufais, more commonly known as the Dancing and Howling Dervishes, are as distasteful as are the ritualistic services of certain modern Anglicans to the conservative members of the Church of England. As to the esoteric doctrines of the dervishes, especially those based on the Mesnevi, they are declared by the doctors of Islam to be quite irreconcilable with both the Koran and the Hadith—the accepted traditions of Mohammedanism. It must be said that the bizarre performances of the Dancing and Howling Dervishes—performances which are resorted to as a means of detaching the minds of the devotees from all things earthly and attaining a state of spiritual ecstasy—are to the casual spectator but little different in kind from certain revivals of our southern negroes. The solemn dervishes, however, exhibit far more dignity and reverence in their devotions than do the excitable and noisy Africans in their camp-meetings and revivalistic gatherings.

Surrounded by a barren and desolate country, Konia, when seen from afar, looks like an oasis in the desert. It is situated on an elevated plateau well-watered by mountain streams and blessed with a salubrious climate. It was these attractive features that led the Seljukian Turks to choose it for their capital. Its luxuriant gardens and orchards have long been famous and add much to the city’s picturesqueness—especially when viewed from a distance. For when one enters the old Seljukian capital there is little to attract attention except a few mosques. Of the old Greek city practically nothing remains aside from the fragments of friezes, cornices, bas-reliefs, and ancient inscriptions which are found in the walls which surround the erstwhile Seljukian capital. Here, as in so many other places in Anatolia, the Turks, when requiring material for their mosques and palaces, converted the imposing temples of the Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines into quarries for stone, and lime. As in Nicæa, a great part of the space within the walls of Konia is covered with crumbling ruins overgrown with weeds and bushes. The poet must have had such a scene in his mind’s eye when he penned the lines:

There a temple in ruin stands
Fashioned by long-forgotten hands;
Two or three columns and many a stone,
Marble and granite with grass overgrown
Out upon time! It will leave no more
Of the things to come than the things before.

Modern Konia, a good part of which lies outside of the walls of the Seljuk capital of the thirteenth century, is composed of one-story buildings, constructed chiefly of wood and sun-dried bricks. But amid all the squalor and decay that distinguishes this historic city there are several mosques and medresses—colleges—which will well repay careful inspection.

Among the buildings deserving particular attention is the splendid tekke of the Dancing Dervishes, in which is the tomb of Hazret Mevlana, the founder of this peculiar order. It is popularly known as the “Blue Mosque” from the exquisite sapphire and turquoise blue tiles which until recently covered the cupola that rises above the great turbeh of the founder. There is nothing in Brusa, Stamboul, or Cairo that can surpass its rich and delicate traceries and arabesques, its profusion of jeweled lamps, its wealth, precious tapestries, wondrous faïence, its magic glories of color from the looms and kilns of Persia and India. But over and above all this wealth of ornamentation there is a religious atmosphere that does not exist in the ordinary mosque. For the dervishes, unlike the orthodox Moslems, make a special appeal to the emotions of their followers, and hence their widespread influence and popularity throughout the Mohammedan world.

There is, however, no attempt made here to affect the emotions through any of the plastic or pictorial arts. In this respect the Blue Mosque, like every other mosque in Islam, is absolutely devoid of paintings and statues. The reason is that Moslem law proscribes all representations of the human form, either in painting or statuary, as impious, because they are regarded “as encouragements to idolatry and as profanations of God’s chief handiwork.”[181]

According to one of the traditional sayings of Mohammed, “Whoever draws a picture will at the day of resurrection be punished by being ordered to blow a spirit into it; and this he can never do; and so he will be punished as long as God wills.” Nor does the Prophet leave any doubt as to the nature of the punishment, for he declares explicitly, “Every painter is in hell-fire.” In another saying, however, he greatly modifies this pitiless statement and tells the painter, “If you must make pictures, make them of trees and of things without souls.” It is because of this concession to artists that one may frequently see in Mohammedan houses pictures of flowers and trees and even of landscapes, provided there be in them no delineation of “the human form divine.” But in the homes of the strict adherents of Moslemism all images are rigorously tabooed, for, according to another saying of the Prophet, “Angels do not enter into the house in which is a dog, nor into that in which are pictures.”[182]

Konia is now a flourishing city of about sixty thousand souls. Most of its inhabitants, like those of Brusa, are pure Turks, who rigidly adhere not only to the religion but also to the manners and customs of their fathers. There is here, however, a goodly number of Greeks, Armenians, and Germans, besides whom there is also, among the employees of the Bagdad Railway, a sprinkling of Swiss, French, and Italians. Among the various institutions we visited, none gave us more agreeable surprise than those established here some decades ago by the Priests and Sisters of the Assumption from France, which are in a very prosperous condition. The Sisters have a school and dispensary, and their devoted care of the poor and sick has made them greatly beloved by all classes, irrespective of creed. Nowhere is the zeal of the ardent French nun seen to better advantage than in foreign missions, where her enthusiasm, notwithstanding the great difficulties she frequently encounters, never abates and where she exhibits a happiness that communicates itself to all who come in contact with her.

Nowhere in Anatolia, except probably in Brusa, has one a better opportunity to study the manners and customs and simple pastimes of the genuine Turk than in Konia. Theaters and operas, as we know them, they have not. From all social assemblages, like those in the western world, which are frequented by men and women alike, they are debarred by a custom that is more binding than the laws of the Medes and Persians.

But notwithstanding the total absence of all the entertainments that contribute so much to the pleasure of the people of Europe and America, the Anatolian has a way of spending his leisure hours that quite satisfies him. His amusements are simple indeed, but with them he is content.

Most of these center in the coffeehouse, which, to a great extent, takes the place of the restaurant in France and the club in the United States. Like the club and restaurant the Turkish coffeehouse

Is the resort of public men; the haunt
Of wealthy idlers and the trysting-place
Of such as have no home to indicate—
A place where each may come and go at will,

Think his own thoughts, pursue his own affairs,

Or fling his ore of feeling and of sense

Into the common crucible.

Unlike the club and restaurant, the coffeehouse serves no food or alcoholic liquors of any kind. Aside from the people who congregate there, and it is usually well-patronized, its attractions are as limited as they are simple. In the less pretentious places these are confined to coffee, tobacco, and, occasionally, the Medak, or story-teller. In the more sumptuous places of the larger cities there is also music, but it is generally of a very inferior quality, for the instruments employed are for the most part limited to a drum, a tambourine, and two or three rude guitars.

In Anatolia, as in all Moslem countries, the Medak is a most popular character. Not infrequently his ability is so marked that he attains the rank of a personage, and his services on festive occasions are in great demand and for them he is liberally remunerated. The admirable manner in which he can, unaided, fill the rôle of entire casts of the most diverse characters, his marvelous versatility in personating the people of different nations, and in imitating the tones, phraseologies, and even the facial expression of the multitudinous races of the Turkish empire are really astonishing and are to his audience a source of unending delight. Not a few of the Medaks, in addition to histrionic talent that would do honor to the best European stage, have a gift of expression and a facility of invention that make them the rivals of the most eminent Italian improvisatori. With such entertainers the Turks can readily forego our more elaborate forms of amusement, even if they were available.[183]

But the stories and drolleries of the Medak—although always a perennial source of pleasure—are not the chief attractions of the coffeehouse. These are partly supplied, as Lowell so playfully puts it, by

The kind nymph to Bacchus born
By Morpheus’ daughter, she that seems
Gifted on her natal morn
By him with fire, by her with dreams—
Nicotia, dearer to the Muse
Than all the grapes’ bewildering juice.

Although the use of tobacco was long forbidden in the Mohammedan world[184] and although its lawfulness is still disputed by a large number of Moslems, especially the Wahabis, the “scented weed” is now used almost universally from Morocco to Delhi and from Stamboul to Mecca. It is, however, well for the Moslems of to-day that tobacco and coffee were unknown in the time of Mohammed, as he would most likely have put them under the same ban as intoxicating liquors and games of chance.

Nothing more perfectly harmonizes with the temperament of the Oriental than the smoking habit, and it is doubtless this practice that contributes not a little to that remarkable patience and that wonderful repose which so distinguishes the Turk and the Arab from the nervous and overwrought American or European. An Oriental reclining on his cushioned divan with his bubbling narghile supplied with the rose-scented tobacco from Shiraz or Salonica is a matchless picture of contentment, and nothing that the hurry-scurry West can offer will excite his envy or disturb his peaceful reverie.

The invariable accompaniment of the narghile or chibouk with their aromatic and sedative narcotic is the zarf, with its small cup of foaming black coffee made from the prized Mocha berries of Arabic Felix.[185] Only in the East is this grateful and refreshing beverage properly prepared.[186] Let those who doubt this statement read of its virtues as celebrated by the Arabic poet, Abd-el-Kader Anazari Djezeri Hanbali. Only those will find his eulogy a wild extravagance who have never experienced the revivifying effects of the dark ambrosia that so gladdens the Bedouin’s tent and the pasha’s palace.

O Coffee! thou dispellest the cares of the great; thou bringest back those who wander from the paths of knowledge. Coffee is the beverage of the people of God and the cordial of His servants who thirst for wisdom. When coffee is infused into the bowl it exhales the odor of musk and is of the color of ink. The truth is not known except to the wise who drink it from the foaming coffeecup. God has deprived fools of coffee, who, with invincible obstinacy condemn it as injurious.

Coffee is our gold and in the place of its libations we are in the enjoyment of the best and noblest society. Coffee is as innocent a drink as the purest milk from which it is distinguished only by its color. Tarry with thy coffee in the place of its preparation and the good God will hover over thee and participate in His feast. There the graces of the salon, the luxury of life, the society of friends, all furnish a picture of the abode of happiness.

Every care vanishes when the cup-bearer presents the delicious chalice. It will circulate freely through thy veins and will not rankle there. If thou doubtest this, contemplate the youth and beauty of those who drink it. Grief cannot exist where it grows; sorrow humbles itself in obedience before its powers.

Coffee is the drink of God’s people; in it is health. Let this be the answer to those who doubt its qualities. In it we will drown our adversities and in its fire consume our sorrows. Whoever has once seen the blissful chalice will scorn the wine-cup. Glorious drink! Thy color is the seal of purity and reason proclaims it genuine. Drink with confidence and regard not the prattle of fools who condemn without foundation.[187]

So much for the oriental coffeehouse and the pleasure and surcease of care and sorrow which it offers its listless, dream-loving habitués. What are the amusements of the women of the Orient? Let the distinguished English writer, Julia Pardoe, whose knowledge of Turkish life and manners was not surpassed even by that of the well-informed Lady Mary Wortley Montague, give a reply to this interesting but ill-understood question. In the quotation given she is writing about the women of Constantinople, but what she says of them can, ceteris paribus, be asserted of their sisters in other parts of the Ottoman Empire:

It is a great fallacy [she declares] to imagine that Turkish females are like birds in a cage or captives in a cell;—far from it; there is not a public festival, be it Turk, Frank, Armenian or Greek, where they are not to be seen in numbers sitting upon their carpets or in their carriages, surrounded by slaves and attendants, eager and delighted spectators of the revel. Then they have their gilded and glittering caiques on the Bosphorus, where, protected by their veils, their ample mantles and their negro guard, they spend long hours in passing from house to house, visiting their acquaintances and gathering and dispensing the gossip of the city.

All this may and indeed must appear startling to persons who have accustomed themselves to believe that Turkish wives were morally manacled slaves. There are, probably, no women so little trammelled in the world; so free to come and go unquestioned, provided that they are suitably attended, while it is equally certain that they enjoy this privilege like innocent and happy children, making their pleasures of the flowers and the sunshine and revelling, like the birds and bees in the summer brightness, profiting by the enjoyment of the passing hour and reckless or thoughtless of the future.[188]

Since these lines were written, the liberty of the Turkish woman has been greatly extended, as have also her opportunities of obtaining a higher education, which were so long denied her.

From the foregoing it seems that the peoples of the Orient—both men and women—get quite as much pleasure out of life—in their own way, of course—as do our luxury-loving people of the Occident at the expenditure of far greater effort and wealth. But in this, as in other things—every one to his taste. De gustibus non est disputandum.

But much as one may be interested in the mosques and medresses and the customs of the people of Konia, the traveler of a practical turn of mind will find more to engage his attention in the splendid barrage which was constructed about a decade ago, some twenty odd miles to the south-east of the city, for the irrigation of the broad plain of Konia. It is the work of a German company, which, by utilizing the waters of two neighboring lakes—the Beushehr and the Sogla Geul—has enabled its enterprising managers to irrigate nearly a hundred and fifty thousand acres of valuable land which would otherwise remain arid and unproductive. It is notable as being the first undertaking of the kind in Asia Minor, and has already been of untold value to the inhabitants of Konia Plain. The success of this important work is sure to lead to the construction of similar reservoirs in other parts of Anatolia, with the happy result that many broad stretches of this long-neglected and deserted country will eventually be restored to their former fertility and populousness.

Time was, as history informs me, when Asia Minor, which has long been presented in many parts by pictures of utter barrenness and desolation, was one of the most fertile and productive and flourishing in the world. It was from this land, as DeCandolle[189] has shown, that Europe received many of its most important fruits and cereals, as well as many of its most valuable shrubs and trees. From Asia Minor came the peach, the plum, the cherry, and the apricot, the quince and the mulberry, and probably also the apple and the olive. From it also came wheat, barley, oats and lucerne and numerous other useful cultivated plants. It was doubtless for these reasons that an old legend located in this region the cradle of our race.

Before leaving Konia it may be noted that it was on the route of the Crusades led by Godfrey de Bouillon and Frederic Barbarossa. Godfrey’s forces found the city abandoned by the enemy, but the army of Barbarossa was forced to take the city by storm and compel the Sultan to sue for peace.

After leaving the old Seljukian capital we found little worthy of note until we reached the famous chain of the Taurus Mountains. For a great part of the distance our train passed over a level plain, sparsely populated. Here and there were small villages with mud-built houses surrounded by diminutive tracts of land under cultivation, not unlike those that are everywhere visible in northern Mexico.

What impressed us here, as in other parts of Anatolia, was the paucity of its inhabitants and their total failure to utilize the marvelous natural resources of the country. Although the area of Asia Minor is equal to that of France, its population is but one-fifth of that of the French Republic. And yet the natural resources of the country are enormous, and if properly conserved would suffice to support several times its present population. Rich in valuable minerals of all kinds, its untold treasures of ore are left unmined. Its flora, too, is as varied as it is valuable. The oak, for instance, counts more varieties here than in any other part of the world. Fifty-two species occur in Anatolia, twenty-six of which are not known to exist elsewhere. But in this part of the world, forestry is an unknown science. Worse still. Not only is arboriculture practically unknown, but thousands of valuable trees are every year wantonly destroyed. If the water, mineral, and forest resources were properly conserved and developed, Asia Minor would again be as it was in the long ago—one of the most populous and flourishing regions of the globe.

No country perhaps has seen such a succession of prosperous states and had such a host of historical reminiscences, under such distinct eras and such various distributions of territory. It is memorable in the beginning of history for its barbarian kings and nobles whose names stand as commonplaces and proverbs of wealth and luxury. The magnificence of Pelops imparts lustre even to the brilliant dreams of the mythologist. The name of Crœsus, King of Lydia ... goes as a proverb for his enormous riches. Midas, King of Phrygia, had such abundance of the precious metals that he was said by the poets to have the power of turning whatever he touched into gold. The tomb of Mausolus, King of Caria, was one of the seven wonders of the world.[190]

But as it is now, this country, once so famed for its wealth and its splendid cities, for its “powerful and opulent kingdoms, Greek or Barbarian, of Pontus and Bithynia and Pergamus—Pergamus[191] with its two hundred thousand choice volumes”—is so poor and neglected that its people frequently suffer from famine and from all the miseries consequent on improvidence and failure to utilize the vast treasures within their reach. It is to be hoped that the advent of the railroad and the introduction of irrigation and the promised establishment of an efficient forestry will ere long materially improve the present sad economic condition of the country, and that fair Anatolia will once more be covered, as of yore, with flourishing marts of commerce and magnificent cities where there are now crumbling columns of Greek temples and scattered fragments of Roman palaces and amphitheaters—a veritable “sepulchre of the past.”

The plain which we now traversed was for a considerable distance gravelly land, alternately marshy and dry and not infrequently very saline. Rocks of a volcanic character were often visible. There were little evidences of life except here and there long droves of heavily burdened donkeys and camels and occasional flocks and herds of wandering Turkomans.

Trains of camels in the deserts of Asia and Africa have always had a peculiar fascination for me. Like the llama trains of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes they seem to be specially adapted to their environment and to the work which they are called upon to perform. Before the invention of the steam engine both, in their sphere, were all but indispensable—the sure-footed llama on dizzy mountain heights, the thirst-resisting camel in torrid, interminable deserts. Even since the appearance of the locomotive these useful animals are apparently as much in demand as ever. For, in addition to transporting merchandise, as formerly, where railroads do not exist, they are still in constant use in delivering goods to such roads as are already in operation.

In the region of which I am now speaking, one, at times, sees only three or four camels at most; at others there are a hundred or more, all loaded to the limit of endurance. But whenever they appear in the gray, barren, undulating plain, they, with their drivers, at once give life and color to the landscape which is else but a dull study in monochrome. Their leader is usually a dirty, unkempt, diminutive donkey—in marked contrast to the stately animals that submissively follow him—which is frequently bestridden by a somnolent Turk wearing a faded old fez and voluminous red trousers, with his legs reaching almost to the ground. As the caravan gradually approaches one hears the jingling of the bells of the light-stepping donkey and the clanging of the larger bells of the heavy, lurching camel. But we also presently discover that both donkey and camels are decked with gaudy trappings adorned with beads and cowrie shells. These, however, are not solely for ornament, as one might suppose, but rather to avert the evil eye which, in the Near East, is even more dreaded than it is in any part of southern Italy.

How the camel carries one back to patriarchal times, to times even when the domesticated horse was known only in warfare! As a long line of betasselled camels came near our train one day, they seemed by their sneers and the lofty manner in which they held up their heads to be conscious of their ancient lineage and to resent the trespassing by the Bagdad Railway on what was long their exclusive domain. But to judge by the general appearance of the country—the old patched tents, the reed huts, the hovels of unbaked mud, the peculiar garb of the people, the primitive methods of agriculture, the simple manners and customs of the people—this part of Anatolia, notwithstanding the advent of the iron horse, is in almost the same condition as it was when Joseph and his brethren tended their father’s flocks in the land of Canaan.

If this part of Asia Minor was as arid and desolate in the days of Godfrey de Bouillon and Barbarossa—and we have no reason to believe it was materially different—we can easily realize what must have been the trials and sufferings of the Crusaders during their long march through “burning Phrygia” and inhospitable Lycaonia. Their route was through a dry, sterile, and salty desert, a land of tribulation and horror.[192] It was then, no wonder that, in view of the perils and sufferings entailed by an inland expedition, the later Crusaders preferred to make the journey from Europe to the Holy Land by sea.

Terror [writes Michaud] opened to the pilgrims all the passages of Mount Taurus. Throughout their triumphant march the Christians had nothing to dread but famine, the heat of the climate and the badness of the roads. They had particularly much to suffer in crossing a mountain situated between Coxon and Marash which their historians denominate, “The Mountain of the Devil.”[193]

So great, indeed, were the toils and dangers and disasters experienced by the Crusaders before they reached the Holy City of Jerusalem, that the brilliant French historian is moved to declare, “If great national remembrances inspire us with the same enthusiasm, if we entertain as strong a respect for the memory of our ancestors, the Conquest of the Holy Land must be for us as glorious and memorable an epoch as the war of Troy was for the people of Greece.”[194] Again he avers, “When comparing these two memorable wars and the poetical masterpieces that have celebrated them, we cannot but think the subject of the Jerusalem Delivered is more wonderful than that of the Iliad.”[195]

There are several passes through the Taurus, but by far the most important of them is the famous one long known as the Pylæ Ciliciæ, or Cilician Gates.[196] From time immemorial this celebrated pass has been the gateway between Syria and Asia Minor, between southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Saracens, Crusaders passed through them. Asurbanipal, Cyrus the Great, and Sapor I led their armies through their narrow defiles. Cyrus the Younger and Xenophon pushed their way through them on their way to fateful Cunaxa. Alexander, Cicero, Harun-al-Rashid led their armies through this narrow passage. It was also traversed by St. Paul, by hosts of the Crusaders and by pilgrims innumerable from the earliest ages of the Church.

On our way across the Taurus we followed in the footsteps of Alexander and the Crusaders as far as the Vale of Bozanti. Here the Bagdad Railway diverges slightly eastward from the old military and trade route which passes through the Cilician Gates. As we preferred to follow the old historic route to passing through nearly eleven miles of railway tunnels, we left the train at Bozanti Khan and proceeded by carriage through the Cilician Gates to Tarsus.

We were well repaid for so doing, for we had, in consequence, one of the most delightful mountain drives in the world. On each side of the road were towering heights clothed with forests of pine and other evergreens, while rising far above these was the sky-piercing summit of Bulgar Dagh covered with a mantle of snow of dazzling whiteness. Further on our way

The pass expands
Its strong jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems with its accumulated crags,
To overhang the world.

And, as if to give life and variety to the majestic scene, we saw circling the fantastic peaks and hovering above the beetling crags in quest of prey, a number of great bare-necked vultures, which seemed to be fully as large as the lammergeier of the Alps and no mean rivals of the condor of the Andes.

The narrow gorge known as the Cilician Gates answers perfectly to Cicero’s appellation of Pylæ-Tauri, gateway of the Taurus. And it corresponds almost equally well with Xenophon’s description of it when he declares it “but broad enough for a chariot to pass with great difficulty.” On both sides of the mountain torrent which rushes along the historic roadway are lofty and almost vertical precipices that could easily be so fortified as to convert it into a Thermopylæ, where a handful of men could hold a large army at bay. It was indeed by fortressing this pass that Mehemet Ali was long able, in defiance of the power of the Turkish Sultan, to retain control of Syria.

Shortly after emerging from the Pylæ Ciliciæ we catch our first view of the famed Cilician Plain, the Cilicia Campestris, which occupies so large a page in the history of this part of the world. Through it we see coursing like silver bands the distant rivers of familiar names—the Sarus, the Pyramus, and the Cydnus. The road in the vicinity of the pass is fringed with forests of pine and plane trees, under whose outstretched branches flows a leaping, laughing, tuneful stream which is ever making the same gladsome music as it did when St. Paul passed this way bearing the joyful tidings of the Gospel to the receptive peoples of Asia Minor. But as we near the plain we note a marked change in climate. Vegetation is not only more luxuriant but is almost semi-tropical in character. The road is bordered with laurel, bay, cedar, evergreen oak, wild fig, and wild olive. There are thickets of myrtle and oleander draped with wild vines and creepers, which greatly enhance the picturesqueness of the enchanting scene.

It was along this road, embowered in all the verdure and bloom of a semi-tropical climate, that the weary and footsore Crusaders passed after their long and toilsome march through the burning desert of Phrygia. Now that they had crossed the formidable Taurus, the greatest barrier athwart their long line of march, and were at last about to tread the sacred soil of the Holy Land, we can easily imagine the joy with which they chanted their favorite hymns, the enthusiasm with which they filled the air with their war cry, Dieu le veult. Clad in polished armor, shining brightly in the Syrian sun, and exultantly marching under their great banners, they form a magnificent pageant, worthy of the chivalry of the Ages of Faith and of the noble cause in which they have magnanimously pledged fortune and life. And as the Christian host moves onward towards its goal, “one pictures, above the lines of steel, the English leopards, the lilies of France, the great sable eagle of the Empire and then the other coats of the great houses of Europe—chevrons and fesses and pales”—ever triumphantly approaching the Holy City until at last they are privileged to “plant above the Holy Sepulchre the banner with the five potent crosses, argent and or, unearthly, wonderful as should be the arms of the heavenly Jerusalem.”

Still following in the footsteps of the Crusaders we finally, after the most delightful of drives, arrived at the old city of Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul the Apostle. This was the first city in which Baldwin and Bohemond and the Tancred the Brave flew their colors after crossing the Taurus. We had followed in their footsteps a great part of the way from the legend-wrapped Bosphorus to the romantic Cydnus—the Cydnus in which Alexander so imprudently bathed, where Cleopatra met Anthony and where legend long had it that Barbarossa lost his life. But the truth of history bids us declare that this great German hero—in whose footsteps we had so closely followed from his embarkation on the far-off Danube—perished not in the waters of the Cydnus but in those of the Calycadnus, several score miles to the northwest of the more famed Cilician stream. It was then in the Calycadnus—the modern Gieuk Gu—that “perished the noblest type of German kingship, the Kaiser Redbeard, of whom history and legend have so much to tell.” The spot where he met his fate was fabled to have been indicated long ages before by a rock near the river’s source, which was said to bear the portentous words Hic hominum maximus peribit—here shall perish the greatest of men.

But although history had declared that the heroic Römischer Kaiser was no more, his admiring subjects knew better. Like Charlemagne, Desmond of Kilmallock, Sebastian I of Brazil, Napoleon Bonaparte, and other worthies,[197] he still lives, but has retired into strict seclusion till, in the fulness of time, “he shall come again full twice as fair and rule over his people.” According to one legend the monarch is fast asleep in the castle of Bordenstein, or in the vaults of the old palace of Kaiserslautern. But according to another legend, he is held by enchanted slumber under the Kyffhauser mountain. All, however, agree that he sits

Taciturn, sombre, sedate and grave,

before a stone table “through which his fiery-red beard has grown nearly to the floor, or around which it has coiled itself nearly three times.” Here, like King Arthur, of whom it is written, “Arturus rex quondam rexque futurus,” he rests until

In some dark day when Germany
Hath need of warriors such as he,
A voice to tell of her distress
Shall pierce the mountain’s deep recess—
Shall ring through the dim vaults and scare
The spectral ravens round his chair,
And from his trance the sleeper wake.
The solid mountain shall dispart,
The granite slab in splinters start,
(Responsive to those accents weird)
And loose the Kaiser’s shaggy beard.
Through all the startled air shall rise
The old Teutonic battle cries;
The horns of war that once could stir
The wild blood of the Berserker,
Shall fling their blare abroad, and then
The champion of his own Almain,
Shall Barbarossa come again.

CHAPTER IX
IN HISTORIC CILICIA CAMPESTRIS

Domes, minarets, their spiry heads that rear,
Mocking with gaudy hues the ruins near;
Dim crumbling colonnades and marble walls,

Rich columns, broken statutes, roofless halls;

Beauty, deformity, together thrown,

A maze of ruins, date, design unknown—

Such is the scene, the conquest Time hath won.

Nicolas Michel.

It is doubtful whether, in any part of the world, more history has been condensed in less area than in the picturesque region formerly called Cilicia. Roughly speaking, it comprised the triangle bordered by the Mediterranean and the lofty ranges of the Taurus and Amanus Mountains. Its rich alluvial plains, watered by the celebrated Cydnus and Pyramus, Sarus, and Pinarus, early attracted a large population, who found there not only a mild and serene climate but also a soil that yielded in rare abundance the plants and fruits most useful to their sustenance and comfort. But, although the economical value of the Cilician Plain—called by Strabo Cilicia Campestris—was great, it was rather the political and military importance of this country that made it the prize of contending nations from the earliest dawn of history.

In the days when Hittite and Assyrian fiercely contended for universal empire—long

Ere Rome was built or smiled fair Athen’s charms

it was the highway between Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. It was the royal road between Persia and Greece on which was heard the martial tread of the armies of Xerxes, Cyrus, and Alexander. Rameses II—the Napoleon of Egypt—and Asurbanipal—the Napoleon of Assyria—led their victorious hosts along this road and, like the warriors who had preceded them, found subsistence for their men in the fertile valleys of the Pyramus and the Cydnus. It was also a field of frequent sanguinary conflicts during the days of Pompey and Cicero, of Mark Anthony and Zenobia, the rarely gifted but ill-fated “Queen of the East.” It was a continued arena of strife during protracted wars between the Byzantine Emperors and the Sassanian Kings, between the Osmanlis and Timur and Jenghiz Khan, and, in recent times, between the Sultan of Constantinople and his ambitious and rebellious viceroy, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt.

Three of the decisive battles of the world war were fought on the Cilician Plain. It was on the banks of the Pinarus that Alexander won his memorable victory over Darius—a victory that gave the irresistible Macedonian the control of the vast region between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates and paved the way for the brilliant triumph at Arbela, which made him the master of the world’s greatest continent. It was here that more than five hundred years later Septimus Severus crushed his rival Pescennius Niger, when “the troops of Europe asserted their usual ascendant over the effeminate natives of Asia.” And it was on this same historic spot that Heraclius defeated Chosroes and once more, in a most signal manner, showed the superiority of the West over the East.

But in addition to its celebrity as the theater of contests for world supremacy, Cilicia, like so many other regions we have described in the preceding pages, is noted as a field of romance, of myths, and legends innumerable.

Among the strange romances that still await the pen of novelist and historian is that connected with the extraordinary life and deeds of the Turkoman freebooter, Kutchuk Ali Uglu, who a century ago had his stronghold in the mountain fastnesses near Issus. Here, during forty years, he openly defied the authority of the Porte and the Great Powers of Europe. With the audacity of a Fra Diavolo and the cruelty and relentlessness of a Barbary corsair he ravaged the surrounding country and plundered traveling merchants and the grand annual caravan of pilgrims from Constantinople to Mecca whenever they came within his reach.

I am not [he was wont to say] as other Darah Beys are—fellows without faith, who allow their men to stop travellers on the King’s highway;—I am content with what God sends me. I await his good pleasure, and—Alhumlillah—God be praised—He never leaves me long in want of anything.[198]

Among some of the most daring performances of this desperado was the seizure of the master of an English vessel with a part of its crew, who were cast into prison. A large ransom was demanded for their release, but before this was forthcoming all but one perished. Strange as it may now seem, the English government with all its power was never able to obtain any satisfaction for this atrocious act of violence.

Shortly afterwards, the dauntless robber took possession of a richly laden French merchantman—which, through ignorance of the locality, came too near his fortress—and after appropriating its cargo, sank the vessel and sent the captain and crew to the French Consul at Alexandretta. Protests against these high-handed proceedings were made by all the consular authorities at Aleppo, but without avail. To the vigorous remonstrance of the Dutch Consul, Kutchuk Ali coolly and blandly replied:

My dear Friend, I am threatened with attacks from the four quarters of the earth; I am without money; I am without means; and the ever watchful providence of the Almighty sends me a vessel laden with merchandise. Say, would you not in my place lay hold of it, or not?

It was only a few months later that this same consul was arrested and imprisoned by the audacious freebooter. And, notwithstanding the cordial friendship which had long existed between the two men, the ruthless marauder did not liberate his prisoner until he had extorted from him a very large ransom.

And during the eight months’ incarceration of the hapless consul, Kutchuk Ali—was it from shame for ill-treating an old friend?—never once visited his hapless victim or admitted him to his presence. But, to show the character of this singular brigand, he did not fail, through his lieutenant, to send to his prisoner words of sympathy and consolation.

Tell him [the captor said] that unfortunately my coffers were empty when fate brought him into this territory; but let him not despair, God is great and mindful of us. Such misfortunes are inseparable from the fate of men of renown, and from the lot of all born to fill high stations. Bid him be of good cheer; a similar doom has twice been mine, and once during nine months in the condemned cell of Abdul Rahman Pasha; but I never despaired of God’s mercy, and all came right at last,—Alla Karim—God is bountiful.[199]

When one is told that Kutchuk Ali, during his forty years of a desperado’s life, never had more than two hundred men, and frequently a far less number, it seems incredible that he was so long able to defy not only the Porte but even the greatest powers of Europe. But we forget that the notorious Calabian bandit, Fra Diavolo, during the same period and with a much smaller band of outlaws, was wantonly perpetrating similar atrocities in southern Italy. And it was only a few generations earlier that the notorious Captain Kidd was roving the high seas in open defiance of the naval power of the civilized world.

One of the most popular legends in Cilicia is that of the Seven Sleepers. According to the Christian version they were seven brothers who fell asleep in a cave near Ephesus during the persecution of the Emperor Decius, and did not awake until the time of Theodosius II—nearly two hundred years later. The Mohammedans, however, contend that the cave in which this preternatural event occurred was about ten miles northwest of Tarsus. Because of the prominence the Prophet gives the legend in the Koran, the Cilician cave has become among the Moslems a favorite place of pilgrimage. Mohammed has, however, elaborated the story by introducing the dog—Al Rakim—of the Seven Sleepers and descanting on the care that Allah took of the bodies of the sleepers during their long, miraculous sleep.[200]

But it is in classical legend and myth that Cilicia is specially rich. It was near the mouth of the Pyramus, according to Homer, that Bellerophon, after his fall from Pegasus,

Forsook by heaven, forsaking humankind,
Wide o’er the Aleian field he chose to stray,
A long, forlorn, uncomfortable way.

Mopsuestia, which was formerly one of the largest and most flourishing cities of Cilicia, was fabled to have been founded during the Trojan war by Mopsus, the son of Manto and Apollo, while Adana, the most important commercial center on the Sarus and the Bagdad Railway, owes its name, legend has it, to Adam, its fabulous founder.

A notable feature of the history of Cilicia is the number of crowned heads who died or found their last resting place within its borders. Constantius, the son of Constantine, died of fever at Mopsucrene, near Tarsus, while marching against his nephew and rival, Julian the Apostate. It was to Tarsus that the embalmed body of the Apostate Emperor, who had been transfixed by a Persian javelin beyond the Tigris, was brought for burial. It was in Tarsus that Maximinus, the last of the great persecutors of the Church, preceding Constantine the Great, died in the greatest agony of a frightful disease—a visitation, according to many, for his barbarous persecutions of the Christians and for his horrible blasphemies against their Lord and Savior. It was, we are informed by Strabo, at Anchiale, the port of Tarsus, where were entombed the mortal remains of the celebrated Assyrian ruler known to the Greeks as Sardanapalus. On his monument was a stone statue beneath which was the famous epitaph—attributed to the Assyrian monarch himself—which, as rendered by Byron in his tragedy “Sardanapalus,” ran:

Sardanapalus,
The King and son of Ancyndaraxes
In one day built Anchiale and Tarsus.

Eat, drink and love; the rest’s not worth a fillip.[201]

Asurbanipal, according to this inscription which was supposed to express in a few words the guiding principles of this life, evidently belonged to that class of Europeans who are seemingly becoming daily more numerous of whom the poet speaks in the words:

Esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna

Vix pueri credunt.[202]

The population of Cilicia, as might be expected from its having been from time immemorial the great arena of the nations of the Orient and the Occident, has always been of the most cosmopolitan character. In ancient times Medes and Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians, Scythians and Hittites foregathered here, sometimes bent on the purpose of commerce but more frequently on the prosecution of war and conquest. To-day we find here Syrians and Arabians, Greeks and Armenians, Kurds and Ansaryii, Turkomans and Osmanlis, and representatives from divers parts of Africa and Europe. Was it this heterogeneous character of the Cilicians which gave rise to their widespread reputation for perfidy and untruthfulness and that led to the proverb Cilix haud facile verum dicet?

Knowing the complex character of its inhabitants, one is not surprised to learn that the gods and idols of the Cilicians were as manifold as the people themselves and that their worship exhibited all the promiscuity of the divers nations from whence they came. Baal and Astarte, Isis, Ishtar, and Osiris had their altars alongside those of Mars and Mercury, Zeus and Aphrodite. There was, indeed, a time—just before the advent of the world’s Redeemer—when it could be said that Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, was, in very truth, the pantheon of paganism.

During the zenith of its glory, Cilicia was one of the most densely populated countries in the world. But it has long since so fallen from its high estate that, like the lands of the Nile and the Euphrates, it is a region of ruins. So great indeed have been the ravages of time and warring mortals that “ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day, astonish the adventurous traveler by their magnificence and elegance.”[203]

Mopsuestia, which once counted two hundred thousand inhabitants, was an archbishopric and for a time the capital of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia, now numbers less than a thousand. Anazarbas, which was the home of the poet Oppian and Dioscorides who, “during fifteen centuries was an undisputed authority in botany and materia medica, has long since been level with the ground.” Nor is this all. Of many places mentioned by Cicero, when he was proconsul of Cilicia, even the sites are unknown.

Because of the strong appeal made by its legendary and historic lore we lingered longer in Tarsus than in any other spot in the Cilician plain. Like many other places we visited during our journey, Tarsus is as rich in myth and legend as it is in literary and historical associations. According to one myth, Tarsus was founded by Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danæ, while on his fabled expedition against the Gorgons. Another has it that the city was so named because Pegasus, the winged horse of Olympus, dropped there one of his pinions.[204] Josephus, however, identifies it with the Tarshish of the Old Testament, whence the ships of Hiram and Solomon brought their treasures of tin, silver, and gold.[205]

From an inscription on the Black Obelisk of Salmanasar II, we learn that Tarsus was captured by the Assyrians under Salmanasar about the middle of the ninth century, B. C. It was thus in existence several centuries before the mythical Romulus and Remus erected on the Capitoline their sanctuary for homicides and runaway slaves, and its foundation was probably laid before the legendary introduction into Greece of the Phœnician alphabet by Cadmus when he went in quest of Europa.

Centuries passed by and Tarsus became a great and flourishing center of commerce and literary activity. While Paris—La Ville Lumière—was as yet only a collection of mud huts on a little island in the Seine, inhabited by the Gallic Parisii, and London was but “a thick wood fortified with a ditch and rampart”[206] and occupied by half-savage, woad-stained Britons, Tarsus ranked as a center of Greek thought and knowledge with the world-famed cities, Athens and Alexandria.[207] Its schools and lecture rooms were frequented by vast numbers of students from far and near, while its agora and gymnasium, as in Athens in the days of Socrates, drew large concourses of people, young and old, who assembled to discuss not only the current news of the day, but also questions of literature, science, and philosophy.

Although famed throughout the Roman Empire as a civitas libera et mimunis—a capital and a free city—and as a great emporium of eastern trade, its proudest boast was that it was a city of schools and scholars. Here were found poets and orators of marked eminence. Here were philosophers of many schools, Stoics and Peripatetics, Platonists and Epicureans—all with their enthusiastic followers and all seriously discussing the same problems which have engaged the attention of thoughtful men from their time to our own.

In the long list of men produced by Tarsus, or who added luster to its name as teacher of students, were the two Athenodori, one of whom had been the tutor of Julius Cæsar and the other the friend of Cato and the instructor of Augustus. These were Stoics. Among the Academicians was Nestor, who was the preceptor of Marcellus, the son of Octavia, sister of Augustus. Other eminent men of Tarsus, mentioned by Strabo, were the philosophers, Archimedes and Antipater, the latter of whom was highly praised by Cicero, and who, next to Zeno, was considered as the most eminent of the Stoics. There were also Strabo, the great geographer, the grammarians Diodorus and Artemidorus, and the poets Dionysides and Aratus, from whose poem, “Phænomena,” St. Paul quoted the pregnant words, “For we too are His offspring,” in his epochal address to the Athenians on the Areopagus.

According to Strabo, Rome was full of learned men from Tarsus, in whose schools, as has been well said, was taught in its completeness the whole circle of instruction, the systematic course from which we get our word “encyclopædia.”[208]

But the flowering of so many ages of preparation in philosophy and religion was the great “Apostle of the Gentiles.” The selection of his birthplace seems to have been providential. Sir William Ramsay is so convinced of this that he writes “that it was the one suitable place that has been borne in on the present writer during long study of the conditions of society and geographical environment of the Cilician lands and cities.... Its peculiar suitability to educate and mould the mind of him who should in due time make the religion of the Jewish race intelligible to the Græco-Roman world, and raise that world up to the moral level of the Hebrew people and the spiritual level of ability to sympathize with the Hebrew religion in its perfected stage, lay in the fact that Tarsus was the city whose institutions best and most completely united the oriental and the western character.... Not that even in Tarsus the union was perfect; that was impossible so long as the religion of the two elements were inharmonious and mutually hostile. But the Tarsian state was more successful than any of the other of the great cities of that time in producing an amalgamated society, in which the oriental and the occidental spirit in union attained in some degree to a higher plain of thought and action. In others the Greek spirit, which was always anti-Semitic, was too strong and too resolutely bent on attaining supremacy and crushing out all opposition. In Tarsus the Greek qualities and powers were used and guided by a society which was on the whole more Asiatic in character.”[209]

In Tarsus the future apostle came into close contact with the greatest teachers and scholars of his time, and was thus prepared to enter the intellectual arena with the keenest minds of Greece and Rome. Being, as he could proudly boast, “a Roman of no mean city,” as well as a disciple of Gamaliel, one of the seven wise men of the Jews, he was peculiarly fitted to preach the truths of the Gospel not only to his own people but also to the much greater world of the Gentiles.

Never was a more important or a more far-reaching mission entrusted to mortal man. It is not too much to say that no one of his time was better equipped for it than the tent maker of Tarsus. Wherever he could secure a hearing for his marvelous message he was sure to go—to the synagogue, to the agora, to the courts of governors and consuls. Learned in the Law and the Prophets, he was a match for the ablest teachers of Israel. Familiar with the literature and philosophy of the pagan world, he spoke as one having authority before the “Men of Athens” and the representatives of the Cæsars. Thanks to the opportunities which he enjoyed in his youth of associating with the wise and learned men of Tarsus and to his thorough acquaintance with the highest forms of Greek culture, he was able, through his quick intelligence and his ardent love of souls, “to recognize and sympathize with the strivings of those who, living in the times of ignorance, were yet seeking after God, ‘if haply they might feel after Him and find Him,’ and to read in their aspirations after a higher life the work of the law written in the hearts of all men.”[210]

As one wanders through the narrow and squalid streets of modern Tarsus—a city of less than twenty thousand inhabitants—one finds no vestige whatever of its former splendor. But few ruins remain, the most conspicuous of which is the concrete foundation of a Roman structure popularly regarded as the tomb of the cynical voluptuary, Sardanapalus. No tradition indicates the house of the Apostle of the Gentiles or points to any church dedicated to his memory. The banks of the silt-filled Cydnus are lonely and desolate. Owing to the neglected condition of the river channel, no white-winged ships are here visible, as of yore, laden with the treasures of foreign lands. And yet it was up this now abandoned stream that Cleopatra sailed in her gorgeous barge when she came to answer the challenge of Mark Anthony. How, by her surpassing address, she led captive the great triumvir is admirably described by Shakespeare, who, following Plutarch, paints the famous picture of her entrance into Tarsus, which was then in the dazzling splendor of oriental magnificence:

The barge she sat in, like a burnisht throne,
Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick.
With them the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke

And made the water which they beat, to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person

It beggared all description, she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth of gold, of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus, where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her

Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

With divers-colored fans whose wind did seem,

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

And what they undid did.

The old capital of Cilicia is, of truth, a city of a wonderful historic past. But among all her proud memories those which have made her best known throughout the ages and which will endure the longest are not those of her abounding wealth and luxury, her superb monuments and palaces and temples, long in ruins; not those that clustered around her poets and philosophers and made her a favored sanctuary of the Muses; not those of her schools and gymnasia and her one-time eminence as the rival of Athens and Alexandria as the home of learning and culture; not those of Persian satraps and Roman proconsuls who here lived as the famed representatives of imperial authority; not those awakened by the presence within her gates of an Asurbanipal, an Alexander, or a Cicero; not those associated with the love-enmeshed Mark Anthony and the fateful “Siren of the Nile,” who both perished the ignoble victims of a debasing passion and a foiled ambition. No; that which has rendered her immortal is that she was the birthplace of a poor tent maker who was disowned by his own family because he became the bond servant of the Crucified, to whom he bore witness from Jerusalem to Rome; of one who, while preaching the good tidings of the Gospel, toiled night and day lest he should “be chargeable to any one”; one who, while preaching the Kingdom of God, was accused by the Thessalonian Jews of “turning the world upside down”;[211] one who, during his long and fruitful apostolate and his almost superhuman labors in the service of his Master, gloried in persecution and was the frequent victim of stripes and chains and imprisonment; one who was the fearless teacher and the strong supporter of the infant Church, and whose matchless Epistles have, during nineteen centuries, been the guide of doctors and professors; one who wrote his own epitaph when he declared “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” and who, in the capital of the Cæsars, won an Apostle’s exceeding great reward—a martyr’s crown; one whom his contemporaries knew as Saul, otherwise Paul,[212] of Tarsus.

While in Cilicia I made a special effort to ascertain the truth regarding the Armenian massacre that so stirred Europe and America to horror in 1909. I had long been convinced that most of the reports circulated respecting Turkish atrocities in Cilicia, like the reports disseminated throughout the world regarding other similar atrocities so frequently ascribed to the Turks, were ex parte accounts of what had actually occurred and that most, if not all, of them were greatly exaggerated. And recalling the activities since 1885 of Armenian revolutionists, many of them inspired by Russian Nihilist propaganda, the conviction grew that in probably the majority of massacres in Asia Minor, as well as in that of Constantinople in 1896, “the Armenian revolutionaries, by their riotous action, had put themselves and their innocent countrymen outside the law.” As the result of my investigations I am now satisfied that my previous views were not without foundation.

The massacre in Cilicia—organized, it was averred, by the Moslem Jews of Salonica—surpassed in frightfulness any that had taken place during Abdul-Hamid’s long and troubled reign. When, therefore, one understands the origin of the Cilician massacre, one may safely conjecture the cause of most, if not all, of the others in Turkey which have so shocked the world during the last four decades.

But, in a matter of such import as the one under consideration, I prefer to give the views of those who visited Cilicia when the terrors of the great massacre in Adana were still fresh in the memory of everyone, or who by long residence in Armenia are well acquainted with its people and are thoroughly familiar with the measures to which Armenians resort in order to achieve their independence of the Ottoman Empire.

Many influences [writes an English traveler who had exceptional opportunities for studying the question and who is well disposed towards the Armenians] went to the making of the (Cilician) massacre, some more or less, obscure, as the part taken in planning it by the Turkish Jews of Salonika and others belonging to the deeper causes of faith and race which ever underlie these horrible affairs. But some were local and exhibited the inconceivable unwisdom which Armenians so often display in their larger dealings with Moslems.

Cilicia [known during the Crusades as Lesser Armenia] is a district closely connected with Armenian history and independence; and here, in the sudden period of liberty which followed the downfall of Abdul-Hamid, Armenians gave unrestrained vent to their aspirations. Their clubs and meeting-places were loud with boastings of what was soon to follow. Post cards were printed showing a map of the future Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and circulated through the Ottoman post. Armenian nationalists marched in procession in the streets bearing flags purporting to be the flag of Lesser Armenia come to life again. The name of the future king was bandied about, no aloof nebulous personage, but, it is said, a well-known Armenian land owner of the Cilician plain, held in peculiar disfavor by the Moslems. Giving a fuller meaning to these matters was the steady assertion that an Armenian army gathering in the mountains by Hajin and Zeitun—an army of rumor like the legendary Royalist Army of Jales which terrorized revolutionary France—would presently march upon Adana and set up an Armenian kingdom again.

Sober Armenians of Cilicia tell you now that these proceedings were folly, the work of revolutionary societies and hot-heads and that the mass of the Armenian population held aloof. But there can be no doubt that the movement was approved and supported by many, and intended to involve the whole race; that it had in fact, got beyond the control both of those who desired to go more slowly and those who disapproved of it altogether.[213]

What is here said of the hot-brained revolutionaries of Lesser Armenia can with even greater truth be affirmed of their seditious compatriots of Greater Armenia. For those who know them best do not hesitate to declare that their lurid accounts of frequent and inevitably recurrent atrocities in certain parts of Asia Minor are to be interpreted in the same way as those which were first published regarding the horrors of Adana and other towns of Cilicia in 1909, and of Constantinople in 1896.[214] We get only one-sided reports respecting them, which reports, if not glaringly exaggerated, are in nearly all instances in severest condemnation of the “bloodthirsty” Turk.

No one probably has a more accurate knowledge of Turkey and her people or has made a more thoughtful study of the Armenian Question than has the noted traveler and Orientalist, David G. Hogarth, sometime fellow in the University of Oxford. With an experience of several years in Armenia, he frankly declares, writing of the Armenian Question:

So far as I understand this vexed matter, the source of the graver trouble is the presence in the heart of Armenia of the defiant Kurdish race which raids the villages where the flocks are fattest and the women most fair, now cutting an Armenian’s throat, now leaguing with him in a war on a hostile tribe and resisting in common the troops sent up to restore the Sultan’s peace. Whatever the Kurd does is done for the sake neither of Crescent nor Cross, for he bears neither one emblem nor the other in his heart, but just because he is Ishmael, his hand is against every man who has aught to lose.

The Armenian, for all his ineffaceable nationalism, his passion for plotting and his fanatical intolerance, would be a negligible thorn in the Ottoman side did he stand alone ... but behind the Armenian secret societies—and there are few Armenians who have not committed technical treason by becoming members of such societies at some period of their lives—it sees the Kurd, and behind the Kurd the Russian; or, looking west, it espies, through the ceaseless sporadic propaganda of the agitators, Exeter Hall and the Armenian Committees. The Turk begins to repress because we sympathize and we sympathize the more because he represses, and so the vicious circle revolves. Does he habitually, however, do more than repress? Does he, as administrator, oppress? So far we have heard one version only, one party to this suit with its stories of outrage and echoing through them a long cry for national independence. The mouth of the accused has been shut hitherto by fatalism, by custom, by the gulf of misunderstanding which is fixed between the Christian and the Moslem.

If the Kurdish Question could be settled by a vigorous Marshal, and the Porte secured against irresponsible European support of sedition, I believe that the Armenians would not have much more to complain of, like the Athenian allies of old, than the fact of subjection—a fact, be it noted, of very long standing; for the Turk rules by right of five hundred years’ possession, and before his day the Kurd, the Byzantine, the Persian, the Parthian, the Roman, preceded each other as over-lords of Greater Armenia to the misty days of the first Tigranes. The Turk claims certain rights in this matter—the right to safeguard his own existence, the right to smoke out such hornets’ nests as Zeitun which has annihilated for centuries past the trade of the Eastern Taurus, the right to remain dominant by all means not outrageous.

I see no question at issue but this of outrage. For the rest there is but academic sympathy with aspiring nationalisms or subject religion, sympathy not over cogent in the mouths of those who have won and kept so much of the world as we: Arria must draw the dagger reeking from her own breast before she can hand it with any conviction to Pætus.[215]

To speak in this fashion of the Armenians is more painful to me than I can express. From my youth I have sympathized with them in their great sufferings and, like most other people who depended on one-sided information, I attributed all their misfortunes to the much maligned and much calumniated Turks. Were the Armenians raided and maltreated by the lawless and murderous Kurds, who have been responsible for the greater part of the crimes which have been imputed to the Osmanlis? A sensational report was at once flashed over the world of a great massacre in Asia Minor perpetrated by the fanatical and fiendish Turk. Were they victims of Russian intrigue and aggression, driven from their homes and forcibly separated from their families? Again it was the Turk that was at the bottom of it all. Did they suffer reprisals for seditious outbreaks of plotting Huntchagists and revolutionary Armenians of foreign extraction? Still again the hue and cry was raised in Europe and America that the soulless Turk, always the Turk, only the Turk, was the guilty one. Armenian agitators, Armenian jacks-in-office, Armenian revolutionary committees provoking the Turks to retaliate on their offenders in order to force the intervention of the Great Powers[216]—these political mischief-makers go scot-free while the ever vilified Osmanli is pilloried before the world as a monster of iniquity and a demon incarnate.

The Anatolian Halil Halid, who was born and bred in Asia Minor and who spent many years in England, commenting on the matters under consideration, pertinently asks, “Did the humanitarian British public know these things? No; it does not care to know anything which might be favorable to the Turks. Have the political journals of this country—Britain—mentioned the facts I have stated? Of course not, because—to speak plainly—they know that in the Armenian pie there were the fingers of some of their own politicians.”[217] And those that are well informed know the reason of Britain’s attitude toward Turkey, for they know that “since 1829, when the Greeks obtained their independence, England’s Near East policy has been remorselessly aimed at the demolition of the Turkish Empire and the destruction of Ottoman sovereignty.”

Does France, the first nation of Europe to form an alliance with the sublime Porte, know these things? She does, but, at the present time, it suits her purpose to feign ignorance of them and to follow the policy of England in her dealings with those whom she has professed to be her friends and allies since the days of Francis I. With a volte-face worthy of a politician she does not even allow a favorite Academician, Pierre Loti—who knows the Turks better probably than any man in France—to make a statement in their favor, without censoring it, for fear he will reflect on the course of the present government.

Does our own country, whose people are supposed to be always on the side of justice and fair play, know the truth about the Turks and Armenians in Asia Minor? Not one in a hundred; not one in a thousand. The reason is simple. They have heard only one side of the Armenian question, and, in most cases, are quite unwilling even to hear anything to the advantage of the long-defamed Turks. With most of our people the case of the Turks has been prejudged and thrown out of court. And when one who has made a thorough study of conditions in Asia Minor writes that “the most part of the peasantry are men of peace, needing no military force to coerce them, giving little occasion to the scanty police and observing a Pax Anatolica for religion’s sake,”[218] he gives most of our people, who should have an open mind, a distinct shock, but does not change in the least their life-long prejudices. And when the same well-informed writer declares that “Aliens, Greek, Armenian, Circassian thrust him”—the Turk—“on one side and take his little parcel of land by fraud or force”[219] he is suspected of being a special pleader and his testimony is rejected as worthless.

But it may be said that I too am a special pleader for the Turk. Nothing is farther from my intention. My sole desire is to make known the truth as I have found it, and I have found that it is not all on the side of the Armenians. “The Turk’s patience is almost inexhaustible, but when you attack his women and children his anger is aroused and nothing on earth can control it.”[220] Then, like all other races of mankind, when stirred by religious or political fanaticism or goaded on by domestic sedition and foreign intrigue, the Turks also resort to reprisals and massacres that startle the world. It may, however, be questioned whether in all their history the Turks have perpetrated such refined atrocities as characterized the Reign of Terror in France, Russia dragonades in Poland, Serbian and Bulgarian savagery in the Balkans, unprovoked deeds of violence instigated by Armenian revolutionists in Asia Minor. But of all the people involved in these unspeakable outrages the Turk is the only one who is not pardoned. Why not? He has never been granted a fair hearing before the great tribunal of humanity.

From the foregoing it is evident that the Armenian Question will not be settled so long as Armenian agitators are allowed to sow with impunity the seeds of sedition in Asia Minor, or so long as they are abetted by European nations whose manifest goal is the partition of the Turkish Empire.[221] It is also evident that, so long as present conditions persist, sporadic massacres like those provoked by the Armenians in Cilicia and Constantinople are inevitable. These conditions involve also the greater and more important Turkish Question, or, speaking broadly, the Mussulman Question. The Great Powers cannot, without grave consequences, treat Turkey as a pariah nation. This the ever-increasing number of adherents of the Prophet will not tolerate. The two hundred millions of the Faithful are, be it remembered, the chief factors in the Near Eastern Question, which can never be settled so long as the Moslems are not accorded fair play in the arena of nations. The present schemes of exploitation and conquest in Mohammedan lands now being executed by the Great Powers can, in the long run, have but one result—and that in spite of all peace treaties and leagues of nations—the result of still farther separating the Cross and the Crescent and of strengthening the barriers that have existed between the East and the West since Greek battled with Trojan on the Plain of Troy.

As we wandered through the suburbs of Tarsus, made fragrant by the inviting gardens and orchards of lemon and orange, we were deeply impressed with the possibilities of the exceptionally rich alluvial soil of the Cilician Plain. Having all the fertility of the Nile it should, if drained, irrigated, and scientifically farmed, sustain a population even greater than that which inhabited it in the days of Pompey and Trajan. In soil and climate it is as favorable for the production of cotton and sugar cane as Texas or Louisiana, while in cereals and fruits of many kinds it yields as large crops as the most favored districts of France or Germany.

But irrigation is needed near the foothills of the surrounding mountains and adequate drainage is required near the mouths of the four chief rivers that bring fertility to the plain. For, as it is now, a great part of the land bordering the Mediterranean is covered with swamps like that described by Ovid in his beautiful story of Philemon and Baucis:

Haud procul hinc stagnum, tellus habitabilis olim,

Nunc celebres mergis fulicisque palustribus undæ.[222]

During the past few decades a great change has been made for the better, as is attested by the large number of American agricultural implements which are now found throughout the plain and the hundreds of ginning machines, looms, and thousands of spindles—mostly from England—which are seen in the cotton factories of Tarsus and Adana. But, although a great advance has been made over the condition which obtained a third of a century ago, there is yet vast room for improvement. When the Ottoman Government shall awaken to the necessity of conserving its natural resources, when it shall systematically reforest the territory whose once precious woodlands have been so sadly despoiled, and shall duly drain the vast swamps which have been formed by the neglect of its treasure-giving rivers, Cilicia Campestris will again be worthy of the name which legend tells us it once bore—Garden of Eden.

As it is now, the whole extent of Cilicia from the Taurus to the Amanus and from the mouth of the Cydnus to the headwaters of the Pyramus is chiefly remarkable for ruins of cities and the sites of towns whose very names are forgotten. Everywhere on the plain and on the girdling foothills, one will see crumbling fortresses built by Genoese and Venetians; moss-covered strongholds of Saracens and Crusaders; Corinthian columns and marble colonnades, arches, and vaulted roofs of Christian churches; reminders of mediæval warfare and of days when this historic land was swept by inundations of barbarian hordes, who destroyed by fire and sword the arts and labors which were once the pride of western Asia. Everywhere one observes fragmentary remains of Roman bridges and arches, of aqueducts and causeways, of Greek altars attributed to Alexander to commemorate his victory over the Persians; dilapidated walls and towers and sepulchral grottoes with an occasional Greek or Arabic inscription to mark the sites of Corycus, Pompeiopolis, and Anazarba—those cities of renown, where their inhabitants could quietly rest under their vines and fig trees free from the incursions of predatory Cliteans and Tibareni and barbarians of Hun and Scithian savagery, who spread terror and devastation wherever they could gratify their lust of cruelty or plunder. It was the boast of the Mongols that so complete was their work of “extirpation and erasure” of certain cities, where they had wreaked their full fury of rapine and murder, “that horses might run without stumbling over the ground where they had once stood.”[223] Judging by the calamities that have been inflicted on the once populous cities of Cilicia one would say that they were, in the expressive words of St. Prosper of Aquitaine, depredatione vastatœ—ravaged by depredations as ruthless as those that ever characterized the frightful irruptions of Timur or Jenghiz Khan.

This indiscriminate destruction of centers of culture and marts of commerce is often attributed to the Turks. But, as we have already seen, the Turks—I refer especially to the Osmanlis—who have been the rulers of the Ottoman Empire for more than five hundred years, were not like the Mongols and Tartars, a nation of raiders, but a nation of colonizers and empire builders. Their object, therefore, was not to destroy but to construct and develop. Those who make this charge, which is in great measure gratuitous, forget the wholesale destruction of the hordes of Timur and Jenghiz Khan, not to speak of other raiders, and lose sight of the fact that some of the most famous cities of the East were reduced to ashes by the armies of Greece and Rome more than a thousand years before the appearance of the armies of the Ottoman conquerors in Syria, Greece, and Ionia. Thus, to mention only a few instances, it was Alexander the Great who destroyed Halicarnasus, the birthplace of the historians Herodotus and Dionysius. Here stood the magnificent tomb of Mausolus, classed by the ancients among the seven wonders of the world, the ruins of which were in 1402 used by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem as a quarry for building their castles. It was the Roman general Mummius who brought ruin to the famous city of Corinth. This was, in truth, rebuilt by Julius Cæsar, but only to be destroyed again, at a much later period, by the Greeks themselves. It was the Emperor Aurelian who doomed to destruction Palmyra, the magnificent capital of Zenobia, almost during the heyday of its architectural splendor and commercial prosperity. It was the Goths who demolished the temple of Diana at Ephesus, another of the world’s wonders, while the city itself was in ruins even before the advent of the devastating Timur. But it was Timur who razed Sardis, the capital of Crœsus, whose name has ever been a synonym of untold wealth. It was Malik al-Ashraf, ruler of Egypt and Syria, who destroyed the famed city of Tyre after its long and eventful history which antedated the reigns of Hiram and Solomon.

Moreover, for thousands of years before the advent of the Osmanlis in western Asia there was at work an agency of destruction that is usually quite disregarded by those who are so propense to impute to the “Unspeakable Turk” the heaps of ruins which overspread a large part of the great Ottoman Empire—an agency whose power of annihilation is incomparably greater than ever was that of Hun or Mongol. This is the earthquake. From the dawn of history this irresistible power has been in action in nearly all the countries bordering the Mediterranean, and has, times without number, exhibited its relentless fury from Cilicia to Sicily and from Egypt to Dalmatia. In Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor,[224] and Greece whole cities were subverted. In the reign of Valens and Valentinian the greater part of the Roman world was shaken by seismic disturbances of the most appalling violence. Time and again the massive walls of Constantinople, its palaces, churches, and monasteries crumbled under the earth’s paroxysmal movements, and the extent of the disaster inflicted was beyond computation. At Cyzicus a temple which its builders fondly hoped would be as stable and as durable as the pyramids was, in an instant, leveled with the ground by one of those periodical earth shocks that have visited Asia Minor from time immemorial.

In the destructive earthquake of 365 A. D., no fewer than fifty thousand persons lost their lives in Alexandria. But probably no city in the world has suffered more from seismic vibrations than Antioch, which is near the southern border of Cilicia. Here in the terrific earthquake of 526 A. D., the loss of life totaled a full quarter of a million people. During the celebration of a public festival in Greece, at which a vast multitude had assembled, “the whole population was swallowed up in the midst of the ceremonies.” It was during this period of widespread catastrophe in Greece that “the ravages of earthquakes began to figure in history as an important cause of the impoverished and declining condition of the country.”[225]

The same causes that led to the economic and social decline of Greece operated with equally dire results in Asia Minor and Syria and Palestine. When, therefore, we contemplate the countless ruins of once famous cities, that are so conspicuous in a great part of Greece and Turkey in Asia, let us assign them to their real causes—not “the ravaging Turks,” but the devastating Huns and Goths, Tartars and Mongols, Persians and Saracens, and the blind and convulsive forces of nature.

It is far from my purpose to excuse the Osmanlis from any of the crimes they have perpetrated against civilization. But the foregoing paragraphs evince that their part in the destruction of the proud cities and monuments—magnificent centers of culture and commerce—of the ancient world has been greatly exaggerated. Their great sin against humanity, at least for generations past, has been one of omission rather than commission.[226] It has consisted—I speak of the ruling classes—in their inefficient government, which has given little or no encouragement to trade or industry; which has neglected roads and bridges, making interior communication difficult and often impossible; which has failed to develop the vast resources of a country to which a beneficent nature has been rarely prodigal; which has oppressed and trodden down a laborious and long-suffering peasantry, than which there is no better in the world; which has failed to provide for the education of the masses, ever eager for knowledge and improvement; which has permitted systematic bribery in high places and allowed crying malfeasance in office to go unpunished; which, by its unexampled apathy, has been responsible for one of the richest countries in the world degenerating into one of the most desolate, and for a great mass of its people—although innocent—becoming the most execrated.

Surely this indictment is damning enough without cumbering it with counts which are irrelevant or of which the Sultan’s government is not guilty. But, fortunately for those who are able to read the signs of the times, there are well-grounded hopes for a change for the better—for a return to the position among nations which the Ottoman Empire occupied when its schools and scholars were as famed as were its achievements on land and sea—when the followers of Osman shall be as far in the van of civilization as they are now in the rear.

CHAPTER X
ISLAM, PAST AND PRESENT

Properly to appreciate Mohammed we must discard our religious and national prejudices and see in his work only what he has put in it, independently of the consequences which this work has entailed and which may more or less wound us even to-day.

J. Barthélemy St. Hilairé.[227]

No one can travel through the Near East with an intelligent appreciation of the manners and customs of its people without an accurate knowledge of the religion professed by the majority of them and an adequate familiarity with the life and times of the one whom they revere as their Founder and Prophet. The reason is obvious. The inhabitants—Osmanlis, Arabs, Turkomans—of this part of the once great Ottoman Empire have so long lived under the theocracy established by Mohammed and his successors that every detail of their religion and civil life is regulated for them with a thoroughness that, outside of Islam, is quite unknown. The Sultan as well as the Mollah is both a religious and a civil functionary, and theocratic government prevails everywhere from the palace of the Padishah on the Bosphorus to the tent of the Bedouin in the Syrian and Arabian Deserts. What is not prescribed by the Koran is ordered by the Hadith, that body of legislative traditions which is based on the reputed sayings or acts of the Prophet of Mecca, and which, in the eyes of loyal adherents of Islam, has the force of prescriptions emanating directly or indirectly from Allah, and which are, consequently, immutable.

It is evident, therefore, that one who is ignorant of the history of Islam will not only seriously misunderstand the people of Moslem countries but will also be compelled, before he shall be long in their midst, greatly to revise his previous notions respecting them. For he will soon discover, as have many others before him, that while he knew all about their defects, he had little or no knowledge of their many and very great virtues.

As his sojourn among the Moslems is prolonged and he becomes better acquainted with them, he will find that most of his views concerning them were based on ungrounded prejudice or age-old stories that had no other basis than crass ignorance or un-Christian hatred. Not only this; he will gradually learn to admire those whom he had been taught to despise and, if he be of a deeply religious nature, he may find himself endorsing the statement of the late General Gordon: “I love the Moslems because they are not ashamed of God.”

To the student of history it seems incredible that so many and so egregious errors regarding Islam should have so long prevailed among men who are otherwise well informed and disposed to be fair in their judgments of all peoples, regardless of creed or color. For “although Islam has been described in so many books, there are yet educated people who,” in the words of the learned Padre Marracci,[228] “believe that Moslems are idolaters who adore Mohammed and the moon,”[229] and who, as the scholarly Sprenger writes, “have not gotten much further in the knowledge of Islam than that the Turks allow polygamy.”

If it were a question of the inhabitants of Central Africa, who were practically unknown until the explorations of Speke, Stanley, and Livingstone, we should not be surprised that even geographers should know next to nothing about them. But it seems difficult to explain the widespread ignorance which has everywhere obtained regarding a people who have played so important a rôle in history as the Moslems, and who during more than twelve centuries have been in constant relations with the Christian nations of Europe.

But, although the contact between the East and the West has been uninterrupted since the time Moslemism essayed

To plant the Crescent o’er the Cross,

the misrepresentations of Mohammed and his followers have continued without intermission from the days of the Crusaders to the present time. And the strangest thing is that the most extravagant tales about Mohammedans and their religion were put in circulation when their originators must have known that they had no foundation in fact.

Many of the stories—as false as they were ridiculous—that were long current respecting the Arabian Prophet and the religion which he founded were due to the Trouvères and the Troubadours. A great majority of the Chansons de Geste exhibit a pitiful ignorance of the tenets of the Saracens, and not a few of them contributed to give vogue to the most revolting fables respecting Mohammed and Islam. Although neither Leo the Isaurian nor Oliver Cromwell, both the sworn enemies of images, were more opposed to idolatry or to the worship of images than Mohammed, nevertheless, in La Chanson de Roland,[230] the Franks are represented under the walls of Saragossa as avenging their defeat at Roncesvelles by mutilating and destroying the idols of their enemies.

In the Chanson d’Antioche—declared to be “a very beautiful chanson which does not contain any fables but only the unadulterated truth”—the author, Richard le Pelerin, in the beginning of his poem, asks God to put to dire confusion the followers of Mohammed—especially those

Qui croient et adorent la figure Mahom.

In the Roman de Beaudouin de Sebourc, the author goes to still greater lengths. By a strange aberration he makes the idol of Mohammed the emblem of Islam, as the Cross is the emblem of Christianity. For, in this chanson the Comtesse de Porthieu is represented as wishing to abjure her faith before the Sultan Saladin and expressing her readiness to adore the effigy of the Prophet:

Mahom voel aourer; aportez-le-moi-cha.

And Saladin, on his part, is pictured as ordering the idol to be brought for the adoration of the newly made convert to Mohammedanism:

Qu’ on aportast Mahom, et celle l’aoura.

When it is remembered that Mohammed was all his life the relentless enemy of images of all kinds and that he absolutely proscribed the representation of animated creatures; when it is recalled that images of all kinds have been studiously excluded from every mosque in the world from the time of the Prophet until the present, one would think that such misrepresentations as those spread broadcast by the trouvères would have found little acceptance, or have been as short-lived as they were false. Had the object of the trouvères been to perpetuate animosity among Christians toward Moslems they could not have devised a more effective method of achieving their purpose.

But Mohammed and his followers had to be discredited and recourse was had to foul means as well as fair. Not satisfied with making them favor what they always consistently denounced, trouvères and chroniclers invented a most cruel legend regarding the death of the Prophet. Notwithstanding the concordant and unquestioned verdict of history respecting the demise of Mohammed, the pilgrim Richard, author of the chanson La Conquête de Jerusalem, fabricates the odious fable that the founder of Islam was devoured by swine while helplessly inebriated.[231] And this, despite the well-known fact that Mohammed was during his entire reforming career as much opposed to the use of intoxicating drinks as he was to the use of images! Nevertheless this alleged disgraceful end of the Prophet is assigned by the pilgrim Richard and by Guibert de Nogent in his “Dei Gesta per Francos” as the reason why Mohammedans never eat pork![232]

I call special attention to the erroneous notions regarding Mohammed and Islam which pervade the pages of the chansons de geste, as they are samples of other errors equally preposterous regarding a people who should have been better understood, and as they help to explain the origin of many similar misconceptions which, notwithstanding all that has been said and written to the contrary, still persist, among large masses of people, in all their original force and crudeness.

Even long after the time of the trouvères there were not wanting historians and divines who were willing to repeat the silly legends of the chansons de geste whenever they thought they would thereby give point to their attacks on the Koran or the Prophet. Thus, among the leaders of the Reformation, the distinguished Orientalist, Bibliander, seriously institutes a comparison between Mohammed and the Devil. Melancthon declared him to be either Gog or Magog, if not both together.[233]

Voltaire, in writing of the Koran, of which he had as superficial an acquaintance as of many other things which engaged his flippant and caustic pen, declared it to be “Ce livre unintelligible qui fait fremir le sens commun à chaque page”—that unintelligible book which makes common sense shudder at every page. And, like many writers before and since his time, he was fully aware that his fictions were totally at variance with history. But, as has been well expressed by Hurgronje, “he wanted to put before the public an armed Tartuffe and thought he might lay the part upon Mohammed.”[234]

Others again, like many writers of our own day, had a political as well as a religious object in their attacks upon Islam. For, under pretense of waging war against the nefarious tenets and practices of Moslemism, they secretly had in view an assault on the Turkish Empire, or, as a noted Swiss Orientalist long ago declared, all their efforts were really directed in oppugnationem Mahometanæ perfidiæ et Turcici regni.[235]

From the days of the Crusaders until the present there has been no cessation of the campaign of vilification of everything Mohammedan as there has for long been no abatement in political hostility on the part of certain nations of Europe against everything Ottoman. Centuries ago the cry was “Pestem hanc ferro et flamma ab orbe depellendam esse”—the pest of Islam must be driven from the earth by fire and sword. To-day the war cry is in Gladstonian phrase, “The Turk must, bag and baggage, get out of Europe.” How much of truth and how much of falsehood there have been in the most recent outcries against the Moslems, especially against those living in the Ottoman Empire, will be determined only when the historian shall be free from the violent passions and the selfish interests and the age-long antipathies which blind the writers of the present as they have blinded those of the past.

In the preface to his monumental work on the Koran, the erudite Padre Lodovico Marracci laments the prevailing ignorance of his time regarding everything Mohammedan and the paucity of books of value respecting the religion and practices of so large a part of mankind as the adherents of Islam.

Although [he writes] some have written learnedly and solidly on these subjects, there is nevertheless no concealing the fact that others, through ignorance of things Saracen, often omit the truth and publish fictitious and fabulous things, which excite the laughter of the Mohammedans and cause them to become more obstinate in their error.[236]

But, notwithstanding Marracci’s eloquent plea for a more thorough study of Islam, his words fell, for the most part, on deaf ears.[237] It was not until our own epoch that a critical investigation of the Koran was begun and that a really impartial inquiry into the life of Mohammed was seriously undertaken. Men were still in doubt as to the true character of the Arabian reformer and were still undecided as to whether he was

Hero, impostor, fanatic, priest or sage.

All, however, were forced to admit that he must have been a man of extraordinary power and influence to set in motion that mighty human current which only a little more than a century after his death had founded an empire which extended from the Tigris to the Gaudilquivir and from the burning sands of Yemen to the chilly steppes of Turkestan. Yet, although the scholarly works of Sprenger, Margoliouth, Prince Caetani, and Noldeke-Schwally have thrown a flood of light on many formerly obscure points in the life of the Prophet and elucidated many previously disputed passages of the Koran, there is still as much discussion as ever regarding the nature of Mohammed’s religious vocation. Some contend that it was the result of hallucination, others of epilepsy, others of psychopathic abnormality, others of auto-hypnosis, while, as a result of long researches, Aloys Sprenger is quite sure that the Prophet was a victim of muscular hysteria.[238]

But however much controversy there may be respecting the origin of Mohammed’s self-styled mission or the nature of the mental disease from which he is said to have suffered, there can be no doubt whatever about the essence of his teaching as incorporated in the Koran. For the creed of Islam is so simple that, as has been said, “it can be written on a fingernail.”

The five duties of Islam, which means resignation to the will of God, as declared by Mohammed, are as follows:

1. Bearing witness that there is but one God;

2. Reciting the daily prayers;

3. Giving the legal alms;

4. Observing the Ramazan or the month’s fast;

5. Making the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime.

In view of the clearness and simplicity of this creed, it is difficult to understand how the Western World has so signally failed to comprehend the real nature of Mohammed’s teaching. It is equally difficult to conceive how the authors of the countless books on the Prophet and his religion could have been honest and sincere when they penned their diatribes against Mohammed or pronounced their bitter and ludicrous invectives against his followers and the religion to which they were so ardently attached. Had they been actuated by a spirit of fairness and Christian charity they could so easily have ascertained the truth about the doctrine which they so strangely misrepresented and the people whom they so pitilessly maligned. For there never was a time since the day Saladin entered the Holy City of Jerusalem accompanied by its bishop, who had gone out to greet the humane conqueror; never a time since the Poverello of Assisi went as a missionary to the Sultan of Egypt, when men of good will, seeking the truth and nothing but the truth, might not have had all the information desired both about the doctrines of Islam and the practices of the millions who looked upon Mohammed as directly commissioned by God to teach them the way to Heaven.

Those who always exhibited such readiness to defame Islam and its followers should have recalled the words of St. Augustine when he declares that “there is no false doctrine which does not contain something of truth.”[239] They should have given heed to the counsels of the learned and zealous Father Marracci, who, guided by the experiences among the Mohammedans of his brothers in religion, taught them how they might bring the followers of Islam to a knowledge of the Gospel and to a love of the Crucified. Had they done so there would not be that inveterate hatred that now exists between the Cross and the Crescent, and there would not be that separation into two hostile camps of so many hundred millions of people who normally should be in the same fold and under the same Shepherd.

For, contrary to what has been so often said and written during the last thousand years and more, there is much, very much good in Islam. No less an authority than the illustrious Cardinal Hergenrœther declares:

Islamism ought to prepare for civilization the peoples most advanced in barbarism, notably those of Africa. Those peoples whom it is necessary to lead from fetishism to monotheism are in their low degree of culture and brutal sensualism materially aided by such a stepping-stone in their transition to Christianity.[240]

When Mohammed began his marvelous career of religious reform his countrymen in Arabia were, in many respects, as deeply sunk in vice as the most debased tribes of Central Africa. They were idolaters who were addicted to the grossest and most absurd fetishism. Trees, stones, shapeless masses of dough and the most trivial things in nature were objects of adoration. There was a special divinity for each of the countless tribes of the peninsula. In Beit-Alia—House of God—in Mecca, there was a different idol for each day of the year. Here also was the most jealously guarded object of worship—a black stone that was reputed to have fallen from heaven in the days of Adam—a stone which, it was averred, was originally of immaculate whiteness, but which was subsequently blackened by the myriad osculations of its sinful worshipers.

Nor was this all. Not only were the Arabians noted for their loathsome idolatry but also for their inhuman practice of disposing of female children at their birth by burying them alive. And so great was their superstition that it was not an infrequent occurrence for a father to sacrifice his child to appease the fancied anger of an offended deity. Besides this, blood feuds, sensuality of the vilest kind, drunkenness, and utter disregard of even the natural rights of women were as rampant as their general results were widespread and fatal.

When Mohammed set out to preach monotheism to these people who were so steeped in every vice—people who had heard the Gospel but had long abandoned its sublime teachings for the abominable practices of idolatry, he encountered the strongest opposition from all quarters. So relentless was the hostility displayed by friend and foe that his projected reform seemed foredoomed. But, notwithstanding the jeers which greeted him on every side and the persecutions which he endured for years, he was eventually successful beyond his most sanguine expectations.

Here we have the spectacle of a man that could neither read nor write who, after twenty years of incessant struggle, had succeeded in extirpating a system of idolatry which, by fostering morals the most depraved and practices the most hideous, had for centuries made the fairest parts of Arabia reeking sinks of iniquity. In place of a blighting and debasing fetishism he substituted the worship of one God, the Greater of heaven and earth—a God who is eternal, omnipotent, merciful; who presides over the destinies of all His creatures; who sees all their actions, even the most secret; who punishes the wicked in another world and rewards the good, and who never abandons them for a single instant either in this life or in the one to come. He preaches submission, the most humble and the most confiding submission, to the holy will of Him who is not only the Author of their existence but also their unfailing support and their just and omniscient judge. And the sole worship which the Mussulman is required to give to this one God is prayer at stated periods of the day and an annual fast during the month of Ramadan—a fast which is designed to direct his thoughts to Him who has created him, who sustains him during life and who, for weal or for woe, will be his Sovereign Lord after death.

Such essentially is Islam in all its simplicity as preached to the Arabian world by the unlettered camel driver of Mecca; such the doctrine which was destined to be adopted by many races and nations in every clime. There is nothing new in it. Mohammed never pretended to introduce anything new. He simply proclaimed to his benighted countrymen not a new revelation, but, as he always insisted, the long-forgotten faith of Abraham and Moses and Christ, as he understood it.

With the exception, therefore, of Christianity, based on the Old and New Testaments, with all its marvelous and beneficent consequences, there is no religion in the world which can justly be compared with Islam or which even remotely deserves to be placed in the same category.[241]

And, with the exception of Christianity and Judaism, it is the only religion in the world which has recognized and consecrated monotheism. It is, therefore, far superior to the debasing paganism of Greece and Rome. It is loftier and nobler than the repugnant dualism of Zoroaster and the selfish and materialistic utilitarianism of Confucius. It is incomparably more elevating than the fantastic metempsychosis and the atheistic Nirvana of Gautama Buddha, which, with Confucianism, holds in spiritual bondage a great majority of the teeming millions of Central and Eastern Asia.

The eminent doctor of the Church, St. John of Damascus, shows how near he considers Islam to Christianity when, in his account of the creed of Mohammed, he treats it as a heresy analogous to Arianism.[242] Peter the Venerable, the illustrious Abbot of Cluny, the first one to have a translation made of the Koran, was of a similar opinion, as is evinced in his work against Mohammedanism—a work which treats not of the paganism but of the heresy of the Saracens, as its title—Adversus Nefandam Hæresim sive Sectam Saracenorum—conclusively indicates.[243] In like manner Dante, who was almost as distinguished as a theologian as he was as a poet, places Mohammed in hell not as a heathen but as a sower of “scandal and schism.”[244]

Arius, by denying the divinity of Christ, had prepared the way for Islam, which saw in the Son of God only a prophet who, as Moslems subsequently claimed, was but the precursor of Mohammed. St. Jerome, in his memorable words—Igemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse miratus est—the world uttered a sigh and was astonished to find itself Arian—expressed the one-time prevalence of the errors of the Alexandrine heresiarch. The grave dissensions in the churches of Asia and Africa that followed close upon dissemination of the heresy of Arius immensely assisted Islam in its lightning career of conquest. For the divided and degenerate Christians of these two continents were easily persuaded that Moslemism was but one of the various Christian sects and not a new religion.

The followers of Mohammed were formerly the victims of calumny on account of their alleged beliefs and practices. Now it is the organization of Islam and the character of its religious services that seem to give rise to the most misunderstandings.

Thus, according to many modern writers, the Sultan of Turkey is to Islam what the Pope is to Christendom. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. That the caliphate, whether of the Ottoman, Ommiad, or Abbassid dynasties, is in no way comparable with the Papacy is clearly evidenced by the fact that Islam has never in all its history regarded the Caliph as its spiritual head.[245]

Again the same writers, as well as many modern travelers, constantly refer to the priests and the clergy of Mohammedanism. The fact is that Islam has not and never has had anything like a clerical body as it is understood in the Christian world. There is no ordination, no priesthood with powers to bind and loose, no confessional, no baptismal font, no altar, no sacrifice, no mediator between man and God. There is in fact no one possessing any special powers through ordination to perform any act that any adherent of Islam could not as rightfully perform. For, Islam, as has been well said, is and has always been “the lay religion par excellence.” There are, it is true, the Khatib—preacher—and the imam—leader in prayer—but neither the one nor the other possesses anything whatever of the sacerdotal character of the Christian priesthood or of the hereditary Levites of ancient Judaism.[246] They are usually selected on account of their grave deportment and their knowledge of the Koran and of the traditions of Islam, but otherwise they might be replaced by a mufti or kadi whose occupations are analogous to our lawyer or judge. The chief purpose of the imam, whose function closely resembles that of a precentor, is to preserve order in public worship. But whether the religious functions of the Moslems be performed by imams, khatibs, mollas, or any of that large class of functionaries known as ulema, there are no gradational distinctions among the worshipers themselves. The ulema may act like priests and may sometimes be considered as priests by uninformed people, but the ulema themselves, who ought to know, strongly and consistently insist on their non-priestly character. So alien, indeed, is all classification to Moslemism, so abhorrent to Islam is the very idea of an ecclesiastical organization as distinct from the laity, that Palgrave, whose long and intimate intercourse with the Mohammedans made him thoroughly familiar with all the details of their creed, did not hesitate when referring to their religious organization, to declare, “‘Each one for himself and God for us all’ is an almost literal translation of what the Koran sums up and a hundred traditions confirm.”[247]

The erroneous notions that so generally prevail respecting the real object of mosques are as numerous as those respecting its khatibs and imams. The primary use of a mosque is to indicate the direction of Mecca. Originally it was a simple platform with a wall at the end facing Mecca. In facing this wall the worshiper looked towards what was to him the holiest city in the world. In southern climates this primitive type of mosque[248] sufficiently answered the chief purpose contemplated. But the more rigorous climates of the north required roofed places of worship, which eventually developed into the magnificent structures which one now finds in Brusa, and Constantinople, as well as in cities much farther south, such as Damascus and Cairo and Jerusalem.

But the reverence which a Mussulman entertains for his mosque and that which a Roman Catholic feels for his church are entirely different in character. There is, in the eyes of a Catholic, a sanctity attaching to a church that does not and cannot attach to a mosque. This is shown by the names given to the two places of worship. A common name for mosque is Jami, which means a meeting house, while the word church, derived from the Greek, signifies the house of God—Τὸ κνριακὸν. In a Moslem’s view God is present in the jami or mosque, but only as he is present everywhere else—in the field, on the mountain. But in the church, according to Catholic teaching, God is really and truly present under the veil of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence all the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic ritual, all the gorgeousness of decoration which so distinguishes the Catholic house of God from the Mussulman meeting house. Because of the Sacramental Presence every Catholic church is called the house of God. But among Mohammedans there is only one specifically recognized Beith Allah—house of God. This is the Kaaba at Mecca, which contains the Black Stone which was for ages an object of idolatrous worship and which is even to-day the chiefest object of Mohammedan veneration, if not also of downright superstition. It is because of the presence of this old pagan fetish in the Kaaba,[249] as well as on account of the fantastic legends which are associated with the Kaaba itself, that the Moslem, when praying, always turns toward Mecca. It is this Kebla—the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca—that is carefully indicated by the niche or mihrab in the interior wall of every mosque. For a time the Kebla was changed from Mecca to the rock in Jerusalem, on which Solomon’s temple was erected, but, whether from policy or atavism, Mohammed changed it back again to its original location. By so doing he virtually reduced Islam to a national religion—the religion of Arabia—instead of making it, as he had dreamed, the religion of the world.

Again, the mosque, unlike the church, is never the center of that kind of religious organization which we know as a parish. There is no congregation comprising those who worship in a particular mosque. Nor have the imams and khatibs any jurisdiction, like that of a Catholic pastor, over those who assemble in the mosque for prayer. Worship in the mosque may be called congregational only in so far as certain individuals, who happen to gather there, unite in prayer to Allah under the direction of the imam, but it is nevertheless individual, as no Moslem has closer affiliations with one mosque than with another. Wherever he happens to be when the muezzin calls for prayer, there is his mosque and there he joins with his fellows in worship.

In the Ottoman Empire the imam, so far as he is charged with special functions, is no more than a paid servant. Outside of acting as precentor, or fugleman, at prayer his chief duties are to officiate at marriages and funerals. There is none of that spiritual relationship which exists between the Catholic priest and his parishioners; none of that love of a father for his children, and none of that affection of children for their father, which exists in every Catholic parish; no one who is in any sense the shepherd of his flock—to assist the weak, to direct the erring, to admonish the remiss, to upbraid the sinner, and lead those aspiring to holiness to higher degrees of perfection in the spiritual life. Far from feeling the need of such a guide and superior, the Moslem prides himself on his ability to dispense with such aids which he would regard as curtailing his religious liberty and circumscribing his independence of action. He prefers to lead his own life, without let or hindrance, without monitors or directors, and to be free, if so disposed, to follow those votaries of pleasure in other parts of the world, who

Compound for sins that they’re inclined to

By damning those they have no mind to.

But one cannot fully understand the religious spirit of the Mussulman without knowing something of the prayers which he is wont to address to the Deity. No class of men, probably, have the name of God—Allah—more frequently on their lips than the Moslems. This is particularly true of those devotees—and their number is legion—known as dervishes.

Prayer five times a day is the second of the five pillars of Islam. At dawn, at midday, in the afternoon, evening and night the Muezzin ascends the minaret and repeats in a loud voice:

God is great. I bear witness that there is no god but God. I bear witness that Mohammed is the apostle of God. Come to prayers! Come to salvation!

But prayer may be said only when the clothes and body of the worshiper as well as the place of prayer are free from all impurity. Moreover, the prayers, whether said privately or in common, must be recited according to a prescribed form and in specified postures from which there can be no deviation. There are constant repetitions of the words “God is great,” “I extol the holiness of my Lord, the Most High.”

Holiness to Thee, O God!

And praise be to Thee!

Great is Thy name!

Great is Thy greatness!

There is no deity but Thee!

A devout Mussulman will recite these and similar forms of prayer no less than seventy-five times a day. But these words, which admit of no variety or change, become, after ceaseless repetition, rather a mechanical than a mental act and are frequently more in the nature of lip service than the prayer of the Christian, which consists not only in acts of praise, as in the above words of the Moslem worshiper, but also in acts of impetration and thanksgiving. The Moslem’s nearest approach to a Christian prayer is the first sura of the Koran, called the Fatihah, which reads:

Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds,
The compassionate, the merciful.
King of the day of reckoning!
Thee only do we worship, and to Thee
only do we cry for help.
Guide thou us in the straight path,
The path of those to whom Thou hast
been gracious,
With whom Thou art not angry,
And who go not astray, Amen.

But we have only to compare this prayer—which has been called “the quintessence of the whole Koran”—with the “Our Father” to see the vast difference between the prayer of the Christian and that of the Mohammedan. It is manifest in the very first word of the Pater Noster, which shows that there is no comparison between the Christian and the Moslem conception of God. Mohammed believed in God, feared and obeyed Him according to his light, but, not recognizing His Fatherhood, he did not and, from his view of the Deity, could not love Him. It is so with his followers. Their God is a God of fear, not a God of love, because not known as God Our Father. How different is this from the relationship—sonship—of the Christian to his Creator, who enjoys the blessed privilege of calling God Abba—Father.

Denying the Fathership of God, Moslem theologians maintain that it is impossible for men to love Him. Man and God, they contend, are of different natures, and where there is a difference of genus there can be no love. The nearest approach to love, they contend, is man’s perseverance in obedience to Allah.

Again, according to the same theologians, there can be no love of God for man, for love, say they, implies change, which, as God is infinitely perfect, is impossible. When God therefore is said to love man, all that is meant, according to Al-Gazali, one of the most eminent of Moslem theologians and philosophers, is that “God so affects man that man comes to God.”[250]

But in this case, as in so many others, the common sense—or shall we call it a special divine illumination?—of many in Islam has enabled them to arrive at a truer conception of God and of their relations to Him than was ever attained by Moslem philosophers and casuists and incomparably superior to anything found in the Koran or in the traditional teachings of Mohammed.

As a proof of this assertion, I need only adduce the beautiful prayer of the Persian imam, El Kachiri, who, discarding the cold and formal acts of praise prescribed in Moslem worship, pours forth his soul to God in these touching and heart-felt words:

Thou, O Lord, threatenest me, with a bitter separation which will forever deprive me of Thy presence! O Lord, do with me as Thou wilt, provided that I be not forever separated from Thee! There is no more bitter nor fatal poison than this separation. For what can a soul separated from God do except be in a state of inquietude and agitation which will be a continual torment? One would rather suffer a hundred thousand deaths; for, after all, they would not offer anything so terrible as the privation of the vision of Thy divine face. All the evils of the world, all the most acute and painful diseases joined together, seem to me incomparably easier to bear than this removal from Thee. It is this transitory removal which renders our lands sterile; which dries up and infects our waters. What would it be if it were eternal? Without it, the fire of hell would not burn; it is through it that it becomes so hot. In a word, it is only Thy presence which sustains us and showers upon us all kinds of good things and Thy absence, it is, which causes all the evils of hell.[251]

This prayer is fully in keeping with the teaching of many other Moslem mystics of non-Semitic origin, who, contrary to the vulgar notions so widely entertained respecting the Mohammedan paradise, explicitly declare that the infinite happiness of the elect in heaven consists in the enjoyment of the beatific vision. This ineffable happiness, they aver, so far transcends all the other joys of paradise that they completely disappear before it. “Paradise, O Lord,” exclaims the Sheik el Alem, “is desirable only because one there sees Thee; because, without the light of Thy beauty, it would pall on us.”[252]

These two quotations are remarkable but no less so than the words of a Mussulman poet of Persia who, in addressing himself to Isa—Arabic for Jesus—says:

The heart of the afflicted man draws all his consolation from Thy words. The soul resumes life and vigor simply by hearing Thy name pronounced. If the mind of man is ever able to raise itself to the contemplation of the mysteries of the Divinity, it is from Thee that it draws the light to know them and it is Thou that givest him the attraction by which he is penetrated.[253]

How like the language of a Christian speaking of the grace of our Saviour, Jesus Christ!

Far less excusable than ignorance of Moslem doctrine and practices, is the disposition everywhere manifested in Europe and America to regard Islam not only as a disintegrating organization but also as a decaying power. Those who thus minimize the ever-growing strength of one of the largest religious bodies in the world exhibit the fatuity of the ostrich which imagines danger does not exist because it is unseen.

For generations past the western world has been periodically informed that Mohammedanism as a religion is moribund and that Christendom has nothing more to apprehend from it. It has been assured that the mosques are unfrequented and crumbling into ruins; that schools and colleges of Moslem law are neglected or languishing for lack of financial support; that the precepts of the Koran are generally disregarded and frequently openly flouted; and that Islam is under an eclipse which portends disaster and extinction.

But what are the facts? I can best answer them in the words of Palgrave whose sixteen years of investigations of Mohammedan conditions from the shores of the Euxine to the interior of Arabia makes his words on the question authoritative. Writing in 1872, he declares:

Were I to attempt the catalogue of mosques, colleges, schools, chapels and the like, repaired or wholly fresh—built within the circle of my own personal inspection alone—several pages would hardly suffice to contain it. Trebizond, Batoom, Samsoon, Sivas, Keysareeyah, Chorum, Amasia, and fifty other towns of names unknown, or barely known in Europe, each can boast its new and renovated places of Mahometan worship; new schools, some of law, others of grammar, others primary, have sprung up on every side; new works of charity and public bequest adorn the highways.... Meanwhile, year after year sees a steady increase in the number of pilgrims to the holy places of Islam; and, although the greater facilitation consequent on steam has undoubtedly contributed not a little to this result, much must also be put down to the growing eagerness manifested by all, high and low, to visit the sacred soil, the birthplace of their religion and Prophet; while the pride that each village takes in its “hajjees” is manifested in the all-engrossing sympathy that accompanies their departure, and the triumphant exultation of the entire populace that welcomes them home. It may not have been less a thousand years ago: it certainly could not have been more.[254]

Although it is nearly half a century since the noted author of the Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia penned the paragraph just quoted, there is no evidence, so far as I have been able to gather in my travels in Asia and Africa, that the current of Moslem revival is running lower than it was fifty years ago, nor is the rejuvenescence of Islam less marked nor its power less resistant or less persistent.

Not only has Mohammedanism long been declared to be moribund but it has also, from time immemorial, been represented as changeless in doctrine as are the agricultural implements of the East—which are the same to-day as “when Proserpine went a-Maying through Enna”—and “the difficulty of bringing Islam and its ways into harmony with modern society as comparable to squaring the circle.”

Again, what are the facts? So far is Moslemism from being what it was when it came from the hands of the Prophet, or from what it is as exhibited in the Koran, that it has been constantly undergoing modification in religious doctrine and practice since the days of the first caliphs. Not to speak of the countless changes which have insensibly been effected by the quiet but continuous action of Christianity, innumerable others have been brought about by the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, by Roman law, Neo-Platonism, and other similar but persistent and irresistible influences. This is practically manifest in the hadith as modified and developed by canonists, dogmatists, and mystics to enable Islam “to shape religious ordinances of old customs” or “to adapt itself to the peculiar characteristics and stages of development of the people whose allegiance it wishes to win.”

For not only have law and custom, religious teachings and political doctrines clothed themselves in Hadith form [writes one of the most eminent authorities on Mohammedanism], but everything in Islam, both that which has worked itself out through its own strength, as well as that which has been appropriated from without. In this work foreign elements have been so assimilated that one has lost sight of their origin. Sentences from the Old and New Testaments, rabbinical sayings as well as those from the apochryphal gospels, the teaching of Greek philosophers, sayings of Persian and Indian wisdom have found room in this garb among the sayings of the prophet of Islam. Even the Lord’s prayer is not lacking in well confirmed Hadith-form.[255]

To say, then, that Islam has always been inflexibly opposed to the influence of foreign science, or law, or philosophy, or theology when these elements enabled it “to mould its intellectual heritage” and adjust itself to an alien spirit or a new environment is not in consonance with the facts of history. So far, indeed, is this from the truth that “it may safely be said that there is nothing more extraordinary in the whole history of Islam than the way in which the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Koran and the consequent stereotyped and unalterable nature of its precepts have, by ingenuity, by legal fictions, by the ‘Sunna,’ or traditional sayings of Mohammed or by responsa prudentum been accommodated to the changing circumstances and the various degrees of civilization of the nations which profess it.”[256] Such being the case, one is not surprised in finding so distinguished a writer as Stanley Lane-Poole making the categorical assertion that “the faith of Islam has passed through more phases and experienced greater revolutions than perhaps any other of the religions of the world.”[257]

No less misleading and mischievous are the continuously repeated statements that the days of Mussulman missionary activity have long since passed; that Mussulman zeal for propagating the teachings of the Koran and the Prophet no longer exists; that Pan-Islamism, as a religious force with which Christianity must reckon, was long ago dealt its death blow in the Gulf of Lepanto by Don Juan of Austria and under the walls of Vienna by the immortal Sobieski.

But still, again, what are the facts? It is true that Moslem canon law still divides the world into Dar al-Islam—Abode of Islam—and Dar al-harb—Abode of war, according as these two parts are in the possession of Mohammedanism or are yet to be won to it by the sword, yet it is, nevertheless, equally true that this distinction is now practically a dead letter and that the Christian Powers of the world are now able to curtail Islam’s schemes of territorial expansion and render forever impossible all hopes of world conquest. But, although Islam as a political and military power is no longer to be apprehended—at least for the present—it is not true that she has discontinued her missionary activities or that her propaganda in behalf of the religion of the Prophet is less determined than it was in the days of Saladin or Solyman the Magnificent. We have only to scan the authentic tokens that come to us from every quarter of the globe to be convinced that Pan-Islamism is to-day a greater missionary force—peacefully aggressive but fanatically persistent—than it has perhaps ever been in any period of her history.[258]

Let us see. According to the most reliable statistics there are now about two hundred and fifty million Mohammedans in the world,[259] and this number, stupendous as it is, is rapidly increasing. The strongest agency in their phenomenal development is the annual hadj or pilgrimage to Mecca which every free Mussulman is required to make at least once in his lifetime. During the period of the hadj, the Sacred City of Moslemism sees gathered around and within its walls a vast, surging throng of devotees, which ranges from two to three hundred thousand strong. They come from every part of Asia and Africa—from the snow-swept steppes of Siberia, from the coral-fringed islands of the Indian Archipelago, and from the tangled jungles of Senegambia and Abyssinia. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Tartars, Chinese, Malays, Egyptians, Berbers, Nubians—men of all colors and of countless tribes and tongues—they all foregather in the Sacred City of Arabia to get inspiration and strength to win proselytes to the creed of Mohammed.

From Mecca where every one is thrilled by the peculiar half-pagan ceremonies which Mohammed incorporated into his religion, every hadji returns to his home, imbued with the surpassing greatness of Moslemism and exulting in the thought that his is the blessed privilege of being numbered among the followers of the Prophet. Each one is a zealous agent of Moslemism and is prepared, if need be, to give his life, in disseminating its principles and in contributing, so far as in him lies, towards the realization of the hopes of every true Mohammedan—the final world triumph of Pan-Islamism.

Such a determined army of missionaries, stirred to a frenzy of enthusiasm by their experience in what is to them the holiest spot on earth, has during the last few decades achieved results that are positively startling. Not in centuries has Islam so defiantly thrown the gauntlet down to Christendom. And never before was it so incumbent, as at present, on the followers of Christ to use every effort to counteract their well-directed campaign of Mohammedan proselytism.

No agency is overlooked by the Moslems that will contribute towards their success in their world-wide propaganda—traders, shepherds, soldiers, husbandmen, shop-keepers, mollahs, muftis, marabouts—all are engaged in the same ubiquitous, unceasing work of winning converts to the religion of Mohammed.

But more active and persistent—were that possible—than the proselytizers just mentioned, are the legions of zealots known as dervishes who now count nearly a hundred different orders and millions of members. Among them are all classes of people from the humblest hamal to the proudest shah and sultan. They count untold thousands of such ardent reformers as the Wahabis and Sanusiyahs who are undoubtedly the most powerful propagators of Islam that the world has yet known. The last named order has zawivas or lodges with six million oath-bound members in northern Africa alone. These are all sworn to labor unceasingly for the extension of Pan-Islamism and for the propagation of the revelation of Allah as contained in the Koran. So unexampled has been their proselyting activity between Egypt and Cape Colony during the last few decades that millions have been brought under the banner of the prophet. Frequently in equatorial Africa whole tribes have, in a short period of time, been won to Moslemism by the unflagging zeal and resistless enthusiasm of its missionaries.

Every instrumentality that promises success is unhesitatingly brought into requisition. With the view of confirming the wavering in their own ranks and continuously increasing the number of converts, they have everywhere established schools, orphan asylums, and printing presses, and in Christian countries they have erected mosques. Only lately a great mosque was completed at Petrograd. Converts to Islam are found in Japan, Jamaica, British Guiana, and Brazil. The number of immigrant Moslems in the New World was recently estimated at more than one hundred and fifty thousand, most, if not all, of them fired with the same zeal for the propagation of Mohammedanism as their brethren in Asia and Africa. In the various parts of India, where according to the most available statistics, there are more than sixty million adherents of the Prophet, the annual number of converts to Moslemism is variously estimated from ten thousand to six hundred thousand.

These facts prove conclusively that Islam is very far from being either tottering or moribund. In the vigorous prosecution of the campaign which is to make Pan-Islamism not only a dominant religious power but a dominant political power as well, it exhibits all the pertinacious activity of its palmiest days. It is everywhere winning victories and ceaselessly planning new and greater victories. It is the most vigorous and the most resolute anti-Christian force that confronts the Church to-day. Those who think that Islam is approaching dissolution or extinction should ponder the words of the Arab poet:

Dead and buried had they seen me, so their ready tale they spread;

Yet I lived to see the tellers buried all themselves and dead.

In the preceding pages I have endeavored in the limited space available to give an honest statement regarding the actual tenets and status of Moslemism in the past as well as in the present. While, on the one hand, I have studiously eschewed everything like detraction, I have, on the other, as carefully avoided anything that could reasonably be construed as an apology either for Mohammed or for Mohammedanism. It has never entered my mind, God forbid! to compare Moslemism with Christianity as a means for attaining to a true knowledge of our Creator or for realizing the highest spiritual ideals of which our race is capable. No, Christianity, especially that form of it which has sanctified and crowned the lives of a St. Jerome, a St. Francis of Assisi, a St. Theresa, a Joan of Arc; which presided at the sublime meditations of an Augustine of Hippo, or a Thomas of Aquin, of a Dante Alighieri, of a Christopher Columbus; which has given to the world such matchless heroes and heroines of charity and self-sacrifice as a St. Vincent de Paul, a Father Damien, a Sister of Charity, or a Little Sister of the Poor; that for us is the truest, the holiest, the most beneficent of all religions; the one that contains in all its fullness the revealed word of God, the one which must be our guide to a world of happiness eternal in the life beyond the tomb.

Truth and justice, however, compel us to admit that there are many, very many, things in Islam to extort our admiration. Nor can there be any doubt that Mohammed achieved many things for the improvement of his idolatrous, drink-sodden, vice-steeped, feud-wrecked countrymen. The Koran, we must confess, contains many beautiful things regarding one’s duties towards God and one’s neighbor; but all of them are directly or indirectly derived from the New or the Old Testament, or from the doctrines of the early Church. Notwithstanding all this, however, the teachings of Islam are as far beneath the saving and incomparable truths of Christianity as is the gross and sensual Prophet of Mecca beneath the all-pure and all-perfect Son of God.

But, to recur again to the previously quoted opinion of Cardinal Hergenrœther, Islam can serve as a stepping-stone from fetishism to Christianity and as such is worthy of our sympathetic study and appreciation.

Among the countless amiable, honest, hospitable, deeply religious Mussulmans that every traveler finds in Moslem lands there is a large number who yearn for union with God and who would make any sacrifice to conform with His holy will were it but clearly and unmistakably made known to them. They are but awaiting the arrival of the Savior’s messenger and will receive the word of salvation with joy and thanksgiving. The spiritual unrest among Moslems; the ever-increasing attempts at social and doctrinal reform; even the very zeal which loyal Moslems exhibit in extending the creed of the Prophet—the only form of religion with which they are really acquainted—attest their eagerness in seeking the truth and explain their ardor in propagating what they deem to be the only revelation of the Most High.

Add to all this a widespread feeling among Mussulman leaders as well as among Christian missionaries that the time has finally come when a serious effort should be made towards effecting some kind of a rapprochement between the Cross and the Crescent; when the vast organizations of Islam and Christianity should endeavor to arrive at a better understanding of one another’s doctrines and practices; when, rising superior to that age-long antipathy and that mischievous odium theologicum which has so long kept them in a state of implacable hostility, they should strive to meet one another as brothers in one Lord and as children of the same Father.

More than sixty years ago Abd-el-Kader, the gifted Algerian ruler and patriot, wrote: “If the Mussulmans and Christians would give ear to me, I should cause their divergence to cease and they would become brothers.”[260]

The number of Moslems who entertain a view similar to that of the distinguished emir is daily increasing. They feel that the moral and religious ideas of the various races of mankind are not so irreconcilable as they are ordinarily supposed to be. The greatest barrier towards a nearer communion of sentiments between Christians and Mohammedans has been erected by ignorance and prejudice. Remove this barrier and the way, they contend, will be prepared for intellectual sympathy and, eventually, for religious union.

Notwithstanding the long centuries of wars between the Cross and the Crescent, Mohammedans are so far from regarding our Savior, as is commonly supposed, with the hatred and contempt which Christians have usually entertained for the Prophet of Mecca, that they have for Him a reverence which is inferior only to that with which He is regarded by Christians themselves. They believe that He will again return to earth and, having slain Antichrist, will establish a reign of peace and justice among men. They believe that truth will at last be triumphant and the sword will be sheathed forevermore. According to the Shiahs of India there will then be an amalgamation of Islam and Christianity and then, finally, will be realized in its truest and highest sense something of Tennyson’s dream of universal peace and charity

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

The spiritual agitation now existing among Moslems, the aspirations of so many of them for a purer and more elevating creed than that of Mohammed would seem to offer a peculiarly favorable opportunity for preaching to them the Gospel of the world’s Redeemer. But there are, unfortunately, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. There are, first and foremost, the selfish diplomacy and the unprincipled aggressions of the European Powers, which nullify in advance all projects of Christian propaganda. The frequent exhibitions of very questionable morality on the part of certain European diplomatists who have manifested a total disregard of the most solemn covenants; the ruthless conquests of Christian nations which have at times displayed an utter disregard of the most elementary rights of humanity and have often had recourse to the most cruel and barbarous methods of warfare—these things have not helped to commend to Moslems the religion of their conquerors. The recent campaigns of Italy in Tripoli, of England on the Gold Coast,[261] of Russia in the Transcaucasia have but intensified the bitterness of Islam toward Christendom and fanned the flame of fanaticism among millions who sullenly await an opportunity for making reprisal.

Then, too, there is among many the pessimistic feeling which is expressed in Kipling’s couplet:

Oh, East is East, and West is West,

And never the twain shall meet—

a feeling that has been engendered among them by a vague notion that there is an impassable chasm between the peoples of Asia and Europe and that any attempt to reconcile them will prove not only illusory but impossible. Starting with such an assumption they still cling to the detestable theory in politics of identifying power and right and of enforcing the inexorable demands of an iniquitous diplomacy by the satanic instrumentality of machine guns and trinitrotoluol.

Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis

Tempus egit....

Christian nations, if actuated by the altruism which they are constantly preaching, if guided by the same law of charity which is binding on individuals, need not such help or such defenders of their prestige or national honor.

No, what is now needed more than ever before is a complete change of attitude of the West towards the East. If we are to make the brotherhood of man anything more than an idle phrase; if we are to bring together in amity and comity the peoples of the Orient and the Occident; if we are to heal the wounds which the followers of Mohammed have suffered from centuries of cruel calumny and still crueler wars; if we are to lead Islam to a knowledge of Christianity and to an eventual acceptance of the Gospel of peace and love; we, the followers of the Crucified, cannot too soon abjure our accursed theory that might makes right nor can we too soon control that abiding lust of conquest which has plunged the weak and the innocent into such untold suffering and which has tended to perpetuate the deep hostility and the fatal misunderstandings which for long centuries have separated the God-created souls of the East from the God-created souls of the West.

The time has come for a new Crusade but a Crusade in which fire and sword shall, in the words of good old Padre Marracci, be replaced by lingua et calamo—by the voice of the evangelist and the pen of the expositor of Christian teaching. It must be a Crusade which shall be inspired by the ardent love of a Francis of Assisi; by the flaming intelligence of a Raymond Lully; by the wisely tempered zeal of a Peter the Venerable.[262] It must be a Crusade to win souls for Christ, our Savior, and to make all men children of the same heavenly Father. And that which in the Crusades of old was the war cry should, in the new Crusade, be the peace cry—Deus lo volt—God wills it.

CHAPTER XI
ALONG THE TRADE ROUTES OF THE NEAR EAST

Beautiful old stories,
Tales of angels, fairy legends,
Stilly histories of martyrs,
Festal songs and words of wisdom;
Hyperboles, most quaint it may be,
Yet replete with strength, and fire,
And faith—how they gleam,
And glow and glitter!
Heine.

Apart from its imposing monuments of the storied past, few things in the Near East are of greater interest or suggest more subjects for reflection to the serious traveler than do its trade routes which, for the most part, follow the same course as they did when Abraham fared forth from Ur of the Chaldees into the land of Canaan and when the messengers of the Great King sped along the Royal Road from Susa to Sardis.

Now as then the roadways follow the lines of least resistance. But, owing to the peculiar topographical conditions of many parts of the Near East, the traveler’s choice of direction is necessarily limited. In the broad and inhospitable desert his course will necessarily depend on the location of the few existing springs and wells and wadis, while in the mountainous regions it will, in great measure, be governed by a few and widely-separated passes. In many cases, too, where broad and deep rivers are to be crossed, the direction taken, especially during the season of rains and floods, will vary with the condition of often-changing and frequently treacherous fords.

The celebrated Royal Road, of which Herodotus gives so graphic an account, is a case in point. The student of ancient history is surprised when he first observes its circuitous course between the one-time capital of Persia and the famous emporium of Crœsus, but the reason of it becomes evident when he learns something of the character of the country through which it passed. He then discovers that the prehistoric travelers—long centuries before the days of Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes—who first selected this long and roundabout route between the plains of Mesopotamia and the shore of the Ægean—a route which took them over high mountains and pitiless deserts and dangerous morasses—did simply what a modern railroad engineer would do under similar circumstances—chose for their venturesome journey the line of least resistance.[263]

It must, however, here be observed that the word “road,” as used in the Orient, rarely has the same meaning which we attach to the term. There a road is rarely anything more than the line of route marked by the footprints of travelers or beasts of burden. Even the Royal Highway between Susa and Sardis was nothing more than this. It was only when the Romans—the great road builders of antiquity—became masters of western Asia that its leading cities were connected by roads in our conception of the word. Now, however, only traces of these splendid highways constructed by the Cæsars exist, and roads available for wheeled vehicles are still almost as rare in most parts of the Near East as they were in the time of Tigranes or Tiglath-Pileser.

But, although the great majority of eastern roads have never felt a spade or pick-ax, and are nothing more than evanescent footprints in spongy swamp or shifting sand, nevertheless there hangs over most of them an air of legend and romance and historic association which stimulates the mind of the traveler in a preëminent degree and affords as much food for thought as he can find in any of the great highways of the more civilized regions of the modern world.

We had wished to go from Tarsus to Antakia, formerly the capital of Syria, which in the days of its greatest splendor was known as “Antioch the Beautiful,” “The Crown of the East,” “The Metropolis and Eye of Christendom.” Here the followers of Christ were first called Christians and here for a long time was one of the most influential seats of the Christian Church. For generations it ranked next to Rome and Alexandria as the most important emporium in the great empire of the Cæsars. During a long period it was also the western terminus of the great trade route over which was borne

The wealth of Ormus and of Ind

for distribution among the marts of Greece and Rome. But lack of time prevented us from visiting the scattered remains of this once famous city and we perforce boarded a train on the Bagdad Railway and started for Aleppo, whose history is in some respects scarcely less eventful than that of the erstwhile capital of the Seleucids.

We left the Cilician Plain by way of the Bagdad Railroad, which took us over several well-constructed steel bridges and through a number of tunnels in the Amanus Range. One of these tunnels, said to be the longest in Turkey, is more than three miles in length. The roadbed, bridges, tunnels, stations, and rolling stock of this noted line compare favorably with those of the best railways in Europe and show, better than words, what great trade development in the Near East its projectors had in contemplation when they put their millions in the Bagdad Railroad. Will they ever receive any return for their stupendous investment? And, if so, when? Echo asks “When”?

The scenery along the railroad in the Amanus Range and in the plain on the way to Aleppo is much like that of the Taurus Mountains and of Cilicia Campestris, where one can truly say with the poet Bryant

There is a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,

And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

Everywhere one comes upon places that are famous in history, both sacred and profane. Everywhere one passes through lands that during thousands of years, witnessed the devastations of Assyrians and Hittites, Persians and Greeks, Romans and Parthians, Mongols and Saracens and Turks. And everywhere are ruins of Christian temples and monasteries which recall the glories of the early Church, the triumphs of her martyrs, and which serve as silent reminders of the days when Roman governors persecuted the followers of the Crucified because they were regarded as dangerous to the Empire and when Sassanian satraps demanded their blood on the ground that they were the foes of the religion of Zoroaster. Of many of these houses of worship but little now remains except a few crumbling arches or disintegrating pillars and doorways. Of others all that is left is buried under a brush-covered tell where a half-famished goat is seeking a little sustenance or whence a Turkoman shepherd is watching his nearby flock.

Notwithstanding, however, the fact that most of the churches and monasteries have long ceased to be more than heaps of dusty rubbish, there are still a few edifices of the long ago in a comparatively good state of preservation. Among these one of the most notable is that of Kal’at Sim’an to the northwest of Aleppo and but a short distance from the railway. Kal’at Sim’an—which is the Arabic for the Castle of Simon—is a monastery church which dates from the fifth century and is unquestionably the most admirable group of ruins in northern Syria. According to tradition this magnificent mandra, or monastery, was erected about the pillar on which the noted St. Simeon Stylites spent thirty-six years of his life and where, by his extraordinary austerities and superior holiness of life, he was the edification of countless thousands from far and near. Among these were the Emperor Theodosius II and his consort, the Empress Eudocia, as well as other distinguished personages of the Byzantine capital.

It may here be remarked that the Simeon Stylites here referred to was not—as is often thought—unique in his strange mode of life. He was but the first of the long line of stylitæ, or pillar saints, whose peculiar asceticism and undoubted sanctity made so deep an impression on their pleasure-loving contemporaries not only in Asia but in Europe as well.

But more extraordinary than the ruins of churches and monasteries which greet the traveler in every part of the Levant, are the imposing monuments which are due to the Crusaders and which are found in surprising numbers from southern Palestine to northern Mesopotamia. Crowning precipice-encircled heights and protecting strategic passes, they are marvels of architectural beauty and massive grandeur. Those, particularly, which belonged to the great Military Orders vie in vastness and solidity with the great strongholds which are the glory of the Rhine and the Danube. They were not only highly fortified strongholds with bastions, barbicans, and donjons which served as places of refuge to the surrounding population in times of stress and danger, but were also lordly palaces with spacious halls and noble chapels and chapter houses worthy of the great castles of France and England.

No less remarkable than the massiveness and grandeur of these venerable ruins are the charming locations which they occupy. And then the picturesque names which were given them by their Frankish builders! Among them were such appellations as Blanchegarde, Chateau Pelerin, La Pierre du Desert, and Castle Belvoir, to the last of which the Arabs gave even a more poetical name when they called it Kokab el-Hawa—Star of the Air. Built on the commanding flanks of snow-capped Hermon and cedar-famed Lebanon these lordly strongholds of the Crusaders and of the Knightly Orders of the mediæval times have about them all the glamour and chivalry and romance which envelope the most noted castles of the Tyrolean Alps or the Tuscan Apennines. As I contemplated these fascinating ruins and the superb sites which they so adorn and recalled the stirring scenes which they witnessed and that too, in one of the most romantic epochs of the world, I often wondered that they had not more frequently supplied themes for the poet and the novelist. Tasso in his Jerusalem Delivered gives us some idea of the marvelous richness of material here awaiting the writer of fiction no less than the literary artist in the domain of sober history and archæology. Where, indeed, could a true romanticist find better locations for the plots of his stories than in the wonderful old castles of Kal’at el-Hosn, Kal’at-es-Subebeh, or Burj Safita—grandiose yet fairylike in their lofty aeries—which have been the houses of the bravest Knights who have ever couched a lance and which, despite their present dilapidated condition, for centuries have been the admiration of travelers from all parts of the world. And what land more readily lends itself to tales of romance than that in which are found such famous places as Antioch and Carmel, Tyre and Ascalon and Jerusalem—places which witnessed the most brilliant exploits of the Crusaders and whose names have so long been identified with the most glorious names of Christian chivalry?

It is a long step from the superb monuments of the Crusades to the highly revered tekkehs or mezars which abound in all Moslem countries. In the Near East they are seen everywhere—along the public highway, in the most crowded quarters of large cities and in almost deserted sections of the country. These tekkehs, which frequently serve the purpose of both tombs and shrines, are interesting for two reasons, both of which show how certain religious practices of modern Islam are totally at variance with the teachings of the Koran and with the traditional doctrines of the Prophet.

According to strict Moslem law, the erection of tombs and monuments over the graves of the followers of Islam is strictly forbidden. The orders of the Prophet, as given in the “Traditions,” are “to destroy all pictures and images and not to leave a single lofty tomb without lowering it to within a span from the ground.”[264] And yet, notwithstanding this ordinance which the reforming Wahabis have strenuously endeavored to enforce, the Mohammedans are noted for the magnificent monuments which they have erected to the memory of their distinguished dead. Many of their mosque tombs are the most gorgeous mortuary monuments in existence.

But building tombs over the graves of the dead, contrary as it is to the spirit of Islam, is far less reprehensible than making them shrines or places of pilgrimage. “May Allah’s wrath,” said Mohammed, “fall heavy upon the people who make the tombs of their prophets places of prayer.” This malediction seems, however, to have fallen upon deaf ears for, as Hurgronje declares:

Almost every Moslem village has its patron saint; every country has its national saints; every province of human life has its own human rulers who are intermediate between the Creator and common mortals. In no other particular has Islam more fully accommodated itself to the religions it supplanted. The popular practice was, to a great extent, favored by the theory of the intercession of the pious dead, of whose friendly assistance people might assure themselves by doing good deeds in their names and to their eternal advantage.[265]

In Bagdad, the “City of the Saints,” the number of shrines is particularly large. They are frequented by pilgrims from all parts, who prostrate themselves before the tombs of the saints to whose shrines they often make liberal offerings and where the more devout pray and chant hymns for hours at a time. “The Moslem,” as Kuenen tells us, “seeks what his faith withholds from him and seeks it where the authority which he himself recognized forbids him to look for it.”[266]

According to a widespread opinion the bodies of the departed Moslem saints are not supposed to undergo corruption. For it is a common belief, confirmed by countless traditions, that when the tombs of saints and martyrs are accidentally opened their remains have the appearance of being freshly buried: “their faces are blooming, their eyes are bright and blood would issue from their bodies, if wounded.”[267]

Not only is the Moslem saint not dead, in our acceptation of the term, but his tomb is his house in which he continues to live and in which he receives the petitions of those who have recourse to him in their difficulties. And yet more. According to the implicit belief of his devotees he can leave his tomb, go on long journeys and return again. Firmly believing in a great invisible organization of saints and in the picturesque al-Khader, who is reputed to wander continuously through the lands of Islam performing everywhere the will of Allah, and in the countless deceased but still very active and ubiquitous saints, the life of the pious Mussulman is indeed, as has truly been observed “hedged around everywhere by the Unseen.”

Our journey from Tarsus to Aleppo was a rarely enjoyable one. At every turn of the road we saw something of unique historic or legendary interest. Everything—mountain crags, swirling rivers, foaming torrents, moss-covered castles, crumbling churches, that would have enraptured a Hobbema or a Ruysdael—held so much of glamour and romance that we seemed all the while to be traveling in a veritable fairyland. High above the dark gray crest of Amanus were motionless masses of bright, cumulus clouds which, under some magic influence seemingly, had grouped themselves into the forms of Norman donjons and Saracen strongholds. And hovering near these fantastic shapes, fashioned from the mountain vapor, was the figure of the giant rock of eastern fable. “Verily,” I said to my companion, “we are in the land of the jinn and they are here giving us an exhibition of their power over inanimate nature.” Having the authority of Mohammed for their belief in these supernatural beings of smokeless fire, is it surprising to find the untutored Mussulman ascribing to their agency what he cannot conceive as being done by human means? It is the jinn “riding in the whirlwind,” that cause, he firmly believes, the gyrating pillars of sand to sweep over the desert and the portentous waterspouts to rise from the troubled sea, as it is the jinn that transform clouds into countless forms of animate and inanimate nature, which oriental fancy so readily discerns in a cloud-dappled sky. Should one then be surprised at the exquisite pleasure which the wonder-loving followers of the Prophet find in the recital of the famous stories of “A Thousand Nights and a Night”—stories in which the marvelous is so conspicuous and in which the jinn play so important a rôle?

While traveling this once densely populated region, we recalled a saying of the Arabs that in the triangle comprised between Hama, Antioch, and Aleppo are found the remains of no fewer than three hundred and sixty-five cities. This statement is, doubtless, an exaggeration but we were willing to accept the estimate of Reclus that there are within this area “over a hundred Christian towns dating from the fourth to the seventh century and still almost intact.”[268]

Then there are the countless dome-covered tekkehs which stud the landscape—each with a Kiblah and frequently with a tomb and lighted lamp. Around many of them we note small groups of women who have, presumably, come to make offerings of oil and fruit and coin to the guardian and to implore the aid, if not the intercession, of the local saint.

Besides these ever-interesting objects there are humble homes of the country folk, every one of which rejoices in its fig, plaintain, or mulberry tree. Frequently the scene is sprinkled with nomad tents and enlivened by flocks and herds which dot the green expanse, and by long lines of swaying camels which slowly bear their heavy burdens along the long-neglected highway, still continuing their service of thousands of years, notwithstanding the arrival of their great competitor—the iron horse. The increasing demands of trade and the need of rapid communication make the construction of railways in Asia as necessary as in other parts of the world, but the lover of the picturesque will hope that the time will never come when the locomotive will entirely displace the camel, which seems to be an essential feature in every eastern landscape. This thought comes to me with special insistence as the shriek of the railway whistle announces our arrival at Aleppo, where a train of cars—in place of a caravan of camels—appears to be as incongruous as at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem.

While in Aleppo we were the fortunate guests of the Franciscan friars, the best and most gentle of hosts. They received us with the same cordial hospitality which they had so graciously extended to me in Egypt and the Holy Land a third of a century before. Thanks to their long residence in Aleppo and their thorough knowledge of the manners and customs of its people, they enabled me to see more of the Aleppines during my short sojourn among them than would otherwise have been possible. I shall never forget the extreme kindness of the courteous and learned Padre Agostino, whose knowledge of everything in and about Aleppo continually reminded me of his learned confrère, Frère Lieven de Hamme, who was my constant guide and friend during the happy weeks I spent many years before in the holy city of Jerusalem and its environs.

There is, however, a great difference between the two cities. Jerusalem is a city of sacred monuments and holy memories while Aleppo is noted as Syria’s busiest interior mart. At present its population is about one hundred and thirty thousand but in the heyday of its prosperity it counted no fewer than three hundred thousand souls. It was then the great entrepôt of trade between the Orient and the Occident. Then great caravans brought silks from China, carpets and tapestry from Persia, spices, drugs, pearls, and precious stones from India and the Spice Islands of the Malay Archipelago. It was then headquarters for a large colony of Venetian, Dutch, French, and English merchants who here exchanged the products of the West for the prized merchandise of the East.

Pietro della Valle, the distinguished Roman traveler who visited Aleppo in 616, was immensely impressed by the magnitude of its commercial transactions. So great was the amount of money involved that, he says, it was never counted but always weighed in boxes. And no one, he assures us, ever spoke of sales or purchases that did not amount to sums which ranged, at the lowest, from forty to a hundred thousand scudi.[269]

For a long time Aleppo was one of the chief trade centers in the East of the Levant and East India companies. During the period of their greatest prosperity the amount of business transacted here was enormous. For, in addition to these two great organizations, the British Factory here counted no fewer than eighty firms, besides which all the leading countries of Europe had here their factories or organizations of factors or agents for the purpose of securing their share of the great trade of the Orient.

At that time a great part of the commerce of the Far East came to Aleppo by way of Basra and Bagdad. Then the population of Basra exceeded two hundred thousand whereas it does not now count more than one-fourth of that number. The number of Bagdad’s inhabitants has diminished in proportion. The great decrease in the commercial importance of these two cities was partly due to war and pestilence. But the great discovery by Vasco da Gama of an all-sea route between the West and the East and the opening of the Suez Canal reduced the overland traffic between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf to a small fraction of what it was in the palmy days of the great European factories of Aleppo, Basra, and Bagdad. According to the plans of its projectors, the Bagdad Railway is to restore this overland trade to its former magnitude and even greatly add to its amount and value.

It is difficult for the modern traveler as he passes along the present overland routes between Aleppo and Basra to form any true conception of the stupendous scale on which the old caravan trade between the two emporia was formerly conducted. Although the distance between the two places is nearly eight hundred miles and most of the road passes through the inhospitable Syrian and Arabian deserts and the difficulties to be encountered, at the time of which we are speaking, were as grave as they were manifold, the number of merchants and capitalists who ventured fortune and life in this forbidding and dangerous part of the world seems almost incredible. And the magnitude of the caravans and the value of the merchandise they transported in a single journey was yet more astonishing.

In the caravan with which Della Valle traveled there were, he informs us,[270] fifteen hundred persons and forty or more large tents. That of the celebrated French traveler, Tavernier, counted six hundred camels and four hundred men. When in 1745 the Englishman, William Beawes, crossed the desert there were two thousand camels! But this was far less than the number that was in the caravan of his countryman, John Eldred, when a century and a half earlier he made the journey from Bagdad to Aleppo with four thousand camels “laden with spices and other rich merchandise.” But the largest of these caravans was much smaller than the one which in 1750 went from Bagdad to Aleppo and which was composed of five thousand camels and eleven hundred men. When trade between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean was most brisk, caravans of from two to five thousand camels crossed the desert twice a year between Aleppo and Bagdad. The Dutch traveler, John Huyghen Van Linschoten, attributes the great prosperity of Ormuz to the fact that it was located on the great trade route to India.[271]

The value of the merchandise carried by these caravans was often very great. Thus we are told of the caravan of an English trader, one Carmichael, which consisted of thirty mules, fifty horses, and twelve hundred camels, “six hundred of which were laden with merchandise valuing nearly 300,000 pounds. The caravans that carried on the trade between Aleppo and Mocha were,” in the words of a writer of the time, “esteemed indifferently rich if they carry less than two million dollars or one hundred thousand ducats of gold either Hungarian, Venetian, or Moorish.”

The foregoing statements are illuminating in the information supplied respecting the size of the caravans and the amount of merchandise they transported, but they give us no idea of the great fatigues and dangers that were incurred in the long journeys through the cheerless deserts which were inhabited for the most part by hostile and plunder-seeking Bedouins. The Venetian traveler, Cæsar Frederick, throws some light on the character of the country which the caravans had to traverse. Returning in 1581 from his long wanderings of eighteen years in India and beyond he tells us that:

From Babilon to Aleppo is forty days’ journey, in which they make thirty-six days over the Wilderness, in which thirty-six days they neither see houses, trees nor people that inhabit it, but only a plaine and no signe of any way in the world.... I say in thirty-six dayes we passe over the wildernesse. For when we depart from Babilon two dayes wee passe by villages inhabited until we have passed the river Euphrates. And then within two dayes of Aleppo we have villages inhabited.[272]

As a precaution against attacks by Arab robbers, Pietro della Valle informs us that it was always necessary to post at night a strong guard around the caravan. “During the entire night this guard runs around the camp shouting—as is their custom—to their friends to be on the alert and their enemies to keep away.”[273] How conducive to sleep was all this to the anxious and way-worn members of the caravan!

But

While beasts and men together o’er the plain

Moved on—a mighty caravan of pain,

they were not entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Although it was long generations before the invention of the telegraph and the telephone, they were able to keep up communication with their friends by means of homing pigeons of which the caravan bashis released one every other day of the journey through the desert. By means of these pigeons, which had been used in the East since the days of the Crusades, the leaders of caravans, Linschoten records, were able to keep up regular communication not only with Bagdad, Basra, and Aleppo but also with far distant Constantinople.

Although the great camel trains which were formerly so indispensable to the merchant of the Levant have long given place to the lines of steamships that now connect the East and the West by way of the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope, the Syrian and Arabian deserts still witness as large caravans as were ever known in the most flourishing period of overland traffic between Aleppo and Bagdad. Such caravans are now, however, but little used for the purpose of commerce but rather for transporting the countless thousands of pious pilgrims who annually visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Doughty in his Travels in Arabia Deserta gives us a most picturesque description of a pilgrim caravan which he was allowed to accompany over what he calls “the old gold and frankincense caravan path to Arabia the Happy.” This, he declares, “is the most considerable desert caravan in the Eastern World.” The caravan with which he journeyed was, he tells us, composed of “a slow-footed multitude” of six thousand persons, ten thousand camels, mules, hackneys, asses, and dromedaries, nearly two miles long with a breadth in the desert of about one hundred yards.[274]

During the last few years, however, the Hedjaz Railroad has in great measure taken the place of the large pilgrim caravans that formerly went from Syria to the two sacred cities of Arabia. The northern terminus of this road is at Aleppo. Although it is planned to extend it to Mecca, it has so far been completed only to Medina. Its construction is chiefly due to the late Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, who saw in it a power-means of furthering the projects of Pan-Islamism. The Shah of Persia, the Khedive of Egypt, and the Sherif and Ulema of Mecca cordially joined in this great enterprise. Contribution from rich and poor towards the work came in from all parts of the Moslem world. Lucknow contributed $140,000; Madras and Rangoon, $300,000; while an Indian Prince spent no less than $200,000 on the Medina station alone. No fewer than seven thousand soldiers were engaged in the construction of this railway which was to combine the two most holy cities of the Mohammedan world more closely to the Osmanli Caliphate than ever before and which was to further the cause of Pan-Islamism more effectively than could anything else whatever.

One feature of the Hedjaz Railway trains, which strongly appeals to the devout pilgrims, is its prayer car. For them it is virtually a mosque on wheels. But the majority of the pilgrims appreciate the road still more because it enables them to reach the sacred cities of their heart’s desire without incurring the many fatigues and dangers that are incident to the slow-moving caravans. For what with the plague, the cholera, the treacherous Bedouins, and the exposure to the withering desert sun the mortality of the pilgrims to Mecca is enormous.

To the observant traveler in the East few things are more interesting than to contemplate the pilgrim caravan as it

Winds slowly in one line interminable

Of camel after camel,

or is more suggestive of serious thoughts regarding Moslem belief and practice.

Many there are who account for the wide spread of Islam, which now numbers two hundred and fifty million adherents, by declaring that it is an easy and sensual religion. But even good Padre Marracci, who was one of the first to make an exhaustive study of the religion of Mohammed, saw that this explanation was not satisfactory.[275] The obligation incumbent on every Mussulman to give liberal alms—which is imposed both by the Koran and by tradition; to observe the strict and very trying fast of Ramadan,—abstaining during the day from water and tobacco even though engaged in the severest kinds of manual labor, and to make at least once during his lifetime the arduous and perilous pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca, would seem rather to act as an effective deterrent to the acceptance of the religion of the Prophet.

To those who account for the success of Islam on the theory that “it attracts by pandering to the self-indulgence of men,” Voltaire addresses the pertinent question:

Were there imposed upon you a law that you should neither eat nor drink from four in the morning until ten at night through the whole month of July; ... that you should abstain from wine and gaming under penalty of damnation; that you should make a pilgrimage across burning deserts; that you should bestow at least two and a half per cent of your revenue on the poor; and that having been accustomed to eighteen wives, you should suddenly be limited to four—would you call this a sensual religion?[276]

Those who lay such stress on self-indulgence as a factor in the success of Mohammedanism forget that “a motive of sensuality could never, of itself, make the fortune of a religion.” They forget what a strong appeal the very simplicity of the Moslem creed makes to a man naturally religious. For, reduced to its simplest expression, Mohammedanism embraces but two fundamental dogmas—belief in God and belief in a future life. “A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding, might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvelous power of winning its way into the consciences of men.” They forget that proselytism is to every Mussulman in a certain measure innate; that every follower of Mohammed is by nature a missionary; that in the pursuit of this avocation he spares neither labor nor expense; that so intense is his conviction that one is forced to “notice and admire the kind of chivalrous pride which the average Mohammedan takes in his faith.”[277]

Nor is this all that will impress the candid observer. Leaving out of consideration the lives of the more unworthy followers of Mohammed, he will find much in Islam that he is forced to respect and admire. Whatever he may think of Moslem teaching, he cannot help admire the devotion, the zeal, the earnestness, the spirit of sacrifice which characterize so large a number of Mussulmans. There are, for instance, no poorhouses among them, for the indigent are abundantly provided for otherwise.[278]

But more remarkable still is the importance which they attach to prayer and the fidelity with which they, five times a day, recite the orisons prescribed by their religion. Mohammed is said to have called prayer the key to Paradise and to have declared it to be of more value in the eyes of Allah than fasting, almsgiving, or a pilgrimage to Mecca. When we see his followers regularly saying their daily prayers wherever they may be, even before satisfying their cravings for much needed food and drink, we must conclude that they take the reputed saying of their Prophet very much to heart and have no doubt of its supreme moment and efficacy.[279]

It is because of their profound religious earnestness, their abiding charity towards the poor and suffering and their many natural virtues that those who know them best have such good reports to give of the Mohammedans,[280] and would fain see them better known among our western people, and will welcome the day when the prejudices and animosities of ages shall disappear and when every soul-loving Christian shall constitute himself a missionary to assist the followers of Islam towards becoming members of the One Fold and finding peace and happiness under the One Shepherd.

Outside of her people, I can truthfully say with Della Valle that I found very little in Aleppo that was specially riguardevole—noteworthy. But the people, especially those I was able to visit in their homes, were most charming. And of never-failing interest were the representatives of many lands whom I met in the streets and mosques and bazaars. In the last named places were Asiatics and Africans of every race and sect and costume, “with their expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow cunning wrists”—wild Bedouins, lordly Turks, grim-visaged Kurds and Turkomans, handsome and athletic Persians and Circassians, artful Greeks, astute Armenians,[281] crafty Jews—“all with eyes glittering with the yellow fires of greed” and all, as in the days of the city’s former commercial prosperity, bent on trade but in transactions far more limited.

I found an additional interest here in the reflection that Aleppo is on the linguistic frontier—extending from Alexandretta to Biredjik on the Euphrates—which separate the peoples of the flowery Arabic speech from those of the more laconic but no less vigorous Turkish. South of this line Turkish ceases to be heard except in the offices of the civil and military administrations of the Ottoman government.

The Syrians, like the Arabs, are Semites, but of their ancient tongue, the Aramaic, little now remains except a sort of dialect which is now confined to only a few villages on the eastern declivities of the Anti-Libanus.[282] Syriac, it is true, is still the liturgical tongue of the Maronites and Jacobites as it was for centuries that of other oriental Christians of Semitic origin. But, if a small number of priests still understand Syriac, no one any longer speaks it. For Syrians as well as for Arabs the language of conversation has for a long time been the vulgar Arabic. The Christians, however, speak a less pure form than the Moslems, for the adherents of Mohammed, by their constant reading of the Koran, become familiar with the more literary forms of classical Arabic.

During the Seleucid and Byzantine domination, the predominant language of educated people in Syria and Asia Minor was Greek. But in these, as well as in other regions formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, we now find the most extraordinary anomalies of linguistic distribution. Thus there are in Anatolia villages whose sole inhabitants are Greeks who belong to the Orthodox Church and where the Greek language is so little understood that the priests, in order to be understood by their people, are obliged to preach and read the services of the church in Turkish. In Cyprus, on the contrary, there are Turkish villages whose inhabitants speak only Greek. But this is no more singular than to find—a frequent occurrence—Turkish newspapers printed in Greek or Armenian characters. These literary curiosities are, however, eclipsed by a Jewish newspaper in Constantinople which is printed in Hebrew characters although the language is Spanish.[283]

I have said that outside of her people I found very little in Aleppo to attract attention. I, of course, visited the great mediæval castle—called the Citadel—that dominates the city and from the summit of which one has a magnificent view of the surrounding country. But this impressed me far less than a small block of basalt which I saw in the south wall of a mosque near the Citadel and which bears a curious inscription like those which have, during the last few decades, been brought to light in ever-increasing numbers throughout the greater part of both Syria and Anatolia. By the superstitious natives it is held in great veneration, for it is supposed to offer a sovereign remedy for all ophthalmic affections. We were assured that the smoothness of the stone’s surface was due to the frequent practice of the afflicted of rubbing their eyes upon it.[284]

The character of this inscription was not new to me for I had seen many similar ones in the Imperial Museum of Constantinople and elsewhere, but its location in this commercial capital of the Near East transported me in fancy back to a period antedating the time when the Patriarch Abraham, according to tradition, was wont to milk his flocks in a cave of the citadel and distribute the milk in alms among the poor.[285] Then Aleppo was in the possession of a power that ranked with Egypt and Assyria; a power which, nearly two thousand years B. C., overthrew the first Babylonian dynasty and made an alliance, on equal terms, with Rameses II, the greatest of the Pharaohs; a power which, in its palmy days, bore rule over the greater part of Syria and Asia Minor.

Until lately it was believed by scholars that there were only two great civilizations in the ancient East—Egypt and Babylonia. But recent discoveries in Sinjerli, Boghaz-Keui, and many other places have proved conclusively that there was a third civilization which was synchronous with those of the Nile and the Tigris and which, in the days of its splendor, prevailed from Nineveh to Smyrna and Ephesus and from the headwaters of the Orontes to the lower reaches of the Halys. Far back in the Mycenean period, when the Cyclops, according to legend, were building the massive acropolis of Tiryns, and when, as far as “the first pale glimmer of Greek tradition” will enable us to judge, the people of Greece “were awakening to intellectual life,” this third civilization—until a half century ago entirely unsuspected—was erecting monuments which are to-day the amazement of the learned world and which have prepared it for revelations as startling as any of those that followed the decipherment of the Rosetta stone by Champollion or the unlocking of the secrets of the cuneiform inscriptions of Mesopotamia by Grotefend and Rawlinson.

In this extended region lived an extraordinary people whose cultural development may probably, according to Messerchmid,[286] “be dated about the third millennium” before our era, and who were known by the ancient Egyptians as the Kheta and by the Assyrians as the Khatti. They were the same people who are spoken of in the Old Testament as Hittites and who are supposed to have, at an early date, extended their migrations as far south as northern Arabia. It was, in the opinion of many investigators, from a Hittite—Ephron—that Abraham bought “the double cave looking towards Mambre” near Hebron, as a family burial place.[287] Referring, apparently to the foundation of Jerusalem the prophet Ezekiel declares that her “father was an Armorite and her mother a Hittite.”[288] There is also reason to believe that the ill-fated “Uriah the Hittite,” the husband of Bethsabee, the mother of Solomon, belonged to the same race.[289] And it was because she bore a son to King David that Bethsabee, the wife of a Hittite, became an ancestress of the Savior of the world.[290]

But these and other obscure references in Scripture to the Hittites threw practically no light on the wonderful people who, during the past half century have been engaging the attention of many of the ablest archæologists and orientalists of Europe and America. In 1812 the famous Swiss traveler, Burckhardt, discovered in Hamath, Syria, a black basaltic block on which were strange hieroglyphic signs.[291] But it was not until sixty years later, when other similar monuments were found in the same place, that scholars began to realize their importance. Systematic investigations were then instituted by individuals and learned societies and it was not long until their labors were rewarded by the most extraordinary finds. Not only hieroglyphic inscriptions, like those on the blocks found at Hamath, were brought to light but also remains of cities with large palaces and fortresses adorned with sculptures of the most surprising character.

Further research by such eminent orientalists as Halevy, in France; Hrozny of Austria; Jensen and Winckler, in Germany; Sayce and Hogarth, in England, showed that the builders of these forgotten cities and the authors of the strange script which was written in boustrephedon fashion were no other than the people of whom the Bible speaks of as the Hettites or Hittites.[292] All our knowledge of this mysterious people, outside of the brief references to them in the Sacred Text, is what has been gained since the publication in this country of the first Hittite inscriptions in 1872. We now know that as a power “The Land of the Hittites” became a memory of the past when the Assyrians took possession of Carchemish and when, following their capture of this celebrated stronghold, they entered Asia Minor in 718 B. C.—but a few years after the foundation of Rome. Thenceforward the region so long inhabited by the Hittites was ruled in succession by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks.

Notwithstanding, however, the fact that scholars now have at their disposition many and valuable Hittite monuments they have, nevertheless, thus far sought in vain for a bilingual inscription that will serve as a key to the Hittite language and which will force the Hittite sphinx to reveal her long-guarded secret. This much desired key may any day be uncovered by the spade of the archæologist. What the results of such a discovery will be can only be conjectured. Many who are competent to judge think they will compare in importance with those that followed the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia—that they will disclose an intimate relation between the culture of the Hittites and the earliest civilizations of Cyprus and Crete, Greece and Italy, and that they will contribute immensely to our knowledge of the earliest connection of the peoples of Western Asia with those of southeastern Europe and of their influences on one another in the divers domains of religion, art, literature, and politics.[293]

As I gazed on the mysterious block of basalt at Aleppo with its soon—one hopes—to-be-deciphered inscription and thought of the wonderful Hittite records that have been unearthed during the last few years and the promise which they hold of priceless contributions to the history of our race, I recalled what the distinguished French savant, the late Vicomte E. M. de Voguë, once said of the East, “L’Orient, qui ne sait plus faire d’histoire, a le noble privilège de conserver intacte celle d’autrefois,” the Orient which no longer makes history has the noble privilege of preserving intact that of former times.

CHAPTER XII
FROM THE EUPHRATES TO THE TIGRIS

We scrutinize the dates
Of long-past human things,
The bounds of effaced states,
The lines of deceased kings!

We search out dead men’s words
and works of dead men’s hands.

Matthew Arnold, “Empedocles on Etna.”

After a delightful but an all-too-short sojourn in Aleppo, made doubly delightful by our amiable Franciscan hosts and by their charming and hospitable friends whose number here, as everywhere else in Syria, is legion, we were once more on the road with our faces turned toward the mysterious and spell-weaving Orient. Although every hour that we had spent under the genial Syrian sun had been replete with its peculiar interest or pleasure, we longed to set foot on the land that is bounded by the famed rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Our feeling, indeed, was somewhat akin to that expressed in Kipling’s Mandalay, “If you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’, why, you won’t ’eed nothin’ else.”

Boarding a train of the Bagdad Railway at the station on the site of the erstwhile camp of the Crusaders under Baldwin, we were soon on our way towards our first objective, Jerablus on the Euphrates. Our course lay through the heart of a fertile country strewn with ruins and dotted with mud-built villages. The puffing locomotive made its way alternately along fruitful valleys and over rolling uplands whose state of cultivation showed that this region well deserved the name of “granary of northern Syria.” And, notwithstanding the advent of the iron horse, the winding caravans which we frequently passed or overtook were proof conclusive that the service of the patient camel is likely to continue for a long time to come.

It was but a few hours after leaving Aleppo that we caught the first glimpse of the Euphrates as it flowed through arid wastes and washed barren rocks and hills of sand. Although, like Ulysses, I

Much had seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

I have seen few things that thrilled me more than my first view of this famous waterway. For, notwithstanding the fact that I had spent my early boyhood within a few hundred miles of the Mississippi, I was familiar with the name of the Euphrates before I had heard of that of our great “Father of Waters.” And when, after nearly three score years of waiting, I at length found myself actually walking along the sandy marge of this stately river—a river that my earliest reading told me had its source in Paradise—and felt personal contact with it, it was in very truth an event in my life. It was, indeed, like meeting again a favorite friend of boyhood days. The emotions which I then experienced and the memories that were evoked have been expressed in part in the beautiful apostrophe of the poet Michel:

All hail, Euphrates! stream of hoary time,

Fair as majestic, sacred as sublime!

What thoughts of earth’s young morning dost thou bring!

What hallowed memories to thy bright waves cling!—

The bowers are crushed where Eve in beauty shone,

Ages have whelmed, beneath their ruthless tide,

Assyria’s glory and Chaldæa’s pride:
But thou, exhaustless river! rollest still,
Raising thy lordly voice by vale and hill;

Sparkling through palm-groves, washing empires’ graves;

And gladdening thirsty deserts with thy waves;

Mirroring the heavens, that know no change, like thee,

A glittering dream, a bright-leaved history!

No river in the world has played so prominent a rôle in the annals of our race, and none, not even the Nile, can boast of nobler traditions or a more illustrious history, or is richer in beautiful myths and soul-stirring legends. On its fertile banks, it is believed, was rocked the cradle of mankind and its glistening waters whisper secrets of long-forgotten dynasties and murmurs the names of peoples of whom history has no record. It was long the barrier between the contending powers of the East and the West; between the forces of Persia and Greece, of Parthia and Rome. Eastern poets never tired in singing its praises and Arabian geographers loved to dilate on it as one of the great rivers of the earth.

In the Bible the name of the Euphrates occurs as early as the second chapter of Genesis. According to scholars of repute the patriarch Abraham on his way to the Promised Land crossed it at Birejik, but a few miles north of where it is now spanned by the great steel bridge of the Bagdad Railway. In the Covenant which God had made with him the dominions of his posterity were to extend “from the river of Egypt[294] even to the great river Euphrates.” And, obedient to the command of the Lord to “go forth from kindred and out of his father’s house ... Abraham took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son and all the substance which they had gathered and all the souls which they had gotten in the land of Haran; and they went out to go into the land of Canaan.”[295] Crossing, then, the Euphrates near the spot where we crossed it ourselves they must, in order to find the necessary sustenance for their flocks and herds, have traversed the same fertile plain that had so engaged our attention on the way from Aleppo to Djerabis and probably by one of the sinuous caravan tracks that we noted from the car window.

But “The River,” “The Great River,” as the Jews called the Euphrates, was more celebrated in profane than in sacred history. This is particularly true of that stretch of the stream between the modern towns of Bir and Rakka. It was at Carchemish, which adjoins Djerabis, where the Hittites had the great capital and the powerful fortress which enabled them so long to control the commerce between Assyria and Babylonia on the east, and Phœnicia and Egypt on the west. It was at the same famous stronghold that Nebuchadnezzar II won a signal victory over Pharaoh-Necho and his Greek and Asiatic allies. It was here also that Chosroes I crossed the river by building a bridge of boats at the time of his third campaign against the Byzantines as he had crossed it at Obbanes in his first expedition against Justinian. It was at Bir, formerly known as Zeugma—the Bridge—that Crassus and Seleucus Nicator passed into Mesopotamia, where the Roman general met such a tragic fate. It was at Thapsacus that Xenophon and Cyrus the Younger crossed the great waterway in the campaign that terminated so disastrously for the Persian Monarch at Cunaxa. It was here also, nearly a hundred years later, that Darius crossed “fleeing headlong eastwards with his broken army after the battle of Issus, with Alexander headlong at his heels.” It was in the waters of the same famed river that Trajan and Julian the Apostate slaked their horses’ thirst. It was the same waters that witnessed the brilliant campaigns of Heraclius, the splendid triumphs of the Caliphs, and the devastating hordes of Timur and Jenghiz Khan.

Tradition informs us that it was down these tawny waters that a frail craft carried Herodotus in his memorable visit to Babylon. And long before this date it was up the Euphrates, that Gisdhubar, the mythical hero of the great Babylonian epic, proceeded on his homeward voyage after having “by a suitable sacrifice,” secured the good will of heaven for his undertaking.[296] But, what has already been said is more than enough to show that the rolling waters of the Euphrates are, in truth, “charged with the history of the ancient world.” And, judging by the railroads and steamer lines that are planned or in operation, and the great irrigation works that are under construction for restoring to the vast Babylonian plain its old-time fertility, the day is not far distant when “The Great River” of the Jews will witness achievements which shall rival the glories of Babylon and its hanging gardens in the days of the city’s greatest splendor and power.

We had anticipated spending several days in Djerabis in order that we might have an opportunity to examine the remains of Carchemish that have recently been uncovered by the spade of the archæologist. The great number of sculptures, both in relief and in the round, which have been unearthed here are destined to throw a flood of light on the cultural and political histories of the great Hittite empire, and, when they shall have been thoroughly investigated, they will no doubt cause us greatly to modify, if not essentially alter, many of the views we have long entertained respecting one of the most powerful but least known peoples of the ancient world. Excavators here are fondly hoping that they may have the good fortune to turn up among these venerable ruins the long desired bilingual inscription that shall enable them to decipher the strange Hittite script that has so long baffled scholars. Such an inscription would supply them with a key to the history of a nation that was so long a rival of Egypt and Babylonia, and its discovery would truly mark a red-letter day in the annals of oriental research and scholarship.[297]

When I first set foot upon Mesopotamia my emotion was almost as great as when I caught my first view of “The River,” “The Great River,” “The River of the East,” “The River of Asia,” as the Euphrates is variously designated in the Sacred Text. I was at last in the Aram-Naharaim of the Jews—“The Syria of the Two Rivers,” known to the Arabs as Al-Jezireh—The Island—because it is compassed by the Tigris and the Euphrates. I was now actually treading the soil of the first country I had ever read about, and surveying the land which first enchained my youthful fancy. But it was not the Mesopotamia of my boyhood dreams that I now beheld; a land of teeming millions of happy shepherds and contented husbandmen; of smiling fields of grain and attractive gardens of luscious fruits; of splendid cities with imposing temples and magnificent palaces. Far from being, as I once pictured it, the most attractive and flourishing region of the world, it was, as far as the eye could reach, a land entirely bare of trees and almost devoid of even the most humble village—a land of utter desolation which exhibited on every side almost a complete cessation of that exuberant life which was here once so dominant.

As I contemplated the sandy wilderness before me, it required a special effort of the imagination to believe that it was once the home of a powerful race which has long disappeared. It recalled, rather, scenes I had witnessed in the arid Sahara or in the barren wastes of northern Chile and southern Peru. The only traces now left here of their once mighty empire are the numerous tells which dot the wide expanse of the desert plain. Beneath the superincumbent earth of these frequent mounds, are all that remains of the homes of the people who inhabited these parts in the long, long ago. Some of these tells, which rise up everywhere in this region like islands in the sea, may some day, under the well-directed work of the archæologist, yield up long concealed monuments that will be of priceless value to the historian and add immensely to our rapidly increasing knowledge of the former inhabitants of this once famous land. Recent discoveries in so many other parts of Mesopotamia render such a conjecture eminently probable.

We interrupted our journey between the Euphrates and the Tigris by making a short side trip to Urfa, formerly the great city of Edessa. It, like Tarsus, was once a celebrated literary center and for that reason, if for no other, it had, for at least one of our party, a very special attraction.

Like all the old cities of the East, Urfa is rich in myths and legends as well as in historic memories both sacred and profane. According to a Jewish legend which identified it with the Arach of the Bible, it was founded by Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord.”[298] Another legend attributes the city’s foundation to Enoch, the Hermes Trismegistes of the Orientals. Equally fabulous was the tradition about the tent of the patriarch Jacob, which, it was averred, was preserved in Edessa until it was destroyed by a thunderbolt in the reign of Emperor Antoninus. But these and similar tales regarding the antiquity of Edessa are all based on myths and fables, for its history dates only from the beginning of the little Kingdom of Osrhoene, which was not founded until 132 B. C.

There is, however, a legend—one of the most beautiful of the early Christian Church—which is connected with Edessa and which deserves more than a passing notice. It was supposed for a long time to explain why Edessa became, at an early date, not only the first Christian city of Mesopotamia but also its greatest religious center, and to account for its preponderating influence in the spread of the Gospel throughout the Orient. Humanly speaking, such good fortune could not have befallen so humble a community as that of Osrhoene, which was at first composed of but a small number of Christians, and which, in the natural course of events, would have made but slow progress in a pagan or Jewish environment which, if not openly hostile, was decidedly indifferent.

No, Edessa, it was fondly believed, had been from the beginning marked by the seal of special privileges, and had been destined by Our Lord to receive the saving truths of the Gospel directly from His apostle.[299] This is the meaning of the legend usually known as “The Legend of Abgar,” which was developed at Edessa towards the middle of the third century and which for centuries had an extraordinary vogue in the West as well as in the East, among Mohammedans as well as among Christians.[300]

According to this legend, the report of the miracles of Our Lord, having reached Edessa, Abgar, who was King of certain tribes beyond the Euphrates and was afflicted by an incurable malady, sent to Jerusalem a messenger with a letter addressed to Our Savior, begging Him to come to cure him. But Jesus replied that He could not go to Edessa but that He would, after executing His mission and ascending to heaven, send him one of His disciples who would effect his cure and at the same time announce to him the tidings of salvation.

Eusebius of Cæsarea, “The Father of Church History,” is our chief authority concerning the letters which are said to have passed between Abgar and Our Lord. They were, the historian assures us, long preserved in the archives of Edessa.

The copy of the letter of the King to Our Lord reads:

Abgarus, ruler of Edessa, to Jesus the excellent Savior who has appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting. I have heard the reports of thee and of thy cures as performed by thee without medicines or herbs. For it is said that thou makest the blind to see and the lame to walk, that thou cleansest lepers and castest out impure spirits and demons, and that thou healest those afflicted with lingering disease and raisest the dead. And having heard all these things concerning thee I have concluded that one of two things must be true: either thou art God, and having come down from heaven, thou doest these things, or else thou, who doest these things, art the Son of God. I have therefore written to thee to ask thee that thou wouldest take the trouble to come to me and heal the disease which I have. For I have heard that the Jews are murmuring against thee and are plotting to injure thee. But I have a very small yet noble city which is great enough for us both.

To this appealing letter of the King the Savior replied:

Blessed art thou who hast believed in me without having seen me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen me will not believe in me and that they who have not seen will believe and be saved. But in regard to what thou hast written me, that I should come to thee, it is necessary for me to fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I have fulfilled them thus to be taken up again to him that sent me. But after I have been taken up I will send to thee one of my disciples, that he may heal thy disease and give salvation to thee and to those who are with thee.[301]

The letter of Our Lord, as given by Eusebius, was subsequently amplified as is seen in an apocryphal work known as “The Doctrine of Addai.” I refer to it because of the concluding sentence of the letter in which Jesus is made to say to Abgar regarding Edessa, “And thy city shall be blessed and the enemy shall not prevail against it for ever.”

It was because of this promise of Our Lord, that His letter to Abgar became doubly precious in the eyes of the King and of his people. For they regarded it thenceforward as a palladium of their beloved city and felt sure that they would never again be at the mercy of their foes.

Chosroes, resolved to show to the Edessenes the futility of the promise on which they so confidently relied, and determined at the same time to prove the falsity of the Savior’s words, proceeded in the year 544 to lay siege to the place. The besieging Persians pushed their work so vigorously that the inhabitants of the beleaguered city were almost in despair. In this extremity, according to the legend, the King of Edessa went to the gate with the letter of Our Lord and, unfolding it and holding it aloft, reminded the Savior of His promise, that no enemy should ever prevail against it. Immediately an impenetrable darkness enveloped the foe and prevented it from advancing further.

During several months Chosroes blockaded the city without, however, being able to effect an entrance. In despair the discomfited and exasperated Chosroes tried to reduce the city to submission by cutting off its water supply. But no sooner did he achieve his purpose than a number of magnificent fountains issued forth within the city and his nefarious design was frustrated. The Persians were thus compelled to raise the siege.

But this was not the only occasion on which the city was thus rescued from its foes. For every time thereafter, the story continues, that the Edessenes were beset by their enemies, it sufficed to produce the letter of the Savior and read it before their enemies to compel them to withdraw.

I have selected this as a type—probably the most beautiful type—of many similar legends that were long current in the Orient. Indeed, not a few of them retain their old-time popularity not only in the East but in the West as well. This is particularly true respecting the legend of Abgar. But what will appear more remarkable to readers of our critical and skeptical age, is that in every century of the Church, from the third to the nineteenth, there have been eminent scholars who have maintained the authenticity of the correspondence between King Abgar and Our Lord. Among them it suffices to mention such distinguished authorities as Tillemont in the seventeenth century, Assemani in the eighteenth and Rinck, Cave, and Cureton in the nineteenth.

It was because of the belief in the genuineness of the letter of Our Lord to King Abgar that it was during the Middle Ages regarded as a panacea for disease and as an amulet or talisman against all kinds of dangers—“against lightning and hail and perils by sea and land, by day and by night, and in dark places.”[302] It was doubtless because of this widespread belief in the phylacteric efficiency of this letter that the custom prevailed in England as late as the last century, and traces of it still exist to-day, for people to hang up a copy of the letter in their homes.[303]

Interesting, however, as is the correspondence in question, it is now pronounced by the general consensus of scholars to be apocryphal and must, therefore, be relegated to the limbo of many similar fictions with which the mythopœic East has in every age supplied the credulous and wonder-loving West.

But fascinating as one may find the myths and legends of Edessa, they must prove but secondary to its long and eventful history. For, in the days of its glory it ranked with Nisibis, Damascus, and Antioch as one of the four great cities of Syria. As a center of trade it was the rival of Palmyra which was then the great emporium of western Asia. Through it passed the highly-prized products of India and China on their way to the marts of Egypt and Rome.[304]

As a literary center, it was, as a recent writer observes, “admirably situated between the Greek world and the Oriental world. Communicating on the one hand with Antioch, on which it depended and on the other with Persia, Greater Armenia, and even with India, the capital of Osrhoene was well placed to profit both by the culture of Greece and the powerful originality of the barbarous countries of the East. It was, as it were, the confluence in which the ideas of two worlds became intimately blended and where the various nationalities of its inhabitants as well as the diversity of religious beliefs brought there by strangers and merchants tended to give the city a physiognomy not unlike that of Alexandria.”[305]

After suffering greatly from a destructive inundation in the early part of the sixth century, Edessa was restored by Justinian on such a magnificent scale that it was reputed to be one of the wonders of the world. According to Arabian writers there were at one time no fewer than three hundred convents and monasteries in and around Edessa. These, like similar institutions in Asia Minor and Europe, were schools of intellectual culture in which the lover of learning could devote himself to the acquisition of knowledge in entire peace and security.

One of the most celebrated of Edessa’s homes of learning and culture was that known as “The School of the Persians,” because its first students and teachers were chiefly Christian refugees from Persia. Its foundation was largely due to St. Ephrem, who so eclipsed all his contemporaries in scholarship that their works soon fell into oblivion. So voluminous were his works, so widely read were they, and so great were their authority that their author was acclaimed the “Column of the Church,” “The Prophet of the Syrians,” “The Harp of the Holy Spirit.” And in so high esteem were his books held, that they were, as St. Jerome informs us, publicly read in some churches after the Holy Scriptures.

It was in the schools of Edessa that the Syriac language and literature reached their highest degree of development. It was in them that Syriac was molded into what subsequently became the classic speech of the Syrians from the Tigris to the Mediterranean and which is seen at its best in the works of Bardesanes and St. Ephrem, in the Peshito and in Tatian’s “Diatesseron.” But neither in Edessa nor elsewhere did the Syrian Church ever produce such eminent scholars and men of so great literary genius as a Basil or a Eusebius, a Chrysostom or a Gregory Nazianzus. We are, however, indebted to Syrian scholars for the translation of many precious Greek works which otherwise would have been lost, and for thus “having passed on the lore of ancient Greece to the Arabs” who in their turn were so greatly instrumental in putting it at the disposal of the scholars of the West.

There is but little in Urfa to-day to show what it was when it was known as Edessa and when students and learned men flocked to it from all parts of the East as to one of the greatest seats of learning in Christendom. There is, it is true, a great castle standing, and walls and towers that date back to the time when Edessa was a Latin principality under Baldwin, and evidences of the city’s former occupation by Romans and Persians and others, but there is little which will long claim the attention of the serious visitor.

Like all travelers we visited the city’s chief lion—the great reservoir which, as Pliny informs us, won for Edessa the name Callirhoe—the city of the beautiful well—spring—Callirhoen a fonte nominatam. From the earliest days to the present, this reservoir has been held in great veneration. In pagan times it was consecrated to the goddess Athagartis. To-day it is known as the Pool of Abraham. The large number of fish with which it is always filled are sacred in the eyes of the Mohammedans, who consider it a very meritorious act to supply them with nourishment. The groups that are sometimes gathered around this pool feeding the sacred fish seem quite as preoccupied as the crowds that so generously distribute their supplies of grain to the pampered pigeons of San Marco, Venice.

The only ecclesiastics in Urfa to-day to devote themselves to the work of the Church which St. Ephrem and his associates served so well, whose convent was our home during our visit to their famous city, are the Capuchins. It is now more than two and a half centuries since these zealous sons of St. Francis inaugurated their missionary labors in Mesopotamia and the adjoining countries, and these have been centuries of trial and sacrifice and persecution which would have forced less heroic men to abandon an undertaking that often seemed impossible. Everywhere they were confronted by the fanaticism of Mohammedanism, which was naturally suspicious, and the jealousy of schism and heresy which were quick to take umbrage at whatever was calculated in any way to affect their age-long belief and practices.

During hundreds of years the torch of the faith which St. Ephrem had preached had been extinct in the broad region which the Capuchins had chosen for the field of their missionary activity. And during an almost equally long period, all vestige of union between the churches of Mesopotamia and those of the adjacent regions had completely disappeared.

It was thus also at Urfa when in 1850 two Spanish Capuchins, Fra Joseph of Burgos and Fra Angel de Villarubbia, took up their abode in this city of noble memories and world-famed achievements. They had to face the same difficulties and fanatical agencies that had been arrayed against their brethren elsewhere. The old schismatic Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians joined forces with the Mussulmans, the Jacobins, and the Nestorians as against a common foe and left nothing undone to render the undertaking of the new missionaries a failure and to compel them to leave the country. But the admirable patience of the good fathers, their great self-abnegation, their abounding charity towards the poor and the distressed soon won all hearts, and churches, schools, and asylums sprang into existence as if by magic. And it was not long until large numbers belonging to the dissident Greek, Syrian, and Armenian churches began to return to the Church of their forefathers and to apply for union with the Church of Rome. Nor were the Mohammedans less impressed than the Christians by the superior virtue of the missionaries. Their veneration for Father Angel was so great that they always called the Latin Church “The Church of Father Angel”—Abuna Angil Kilisesi—a name which it still bears.

But the Capuchins were not the only agents of a new spiritual and intellectual life in Urfa. For in all their works of mercy and reform they were most ably seconded by the zealous Sisters of St. Francis from Lons—le Saunier, France. Forbidden by the iniquitous “Association Laws” from devoting their lives to the poor and the suffering and the illiterate of their own country they, with rare self-denial, generously offered to labor in the vineyard of the Lord in far-off Mesopotamia. As I noted their cheerfulness and enthusiasm in their labors among the poor and afflicted in Urfa, I could but compare them with some of their sisters in religion whom I had seen in the leper hospitals of Hawaii—who, although always in contact with the most repulsive form of disease, were, I thought, the most buoyant and lighthearted beings I had ever met—all enjoying an abounding happiness that could come only from a heroic sacrifice in the service of God and humanity.

On our return to the railway we were greatly impressed by the fertility of the soil in the vicinity of Urfa. Its orchards and gardens, gay with flowers and fruit trees of all kinds—oranges and lemons, apricots and mulberries, figs and pomegranates—were a delight to the eye and formed a garland around the city, which gave it “the smiling appearance of a grandiose villa.”

About an hour after boarding the train we found ourselves crossing the dried-up bed of the Nahr Belikh, one of the most noted streams in Mesopotamia. It was on its banks—and only a short distance to the north of our course—that was located the once famous city of Haran. It has long been in ruins and only a few Arab families now make their home there.

Haran figures in the earliest chronicles of both the Assyrians and the Hebrews. For a long time it was the focus of all the roadways of northern Mesopotamia and a center of great wealth and prosperity. But a single well-attested fact shows the great change that has come over the face of the land round about Haran since its first mention in history. For what is now a sandy desert was then a well-watered region of remarkable fertility, with a rich flora and a notable fauna. This is evidenced by undoubted records according to which this part of Mesopotamia was a favorite hunting ground for the kings of Egypt and Assyria, for here big game was once as varied and as abundant as it is anywhere at present in equatorial Africa. Thus the Assyrian King, Tiglath-Pileser I, 1120 B.C., declares, “Ten powerful bull-elephants in the land of Haran and on the banks of the Habour I killed; four elephants alive I took. Their skins, their tusks, with the living elephants, I brought to my city of Asshur.”[306] To-day no elephants are to be found in the wild state nearer than far-off India. Their disappearance from Western Asia, where they formerly roamed as far westward as the Lebanon range, has long been as complete as is that of the American bison from the region east of the Mississippi.

According to a tradition based on the book of Genesis, this once celebrated city was named after Haran, son of Thare, who was the father of the Patriarch Abraham.

“And Thare took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son and brought them out of Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan: and they came as far as Haran and dwelt there.”[307]

It was here that Abram received from the Lord the command: “Go forth out of the country and from thy kindred and out of thy father’s house.” It was thence he went into the Promised Land which was to be the home of his children and children’s children until the advent of the world’s Redeemer.

It was to his kindred in or about Haran that Abraham sent his servant from Canaan to get a wife for his son Isaac and it was in Haran that he found the fair Rebecca as she was going to a spring with a pitcher on her shoulder. It was this same region that witnessed that idyllic episode in the early life of Jacob so beautifully described in the book of Genesis. It was here that he spent twenty years in the service of his uncle, Laban—six years for the flocks that his uncle gave him, and fourteen years for his two daughters—“the tender-eyed Leah” and “the beautiful and well-favored Rachel.”[308]

What a delight it was in this distant Mesopotamian plain, where countless lambs still skip about their solicitous mothers, as they did when Leah and Rachel tended their father’s flocks in the long ago, to recall the noble fiction of Dante who, in his Terrestrial Paradise, makes these charming women of humanity’s youth the symbols of the active and the contemplative life as are Martha and Mary in the New Testament! And what a pleasure it was to read on this romantic ground in my well-thumbed Divina Commedia the oft-conned verses:

About the hour,
As I believe, when Venus from the east
First lighted on the mountain, she whose orb
Seems always glowing with the fire of love,
A lady young and beautiful, I dreamed,
Was passing o’er a lea and, as she came,
Methought I saw her ever and anon

Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:

Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,
That I am Leah: for my brow to weave
A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply.
To please me at the crystal mirror, here
I deck me. By my sister Rachel, she
Before her glass abides the live-long day,
Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less
Than I with this delightful task. Her joy
In contemplation, as in labor mine.[309]

I am loath to leave this patriarchal Arcady—the once happy home of Rachel and Leah and Rebecca and those near and dear to them—without referring to a fable associated with this region, in which oriental fancy attains its loftiest flight. The thirty pieces of silver for which Judas Iscariot betrayed his Master, were, it was fabled, coined by Thare—Terah in the King James Version—and given to his son Abraham, who gave them to Isaac; “Isaac bought a village with them; the owner of the village carried them to Pharaoh; Pharaoh sent them to Solomon, the son of David, for the building of his temple; and Solomon took them and placed them round about the door of the altar.” They were taken thence to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave them to some Persian youths who had been his hostages. These youths then gave the coins to their fathers who were the three Magi. When Christ was born, and they saw His star, they, taking the pieces of silver with them, set out on their journey to Bethlehem. Arriving near Edessa they mislaid the coins, which were found by some traveling merchants, who spent them in the purchase of a seamless tunic which an angel had given to some shepherds. Informed of these extraordinary facts, King Abgar got possession of the tunic and the pieces of silver and sent them to Our Lord in grateful recognition for the good He had done him in healing his sickness. The Savior retained the tunic but sent the pieces of silver to the Jewish treasury. These were the thirty pieces which Judas received for delivering his Master into the hands of the chief priests and which after the traitor had hanged himself, were used for the purchase of a field for a burial place for strangers.[310]

After leaving what was once the home of the Patriarchs we saw little of interest until we reached Nisibis. But Nisibis, like Haran, is interesting rather for what it was in the distant past than for what it is at present. Like Haran, it was once a busy and commanding mart between the East and the West. Now, however, like Haran, it is little more than a mass of ruins which are eloquent witnesses of ancient power and splendor. This is evidenced by the remaining arches of a great bridge across the Gargar on which the city was built and by the crumbling walls and columns of a great cathedral whose florid Corinthian ornaments remind one of those which so distinguish the famous temples of Baalbec and Palmyra.

As I contemplated the three or four hundred hovels which make up modern Nisibis, it seemed difficult to believe that it was once a city of palaces and schools and the great bulwark of Rome in Mesopotamia against Persians and Parthians, and that it was for centuries compelled to endure a constant change of rulers. The Armenians, to begin with, took it from its founders. Lucullus, after a long siege, captured it from Tigranes. After the crushing defeat and death of Crassus at Haran,[311] the Parthians wrested it from the Romans. It next fell into the power of Trajan and under Septimus Severus became a stronghold of the Roman colony established in these parts. Sapor I became master of it in the year 242, but it was soon retaken by the Romans under Gordianus III Diocletian and Maximian, recognizing the importance of this strategic point and foreseeing that it would inevitably be subject to the attacks of the enemy, had it strongly fortified. Ammianus Marcellinus gives us some idea of the formidable character of its fortifications when he declares that Nisibis had served the Orient as a barrier against the invasion of the Persians.[312]

But Nisibis was not only a stronghold of the utmost importance to the nation that controlled it; it was also a literary center whose fame extended to Africa and Italy and whose schools were as celebrated for certain of their courses of study as were those of Rome and Alexandria.[313] When the famous school of Edessa was closed in 489 by Bishop Cyrus and the Emperor Zeno on account of its Nestorian tendencies, its teachers and students repaired to Nisibis, where they became the most zealous advocates of Nestorianism as they subsequently became its most active propagators in Persia.

The ruins of this old metropolis show what an important city Nisibis must have been when it was ranked with Edessa and Antioch and Damascus at the period when they were at the zenith of their power and greatness. And history tells us of what a fertile and densely populated region it was once the capital. In the days of its splendor it was surrounded by marvelously fruitful gardens and grain fields while the valleys of the Gargar and the Khabur were famous for their olive groves and their extensive plantations of cotton. Many cities and towns on the Khabur, which have long been in ruins, were once noted cotton markets whence this valuable staple was shipped to Mosul and Chilat in southeastern Armenia, where it was converted into muslin. The word muslin, as is known, is derived from Mosul because this fabric had its origin there. But both the cultivation of cotton and the manufacture of muslin have long ceased to be the important industries they once were in this part of the Orient.

Another feature of this part of Mesopotamia, noted by historians, was its forests. It was at Nisibis “where good timber was abundant,” that the Emperor Trajan had a large fleet constructed to be used on the Tigris.[314] Now the entire country is so treeless that anything larger than a shrub is rarely seen. So uncommon, indeed, is a tree of any size that when one occurs, it is deemed worthy of a special name, even as was “The Oak of Weeping,” under which was buried Debora, the nurse of Rebecca.[315]

Nor is the desolation which so characterizes the regions round about Haran and Nisibis exceptional in northern Mesopotamia. It is typical of the entire country extending from the Euphrates to the Tigris. But according to the “Peuteringian Table” this vast belt of land was once studded with cities and towns, of which there are now but scattered traces. Crumbling walls, remnants of bridges and churches and reservoirs are all that now remain to attest the prosperity of this land in the days of Roman grandeur and Byzantine splendor.

At Nisibis we reached the present eastern terminus of the Bagdad Railway. Thence to Mosul, about a hundred and fifty miles distant, we journeyed on the backs of dromedaries. I did not, however, regret that this slower means of locomotion necessitated our spending more time in a region that recalled Libya’s solitary waste,

Its barren rocks, parched earth and hills of sand.

Not at all. I have always loved the desert, its solitude, its tranquillity, its restfulness. In it,

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

I have spent many of the most peaceful and enjoyable days of my life. I love its diaphanous skies, which are as limpid as the crystal heaven of Eden. I love its dry, ethereal, stimulating atmosphere which exalts the spirits, restores the zest of youth, intensifies the joy of living. Often, while within its quiet confines, I have exclaimed with St. Bernard and St. Jerome, O sancta solituto! Then I realized, as never before, its attraction for the hermits of the Thebaid and the anchorets of the Syrian Chalcis.

It matters not that the desert is as monotonous as the ocean; that its silence is broken only by the muffled footsteps of our even-paced camels; that there is a total absence of life—there is not a beast or bird or insect visible in the broad expanse; that on all sides one sees nothing but sterility, desolation, and death.

This is all true—very true. But if the desert has the monotony of the ocean, it also holds within its mysterious solitudes all the awe and solemnity; all the grandeur and sublimity of the ocean. This is particularly true at the magic hour of refulgent sunset. Then its shifting sands and fantastically formed rocks—black asphalts, brown sandstones, gray and rose granites which are massed like groups of antediluvian monsters—are illumined by splendors of color and phantasmagorias of light which transform the most ordinary landscape into a veritable fairyland.

The flanks and crest of Jebel Sinjar, a picturesque mountain range on our right, exhibit the same riot of color, the same marvelous contrasts of light and shade. At the base there is the delicate violet of the iris, at the summit the glowing red of the poppy, and above all is the soft, turquoise blue of the deep, steady empyrean.

Then there appears the wonderful, mystic afterglow which completely transfigures everything on mountain and plain, and lights up the scene with a light that rarely shines in our cloudy, mist-enveloped clime. In the clear western sky, the evening star hangs like a solitaire. Presently there flash-out in rapid succession the stars and constellations which, in the long ago, were the wonder and the delight of the shepherds and the priest astronomers of Assyria and Chaldea.

Near our tent the camels, relieved of their burdens, are quietly browsing on the scanty broom and brushwood which in these parts constitute their chief sustenance. Their Bedouin masters, seated in a circle, around an odorous camp fire, entertain one another by recounting past experiences and adventures and by singing their favorite songs, most of which are in a minor key and characterized by the frequent occurrence of the terrible name of Allah, which gives to their doleful chant a note of sadness that once heard one can never forget. Amid such scenes of nomadic life, we welcome the hour of sweet repose, when, beguiled by gentle dreams, we, like the lotus-eaters of old, soon become quite unconscious of the fleeting passage of time and of all the world beside.[316]

On the last day of our journey between Djerabis and Mosul, while contemplating at times the prevailing “abomination of desolation” of a ruin-covered waste, we continually referred to the novel excitement which had been ours as we gazed on the hallowed land of the patriarchs about Haran and viewed in Nisibis the fate of a once splendid home of letters and culture. Traversing a region of hoar antiquity, whose annals and legends so captivate the fancy, where turbaned nomads, happy in their felt tents, enjoy the unrestricted freedom of the desert, ours was a sensation and a pleasure unknown in the rush and turmoil and savage energy of our high-pressure civilization of Europe and America. And while the eye delighted in the marvelous succession of contrasts in the landscapes—where rugged mountains alternate with endless plains and “spots of verdure lie strewn like islets amid shoreless seas of sand”—the mind ever pondered on the whirlpool of vicissitudes which has made Mesopotamia unique among the regions of the earth—where, during its long and eventful history, civilization has been succeeded by barbarism and grandeur by decay and death. But as one surveyed this land of former glory and present desolation, one loved to think that “before his eyes the sands of an expiring epoch were fast running out; and the hour-glass of destiny was once again being turned on its base.” It was with this reflection that we completed another lap of our journey and that, travel-worn, we finally arrived at Mosul, the once famous emporium on the arrow-swift Tigris.[317]

CHAPTER XIII
THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST

Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given me; that they may be one, as we also are.

St. John, xvii: 11.

Nestorian, Monophysite and Other Eastern Churches

Our arrival at Mosul was to us a cause of gratification for many reasons. Not the least of these was the very cordial reception tendered us by the good Sons of St. Dominic whose hospitality to wayfarers like ourselves has always been as proverbial as that of the Franciscans. Indeed, the friars of both these venerable religious orders seem, particularly in the Orient, to have made their own, the beautiful Armenian saying “A guest comes from God.”

As for myself, I was specially glad to be in this famous old city, for it is located on the Tigris which I was almost as eager to see as the Euphrates. The names of both of these celebrated rivers had ever been associated in my mind from my earliest youth and, seeing their tawny waters for the first time, they evoked many pleasant memories of boyhood days when I loved to picture to myself the remarkable peoples who dwelt in the fertile land bounded by these two great waterways, peoples whose marvelous achievements impressed me more then than did, in maturer years, the matchless deeds of those incomparable men who dwelt on the banks of the Nile and the Tiber.

But my chief reason for rejoicing on our arrival at Mosul was that I there had a rare opportunity to complete observations which, during the greater part of our journey, I had been making on the condition and influence of what are known as the Eastern Churches. I do not speak of an “Eastern Church,” about which so much has been written, for such an organization, as contradistinguished from a Western Church, is mere fiction.

The noted Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, in writing of the inhabitants of Mosul, declares:

There is a kind of people called Arabi and these worship Mohammed.[318] Then there is another description of people who are called Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. These have a Patriarch whom they call the Jatolic [he means Catholic] and this Patriarch creates Archbishops and Abbots and Prelates of all other degrees and sends them into every quarter, as to India, to Baudas [Bagdad] or to Cathay, just as the Pope of Rome does in Latin countries. For you must know that though there is a very great number of Christians in those countries, they are all Jacobites and Nestorians; Christians, indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome, for they come short in several points of the faith.[319]

Nearly five and a half centuries after the illustrious Venetian traveler had dictated these lines, the erudite historian and Orientalist, von Hammer-Purgstall, referring to the inhabitants of the terraced city of Mardin, located between Edessa and Mosul, wrote: “There Sunnis and Shias, Catholic and Schismatic Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Chaldæans, Sun, Fire, Calf and Devil worshipers dwell one over the head of the other.”[320]

These two quotations from writers who lived in such widely separated periods give one a fair idea of what has long been the religious affiliations of the greater part of the population of Mesopotamia and what, with slight changes, they are still to-day.

Dismissing the Moslems and Pagans just mentioned as without the purview of this chapter, a few pages on the different Christian bodies above-mentioned will aid the reader to form an intelligent estimate of the present condition of some of these Churches of the East and of their relations to one another.

We begin with the Nestorians as they constitute the oldest of the existing dissident Churches. The Arians, Novatians, Paulinists, and scores of other heretics who gave such trouble to the early Christian Church have long disappeared and only students of heresiology now know what doctrines they really professed.

The distinguishing tenet of Nestorianism, which owes its origin to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, is the assertion that in Christ there are two persons—the human and the divine—and the denial that the Mother of Christ is the Mother of God. The Catholic doctrine, as defined by the third Œcumenical Council held at Ephesus in 431, is that in Christ there is but one person—the person of the Son of God—and that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God—Θεοτόκος.

From its beginning Nestorianism has been essentially an eastern organization and was early adopted by the successors of the “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia,” who, on the first Pentecost, were so amazed to hear the Apostles in Jerusalem speaking in divers tongues the wonderful works of God.[321]

On account of political and other reasons, the Nestorians soon became separated from the rest of Christendom. Banished from Edessa in 489 by the Emperor Zeno, they fled to Nisibis which then belonged to Persia. The Persian King, learning that they did not profess the same creed as that held by the Byzantines, with whom he was always at war, took them under his protection. From that time the Nestorian Church, which eventually became almost forgotten west of Mesopotamia, had an extraordinary development in the East. For, although from his palace, in the twin city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Nestorian Katholicos sent missionaries to Arabia and Syria and Egypt, by far the larger number went to far-off India and China. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Nestorian Church attained its greatest development, the jurisdiction of the Nestorian Katholicos rivaled in extent that of the greatest of the Byzantine Patriarchs. For then the supreme head of the Nestorians ruled over a vast number of bishops who were stationed at important points in Asia from Mosul to Malabar and from Jerusalem to Java and Peking.[322]

But from this period, the Nestorian Church, which had then reached the zenith of its greatness and power, began rapidly to decline. Its downfall was hastened by the Moslem hordes of Timur which then swept over the greater part of middle and western Asia and subjected to the fiercest persecution all who did not profess the religion of Mohammed. In addition to the disasters which followed in the footsteps of the Tartars from Delhi to Damascus and from the Aral Sea to the Persian Gulf, the Nestorians suffered greatly from schisms and internal quarrels. These, coupled with the devastations of the Tartars, from which they never recovered, eventually reduced what was the greatest Christian organization in Asia to a poor and insignificant community in the bleak region of Kurdistan on the frontier between Persia and Turkey.

The Nestorian Patriarch now lives at Kochanes between Lake Van and Lake Urmia and always assumes the title Mar Shimum—Lord Simon.[323] A striking peculiarity of the Patriarchy is that it has been hereditary since 1450 and passes from uncle to nephew. Realizing their miserable condition in the spiritual as well as in the material order, many of the Patriarchs during the last two centuries have sought reunion with Rome. Thanks to the untiring missionary labors of the Dominicans of Mosul the majority of the Nestorians, after fourteen centuries of separation, have returned to the faith of their forefathers. Sometimes the inhabitants of several villages returned together. All those in and around Mosul who formerly professed the faith of Nestorians are now members of what is known as the Chaldean Church, which is in communion with Rome. And according to the latest reports from the Dominican missionaries of Mosul, there is reason to believe that all the remaining Nestorians will soon—if they have not already done so—accept the teaching of the Council of Ephesus; and the schism, which for more than fourteen centuries has kept countless myriads outside the pale of the Mother Church, will, like many other schisms, be but a matter of history.

Those who may still cling to Nestorianism—if there yet be any—have long practically forgotten the great questions that so distracted the Church in the East in the days of Nestorius, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Few of them know why they have ever been separated from the Church of Rome, and, when questioned about it, are able to give no better reason than “Because we have always been separated.” With the exception of the heresy of Nestorius which was condemned at Ephesus, the faith of the Nestorians is virtually the same as that taught by the Church of Rome. Like other Eastern Churches, the Nestorian has its peculiar liturgy, rites, laws, customs, but these are so far from affecting the truths of faith, that converts from Nestorianism are allowed by Rome to retain all its peculiarities of worship and religious observance, except in the rare cases in which they actually conflict with Catholic dogma. This is evidenced in the rites and liturgy of the Chaldeans—the Uniates, or converted Nestorians—which are exactly the same as the schismatic Nestorians have used from time immemorial.

When in 1750 the Dominican missionaries took up their abode in Mosul, they found there but one Catholic family and that was one of the Chaldean rite. But so fruitful was their work of conversion that the Patriarch of Mesopotamia and Lower Kurdistan soon afterwards resigned his position and his nephew and successor Mar Yohannan applied for admission into the Church of Rome. He was followed almost immediately by five of his bishops and by the greater part of his people in and around Mosul.

This rapid movement Romeward of the Nestorian pastors and their flocks is partly explained by the fact that they saw no valid reason for remaining separated from a Church which taught the same doctrines as they themselves had always believed and which, during long centuries of persecution, they had preserved intact. But their reunion with Rome was hastened by the tact and zeal of the learned and sympathetic Dominicans whom all soon learned to revere and love. For these devoted priests not only aided these poor but earnest people in becoming reconciled with the Mother Church on the most lenient terms, but they also established for them schools and asylums and hospitals where both souls and bodies could receive much needed care.

In Mosul an up-to-date printing establishment was installed in which were printed the Scriptures and other books in Arabic, Syriac, and other languages. A seminary was founded for the benefit of Chaldean students destined for the priesthood. The education of girls was entrusted to the highly cultured Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Tours, France. Not only did they assume charge of preparatory and normal schools but they also opened industrial schools for girls, especially for the working girls of the city. They also took charge of dispensaries where thousands of poor and sick people received free of charge the medicine and treatment which their condition required and which, before the arrival of these ministering angels of mercy, were not available.

In view of all these facts is there anything surprising in the final return of the followers of Nestorius to communion with Rome?[324]

The history of the Jacobites, of whom Marco Polo found many in Mosul—“Christians indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome”—differs but little, except in one point of doctrine, from that of the Nestorians. This point of doctrine is in one respect the very opposite of the distinguishing dogma of the Nestorians. For, whereas the Nestorians divided Christ into two persons against the Catholic doctrine which maintained His unity, the Jacobites, contrary to Catholic teaching, asserted that there is in Christ but one nature and not two, the human and the divine, as decreed in 451, by the Œcumenical Council of Chalcedon.[325] It is because this heresy teaches the fusion of Our Lord’s humanity and divinity that it is called Monophysitism. And because, in its early stages, it was so ardently championed by Eutyches, an archimandrite of a monastery outside the walls of Constantinople, it is also known as Eutychianism. The Syrian Monophysites are usually called Jacobites, after Jacob Zanzalos, who was an early and zealous propagator of the heresy.

So far as statistics are available the number of Jacobites is somewhat larger than was that of the Nestorians when the Dominicans began to lead them back to obedience to Rome. They are scattered throughout Syria and Mesopotamia and Malabar. Their Patriarch, who always takes the name Ignatius with the title of Antioch, resides at Mardin or Diarbekir on the Upper Tigris to the northwest of Mosul. Although they all talk Arabic, the Jacobites use the Syrian liturgy of St. James.

In consequence of the missionary labors of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Capuchins the majority of the Jacobites are again in communion with Rome under the name of Melchites or Syrian Uniates. Their Patriarch with the title of Antioch usually resides at Beirut. He has eight suffragans, most of whom live in Mesopotamia. From present indications the day does not seem distant when the Jacobites, like the Nestorians, shall once more be reunited with the See of Peter, from which they have so long been separated.

Another Eastern Church which has long been cut off from the rest of Christendom is that of the Armenians. Like the Jacobites, the Armenians early adopted Monophysitism, a doctrine which they still retain. Although many of them have returned to Rome, the majority, known as Gregorians from St. Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of Armenia, are still Monophysites. They have on various occasions sought corporate reunion with the Church of their fathers, and, judging by their friendly attitude towards Catholics, this union may take place at any time.

A peculiarity about the Armenian Church is its intensely national character. It is indeed the most national church in the world, for its only members—whether Gregorians or Uniates—are Armenians. It is their religion which has held the Armenians together in spite of centuries of persecution by Persian satraps; in spite of the tyranny of Seljuk sultans; in spite of the pogroms of Russian autocrats. To no other people in the world, save only those of the real “Niobe of nations”—the long-suffering but invincible sons and daughters of Erin—has their religion served as a stronger bond of union than it has to the cruelly harassed and down-trodden Armenians. It has enabled them with unparalleled tenacity to preserve their language and literature and live ever in the hope that they may one day—God grant it may be soon!—achieve their national independence.

Statistics regarding the number of Armenians are very unsatisfactory. If one were to believe all the horrible tales circulated during the last few decades about wholesale massacres of Armenians by Turks and Kurds and Russians, one would have to conclude that the brave and patriotic race is now extinct. Fortunately we have positive evidence that these bloodcurdling reports have, for political and other un-altruistic motives, been greatly exaggerated and that there is reason to believe that the number of Armenians still living in what was once the Ottoman Empire is not far from three millions.

The Katholikos of the Gregorian Church, who is the successor of the old line of Armenian Patriarchs descended from St. Gregory the Illuminator, resides in the famous monastery of Etchimiadzin near Erivan in Russian Armenia. This monastery, which has been the seat of the Patriarchs for nearly five centuries, was formally ceded to Russia, after the Russo-Persian War, in 1828, and since that time the Katholikos has been subject to a Muscovite process of Russianization which has left him so little liberty of action that his patriarchate has been reduced to what is virtually only a primacy of honor.

In Turkey the Armenian Church is largely under the control of the government. For, as far back as 1461, the Sultan Mohammed II, in order to have the Primate of this Church under his direction, raised the bishop of Constantinople to the dignity of Patriarch. As a result of this arbitrary action of the Sultan the Patriarch of Constantinople and not the Katholikos of Etchimiadzin has ever since been the real primate of all the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

In addition to the two Patriarchs just named, the Armenian Church counts two others. For some centuries ago, as the result of schism and usurpation, it was forced to recognize the self-styled Patriarchs of Jerusalem, and Sis in Cilicia. But, although the schism has been healed, the Patriarchs are still tolerated. They are, however, only titular and have no jurisdiction as such.

Monophysitism was embraced not only by the Jacobites and Armenians but also by a large part of the people of Egypt. It was these Egyptian Monophysites who constituted what has since been known as the Coptic Church. Like the Jacobites and Armenians, the Copts,[326] since their schism has been out of communion with the rest of Christendom, have suffered all the persecutions and been involved in all the internal dissensions that have been the lot of the other schismatics of the East.

The Copts of Egypt now number about half a million souls. Their chief ecclesiastical ruler, who usually resides in Cairo, is the Patriarch of Alexandria. He pretends to be the direct successor of the Evangelist St. Mark, the first bishop of Alexandria, and claims jurisdiction not only over Egypt but over Abyssinia as well. Like the other Eastern Churches, that of the Copts has its own peculiar rites and customs. She uses old Coptic in her liturgy although it has for centuries been a dead language and is no longer understood by any of her priests. As is the case with most of the Nestorians and Jacobites, the language of the Copts is Arabic. And like the sparsely scattered schismatics of Syria and Mesopotamia, the great majority of the Copts and Abyssinians live in a state of extreme poverty and ignorance, although their more fortunate countrymen and coreligionists are now making efforts to elevate them in the social scale and give them some of the benefits of an elementary education.

In consequence of the missionary activities of Franciscans, Capuchins, Jesuits, and Lazarists there are now many Uniate Copts and Abyssinians and their number is gradually increasing. Like the Uniate Syrians, the Uniate Copts are called Melchites.[327] The Primate of the Melchites bears the title of “Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and all the East.” On specially solemn occasions he is called “Father of Fathers, Shepherd of Shepherds, High Priest of High Priests and Thirteenth Apostle.” Although he spends some weeks annually at Jerusalem and Alexandria, where he administers the affairs of his flock through vicars, he resides during the greater part of the year in Damascus. The liturgy used by the Melchites is the Byzantine which is usually celebrated in the Arabic language. On certain very solemn occasions, however, the language of the liturgy is Greek.

Unique among all Eastern Churches is that of the Maronites. The members of this interesting and flourishing communion are all Catholics and it is their proud boast that their Church has never been tainted by heresy. It is certain, however, that they were once Monothelites and taught a doctrine which was but a veiled form of Monophysitism. But this heresy they abandoned at the time of the Crusades when their Patriarch made his submission to Rome. Since then, despite partial defections and centuries of oppression on the part of their schismatic and Mohammedan neighbors, their faith has been of practically uninterrupted orthodoxy.

The Maronites constitute almost the entire population of the Lebanon. There is besides a considerable number in Western Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, and Palestine. According to the most reliable estimates available their total number is about three hundred thousand.[328] The usual place of residence of their Patriarch is the great monastery of St. Mary of Kanobin in the Lebanon where for centuries the Maronite Patriarchs have found their last resting place. The title of the Maronite Patriarch is Patriarchus Antiochenus Maronitarum, but, curiously enough, this Antiochene title is shared with him by no fewer than five other Patriarchs, two of whom are schismatical and three Catholic. These are the schismatic Patriarchs of the Jacobite and Orthodox Churches and the Melchite, Syrian Catholic, and Latin Patriarchs, the last named of whom is only titular. And strange to say, not one of these six Patriarchs lives in Antioch. The language used in the Maronite liturgy is ordinarily Syriac. But to priests who are not sufficiently familiar with Syriac, permission is given to perform the liturgy in Arabic—but Arabic written Syriac characters.

But a word needs to be said about the so-called Church of St. Thomas in Malabar. Although Malabar Christians love to trace the origin of their Church to St. Thomas the Apostle, it seems more probable that it was founded by Nestorian missionaries when their activities extended over a great part of Asia. At any rate, they were once Nestorians. At a later period most of them became Monophysites. Now, however, the majority of them are in communion with Rome under the name “Uniates of Malabar,” with a peculiar rite of their own called the “Rite of Malabar.”

The different Churches which have engaged our attention in the preceding pages and which cannot fail to enlist the interest of the observant traveler in the Orient, suggest at least two questions which demand an answer. What was originally the real cause of these schismatic organizations which have no communion with one another? And how explain the tenacity with which each of them, during more than fourteen centuries, has clung to its peculiar rites and customs and liturgies, and despite all the vicissitudes of war and conquest, has preserved them intact to the present day?

In answer to the first part of the question it is usually asserted that the cause of each of the dissident Churches in question was some specific heresy. This is the truth but, as history proves, it is not the whole truth. Misunderstanding, deception, national jealousies and aspirations had probably as much—if not more—to do with the separation of these Churches from Rome as the particular heresies with which they are usually associated.

A striking proof of this assertion is the peculiar manner in which Monophysitism was introduced into Egypt. The people of the Nile Land readily embraced it because they were under the impression that it was the teaching of St. Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria. As the chief opponent of Nestorius and the valiant champion of Our Lady’s title of Mother of God at the Council of Ephesus, he was regarded by the Egyptians as their national hero and acclaimed their Christian Pharaoh. They were confirmed in this view because Dioscur, Cyril’s successor as Patriarch of Alexandria, was an avowed advocate of Monophysitism. When his teaching was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon and he was deposed from the office of bishop, the people of Egypt, who were always loyal to their ecclesiastical Pharaoh, rallied to his support. They did not stop to examine the merits of the case. The fact that the doctrine, for which their Patriarch was deposed, was known to be opposed to “the faith of the tyrant of the Bosphorus”—as the Byzantine Emperor was called—was an additional reason why it approved itself to the ever patriotic Egyptians. “Lurking under the dispute about one or two natures in Christ was the old national feeling, the old hatred of the Roman power.”[329] The decree of Chalcedon and the consequent deposition of their Patriarch gave occasion for a recrudescence of this hatred of Cæsar and Cæsar’s religion and for an anti-imperialistic outbreak in Alexandria such as this great city had never before witnessed. Thenceforth Monophysitism in its opposition to Byzantine imperialism was identified with Egyptian nationalism. And when the Mohammedans under Amru swept over Egypt, so great was the hatred of the Copts for the Melkites that they sided with the Arabs against the forces of Byzantium. But this with Monophysitism was the cause of their downfall. “The great days when the Christian Pharaoh was the chief bishop of the East have gone forever.”[330] And by a strange irony of fate it was Constantinople, Alexandria’s detested rival, that was eventually to hold the second place among the patriarchates of the Church—a position which, since the days of St. Mark, had been held by the world-famous metropolis of Egypt.

The events which attended the introduction of Monophysitism into Syria were almost a repetition of those which occurred on the entrance of this heresy into Egypt. And the causes which led to the introduction of Monophysitism into the two countries and favored its development there were practically the same. For Antioch, the capital of the Seleucids, as well as Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemies, was a Greek city and each from the disruption of Alexander’s Empire had been a center of Greek civilization and culture. But neither the Syrians nor the Egyptians had ever become reconciled to the intrusion of the Macedonians or other Greek-speaking peoples into their native lands. Nor was their antagonism to foreign domination diminished when their countries became appanages of Rome and Byzantium. They clung as tenaciously as ever to the laws and customs and languages of their fathers and welcomed an opportunity of concealing under the guise of heresy their hatred of Cæsar’s religion as well as their ill-concealed disloyalty to Cæsar’s empire.

In spite of the repeated efforts of the Emperors of Constantinople to conciliate their disaffected subjects in Egypt and Syria and to suppress a heresy that was a constant menace to the State, all their endeavors proved abortive. And when the Moslems invaded Syria it was in Monophysitism that its inhabitants found an outlash of their long pent-up national and anti-imperial feelings which made the conquest of Islam as easy in the Levant as it had been in the Delta of the Nile. But the penalty paid by Syria for its disloyalty and schism was no less terrific than that which reduced Egypt from its high estate and degraded it to the rank of a dishonored province in the ever-extending dominion of the Saracens. For just as it was schism that led to the downfall of Alexandria—the seat of the greatest and most celebrated patriarchate in the East—so was it schism that heralded the inglorious collapse of her great rival—Antioch, the third city of the empire—Antioch, where the followers of the Crucified were first called Christians.

What has been said of Monophysitism as an outlet of national feeling in Egypt and Syria holds equally true of it in Armenia. Its introduction and rapid diffusion was in great measure due to jealousy of the Orthodox Church and hatred of the Byzantine government. But far more than in the case of other Eastern Churches, Monophysitism is the religious bond that during long centuries of oppression and persecution held the Armenians together as a nation and that, especially during recent times, has won for this long-suffering people the sympathy of the entire civilized world.

Only those who have traveled in the Near East and studied there the aspirations of its peoples can fully realize the intense national feeling of the Eastern Churches. Similarly only those who have carefully studied the history of these various ecclesiastical bodies can duly appreciate their present attitude toward the great Latin Church of the West and understand that remarkable conservatism which has ever been one of their most striking characteristics.

The truth is that in all the Eastern Churches—especially the Armenian—national loyalty and national pride count for more than religious conviction or dogmatic teaching. This, strange as it may appear, means that the nation comes before the Church; that politics takes precedence of theology.

To envisage the State as separated from the Church, politics as distinct from religion, as we do in the West, is as alien to a Syrian or an Armenian patriot as it is to a Persian mollah or an Ottoman grand vizier. For this reason the Eastern Churches, like the theocratic government of Islam to which they have so long been subject, have always attributed so paramount an importance to everything that specially bears on their national life and character. And they have been confirmed in this view by their age-long treatment by the Sublime Porte which, in organizing its Christian subjects, made religion the basis of their nationality. Thus the Armenian Church was made Ermeni Millet—the Armenian Nation; the Orthodox Church, regarded as inheriting the name of the Roman Empire, became Rum Millet—the Roman nation—while Catholics of the Latin rite are known as Latin Millet—the Latin Nation. And so it was with the Churches of Egypt, Syria, Mount Lebanon, and the various other Christian Churches in the vast dominions of the Ottoman Sultan.[331]

From the foregoing it is seen that among Eastern Christians it is not their particular church that counts so much as their millet. This, although quite an artificial nation, is as dear to them as our fatherland is to us, while in comparison all matters of dogma and theology are quite secondary. For this reason it is that there are rarely any conversions from one Eastern Church to another. And for this reason, too, it is that—as has well been observed—“for a Jacobite to turn Orthodox would be like a Frenchman turning German.”

This loyalty of the schismatic Christians in the East to the traditions and national spirit of their forebears explains the exceptional conservatism of the divers Churches to which they belong—the tenacity with which through the ages they have clung to their particular rites and customs and retained unchanged their special liturgies since schism first separated them from their mother Church. And it is this intense conservatism, this undying loyalty to their millet that constitutes the greatest barrier to the reunion of the Eastern Churches with the primatial Church of Rome.

Then, too, there is ever before them the terror-inspiring specter of Fragistan—Europe—which portends disasters innumerable. It is the horrid old phantom of the land of mists and shadows which has been haunting the East since the Trojan War—which reappeared with all its horrid accompaniments of rapine and death during the invasion of Alexander the Great and still again during the repeated and long-continued campaigns of the Crusaders. These days of unalterable woe have so seared the hearts and memories of the peoples of Western Asia that, like the Trojans who feared the Greeks even when bearing gifts, they have an inborn distrust of the Feringees,[332] of their Churches, their schools, their laws, their governments.

It is because the Holy See is so thoroughly cognizant of all the fears and jealousies and animosities of the divers Eastern Churches and because she fully realizes the importance which they severally attach to their millet that she has always been so prudent and considerate in her dealings with them and so disposed to conciliate them and remove everything that might excite suspicion or distrust. Always yearning for a return of the misguided children who so long ago left her fold, she is ever ready to make any reasonable concession, so long as it does not affect the deposit of faith of which she is the divinely appointed custodian. Hence it is that, in her eagerness to further the cause of the reunion for which she has always so ardently longed, she has, in her supreme wisdom, ever been ready to allow each Church and each millet to retain its own laws and customs, rites and liturgy, language and hierarchy. And it is because of this wise and benevolent policy that recent years have witnessed the return to Rome of so many thousands of Eastern schismatics—often whole dioceses at a time—to the venerable Mother Church from which they had been lured by heresy and schism in the long ago. So far, then, as the Eastern Churches mentioned are concerned, it would appear from the foregoing pages that the day is not very distant when, in great measure, heresy shall be adjured and schism healed.

The Orthodox Churches

Just as it is not true to speak of an Eastern Church, so it is still less true to speak of an Orthodox Church. For, whereas the Eastern Churches we have considered are only seven in number, the Orthodox Churches are no fewer than sixteen. But in their origin a very marked difference is to be noted between the Orthodox and other Churches of the East.

The Nestorian and Monophysite Churches, as we have noted, originated in certain specific heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. But the false doctrines of these heresiarchs, as has been observed, contributed less towards the separation of the Copts, Syrians, and others than did the intense nationalism of these peoples who wanted only a pretext under the guise of heresy for concealing their disloyalty to the Byzantine Empire. Few of the rank and file knew anything about the theological issues involved in the false doctrines of their leaders. The majority of them were almost as ignorant of their real bearing on Catholic dogma when the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon issued their famous decrees as they are to-day. With possibly a few exceptions not even the clergy or the bishops of the Eastern Churches are now aware of what was the cardinal issue of their schism or are able to give anything more than the vaguest and most shadowy reason for their continued separation from the Church of Rome.

The Orthodox Churches—which embrace those Christians who use the Byzantine rite but are not in communion with the Catholic Church—unlike the Eastern Churches of which we have spoken, had their origin not in heresy but in schism, pure and simple. Many and various were the causes of this schism but the chief of them were the jealousies and ambitions of the Emperors and Patriarchs of Constantinople. And these jealousies and ambitions began at an early date and gradually developed until they eventually culminated in the fatal schism precipitated by Photius and Cerularius. For

After that Constantine the Eagle turned

Against the course of heaven which it had followed,[333]

there was ever-increasing friction between the East and the West. Constantine, fully occupied with the affairs of his vast empire, had wisely allowed the Church to govern herself[334] but such, unfortunately, was not the policy of his successors. Continually interfering in ecclesiastical affairs and determining questions of doctrine by imperial decrees, they soon proved themselves the worst enemies of the Church’s freedom of action. This was particularly true during the Byzantine period which extended from the accession of Justinian to the throne to the fall of Constantinople under Mohammed II. During all this time the Emperors were unremitting in their efforts to make the Church a subject of the State. In this they had the ever-ready cooperation of the court bishops, whose subservience is easily explained. Their ambitions were great and they counted on their imperial masters to help them to realize their unholy aspirations. Nor were they disappointed.

When in 330 Constantine established his new capital on the banks of the Bosphorus and beautified it with all the artistic treasures he was able to remove from the old capital on the Tiber, the ecclesiastical head of Constantinople was but a simple bishop under the metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace. But this position was far from satisfying the vaulting ambition of one who suddenly found himself the honored chaplain of the Emperor and his court, the bishop of the magnificent metropolis that was thenceforth to be the center of the Roman world. What was now to prevent his becoming a Patriarch—the rival even of the greatest of Patriarchs—of the successor of the Galilean Fisherman who ruled the Universal Church from his palace in the old capital of the Cæsars?

What indeed was to prevent him from making his dream a glorious reality? The Emperor, he felt sure, would not thwart his ambitious schemes. Nor did he. For it was in harmony with his policy of centralization to have his court bishop raised to the highest hierarchical position possible. It would add to his own prestige, it would stimulate the loyalty of his subjects, and would augment his power and influence in his dealings with the Church. Nor was he mistaken. For history does not furnish more glaring examples of the tyranny of Cæsar in the things of God nor of more ignoble subjection of bishops to civil power than were exhibited in the Emperor’s arbitrary and contemptuous treatment of those ecclesiastics—even the highest—who, in return for the encouragement he had given to their unholy ambitions, had become the willing vassals of the imperial government.

In the evolution of the See of Constantinople, barely fifty years were required for achieving the joint plan of Bishop and Emperor. For as early as the year 381 it was decreed by a council summoned by the Emperor Theodosius I, which was composed of only a comparatively small number of Eastern bishops, and at which the Holy See had no representative, that thenceforth the Bishop of Constantinople should have the primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because that city—Constantinople—was New Rome. Thus, by a stroke of the pen, the Patriarch of Alexandria, who had previously held precedence after the Pope of Rome, was supplanted by the Bishop of Byzantium. The Pope and the Alexandrian Patriarch protested against this outrageous proceeding, but it was of no avail. The Emperor and his subservient bishops had achieved their ambitious purpose and had virtually divided Christendom into two dominant Patriarchates—that of the West, under Rome, and that of the East, under Constantinople.

It was this realization by the bishops of New Rome of their most cherished aspiration—the separation of the Church into two great Patriarchates—that engendered and fostered that jealousy and friction that ever afterwards existed between Rome and Constantinople and which, more than anything else, led to that ever-regrettable schism that still separates the East from the West. For the position of the Church of New Rome, as that of the “first Church of all Eastern Christendom, was so exalted that her bishops even ventured to think themselves the rivals of the Roman Pope, so influential that when at last they”—her bishops—“fell into formal schism, they dragged all the other eastern bishops with them.”[335]

Besides the jealousy and overweening ambition of sycophantic bishops and tyrannical Emperors, there were other determining causes of the estrangement between the Eastern and Western halves of Christendom and of the ultimate establishment of an autonomous Byzantine episcopate.

Not the least of these was the difference of language. For after Constantinople had become the capital of the Empire, the Roman Court became so completely Hellenized that the language of Virgil and Cicero was no longer heard and was understood by but few. Even Photius, the most eminent scholar of his time, was ignorant of Latin. For this reason, it is quite possible that, aside from Byzantine ambitions and aspirations, “the divergence of tongues, combined with the Hellenic contempt of the Latin race might have contributed to ... a grouping of the Eastern Churches around the See of Constantinople, and thus have brought about, more or less rapidly, the formation of a Greek autonomy. The Roman Empire had succeeded in overpowering and even in suppressing the tongues of all the other conquered nations—such as the Syriac, Coptic, Celtic, Iberian, Phœnician, Etruscan, and many others—but it had never attempted anything in the direction of the Greek language. The result was that Greek ranked side by side with Latin as a second official tongue and this cause brought about the division of the Empire. Nor was it merely a question of tongues. Latins as well as Greeks knew and recognized that all intellectual culture in the West had its origin in Greek antiquity; hence arose a superiority that, when once the Empire was divided, promptly gave to the Greek portion a preponderance over the Latin.”[336]

Nothing, however, was so calculated to stir up the rancor of the Greeks against the Latins as the Pope’s coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of territory that was regarded as an integral part of the Byzantine Empire. For the Greeks then held the theory, which was subsequently so elaborated by Dante in his De Monarchia, that the cause of Cæsar was the cause of Christ and that the perfection of the Church presupposed the integrity of the Empire and harmonious relations between Pope and Emperor. When, therefore, the Roman Patriarch set up a rival Augustus in the person of Charlemagne and divided the Roman Empire, which, under Justinian, extended from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules, he was in the estimation of the Byzantines guilty of high treason. Claiming that they alone had the direct line of imperial continuity they would never recognize Charlemagne as anything more than “a barbarian King of a barbarian people.”[337] To what extent the establishment of the Empire in the West contributed to existing friction and to the fatal rupture between New Rome and Old Rome, which occurred seventy years later, is a matter of speculation, but it can scarcely be doubted that its effect on the exacerbated temper of the Greeks was far greater than is usually imagined.

Although, during the first five centuries of its existence, the See of Constantinople had several times been out of communion with Rome, the “Great Schism,” as it is called, was not inaugurated until Photius, with the connivance of the Byzantine Emperor, iniquitously usurped the Patriarchate of New Rome. After the death of this intruder in 891 peace was again restored between the Eastern and Western Churches. But the schism that had been engendered by the misunderstandings and animosities, jealousies and ambitions, of centuries was healed only temporarily. For but a little more than a century and a half had elapsed after the mortal remains of Photius—who has been called “the Luther of the Orthodox Church”—had been moldering in an unknown grave when the Byzantine Church was again, in 1050, thrown into schism by the overweening ambition of Michael Cerularius, whom the Emperor Constantine IX had, in violation of the most sacred laws of the Church, foisted into the See of Constantinople as its Patriarch.

Neither Photius nor Cerularius, it must here be observed, instigated schism because of controverted questions of dogma. Photius caused it by his shameless usurpation of the See of the lawful Patriarch of Constantinople. Cerularius, in his opposition to Rome, was actuated by similar motives. But he was not, like his schismatic predecessor, satisfied to be Primate of the Byzantine Church. His pride and ambition led him to aim at something far higher. This was nothing less than the founding of a theocracy of which he was to be supreme head and in which the State was to be subservient to the Church. This theocracy was to be the antithesis of the Cæsaropapism which had flourished almost uninterruptedly since the death of Constantine. At one time, indeed, Cerularius thought seriously of uniting the imperial and the patriarchal functions and proclaiming himself the Emperor-Patriarch of the Roman Empire....[338] He began to wear purple shoes, one of the Emperor’s prerogatives, and to join royalty and the priesthood in his own person. Michael Prellos, who knew him well and who wrote a valuable history of this period, informs us in referring to Cerularius: “In his hands he held the cross while from his mouth issued imperial laws.”

But Cerularius’ ambition was the cause of his undoing. Like Photius he was made Patriarch by the Emperor. Like Photius he was deposed from his exalted position by imperial authority and sent into exile on the charge of high treason. But, although he failed in his stupendous scheme to make himself the Emperor-Patriarch of the East, he was successful where Photius fell short—in definitively separating the Greek from the Latin Church and by perpetuating the most disastrous schism which has ever befallen the Church of Christ. It was for this “unheard of offence and injury done to the Holy Apostolic and First See” that the Papal Legates in Constantinople, who tried to the last to prevent schism, pronounced Cerularius and his adherents Anathema Maran-atha.[339] Their last words after laying the bull of excommunication on the altar of Santa Sophia were Videat Deus et judicet.

These words in which they called upon God to witness and judge were uttered at nine o’clock in the morning, July 16, 1054. The Great Schism which—aside from a brief interval—has ever since continued unbroken was then a fait accompli.

No sooner had the schism of Cerularius become an accomplished fact, than God-fearing men of both the Eastern and the Western Church set to work to devise ways and means of closing the deplorable breach. The Popes especially never lost sight of their erring children to the east of the Adriatic. From the fateful sixteenth of July, 1054, until the present, they have made efforts innumerable to bring about a reunion between the tragically separated churches. With this object in view, two General Councils were convened, the Second Council of Lyons in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439.

But since the outbreak of the schism, a new barrier had been erected between the East and the West, which seemed almost insurmountable. This was the result of the horrible sack of Constantinople by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade. The cruelties, massacres, and wholesale destruction of the choicest works of art which attended this unpardonable outrage made it one of the most shocking events in the history of the capital.[340] Then, too, there was the establishment of the Latin Empire in Constantinople and the erection of Frankish States in Syria and Palestine. This ruthless ignoring by the Latins of the sovereign rights of a Christian power and all the wanton cruelty that accompanied it was still fresh in the minds of the Greek delegates when they convened at Lyons and Florence and this, added to all the causes of friction that had so long rankled in the hearts of the Byzantines, made a successful issue of the deliberations of the assembled fathers almost hopeless.

Notwithstanding, however, all the causes of rancor that existed, a reunion was effected by each of the Councils but in each case it lasted only a very short time. For no sooner did the people of Constantinople hear of the action of the Council of Lyons than, exercising what should now be called the right of referendum, they rose in insurrection against it. As a result, however, of the reunion brought about by the Council of Florence, the Byzantine Church remained, at least nominally, in communion with the Holy See for a period of thirty-three years—from 1439 to 1472. It was during this fateful time that Constantinople was taken by the Turks under Mohammed II.

The Conquest of Constantinople was almost as great a turning point in the history of the Byzantine Church as was the Great Schism of Photius and Cerularius. For the Sultan had scarcely taken possession of the city when he sent for the leader of the anti-Papal party, one George Scholarios, and, with a view of winning him together with the schismatic Byzantines over to his rule as against that of the Catholic Powers of the West, he had him made Patriarch, although at the time of his appointment Scholarios seems to have been a layman.

No sooner had the Sultan championed the cause of the Greeks against Rome than they at once exultingly rallied around their Patriarch and, in words of deepest hatred and wildest fanaticism, shouted: “Rather the Sultan’s turban than the Pope’s tiara.” They have had their choice but with what long centuries of degradation and ignominy!

Neither the Patriarch nor his followers had to wait long before the scales fell from their eyes. For no sooner had Scholarios, under the direction of the Sultan, been appointed to the See of Constantinople than Mohammed sent for him and handed him the berat-diploma[341]—which defined what were his duties and prerogatives as Patriarch under the Moslem Government. But this was not all. For scarcely had he been invested with the signs of his spiritual jurisdiction than the unfortunate Patriarch was given to understand that he was nothing more than a puppet in the hands of his Moslem master who could depose him at will. Each of his successors since that time in the See of Constantinople has been obliged to submit to the same humiliating ceremony of investiture.

To their intense chagrin the Patriarchs soon learned furthermore that their appointment had to be followed by a gift to the Sultan of a large sum of money; that their tenure of office would rarely exceed two years;[342] that they could be deposed to make room for others who were forced to pay similar exorbitant sums for their appointment; that they might be deposed and reappointed no fewer than five times and at each appointment to the office from which they had been deposed, they would be obliged to renew the enormous bribe to their arbitrary and rapacious overlord.

The result was simony of the worst kind, for, in order to obtain the money required by the Moslem tyrant for their appointment, the subservient Patriarchs resorted to the selling of benefices to priests and bishops and metropolitans. To such an extent had this sacrilegious traffic in the things of God been carried on that simony has long made the Orthodox Church “a reproach and a scoff, an example and an astonishment among the nations that are round about her.”

But the troubles and humiliations of the Œcumenical Patriarch—as the Primate of the Byzantine Church is called—did not end with his degrading investiture by the Sultan, or, as was more frequently the case, by his Grand Vizier and by the payment of an enormous bribe for his appointment. Owing to his subjugation to the Sublime Porte, he soon found himself confronted with untold difficulties based on racial jealousies and antagonisms. These were augmented by the subserviency of the Phanar—the Vatican of the Orthodox Church—and the readiness which Phanariote Greeks always exhibited to become the agents of Turkish oppression of their fellow Christians—especially those in the Balkans. It was because the policy of the Phanar was identical with that of the Porte that the enemies of the Sultan were unwilling to acknowledge any kind of dependence on the Byzantine Patriarch. This was strikingly evinced in the war of Greek Independence, as one of the first acts of the Greek Parliament was to declare the Church in Greece to be autocephalous.

The example of Greece was subsequently followed by the different states in the Balkans. For no sooner had they freed themselves from Turkish rule than they proclaimed their independence of the Œcumenical Patriarch.

This Philetism—love of one’s race—in things ecclesiastical, which the various nations of southeastern Europe so conspicuously exhibited during the last century was a great blow to the Phanar, but it was this same kind of nationalism that was the chief cause of the Great Schism. Greece and Roumania, Serbia and Bulgaria, and Russia, long before any of them, had done nothing more than had the Orthodox Church when it separated itself from communion with Rome. It was in vain that the Phanar announced Philetism as a heresy. It was but the reassertion of the national idea which had led the Œcumenical Patriarch to rebel against the Pope—the construing of it into the principle cujus regio ejus religio which met with such favor in the seventeenth century in Germany, according to which “each politically independent state should have an ecclesiastically independent church.” As a result of the frequent application of this principle the Orthodox Church has shared the fate that never fails to overtake schism and heresy. In consequence of political and ecclesiastical jealousies and antagonism; of excommunications and counter-excommunications by rival bishops; of divisions and subdivisions, the once great and powerful Orthodox Communion now finds itself divided into sixteen independent Churches whose jurisdiction ranges in extent from that of the Independent Church of the monastery of Mount Sinai to that of the once great Empire of Russia. There is now little left to the Patriarch of Constantinople but the primacy of honor, for he has no jurisdiction outside of his rapidly diminishing Patriarchate. Is there in all history a more striking case of poetic justice than that afforded by the gradual disintegration of the proud and ambitious Patriarchate of Constantinople?

Although the retribution which has visited Cerularius and his successors is fearful to contemplate, stern Nemesis still pursues the Œcumenical Patriarchs with unrelenting severity. For now these unfortunate hierarchs are trembling under the Damoclean sword, which the vengeful goddess has put into the hands of Russia.

In 1721 Peter the Great placed the Church of Russia under the Holy Directing Synod, where it has since remained. As this Synod was never more than the shadow of the Czar, the Church of Holy Russia was for two centuries the most Erastian Christian organization that has ever existed. For during all this time the Holy Synod was as much under the domination of the Czar as any department of the imperial government. Added to this is the portentous fact that the Russian Church counts eight times as many communicants as all the other Orthodox Churches together. Even in the famous monastic republic of Mount Athos—a supposedly Greek community—where in 1902 there were seven thousand and five hundred monks, the majority were Slavs and nearly one-half were Russians.

All this being the case, the Russians, who are fully as ambitious as were the Greeks in the time of Photius and Cerularius, are beginning to ask themselves whether the time has not arrived for the Holy Synod to assume the supreme headship of the entire Orthodox Church. Nor is the Phanar ignorant of the aspirations and purposes of the Holy Synod. It has read the writing on the wall and knows that as soon as the Russian Church shall find a leader with the towering ambition and intense national spirit of Photius, the fondly-entertained project of the Holy Synod will be quickly realized, that the primacy of the Orthodox Church will be transferred to Moscow or Petrograd, and that the power and the prestige of the Œcumenical Patriarch will then be little more than were those of his first predecessor when he was the humble suffragan of the Metropolitan of Heraclea. The Great Church—the official designation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople—will then have shared the fate of the Churches of Antioch and Alexandria which, in the days of their glory, were the rivals of the Mother Church of Imperial Rome. And then, too, will the aspiring Greeks be rudely wakened from the fantastic dream of their “Great Idea”—the idea of a great and reconstructed Hellas that shall embrace the Balkans and have as its capital the Queen City of the Bosphorus.

There are few things in the history of the Church, which the lover of Christian Unity and peace finds more saddening than the clandestine intrigues and open antagonism that led to the Great Schism; few things that are more discreditable than the incessant machinations of those politicians and ecclesiastics who were the cause of all those fatal dissensions which were so characteristic of the Orthodox Church during the nineteenth century and have led to that widespread disintegration which, there is reason to fear, is just beginning. While one can have no sympathy with the authors of these disastrous schisms in the just retribution which has been meted out to them, one cannot help pitying the countless thousands among the clergy and laity who, in spite of the unpardonable scandals caused by Church and State are, nevertheless, earnestly striving to further the cause of Christ and to reflect in their lives the teaching of the gospel of their Redeemer. In Russia, in Greece, in Asia Minor—wherever the Orthodox Church still retains a hold on her children—one cannot help being edified by the piety, the zeal, the deep religious spirit of innumerable thousands who are not only ignorant of the cause of the schism that separates them from the Church of Rome but are also ignorant that they have even been in schism. Of those, however, who are acquainted with the origin of the Great Schism there are many who ardently hope and pray that it may soon be healed. For they have learned by long and sad experience the truth of the words of St. John Chrysostom who—with the possible exception of St. Gregory Nazienzen—was the most illustrious prelate who ever ruled the See of Constantinople: “Nothing can hurt the Church so much as love of power.”[343]

Reunion of the Eastern Churches with the Holy See

During my wanderings in the Near East, as during previous travels in Greece and Russia, a question of ever-absorbing interest to me was that of the long-desired and often-attempted reunion of the Eastern Churches with the Church of Rome. When I contemplated the majestic temples of Petrograd with their surging multitudes of pious worshipers and examined the stately convents and monasteries of Moscow with their vast number of devoted, God-fearing inmates; when I marveled at the shiploads of Russian pilgrims who at great expense and with great discomfort annually visited the Holy Land and noted the sumptuous hospices and shrines that their government has there erected for them; when I beheld the desecrated temples of Hellas and Anatolia and recalled how the Greeks, during long centuries of oppression and degradation—when they had everything to gain by apostasy—preserved intact the faith of the Orthodox Church and augmented that vast army of martyrs who sealed their belief in Christ with their blood—when I saw and recollected all this, there was the ever-recurrent question, “Will the fateful schism of a thousand years ever be healed?”

As we have already seen, the last reconciliation of the Orthodox Church with the Holy See took place at the Council of Florence in 1439. On this occasion, also, the Coptic, Abyssinian, Jacobite, Maronite, and Armenian Churches were wholly or partially united with the great Mother Church, from which they had so long been separated. It was then that the Uniate Churches already referred to had their origin. But as the reunion of the Orthodox Church had been based on political rather than ecclesiastical grounds it was of short duration, for it was formally repudiated by the Byzantines in 1472, nineteen years after the occupation of Constantinople by the Ottoman army under Mohammed the Conqueror.

But, although the reunions effected at the Councils of Lyons and Florence were so short-lived, the hope of an eventual and enduring reunion has always been cherished not only by the Latins but by an influential body of the Orthodox Church as well. It will suffice here to refer to two recent efforts to secure reunion—one of which was made by the Œcumenical Patriarch, Joachim III, a little less than two decades ago, and one made by Pope Leo XIII a few years earlier.

In a noted encyclical addressed to the divers Orthodox Churches, the Œcumenical Patriarch requested them to consider the question of reunion of Christendom. His courteous and charitable references in this letter to the Latin Church and his expressed hope that it and the Orthodox may again be reunited evince a man of a deeply religious spirit, whose sole object was the cause of Christ, which, as he conceived it, would be immensely advanced by the restoration of Church unity. But the replies which he received from the sister Church—those in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople—soon convinced him that his efforts in the direction of the proposed reunion were doomed to failure.

In his famous encyclical Præclara—aptly called the “Testament of Leo XIII.”—which was addressed on June 20, 1894, to “Princes and Peoples,” His Holiness speaks to his wayward and error-bound children in words of surpassing tenderness and deepest paternal solicitude. There is not a word of reproach, not a single expression to wound even the most sensitive.[344] He refers lovingly to the East, “whence salvation spread over the whole world”; to the resplendent history of their venerable sees; to the Greeks who had occupied the Chair of Peter and had edified the Church by their learning and virtue. In his plea for reunion he declares: “No great gulf separates us; except for a few smaller points we agree so entirely with you that it is from your teaching, your customs and rites that we often take proofs for Catholic dogma.”[345] And referring to certain unfounded charges that had often been made against the Holy See, he declares in the most positive terms that no Pope has the slightest desire to diminish the dignity and rights of any of the great Patriarchates of the East. And as for their venerable customs “we shall,” he assures them, “provide in a broad and generous spirit.”

Had the occupant of the Patriarchal See of Constantinople been imbued with the spirit of his illustrious countryman, Cardinal Bessarion, who labored so strenuously for Church reunion at the Council of Florence, and had he been actuated by a tithe of the zeal and charity and love of peace that so distinguished the great St. Athanasius of Alexandria, there is reason to believe that the Sovereign Pontiff’s gentle and noble letter would have met a very different reception and that measures would have been taken ere this to terminate a schism which during ten long centuries has been so prolific of evil to untold millions of souls redeemed at an infinite price.

But, unfortunately for the Eastern Churches, as well as for the Church of Rome, Anthimos VII was then Œcumenical Patriarch. His offensive and abusive reply to the gracious and generous appeal of the renowned successor of the Fisherman shows that in character and zeal for souls and ardent love of the Church of Christ he was the very opposite of the great Pontiff whose overtures he so disdainfully and so ignominiously rejected.

Although the efforts to restore union which were made by Joachim III and Leo XIII were, apparently, completely ineffectual, there can be no doubt that they set people—both clergy and laity—to thinking, and that Church unity is now nearer realization than it has been for centuries. Thanks to more frequent communication between the East and the West, as well as to the all-powerful agency of the press, the people of the Eastern Churches are beginning to realize as never before the extent and magnitude of the frightful evils that have been engendered by the Erastianism and the Philetism which so dominate the Churches of Russia and the Balkans. They have learned that most of the hatred, dissensions, and race antagonisms which have so grieved and afflicted them may be traced to their lack of a central ecclesiastical authority and to the fact that their clergy have been forced to become mere tools of the government. Comparing their condition before the Great Schism with what it is now, they find to their sorrow that they are suffering from arrested development; that their boasted conservatism is but an euphemism for fossilization; that they have long ceased to be a living, active force, and that their only hope of regaining their erstwhile power and prestige is to become reunited with the Apostolic See.

Those who were familiar with the history of the past will recall the days when the eminent saints and scholars Athanasius, Clement, and Cyril of Alexandria reflected such honor on the Church in Egypt; when St. John Damascene and St. Ephrem were the glory of Syria and Mesopotamia; when St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzen were the great intellectual luminaries of Asia Minor and the revered doctors of the entire Church of Christ. And pondering these facts it may occur to them that had Photius been less ambitious and more religious he might now be numbered not among sowers of scandal and schism—

Seminator di scandalo e di scisma[346]

but among the great Fathers who were ever-zealous promoters of the good name and the sacred union of the Church Universal.

They will also recall the disillusioning and disconcerting fact that since the very beginning of schism, the Eastern Church, to quote the words of Dean Stanley, “has produced hardly any permanent works of practical Christian benevolence. With very few exceptions, its celebrated names are invested with no stirring associations. It seems to open a field of interest to travelers and antiquarians, not to philosophers or historians.... As a rule there has arisen in the East no society like the Benedictines, held in honor wherever literature or civilization has spread; no charitable orders like the Sisters of Mercy, which carry light and peace into the darkest haunts of suffering humanity.”[347]

So far as intellectual life is concerned they will find that the above words apply with equal truth even to the great monastic republic of Mount Athos, which, during the Middle Ages, was so noted a center of Greek learning. For, sad to relate, one finds even there the same intellectual apathy and decay as elsewhere, and its seven and more thousand monks are to-day as dead set against scholarship as when they indignantly razed the school which Eugenius Bulgaris, the greatest Greek scholar of the eighteenth century, had there established in their own behoof.

It is the recollection of all these things—“the remembering in misery the happy time”—combined with the kind and generous invitation of Leo XIII to return to the Church of their fathers, that has swelled the ranks of that long-existent party in the Orthodox Church known as the λατεινόφοροντες—Latin-favorers—who have always deplored schism and who would use all their influence to bring it to an early termination. This party, which has long groaned under the Erastianism of the Czar and the absolutism of the Sublime Porte, is only biding its time to seize an opportunity to return to its allegiance to the Pope. Professor Harnack, whose competency to express an opinion in this matter no one will question, declared in a notable pronouncement on the encyclical Præcala of Leo XIII that:

People who understand Russia know that there is a patriotic Russian party—or rather tendency—in the heart of the country, in Moscow and among the most educated people, that hopes for a movement of their Church in the direction of the Western Church—that is of the Roman, not the Evangelical Communion—who work for this and who see in it the only hope of Russia. This party manifests its ideas in writing, so far as circumstances in Russia allow, and has already shown that it possesses men of unusual talent, warm love of their country and undoubted devotion to the Greek Church. They have also considered how they shall reconcile Russia’s traditions and world-power with a change in her Church affairs that shall harmonize with the views of Rome and they believe in its possibility.[348]

If the Latin-favorers could now find a leader of commanding personality there is good reason to believe that the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches would not be far distant. Had Russia a pious and forceful monarch like her saintly Apostle, King Vladimir, or had Constantinople a Patriarch of the zeal and influence of St. Theodore of Studium, the great majority of the Orthodox Church, who know nothing about the origin of the existing schism, would follow such a leader without hesitation. And so slight would be the change in faith, in consequence of reunion, that the great mass of the faithful would scarcely be conscious of it. Their faith would remain exactly the same as it was before the schism.

And this holds true not only of the Orthodox Church but of all the other schismatic churches as well. They would, all of them, retain their peculiar rites and customs; they would hear the same language in the liturgy that has been consecrated by long centuries of use. The Copts would retain the presanctified liturgy of St. Mark and continue to use the venerable Alexandrine rite in the Coptic language. The Jacobites would celebrate the sacred mysteries in Syriac according to the age-old ritual of St. James. The adherents of the Orthodox Church would still hear their strange chant echoing “backwards and forwards through the gleaming inconostasis, while the deacon waves his ripidion over the holy gifts and the clouds of incense are borne through the royal doors. Still the people would crowd up for the antidoron and the kolybas, dive for the cross at the holy lights, kiss each other on Easter Day and dance for the Forerunner’s birth, while the psalms from the Holy Mountain would still sound across the Ægean Sea.”[349]

It is because the venerable eastern rituals and liturgies, in their several ancient languages, represent some of the most sacred traditions of the Church that Pope Leo XIII in his noted encyclical Orientalium Dignitas Ecclesiarum praises them so highly and applies to the bride of Christ the words of the Psalmist: “The queen”—the Church—“stood on Thy right hand in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety.”[350]

As I observed, during my travels in the Near East, the frightful ravages that schism has everywhere caused, and noted the growing tendency of many to return to “the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God,”[351] I repeated with ever renewed fervor the supplication in St. Basil’s liturgy: Πãνσον τα σχίσματα των ἐκκλησιῶν—“Grant that Church schisms may cease.” And never did I in fancy more frequently hear reëchoed the touching words of Our Saviour before his passion: “I pray ... that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us.”[352]

CHAPTER XIV
NINEVEH AND ITS WONDERS

Here thou behold’st
Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds,
Araxes and the Caspian Lake; thence on
As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,
And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay
And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth;
Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall
Several days’ journey, built by Ninus old,
Of that first golden monarchy the seat,
And seat of Salmanassar, whose success
Israel in long captivity still mourns.
Milton, “Paradise Regained.”

Wrapt in the crispy air of a bright October morning, we found ourselves on the shaky and crowded pontoon bridge that connects Mosul with the long-buried city of Nineveh. Horses and camels jostled heaving, shouting, unwashed Turks and Kurds and Arabs, who seemed to be constantly in imminent danger of being shoved into the swift-flowing Tigris. The variety of garb and multiplicity of tongues of the motley and vociferous throng on the swaying and creaking bridge strikingly recalled the clamorous and varicolored multitude that always crams the outer bridge between Galata and Stamboul.

How often, during our delightful sojourn in Mosul, had we gazed on the mysterious mounds on the eastern bank of the Tigris which were insistently beckoning us to visit them! And how eager were we to respond to the silent invitation and to explore the site of the once proud capital of Assyria! But we resisted the persistent temptation to interrupt our work in Mosul. We had there, with the assistance of the scholarly sons of St. Dominic, a rare opportunity of getting first-hand information regarding the social and economical condition of the people of this part of Asia and of completing our investigations, begun almost at the inception of our journey, respecting the various schismatic churches of the East. Not, then, until we had completed our observations in Mosul and coördinated our impressions, could we be induced to suspend our self-imposed task. We wished to have it completely off our hands in order that, once on the historic soil of Nineveh, we might indulge in reverie without let or hindrance.

When, finally, we were ready to visit the ruins of Nineveh, ours was the good fortune to have with us a learned Dominican of Mosul, who was as familiar with the early history of the famous old Assyrian metropolis as he was with the excavations which during the last two generations have revealed artistic and literary treasures that have been the marvel and the delight of the world. We could not have had a more intelligent or a more enthusiastic guide among the devious ways which led to the sites of ancient temples and palaces, whose existence was absolutely unknown until uncovered by the pick and spade of the archæologist but a few decades ago.

How strange it seemed to me, as we threaded our way through the maze of passages that led to the locations of once famous palaces and temples, that it was also a Dominican—a brother in religion of our guide—who first awakened my interest in Nineveh! That was more than three score years ago. And yet, so vivid was the impression then made on my youthful mind that it seems but yesterday when I first came under the spell of the famed lands of Assyria and Babylonia.

It came about in a very simple way. The Dominican in question—a dear, venerable man—had visited the Holy Land shortly before I met him, and took great pleasure in telling me his experiences in the East. Seeing that I was greatly interested in his narrative he gave me a large history of the Bible. It was not such a book, I have often since thought, as the average boy would have cared to read. But the good priest could not have selected a work that would have given me more pleasure—certainly not one that would have benefited me more deeply or influenced more profoundly all my subsequent reading and study. It was, too, I must add, the first book I ever had in my hands outside of my elementary school readers. But how I prized that book! And how I read it again and again, and always with ever-increasing interest and delight! I do not know how often I read it carefully from cover to cover, but I do know that there is only one other volume that I have read more frequently, and that, after the Bible, is my favorite of all books—The Divina Commedia.

How often I have had reason to be grateful to the good old Dominican who unconsciously directed my studies in such wise as to afford me life-long pleasure and profit! As a consequence of the repeated reading of the book which he placed in my hands I became familiar with the history of the cradle of our race long before I had entered my teens, and I felt quite well acquainted with Nineveh and Babylon when Athens and Rome were yet to me but little more than mere names without significance. And, although as I grew older, I became interested in many other subjects, I never lost my early love of sacred history or of the history and geography of the Near East. For no matter how occupied I might be, I always contrived to find time to continue the studies which had such a fascination for me in my early boyhood.

To the student of Assyrian or Babylonian history, nothing is more impressive than the first view of one of those stupendous mounds which are so frequent along the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and in the vast plain between Bagdad and Abu Sharein. But the impression is greatly intensified when the place visited is associated with the happiest days of one’s youth and when one may again dream the dreams that once afforded such exquisite pleasure and such delightful visions of long-departed glory and magnificence. This was my experience when I first set foot on the soil that covers the superb structures which, in my early boyhood, I had so frequently pictured in fancy that it almost seemed that I had really wandered through their sculpture-adorned halls and had been an actual spectator of the gorgeous processions which they had so frequently witnessed when Nineveh was at the zenith of her power and greatness.

I had been deeply impressed when I first ascended the hill on which stood Homer’s Troy, but my emotion was not so great as when I found myself on the crumbling ruins of “Nineveh, that great city in which there were more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that knew not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left.”[353]

But this is easily explained. I was much younger when I became acquainted with the enchanting story of Nineveh than when I first conned the spell-weaving pages of the Iliad. My earlier impressions were more vivid and, because of the intimate relation of Assyria to the Holy Land, as exhibited in the Sacred Text, my interest was correspondingly greater.

As I contemplated the remains of the great city which had in tender years been so frequently the subject of my dreams and in mature age had been the subject of so much study and reflection, I found a thousand thoughts presenting themselves to my mind regarding the great capital which for so long a period played so important a rôle during the dawn of civilization.

The days of old return;—I breathe the air
Of the young world;—I see her giant sons
Like a gorgeous pageant in the sky
Of summer’s evening, cloud on fiery cloud
Thronging upheaved,—before me rise the walls
Of the Titanic city—brazen gates,—
Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen!
In all her golden pomp I see her now.

No region in the world has a more venerable historic past than that vast territory enclosed by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and no city in this region, with the possible exception of Babylon, was for centuries the center of greater power and influence than Nineveh. According to the book of Genesis,[354] it was built by Asur, who came from the land of Sennaar. How long ago this was is a matter of mere conjecture. Its first certain mention occurs in the code of Hammurabi, who ruled over Babylonia in the twenty-third century before our era, but it was doubtless in existence many centuries before the time of this great Babylonian lawgiver. It is, however, certain that from the time of its foundation, it gradually increased in size and importance until it became the celebrated capital of the Assyrian Empire—an empire which at one time embraced the whole of the civilized world. But when it was at the zenith of its greatness, when it was feared and hated from the Nile to the Persian Gulf and from the scorching deserts of Arabia to the Hittite lands to the north of the Taurus, it suddenly, in 707 B. C., collapsed under the combined attacks of the Medes and the Babylonians led by Cyaxares and Nabopolassar, who left it a smoking ruin, where, according to the victors, “the words of men, the tread of cattle and sheep and the sound of happy music” were heard no more.

How execrated was the name of Assyria throughout the length and the breadth of western Asia, and how the peoples whom she had so long plundered and enslaved rejoiced when they heard of the downfall of her capital is made clear by the prophet Nahum when he declares:

All who have heard of the fame of thee [thy destruction] have clapped their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually.[355]

But the Prophet Zephaniah, who was a contemporary of the stupendous event, gives an even more graphic account of the utter desolation which followed the overthrow of the far-famed metropolis:

And the Lord of hosts ... will stretch out His hands upon the north and will destroy Assyria and He will make the beautiful city [Nineveh] a wilderness and as a place not passable and as a desert.

And flocks shall lie down in the midst thereof, all the beasts of the nations; and the bittern and the urchin shall lodge in the threshold thereof; the voice of the singing bird in the window, the raven on the upper post, for I will consume her strength.

This is the glorious city that dwelt in security; that said in her heart: I am, and there is none beside me; how is she become a desert, a place for beasts to lie down in? Everyone that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand.[356]

How completely these dire words of the Hebrew prophet were verified is evidenced by the fact that when Xenophon and his Ten Thousand Greeks two centuries later passed by the mounds which covered the remains of Nineveh’s one-time magnificence, they were quite unaware of being in the immediate vicinity of the sumptuous palaces and temples of the erstwhile Queen City of the Tigris.[357]

Lucian, the Greek Voltaire, who was born at Samosata on the Euphrates in the second century after Christ, tells us in one of his satirical dialogues that all trace of Nineveh had disappeared. Representing Charon as on a leave of absence from the infernal regions, where he officiated as ferryman of the dead, and as starting with Hermes, the swift-footed messenger of the gods, who acts as his guide, on a short tour of this upper world, he gives us these two characteristic paragraphs:

Charon.—Show me the famous cities of which we hear so much down below: The Nineveh of Sardanapalus and Babylon and Mycenæ and Cleonæ and especially Troy. I remember to have ferried over the Styx so many times from this last place that I could not haul my boat upon the bank, or have it thoroughly dried for ten whole years.

Hermes.—Nineveh, O Ferryman, perished long ago and there is no trace of her remaining; nor would you be able to tell where she stood. Babylon is yonder city with the fair towers and the immense circuit of wall, but will soon have to be sought for like Nineveh.[358]

But, although Assyria’s capital was so thoroughly demolished, its name and fame still persisted. In the course of time a new Nineveh arose on the site of the ancient metropolis and, although quite unimportant as compared with its famous predecessor, it served at a later date to aid in the identification of the ancient site and to pave the way to some of the most extraordinary archæological discoveries of the last century.

The great Assyrian Empire came to an end after enduring more than a thousand years, and being, a great part of this period, one of the greatest powers of western Asia. Its downfall, after its long centuries of glory and preëminence, occurred while Rome was yet in its infancy and little more than a rendezvous of robbers and refugees from justice. From that date, 707 B. C., nearly twenty-five centuries passed over the grass and shrub-covered mounds on the site of ancient Nineveh before any serious effort was made to determine whether they concealed any remains of the long-buried metropolis of Mesopotamia.

Until the middle of the last century our knowledge of the history of Assyria and Babylonia was based entirely on the historical books of the Old Testament and on the accounts given by certain Greek and Latin writers. The books of Scripture which are of special importance in their relation to Assyrian and Babylonian history are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Nahum, and the Fourth Book of Kings.

Chief among the classical writers is Herodotus. He was not only, as Cicero calls him, the “Father of History,” but he was also the greatest traveler of his time. Not only did he traverse a great part of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, but there is a strong probability that he extended his peregrinations to the Euphrates and proceeded on its waters to Babylon. Making all due allowance for numerous inaccuracies which exist in his picturesque work and for not a few travelers’ tales,[359] the history of the brilliant Greek writer will always possess value not only for its matchless style but also for the facts which it contains and its descriptions, which are evidently from the pen of an eye witness. I refer especially to that part of his charming work which treats of Babylon and the culture of its inhabitants.

Of more importance was the great history of Babylonia written by Berosus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great and a priest of Bel in Babylon. Unfortunately we have only the fragments of this work which have been preserved by Eusebius, Josephus, and other ancient writers.

But the works mentioned, as well as those of Ctesias, Dinon of Colophon, and others, threw but little light on the civilization and achievements of Assyria and Babylonia during their long and eventful history. Detailed information respecting the development and decline of these two mighty empires was to come only from native annals of which not even the existence was suspected until the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Nor was there before the beginning of the last century any certitude regarding the sites of the great Assyrian and Babylonian cities which had made such a profound impression upon the peoples of the ancient world. Although history and tradition still spoke of the grandiose palaces and temples of Nineveh and of the towers and hanging gardens of Babylon, the general ignorance which almost from the time of the Arab conquest had prevailed regarding the actual sites of Babylon and Nineveh was not removed until the illustrious Danish scholar, Carsten Niebuhr, proved that the site of Babylon was in the vicinity of the modern village of Hillah, and the noted English investigator, Claudius James Rich, demonstrated in 1821 that the mounds on the left bank of the Tigris, just opposite Mosul, covered all that remained of the famed city of Nineveh.[360]

But even after the sites of Nineveh and Babylon had been identified, it was yet to be proved that amid the ruins of these famous cities there were records and monuments which would shed light on the civilization of which they were once such noted centers. The potsherds and fragments of cylinders which travelers had found in and about the mounds of Babylon and Nineveh led scholars to believe that discoveries of greater value awaited the explorer. This conclusion was confirmed by the finding in various places of bricks, tablets, and monuments covered with strange inscriptions which were written in characters which are now designated as cuneiform.

It was not, however, until 1842 when the French Government—to which the world of science has long been indebted for intelligent encouragement and generous assistance in every branch of research—sent Paul Emil Botta to Mosul that decisive results were obtained. He was ostensibly appointed to fill there the newly-created position of vice-consul, but, as French commerce did not require the service of such an official at that point, he was really designated to act as the head of an archæological mission to Nineveh and its environs. His appointment, as subsequent events proved, was a red-letter day in the annals of Assyrian research. For, not long after his arrival in Mosul, the world was thrilled by the news of his marvelous discoveries in the long-buried city of Nineveh and the report that he was “sending home the spoils of superb ancient edifices to increase the treasures of the Louvre.... A city buried for more than twenty centuries offered its remains for comparison with the aspects of modern London and Paris; and the sculptured monuments of a bygone race rose up to offer a contrast with the works of modern art.”[361]

Three years after Botta’s arrival in Mosul, Austen Henry Layard began his memorable excavations at Nimroud, a short distance to the south of Nineveh. So successful was he in his work here and subsequently at Kuyunjik—Citadel of Nineveh—that he was soon able to send a larger and a more valuable collection of antiquities to the British Museum than that with which Botta had enriched the Louvre. Great, indeed, was the excitement in France and England when the treasures of the long-buried palaces of Nineveh were placed on exhibition and when people had before their eyes tangible evidence of that famed Assyrian capital which for more than twenty centuries had left no other trace of its existence than a name which was a synonym of fabulous wealth and magnificence.

In a work published shortly after Botta and Layard had electrified the world by their startling discoveries, a well-known English scholar, speaking of the unearthing of Nineveh, wrote:

More than two thousand years had it thus lain in its unknown grave, when a French savant and a wandering English scholar, urged by a noble inspiration, sought the seat of the once powerful empire, and, searching till they found the dead city, threw off its shroud of sand and ruin and revealed once more to an astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, the idols; the representations of war and the triumphs of peaceful art of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture, the Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh—twin-sister of Babylon—glorying in a civilization of pomp and power, all traces of which were believed to be gone; the Nineveh, in which the captive tribes of Israel had labored and wept, was, after a sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to light. The proofs of ancient splendor were again beheld by living eyes, and, by the skill of the draftsman and the pen of antiquarian travelers, made known to the world.[362]

Notices like this which frequently appeared in books and periodical literature had the effect of exciting widespread enthusiasm for the advancement of Assyrian research. Societies were organized for promoting excavations on a larger scale than was feasible for the first explorers, who were greatly hampered by the lack of adequate funds, and for giving due publicity to the work of the archæologists in the field. The results were most gratifying, for it was not long before explorers were investigating the mounds of Babylonia as well as those of Assyria.

Meantime, under the direction of George Smith and Ormuzd Rassam, the mounds which covered the site of Nineveh were made to yield further treasures which were quite as extraordinary as any which had been brought to light by Botta and Layard. A discovery by Smith of a tablet relating, it was supposed, to the Noachian deluge, convinced many that Assyrian archæology was destined to render incalculable aid in the study of Sacred Scripture. Although its apologetic value subsequently proved to be greatly overestimated by some of the more enthusiastic students of Assyrian antiquities, it soon became manifest that the new science was destined to throw a flood of light not only on the Old Testament but also on the history of the greatest nations of the ancient world.

We experienced special pleasure in exploring the mounds which covered the remains of imperial Nineveh. There was not, truth to tell, much to see which was either of interest or value, for everything of importance, that could be transported, had been forwarded to the museums of Europe as soon as they had been disinterred.

On the mound of Nebi Yunus—Prophet Jonas—we visited the mosque which the Moslems declare contains the remains of the prophet who preached repentance to the sinful Ninevites.

This mosque [said our Dominican companion] was originally a Christian monastery that was built in the fourth century by a disciple of St. Anthony of Egypt. He named it in honor of the Prophet Jonas, but when the building, long afterwards, came into the possession of the Mussulmans, it was converted into a mosque. It, however, retained its original name—Prophet Jonas—which it bears to this day.

The inhabitants here exhibit a flat stone which they guard as a treasure beyond price. “It was upon this stone,” they aver, “that the great fish deposited Jonas when it returned him to terra firma.” Since that time the stone is reputed to have the power of curing rheumatism by simply being brought into contact with the afflicted part. So highly do the natives prize this remedial agent that nothing could induce them to part with it. When we told them of the curative powers attributed to the Hittite stone at Aleppo they gravely assured us that the stone of Nebi Yunus possessed incomparably greater efficacy and that it afforded certain relief to all cases of rheumatism however malignant.

Although we were always interested in listening to the folklore of the Mussulmans of the Near East, we preferred on this occasion to stroll over the mounds beneath which were buried the remains of one of antiquity’s most celebrated cities and to inspect the localities where Botta and Layard and Ormuzd Rassam had made those famous finds which contributed so greatly to our knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia. Most of the excavations whence they drew such priceless treasures had been refilled with earth, but this did not matter. We had in various museums seen the valuable monuments that had been taken from them and were, therefore, freer to indulge in day-dreams than we had been when we visited Homer’s Troy.

Aided by the drawings of Place and Fergusson we found it easy to reconstruct in fancy the superb palaces of Sargon and Eserhaddon and Tiglath-pileser, whose names and achievements had so impressed us in our youth. In imagination we contemplated the colossal statues of winged lions with human heads, which stood at the portals of the palace of Sennacherib, and fixed our gaze on the marvelous bas-relief and sculptures—reminders of the frieze of the Parthenon—which adorned the vast halls and exhibited the monarch’s exploits in the chase and in wars innumerable.[363] We could observe Sennacherib himself standing on an elevated outlook of his palace and watching “the marching forth of the hosts of Assur and the smoke of their holocausts spreading over all the lands,” or pensively pacing a lofty tiled terrace which overlooked the swift-flowing waters of the Tigris and the broad expanse of the western desert illumined by the crimson glow of the setting sun.

But a more fascinating scene engages our attention. It recalls one described in the book of Esther,[364] in which King Assuerus is represented as having his annalists and wise men read for him “the histories and chronicles of former times.” Before us is Asurbanipal—the Grand Monarch of Assyria—surrounded by his scribes and sages and intent on the examination of a recent addition to the royal library. For, after many years spent in military campaigns in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Susiana, and elsewhere, he resolved to devote the remainder of his life to the arts and avocations of peace. Numerous temples and palaces in many parts of Assyria and Babylonia bear witness to his activity as a builder and to the magnificence of the structures erected to his own glory and to that of his gods.

But it was in his gorgeous palace at Nineveh that he had the joy of his life—that which was to perpetuate his name to the end of time. This was his library—the largest and most valuable collection of documents that the world had yet seen. Composed of myriads of inscribed tablets, they were fortunately made of a material—baked and unbaked clay—which, for more than two millennia, successfully withstood all the ravages of war and the elements. They treated of mathematics, astronomy, history, poetry, grammar, lexicography, law, religion—in a word, of the entire circle of the sciences of the ancient world.

Asurbanipal—an Assyrian Mæcenas—was not only the patron of scholars, whom he encouraged to produce new books on every branch of science and literature, but was also, as a collector, the worthy forerunner and rival of the bibliophilous rulers of Pergamum and Alexandria. He had his scribes visit all the libraries of Babylonia—the earliest home of science and letters—and had them make copies of all works of value which did not exist in his own library. So indefatigable, indeed, was the King as a collector that it is probably true—as has been stated—that he had in his extensive library a copy of all the books that existed in the numerous libraries of Assyria and Babylonia.

The discovery of Asurbanipal’s library surpassed in importance any that had ever been made in either the valley of the Tigris or of the Euphrates. But every tablet in this immense collection was absolutely a sealed book, for there was not anyone living then who was able to decipher a single sentence of those mysterious documents which had thus so unexpectedly been brought to day. When Layard, in the course of his exploration of the vast palace of Asurbanipal, first beheld the priceless contents of the royal halls of records, his emotions must have been like those of Shelley’s Alastor in the temples of Egypt, for

Among the ruined temples there,
Stupendous columns and wild images
Of more than man, where marble demons watch
The zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

Have their mute thoughts on the mute walls around.

He lingered, pouring on memorials

Of the world’s youth; nor when the moon

Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades

Suspended he that task, but ever gazed

And gazed

on precious monuments before him which he knew full well contained

The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.[365]

The identification of the site of Nineveh and the unearthing of its long-concealed monuments marked the beginning of a new era in Oriental research. But nothing gave so great a stimulus to the study of all things Assyrian and Babylonian as the discovery of the precious library of Asurbanipal. For this wonderful collection of documents was destined to disclose much of the history, science, literature, and politics of the famous land bounded by the Tigris and the Euphrates, and to show—what would not otherwise have been possible—the relation of this land to the other great nations of the Near East.

But who was to decipher the cuneiform tablets which were thus so unexpectedly brought to the light of day? That was the question that was on the lips of everyone. Until this could be accomplished the countless books of the royal library would be of little more value than so many useless curiosities.

That the work of decipherment would eventually be achieved, scholars had no doubt. That the languages in which the mysterious inscriptions were written would one day be read with ease and certainty, all investigators were convinced. The achievements of Champollion in deciphering the hieroglyphics of Egypt and of De Sacy in reading Pehlevi gave an assurance that eventually the mysterious Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions would also be elucidated and that the long-forgotten documents of Asurbanipal’s library would then become the chief sources of our knowledge of the most ancient and most powerful empires of western Asia.

Nothing in the entire history of intellectual advancement is more interesting and romantic than the story of the gradual decipherment of those strange cuneiform inscriptions whose interpretation long baffled the powers of the greatest linguistic geniuses of Europe.

The discovery of the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions was practically the work of one man—the immortal Jean François Champollion. The decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions was the joint achievement of many men, laboring during many generations, in many and widely separated parts of Asia and Europe. It was effected by daring travelers and explorers, by philologists, philosophers, and historians, most of them laboring independently of one another, but all working, although nearly always unconsciously, toward the same goal.

And an even more singular fact was that the first clue towards the unraveling of the great enigma was found far away from both Assyria and Babylonia and in a place where an explorer bent on searching for it would certainly not look for it. This place was Persepolis, where are the remains of the splendid edifices constructed by Darius I, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes I, the celebrated Persian Kings of the Achæmenian dynasty.

So far as known the first European to visit these remarkable ruins was the noted Franciscan friar, Fra Oderico, on his way to Cathay in the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century Persepolis was visited by an Augustinian monk, Antonio de Gouvea, whom Philip III, King of Spain and Portugal, had sent as an ambassador to Shah Abbas the Great, King of Persia. Among the many things which attracted his attention in the old Persian city were the inscriptions which he saw on the monuments, which, “although they are in many parts very distinct, there is nevertheless no one who can read them, for they are not written in Persian, or Arabic or Armenian or Hebrew, which are the languages spoken in this land.”[366]

Some thirty years later Gouvea was followed, as ambassador to Shah Abbas from Philip III, by Don Garcia de Sylva y Figueroa, who wrote a letter on the monuments of Persepolis which attracted deep interest when published in Europe in 1620. In this communication he speaks of “one notable inscription cut in a Jasper-table, with characters still so fresh and faire that one would wonder how it could escape so many ages without touch of the least blemish. The Letters themselves are neither Chaldæan nor Hebrew, nor Greeke, nor Arabike, nor of any other Nation which was ever found of old, or at this day, to be extant. They are all three-cornered, but somewhat long, of the forms of a pyramide, or such a little Obliske as I have set in the margine: (△) so that in nothing do they differ one from one another, but in their placing and situation, yet so conformed that they are wondrous plaine, distinct and perspicuous.”[367]

But the first one to make known these peculiar characters to the scholars of Europe was the learned traveler, Pietro della Valle, of whom we have already spoken. And it was thus that this eminent Roman patrician had the honor of being the first of that long line of investigators whose labors have resulted in building up that comprehensive branch of science now known as Assyriology.[368]

From the time of Pietro della Valle the number of travelers who visited the ruins of Persepolis and wrote of the inscriptions which they saw on the ruins of this old Persian capital rapidly increased. But, although their published observations failed to arouse any special interest at the time, some of them deserve at least a passing notice for the quaint language in which the views of the authors found expression. Thus Thomas Herbert, referring to the inscriptions of Persepolis, writes:

Wee noted above a dozen lynes of strange characters, very faire and apparent to the eye, but so mysticall, so oddly framed, as no Hierogliphick, no other deep conceit can be more difficultly fancied, more adverse to the intellect.... And, though it have small concordance with the Hebrew, Greek, or Latine letter, yet questionlesse to the Inventer it was well knowne; and peradventure may conceale some excellent matter, though to this day wrapt up in the dim leafes of envious obscuritie.[369]

The Italian, Spanish, and English writers on Persepolis were followed by travelers and writers of other nationalities. Among these were Jean Chardin of France, Cornelis de Bruin of Holland, Engelrecht Kaempfer of Germany, and Carsten Niebuhr, a German, long in the service of Denmark. Each of these men made a contribution—small though it was—towards the decipherment of the Persepolitan inscriptions.

Chardin was the first to reproduce in his superbly illustrated work[370] an entire inscription from one of the monuments of Persepolis. This, to scholars, was incomparably more valuable than any of the fragments that had hitherto come to Europe. De Bruin, who visited Persepolis in 1704, and subsequently published a book with magnificent views of the ruins of the old Achæmenia capital, together with numerous inscriptions from its monuments, put more material in the hands of scholars than had any of his predecessors. Kaempfer advanced a step further when he published in 1712 a long inscription in Assyro-Babylonian.

But of the four travelers mentioned the one who performed the most important work was Niebuhr, an experienced traveler, an accurate observer and a man of broad scholarship. Besides making careful drawings and measurements of the monuments of Persepolis—monuments which in many respects were the most important in the East—he made copies of numerous cuneiform texts which had not appeared in any preceding work. His studies of the inscriptions also led him to conclude that there were three classes of them and that they were, as some of his predecessors had surmised, to be read from left to right. He had thus not only supplied scholars with new and valuable material but, by his comparative study, blazed the way which led to their final decipherment.

Among the first to attempt decipherment of these inscriptions were such distinguished philologists as Professor Tychsen, of the University of Rostock, and Friedrich Munter, of Copenhagen, and such eminent Orientalists as Eugène Burnouf, Anquetil-Duperron, and Silvestre de Sacy, who was the most eminent Arabist of his age. They did not succeed in solving the problem which had so long baffled the keenest minds of Europe, but they had accumulated the material that was necessary for its solution.

Several years before Botta and Layard sent their vast stores of tablets from Nineveh and Nimroud to the Louvre and the British Museum, it was evident from the few specimens of cuneiform inscriptions which had reached Europe from Mesopotamia that the script on the Babylonian tablets was the same as one of the varieties occurring in the trilingual inscriptions of Persepolis. It was then only a step to the conclusion that these two scripts were identical and represented identical languages. Thanks to the researches of De Sacy, Burnouf, Anquetil-Duperron, and others, it was now possible to make the old Persian script—the first class—of the trilingual inscriptions of Persepolis serve as a key to the third class, or what is now designated as the Assyro-Babylonian script. The process was exactly similar to that which enabled Champollion to use the Greek on the Rosetta stone as a key to the mysterious hieroglyphics of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

But, although the method to be adopted seemed simple enough, the labor involved was incomparably greater than that which was required of the illustrious French savant. For the Greek on the Rosetta stone was a well-known language, whereas Old Persian, which was to serve as the key for deciphering the Babylonian script, was itself quite as unknown as the writing to be deciphered. It was only after a knowledge of Old Persian had been acquired by comparing it with Avestan, Pahlavi, and Sanscrit, that it could serve as the long-sought key to Assyro-Babylonian.

The first one to read an Old Persian word was Georg Friederich Grotefend. This was in 1802, when he was only twenty-seven years of age and without any knowledge of oriental languages. Nevertheless, he was, wonderful to relate, able “to solve the riddle practically in a few days, that had puzzled much older men and scholars apparently much better qualified than himself. Under the magical touch of his hand the mystic and complicated characters of ancient Persia suddenly gained new life. But when he was far enough advanced to announce to the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen the epoch-making discovery which established his reputation for ever, that learned body, though comprising men of eminent mental training and intelligence, strange to say, declined to publish the Latin memoirs of this little-known college teacher, who did not belong to the University circle proper nor was even an Orientalist by profession. It was not until ninety years later—1893—that his original papers were rediscovered and published by Prof. Wilhelm Meyer, of Göttingen, in the Academy’s transactions—a truly unique case of post mortem examination in science.”[371]

Notwithstanding, however, the attitude of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, scholars like De Sacy, Heeren, and others were not slow to recognize the importance of Grotefend’s far-reaching discoveries. The number of investigators in the studies of Europe and in the ruin-dotted plains of Persia and Mesopotamia gradually increased. The careful researches of Niebuhr were followed in the first half of the nineteenth century by the painstaking observations of Rich, Ker Porter, and Colonel Chesney. But while those noted explorers were winning laurels in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, Sir Henry Rawlinson “forced the inaccessible rock of Behistun to surrender the great trilingual inscription of Darius, which, in the quietude of his study on the Tigris, became the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of Assyriology and in his master hand the key to the understanding of the Assyrian documents.”[372]

While Rawlinson was conducting his celebrated investigations relating to the trilingual inscription of Behistun, and Layard and Rassam were unearthing the priceless documents of Asurbanipal’s library, Edward Hincks in Ireland, Edwin Norris in England, Eugène Burnouf and M. de Saulcy in France, Westergaard, a Dane, and Lassen, a Norwegian, both living in Germany, were astonishing the learned world by their wonderful contributions towards the decipherment of the inscriptions of Persepolis and Behistun and of tablets and seals and cylinders taken from the temples and palaces of Assyria and Babylonia.

Thanks to the investigators named and to a rapidly increasing number of others, the decipherment of Assyrian inscription was gradually assuming the dignity of an exact science. But there were still scholars of acknowledged eminence who questioned the validity of the system employed and who openly expressed grave doubts about the translations of the cuneiform inscriptions which had been published by divers scholars of Great Britain and the Continent.

Finally, in 1857, it was suggested to make a test which should silence all objectors and demonstrate that the method of the decipherers reposed on a scientific basis. An Assyrian text was translated independently by Hincks, Talbot, Oppert, and Rawlinson, and sent sealed to the Royal Asiatic Society. When these versions were compared by a committee of distinguished scholars they were found to show such a remarkable correspondence that there could no longer be any reasonable doubt as to the system of decipherment or the substantial accuracy of the four translations which had been offered to the distinguished committee of the Royal Asiatic Society.

But, notwithstanding this remarkable confirmation of the correctness of the method of decipherment employed by Assyriologists, there still remained a certain number of skeptics even among the most noted scholars of the age—men like Gutschmid in Germany and Renan and Gobineau in France—who refused to admit the conclusiveness of the demonstration which had silenced most other objectors. Even after the French Institute on July 15, 1863, had awarded to Oppert the coveted quinquennial prize of twenty thousand francs for “that work or discovery which is best calculated to honor or serve the country,” skepticism still persisted among certain Orientalists.[373] Indeed, it was not until the appearance in 1872 of the masterly Die Assyrisch—Babylonischen-Keilinschriften of Eberhard Schrader that general confidence in the prevailing system of cuneiform decipherment was firmly established and that all opposition to its methods was finally abandoned.

Seventy years had elapsed from the reading by Grotefend of his epochal paper before the Göttingen Academy to the publication of Schrader’s great work on the cuneiform writing and language. From the time of Schrader, who has been called the father of early Assyriology, to the splendid achievements of his illustrious countryman, Friedrich Delitzsch, who is known as the father of contemporary Assyriology, progress in the new science has been as rapid as the activity of its countless votaries has been enthusiastic. This is evidenced by the large number of cuneiform monuments which are now found in the museums of Europe and America and by the ever-increasing number of scholars who are devoting all their time to the study of Assyrian science, religion, and literature.

It is estimated that there are now, in the divers museums of the world, more than a half million inscribed tablets. Besides the immense number of tablets found in the great library of Asurbanipal, Rassam discovered in Abu-Habba, formerly Hillah, no fewer than seventy thousand. In 1894 M. Ernest de Sarzec took from a single chamber in the ruined city of Telloh, in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, fully thirty thousand tablets, while a few years later Haynes and Hilprecht to the north of Telloh, in the ruins of Nippur, discovered more than forty thousand tablets, which have proved to be of inestimable value to the student of the history, religion, and social conditions of the inhabitants of ancient Sumer and Akkad. Still other stores of tablets were unearthed by Banks at Bismya and De Morgan at Susa. Among the precious monuments brought to light by the distinguished French explorer of Susa was the important code of Hammurabi—the oldest compilation of laws in the world—the code by which Babylonia was governed at a period which antedated the Christian era by fully two thousand years.

But the inscribed clay tablets—some baked, others unbaked—are not the only monuments of value as sources of history which have been uncovered by the pick and spade of the excavator in the tells of Assyria and Babylonia. There are also seals, statues, cylinders, and bas-reliefs innumerable which bear cuneiform inscriptions of the utmost value to the historian and the man of science. There are even numberless uninscribed monuments which are also of immense historical importance. Such are the sculptured alabaster slabs which once adorned the palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh. These marvelous bas-reliefs exhibit scenes of domestic life, the peculiar garbs of men and women, of masters and slaves, of natives and foreigners with almost photographic exactness. They likewise show spirited representations of battles and sieges, which portray in the most lifelike manner the types of the combatants, their divers instruments of warfare, the punishments inflicted by the victor on helpless captives, and long processions of the vanquished bringing tribute to the triumphant monarch of Assyria.

Without the knowledge of a single cuneiform character [declares Professor Hilprecht] we learned the principal events of Sennacherib’s government, and, from a mere study of those sculptured walls, we got familiar with customs and habits of the ancient Assyrians, at the same time obtaining a first clear glance of the whole civilization of Western Asia.[374]

The foregoing pages show the extraordinary progress that has been made in Assyriology since Botta and Layard began their famous excavations in the ruins of Nineveh in the middle of the last century. But, although much, very much, has been achieved, far more remains to be accomplished. For there are, we are assured, hundreds of ruin-mounds and earth-covered cities in Western Asia awaiting the spade and the pick of the excavator to disclose treasures that will equal, if not surpass in value any that have yet rewarded the labors of the explorer. Even such important ruins as those of Babylon and Nineveh, where such splendid results have been obtained, have so far yielded, there is reason to believe, but a part, possibly but a small part, of their precious stores. For it has been computed that to excavate Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus—the two principal mounds of Nineveh—would require the labor of a thousand men working continually for a hundred and seventy-four years. “The recent excavations and tunnelings at Kuyunjik”—the Citadel of Nineveh—“fruitful as they have been in results, have made little impression on the vast mass of ruin, and only prove how much might be gained by complete clearance.”[375]

But as the work of excavation is still almost in its infancy, so is also that of decipherment and coördination of the myriads of inscriptions now in the museums of the world. For, notwithstanding the wonderful achievements of Assyriologists during the last three-quarters of a century, many generations must yet elapse before the vast amount of material which has been already collected and to which additions are being constantly made, can be properly interpreted and made available for students who are not professional Orientalists. As yet there is in Assyrian neither a complete grammar nor a complete dictionary, and, on account of the immense number of ideograms yet undeciphered and the astonishing number of polyphonous signs in the Assyrian language—signs which have each several distinct syllabic values—it is certain that many decades will elapse before the countless difficulties can be overcome.

Considering, however, the complexity of the problem which confronted Orientalists at the beginnings of their researches, it is, indeed, a wonder that their achievements during the last two generations have been so fruitful and of so far-reaching importance. For in a few decades they have changed completely our conception of the ancient peoples of Assyria and Babylonia and shown that their civilization “stands before us in all its ramifications as one of the great forces in the ancient history of mankind, the direct or indirect influence of which is to be seen in many a phase of our modern culture.”[376] They have proved that the Assyrian language was not only the speech of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia but that it was also long used as the language of diplomacy by the Hittites and the Egyptians and by the peoples of Syria and Palestine. More than this, it was a kind of lingua franca from the Euxine to the valley of the Nile and from Cyprus to the plateau of Susiana. This fact is most strikingly proved by the priceless collections of cuneiform inscriptions which, only a few years ago, were found in Tel-el-Armana, Egypt, and in Boghaz-Keui, Asia Minor. These finds are indications that there are other, probably many other, similar discoveries to reward the patient and well-directed excavations of the explorer in the ruin-spread lands of the Near East.

How often, while wandering among the ruins of Kuyunjik, Nebi Yunus, and Khorsabad, have I not had brought home to me the far-reaching changes in our knowledge of the Near East, which have been effected by the startling discoveries that were made three-quarters of a century ago in the palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib and Asurbanipal! But nothing impressed me more than the first question which Scriptural students always make regarding these discoveries, “How do they bear on the Bible”? It is the same question which has so often been asked about the revelations of geology in their bearings on the Sacred Text. Something is discovered which at the first blush is regarded as militating against the accuracy of the Sacred Scriptures. After further investigation, this same discovery is viewed as being strongly confirmatory of the Bible, while still more careful examination shows that the teachings of the new science not only do not but, by their very nature, cannot question, much less impeach the veracity of the Book of Books.

It is true that one’s view of the Bible may be enlarged with one’s advancing years; that one’s understanding of it may be improved by more profound study, and by the progress of research; but science, whether it appear in the guise of geology, or Assyriology, or of what has falsely been called the science of evolution, can never invalidate a single one of the fundamental teachings either of Scripture or of the Church of Christ.

This thought was borne in upon me with unwonted force as I stood one day above the ruins of Asurbanipal’s library. Gazing at a cluster of keleks—skin rafts—bearing their light traffic down the historic Tigris, as they did when Assyria ruled the East, and recalling the pictures I had formed of “Nineveh the great city” when as a boy I read my first history of the Bible—a book that was to exert so paramount an influence on the studies and thoughts of my after life—I asked myself, “In what respect does my faith to-day differ from that which I held three score years ago”? I had then, as Pasteur once said of himself when at the zenith of his fame and mental vigor, the faith of a Breton peasant.[377] Since that far-off time when I delighted to picture the glories of Nineveh and Babylon and dwell on the famous campaigns and victories, the superb palaces and entertainments of Sennacherib and Assuerus and Nebuchadnezzar, I have striven to keep abreast with the intellectual movement of my time and, in so doing, I have never found anything in any of the new sciences that could by any legitimate interpretation be construed as being at variance with the teachings of the religion of my boyhood. We now know incomparably more about the history, the social and economic condition of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians than we did before the explorer brought to light the literary treasures of Nippur, Telloh, Abu-Habba, and Nineveh; but we have discovered nothing which is competent to discredit any of the eternal verities on which our faith is founded. The higher criticism may, indeed, cause us to modify some of our views regarding literary or textual problems, but as to the basal truths of Scripture, they stand absolutely in all their divine immutability untouched and absolutely unassailable. It was, indeed, with a feeling of joy and gratitude that I could, sixty years after my first acquaintance with Nineveh, feel, while contemplating the ruins of the famous city, that there was still in my soul nothing changed of that faith of a Breton peasant—a faith which, as it was my most precious inheritance in early youth, has ever continued to be my greatest consolation from then to beyond the Scriptural age of three score years and ten.

That the discoveries at Nineveh or elsewhere should ever prove to be in conflict with revealed truth, has to me never seemed possible. How could they be? Science and religion belong to entirely different spheres of thought. They are as far separated from each other as are the theories of electricity, of the constitution of matter, of the origin of species, and of universal gravitation from the doctrines of creation, redemption, Providence, sanctification. For this reason I can now repeat as unreservedly as I did a quarter of a century ago that “I am as firmly convinced as I can be of anything, that God is the Lord of science, that science is the handmaid of religion, that the two, speaking of the same Author, must voice the same testimony, and that this testimony must be not only unequivocally true but also unequivocally one.”[378]

When, therefore, the eminent Assyriologist, Friedrich Delitzsch, tells us that “the conviction is becoming more general that it is the results of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria in particular, that are destined to inaugurate a new epoch as regards both the way in which we must understand the Old Testament and the estimate we must form of it,”[379] we must tell him that our viewpoint will be unchanged in all essential matters and that, whatever may be the future discoveries of Assyriologists, all of them will eventually be harmonized with the Bible and with the fundamental doctrines of the Church just as science and religion have always been reconciled with each other from the days of Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo to those of Bossuet of Meaux and Wiseman of Westminster.

CHAPTER XV
FLOATING DOWN THE TIGRIS ON A KELEK

When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free
In the silken sail of infancy,
The tide of time flow’d back with me,
The forward-flowing tide of time;
And many a sheeny summer-morn,
Adown the Tigris I was borne,
By Bagdad’s shrines of fretted gold,
High-walled gardens green and old.

Tennyson.—“Recollections of the Arabian Nights.”

The first thing we did on arriving at Mosul—even before we visited any of the places of interest in the city—was to make arrangements for our transportation to Bagdad. Had it not been for the late World War, the Bagdad Railway would have been completed to the famed city of Harun-al-Rashid and we could then have made the journey from Mosul to Bagdad in a luxuriously upholstered car or in the latest type of wagon-lit accompanied by a well-supplied and well-manned wagon-restaurant. In the absence of these we might, had we sought for one, have found an aviator who would have taken us to our destination in an aeroplane, for both aviators and aeroplanes were numerous in this vicinity during the war and there was reason to believe that there were still here both flying machines and pilots.

But we were not looking either for luxury or rapidity of transportation. Even if they had been at our disposal we should not have availed ourselves of these twentieth-century comforts and time-saving devices by which our western world sets such store. We had no desire to fly at express-train speed through the historic valley of the Tigris even if we had had at our disposition all the luxuries and conveniences of a railway president’s private car. We wished to study the country and the people and we desired to do so at our leisure.

The usual way to make the journey from Mosul to Bagdad is by land. Some make it on horseback, but the majority elect to perform it on the back of an Arabian or a Bactrian camel. A few, however, prefer to entrust themselves to the capricious waters of the tortuous Tigris. This route requires more time and offers, besides, a little spice of adventure. Both of these facts appealed to us and we decided—without hesitation—that our journey to the city of the Thousand and One Nights should be by the longest and the slowest and, as we were assured, the most venturesome way.

We chose also to go by the Tigris because I had always been specially fond of river travel. It has been my good fortune to navigate from source to mouth or from mouth to source many of the longest rivers of the world, and I was grateful for the opportunity to spend a week or more on one of the largest rivers of western Asia and one of the most famous in history. Another reason for choosing this route was the peculiar age-old craft that was to carry us to the famed capital of the Caliphs.

It was not a boat nor anything that even remotely resembled one. It was a peculiar kind of a raft which has been in use on the Tigris since the time of the early Assyrian kings, and which, notwithstanding all our modern improvements, still holds its own here not only for conveying the traveler to his destination but also for carrying freight as well.

The raft in question is called a kelek. It is composed of a large number of inflated goat or sheep skins which are kept united by reeds. Over these is laid a framework made of saplings or scantlinglike timbers which are held together by twigs or lianas. No nails or screws whatever are used. If the skins be continually kept moist and properly inflated, the framework of the kelek will always remain above water, even when bearing a considerable load.

Thanks to our good Dominican hosts, the work of constructing our kelek was specially expedited after the workmen knew exactly the size and kind of craft we desired. And to our great joy it was ready for us as soon as we were prepared to start on our journey down the river. It was fifteen by twenty feet in dimensions and counted a hundred and seventy-five inflated skins. In the middle of the kelek we had a good-sized tent in which we had two light cots, three light folding chairs, a folding writing table, ten pockets, and other things which occupy little space but which we found by previous experience contributed immensely to the convenience and comfort of the traveler whether on land or water. Most of our luggage, as well as our provisions, was left outside of the tent in care of our good and faithful Simoun, a middle-aged Chaldean who had been specially recommended to us by our Dominican friends and who was guaranteed to give us devoted and intelligent service. He took charge of everything on the kelek and looked after the kelekgis—rowers—cook, and the commissary department as well as our comfort and pleasure. Certain Greeks and Armenians had applied for the position which we gave to Simoun, but our experience with their countrymen had been such that we had resolved to entrust ourselves thenceforth to the much abused and little-understood Chaldean. For honesty, reliability, devotedness, a Christian Chaldean, like an Osmanli Turk from the interior of Anatolia, is, in any fiduciary capacity, absolutely unsurpassed.

When we actually found ourselves on our kelek, ready to depart for Bagdad, we felt as happy as schoolboys starting on a vacation. It meant at least a week of absolute rest—a rest which, after the strenuous lives we had been leading since we left Constantinople, was most welcome.

Besides the good fathers of St. Dominic, whose kindness during our sojourn in Mosul we can never forget, a number of the people of the city whom we had learned to know were at the point of embarkation to bid us Godspeed. We were specially touched by the presence of some school children with whom, from having frequently met them, we were on the friendliest terms. “Children,” said I to my companion, “are the same the world over. Treat them kindly and they will do anything for you.” I was then specially thinking of the little Indian children whom I had often met in the wilds of South America, and who, although they had never come into contact with a white man before, became, after a little act of kindness, my devoted friends and wished to be always near me. The Turkish children of Anatolia, the little Arabs of Syria, and the Chaldeans of Mesopotamia are, when kindly treated, just as loving and as lovable as the youthful redskins of the broad wildernesses of Brazil and Peru.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when we finally got under way. The last words I heard from my friends on the shore were those of a charming Osmanli youth who in a clarion voice bade us an affectionate good-bye in the touching Turkish words Allaha-ismarladiq—we have commended you to God. Again how like the fond adios of the good children of the South American hinterland whose parting words Vaya Usted con Dios!—may you go with God—so often cheered our souls during our long journeys over the snow-clad summits of the Andes or through the trackless forests of the Amazon and the Orinoco.

We started on our journey down the Tigris under a cloudless sky. During the early morning it had been quite chilly, but, as the sun rose in the heavens, the atmosphere became as balmy as that of a morning in May. All augured a pleasant voyage; and no sooner had the minarets of Mosul and Nebi Yunus vanished from our sight than we proceeded to give the interior of our tent as homelike an appearance as circumstances would permit. Simoun had decked the opening of the tent with some flowers that our kind friends had brought us. On our writing table we placed some of our favorite books. Among these was a small copy in India paper of the Bible which was in constant use during our journey in the Orient. Another was a small pocket edition of the Divina Commedia which, for years, had been my companion to the most distant parts of the world. There were also small editions of the Soliloquia of St. Augustine and of the select works of St. Teresa. I took these last two books with me because they, like Dante’s immortal poem, had been old and cherished friends in other lands and because they seemed peculiarly appropriate for such a journey as the one we were then undertaking. To these were added copies of Xenophon’s Anabasis, Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, and The Oxford Book of English Verse. The other books I had brought with me I left in my trunk, as I expected to spend most of my time on our way down the river in contemplation of the many objects of interest with which both banks were everywhere studded.

A great part of the land in the vicinity of Mosul is under cultivation. Wheat and barley are grown in abundance. Hemp is also cultivated but more attention is given to cotton, especially along the banks and on the islands which diversify the river. Melons seem to be as popular along the Tigris as they are among our dusky population south of Mason and Dixon’s line.

Much of the land in this region is very fertile and, if irrigated as it was three thousand years ago, would yield harvests as extraordinary as ever in the past. But the countless vicissitudes, consequent on wars innumerable and on inefficient government, through which this ill-fated region has passed since the fall of Nineveh, have not been conducive to the development of agriculture nor to the economic growth of what was once the wealthiest country of Western Asia.

I have been on many rivers but I have never found so much genuine intellectual pleasure on any of them as on the Tigris. It has not, indeed, the natural beauties of the Hudson or the Columbia, of the Rhine or the Danube; but it has something that appealed to me far more than the attractions for which these famous waterways of America and Europe are so justly celebrated. Charged with the myths and the legends, the traditions and the historical associations of six millennia, it offers to the thoughtful student subjects for consideration that cannot be found elsewhere.

In contemplating the old classic streams of Greece and Italy, the Illisus, the Peneus, the Tibur, the Po—I always experience a kind of admiration bordering on respect. I am impressed not by the volume of water which they carry to the sea but by their picturesqueness, by the atmosphere of romance that hangs over them and by the venerable history in which they all rejoice. But when I gazed on the Tigris and its ruin-fringed banks, a surge of emotion pervaded my entire being and I was thrilled as by few other objects on earth. Under the name Hiddikel it appears as one of the rivers of Eden. To the prophet Daniel, who crossed it in his journeys to and from Susa, it was “The Great River,”[380] and on its banks he had some of his most remarkable visions. It carried on its waters the greatest fleet ever built by an Assyrian potentate. This was when in 694 B. C., Sennacherib inaugurated his campaign of devastation in Babylonia and when, with the aid of seafaring men from Cyprus and Phœnicia, he floated his boats to the lower Tigris and thence transported them to the Euphrates. It was during this ruthless war that he applied the torch to the great city of Babylon and left it with its magnificent temples and palaces and its splendid works of art—the result of long centuries of labor—a vast, smoldering ruin. It was along the Tigris that Xenophon and his heroic Ten Thousand returned homewards after the eventful battle of Cunaxa. This famous retreat revealed to the Greeks the weakness of the vast Persian Empire and led to its overthrow by Alexander the Great and to “the accomplishment of the promises of God, as made in the prophecies of Daniel, and prepared the way for the third of the great empires which were to precede the coming of the Savior of mankind.”[381]

As the evening sun was disappearing behind a gorgeous gold and crimson mountain range of cumulus clouds, we heard, a short distance ahead of us, the roaring of the Zikr ul Aawaze, a noted cataract about twenty miles below Mosul and we then knew that we were near the celebrated ruins of Nimroud. These ruins formerly stood on the left bank of the Tigris, but, owing to a shifting of the river’s channel towards the west, are now about two miles inland.

As we desired to visit the great tell of Nimroud the following day, we here tied up our kelek for the night. Early the next morning we were on our way to the ruins which, in the annals of Assyrian archæology, are almost as famous as those of Kuyunjik and Khorsabad. Here Layard unearthed some of the most prized treasures in the Assyrian department of the British Museum and here, there are reasons to believe, are still buried countless other treasures equally valuable.

The ruins of Nimroud occupy the site of Calah mentioned in Genesis as having been built by Assur, the founder of Nineveh. But the people living near by are convinced that it was built by Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord,” and that it was his favorite place of residence. Assyriologists, however, declare that it was built by Salmanassar I who made it the capital of Assyria, a dignity which it retained until the time of Sargon who removed his residence to the north of Nineveh where lie the ruins of Khorsabad.

The general aspect of the ruins of Nimroud is not unlike that of Nineveh. The ruins constitute a platform in the form of a parallelogram about five hundred feet in width and a thousand in length. At the northwest corner of this elevation is a conical tower whose height, according to recent measurements, is one hundred and ten feet above the surrounding plain. This is all that now remains of the imposing zikurat, or stage tower, that once dominated the great capital of Salmanassar.

In order to get a good view of the ruins, as well as of the surrounding country, we lost no time in reaching the summit of the tower. From its crest we had a view as interesting as it was replete with historic reminiscences. Our vision ranged over a region in which were enacted some of the most memorable events of Mesopotamia and Persia. Down the Tigris passed the famous fleets of Trajan and Sennacherib, and along its bank marched the vast armies of Esarhaddon, Cyaxares, and Nabopolassar. Within gunshot were the emerald waters of the Great Zab rushing to join the tawny current of the Tigris. On its banks the Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, in violation of a solemn compact, treacherously seized Clearchus and several of his generals and sent them to Artaxerxes, who ordered them to be beheaded. It was here that Xenophon assumed command of the memorable expedition of the Ten Thousand—an expedition that the distinguished English geographer, Rennell, has declared was “the most splendid of all the military events that have been recorded in ancient history.” Eastward was the famous battlefield of Arbela, where “the greatest battle in the record of the ancient world had been fought; where the issue of centuries had struck their balance in a day; where the channel of history for a thousand years had been opened with a flying wedge”;[382] where Alexander the Great had completed the work which was begun by his countrymen under Xenophon when they made the discovery of the innate weakness of the Persian colossus and thus prepared the public opinion of Greece for the great campaign against the ancient Persian Empire which once menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection but which “was irrevocably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory of Arbela.”[383]

After exploring the ruins of Nimroud, we returned to our kelek which, with much creaking and quivering, was soon wrestling with the boiling waters of the Zikr ul Aawaze. This is a dam or dyke built across the river and during low water rises a foot or more above the surface. It produces quite a cataract but our kelekgi conducted our frail craft over its seething waters without any difficulty. Like other remarkable works in this neighborhood this dam—some say it was a bridge—is attributed by the inhabitants to Nimrod. The noted French traveler, Tavernier, tells us that when he passed down the Tigris, the Zikr ul Aawaze formed a waterfall twenty-six feet high. He assures us, however, that his kelek went over this waterfall without mishap.[384] One may be permitted to suspect that in this statement he was striving, in recounting travelers’ tales, to emulate his mythical predecessor, Sir John Mandeville.

About fifty miles to the south of Nimroud, on the right bank of the Tigris, is the great mound of Kalah Sherghat over which, until a few years ago, hung as deep a mystery as that which so long enveloped the imposing tells of Nimroud and Khorsabad. To the Turks, in their ignorance, it was but a fort made of clay—Toprak Kale. Even so late as 1900 a distinguished German traveler was unaware that the wonderful tell of Kalah Sherghat, which so excited his admiration, covered the remains of one of the most noted cities of Assyria.[385]

It was indeed only after Dr. Robert Koldewey and Dr. Walter Andræ, the eminent explorers of the German Orient Society, had, in 1903, begun their exhaustive excavations at Kalah Sherghat that it was demonstrated that its imposing ruins were none other than those of Assur, the first capital of ancient Assyria. It was here that Asur, the national god of Assyria, had his favorite sanctuary—a god that was not only supreme over all the gods of the Babylonian pantheon but was also their lord and master, “the King above all gods.”[386] King Sennacherib addresses him as

King of the totality of the gods, his own creation, father of the gods.

Whose power is unfolded in the deep, king of heaven and earth, lord of all gods.[387]

As the national deity of the greatest military power of the ancient world, Asur was preëminently a martial god. For, as is evinced by cuneiform inscriptions, it is “by the might of Asur” that the nation’s enemies are vanquished, that towns and cities are razed, that other lands are brought under the dominion of the invincible Kings of Assyria.

Although I had read with exceeding interest, shortly after their publication, Andræ’s superbly illustrated reports of his careful and methodical excavations at Kalah Sherghat, I was not fully prepared for the wonderful ruins which greeted my vision when I first surveyed them from one of the imposing zigurats of the great temple of Anu and Adad, which was rebuilt by Salmanassar III, nearly nine centuries before our era.[388] As reconstructed by Andræ this temple was, in its day, one of the architectural wonders of western Asia. But the city of Assur was more than a thousand years old when Salmanassar placed in the great temple enclosure a record of his work on it and an account of its completion. For fully twenty centuries, B. C., Assyria, from Assur as a center, had begun to extend her dominions northwards and to lay the foundations of that mighty empire which was for so many generations the admiration and the dread of the ancient world.

Besides uncovering the temples and palaces of Assur, Dr. Andræ and his colleagues unearthed a part of its residential quarter. In so doing they made discoveries of the greatest interest regarding the domestic life of its inhabitants and their care for the sanitary condition of their homes. Every house, however small, had suitable sewer connections, while all the larger homes had rooms for domestics and dependents.

But to many students of Assyriology the most notable discovery made here by the German expedition took place not in the temples and palaces of the venerable city but in the space between its interior and exterior walls. This consisted in unearthing a large number of tombs and nearly a hundred and fifty stelae, some of which were made of sandstone and limestone, while others were fashioned out of basalt and alabaster. From the inscriptions on these stelae it was evident that no fewer than thirty-five of them were erected to the memory of rulers of Assyria.

Among the royal tombs were those of Ashbelkala, Ashurnasirpal III, and Shamsi-Adad V. The massive sarcophagus of the first-named king was found to be in almost perfect condition.

Commenting on this remarkable find Dr. Rogers writes:

This discovery of these royal tombs appeals most strongly to the imagination. Before this, Assyriology had seemed so poor in comparison with Egyptology which has from the beginning been able to point to its long series of royal tombs, nay, even to the mummied remains of the greatest of Egyptian Kings. There is no probability that Assyrian discoveries will ever be able to match these, but the reproach that neither Assyria nor Babylonia had even one royal tomb has been taken away.[389]

More interesting far than any of the royal tombs referred to is one of the stelæ that were uncovered in the same place. According to the inscription on it the discovery of this monument was really startling in its import and marked a most notable event in the romance of archæology. The legend which this stone pillar bears tells us that it is:

The stela of Sammuramat

The woman of the palace (that is, the consort of Shamsi-Adad,)

The King of the world, King of Assyria,

The mother of Adadnirari

The King of the world, King of Assyria,

The daughter-in-law of Salmanassar

The king of the four quarters of the earth.[390]

But who was Sammuramat? Surprising as it may seem, she was, as scholars now concede, none other than Semiramis, the famous legendary queen of Assyria.

What a marvelous discovery! What a vindication of long suppressed truth! What an unexpected substitution of reality for fiction, of fact for fancy, of authentic history for myth and legend!

To no other woman of antiquity have there been attributed so many brilliant achievements as to Semiramis. Nor has any one of her sex during the last two thousand years and more, occupied a more conspicuous position in myth and legend, song and story.

From the time of Ctesias, the physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon, until the latter part of the last century, there was no question about the main facts of her marvelous career. During all this time she was regarded as one of the most notable rulers of antiquity—as a queen of consummate military ability and exceptional statesmanship; as a ruler of vaulting ambition and as a conqueror whose dominions embraced the most flourishing regions of Asia and Africa. So great indeed was her reputed activity and genius that Strabo tells us tradition attributed to her all the most stupendous works along the Tigris and the Euphrates and even those in distant Iran.[391] Alexander the Great, it is said, found an inscription of hers on the frontier of Scythia, which was then considered the boundary of the inhabited world. In this inscription the famous queen declares:

Nature has given me the body of a woman but my achievements have made me the equal of the most valiant of men. I have ruled the empire of Ninus which on the east extends to the river Hinamanes, on the south to the country of incense and myrrh, and on the north as far as the Sacæ and the land of Sogdiana. Before me no Assyrian had seen any of the seas; I have seen four of them which were so distant that no one had ever reached them. I have forced rivers to flow where I wished them to, and I have wished them to flow only where they would be useful. I have rendered the sterile earth fecund by irrigating them with these rivers. I have erected impregnable fortresses. With iron I have made roads through impassable rocks. I have constructed for my chariots highways through places which the wild beasts themselves had never traversed. And in the midst of these occupations I have found time for my amusements and my pleasures.[392]

Zenobia and Cleopatra were distinguished for their beauty, their genius, and the brilliancy of their achievements, but, according to the testimony of Ctesias, Diodorus Siculus, and other ancient historians, they were completely eclipsed by the wonder-working queen of Assyria. So great, tradition had it, were her abilities as a sovereign that two thousand years after her time the most eminent female rulers of their age were named after this extraordinary woman who had so impressed her personality on the West as well as on the East. Thus it is that Catherine II of Russia, who was almost the rival of Peter the Great, is known as the Semiramis of the North, while the same epithet is given to that remarkable sovereign, Queen Margaret de Valdemar of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

But when, in the second half of the last century, Orientalists began to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia, the majority of them soon showed a marked skepticism regarding the historical character of the renowned Assyrian queen. It was contended that there was no mention of her name in the Babylonian records during the period in which she was supposed to have lived and that the silence of these records respecting a ruler who, according to ancient writers, played so important a rôle in antiquity was conclusive proof that she never existed. It was furthermore asseverated that the work of Ctesias, which for so many centuries had been accepted as sober history, was no more than a romantic narrative which the progress of Assyrian research had completely discredited. And Semiramis, it was further averred, was not a woman of flesh and blood at all but an entirely mythical character,—merely a creation of Ctesias and having no existence outside of his elaborate romance which for more than two thousand years passed as serious history.

But scholars, while denying that Semiramis was the human personage she was so long believed to be, were unwilling to concede that she was nothing more than a mere arbitrary creation of the fertile imagination of a Greek romancer posing as a historian. The assumption that she was nothing more than a creature of fancy would, in view of her conspicuous position in the ancient world, be more difficult of acceptance than the age-old belief that she was really, as so long considered, the great queen and conqueror of Western Asia.

If, then, she was neither a human being nor a mere figment of the imagination, what was she? Scholars, and especially Orientalists, felt the necessity of finding a plausible, if not a satisfactory, answer to this question which became daily more and more insistent. To obtain such an answer they ransacked, as never before, oriental history, mythology, and archæology and with results which, at least to themselves, seemed beyond question.

Semiramis [declares an eminent Orientalist] is not a human personage, but a divinity whom legend, as so often happens in similar cases, transports into the domain of human affairs. Diodorus says formally that she was adored as a goddess and declares that her cult had two principal seats, Assyria and the city of Ascalon in Philistia.... That she was, of a truth, a goddess is evinced by her being the daughter of Derceto as well as by the traditions respecting her birth and by her final metamorphosis, which have all a distinctly mythological color.[393]

Another distinguished Orientalist is positive that “Semiramis was the name not of a human queen but of the goddess Istar whose legend was nationalized by the Persian historians and their Greek followers.”[394] “The name of Semiramis,” he will have it, “belongs not to Babylonian history but to Greek Romance.”[395] He accentuates this statement when he asserts that Ctesias, the creator of Semiramis, who is only the Greek Aphrodite, based his history in great measure on Persian annals which “like those of Firdusi or of later Arabian writers consisted for the most part of mere legendary tales and rationalized myths,” in which we have to seek “not the history but the mythology of the Babylonians.”[396]

Another noted scholar writes a learned paper to prove that “Semiramis is not an historical queen whose legend was enriched in later times with elements borrowed from a religious myth,” but that “she is primarily a goddess, and becomes a quasi-historical queen only by virtues of that euhemerism which in the East is so much older than Euhemerus.”[397]

For several decades these and other distinguished scholars endeavored to account for the origin and exploits of Semiramis in a way that would relieve them from the necessity of conceding that she was either an arbitrary creation of Ctesias or, as historians so long taught, an actual Assyrian queen. Insisting that the character of Semiramis is unmistakably that of the Semitic Ishtar or Astarte, some accounted for her historical character by assuming that she was but an eastern myth translated into “the semblance of a history that would be creditable to the Greeks.” Others maintained that she was the daughter of the fish-goddess Derceto, while still others quite as vigorously contended that “the legend of Semiramis originated in Lydia,” whence it found its way to Persia where Persian imagination transformed the daughter of a fish-goddess into a Babylonian queen. Then again it was asserted that the Semiramis legend arose from the commingling of exaggerated accounts of a royal Assyrian lady named Sammurat and certain myths regarding the Assyro-Babylonian Ishtar and the Canaanite Astoreth. To this Semiramis, as to the great Sesostris of Egypt, the Greeks in course of time assigned most of the stupendous works in Asia Minor which were of Hittite or Assyrian origin. Smith, as the result of an exhaustive investigation, comes to the conclusion that “Semiramis is a name and form of Astarte and the story of her conquests in Upper Asia is a translation into the language of political history of the diffusion and victories of her worship in that region.”[398]

But while Orientalists were cudgeling their brains in the vain endeavor to solve the problem on which they had wasted so much midnight oil, Dr. Andræ and his associates of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft unexpectedly made their astounding discovery among the ruins of Assur. By a single stroke of the pick they nullified the carefully constructed theories of nearly a half century and proved beyond peradventure that the romantic and mysterious Semiramis was neither an Aramæan goddess, nor the arbitrary creation of a Persian poet, nor the figment of a Greek romancer, but an actual personality who was closely related to some of the best known sovereigns of Assyria. As the wife of Shamsi-Adad V and the mother of Adadinari IV and the daughter-in-law of Salmanassar III, who reigned over Assyria from B.C. 860 to 826, the place of Semiramis in history is henceforth as certain and as fixed as is that of Sargon II or Tiglath-pileser IV, two of the most brilliant monarchs who ever presided over the destinies of the vast empire of Assyria when in the apogee of her power and splendor.

That romance has so long been busy with the name of Semiramis as to leave small space for history; that the myths about Derceto and Astarte and Ashtaroth were in the course of ages attached to the Assyrian palace lady who made so great an impression on her contemporaries is not an exceptional occurrence. Similar myths and romances have clustered about the names of Alexander the Great, about Charlemagne, about Harun-al-Rashid, about Frederick Barbarossa, about Dietrich von Bern, and other notabilities of ancient and mediæval times.[399]

But the veils of myth and legend and romance, which have so long enveloped the commanding personality of Semiramis, are finally torn away and reveal a woman, like her namesake of Russia, of rare ability and forcefulness, and that at a time when and in a land where participation in public affairs on the part of women was absolutely taboo.[400]

I have dwelt somewhat at length on the fascinating romance of Semiramis because it is so interesting an illustration of the extraordinary progress which the new science of Assyriology has made during the last few decades; because it illustrates how difficult it is in the annals of the nations of western Asia to separate myth and legend from authentic history; because it shows how gradually we are acquiring a more thorough and exact knowledge of the great empires of Assyria and Babylonia than was possible for a Berosus or a Herodotus to obtain; and, lastly, because it exhibits in bold relief the importance of the work which the Germans, especially the members of the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft, have for years been quietly accomplishing in the valley of the Tigris from the source of this storied river in the highlands of Kurdistan to the alluvial plains of ruin-besprent Babylonia.

The first two days after leaving Assur we found but little along the river to attract us from our smoothly-gliding kelek. We encountered, it is true, occasional eddies, or reaches in the river where the current was more rapid than usual, or where small islands were so numerous that navigation was somewhat intricate, but we rather enjoyed this as it roused our crew from their habitual lethargy and from their chronic disposition to spend all their time in kaif. We also met with quite a number of breakers which extended across the river, but none of them were so violent as that of the Zikr ul Aawaze. Many have maintained that the largest of these rapids are due to the ruins of bridges that spanned the Tigris in ancient times, but it seems more probable that they were caused by the ruins of dams which were constructed by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia “to insure a constant supply of water to the innumerable canals which spread like a network over the surrounding country.” This seems clear from what Strabo says of them, although he himself seems to think that they were built to prevent hostile fleets from ascending the rivers of Mesopotamia and Susiana.

The Persians [he writes], through fear of incursions from without and for the purpose of preventing vessels from ascending these rivers, constructed artificial cataracts. Alexander on arriving there destroyed as many of them as he could, those particularly on the Tigris from the sea to Opis.[401] [He declared that] such devices were unbecoming to men who are victorious in battle and, therefore, he considered this means of safety unsuitable for him and, by easily demolishing the laborious work of the Persians, he proved in fact that what they thought a protection was unworthy of the name.[402]

A short distance below Assur we passed the embouchure of the little Zab whose clear mountain waters were in strong contrast with the flood of the turbid Tigris. Near the confluence of these two rivers were located the Median villages of Parysatis, the wife of Darius and mother of Cyrus the Younger. These villages had, according to a Persian custom, been bestowed upon the queen by the king for her girdle—that is for the purchase of personal apparel and ornaments. How generous the Persian monarchs were in supplying their wives with pin money!

The scenery below the Little Zab differed but little from that round about Assur—an arid plain on the left and a low range of yellow hills on the right. The Arabs call them mountains—Jebel Hamrin and Jebel Makhul—but they scarcely deserve such an exalted appellation. In a recess of Jebel Makhul are the remains of a stronghold that reminds one of similar ruins along the Danube. It is called Kalat Makhul—the Castle of the Maiden. According to an Arabian legend, this was the citadel of the warlike daughter of a giant, who was the terror of all who sailed down the river. Near by was the citadel—Kalat el Gebbar—of her giant father. The legend apparently recalls the time when these strongholds were occupied by bandits who, like the old robber barons of the Rhine and the Danube, formerly levied tribute on all the passing keleks or who despoiled their owners of all they possessed. These brigands are said to have infested certain reaches of the Tigris as late as a third of a century ago, but, although the traveler is still warned against them, they seem to have changed their scene of operations to fields where they would not be so much harassed by government soldiery.

A few miles below the Giant’s Castle, the river becomes much narrower and swifter, for it here cuts through the sandstone chain of hills called Jebel Hamrin which, on the left bank of the Tigris, continues in a southeasterly direction until it unites with the one of the rugged spurs which juts out from the mountains of Luristan. This narrow section of the river through the range of Jebel Hamrin, which is locally known as El Fatha—the aperture—is interesting because it is on the boundary between the vilayets of Mosul and Bagdad, and because it once marked a point on the natural frontier between Assyria and Babylonia.

Outside of Nimroud and Assur, there is little during the first half of the journey to Bagdad to claim one’s attention except the numerous Kurd villages, composed of squalid stone and mud houses and frequent groups of black tents occupied by various tribes of Arabs. Around the Arabian encampments one sees occasionally quite large flocks of sheep and, in the vicinity of the stone and mud villages of the Kurds, one will note the feeble attempts which its inhabitants make to cultivate the land. Considering the primitive methods of irrigation that exist here, one is not surprised to find that the poor husbandman’s return for his labor is very small. In marked contrast, however, to the unpromising grain fields on the arid plains were the luxurious fields of Indian corn in the small islands which dotted the Tigris.

During the entire journey between Mosul and Bagdad one is never long out of sight of ruins of some kind or other—ruins of old strongholds, ruins of monuments to Moslem saints, ruins of mosques and minarets, ruins of towns and cities long since deserted or destroyed by the ruthless invader. They certainly give the country a most desolate appearance, but they, at the same time, tell in the most eloquent fashion how great must have been the wealth and prosperity of this ill-fated country in the palmiest days of the great Caliphs and during the reigns of the wise and beneficent monarchs of the Sassanidæ and the Achæmenidæ.

However rich the flora and fauna may formerly have been along the Tigris, there is now visible but little of either. Older travelers speak of the long stretches of woodland along the river. Now one sees little more than small clumps of Acacia and Glycyrrhiza here and there and even these seem to be rapidly disappearing.

Wild fowl are said to be abundant, but during the first half of our journey on the Tigris we saw only a few shy francolins, pelicans, and cormorants. Farther down the river, however, the number of fowl appreciably augmented. Among them were some snipe and a beautiful species of duck with snowy-white plumage. Singing birds were exceedingly rare.

According to early travelers, large game formerly abounded the whole way from Nineveh to Bagdad. Thus Jean de Thévenot in his entertaining work on the Levant assures us that in the vicinity of El Fatha, lions were as numerous as sheep elsewhere—des lions—que l’on y voit en aussi grande quantité que des moutons ailleurs.[403] He tells us particularly of an extraordinarily large and powerful lion which took a man from every caravan—except his own—that ventured to pass by that terrible place. That his caravan escaped the payment of the tribute exacted by the ferocious brute from all others, was, he opined, something glorious—ce qui devoit être bien glorieux pour la noire qui ne lui paia point ce tribut.

Judging by the precautions which, he informs us, he was continually obliged to take against these feral terrors of the desert, Thévenot was as much obsessed by them as he was by the hot and poisonous wind which, he avers, was such a deadly menace in the valley of the Tigris. This consuming wind is, he declares, the same as the ventus urens—burning wind—mentioned in the twenty-seventh chapter of the book of Job and prevails during the summer all the way from Mosul to Surat in distant India and is so fatal that if one inhales it one instantly drops dead, and his corpse immediately becomes as black as ink, and, if one touches it, the flesh falls from the bones.[404]

But these are only samples of travelers’ tales that have been current regarding the East and its scorching atmosphere since the days of Strabo.[405] It is, therefore, quite evident that Thévenot did not purpose to allow his predecessors, including his countryman Tavernier, not to mention others, to enjoy a complete monopoly in the recounting of wonders and adventures.

In addition to stories about the poison wind—the Samum of the Arabs—most travelers in the desert have something to say about the huge, yellow sand pillars that are sometimes seen scudding over the plain on the wings of the whirlwind. They are at times a positive menace to travelers and to the natives are objects of terror. According to Arab superstition they are “Jinnis of the Waste which cannot be caught, a notion arising,” Burton tells, “from the fitful movements of the electrical wind-eddy that raises them.”[406]

The first place at which we stopped after entering the vilayet of Bagdad, which embraces the northern part of old Babylonia, was Tekrit. Although modern Tekrit is little more than a wretched village, the Tekrit of mediæval times, as is evinced by the vast area covered by rubbish and ruins, was a large and flourishing city. Writing of the modern town, Rich says its atmosphere “seems to be favorable to prosers, as the saying, ‘To talk like Tekreetli,’ which is common in these parts, apparently indicates.” To this statement he adds, “If the women exceed the men in this gift, in the due proportion of the sex, he is to be pitied who marries a Tekreetli wife.”[407]

The German traveler, Baron von Thielmann, in the account of his journey down the Tigris, gives his impression of the town in a single sentence: “As for ourselves we saw nothing worth noticing in this miserable abode save two solitary palm-trees, the first which we had met with.”[408] Incidentally, he quotes as a statement of Karl Ritter, the celebrated geographer, “the striking remark that the furthest palm-tree in the East always denotes the limit of Arab sway and Arab life.”

But, if modern Tekrit possesses little of interest for the traveler, the ancient city, long in ruins, still breathes proud memories of the distant past. Once known as “Tekrit the Blest,” it was the seat of the Monophysite metropolitan and a center whence missionaries of the Monophysite church radiated in all directions. It was also the birthplace of Saladin, one of the most celebrated of oriental sovereigns, the famous adversary of Richard Cœur de Lion, the Moslem warrior whose chivalry and generosity were the admiration of the Crusaders and whose memory has lived in history and romance from the appearance of the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi and the masterly Historia Hierosolymitana of William of Tyre to the days when Lessing in his Nathan der Weise and Scott in his Talisman gave those matchless portraits of the chivalrous sultan, which made the name of Saladin a household word throughout the whole of Christendom. The valley of the Tigris can point to many illustrious sons, but to none whose achievements were more brilliant than those of the immortal Kurd who, by reason of his gentleness, courtesy, and nobility of character, his justice, truthfulness, and generosity has been signalized in The Tales of a Minstrel of Rheims as “the best prince that ever was in pagandom,” and who, on account of his kingly liberality, is given a place by Dante[409] in company with such illustrious men as Alexander the Great, the good King of Castile, the good Marchese of Monferrato, the good Count of Toulouse, Bertran of Born, and Galasso of Montefeltro.” And, although the poet condemns Mohammed to the frightful punishment meted out to schismatics in the ninth bolgia of hell, he honors Saladin by placing him in the noble castle of Limbo where—senza martiri—without torments—he associates with Cæsar and Brutus, Lucretia and Cornelia and other illustrious heroes and heroines of antiquity.[410]

Although Tekrit is in ruins and has been since it was visited by the fell destroyer Timur, it will still continue to occupy a place in the annals of our race because it was here that the baby eyes of Saladin first opened on the bright, blue sky which canopied the broad lands of which he was in manhood’s prime to become the humane conqueror and the wise and beloved sovereign.

Below Tekrit the Tigris gradually widens and deepens, while the velocity of the river’s current becomes markedly less. Obstructions to navigation rapidly diminish in number and we are able to sail on an even keel—if one can say this of a craft that is keelless.

Our progress down the Tigris, as we foresaw before embarking at Mosul, was exceedingly slow. It rarely exceeded three miles an hour while it was often less than one. As the fall of the river between Mosul and Bagdad, a distance of three hundred and sixty miles, is less than seven hundred feet, there is an average fall of less than two feet to the mile. The Tigris is said to have been named on account of the swiftness of its current, from the Persian word for arrow. The Hebrew name of the river—Hiddekel—also means arrow. Judging, however, from the actual velocity of the river, this name, if not originally given because of some of its northern rapids, is a very apparent misnomer.

Although we had four kelekgis—two for the day and two for the night—their chief occupation was not to propel our kelek, but rather, by means of their long wooden sweeps, to keep it away from rocks and sand bars and steer it clear of dangerous currents and whirlpools. We did not, therefore, row or sail down the river; we simply floated. Sometimes, when we faced a head wind, we came to an actual standstill. But no one complained. We were prepared for this and our crew was so accustomed to it that they would have been surprised if we had not encountered occasional delays of this kind. It gave us an opportunity to enjoy dolce far niente, as never before, and afforded our crew the always coveted leisure to make kaif, to smoke and dream at their sweet pleasure. With the Lotos-Eaters their

Inner spirit sings

“There is no joy but calm!”

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

And how natural is it for us to appreciate the point of view of our calm-loving, rest-seeking boatmen! For hours at a time they sit at their posts without uttering a word and as immovable as statues. Whether they arrive at their destination in a week or a month is apparently immaterial to them. So long as they are allowed to enjoy their kaif they are supremely happy.

As we gaze on our men at their “dreamful ease,” I recall the verses of Tennyson’s “Song of the Lotos-Eaters”:

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half dream!

*****

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing slowly)

With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—
To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro’ the thick twined vine—

To watch the emerald-color’d water falling

Thro’ many a wov’n acanthus wreath divine!

Noiselessly and, at times, almost imperceptibly, we glided down the majestic Tigris which through the broad desert waste floats

Changeless to the changeless sea.

With ever renewed interest we gazed on the silent ruins whose history was ended before that of Ancient Rome began. The Forum, the Palatine, the Colosseum, the Mole of Hadrian belong in their splendor to an age when the more imposing ruins along the Tigris were hoary with the dust of centuries or long buried under the shifting sands of the desert.

But it is at the hour of sunset that one most completely falls under the spell of the Tigris and the historic land through which it flows. For the sunsets of the desert lands of the East exhibit a gorgeousness of color unknown in our land of fogs and mists. This is probably owing to the haze produced by impalpable dust in an exceptionally dry atmosphere. As the sun nears the horizon, the western sky glows with all the delicate hues of ruby and topaz, emerald and amethyst and, after it has set, the zodiacal light, rising from where the sun disappeared, ascends to the zenith with a display of all the delicate tints of rose and gold and lilac of the aurora borealis.

The glories of a sunset in Mesopotamia are indeed entrancing, but it is when night comes with her dewy freshness and

Her starry shade

Of dim and solitary loveliness;

when the moon silvers the river’s wavelets and its ruin-crested banks, that one loves to linger in this land of a great historic past and contemplate at leisure

Those ruined shrines and towers that seem
The relics of a splendid dream;
Amid whose fairy loneliness
Naught but the lapwing’s cry is heard.[411]

How we reveled in those glorious moonlit nights spent on our tranquilly floating kelek on the enchanting Tigris! “They say that Carl Niebuhr, the traveler, when old and blind, used to lie and dream over the old Eastern landscapes and night-skies in his darkened life,—a perpetual world of enchantment to console him.”[412] How could it have been otherwise? For how often since our return from the East where we, like Niebuhr, have spent some of the most delightful days of our life, have we not also found ourselves dreaming of the eventful days and the fascinating nights which it was our privilege to spend under the pale azure skies of the inspiring and enthralling home of our race?

But while, in silent rapture, we were thus enjoying the magnificent displays of the setting sun and were reveling in the beauties of the stars,—“the flowers of the sky,” “the poetry of heaven,” “the forget-me-nots of the angels,”—our crew was totally indifferent to all these sublime manifestations of nature and completely buried in their kaif. They were indeed living pictures of what Robert Louis Stevenson somewhere most aptly calls “the apotheosis of stupidity.” As we noted in their placid features their rapturous expression of contentment and happiness we realized as never before the full force of the poet’s words,

The heaven of each is but what each desires.

Never once, during our journey from Mosul to Tekrit were we ever out of sight of some place or monument of historic or legendary lore. But the number of these reminders of the hoary past rapidly increased in our sail between Tekrit and Bagdad. About five miles below Saladin’s birthplace we came to the little town of Iman Dura. According to tradition, it was here that King Nebuchadnezzar set up his colossal golden statue which the Hebrews, Sidrach, Misach, and Abednago, in defiance of the King’s orders, refused to adore.[413] It was near Dura that the Roman army under Jovian pitched their tents after the death of Julian the Apostate and it was here that the Roman Emperor was forced to conclude an ignominious peace—necessariam quidem sed ignobilem, writes Eutropius—with the Persian King, Sapor the Great. A short distance below Dura is a small stream which the natives say was a canal dug by King Solomon. Near it, on the left bank of the Tigris, begins the ruins of Eski Bagdad—Old Bagdad—“a mighty field of ruins,” writes Thielmann, “extending some twenty-five miles along the Tigris.”[414] Situated in this long field of ruins is the little town of Samara, as celebrated for its romantic history as for its remarkable monuments which, however, have only in the last decade or two received the attention on the part of scholars which they so richly deserve.

The ruins of which I have here given a brief account [writes a well-known archæologist, after a visit to Samara] are of the first importance for the elucidation of the early history of the arts of Islam. They can all be dated within a period of forty years falling in the ninth century, and are, therefore, among the earliest existing examples of Mohammedan architecture. They bear witness to the Mesopotamian influences under which it arose. The spiral towers of Samara and Abu Dulaf are an adaptation of the temple pyramids and Assyria and Babylonia, which had a spiral path leading to the summit; the technique of arch and vault was invented by the ancient East and transmitted through Sassannian builders to the Arab invaders; the decoration is Persian or Mesopotamian and almost untouched by the genius of the West. In the palaces and the mosques of Samara we can see the conquerors themselves conquered by a culture which had been developing during thousands of years on Mesopotamian soil, a culture which had received indeed new elements into its composition, which had learnt from the Greek and from the Persian, but had maintained in spite of all modifications its distinctive character.[415]

The complex of ruined mosques and palaces which here excites the admiration of the student dates from the time—A. D. 836 to 892—when Samara was the capital of the Abbassid Caliphate. Mutasim, a son of Harun-al-Rashid, was the first caliph who made his residence here. So numerous and magnificent were the edifices which he called into existence, as by an enchanter’s wand, that the glories of Samara soon rivaled those of Bagdad in the days of her greatest power and prosperity. The magnificence of the enlarged and embellished city was expressed in the official name which was then given it, for, in lieu of Samara, it was called Surra-man-raa—Who sees it, rejoices. Judging from the ground plan of the palaces of Samara as given by M. H. Violet, the distinguished French Academician who, during a visit to Samara, made a careful study of its imposing ruins, this group of buildings was not inferior to the royal edifices of Versailles.[416]

According to local tradition Samara, like Sestos and Abydos, had also its Hero and Leander. As they lived in palaces on opposite sides of the river, the Samara Leander could see his immorata, who was the daughter of a sultan, only by breasting the swift-flowing waters of the romantic Tigris. The lovers were, however, more fortunate than were their Greek prototypes, for their lives did not end in the tragedy which overtook the Romeo and Juliet of the Dardanelles but, so the story runs, terminated in a happy marriage like that of Feramoz and Lalla Rookh. And the memory of the devoted pair is still kept green by the names which the Arabs have given to the ruins of their former homes—El Aschik—the lover—and El Maschuka—the beloved.[417]

Below Samara the number of ruins and places of historic and legendary interest seemed to increase in proportion as we sailed southwards. Particularly interesting were the ruins of Opis which was once, next to Babylon, the most important city in Babylonia. It was to this point that were floated from the upper Tigris the boats that Sennacherib, seven centuries B. C., had constructed for use in his celebrated campaign against the Chaldeans and Elamites. From Opis the boats were transported by camels overland to the Euphrates, down which they sailed to the Persian Gulf. How forcibly this achievement of the great Assyrian monarch reminds one of a similar exploit nearly twenty-two centuries later, when Mohammed the Conqueror had a part of his fleet conveyed over the elevated section of land between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn preparatory to his capture of Constantinople, May 29, 1453!

Opis is also celebrated as having been visited by Alexander the Great in his memorable voyage up the Tigris from the Persian Gulf. “In his voyage up,” as Arrian informs us, “he destroyed the weirs which existed in the river and thus made the stream quite level.”[418] More than twenty-one centuries afterwards, in 1839, the English steamer “Euphrates”—the first steamer ever seen in this region—ascended the Tigris on its voyage of reconnaissance when it went up the river to the tomb of Sultan Abdullah near the mouth of the Greater Zab.[419] But since that date the navigation of the Tigris—at least for commercial purposes—has terminated at Bagdad. If the country bordering the Tigris were under a stable and enterprising government, there is no reason why light-draught and light-tonnage boats should not ply regularly not only between Bagdad and Opis but between Bagdad and Mosul as well. High explosives properly applied under the direction of competent engineers, and possibly a dam or two with suitable locks would solve the problem and would contribute immensely towards restoring to its former flourishing condition a country which, as we have seen, is now little more than a desert overspread with ruins “where kings have paced” and where

The gray fox litters safe

Under the broken thrones.

When the Tigris shall have been cleared for steam navigation from Bagdad to Mosul and the Bagdad Railway shall be completed and in successful operation through its entire length, we may hope to see the fertile lands, through which the famous river flows once more the home of teeming millions as they were when they constituted the richest and the most flourishing region of Western Asia.

Below Opis we noted a marked change in the aspect of the country. We were now passing through a rich alluvial plain where not a pebble was to be seen. There were on both sides of the river broad, verdant fields enameled with wild flowers and carefully irrigated by the primitive shadoofs and norias which are still in use here as they are along the Nile and in all parts of the Levant. Much of this land is under cultivation or utilized for grazing, as is evinced by the flocks and herds with which the country is everywhere dotted. As we slowly glided down the river we observed an ever-increasing number of villages surrounded by gardens and fruit trees and clumps of date palms. All these grateful changes in the landscape, especially the beautiful palm groves which hourly became more numerous and more attractive, and the little fleets of guffahs filled with commodities and passengers, told us that we were near our destination. These indications did not mislead; for a few hours later the domes and minarets of Bagdad hove in sight and our week’s happy floating on a kelek was at an end. We were at last within the gates of the world-renowned metropolis of the Abbasside Caliphs.

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.

CHAPTER XVII
MOTORING IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden eastward; wherein he placed man whom he had formed.

And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And a river went out of Eden to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads.

The name of the one is Phison: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath, where gold groweth.

And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone.

And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia.

And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

And the Lord God took man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Genesis, ii: 5–15.

“Effendi, your terumbil is ready.” Thus did a young Arab inform me that the automobile which was to take us to Babylon was at the door of the Carmelite monastery.

Barely have a few words so thrilled me as did these then pronounced by the bronze-visaged son of the desert. They meant so much to me—far more than the simple words would seem to imply. They meant that we were at last near the final objective of our long and eventful journey; that, in a few hours, we should be contemplating the world-famed ruins of Babylon; that in, the short journey from the romantic capital of Harun-al-Rashid to the historic city of Nebuchadnezzar we should traverse a land which has long been celebrated in story and legend as the cradle of our race.

When we attempted to cross the swaying pontoon bridge which separates Bagdad proper from its old suburb on the right bank of the Tigris, we found our passage blocked for a while by the heterogeneous crowd of men and women and the long train of burdened donkeys and camels that were headed for the shops and the bazaars of the old capital of the Caliphs. But we welcomed this delay as it gave us an opportunity to study a scene which, during our wanderings along the river front of the city, had always possessed for us a special fascination.

Here were assembled the strange and varied craft for which the Tigris is so noted. Among them was the steam side-wheeler which brings freight and passengers from the port of Basra on the Shat-al-Arab. There were also tugs and barges and lighters of other varieties of modern craft familiar to people of the West. Scattered among these were numerous mahailas, those primitive and picturesque boats so much used by the Arabs in the navigable parts of the Tigris and Euphrates. With their pointed prows, high masts, and lateen sails, they are not unlike the dahabiyehs of the Nile or simplified forms of the fast-sailing felucca and xebec once so much used by the pirates of Barbary. Alongside of them were countless specimens of that long, canoe-shaped boat called by the Arabs the bellum—which in the narrow canals in and around Basra serves the same purpose as the gondola in Venice. The bellum, to judge from certain bas-reliefs found among the ruins of Nimroud, is but a slight modification of the type of boat which Sennacherib employed in his fleet during his celebrated campaign against the Elamits. But a far more singular craft than any of those mentioned is the kufa. Its frame is woven of willows or the split branches of the date palm and, like the Ark of Noah, is “pitched within and without with pitch” which is procured from the hot, bitumen springs of Hit, on the Euphrates. It is circular in form and looks like a large cauldron with its brim turned inwards. Their great number at Bagdad and the way which they are made to rotate among the other boats are always sure to attract attention. They are used as ferryboats in crossing the river and for carrying freight and passengers to and from the city and the adjoining country. Herodotus tells us that, after the city itself, these curious craft surprised him more than anything that he saw in Babylon. In form and size they are similar to the coracle in which St. Brendan is said to have made his famous voyage from Ireland to America, long centuries before Columbus “to Castile and Leon gave a New World.”

But few keleks are seen among the numberless boats that dot the Tigris at Bagdad. The reason is simple. As soon as they arrive from Mosul and Diarbeker their wooden frameworks are sold for fuel, for which they fetch a good price, while the deflated skins are returned to the places whence they came to be again used in the construction of other keleks.

Nowhere in the world can one see so great a variety of river crafts as at Bagdad, or styles of vessels which have remained unchanged for so many thousands of years. For here one finds everything from the raftlike slow-floating kelek to the swift, surface-skimming glisseur which, with a powerful engine, is capable of making a speed of more than forty miles an hour. The kelek and the kufa represent the high-water mark of the shipwright’s achievements two thousand years before our era, while the glisseur is but one of the many triumphs of the marine engineers of the twentieth century of the era in which we live. Forty centuries separate the two creations and yet they are both seen here side by side—one typifying the changeless East and the other the ever-progressive West.

After the congested traffic on the bridge had diminished sufficiently to allow us to pass, we took the stage road that leads to Hillah and Babylon. There was nothing to detain us in West Bagdad for of the old Round City of Mansur not a vestige is now visible. Many travelers make a detour to get a near view of the noted Kazimayn mosque but, as the fanatical Shiahs do not allow a Christian to enter this sacred shrine, I was satisfied with the view I had had of it through my field glass from the summit of the lofty old minaret of Souk-El-Ghazl.

Neither did we go to see that other lion on the western bank of the Tigris—the much lauded tomb of Zobeide, who occupies so conspicuous a place in Thousand and One Nights and in many Arabian chronicles. With the renowned Arabian queens Zenobia and the Queen of Sheba, Zobeide will always live in story and legend as one of the most prominent figures of the East. According to an Eastern tradition, she shares with the mythical Sultana Scheherazade the honor of having composed those fascinating tales known as “The Arabian Nights.” We did not visit the crumbling monument which is said to contain her tomb, for the simple reason that it has been proved beyond doubt that this was never the last resting place of Harun-al-Rashid’s favorite wife and was never considered to be so until nearly nine hundred years after her death.

A few short hours after leaving the city of the Caliphs we were in the heart of the broad alluvial plain of Babylonia. But there was little to attract our attention except the countless mounds that dotted the broad expanse of level land and covered all that remained of once flourishing towns and cities. With the exception of a few palms here and there along some old irrigating canal this extensive region was almost as treeless as the desert sections of northern Mesopotamia. Outside of an occasional reed hut or black tent—the humble homes of Bedouin Arabs—we saw but few human habitations in a land that during thousands of years was as thickly populated and as carefully cultivated as Holland or the valley of the Rhine.

Once we met a small caravan of pilgrims coming from far-distant Mecca and Medina. Although travel worn by their long journey through the burning sands of Arabia they seemed, nevertheless, to be a very joyous company. They were happy in the thought of having complied with the precept of the Koran which requires that every one of the Faithful shall, if at all possible, make a pilgrimage, at least once in his lifetime, to the venerated shrines which enclose the Kaaba and the tomb of the Prophet. Even

The camels, tufted o’er with Yemen’s shells,

Shaking in every breeze their light-toned bells,

seemed to enter into the spirit of their cheerful and godly riders.

Among the green-turbaned hadjis I observed two whose means enabled them to indulge in the luxury of genuine Arabian steeds. After the delightful experience I had had with a pure-blooded Arabian horse when traveling in the East many years ago, I have never been able to pass one of these noble animals without scrutinizing it as closely as I would a masterpiece of Raphael or Murillo. I do not know whether or not these two horses had made the long journey to Mecca and return—a distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles—but if they did, they failed to show it, for they seemed as lively and as vigorous as if they had been on the road but a few days. But this is one of the characteristics of the true Arabian horse—its remarkable powers of endurance, even when forced to travel long distances without food or water.[454] Judging from their delicate forms, their well-fashioned heads, their large beautiful eyes, their agile and supple movements, the two steeds in question must have been bred from one or two of the five pure-blooded races of horses for which, from time immemorial, Arabia has been so celebrated.[455]

According to an Arabian legend, when God wished to create the horse He called the South Wind to Him and said, “I wish to take from thy bosom a new being. Condense thyself by depriving thyself of thy fluidity.” The wind obeyed. The Lord then took a handful of that element, now become malleable, breathed upon it and the horse was born. “You will be for man,” the Lord then said, “a source of happiness and riches and he will render himself illustrious by riding you.”

It is said that “the happiest events in the life of a Bedouin are the births of a she-camel, of a son, and of a she-foal.” And so highly does the Arab value his young colts, as well as his young camels, that he cares for them as children and “the nearer on the social ladder he stands to the real Bedouin” the higher rises his love for his horse. Indeed, to judge by his actions at times, one would think that he prefers his horse to his son. For when the camels are milked in the evening the colts receive their regular supply of the lacteal fluid before the children of the family. Not only this, but the true Arab puts the care of his horse before his own ease. In the desert there is a saying that “work which does not belittle a man is for his horse, for his brother and for his guest.” Another saying among the Bedouins is that “Allah has three great gifts for man—a good horse, a good wife and a good blade.” Similar to this is the adage that “the greatest blessings are a wise wife and a fruitful mare.”

How well the Bedouin is rewarded for his affectionate care of his horse is a common theme of the stories and songs of the desert. For the prized animal which occasionally exhibits almost human intelligence fully reciprocates his master’s affection and serves him in danger and out of danger with a loyalty that is proverbial and with an unswerving devotion that never falters as long as strength and life endure.

But one cannot speak of the Arab’s horse without also saying something of his intimate associate—the camel. So indispensable is the camel to the Bedouin that, without it, it would be almost impossible for him to continue his nomad life. For the hair of the animal supplies him with clothing and tents while its milk is his principal article of food. Hence, the significant proverb “God created the camel for the Arab and the Arab for the camel.” Hence, also, the peculiar custom of speaking of the camel as a “person.” Thus an Arab when enumerating his flocks and herds will speak of so many “head” of sheep or cattle, but when counting his camels will speak of them as so many “persons.”

According to a Bedouin legend, the camel and the date were fashioned by Allah from the same clay from which Adam was formed. The same legend declares that they were found with our first parents in the Garden of Eden and that they will accompany man to the world beyond the tomb. When young, the camel, like the colt, is regarded as a member of the family. Like its companion, the colt, it is fondled as a child and always treated with the most unremitting care. And so important a position does it occupy in the life of the family and the clan in Arabia, that the poets of the desert have from time immemorial vied with one another in seeking suitable epithets for their inseparable servant and associate. The number of these epithets, describing and glorifying the camel, is no less than six hundred, while the distinguished French traveler Chardin assures us that it is fully a thousand.

And well may the Arab sing the praises of the animal to which he owes so much, for it is to the patient, frugal, and laborious camel that he, in great measure, owes his proud, uninterrupted independence during the long ages of his country’s history. For, “without the camel, he must have long since bowed his neck to a foreign yoke, sharing the fate of those despised felahin who guide or draw the plow on the banks of the Nile and the Orontes.”[456]

But while the much-praised camel is to the Arab fully as useful as the horse—in many respects far more indispensable—he has, contrary to general opinion, neither the docility nor the intelligence of the horse and, notwithstanding all the care his master may have lavished upon him, shows no interest in him whatever. Besides this, he is vindictive to a degree, and that sooner or later he will seek revenge for some real or fancied injury is so well known that the camel driver is always on his guard against its malice and fury.

Palgrave, the adventurous explorer of central and eastern Arabia, who had a rare opportunity of studying “the ship of the desert” in his desert home, writes:

If docile means stupid, well and good; in such a case the camel is the very model of docility. But if the epithet is intended to designate an animal that takes an interest in its rider so far as a beast can, that in some way understands his intentions or shares them in a subordinate fashion, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half fellow-feeling with his master, like the horse and elephant, then I say that the camel is by no means docile, very much the contrary; he takes no heed of his rider; pays no attention whether he be on his back or not; walks straight on when once set agoing, merely because he is too stupid to turn aside; and then, should some tempting thorn or green branch allure him out of the path, continues to walk on in this new direction simply because he is too dull to turn back into the right road.... In a word, he is from first to last an undomesticated and savage animal, rendered serviceable by stupidity alone, without much skill on his master’s part or any coöperation on his own except that of an extreme passiveness. Neither attachment nor even habit impresses him; never tame, though not wide-awake enough to be exactly wild.[457]

Shortly after meeting the caravan from Mecca and Medina, we overtook one going in the opposite direction. This was composed of pilgrims on their way to the sacred shrines of Nejef and Kerbela—the holy cities of the Shiites. A sorrier and more mournful crowd could not easily be imagined. It was composed of Persian Shiites who were convoying their dead to Kerbela and Nejef for burial. Among the departed were some but recently deceased, while others had been dead for years and their moldering remains had been exhumed for final interment in the sacred ground in and around Kerbela and Nejef. There were no sumptuous funeral cars for transporting this gruesome freight. Only jades and donkeys and mules, all worn out by their long journey through the sandy desert. Nor were there any costly caskets to enclose the remains of the dead. Far from it. Some were wrapped in reeds and rugs while others were packed in bags and baskets. In this condition they were slung from the backs of the jaded pack animals which were conducted by friends or servants of the deceased.

In Nejef are preserved the ashes of Ali, the husband of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet of Mecca, while in the mosque of Kerbela is the last resting place of his son, Husein. By his followers Ali was considered the first legitimate Caliph and his sons Hasan and Husein have ever since their tragic death been venerated as martyrs. It was the dispute about the first lawful Caliph that occasioned the great schism which divides the Moslem world into two sects: the Shiites, who reject the first three Caliphs—Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman—as usurpers; and the Sunnites, who recognize Ali as well as the three Caliphs named, while they regard the Shiites as “forsakers of the truth.” The Shiites include the Persians, besides whom they have a large representation among the Mohammedans of India.

It is the ardent desire of every devout Shiite to be buried either in Nejef or Kerbela, for the sacred soil of these places, so he firmly believes, assures him of paradise. There is a cherished tradition among the Shiites that Ali will be the first to rise on the day of the general resurrection and that all who are interred in Nejef will rise with him to a life of immortality and happiness.

This accounts for the countless thousands that are every year interred in Nejef and Kerbela. The cost of the burial permits at these two places is said to amount to nearly a million dollars a year, while the number of pilgrims from Persia alone, who annually visit the shrines of Ali and Husein is estimated at no less than sixty thousand souls. In a preceding chapter we have seen that the pilgrims—nearly all of whom are Sunnites—that yearly visit Medina and Mecca number fully two hundred thousand. Considering, however, the relative populations of Shiite and Sunnite countries, more pilgrims are found at the shrines of Ali and Husein than at those of the Prophet and the Kaaba.

But, although both the great Moslem sects recognize Mohammed as their prophet and have the greatest veneration for him, the most profound hatred separates one from the other. The Shiites regard the Sunnites as impure and detest them because of their association with Christians and Jews, something which the followers of Ali consider intolerable.

Unlike the Sunnites, the Shiites, especially those in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, lead a retired life and studiously avoid relations with all except their coreligionists. Those of the well-to-do class are, when at home, continually engaged in religious ceremonies and conferences. On these occasions accounts are read of the tragic deaths of Ali and his sons. So moved are all present that they express their grief by sobs and lamentations. These reunions, which usually last two hours, take place for the men in apartments specially reserved for them and in the harem for the women. But the women are much more demonstrative in their sorrow than the men, for so moved are they by the recital of the cruel deaths of Ali and his sons that they utter piercing shrieks, strike their breasts, and, when carried away by their delirium, disfigure their faces with their finger nails.

But what is passing strange is that these ceremonies of mourning take place on such occasions of rejoicing as a wedding or the birth of a child. In a word, the Shiites are born, live, and die in the midst of tears and moans and lamentations. The wailing of the Jews in Jerusalem at the wall of the temple of their forefathers occurs but once a week, while the dolorous reunions of the Shiites are far more frequent. During the first ten days of the month of Moharrem and every day during the pilgrimage to Nejef and Kerbela they are obligatory.[458]

But it is not my purpose in this chapter to give more than a cursory glance at the present condition of Babylonia and its people. For, during my wanderings in this historic land, my thoughts were rather occupied with its myths and legends and, above all, with that interesting and persistent tradition which, from time immemorial, has here located the Garden of Eden—what the “Vulgate” calls the Paradise of Pleasure and what is frequently known as the Terrestrial Paradise.

Of the many interesting subjects treated of in the book of Genesis, few have received more attention from scholars and interpreters than that which relates to the Terrestrial Paradise. Even in the early days of Christianity men began to dispute about it. Some, among them Origen[459] and St. Ambrose, not to mention others, inclined to the opinion that the Genesiac account of the cradle of our race was to be interpreted allegorically. Others, however, like St. Jerome and St. Augustine,[460] maintained that the Scriptural narrative regarding the Garden of Eden was to be interpreted literally. Even at the present time Biblical students exhibit the same difference of opinion respecting the words of the Sacred Text which relate to the Garden of Paradise as was displayed by the writers and Fathers of the primitive Church. Some favor an allegorical interpretation of the much discussed narrative while others contend that we must adopt a literal interpretation. “So concrete,” they hold with St. Augustine, “is the description of the Terrestrial Paradise that one cannot allegorize it without doing violence to the text.”

The eminent Assyriologist, Frederick Delitzsch, in an elaborate study of this long vexed question, insists that “the Biblical record of the Garden of Eden contains no indication of being fabulous or extravagant, or enveloped in semi-obscurity. Neither need one hesitate as to the sense, nor is one, for lack of clearness, obliged to read between the lines. For the narrator the Garden of Eden, with its four rivers, the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, is a manifest and well-known reality. He is in nowise obscure respecting the meaning of the names of the Phison and the Gehon. Not only does he know exactly their signification—as exactly as that of the Tigris and the Euphrates—but he wishes to instruct his readers concerning the subject. It is for this reason that he gives explanations and elucidations which his readers can control.”[461]

But, notwithstanding the explicitness of the author of the second chapter of Genesis, the localization of the Garden of Eden bristles with many and grave difficulties. Ever since the days of Philo Judæus, scholars have been seeking a solution of the problem, and, although they have written countless books on the subject, the actual site of the Terrestrial Paradise still remains a matter of uncertainty.

How diverse have been the views of learned men respecting the site of Paradise is evinced by the fact that they have located it almost everywhere on the earth, above the earth, and under the earth. Some, following the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, have contended that the home of the first parents was in the third heaven; others that it was in the fourth; others still that it was in the heaven of the moon, or in the middle region of the air, or in some hidden place far removed from the knowledge of mortals. Others again with a great display of erudition have attempted to prove that it was situated in Syria, or Palestine, or Arabia, or Persia, or Armenia, or Assyria, or India, or China, or Tartary. Still others, who were a little more specific in their speculations, placed the Garden of Eden on the banks of the Ganges, in the Canaries, or in Ceylon, or on the Mountains of the Moon, where the Nile was supposed to have its source. Hebron, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Babylon have each been considered as being on the identical spot where our first parents were created and where they fell from their high estate.

The Benedictine, Ralph Higden, who follows the opinion of some of the Fathers of the Church, tells us in his Polychronicon that the Terrestrial Paradise is in an inaccessible region in Eastern Asia. Gautier de Metz, in his Image du Monde, is in essential agreement with the learned Benedictine as to the location of the Garden of Eden. It is, he avers, surrounded by flames, and access to it through its single gate is precluded by an armed angel who is always on guard. Lambertus Floridus describes the primeval home of our race as an island in the Eastern ocean—Paradisus insula in oceano in oriente. But, like Gautier de Metz, he declares it to be inaccessible because it is surrounded by a wall of fire.

Peter Lombard, the famous Master of the Sentences, who is followed by other mediæval writers, teaches that Paradise is located on a very high mountain in Eastern Asia—so high that the waters of the Deluge, which rose above the summit of Ararat, submerged only its base.[462] Another author informs us that “Paradise is neither in heaven nor on earth.... It is forty fathoms higher than Noah’s flood was and it hangeth between heaven and earth wonderfully, as the Ruler of all things made it.... There is there neither hollow nor hill; nor is there frost nor snow, hail or rain, but there is fons vitæ, that is, the well of life.... There is there neither heat nor hunger, nor is there ever night, but always day. The sun there shines seven times brighter than on this earth. Therein dwell innumerable angels of God with the holy souls till doomsday.”[463]

Of similar import is the description of Paradise contained in an Anglo-Saxon poem—a translation of the “De Phœnice” of the Pseudo-Lactantius—in which the poet declares:

I have heard tell
That there is far hence
In eastern parts
A land most noble
Amongst men renowned.
That tract of earth is not
Over mid earth
Fellow to many
Peopled lands;
But it is withdrawn
Through the Creator’s might
From wicked doers.
Beauteous is all the plain,
With delight blessed,
With the sweetest
Of earth’s odors.

From the time of Indicopleustes, who flourished in the sixth century, to our own, travelers and explorers have sought for the Garden of Eden, and geographers have indicated on their maps the places they imagined it should occupy. Some were satisfied with a conjectural location, but others, basing their speculations on the data given in the second chapter of Genesis, were minded that the problem was so simple that it could be answered off-hand. They were quite like Hudibras who

Knew the seat of Paradise,
Could tell in what degree it lies,
And as he was disposed could prove it
Above the moon or below it.

In a letter purporting to have been written to the Emperor Manual Comnenus, the mythical king Prester John declares that Paradise is situated within three days’ journey of his own empire, but whether this empire is in Asia or Africa is not made clear.

The river Indus which issues out of Paradise [he writes] flows among the plains through a certain province and it expands, embracing the whole province with its various windings. There are found emeralds, sapphires, topazes, chrysolites, onyx, beryl, sardius and many other precious stones. At the base of Mount Olympus, located in the dominions of Prester John, there is [the king continues] a marvelous fountain and from hour to hour and day to day the taste of this fountain varies and its source is hardly three days’ journey from Paradise from which Adam was expelled. If any man drinks thrice of this fountain he will from that day feel no infirmity and he will, as long as he lives, appear of the age of thirty.

Sir John Mandeville, the reputed author of a celebrated travel book, which, he assures us, was “proved for true” by the Pope’s councils, places Paradise “beyond the lands and isles and deserts of Prester John’s lordship.”...

Of Paradise [he tells us] I cannot speak properly, for I was not there.... I repent not going there, but I was not worthy. But [he continues] Terrestrial Paradise, as wise men say, is the highest place of the earth; and is so high that it nearly touches the circle of the moon there as the moon makes her turn.

You shall understand [he writes] that no mortal may approach to that Paradise; for by land no man may go, for wild beasts that are in the deserts and for the high mountains and great, huge rocks that no man may pass by for the dark places that are there; and by the rivers may no man go, for the water runs so roughly and so sharply, because it comes down so outrageously from the high places above, that it runs in so great waves that no ship may row or sail against it; and the water roars so and makes so huge a noise, and so great a tempest, that no man may hear another in the ship, though he cried with all the might he could. Many great lords have essayed with great will many times to pass by those rivers towards Paradise with full great companies, but they might not speed on their voyage; and many died for weariness of rowing against the strong waves; and many of them became blind and many deaf from the noise of the water; and some perished and were lost in the waves, so that no mortal man may approach to that place without the special grace of God.[464]

Columbus, as we learn from his letters, thought he had found the site of the Garden of Eden in the northern part of South America. True, he was not aware that he had discovered a new continent. He was under the impression that he was on the east coast of Asia, the ocean-laved shores of far-off Cathay. He accepted as true one of the traditional beliefs which located Paradise in farther India, or yet more to the eastward and was fully persuaded that he had, in the Orinoco, discovered one of the rivers that watered Eden.

Writing to his Royal patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella, of the region at the headwaters of the Orinoco, he says:

I have no doubt that, if I could pass below the equinoctial line, after reaching the highest point of which I have spoken, I should find a much milder temperature and a variation in the stars and in the water; not that I suppose that elevated point to be navigable, nor indeed that there is any water there; indeed I believe it impossible to ascend thither, because I am convinced that it is the spot of the Earthly Paradise whither no one can go but by God’s permission.

[Continuing, he adds] There are great indications of this being the Terrestrial Paradise, for its site coincides with the opinions of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned; and moreover the other evidences agree with the supposition, for I have never either read or heard of fresh water coming in so large a quantity in close conjunction with the water of the sea; the idea is also corroborated by the blandness of the temperature; and, if the water of which I speak does not proceed from the Earthly Paradise, it appears to be more marvelous, for I do not believe that there is any river in the world so large and so deep.

The more I reason on the subject [he concludes] the more satisfied I become that the Terrestrial Paradise is situated on the spot I have described; and I ground my opinion upon the arguments and authorities already quoted. May it please the Lord to grant your Highnesses a long life and health and peace to follow out so noble an investigation in which I think our Lord will receive great service, Spain considerable increase of its greatness and all Christians much consolation and pleasure, because by this means the name of the Lord will be published abroad.[465]

But Columbus was not the only one to locate the original home of our race in South America. Only a few years ago a patriotic Bolivian scholar, Emeterio Villamil, maintained that the site of the Garden of Eden was on the eastern slope of the mighty Sorata, while the Argentine geologist, Dr. Ameghino, contended that the mother region of mankind was within the shadow of Monte Hermoso, in southern Argentina. There could be no doubt about it. For did he not here discover the skeleton of the first man? And did he not testify to the faith that was in him by giving to the Argentine Adam the imposing name of Tetraprothomo Argentinus?

According to M. Mayo, however, all those who would place humanity’s first hearthstone in Asia, or in Europe, or in America were entirely mistaken. In an ingenious study on “Les Secrets de Pyramides de Memphis”[466] he argues that the desert of Sahara embraces what was once the Garden of Eden. True, it is now a bleak and arid desert, but he believes it was once a land of marvelous beauty and fertility. There was a time, he avers, when it was watered by large rivers and meandering streams; when it was covered with rich verdure and luxurious vegetation; when it was densely populated and the happy home of a peaceful and prosperous people. A new reading of Genesis, in the light of certain hieroglyphical inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty regarding the pyramid of Cheops will, he assures us, solve the mystery that has so long enshrouded the famed monument of Gizeh and reveal the reason why all attempts hitherto made to localize the Paradise of Scripture have proved futile. The Nile, he will have it, formerly flowed through the Sahara where it divided into four branches, constituting the quadrifurcate river of Genesis. At this time the people of Egypt, who even then were a powerful and highly civilized nation, suffered from lack of water and cast about to increase their supply of this all-important element. They obtained it by deflecting the course of the Nile and directing it through their own country. By making a large cut or ditch through an elevation near Khartoum they appropriated to themselves the waters of the great reservoirs of equatorial Africa and shut off from their neighbors in the Sahara the only source of irrigation on which their country could depend. It was thus, according to this quixotic Frenchman, not God but man who closed Paradise and made entrance into it impossible by taking from it the water that gave it fecundity and life.

“Fudge,” vociferates Ignatius Donnelly. “Amen,” ejaculates Unger. Paradise according to these worthies was not situated in any of the existing continents, for its seat, as can be proved, was in the lost Atlantis. Accepting Plato’s account of the Atlantis, as given in the Timæus, as veritable history, the paradoxical Donnelly attempts to show that Atlantis was not only the Garden of Eden but also the only possible center of distribution for the various races which now people the Old and the New World. And more than this. Not only, he asseverates, “was it the original home of mankind but it was likewise the focus whence have eradiated all our cereals and most useful plants and fruits and all our domestic animals.”[467] Here, too, he claims, many of the most valuable inventions which ever blessed our race had their origin. In a word, if we are to believe this plausible author, Atlantis was the home of art, science, and literature and the people who inhabited it not only enjoyed all the peace and happiness of which the ancient poets speak as being the lot of the privileged mortals of the Golden Age but they were the prototypes of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes of a later and less fortunate period.

“Nonsense,” exclaim Dr. Warren, Count Saporta, and the German astronomer, Herr Kohl. Basing their opinions on certain forced interpretations of various ancient legends and traditions and on the results of scientific explorations of the regions within the Arctic Circle, these gentlemen reach the startling conclusion that the first home of our race was in the circumpolar North.

The investigations of botanists, they remind us, declare the singular, but as yet inexplicable fact, that “all the floral types and forms revealed in the oldest fossils in the earth, originated in the region of the North Pole and thence spread first over the northern and then over the southern hemisphere, proceeding from north to south.” The same may also be said of numerous and important representatives of the world’s fauna. Why then, they inquire, are we not justified in placing humanity’s birthplace where the animals and plants which serve man and on which he subsists and which have accompanied him on his migrations over the earth’s surface are known to have originated? “Only from the circumpolar regions of the North,” affirms Count Saporta, “could primitive humanity have radiated as from a center to spread into the several continents at once and to give rise to successive emigrations toward the south. This theory best agrees with the presumed march of the human races.”[468]

At the North Pole of the earth, therefore, “the sacred quarter of the world,” “the navel of the earth,” “the mesomphalos,” “the umbilicus orbis terrarum,” are we to look for the long lost Eden, for the cradle of mankind. There where the aurora borealis is seen in all its splendor, under a canopy formed by palpitating and wafting draperies, quivering curtains and shining streamers of primatic hues of varying intensity and matchless brilliancy our first parents spent the first happy days of their existence and there, amid a frozen desolation lie buried the “hearthstone of Humanity’s earliest and loveliest home.”[469]

But the views of those who have located Paradise in “the fairie North” have been no more satisfactory than the contentions of those who have placed it on the elevated plateau of the Andes, or on the top of a cloud-piercing mountain of farther India or beneath the shifting sands of the Sahara or in the fabled Atlantis or in some mythical Hyperborean land which has been ice bound for a million years or more. Far from it. So fascinating, however, is the subject that men of science still continue the quest of humanity’s original dwelling place and still elaborate theories respecting its location that are quite as fantastic as were those of the speculators and paradox mongers of the past. Thus, according to Hasse, it was in Prussia on the shores of the Baltic; Herder imagined it to have been in Cashmere; Livingstone sought it in equatorial Africa and hoped to find it at the headwaters of the Nile, if he could be fortunate enough to discover them. Daumer maintained that it was in Australia whence man emigrated to America and thence, by way of Behring’s Straits, to Asia and Europe.

The eminent anthropologist, Quaterfages de Bréau, is disposed to consider the lofty plateau of Pamir as the original hearthstone of mankind.[470] This is also the view of the distinguished Orientalist, François Lenormant, whose investigations have led him to believe that the four rivers—the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates—which watered Gan-Eden, or Paradise, were what are now known as the Indus, the Oxus, the Tarin, and the Jaxartes.[471]

Here, too, curiously enough, on this “Roof of the world”; on this “central Boss of Asia,” is the spot where the puranas locate the holy Mount Meru, the primeval Aryan Paradise; the center, according to the traditions of the Parsees, whence radiated the first Aryan migrations, and one of the regions of the earth which even Mohammedan teaching has assigned as the cradle-land of our species.[472]

From the foregoing opinions entertained by divers authors the reader can infer how prominent a part wild conjecture, unbridled fancy, and love of learned paradox have played in the numerous investigations which at various times have been made with a view of determining the geographical seat of Paradise. And, be it remembered, allusion has been made to only a few of the opinions that have in times past been promulgated respecting humanity’s pristine home. Nearly a hundred different theories regarding the birthplace of our race have been advocated at one time or another, practically all of which are now discarded as highly fanciful or supremely ridiculous.

Must we, then, as many have done, look upon the Garden of Eden as a religious or a philosophic myth? Has modern research—especially research in the domain of the new science of Assyriology—done nothing toward clearing up the mystery which has so long enveloped the site of the Biblical Paradise, or are we forever to renounce all hope of even an approximate solution of the great enigma? Not at all. We can still say with the Florentine Poet, Leonardo Dati:

Asia è la prima parte dove l’unomo,

Sendo innocente stava in Paradiso.

And leaving out of consideration the vagaries of certain transformists and polygenists and the lucubrations of certain noted paradoxers like those just referred to, it may be asserted of a truth that the general consensus of the highest and most trustworthy authorities is agreed in locating the cradle of humanity somewhere in that part of Asia which is embraced by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

There would, probably, never have been much doubt about this matter, at least on the part of Scriptural scholars, had it not been for the imperfect geographical knowledge of early Christian writers and for the errors that had been given currency by The Seventy in their version of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. They made no mistake about the Tigris and the Euphrates, which were well known to them, but when it came to the Phison and the Gehon they went completely astray and gave to these two rivers an interpretation which was accepted without question by even the most learned Biblical exegetes for more than a thousand years. For, in their identification of the Phison with the Ganges and the Gehon with the Nile, they so confused all researches respecting the actual site of the Terrestrial Paradise that it was not until long centuries afterwards that students of the Genesiac narrative bethought themselves of making a more serious study of the Sacred Text.

Reading carefully the second chapter of Genesis they discovered that many had been misled by a misunderstanding of the eighth verse. There, according to the Vulgate, it is stated that “the Lord God planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning.” But a careful examination of the Hebrew word, mid-quedem, which is here made to signify the beginning, should, they found, indicate space rather than time. The real sense of the words above quoted should, therefore, be: “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.” And they furthermore discovered that the word mid-quedem meant eastward from Palestine and not, as some had imagined, eastward from Babylonia.[473]

The site of Eden, it now seemed clear, should be sought for eastward of Palestine where the writer of the Genesiac narrative lived and somewhere between the well-known rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. This greatly reduced the area in which the Terrestrial Paradise was presumed to have been located. For, if the Biblical account of Eden was to be interpreted literally, it necessarily followed that it must have been placed somewhere in that peninsular tract of land which is included between the Tigris and the Euphrates and which extends from their sources—very near each other—in the highlands of Armenia to their confluence in the lowlands of Babylonia near the Persian Gulf.

Guided by these indications of the narrative of Genesis, the learned Benedictine, Dom Calmet, fancied that the seat of Paradise was in the rich plateau of Armenia where even to-day are found some of the most fertile valleys in the world. This opinion, it is avouched by the followers of the distinguished Benedictine, is corroborated by a popular tradition in Armenia which locates the Garden of Eden in the oasis of Ordubad, on the right bank of the Aras.[474]

The four rivers, according to Dom Calmet’s theory, which watered Paradise, are the Tigris and the Euphrates—whose sources are only an hour’s journey from each other—and the Phasis and Araxes mentioned by Pliny and Strabo. It is interesting to note that the sources of all four of these rivers are very near one another, but it is still more interesting to observe that the land which is watered by the Phasis and which is supposed, according to Calmet’s theory, to be the Hevilath of Genesis, “where gold groweth,” corresponds with the Colchis whither the Argonauts sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece.

An objection to this theory is that it does not harmonize with the words of Genesis which declare that the river which went out of Paradise “is divided into four heads,” that is, into four branches. The natural meaning of these words is that the four rivers mentioned in the Edenic narrative had one and the same source. But each river, as has been said, has its own distinct source. The only answer that the defenders of the theory have been able to give is one that is warranted by no known fact—namely that past revolutions of the earth’s surface have materially changed the topography of the original site of the Garden of Eden.[475]

There were many other objections to the theory which located the Paradise of Delights at the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Not the least of these was the rigorous climate of the Armenian uplands. For this reason, and for others that need not here be specified, scholars began to consider more favorably the hypothesis which placed the Garden of Eden somewhere in southern Babylonia. Among the first of these was John Calvin. He identifies the Gehon and the Phison with the Tigris and the Euphrates, in as much as he gives the names Gehon and Phison to the two lower reaches of these rivers, which connect the Shat-el-Arab with the Persian Gulf.[476] But Calvin’s theory regarding the location of Paradise is at variance with the words of the Sacred Text while his assumption of the antiquity of the two channels which connect the Shat-el-Arab with the Persian Gulf is completely negatived by the teachings of science respecting the recent formation of these watercourses.

The first one who ventured to state precisely in what part of Babylonia Eden was located was Pierre Daniel Huet, the learned bishop of Avranches. This he did in his celebrated Tractatus de Situ Paradisi, a book which had so great a vogue that it passed through many editions and was translated into several languages. So clear to him were the indications of the Genesiac narrative respecting the site of Paradise that he declares “I have often marveled that interpreters have shut their eyes to them and have worried with many and so various conjectures which were so little in keeping with the plain words of the Sacred Text.” As for himself he had no doubt about the site of the Garden of Eden. He was sure he could indicate the exact spot where the first pair lived before the fall. It was, he opined, in a bend of the river now known as the Shat-el-Arab and at a point which, according to Ptolemy’s map, is located in latitude 32° 39´ and in longitude 80° 10´. This, as the map drawn to illustrate his view shows, was near Aracca—the Erech of Scripture.

Huet’s view as to the location of Paradise was essentially the same as that of Calvin whose theory was closely followed not only by the theologians of Louvain but also by Joseph Scaliger—the father of modern chronology—and by other scholars innumerable. But, although the good bishop thought he had determined the exact spot where the first human pair first saw the light of day and, although very many of his contemporaries seemed to share his views, it was not long until other hypotheses were promulgated regarding the much disputed site of humanity’s original home. Not counting, however, the fanciful and ingenious speculations of certain authors already mentioned, the general consensus of scholars, since the time of Dom Calmet, seems to have favored southern Babylonia as the land in which “the Lord God planted” the ever-mysterious, the ever-elusive Garden of Eden.

This is particularly true since investigators have had the powerful aid of the new and all-important sciences of geology and Assyriology. They have eliminated many fantastic notions that so long marred the works of the most serious men of science and have shown that certain assumptions formerly made by exegetes must now be regarded as quite impossible. And the general trend of these two sciences has been to illumine and corroborate the much debated statements of the second chapter of Genesis in the most unexpected manner.

Thus, one of the oldest accounts of Creation, as given in a cuneiform inscription discovered some decades ago by the noted Orientalist, T. F. Pinches, “carries us directly to Babylonia. In this the creation of the earth is but a preparation for that of the Garden which stood eastward in Eden, in the center, it would seem of the world. The garden was watered by a river which after fulfilling its work was parted into ‘four heads’ and flowed in four different streams. Of these two were the great rivers of the Babylonian plain, the Tigris and the Euphrates; the others bear names which have not yet been identified with certainty.

“The scenery, however, is entirely Babylonian. The Eden itself, in which the garden was planted, was the plain of Babylonia. This we know from the evidence of the cuneiform texts. It was called by its inhabitants Edinu, a word borrowed by the Semites from the Accado-Sumerian edin, ‘the (fertile) plain.’ To the East of it lay the land of the ‘nomads,’ termed Nod in Genesis and Manda in the inscriptions. The river which watered the Garden was the Persian Gulf, known to the Babylonians as ‘the river,’ or more fully ‘the bitter’ or ‘salt river.’ It was regarded as the source of the four other rivers whose ‘heads’ were the spots where they flowed into the source which at once received and fed them.”[477]

Regarding the rivers which are mentioned in the Edenic narrative, Mr. Sayce, the distinguished Orientalist, seems to have no doubt. Chief among them are the Tigris and the Euphrates whose names date back to early Accadian times. “Though it is questionable,” he writes, “whether the names of the Pison and the Gihon have hitherto been detected on the cuneiform monuments, it is not difficult to determine the rivers with which they must be identified.“[478] These rivers, he endeavors to show, must have been the Kerkhah, the Choaspes of the classical writers, and a stream which is now represented by the Pallakopas Canal. In the first of these two rivers he sees the Gehon of Genesis which ”compasseth the whole land of Cush,” while in the second he recognizes the Phison which “compasseth the whole land of Havilah.”

As to the location of Eden it was, according to Accado-Sumerian inscriptions, near the sacred city of Eridu which, some six thousand years ago, was “the great seaport of Babylonia,” but of which nothing now remains but “the rubbish heaps of Abu-Shahrein.” “When Eridu still stood on the seacoast,” continues Sayce, “not only the Tigris but other rivers also flowed into the Persian Gulf. The great salt ‘river,’ as it was termed, received the waters of four in all at no great distance from the walls of Eridu.”[479]

As seen from the foregoing paragraphs, Sayce like Calvin, Huet, and many other scholars, also places the Garden of Eden in southern Babylonia and only about twenty miles from the spot so confidently indicated by the scholarly bishop of Avranches as the site of the Terrestrial Paradise.

No less interesting than Sayce’s view, which is based entirely on the teachings of Assyriology, is the conclusion arrived at by the noted Canadian investigator, J. W. Dawson, from data supplied by the science of geology of which he was a recognized master. With Sayce he agrees that the Kerkhah is the Gehon of Genesis but contends that the river Karun, instead of the Pallakopas Canal, as his English confrère maintains, is the Phison.

We thus find, that if we place our ancient geographer [the author of the second chapter of Genesis] where he places himself, and suppose he refers to the Euphrates and the three principal rivers confluent with it near its entrance into the Persian Gulf, we obtain a clear idea of his meaning and find that, whatever the sources of his information respecting the antediluvian Eden, he had correct ideas of the Idinu of his own time and of its surrounding inhabitants. According to him, the primitive seat of man was in the south of the Babylonian plain, in an irrigated district of great fertility and having in its vicinity mountain tracts abounding in such mineral products as were of use to primeval man.[480]

Curiously enough, it is near the locality designated by Huet and Sayce and Dawson as the site of the Garden of Eden that an age-old tradition of the Babylonian Arabs has located the Terrestrial Paradise. For it is at Kurna at the present confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris, a spot noted for its beautiful and stately date palms—trees so characteristic of southern Babylonia where its fruit has always formed the staple food of its inhabitants—that this tradition places the pristine home of Adam and Eve. Aside from any legends that might have been associated with it, its lovely palm grove must have made so strong an impression on the swarthy sons of the desert that they naturally concluded that it could have been naught else but a beautiful vestige of the original Garden of Eden where the first human pair enjoyed supreme happiness during their short life of original innocence.

The great difficulty in localizing the site of the Terrestrial Paradise has hitherto arisen from the impossibility of identifying with any degree of certainty the rivers Gehon and Phison. Assyriologists, however, are optimistic enough to believe that some document will eventually be discovered among the cuneiform inscriptions still buried beneath the ruins of ancient Babylonia that shall settle this long controverted question to the satisfaction of the most critical investigator.

But, in the absence of the tablet or monument which is to supply us with the eagerly sought information respecting these two puzzling rivers, exegetes and historians, geologists and archæologists, Assyriologists and anthropologists still continue their quest of some clue that may enable them to solve the riddle which has hitherto so completely baffled every attempt at its solution.

Among the most distinguished of recent scholars who have essayed to clear up the mystery are the German savants, E. Glaser and F. Hommel. The former, as the result of a careful study of the geographical indications given in the cuneiform inscriptions, arrives at a conclusion which, so far as it respects two of the rivers named in the Biblical account of Eden, is toto cœlo different from that of any of his predecessors in this fascinating field of inquiry. For he insists, surprising as it may seem, that the Gehon is the Wadi al-Rummah and the Phison the Wadi Dawasir which, in early post-glacial times were two great rivers that, after flowing eastward through central Arabia, became confluent with the Tigris and the Euphrates at a point near the Persian Gulf. This was, we are told, when Arabia, now a sun-parched desert, was a land of magnificent forests and luxuriant vegetation; of extensive and fertile prairies watered by frequent rains; of a temperate and equable climate—an ideal home for a people who were yet ignorant of the arts of civilized life and whose only shelter was abodes of the most primitive type. Glaser, however, agrees with those of his predecessors who locate the Garden of Eden in southern Babylonia.[481]

Professor Hommel, of Munich, goes still farther for, not content with identifying the Gehon and the Phison with the two wadis demanded by his learned compatriot’s novel theory, he contends that the Hiddikel of Genesis—usually called the Tigris—was none other than the Wady Sirhan which traverses northern Arabia and anciently emptied its waters into the Euphrates near Kufah.[482] According to this theory, the three Arabic rivers mentioned formerly discharged their waters into a shallow estuary at points not far distant from one another. This estuary has long since been replaced by the alluvial land of southern Babylonia and through it the lower bed of the Euphrates now passes on its way to the Persian Gulf. Like Huet, Sayce, Dawson, and Glaser, Hommel also teaches that the Garden of Eden must be sought in the Babylonian lowland and somewhere near the confluence of the three Arabian rivers just mentioned with the lower Euphrates.

All these eminent exegetes and men of science—and countless others might be named—are at one with Prince Caetani—justly esteemed for his contributions to our knowledge of the Near East—when he declares that the description of the Terrestrial Paradise, as given in the Sacred Text, in no wise “alludes to an imaginary place, but, on the contrary delineates with great precision a real and determinate locality in western Asia. This it does not only by naming the four rivers which arise in it but also by specifying the countries watered by them and by giving a list of their principal products.

“It is clear that the author of the Genesiac narrative had in view a place that was well known and that he took pains to describe it so minutely that there could be no doubt whatever regarding the country which he wished to indicate.”[483]

But of all the recent works which locate the site of Eden in Babylonia none has attracted more attention or produced a profounder impression than Professor Delitzsch’s masterly Wo Lag das Paradies. The fact that its author is recognized as the most eminent of contemporary Assyriologists and as one who has in lower Mesopotamia made a careful and special topographical study of the region which he designates as Gan-Eden and in which he places the Terrestrial Paradise, gives to his interpretation of the Genesiac record respecting the Garden of Eden an importance that no one can ignore. In his opinion the four rivers mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis are the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the two watercourses now known as the Shatt en-Nil, which he maintains corresponds with the Gehon, and the Pallakopas Canal which he identifies with the Phison. I refer the reader to the author’s work for his reasons for arriving at these conclusions. The interesting fact is that he agrees with the other eminent scholars above-mentioned in placing Gan-Eden—the Hebrew name for the Garden of Eden—in Southern Babylonia, although slightly farther northward than do some of the other noted workers in the same field of research. According to the interesting map, at the end of the volume, with which the learned professor has illustrated his book, Gan-Eden occupied the tract of land between Bagdad and Babylon. This is where the Tigris and the Euphrates most nearly approach each other before their final confluence much farther towards the south.[484]

Were we, then, really traversing the Garden of Eden on our way from the city of the Caliphs to the capital of Nebuchadnezzar? Tradition and legend, history, geology and Assyriology, as interpreted by the most eminent scholars of our time answer in the affirmative. Needless to say, I loved to think so. Indeed, during our entire journey through this mysterious land which has filled so large a page in the annals of our race, I thought of little else. Fancy was active. I needed only to close my eyes to surrounding realities to feel that I was literally wandering through the fragrant and mystic groves of Paradise. I was as a music lover under the spell of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or as one entranced by the sublime harmonies of Wagner’s Parsifal. Oblivious of my actual environment and indifferent, for the time being, to the theories and hypotheses of men of science respecting the site of the Terrestrial Paradise, I thought only of the simple narrative of Genesis and the pictures, based upon it, which, in my early youth, my imagination was wont to portray of the home of our first parents. I recalled Dante’s description of the beauties of the Paradise where he met his beloved Beatrice, from whom he had been so long separated and where he was made

Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.[485]

Yes, youthful impressions and poetic fancies embalmed in immortal verse meant more to me than did the latest teachings of geologists and Assyriologists with all their display of learning and cocksureness. This was particularly true when we first caught sight of the palm-fringed Euphrates and the sand-mantled ruins of Babylon. The Euphrates is the one river which the great majority of serious students have always held was, without doubt, one of the four rivers of Eden. And Babylon, I hardly know why, I have always looked upon as being as intimately associated with the cradle of our race as is the Euphrates. Both of them were then to me tangible landmarks on the site of the Terrestrial Paradise and when I read Wo Lag das Paradies I could not but hope that future researches would prove that the scholarly Berlin Professor had at last succeeded in locating the site of humanity’s birthplace and, in so doing, had definitively solved one of the greatest riddles of the ages.

And as we came near to Hillah—which is supposed to have formed a part of Babylon in the days of its greatness—and caught our first view of its magnificent groves of date palms, I loved to fancy that they were, as the Talmud teaches, the actual scions of those which flourished in the “Garden of God” and which supplied food and shelter to the father and mother of mankind.

But a more charming sight was awaiting us. It was a beautiful garden adjoining the home where a kindly and well-to-do Arab gave us hospitality while we visited Babylon and its vicinity. In this garden were stately date palms, waving lazily in the soft and scented breeze, orange and other trees laden with golden fruits, and the plantain named the Musa Paradisaica[486] and countless flowers of most gorgeous colors and most grateful fragrance. How vividly this garden recalled the one by God “in the East of Eden planted,” of which Milton sings:

In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant Garden God ordain’d;
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow

All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste.

And how a favored nook, distinguished by a riot of flowers, caused this fair garden to remind us still more vividly of the blissful bower where our first parents found their happiest and most blissful home! Watered by “many a rill” of the Edenic river which flowed gently by it,

It was a place

Chosen by the sov’reign planter, when he framed

All things to man’s delightful use; the roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus and each odorous, bushy shrub,

Fenced up the verdant wall, each beauteous flower,

Iris all hues, roses and jessamin

Rear’d high their flourish’d heads between and wrought

Mosaic; under foot the violet,

Crocus and hyacinth with rich inlay

Broider’d the ground, more color’d than with stone

Of costliest emblem.[487]

Yes, as I contemplated the stately trees and ravishing shrubs and blooms of this lovely garden on the sweetly murmuring Euphrates, I wished to believe that the tradition which located Paradise at or near this spot was well founded and that I was actually gazing on some of the floral and arboreal descendants of those which here sheltered

Adam, the goodliest man of men since born

His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.

I wished also to believe that we here saw a remnant of that spot which was a prototype of the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed and what was a type and figure of the Celestial Paradise and of the home of Our Father in Heaven.

CHAPTER XVIII
BABYLON

A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon
Spreads o’er the blasted plain;
The wandering Arab never sets his tent
Within her walls; the shepherd eyes afar

Her evil towers, and devious drives his flock.

Alone unchanged, a free and bridgeless tide,

Euphrates rolls along,

Eternal nature’s work.

Southey.

Hillah was founded by the Arabs in the eleventh century of our era and is said by some to occupy the southern part of the site of ancient Babylon. Aside from its interesting legends and traditions—many of them connected with the Tower of Babel and the famed capital of Nebuchadnezzar—its chief attraction for us was the number and beauty of its date palms. Some of them were, doubtless, descendants of those noble trees which once graced the gardens and orchards of Babylon in the meridian of her splendor and which supplied her people with an important part of their nutriment. And, if Delitzsch’s theory regarding the site of the Garden of Eden be true, it is reasonable to suppose that some of the stately palms that now adorn the gardens of Hillah are scions of trees that once raised their graceful fronds high above the humbler plants and shrubs of the Terrestrial Paradise.

Nowhere in the world, not even in the valley of the Nile or in the fertile oases of Algeria, will one find such magnificent groves of date palms as one sees along the lower course of the Euphrates. On the west bank of the Shat-el-Arab, in the humid district of Pasra, there are more than sixty varieties of date palms while the number of trees is estimated to run into hundreds of millions. It is, indeed, from this region that are exported most of the dates of commerce.

But these nourishing and delicately flavored fruits are not a modern staple of commerce. Way back in early Babylonian times “dates of Akkad,” as they are called in cuneiform invoices of the period, were exported in exchange for gold, sheep, and oxen. With corn and flocks and herds they were among the principal sources of the country’s wealth. The early Babylonian kings specially encouraged the development of date plantations and it is related of a certain governor that he considered the planting of palms as among the most notable achievements of his administration.

And there was reason for attaching so much importance to the cultivation of the palm, because it is not only “the prince of the vegetable world,” as Humboldt declared, but also the most useful of all known trees. For it not only supplies the oriental with one of his chief articles of diet but also furnishes him with bread and wine, meal and vinegar, sugar and fuel, matting and cordage, cages and baskets, chairs, benches, beds, and other articles of household furniture and material for the construction of the house in which he lives. So manifold, indeed, are the uses of the date palm that Strabo informs us that a Persian poem enumerates no fewer than three hundred and sixty valuable properties of the palm.

We have seen how dependent the oriental is on the horse and the camel, especially the latter. But the date palm is no less essential to his well-being than the camel. What an incomparable blessing it is in his eyes is evinced by an eastern saying: “The palm is the camel and the camel the palm of the desert.” And so highly does he revere it as a gift of God that he would regard the wanton injury of the palm tree as nothing less than a mortal sin.

“Honor the palm,” enjoins Mohammed, “for it is your maternal aunt; on the stony soil of the desert it offers you a fruitful source of sustenance.” And it is to be noted that this noble tree has followed Islam in all its conquests and is now to be found in every clime which is favorable to its growth in which the followers of the Prophet have made their homes. But the high estimation in which this useful tree is universally held in the East is shown by an Arabian legend which declares that it was from the slime that surrounded a date palm that God formed the first man.

It is not, then, surprising that a tree that plays so important a rôle in the life of the oriental should never be long absent from his thoughts, especially when away from the land of his fathers. For, as the Swiss when abroad longs for his native mountains, so does the Arab pine for the stately palms whose feathery and umbrageous crowns are to him synonyms of home and sweet repose.

Abd-er-Rahman I, the founder of the Ommiad Caliphate of Cordova, was unable to endure in Spain the absence of the beautiful tree which had been the delight of his youth. He, accordingly, had a young palm brought from Syria and planted in the garden of his villa at Rusafah. It was to this tree, the lovely reminder of his native land, that the homesick Caliph addressed these pathetic verses:

Oh, Palm, like me a stranger here,
An exile in the alien west,
Driven from home and dispossessed—

But, ah! thou’rt mute, nor canst thou shed a tear.

Happy to have no sentient soul!

Heart-ache like mine thou canst not know;

Could’st thou but feel, thy tears would flow

In yearning love and grief, without control.

Aye, homesick tears for eastern groves
That shade Euphrates; but the tree
Forgets; and I, compelled to flee
By hate, almost forget my former loves.

When one reads these impassioned verses, one recalls the touching lines of the poet Juvenal who, in his exile in Dyene, wrote:

Mollissima corda

Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur

Quæ lacrymas dedit; hæc nostri pars optima sensus.[488]

The words of the exiled Roman seem almost a commentary on those of the homesick Arab.

As we were leaving Hillah for the ruins of Babylon, our attention was arrested by a group of happy, laughter-loving children. Having always been specially interested in the children of the Near East, particularly in those of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, we stopped to learn the cause of their mirth. We found them intently engaged in various games which seemed to afford them the keenest delight. But what was our surprise to find that the favorite games of these sunburnt children in the immediate vicinity of the ruins of Babylon were just the same as the games that are so popular among the boys and girls of America. And stranger still, many of them were quite the same as I had frequently seen played by Indian children on the plateau of the Andes and in the wilds of Brazil. The boys played ball and marbles and leap-frog, while the girls were equally preoccupied with tag, cat’s cradle, and hopscotch.

It would be interesting to know if there was any Babylonian blood in these Hillah children—they seemed to be pure Arabs—and if the games which afforded them such exquisite pleasure were in vogue among the young folk of Babylon in the days of Paltasar and Hammurabi. I commend these subjects to those ardent folklorists who love to trace the nursery tales which so delight the child of to-day back to times primeval.[489]

Our first objective, after leaving Hillah, was the mound of Babil which lies in the northern part of the ruins of Babylon. Most of the land between Hillah and the ruins of the ancient world capital is desolate in the extreme. Not a single human habitation is visible. And yet we were traversing what was during thousands of years the richest and most carefully cultivated tract of land in the world and the one, too, that had the densest population. Now it is untilled and as abandoned as the Arabian desert but a few miles to the westward. The only evidence that we were actually on the site of a once great city were the fragments of pottery and inscribed bricks and the heaps of rubbish which cumbered the ground and the innumerable mounds, high and low, which covered a region many square miles in area.

We saw nothing to remind us of the majestic ruins of Pæstum or Girgenti; no magnificent temples, no stately columns, or impressive pediments or friezes or entablatures. In the mounds which have not yet been changed by the pick and spade of the explorer we could note only occasional traces of brick walls but not the slightest vestige of stone or marble. No remains of temples or palaces or buildings of any kind. All the marvelous structures described by Ctesias and Herodotus had long since disappeared beneath the drifting sands of the desert.

As one contemplates these mounds, beneath which lay the ruined palaces and temples and strongholds of the proud Kings of Chaldea, they have, in the words of the illustrious German explorer, Dr. Robert Koldewey, “the appearance of a mountainous country in miniature; heights, summits, ravines and tablelands are all here.”[490] The landscape is, indeed, such as one might fancy to exist on the planetoid Ceres or Vesta.

We asked an Arab who accompanied us how the potsherds and fragments of vitrified bricks which littered the ground were brought here and he promptly replied—“By the Deluge.” “A foolish answer,” one will say, but it is the same answer that was given by learned men only a few generations ago to account for the occurrence of fossils on the summit of the Alps. And it is the same explanation that was given by the distinguished geologist, Buckland, of the remains of early man, which were found in many of the caverns of Europe. They were reliquæ Diluvianæ—relics of the Noachian Deluge—and the majority of the scientific men of his day were disposed to accept his conclusion as correct. It is, then, not so long ago that savants gave answers to questions that were quite as naïve as that of the untutored Arab of to-day.

But the Arabs who live in the neighborhood of Babylon tell more fantastic stories. They assure one that the ruins are haunted by evil spirits and by malignant jinn and that it is dangerous to wander among the ruins after nightfall.

They also declare that there is at the foot of one of the mounds here a rocky pit, although quite invisible to mortals, in which the wicked angels Harut and Marut were condemned by the Almighty to be suspended, in punishment for their sins, until the day of judgment.[491]

But more remarkable is their belief in the existence hereabouts of satyrs—creatures which are usually supposed to be creations of the mythologies of Greece and Rome. The natives are said to hunt them with dogs and to eat their lower half, although they decline to partake of the upper part on account of its resemblance to the human species.

As one contemplates the utter ruin and desolation which are here so overpowering and listens to the strange stories of the Arabs, one recalls the words of Isaiah—I quote from the King James version:

And Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs[492] shall dance there.

Babil is one of the loftiest eminences in southern Babylonia and it is for this reason that we visited it before any of the other parts of the ruined Chaldean capital. From its summit, which towers seventy-one feet above the surrounding plain, one has a magnificent view not only of the ruins as a whole but also of many notable features in their immediate vicinity. To the west and southwest are the palm-fringed Euphrates and a number of Arabian villages and gardens along its banks. Several miles southward is Hillah with its gleaming minaret, while some six miles towards the southwest of it is the famous tower of Borsippa, called by the natives Birs Nimrud, and long supposed by many European travelers to be identical with the tower of Babel “the top whereof was to reach to heaven.”[493]

The prospect that greets the vision of the spectator from Babil is always interesting, but to the student of sacred and profane history the word interesting but feebly expresses one’s emotions. This is particularly true when, at the hour of sunset, the long amethystine shadows cast on the dun-colored plain, bring out into bold relief the rich golden lines of the spell-weaving ruins of that great city which, in her glory, ruled over the kings of the eastern world. Then the prospect is absolutely thrilling. Then one loves to be in media solitudine—such a solitude as Babylon is to-day—to watch the magnificent sunset—a burnished-gold splendor shading up starward into delicate rubies and emeralds—to be alone with one’s thoughts while musing on the vanished glories of what was once earth’s proudest and most powerful capital, where for centuries

The gorgeous East with richest hand

Show’red on her Kings barbaric pearl and gold—

but of which all we can now say is contained in the words of a Greek comic poet, quoted by Strabo,—“the great city is a great desert.”[494]

Babil—from the old Semitic name Bab-ili—which signifies “The Gate of the Gods,” was the ancient name of the city of Babylon. As locally used it now designates the most northerly mound of the great city. It is, doubtless, because of its name that many travelers have mistaken it for the Tower of Babel spoken of in the eleventh chapter of Genesis.

Thus John Eldred, an English merchant-traveler, who, in the sixteenth century, made three journeys from Aleppo to Bagdad—which he calls New Babylon—speaks of seeing not only “at his goode leisure many olde ruines of the mightie citie of Babylon” but also of having “sundry times” visited “the olde tower of Babell.”[495] From his description, however, one would infer that the ruin which he took for the tower of Babel, was not the Babil of which we have been speaking but rather the imposing ruin of Akerkuf which is a few miles to the northwest of Bagdad, and which is locally called Nimrod’s Tower.[496]

The first European to give an elaborate description of Babil was Pietro della Valle.

Its situation and form [he writes] correspond with that pyramid which Strabo calls the Tower of Belus.... The height of this mountain of ruins is not in every part equal, but exceeds the highest palace of Naples. It is a misshapen mass, where there is no appearance of regularity. In some places it rises in sharp points, craggy and inaccessible; in others it is smoother and of easier ascent. There are also traces of torrents, caused by violent rains, from the summit to the base.[497]

The picture of this mound, which he had made by an artist who accompanied him, gives one a very good idea of what has been considered by many to be the Tower of Babel but which, after the noble Roman’s visit to it, was long known as Della Valle’s Ruin.[498]

But the excavations of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” under the direction of Dr. Koldewey have completely exploded all the theories that have hitherto obtained regarding the mound of Babil. Far from being the Tower of Babel, or Nimroud or Belus, as has been asserted by many writers and travelers, it is now demonstrated to be the ruin of one of the numerous palaces of Nebuchadnezzar. And it is highly probable that it is the structure to which this monarch refers in one of his inscriptions, in which he declares:

On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protection of Babylon.... I raised its summit ... with bricks and bitumen. I made it high as a mountain. Mighty cedar trunks I laid on it for roof. Double doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper, threshholds and hinges made of bronze did I set up in its doorways. That building I named “May Nebuchadnezzar live, may he grow old as the restorer of Esagila.”[499]

There were, however, other ruins that have at various times been identified with the Tower of Babel. Among these, as has been stated, was that of Borsippa, commonly called Birs-Nimrud, which lies some six miles southwest of Hillah. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited these parts in the twelfth century, speaks of it as “the tower built by the dispersed generation” and declares that it was struck by a heavenly fire which “split it to the very foundation”[500]—a description that is quite applicable to its present appearance.

The distinguished explorers Carsten Niebuhr, Claudius Rich, and Robert Ker Porter were also of the opinion that in Birs-Nimrud “we see the very tower of Babel, the stupendous artificial mountain erected by Nimrod in the plain of Shinar and on which in after ages Nebuchadnezzar raised the temple of Belus.”[501]

That the tower of Babel and that of Belus [writes Porter, in the work just quoted from] were one and the same, I presume there hardly exists a doubt. And that the first stupendous work was suddenly arrested before completion we learn not only from the Holy Scriptures but from several other ancient authors in direct terms ... and almost every testimony agrees in stating that the primeval tower was not only stopped in its progress but partially overturned by the Divine wrath, attended by thunder and lightning and a mighty wind, and that the rebellious men who were its builders fled in horror and confusion of face before the preternatural storm.... In this ruined and abandoned state most likely the tower remained till Babylon was refounded by Semiramis; who, in harmony with her character, would feel a proud triumph in repeopling the city with a colony from the posterity of those who had fled from it in dismay and, covering the shattered summit of the great pile with some new erection, would there place her observatory and altar to Bel.[502]

But the tradition which identifies the tower of Birs-Nimrud with that of Babel, which is often spoken of as “the oldest building in the world,” rests on no better foundation than does that which would make Babil the tower whose progress was arrested by “the confusion of tongues.” The researches of Assyriologists, which have thrown such a flood of light on many Scriptural subjects, have so far been unable to identify the Tower of Babel, or to indicate where the famous structure was located. Neither the renown of the tower of Babil nor that of Borsippa proves that either of them was the famous tower begun by the ambitious descendants of Noah in the plain of Shinar, for the populace, especially in the East, “is fickle-minded in this as in other matters and holy fanes have the periods when they are in the fashion, just like everything else.”[503]

Incredible as it may seem, as much ignorance long prevailed among the learned of Europe respecting the site of the city of Babylon as about that of the tower which was generally supposed to be located either within its walls or in its immediate neighborhood. Writing about the famed capital of Nebuchadnezzar at the beginning of the last century, a learned English scholar declared, “Well indeed may the glory of this renowned place be said to have departed when even its site cannot with precision be ascertained and when the antiquary and the traveler are alike bewildered amid the perplexity of their researches.”[504] The same author expresses the same opinion in different words when he writes of Babylon, called Babel by the Arabs, that “its vast remains lay for ages in the depths of time as much forgotten by the learned of Europe as if it had been a city of the antediluvians.”[505] Even the Turkish geographer, Djihannuma, was so in the dark about the location of the ruins of Babylon that he placed them at Teluja, nearly eighty miles northwest of their actual site.

How great was the ignorance of Europeans during the Middle Ages regarding the capital of the ancient world may be gathered from a statement of Sir John Mandeville, who tells his readers that “Babylone is in the grete desertes of Arabye, upon the waye as men gon toward the kyndome of Caldee. But it is fulle longe sithe ony man durste neyhe to the toure, for it is alle deserte and full of dragons and grete serpentes and fulle deverse veneymouse bestes alle abouten.”

Even in the second part of the last century the distinguished Orientalist, Oppert, head of the French expedition to Mesopotamia in the years 1851 to 1854,[506] was entirely in error as to the site of Babylon. Influenced, no doubt, by the accounts of Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and other classical writers regarding the vast extent of Babylon, he made it to embrace both Babil and Birs-Nimrud, which are full fifteen miles apart from each other, and to include an area that the researches of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” have demonstrated to be preposterously large.[507]

But, in order fully to realize how greatly the size of Babylon was exaggerated by the ancient writers and to understand how this capital of thousands of years was able, throughout the ages, to cast so great a spell upon the peoples of the earth, one must briefly consider some of their statements respecting its vastness and magnificence. Only in this way is it possible to appreciate the glamour that has so long attached to it and to discover the reasons for the countless legends and romances to which it has given rise since the days of Nebuchadnezzar and Semiramis.

Of the ancient writers who have given us the most minute descriptions of Babylon, Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus are the most deserving of notice. As Herodotus spent some time in the city and was an eye-witness of what he describes he is, notwithstanding the charges of credulity and exaggeration which have frequently been made against him in certain of his statements, more trustworthy than are those authors who wrote only from hearsay.

What most impressed the writers of antiquity who have given us the most graphic descriptions of the Babylonian capital was its stupendous walls and the vast area which the city embraced. According to Herodotus, who is followed by Pliny, who evidently accepted the measurements of the Greek historian, the wall which girdled this wonderful metropolis was seventy-five feet in thickness and three hundred feet in height.

On the top, along the edges of this wall were constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to drive round. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts.[508]

Such a prodigious wall seems impossible, but when we remember the Great Wall of China, which has nearly thirty times the length of that which Herodotus says surrounded Babylon, we cannot insist that the historian’s account is inherently improbable. But when we know that the Babylonian wall was composed almost exclusively of sun-dried bricks we feel compelled to doubt the writer’s measurements for the simple reason that it was quite impossible for the material used to support a structure of so great a height. It is true that Nebuchadnezzar, in a notable inscription, describes his wall as “mountains high,” but this is a bit of hyperbole in which the self-glorifying monarch was wont frequently to indulge. His statement is quite as much of an exaggeration as that of Diodorus Siculus,[509] who declares that Semiramis, to whom he attributes this colossal work, employed two million men in building the wall of Babylon and that she built it at the rate of a furlong a day and had it completed in the space of a single year.

The circumference of the immense wall of Babylon, according to Herodotus, measured no less than four hundred and eighty statia—somewhat more than fifty-three miles. Ctesias, however, makes the circuit of the city but a trifle more than forty miles. In either case the area enclosed by the wall was enormous and far greater than that included within the extended walls of Paris or within those of Nanking, which is the largest city site in China.

The city of Babylon [writes Herodotus] is an exact square, but certain recent investigators maintain that it was in the form of a rectangle twelve miles wide and fifteen miles long. But whatever the form of the city, the estimates given of its area by ancient authors have appeared to many modern scholars so staggering that they have contended that it was an inclosed district rather than a regular city, the streets which are said to have led from gate to gate across the area being no more than roads through cultivated land over which buildings were distributed in groups and patches.[510]

Quintus Curtius asserts positively “that the enclosure contained sufficient pasture and arable land to support the whole population during a long siege.”[511]

If such was the case we should be forced to conclude that the population of the city was out of all proportion to its size. The English geographer, Rennell,[512] is disposed to allow to Babylon during its most flourishing period a population of a million and a quarter, but this is but a surmise, and all estimates of the number of inhabitants in the great city are, at best, the merest conjectures.

For nearly twenty-five centuries the accounts of Ctesias, Strabo, Herodotus, and the writers who accompanied Alexander the Great to the East were our sole authorities respecting the size and the magnificence of the great capital on the Euphrates. Since, however, the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” have begun to publish the results of their carefully conducted excavations we find that we must greatly modify many of our views concerning the city about which there has been so much legend and romance, and envisage it in the light of the cold, scientific facts which have been submitted to us, as the results of long research, by Dr. Koldewey and his scholarly associates. While many of the descriptions of Herodotus and other early writers are found to be accurate, it is now clear that many of their measurements require very considerable revision. Thus, in lieu of the fifty-three miles which Herodotus has given as the circuit of the city and the forty miles at which Ctesias has estimated it, Dr. Koldewey finds that these figures must be reduced to eleven miles. The learned investigator noting that the circumference given by Ctesias approximates closely to four times the correct measurement is lead to suspect that the Greek writer “mistook the figures representing the whole circumference for the measure of one side of the square.”[513]

The excavations of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” seem, therefore, to prove conclusively that Babylon, far from covering an area so large that both Paris and London could find place within it, side by side, was in reality, as Delitzsch declares, no larger than Munich or Dresden.[514]

But in spite of the great reduction that Koldewey found himself compelled to make in the measurements of the classical writers he does not hesitate to declare “that, in any case, the city, even in circumference, was the greatest of any in the ancient East, Nineveh, which in other respects rivalled Babylon, not excepted.” He also pertinently observes that “it must always be remembered that an ancient city was primarily a fortress of which the inhabited part was surrounded and protected by the encircling girdle of the walls. Our modern cities are of an entirely different character; they are inhabited spaces open on all sides. A reasonable comparison can, therefore, only be made between Babylon and other walled cities and, when compared with them, Babylon takes the first place, as regards the extent of its enclosed and inhabited area, not only for ancient but also for modern times.”[515]

After spending some time on and round about the mound of Babil we proceeded to explore the ruins in the southern part of the city. On our way thither we strolled along the east bank of the Euphrates which, in places, is fringed with stately palms whose feathery crowns are always a delight to the eye. Indeed, the palm is so indispensable a feature of an eastern landscape that no picture of a town or a river seems complete without groves and clumps of this most picturesque of oriental trees. I was glad to find so many of them bordering the Euphrates and the western ruins of Babylon, as I had always imagined that they must here, more than anywhere else, be an essential part of the environment. But, although I was delighted to find so many of these noble trees, it was not for them that I was then specially looking. I was seeking rather a specimen of the weeping willow—the graceful Salix Babylonica—which, in my mind, has always been associated with what is the most pathetic threnody ever written in any language. I refer to the plaintive elegy of the Children of Israel during their captivity in Babylon. Seating myself under an umbrageous palm near a cluster of delicate weeping willows, I said to myself: “This is the one place in the world where one can best appreciate the overmastering sadness of the homesick exiles when their captors asked them to sing the songs of their native land.” And, taking my breviary from my pocket, I read again and again what then seemed to me the most affecting lines ever composed. Put yourself, in fancy, gentle reader, on the bank of the Euphrates in sight of the ruined palace of Nebuchadnezzar and read aloud the lamentation of the disconsolate Hebrews, as given in Psalm 137:

Upon the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion:

On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments. For there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs.

And they that carried us away said: Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion.

How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten.

Let my tongue cleave to my jaws if I do not remember thee:

If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy.

Is it possible to put in words a more soul-subduing “Home Sweet Home” than this affecting Super flumina Babylonis of the heart-broken captives of Israel? But it is only when it is sung in its beautifully rhythmic Hebrew that one can fully appreciate its depth of pathos and exceeding beauty of expression.

Our walk from Babil southward was one of rare delight and interest. It was through gardens and cultivated fields and attractive palm groves which occupied the greater part of the narrow strip of fertile land which separates the Euphrates from the great city of ruins. The methods employed in tilling the soil here are the same as those used in the days of the Jewish Captivity. There is the same primitive plow, the same process of treading out and winnowing grain, the same methods of irrigating the land as obtained when the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel were here the teachers and the consolers of their exiled countrymen.

The width of the Euphrates varies according to the season. As the rainfall in this subtropical land is rarely more than three inches a year, the river is quite shallow, except when its bed is filled by the annual flood from the mountains of Armenia. At Babylon it is rarely more than four hundred feet wide; and during the dry season its surface is considerably below its banks. For this reason the inhabitants from the earliest times have, in order to irrigate their lands, had recourse not only to canals but also to various devices for lifting water from a lower to a higher level. Among these contrivances are the dolab or chain pump, the na’ura or water wheel, and the djird, a huge leather bag, which, when filled with water is, by means of a simple machine operated by an ox, lifted the desired height and automatically emptied into the channel by which the field or garden is irrigated. The strident notes of these various water elevators and the accompanying songs of the native attendants are often the only sounds that penetrate the solemn stillness which reigns amid the venerable ruins that cover the ground from the mound of Babil on the north to the village of Djumdjuma in the southern part of Babylon.

Herodotus tells us that in his time the Euphrates divided the city into “two distinct portions.” But the present bed of the shifting river is considerably to the westward of that which existed in his day. As a result of this shifting, the western part of the city has almost completely disappeared, for nothing of it now remains on the right side of the present channel except slight vestiges of its once massive walls. The same writer also tells us that the two halves of the city were connected by a stone bridge which spanned the river near the center of the metropolis. He attributes this feat of engineering to Queen Nitocris, but, as there is no record of this queen, either in Berosus or in the Babylonian inscriptions, it is probable that Herodotus was misinformed about her existence, or that he had in mind Queen Amuita, the Median wife of Nebuchadnezzar, who is said to have suggested to her royal consort the construction of the famous hanging gardens which were long ranked among the seven wonders of the world. Diodorus,[516] however, will have it that the bridge was due to Semiramis, to whom antiquity ascribes many other of Babylon’s most notable works. But in spite of the determination of the ancient historian to give the credit of this remarkable achievement to a woman, and in spite of the denials of many modern writers that such a bridge ever existed, or that its construction was even possible in the age in which it is said to have been built, the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” in 1910 actually discovered incontestable remains of the much disputed bridge and demonstrated that its construction was due not to Nitocris, or Amuita, or Semiramis, but to the renowned Nebuchadnezzar or to his father, Nabopolassar.

At the spot once occupied by the eastern bridgehead of this notable structure we found ourselves on the famous Procession Street which was long one of the most remarkable features of Babylon. This was the street along which passed the great processions of Marduk-Merodach—the tutelar deity of the Chaldean capital, and of Nabu-Nebe—his son. In this respect it served the same purpose as the magnificent Via Sacra, which extended from Athens to Eleusis and which was used by the solemn Panathenaic procession which was annually held for the celebration, in the great Elusinian temple, of the impressive mysteries of Demeter, Iacchus, and Persephone. An inscribed brick recently found informs us of the part Nebuchadnezzar had in the construction of the Sacred Way of Babylon and gives us the characteristic prayer that he addressed to his gods, which reads:

Nabu and Marduc, when you traverse these streets in joy, may benefits for me rest upon your lips; life for distant days and well being for the body.... May I attain eternal age.[517]

Passing eastwards along Procession Street we soon find ourselves between the two ruins of the great temple of Merodack and of the famous Tower of Babylon.

In the temple, according to Herodotus, there was a sitting statue of Zeus—the name he gives to the god Merodach—all of gold. “Before the figure stands a large golden table and the throne whereon it sits and the base on which the throne is placed are likewise of gold”—the weight of the gold of these divers objects aggregating eight hundred talents.

Nebuchadnezzar, speaking of this temple, of which he calls himself “the fosterer,” says he adorned it with the wealth of the sea and the mountains and all conceivable valuables,—gold and silver and precious stones. The shrine of Merodach, he declares, “I made to gleam as the sun. The best of my cedars that I brought from Lebanon, the noble forest, I sought out for the roofing of the chamber of his lordship, which cedars I covered with gleaming gold. For the restoration of this temple I make supplication every morning to Merodach, the king of the gods, the lord of lords.” To judge from his inscriptions, it would be difficult to find a pagan king who was more prayerful or who exhibited greater devotion to his gods than did this proud ruler of old Babylonia.

It was in one of the sanctuaries of this temple, apparently in that of the god Ea, lord of wisdom and life and healer of the sick—whom the Greeks identified with Serapis—that the generals of Alexander the Great “asked the god whether it would be better and more desirable for Alexander,” who was then lying critically ill in a palace but a bowshot away, “to be carried into his temple in order as a suppliant to be cured by him. A voice issued from the god saying that he was not to be carried into the temple but that it would be better form to remain where he was. This answer was reported by the Companions and soon after Alexander died as if, forsooth, this were now the better thing.”[518]

Alexander had planned to make Babylon the capital of his world empire, but, shortly after taking possession of the city, his meteoric career in the prime of youthful manhood, was cut short by death, the only invincible foe he had ever encountered. His death was the downfall of the city whence he purposed to rule both Asia and Europe. One of his generals, Seleucus Nicator, succeeded him as ruler of Babylonia and soon thereafter transferred his capital from the banks of the sluggish Euphrates[519] to a new city, Seleucia, named after himself, which he had founded on the banks of the swift-flowing Tigris. And it was not long after this that the great metropolis of Babylonia, which for nearly two thousand years had been the leading capital of the ancient world and which had so long been “the glory of the kingdoms and the beauty of the Chaldees excellency” had literally, in the words of Isaiah, become the habitation of the wild beasts of the desert and was reduced to such a state of decay that, according to St. Jerome,[520] its walls, once the marvel of the world, served only to enclose a hunting park for the diversion of the Parthian Kings.

A furlong to the north of the temple of Merodach is the ruin of the famous tower of Babylon, which by many has been considered identical with the Tower of Babil. So colossal was it that the Babylonians called it “the foundation stone of heaven and earth,” and Nebuchadnezzar, who contributed materially towards its restoration and enlargement, declared in an inscription that he had raised the top of the tower “to rival heaven,” but this was a form of oriental exaggeration in which this monarch frequently indulged. Herodotus tells us that it was a stadium—six hundred feet “in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower and on that a third, and so on up to the eighth, above which there is a great temple.”[521] According to Strabo,[522] this quadrangular pyramid was “five hundred feet high”—nineteen feet higher than the great pyramid of Gizeh. As, however, the existing ruin of the tower of Babylon has not yet been excavated it is impossible, by actual measurements, to control the statements of ancient writers regarding its magnitude. But, from an old inscribed tablet which has been translated by the noted Orientalist, G. Smith, and more recently by Father Scheil, the distinguished French Dominican, we gather that the estimates of the Greek writers were probably excessive, for, according to the tablet in question, the summit of the tower was only three hundred feet above the surrounding plain.

Diodorus[523] informs us that this tower was used by the Chaldeans as an astronomical observatory. In the thick, dust-laden atmosphere of Babylonia, where sand storms are so frequent, such a lofty structure would be quite a necessity for the successful observations of the priest astronomers of Babylonia. “The greatly renowned clearness of the Babylonian sky,” as Koldewey truly observes, “is largely a fiction of European travelers who are rarely accustomed to observe the night sky of Europe without the intervention of city lights.”[524] Cicero, therefore, was quite as mistaken as modern travelers when he thought that the broad plains of Chaldea, where the sky was visible on all sides,[525] were specially favorable to star-gazing and the cultivation of astronomy. Equally misled was the poet who sang of Chaldean shepherds who

Watched from the centre of their sleeping flocks

Those radiant Mercuries that seemed to move,
Carrying through ether, in perpetual round,
Decrees and resolutions of the gods;
And, by their aspects, signifying works
Of dim futurity to man revealed.

No, it was not those shepherds “in boundless solitude” who “made report of stars,” but the Babylonian priests who, from the summits of their zikurrats, or temple-towers, laid the foundations, broad and deep, of the sublime science of astronomy centuries before Hipparchus and Ptolemy began those admirable investigations which have rendered them immortal.

All the ruins of Babylon which we had hitherto inspected had greatly impressed us, but we did not yet have a concrete idea of the greatness and splendor of the capital of the Babylonian Kings until we visited that part which the Arabs still call the Kasr, or castle. It was the great palace which was begun by Nabopolassar and completed by his illustrious son, Nebuchadnezzar. By the Roman historians it was called the Arx, by the Greeks the Acropolis. It served not only as a citadel but also as the favored residence of the king and as the approach to the great temple of Merodach, already referred to, which was the most famous sanctuary in Babylonia.

Not until we saw the wonderful ruins of the Kasr, which have in great measure been excavated, were we able to appreciate the enormous amount of work which Dr. Koldewey and his associates have here accomplished and the splendid contributions which they have made to the science of Assyriology and to our knowledge respecting the greatest capital of the ancient world.

The massiveness of the walls of the citadel—some of them more than fifty feet in thickness—and the vastness of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace with its countless chambers were amazing. But even more noteworthy were the remnants of the Sacred Way, which were once adorned with scores of life-size figures of lions made of brilliantly enameled bricks, and the great Ishtar Gate which spanned Babylon’s Via Sacra, where it entered the older city. The hundreds of bulls and dragons, in brick relief, which cover the walls, and the delicate modeling of the figures prove conclusively that the glyptic art of the Neo-Babylonian period must have attained a very high degree of perfection.

Before the discovery of these wonderful works of art, Koldewey was disposed to be quite skeptical about the traditional splendor of Babylon, but, when he unearthed the marvels of the Sacred Way and the Ishtar Gate, which is “the largest and most striking ruin of Babylon,” he was compelled to admit that the fabled splendor of the city was not without foundation.

Adjoining Ishtar Gate are what are supposed to be the remains of the famous Hanging Gardens which antiquity classed among the Seven Wonders of the World. But a view of the semicircular arches which are said to have supported these gardens makes it difficult to understand why they were called hanging—pensiles hortus—as described by Quintus Curtius[526] and other ancient writers. So far as one can judge by an inspection of the ruins now visible, this wonder of antiquity was nothing more than an elevated garden court and far less of a miraculum, as the Roman historian calls it, than is an ordinary roof garden on one of our modern “sky-scrapers.”

In the same palace, of which the Hanging Gardens formed so conspicuous an ornament, is shown the large throne room of the Babylonian Kings. Speaking of this Dr. Koldewey does not hesitate to say that “it is so clearly marked out for this purpose that no reasonable doubt can be felt as to its having been used as their—the Kings’—principal audience chamber.” And he furthermore adds: “If anyone should desire to localize the scene of Belshazzar’s eventful banquet, he can surely place it with complete accuracy in this immense room.”[527]

Among the other objects of interest among the marvelous complexus of ruins are a huge lion of basalt, the remains of Persian and Parthian buildings and the débris of a Greek theater which, one may believe, was founded by Alexander the Great for the benefit of his countrymen who, in this remote capital of the East, would have been quite loath to forego those intellectual amusements to which they had been so devoted in the land of their birth.

So much has our knowledge of Babylon been increased by the excavation of one-half of the city that we hope that Dr. Koldewey and his scholarly associates will be able to uncover the other half. Should anything interfere with their completion of the great undertaking in which they had already achieved such splendid results, both science and history would suffer a loss that cannot easily be estimated.

From an examination of the ruins of Babylon, that which most impresses one is the immense size of the city, of its walls and palaces and temples, and that tower of Belus which “the Jews of the Old Testament regarded as the essence of human presumption.” Compared with these colossal ruins the remains of such celebrated cities as Delphi and Sparta and Olympia fade almost into insignificance.

From the descriptions of the Babylonian capital left us by the writers of antiquity, the dominant impression made on us is that of the wealth and splendor and magnificence of this famous metropolis. This impression is emphasized by the inscriptions of its kings, who tell us how lavishly their palaces and temples were embellished by the rarest woods of the East and by vast quantities of ivory and silver and gold. Thus Asurbanipal proudly declares, “I filled Esagilla with silver and gold and precious stones and made Ekua to shine as the constellations in the sky.” And Nebuchadnezzar rejoices in the treasures of art and learning which he had accumulated in his palace for “the amazement of mankind.”

But how are these grandiloquent statements of monarchs and historians substantiated by the investigations of the “Deutsche Orient-Gessellschaft”? That Babylon

Far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind;

that, as a trade center, its activities extended from

Indus to the Nile

Or Caspian wave or Oman’s rocky shore,

there is no room for doubt. But from the glowing descriptions of the Greek and Latin writers, we are also led to infer that the buildings of the city—especially its temples and palaces—rivaled in beauty and grandeur the imposing structures of Athens under Pericles and the sumptuous edifices of Rome under Augustus. The discoveries, however, of the German excavators compel us greatly to revise many of our notions regarding the famed palm-embosomed capital on the Euphrates.

One of their most startling revelations is that, so far as their investigations enable them to determine, hewn stone was employed “in bulk for building,” only in the construction of the northern wall of the Kasr, the Sacred Way, the bridge over the Euphrates and in the arches that supported the Hanging Gardens. In this respect Babylon was far behind Nineveh, its great Assyrian rival, where stone was a common building material. Nearly all of its buildings, even its most lauded temples, were composed chiefly of sun-dried bricks. Only in certain parts of the larger temples were kiln-dried bricks employed. What a contrast between such mud structures and the superb marble temples of Baalbec and Palmyra, or the highly polished granite fanes of Thebes and Abydos on the banks of the Nile! What a contrast, even, between the mud temple of Marduk—the greatest in Babylonia—and the immense stone Temple of the Sun erected by the Incas of Peru in their capital of Cuzco!

The dwelling houses of Babylon, according to Herodotus, were mostly three or four stories high. So far, however, the evidence based on excavations goes to prove that private houses were of but a single story. They were probably, like most of the one-story houses in Babylonia to-day—with flat mud roofs which served as dormitories during the intense heat of summer. Such dwellings were almost exactly like the modern one-story adobe houses everywhere visible in New and Old Mexico. The Mexican houses, however, have windows, while those in Babylon had none—at least on the side facing the street. In this respect, however, they were not unlike so many dwelling houses seen in the Near East to-day.

As I contemplated the large mud buildings of ancient Babylon, I could not but compare them with those of the Great Chimu, whose ruins are now among the most remarkable remains of pre-Hispanic Peru. To look at them one would imagine that some jinnee had picked up a section of the Babylonian city and transported it to the far-distant shore of the South Pacific.[528]

With the exception of the Sacred Way and a few other streets, the thoroughfares of Babylon were unpaved. But none of them, not even the great Via Sacra, although polished by long and continuous use, exhibits any trace, as do the pavements of Pompeii, of having ever been used for wheeled traffic. This would seem to indicate that such traffic, even in the Neo-Babylonian period, was rare or nonexistent.

Still more surprising is the fact that the excavations, outside of some of the larger buildings, show but few traces of a drainage system. How so large and flourishing a city could have endured so long without one is a mystery that remains to be solved.

In the light, then, of the German excavations, it is apparent that Babylon, on whose splendor and magnificence the old classical writers so loved to dilate, and concerning whose beauty and grandeur legend and tradition have long spun such wonderful fairy tales, was a city that was remarkable rather for the vastness of its public buildings than for their elegance of design or beauty of execution. Even the temples and palaces were low, squat structures with flat mud roofs and were, from an architectural point of view, quite inferior to many caravanseries that one may now find in various parts of the East. Such ornaments as they possessed were evidences of barbaric richness and prodigality and showed none of the purity of taste that so characterized the matchless creations of Phidias and Ictinus.

But, although Babylon was, in its architectural features, a much overrated city, it has, nevertheless, deserved well of the world and has contributed to the advance of civilization as did few other cities before the rise of Athens and Rome. For, as has been observed, Babylon is “the oldest seat of earthly empire.” And “when the West was shrouded in a darkness that neither history nor tradition can penetrate, ... while wild beasts or naked savages roamed over the future sites of Athens and Rome and Florence and London,”[529] Babylon was laying the foundations of art and science, of law and literature and of that civilization which was subsequently developed and elaborated by the great nations of the West.

Trade and commerce and agriculture [asserts Delitzsch] were at their prime and the sciences—geometry, mathematics, and, above all, astronomy, had reached a degree of development which again and again moves even the astronomers of to-day to admiration and astonishment. Not Paris, at the outside Rome, can compete with Babylon in respect to the influence which it exercised upon the world throughout two thousand years.[530]

It has been the custom, time out of mind, to speak of Egypt as the cradle of civilization. And there was reason for this. For her venerable monuments—her pyramids and temples and obelisks and colossal rock—sculptures—which seemed to be coeval with the dawn of history, appear to justify the theory that our race here took its first steps forward in its great career of material and intellectual development. But recent investigations among the ruins along the Euphrates prove that Babylonia is entitled to the honor which has so long been so freely accorded to the valley of the Nile.

The proofs of this thesis are as numerous as interesting; and, so far as inductive evidence goes, are practically conclusive. But most of them are of so recondite a character that they can be properly discussed only in special works bearing on the archæology and prehistory of the two countries in question. One may, however, be permitted to indicate a few of the more obvious reasons which have led Orientalists to conclude that the civilization in the land of the Pharaohs had its origin in Babylonia.

Thus, recent discoveries in Upper Egypt seem to prove beyond doubt that there was intercourse between the two countries in prehistoric times and that, as a result of this early communication, wheat was first introduced from the valley of the Euphrates to that of the Nile. Another consequence of the intercourse between the two lands was that the Egyptians became acquainted with the Babylonian system of irrigation—a system which had rendered the soil of Babylonia the most productive in the then known world. Babylonian engineers, there is reason to believe, introduced into Egypt the shadoff and the sakieh or water wheel, both of which were Babylonian inventions, as is clearly attested by early Assyrian bas-reliefs and by still earlier Sumerian inscriptions.

Yet more exhaustive researches regarding the early script used in the two countries and the relations of the language of Babylonia, which was a Semetic tongue, to that of Egypt lead to the same conclusion as do investigations respecting the introduction of wheat from the land of the Euphrates, where it still grows wild, into that of the Nile, and the identity of the irrigation machines which have been in continuous use in both lands for thousands of years.

It may, indeed, be admitted that no one of these facts is, of itself, sufficient to demonstrate that the culture and the engineering science of Egypt were Babylonian in origin; but, when they are all found to point in the same direction, the argument based on them has a cumulative force that is quite unassailable. Dr. Sayce gives judgment in a single sentence when he declares “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Semitic-speaking people who brought the science of irrigation and the art of writing to the banks of the Nile came, like the wheat they cultivated, from the Babylonian plain.”[531]

Those, however, who are interested in this fascinating theory, which ascribes to Babylonia not only Egyptian civilization but also the ancestors of the historical Egyptians, should read the remarkable work on the subject by Professor Hommel—a work[532] of profound scholarship and one which has convinced many of the most eminent Orientalists that there can no longer be any doubt that the civilization and culture of Egypt came originally from Babylonia.

But interesting as are the discoveries respecting the cultural relations between the two countries in question, no notice of Babylonia would be complete without some reference to her contributions to the science of astronomy. Here we have more positive information than has hitherto been available regarding the primeval intercourse between the peoples of the Euphrates and the Nile. As one might expect, however, in dealing with subjects carrying us back into the mists of antiquity, we find that the question of Babylonian astronomy is one that is deeply involved in myth and legend, but such myths and legends as help to corroborate the findings of historians and archæologists concerning the labors of the astronomers of old Chaldea.

Even in the question regarding the origin of astronomy, as in that concerning the beginnings of civil engineering in Egypt, we note the same old debate among the learned as to who were the more ancient astronomers, the Egyptians or the Babylonians. The people of the Nileland boasted that Hermes or Osiris was the founder of their astronomical system, while the Chaldeans, that is the Babylonians, claimed that the first astronomer was Belus,[533] the son of Nimrod, who was the grandson of Noah and the reputed builder of the Tower of Babel. This tower, often confused with the tower of Bel described by Herodotus, was, according to Chaldean legend, the first astronomical observatory.

It was not, however, thousands of years before the Christian era, as certain writers would have us believe, that Chaldean astronomy became an exact science. This was not possible and for a very simple reason—the absence of a strict chronology to which the Chaldean observers of the heavens did not attain until 747 B. C., when they adopted what is known as the era of Nabonnassar. Previously there could be no certainty regarding the calculation of time. Not, indeed, until the first recorded eclipse, March 21, 721 B. C., was astronomy raised to the dignity of an exact science.

In fact, during the first twenty or thirty centuries of Mesopotamian history [writes the distinguished Belgian savant, Franz Cumont] nothing is found but empirical observations, intended chiefly to indicate omens, and the rudimentary knowledge which these observations display is hardly in advance of that of the Egyptians, the Chinese or the Aztecs.[534]

It is only during the last quarter of a century that we have been able to determine the advances made by astronomy at different periods of Babylonian history and we owe this knowledge almost entirely to the persistent labors of three Jesuits, Fathers Epping, Kugler, and Straszmaier.[535] By a long and careful study of the cuneiform inscriptions bearing on astronomy, many of which they have deciphered, interpreted, and published, they have, for the first time, put the history of Babylonian astronomy on a firm, scientific basis. And they have at the same time completely dissipated the poetical fancy of “Chaldean shepherds discovering the causes of eclipses while watching their flocks” and the oft repeated fable that it was Babylonian astronomers who discovered the precession of the equinoxes—an achievement that was due to the genius of Hipparchus of Nicæa.

Thanks, however, to the researches of the three savants named, it must now be conceded that certain discoveries which have hitherto been attributed to Hipparchus should be credited to the astronomers of Babylonia. Among these were discoveries regarding the inequalities of the lengths of the seasons, the methods of determining in advance the phenomena of the five known planets, the duration of their synodic revolutions, and the dates of the phases and eclipses of the moon. In a remarkable cuneiform inscription, dated as early as 523 B. C., is given what is practically a monthly ephemeris not only of the sun and moon and eclipses but also the more notable phenomena of the planets. With reason does Father Kugler consider this “the oldest known document of the scientific astronomy of the Chaldeans.” And so greatly is he impressed by the marvelous astronomical tables which were constructed by the priest astronomers of Babylonia that he declares:

One does not know which to admire the more, the extraordinary accuracy of the periods which is implied by the drawing up of each of the columns of figures or the ingenuity with which these old masters contrived to combine all the factors to be considered.[536]

Recent research has also shown that some of the very accurate calculations of lunar periods which, from the time of Ptolemy, have been attributed to Hipparchus, should in reality be ascribed to the astronomers of Babylonia.[537] That these ancient observers, who had none of the instruments of precision which are now available in our observatories, should have been able to make so exact calculations is marvelous in the extreme.

Equally noteworthy were the discoveries of the hellenized Chaldean, Seleucus, who proved that the movement of the tides is due to the action of the moon and who, contrary to the view which then generally prevailed, taught the helio-centric theory of the solar system—nearly two thousand years before the epochal achievements of Copernicus and Galileo.

The foregoing paragraphs clearly evince that it was the Babylonians who laid the foundations of astronomy, and not, as Buckle, Draper, and others would have us believe, the Arabians under the Caliphate. “The place of honor in science, therefore,”—a place which for ages was conceded to the Babylonians and which, through Father Epping’s studies, has been won for them anew—“will henceforth remain to them uncontested and incontestable.”[538]

In order, however, to have a correct idea of the far-reaching influence of Babylonian civilization, one must know more about it than its contribution to science, art, and literature. One must know something about the social condition of the people and of their manners and customs as described in their history and reflected in their laws. For this a few words will suffice and these will be based on the wonderful code of Hammurabi, the king who ruled over Babylonia more than two thousand years before our era and who was the real founder of her greatness.[539]

It is true that the great legal code which bears his name was, like all other ancient codes, based to a great extent on precedent and on earlier collections of laws, some of which, there is reason to believe, antedated Hammurabi’s great compilation by more than a thousand years. But it is because it is chiefly a codification of preëxisting laws that the great code of the Babylonian King is so valuable and instructive. We find that, unlike the warlike Assyrians, the Babylonians were not only a peaceable and intelligent but also a very humane and deeply religious people. In the words of one who has made a special study of the history and laws of the people over whom Hammurabi bore rule for forty-three years:

It is startling to find how much that we have thought distinctly our own has really come down to us from that great people who ruled the Land of the Two Streams. We need not be ashamed of anything we can trace back so far. It is from no savage ancestors that it descends to us. It bears the “hall mark” not only of extreme antiquity but of sterling worth.... A right-thinking citizen of a modern city would probably feel more at home in ancient Babylon than in mediæval Europe.[540]

Among the laws of the great Babylonian legislator that are especially remarkable are those which safeguard the rights and privileges of married women. That such laws should have been enacted and enforced more than four thousand years ago shows better than anything else the high plane of social progress to which the Babylonians had thus early attained. To quote from the distinguished Orientalist, L. W. King, they “throw an interesting light on the position of the married woman in the Babylonian community, which was not only unexampled in antiquity but compares favorably in point of freedom and independence with her status in many countries in modern Europe.”[541]

One of the many results of the discovery of Hammurabi’s Code was, curiously enough, completely to demolish a favorite argument of certain Biblical critics respecting the laws of Moses. So elaborate a legislative code as that attributed to the Jewish lawgiver was, they contended, quite improbable at the early date assigned to it, and it must, therefore, have had its origin at a subsequent period when society was more highly organized. It must, then, the critics maintained, have been the work of the Jewish priesthood in the later days of Israel, who, in order to give it the necessary sanction, falsely attributed it to Moses. What then must have been their surprise and confusion, on the appearance of Father Scheil’s translation of Hammurabi’s Code, to find that it was more than five hundred years older than that of Moses, and that with its two hundred and eighty-two enactments it revealed a more elaborate social organization than that described in the violently attacked Book of Exodus? But this is only one of many similar surprises which the Higher Critics have found in the monuments of Babylonia. And in proportion as the cuneiform inscriptions continue to disclose their long-withheld secrets, so also, we may feel sure, will they, in all essential matters, be found to verify and corroborate the declarations of the Sacred Text.

Our last bird’s-eye view of the abomination of desolation that was Babylon was from the highest accessible point of the great royal palace on the Kasr. It was at the hour when the noonday sun was pouring his irradiating beams on the scattered and crumbling ruins of temples and palaces and citadels, which seemed to have been blasted by the lightnings of a wrathful heaven and to be lying under a major anathema maranatha of an offended Deity. In this accursed haunt of serpents and scorpions,—and the Arabs add—dragons and satyrs—the earth was absolutely verdureless. No four-footed thing trod the earth; no winged creature circled through the air; not a tree or a shrub adorned the brown, sun-baked mound. Where once stood the Hanging Gardens that were the glory of an arrogant potentate and the wonder of a marveling world; where once were gorgeous halls, with throne of ivory and gold; where kings and nobles feasted in bejeweled robes; where loud choruses swelled to the joyous notes of harp and cymbal and psaltery; where brazen bacchanals drank to Bel from golden goblets looted from Salem’s desecrated temple, there now was the silence and the vacuity and the oblivion of the tomb. Desolation was everywhere made desolate. Of a truth has Babylon the great, “the mother of the abominations of the earth,” “been thrown down and shall be found no more at all.”[542]

We stood on a spot which must have been near that occupied by Nebuchadnezzar when, in the pride of his heart, he exultantly exclaimed:

Is not this the great Babylon which I have built to be the seat of the kingdom, by the strength of my power and in the glory of my excellence?

And while the word was yet in the King’s mouth a voice came down from heaven: To thee, O King Nebuchadnezzar, it is said: Thy kingdom is taken from thee.[543]

But before this word was uttered the Prophet Jeremias, speaking with all the detail of an eye-witness, had foretold what would be the fate of the proud and wicked city on the Euphrates. How literally true are his predictions, let the reader judge from the following verses:

Thus saith the Lord of hosts: That broad wall of Babylon shall be utterly broken down, and her high gates shall be burnt with fire, and the labors of the people shall come to nothing, and of the nations shall go to the fire and shall perish.[544]

And Babylon shall be reduced to heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment and a hissing, because there is no inhabitant.[545]

Thou shalt say: O Lord, thou has spoken against this place to destroy it; so that there shall be neither man nor beast to dwell therein, and that it should be desolate forever.[546]

Reading these graphic words of the inspired prophet in the presence of the ruins of Babylon as they appear to-day, one can but exclaim with the Royal Psalmist:

“Forever, O Lord, thy word standeth firm in heaven.”[547]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PARTIAL LIST OF THE MORE IMPORTANT WORKS CITED IN THIS VOLUME

Abd-el-Kader, Rappel à l’Intelligent, Avis à l’Indifférent (Paris, 1858).

Ainsworth, W. F., Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia (London, 1842); Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand (London, 1844).

Andræ, W., Die Festungswerke von Assur (Leipsic, 1913).

Arnold, T. W., The Preaching of Islam, a History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith (London, 1913).

Assemani, J. S., Biblotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (Rome, 1719–1725).

Aublé, Émile, Bagdad, Son Chemin de Fer, Son Importance, Son Avenir (Paris, 1917).

Baicoianu, C. I., Le Danube, Aperçu historique, Économique et Politique (Paris, 1917).

Barker, W. B., Lares et Penates, or Cilicia and its Governors (London, 1853).

Batuta, Ibn, The Travels of, translated by S. Lee (London, 1829).

Beattie, W., The Danube (London, 1843).

Bell, Gertrude, L., From Amurath to Amurath (London, 1911).

Bevan, E. R., The House of Seleucus (London, 1902).

Bonomi, J., Nineveh and Its Palaces, The Discoveries of Botta and Layard Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ (London, 1852).

Booth, A. J., The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions (London, 1902).

Bréhier, L., Le Schisme Oriental du XI Siècle (Paris, 1899).

Budge, E. A. Wallis, By Nile and Tigris (London, 1920).

Bunbury, E. H., A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans from Earliest Ages to the Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1883).

Burckhardt, J. L., Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (London, 1822).

Burton, Isabel, Inner Life of Syria (London, 1884).

Burton, Richard, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah (Boston, 1858).

Caetani, Leone, Annali dell’Islam (Milan, 1905–1912).

Canale, M. G., Nuova Istoria della Repubblica di Genova, del Suo Commercio e della Sua Letteratura dalle Origini all’Anno 1797 (Florence, 1858).

Candolle, Alphonse de, Géographie Botanique Raisonnée (Paris, 1885).

Castries, Henry de, L’Islam, Impressions et Études (Paris, 1912).

Chapot, V., La Frontière de l’Euphrate de Pompée a la Conquête Arabe (Paris, 1907).

Chateaubriand, F. de, Voyage en Orient (Brussels, 1835).

Chéradame, André, Le Chemin de Fer de Bagdad (Paris, 1915).

Clemente da Ferzorio, P., Le Missioni dei Minori Cappuccini, Vol. VI (Rome, 1920).

Chesney, F. R., Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition carried on by Order of the British Government during the Years 1835, 1836 and 1837 (London, 1868).

Cox, W., History of the House of Austria from the Foundation of the Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburg to the Death of Leopold the Second (London, 1820).

Cumont, F., Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans (New York, 1912).

Dawson, J. W., Modern Science and Bible Lands (New York, 1889).

Delitzsch, F., Babel and Bibel (London, 1903); Im Lande des Einstigen Paradieses (Stuttgart, 1903); Wo Lag das Paradies? (Leipsic, 1881).

Demorgny, G., La Question du Danube, Histoire, Politique du Bassin du Danube (Paris, 1911).

Denzinger, H., Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum Declarationum Quae de Rebus Fidei et Morum (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1911).

Dieulafoy, Jane Paule, La Perse, La Chaldée et la Susiane (Paris, 1887).

Djuvara, T. J., Cent Projets de Partage de la Turquie, 1281–1913 (Paris, 1913).

Dodd, Anna B., In the Palaces of the Sultan (New York, 1903).

Doughty, C., Travels in Arabia Deserts (Cambridge, 1888).

Duschensne, L., The Churches Separated from Rome (New York, 1907).

Duval, R., Histoire Politique, Religieuse et Littéraire d’Édesse jusqu’à la Première Croisade (Paris, 1892).

Dwight, H. G., Constantinople Old and New (New York, 1915).

Eliot, C., Turkey in Europe (London, 1908).

Epping, J., Astronomisches aus Babylon, oder das Wissen der Chaldaer über den gestirnten Himmel (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1889).

Eusebius of Cæsarea, Ecclesiastical History.

Evetts, B. T., New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land (New York).

Fergusson, J., History of Architecture (London, 1867).

Ferriman, Z. D., Turkey and the Turks (New York, 1911).

Finlay, G., History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time (Oxford, 1877).

Fortescue, A., The Orthodox Eastern Church (London, 1908); The Lesser Eastern Churches (London, 1913).

Freeman, E. A., Historical Essays, Third Series (London, 1879); The History and Conquests of the Saracens (London, 1877).

Garnett, Lucy, Turkey and the Ottomans (New York, 1911).

Gelzer, H., Vom Heiligen Berge und aus Makedonien (Leipsic, 1904).

Gibbon, E., The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Gibbons, H. A., The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1916).

Glaser, E., Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Propheten Muhammed (Berlin, 1890).

Gobineau, M. A. de, Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale (Paris, 1865).

Goldziher, I., Mohammed and Islam (New Haven, 1917).

Halid, Halil, Diary of a Turk (London, 1903).

Hall, H. R., The Ancient History of the Near East from the Earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis (London, 1916).

Hammer-Purgstall J. de, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, depuis son Origine jusque à nos Jours (Paris, 1835–1841).

Herbelot, Barthélemy d’, Bibliothèque Orientale (The Hague, 1777).

Hergenröther, J. Cardinal, Handbuch der Allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1884).

Heussi, K. and Mulert, H., Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte (Tübingen, 1919).

Heyd, W., Geschichte des Levant-handels im Mitterlalter (Stuttgart, 1879).

Hilprecht, H. V., Explorations in Bible Lands During the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1903).

Hogarth, D. G., Carchemish (London, 1915); The Nearer East (New York, 1902).

Hommel, F., Aufsätze und Abhandlungen (Munich, 1901); Der Babylonische Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur (1892).

Hottinger, J. H., Historia Orientalis (Zurich, 1660).

Howorth, H., History of the Mongols (London, 1888).

Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Mohammedanism (New York, 1916).

James, G., A History of the Life of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England (London, 1854).

Jastrow, M., The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, Its Remains, Language, History, Religion, Commerce, Law, Art, and Literature (Philadelphia, 1915).

Johns, C. H., Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters (New York, 1904).

Jonquiére, Vicomte de la, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman (Paris, 1914).

Kinns, S., Graven in the Rock (London, 1891).

Koldewey, R., The Excavations at Babylon (London, 1914); Die Tempel von Babylon und Borsippa (Lepsic, 1911).

Kugler, F., Die Babylonische Mondrechnung (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1900).

Labourt, J., Le Christianisme dans l’Empire Perse sous la Dynastie Sassanide (224–632) (Paris, 1904).

Lane-Poole, Stanley, Studies in a Mosque (London, 1893).

Laurent, J. C., Perigrinatores Medii Ævi Quatuor (Leipsic, 1864).

Layard, A. H., Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert (New York, 1856).

Lehmann-Haupt, C. F., Die Historische Semiramis und ihre Zeit (Tübingen, 1910).

Lenormant, F., Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient (Paris, 1881).

Le Strange, G., Baghdad During the Abbassid Caliphate from Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources (Oxford, 1900); Palestine Under the Moslems (London, 1890).

Lethaby and Swainson, The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople (London, 1894).

Loti, Pierre, Turquie Agonisante (Paris, 1913).

Macdonald, D. B., Aspects of Islam (New York, 1911).

Marracci, Lodovico, Alcorani Textus Universus (Padua, 1698).

Marriott, J. A., The Eastern Question (Oxford, 1917).

Michaud, J. F., The History of the Crusades (New York).

Michælis, A., A Century of Archæological Discoveries (New York, 1908).

Müller-Simonis, P., and Hyvernat, H., Du Caucase au Golfe Persique a travers l’Arménie, le Kurdistan et la Mésopotamie (Washington, 1892).

Mutinelli, Favio, Del Commercio dei Veneziani (Venice, 1835).

Neubauer, A., La Géographie du Talmud (Paris, 1868).

Ohssen, Mouradja D’, Tableau Général de l’Empire Othoman (Paris, 1790).

Oppenheim, M. von, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf (Berlin, 1900).

Oppert, J., Expédition Scientifique en Mésopotamie (Paris, 1859–1861).

Palgrave, W. G., Essays on Eastern Questions (London, 1872); Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia (London, 1869).

Perrot, G., and Chippiez, C., Histoire de L’Art dans L’antiquité (Paris, 1884).

Pinches, T. G., The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (London, 1908).

Polo, Marco, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, translated by H. Yule (London, 1903).

Porter, R. K., Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia and Ancient Babylonia (London, 1822).

Ramsay, Lady, Everyday Life in Turkey (London, 1897).

Ramsay, W. M., Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Years’ Wanderings (London, 1897); The Historical Geography of Asia Minor (London, 1890).

Rassam, Hormuzd, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (New York, 1897).

Rawlinson, G., The Five Great Monarchies (New York, 1881).

Reclus, Élisée, The Earth and Its Inhabitants (New York, 1885).

Reland, A., De Religione Mohammedica (Utrecht, 1705).

Rennell, J., The Geographical System of Herodotus (London, 1830).

Rich, C. J., Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh with a Journal of a Voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad (London, 1836).

Rogers, R. W., A History of Babylonia and Assyria (New York, 1915).

Sayce, A. H., The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of Monuments (London, 1894); The Archæology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions (London, 1908).

Schliemann, H., Troy and Its Remains (New York, 1876); Ilios (New York, 1881); Troja (New York, 1883).

Schuchhardt, C., Schliemann’s Excavations and Archæological and Historical Studies (London, 1891).

Silbernagel, I., Verfassung und gegenwartiger Bestand sämtlicher Kirchen des Orients (Ratisbon, 1904).

Smith, R. B., Mohammed and Mohammedanism (London, 1876).

Sprenger, A., Das Leben und Lehre des Mohammed (Berlin, 1862).

St. Hilaire, J., Barthélemy, Mahomet et le Coran (Paris, 1865).

Tavernier, J. B., Voyages en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes (Paris, 1679).

Thevenot, Jean de, Voyage au Levant (Amsterdam, 1727).

Tixeront, L. J., Les Origines de l’Église d’Édesse et la Légende d’Abgar (Paris, 1888).

Tozer, H. F., Highlands of Turkey (London, 1860).

Vadal, A., Napoleon et Alexander, L’Alliance Russe sous le Premier Empire (Paris, 1896).

Valle, Pietro della, Viaggi (Brighton, 1843).

Walpole, F., The Ansayrii and the Assassins (London, 1851).

Whitman, Sidney, Turkish Memories (London, 1914).

Zahm, J. A., Evolution and Dogma (Chicago, 1896); Bible Science and Faith (Baltimore, 1895); (H. J. Mozans) Along the Andes and Down the Amazon (New York, 1911).

Les Missions Catholique Françaises au XIX Siècle, publiés sous la Direction du J. B. Piolet, Tom. I (Paris).

Mishcat-ul-Masabih, or a Collection of the Most Authentic Traditions Regarding the Actions and Sayings of Mohammed, translated from the Original Arabic by A. N. Mathews (Calcutta, 1809).

Recueil des Historiens des Croisades (Paris, 1879).

Patrologia Græca, Migne edition (Paris, 1857–1866).

Patrologia Latina, Migne edition (Paris, 1844–1855).

The Book of The Thousand and One Nights, translated by John Payne (London, 1884).

INDEX

“Aaron the Just,” 418
Abbasside Caliphate, the, 172
Abd-el-Kader, Algerian ruler, 249
Abd-er-Rahman I, 473
Abdul Hamid I, Sultan, 110, 159
Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, 50, 110, 268
Abgar, King, 285, 296
Abraham, Patriarch, 253, 275, 294
Abydas, Strait of, 77
Abyssinia, 312
Achilles, Ashes of, 36
Adadinari IV, 386
Adana, commercial center, 197
Aegean Sea, 90
Afium-Kara-Hissar, 122
Agamemnon, “King of Men,” 87
Agostino, Padre, 263
Aimée Dubuc de Rivery, 110
Albertus Magnus, 6
Alcæus, 105
Aleppo, 255, 263
Alexander I, of Russia, 78

Alexander the Great, 27, 46, 78, 83, 194, 217, 400

Alexandria, 289
Alfold, great central plain of Hungary, 19
Ali, first legitimate Caliph, 445
Al-Khader, 260
Allah, 237
Al-Mamun, Caliph, 420
Al-Mansur, founder of Bagdad, 409
Ameghino, Dr., 453

America, does not know or care about the truth about Turkey, 211

Ammianus Marcellinus, 297
Amru, 316
Amuita, Queen, 488
Anadoli Kavak, 45
Anathema Maran-atha, 327
Anatolia, 183
life of the Osmanlis, 121
ruins of, 106
Anatolian Railway, 99, 121, 157
Anazarbas, 199
Andrae, Dr. Walter, 379
Angel de Villarubbia, Fra, 292

Anglo-French press, hostile to Bagdad railway, 166

Antakia, 255
Anthimos VII, Œcumenical Patriarch, 336
“Antioch the Beautiful,” 218, 255, 289
Antipater, 201
“Apostle and Proto-Martyr among Women,” 172
“Apostle of the Gentiles,” St. Paul, 202
Arabian horses, 441
Arabians, life of the, 442
Arab robbers, protection against, 266
Aracca, the Erech of Scripture, 461
Aramaic language, 272
Aratus, 201
Archimedes, 201
Argonauts, 42
Argos, 44
Arianism, 232
Aristarchus of Samothrace, 106
Aristotle, 83
Armenian question, 208
Armenians, business ability of, 271
massacre of 1909, 205
responsible in great part for massacres, 207
Arrians, 101, 305
Artemidorus, 201
Ashbelkala, 380
Ashurnasirpal III, 380
Asia Minor, 183
great trouble of, 149
rich in natural resources, 184
Aspasia, wife of Pericles, 104
Asshur, city of, 294
“Association Laws,” 292
Assuerus, King, 353
Asur, builder of Nineveh, 345, 379
Assyrian Empire, 347

Astronomy, foundations and practice of, by Babylonians, 501

Asurbanipal, the Grand Monarch of Assyria, 353

“A Thousand Nights and a Night,” 261
Attica, 104
Attila, 23
Augustine of Hippo, 369
Augustus, Emperor, 11
Aurelian, Emperor, 217
Babil, mound of, 475, 477
Babylon, 471–508
bird’s-eye view of desolation of, 506
descriptions of, by ancient writers, 483
great wall of, 483
hanging gardens of, 282, 494
present day, 486
tower of, 491
Bagdad, 41, 260, 402–436
ancient glories of, 412
bazaars of, 432
Carmelite priests of, 403
etymological names of, 410
fall of, 425
founding of, 409
modern, 427
periodically visited by the plague, 431
population one-fourth Jewish, 432
the future of, 435
the women of, 432
Bagdad railway, 151
aim and purpose of, 168
completion of, held up by World War, 370
Germany gets concession for, 158
meeting of Czar and Kaiser in 1910 in regard to, 164
source of far-reaching political cataclysm, 169
splendidly built, 167
tunnels of the, 255
Balkan peninsula, 22
peoples of, hated one another, more than the Turks, 22

Barbarossa, Frederick, 78, 121
Barmecides, Slaughter of the, 419
Barnabas, 171
Basra, 264
Bayazid I, Sultan, 46
Bazaars of Bagdad, 432
Beaconsfield, Earl of, 63
Beames, William, 265
Bedouins, 268
life of, 442
Beirut, 310
Beith Allah, house of God, 235
Belgrade, 19
Belus, first astronomer, 501
Benjamin of Tudela, 414, 480
Berosus, priest of Bel, 348
Berlin, 1
Bessarion, Cardinal, 335
Bethsabee, 275
Bianca Capello, 110
Bilejik, 122
Bir, 281
Birs-Nimrud, 477
Black Forest, 5
Black Obelisk of Salmanasar II, 200
Black Sea, 30
Black Stone, worshiped by Mohammedans, 235
“Blue Mosque,” 175
Bohadin, 417
Borsippa, 480
Bosphorus, 161
plan for tunnel under, 166
proposed bridge over, 166
Bossuet of Meaux, 369
Botta, Paul Emil, 349
Bourse, the, 163
Bozanti Khan, 188
Bralia, 31
Bréau, Quaterfages de, 456
Bronze Horses of Lysippus, 58
Bruin, Cornelius de, 358
Brusa, 94
Budapest, 18
Bukcovitz, Stephen, 114
Bukharest, city of, 29
Bulgar Dagh, the, 189

Burckhardt, discovers black basaltic block, 275

Burnouf, Eugène, 362
Byron, Lord, 43
Byzantine liturgy, 313
Byzantines, 305
Byzas, son of Neptune, 67
Cæsaropapism, 326
Caetani, Prince, 466
Caliphs, triumphs of the, 281
Callicolone, 87
Calmet, Dam, the Benedictine, 459
Calycadnus, the, 191
Camels, trains of, 185
Canals,
Danube-Elbe, 34
Danube-Oder, 34
Danube-Salonica, 34
Ludwig, 33
Suez, 153
Canon law of Mohammedanism, 244

Cantacuzenos, introduces the Osmanlis into Europe, 113

Capistrau, St. John, 20
Capuchins, the, 291
Caravans, 186
kept in communication with friends by homing pigeons, 267
protection against Arab robbers, 266
trade, 264
Carchemish, the, 276, 282
Carmelite priests, of Bagdad, 403
Cassandra, 91
Castle of Simeon, 256
Catherine de Medici, 110
Catherine II, of Russia, 61, 383
Caulaincourt, French Ambassador, 79
Cerularius, Michael, 325
Chalcedon, 97
Chaldean church, 307
Champollion, Jean François, 356

Chansans de Geste, untruths in, concerning Mohammedanism, 222

Chardin, Jean, 358
Charlemagne, 10, 324
Chateaubriand, 52
Chesney, Colonel, 152
Chilat, 298
Chosroes I, 194, 281, 287
Christianity,
in relation to Mohammedanism, 247
need of change of attitude of the West toward the East, 251

Chrysopolis, the golden city, 96
Chrysostom, St. John, 71
Churches of the East, 303–340
Church of Holy Wisdom, 56
Cicero, 171
Cilician Plain, or Cilicea Campestris, 189
population of, 198
the Garden of Eden, 214
three decisive battles of the world fought on, 194

Citadel, at Aleppo, 273
“City of Delight,” the, 29
“City of the Blind,” the, 97
“City of the Saints,” Bagdad, 260
Cleopatra, 204
Code of Hammurabi, 345, 364, 504
Coffee, great beverage of the Moslems, 179
Coffeehouse, Oriental, 181
Columbus, 452
Comnena, Princess Anna, 72
Conquest of Constantinople, 328
Constantine IX, Emperor, 325
Constantine Paleologus, 68
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 414
Constantine the Great, 68, 321
Constantinople, 51
people of, 65
Constanza, 37
Consul Lirius, 84
Coptic church, 312
Copts, of Egypt, 312
Corinth, 217
Cos, 105
Council of Florence, 327
Crassus, 297

Creation, one of the oldest accounts of, discovered, 462

Crescent and the Cross, 27
Crimean War, 99
Crœsus, King of Lydia, 184
Cross and the Crescent, 27
Crusaders,
castles built by, 257
in Phrygia and Lycaonia, 187
in the footsteps of the, 171
route of the, 257
Crusade, Fourth, 327
time has come for a new but different, 252
Cunaxa, battle of, 375
Cyaxares, 345
Cydnus, 203
Cydnus, the, 190
Cyrus, Bishop, 297
Cyrus the Great, 433
army of, 171
Cyrus the Younger, 281

- Dacia, 26
- Dacians, the, 30
- Damascus, 289, 313
- Damoclean sword, 331
- Dandolo, Henricus, 68
- Dante Alighieri, 247, 295
- Danube, 4, 31
- Darius, 194, 281
- Darius Hystaspes, 31
- “Dates of Akkad,” 472
- Dati, Leonardo, 457
- David, King, 275
- Dawson, J. W., 463
- Debora, nurse of Rebecca, 298
- Deggendorf, 8
- De Lesseps, and the Suez Canal, 165
- Delitzsch, Friedrich, 363, 369, 448
- Delta of the Nile, 317
- Dervishes,
- dancing or whirling, 173
- howling, 96
- Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, 387
- Devil’s Wall, 9
- Diana, Temple of, 217
- Diering, Professor, on the Germans, 168
- Diocletian, 100
- Diodorus Siculus, 201, 483
- Dionysides, 201
- Dioscur, Patriarch of Alexandria, 315
- Disraeli, and the Suez Canal, 153
- Djerabis, 282
- “Doctrine of Addai,” 286

- Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Tours, 308

- Dominicans of Mosul, 307

- Drang nach osten, Trend toward the East, 155

- Duke Leopold, of Austria, 10

- Dunkelboden, 7

- Earthquakes, 218
- Eastern Churches, 303–340
- reunion with the Mother Church, 334
- Edessa, 284
- legend connected with, 284
- school of, 297
- Egyptian monophysites, 312
- Eldred, John, 265, 478
- El Farruch, Earth-Divider, 74
- Elgin, Lord, 57
- Endocia, Empress, 257

- Enoch, the Hermes Trismegistes of the Orientals, 284

- Entente Cordiale, 165
- Ephesus, 103
- Epicureans, 201
- Ermeni Millet, 318
- Eski Bagdad, old Bagdad, 398
- Eski-Shehr, 122
- Etchimiadzin, monastery of, 311
- Eudocea, Empress, 71
- Euphrates, the, 278, 488
- Eusebius of Cæsarea, 285
- Eutyches, 309
- Eutychianism, 309
- Euxine Sea, 5, 35

- Father Damien, 247
- “Father of Medicine,” 105
- Fatihah, first chapter of the Koran, 96
- Feringees, 319
- Figueroa, Don Garcia de Sylva y, 357
- Fourth Crusade, 327
- Fra Diavolo, 195, 196
- Fragistan-Europe, 319
- France, as a protector of Turkey, 160

- fate of the French railway in Near East, 160

- has always encouraged scientific research, 349

- not willing to give recommendations to Bagdad railway project, 163

- on friendly terms with Ottoman Government, 155

- Franciscan friars, 262
- Francis I, of France, 155
- Frankish States, 328
- Fra Oderic of Pordenone, 39

- Galambocz, 24
- Galata, 65
- Galatz, 31
- Garden of Eden, 214
- location of, 447
- motoring in the, 437

- one of the oldest accounts of creation discovered, 462

- Gargar, valley of, 298

- Genghis Kahn, 113

- Germans, determined to build Bagdad railway unaided, 166

- Germany, dream of world power in the East, 155

- gets concession for Bagdad railway, 158
- Ghazzali, 417
- Girgenti, ruins of, 475
- Gisdhubar, 281
- Giurgero, 29
- Gladstone, William, 64
- Glaser, E, 465
- Glorietta of Schönbrunn, 12
- Godefroy de Bouillon, 121
- Golden Fleece, 44
- Golden Horn, 47
- Gordianus III, 297
- Goths, the, 217
- Gourea, Antonio de, 357
- “Granary of Northern Syria,” 278
- Grand Opera House, of Paris, 55
- “Great Assassin,” Abdul Hamid, 159
- Great Britain and the Gold Coast, 250
- attitude toward Bagdad railway, 160
- attitude toward Turks, 159

- does not wish to know the truth about Turkey, 211

- fear of protectorate over Turkey by Teutonic powers, 162

- not willing to give recommendation to Bagdad railway project, 163

- Great Cemetery, 96
- Great Chimu, 497
- “Great Idea,” 332
- “Great Schism,” 325
- Great Sweet Water, 48
- Great Wall of China, 483
- Greece, people of, in ancient days, 274
- Greeks, business ability of, 271
- Gregorians, 310
- Gregory of Nyssa, 369
- Grotefend, Georg Friederich, 360

- Hadj, annual pilgrimage to Mecca, 244
- Haidar Pasha, military hospital, 98
- Hainburg, 14
- Halicarnasus, 217
- Halil Halid, the Anatolian, 210
- Hamme, Frère Lieven de, 263
- Hammurabi, Code of, 345
- Hanging gardens of Babylon, 282, 494
- Hannibal, 94
- Haran, city of, 293
- Harem, explanation of, and meaning, 126–129
- Haremlik, 126
- Harnack, Professor, 338
- Harpies, 44
- Harum-al-Rashid, 46, 417
- Hazret, Mevlana, 175
- Hebron, 275
- Hedja railroad, 267
- Hellespont, the Thacian, 77
- Heraclius, 194, 281
- Herbert, Thomas, 358
- Hergenroether, Cardinal, 229
- Herodotus, 281, 347, 488
- Hieron, city of, 46
- Higden, Ralph, the Benedictine, 449
- Hillah, village of, 349, 471
- Hincks, Edward, 362
- Hipparchus of Nicæa, 105, 502
- Hippocrates, 105
- Hippodrome, in Constantinople, 58
- Hissarlik, hill of, 86

- Hittites, language of undecipherable as yet, 276

- third great empire with Egypt and Babylonia, 275

- Hogarth, David G., on the Armenian question, 208

- Holy City of Jerusalem, 187
- Holy Directing Synod, 331
- Homer, 36, 81
- Hommel, F., 465
- Howling Dervishes, 96
- Hudibras, 450
- Huet, Pierre Daniel, 460
- Hugo, Victor, on the Danube, 5
- Hulagu Khan, 426
- Hunyady Janos, 20

- Ibrahim, 117
- Iconium, now Konia, 122, 151
- Iconoclasts, doctrine of, 102
- Ida, 87
- Iliad and Odyssey, 81
- Illock, 20
- Imam, the, 236
- Iman Dura, town of, 397
- Imperial Museum of Constantinople, 273

- Independent Church of the Monastery of Mount Sinai, 331

- Indicopleustes, 450

- International Commission, for regulation of traffic, 33

- Io, priestess of Hera at Argos, 45
- Ionia, 104
- Irene, Empress, 102
- Iron gate, 26
- Irrigation, of Babylon, 499
- Isaac, 295
- Ishtar gate, 494
- Islam, creed of, 227
- liberal policy of, 116

- not opposed to influence of foreign science, law or theology, 243

- past and present, 220
- “the lay religion par excellence,” 233
- Island of Achilles, 36
- Ismid, 100
- Italy, recent campaigns in Tripoli, 250

- Jacobites, 309
- Jacob, Patriarch, 284
- Janissaries, corps of, 114
- Jappa, Gate of Jerusalem, 262
- Jason, 44
- Jebel Hamrin, 389
- Jebel Makhul, 389
- Jebel Sinjar, 300
- Jelal-ed-din-Rumi, tomb of, 172
- Jenghiz Khan, 216
- Jerablus, 278
- Jerusalem, 263
- Jinn, land of the, 261
- Joachim III, Œcumenical Patriarch, 334
- Joan of Arc, 247
- Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, 61
- Joseph of Burgos, Fra, 292
- Judas Iscariot, 295
- Julian, the Apostate, 10
- Julius Cæsar, 84
- Justinian, 321

- Kaaba at Mecca, the, 235
- Kadi Keni, town of, 97
- Kaempfer, Engelrecht, 358
- Kaffa, city of, 41
- Kaif, favorite pastime of the Moslems, 138
- Kalah Sherghat, mound of, 378
- Kalat el Gebbar, 389
- Kalat Makhul, 389
- Kapist, Count, 154

- Katholicos, head of the Nestorian church, 306

- Kelek, a trip down the Tigris on a, 370–401
- Kerbela, sacred shrine of, 444
- “Key of the Danube,” the, 24
- Khabur, valley of, 298
- Khanikin, 154
- Khatti, the, 275
- Kheta, the, 275
- Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, 217
- Kohl, J. G., 17
- Koldewey, Dr. Robert, 379, 475
- Konia, 151
- ancient Iconium, 122
- inhabitants of, 176
- situation and climate of, 174
- Koran, 96, 116
- contains many beautiful things, 248
- Kublai Khan, 40
- Kufah, 466
- Kurdish race, 208
- Kurdistan, 306
- Kutchuk Ali Uglu, 194
- Kuyunjik, 365

- Lane-Poole, Stanley, 243

- Language of Babylonia, 500

- Latin Empire in Constantinople, establishment of, 327

- Latin, language of Hungary for many years, 16

- Latin Millet, 318
- Layard, Austen Henry, 350
- Leah, 294
- Lebanon, 313
- Lebanon Range, 294
- “Legend of Abgar,” 285
- Lemnos, 87
- Lenormant, François, 456
- Leo, the Mathematician, 423
- Leo XIII, Pope, 334, 338
- Lesbos, 105
- Liberator of Bulgaria, 29
- Library of Asurbanipal, 354
- Linschoten, John Huyghen Van, 265
- Little Sister of the Poor, 248
- Little Sweet Water, 48
- Lloyd George, David, 64
- Lombard, Peter, 449
- Loti, Pierre, on the Turks, 140, 144
- Louis VII, of France, 121
- Lucian, the Greek Voltaire, 346
- Lucullus, 297
- Ludwig I, of Bavaria, 6
- Ludwig Kanal, 33
- Lully, Raymond, 252

Mahmud II, Sultan, 110, 156
Malabar, 310
Malik al-Ashraf, 217
Mandeville, Sir John, 378, 451, 482
Manzoni, 8
Marco Polo, 39, 304, 412
Marcus Aurelius, 14
Mardin, city of, 304
Mare Magnum or Majus, 39

Margaret de Valdemar, Queen of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, 383

Maria Theresa, Queen, 15
Marie-Joseph, Father, 405
Mark Anthony, 204
Marmora, Sea of, 77
Maronites, 313
Marquise de Pompadour, 110
Marracci, Padre Lodovico, 221, 226
Mar Shimum, Lord Simon, 306
Mar Yohannan, 308
Mausolus, King of Caria, tomb of, 184
Mayo, M., 453
McGahan, Januarius A, 27, 28
Mecca, hadj, or annual pilgrimage to, 224
Medak, or story-teller, 177
Medes, the, 345
Mehemet Ali, 189
Melchites, 310
Merodach, temple of, 490
Mesopotamia, 283
Metz, Gautier de, 449
Mevlana, tomb of, 172
Meyer, Professor Wilhelm, 361
Michael Cerularius, 325
Michael Prellos, 326
Midas, King of Phrygia, 184
Moawiah, Saracen, 61
Mohammed, accomplishments of, 230
and his followers, 224
creed of, 227
erroneous notions concerning, 224
preaches monotheism, 230
reformation of his countrymen by, 229

Mohammedanism, campaign of vilification against, 225
changeless in doctrine, 242
Christianity in relation to, 247
has a reverence for our Saviour, 249
much to respect and admire in, 270
not on the wane, 240
“the lay religion par excellence,” 233
theologians comment on, 238
Mohammed II, Sultan, 57, 68, 108, 311, 321
Mohammed V, Sultan, 125
Monogamy, 125
Monophysitism, 309
Monotheism, preached by Mohammed, 230

Montague, Lady Mary Wortley, on the Turkish women, 181

Mopsuestia, city of, 197, 199

Moslems, by law not allowed to erect tombstones, 259
characteristics of, 134
creed of the, 227
forbidden tobacco, 178
great use of coffee, 179
of a deeply religious nature, 221
orthodox, do not like the dervishes, 173
piety and devotion of, 124
prayers, 237
regard paintings and statues as impious, 175
women, their place in things, 129
Mosques, the, 234
Mosul, 298, 299, 303
Mount Athos, community of, 331
Mummius, 217
Murad II, Sultan, 108
Muslin, derivation of the word, 298
Mustansiriyah College, 417

- Nabonnassar, era of, 501
- Nabopolassar, 345
- Nahr Belikh, 293
- Napoleon, 78
- Nazienzus, St. Gregory, 71

- Near East question, modified by the Bagdad railway, 151

- Nebuchadnezzar II, 281, 397, 490
- Nehi Yunus, 365
- Nejef, sacred shrine of, 444
- Nestor, 201
- Nestorianism, 297, 305
- Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 305
- Nibelungenlied, 11
- Nicæa, 101
- Nicene Creed, 102
- Nicomedia, 101
- Niebuhr, Carsten, 349, 358, 480
- Nightingale, Florence, 98
- Nimrod, 284
- Nimrod’s tower, 478
- Nimroud, general aspect of, 376
- ruins of, 376
- Nineveh, 341–369
- built by Asur, 345
- early history of, 345
- “Niobe of nations,” 310
- Nippur, ruins of, 364
- Nisibis, 289, 296
- Nitocris, Queen, 488
- Nizamiyah College, 417
- Noachian deluge, 351
- Nod, land of, 462
- Novatians, 305
- Norris, Edwin, 362

- “Oak of Weeping,” 298
- Obbanes, 281
- Œcumenical councils, 102
- Œcumenical Patriarchs, 330
- Olympus, 90
- Omar Khayyám, 417
- Opis, 400

- Oppert, head of French expedition to Mesopotamia, 482

- Orientalium Dignitas Ecclesiarum of Pope Leo XIII, 340

- Orkhan, second ruler of the Osmanlis, 95
- son of Osman, 107
- Orthodox churches, 320
- Osman, founder of the Osmanli dynasty, 107
- Osmanlis, characteristics of, 133

- great sin, one of omission rather than commission, 219

- plea for more tolerance to, 150
- Oshœne, kingdom of, 284
- Ottoman women, 49

Pæstum, ruins of, 475
Pagans, 304
Palace of the Star, 49
Paleologus, Theodore, 114
Palgrave, on Mohammedanism, 241
Palmyra, 217

Pan-Islamism, a force which Christianity must reckon with, 243
greater missionary force than ever, 244
the strengthening of, 268
Parthenon, 57
Parthian Kings, 491
Parthians, 297
Passau, 7

Patriarch of Alexandria, head of the Copts, 312

Patriarchus Antiochenus Maronitarum, 314
Paulinists, 305
Paul-Simon, Father, 403
Perez, Father, 403
Pergamus, kingdom of, 185
Peripatetics, 201
Persepolis, 356
Persian Gulf, 466
Persian Kings of the Achæmenian dynasty, 356
Persian satraps, 310
Persian shiites, 445
Persians, school of the, 290
Pescennius Niger, 194
Peter the Great, 331
“Peuteringian Table,” 298
Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, 232, 252
Petervarad, 20

Phanar, the Vatican of the Orthodox church, 330

Philetism, love of one’s race, 330
Photius, 71, 323
Phrygian language, 171
Pietro della Valle, 263
Pillars of Hercules, 325
Pinches, T. F., 462
Plague, in Bagdad, 431
Platonists, 201
“Plato the Divine,” 172
Pliny the Younger, 94
Polygamy, 125
Pontus Axenus, 39
Pool of Abraham, 291
Porter, Robert Ker, 480

Potsdam, meeting at, in 1910 of Czar and Kaiser, 164

Poverello of Assisi, 142
Pozsony, 18
Præclara, 335
Prayer, of the Moslems, 237
Priam, city of, 88
Primate of the Melchites, 313
Princes Islands, 99
Prophet Daniel, 375
Prophet Jonas, mound of, 352
Prophet Zephaniah, 345
Psametik, King of Egypt, 171
Pylæ Ciliciæ, or Cilician Gates, 188
Pylæ-Tauri, gate of Taurus, 189

- “Queen of the East,” 194

- Rachel, 294

- Railway, construction of, across Mesopotamia, 152

- Rameses II, the greatest of the Pharaohs, 274

- Ramsay, Lady, 129
- Ramsay, Sir W. M., 129
- Raphael’s Madonna of San Sisto, 3
- Rashid ud Din, 413
- Rassam, Ormuzd, 351
- Ratisbon, city of, 3
- Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 361, 411
- Rebecca, 294
- Reign of Terror in France, 212
- Rhazes, Mussulman physician, 416
- Rhenus Superbus, 8
- Rhine, river, 11
- Richard Cœur de Lion, 10
- Rich, Claudius James, 349, 480
- Ricouard, Marie, 404
- Rio de Janiero, 66
- “Rite of Malabar,” 314
- Robinson, Reverend Paschal, 141
- Romans, road builders of antiquity, 254
- Roumania, 26
- Roxalana, the Muscovite, 109
- Royal Art Gallery of Dresden, 3
- “Royal Road,” 121, 253
- Rum Millet, 318

- Russia, attitude toward the Bagdad railway, 160

- campaigns in the Transcaucasia, 250

- waives all share in Bagdad railway, 164

- Russian Nihilist, Armenian revolutionists inspired by, 206

- Russians, 28

Safia, the Venetian, 110
St. Athanasius of Alexandria, 335
St. Augustine, 228
St. Basil’s liturgy, 340
St. Bernard, 299
St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, 315
St. Dominic, Sons of, 341
St. Ephrem, 290
St. Francis, Sons of, 142
St. George and the dragon, 24
St. Gregory Mazienzen, 333
St. Gregory the Illuminator, 310
St. Jerome, 232, 299
St. John of Chrysostom, 333
St. John of Damascus, 231
St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of, 217
St. Mary of Kanobin, 314
St. Paul, 171, 189
life and career of, 202–205
St. Peter of Alcantara, 406
St. Prosper of Aquitaine, 216
St. Simeon Stylites, 257
St. Stephen, cathedral of, 12
St. Thecla, 172
St. Theodore of Studium, 339
St. Theresa, 247
St. Thomas, church of, in Malabar, 314
St. Vincent de Paul, 247
Sainte-Thérèse, Father Bernard de, 404
Saladin, Sultan, 223
birthplace of, 393
Salmanassar I, 376
Salmanassar II, black obelisk of, 200
Salmanassar III, 386
Sammuramat, or Semiramis, 381
Samothrace, 87
San Marco, Cathedral of, 58
San Stephano, treaty of, 63
Santa Sophia, church of, 53
Sapor I, 297
Sappho, 105
Saracens, 317
Sardanapalus, 203
Sargan II, 386
Sarzec, M. Ernest de, 363
Satyrs, 476
Saulcy, M. de, 362
Schneider, Siegmund, German engineer, 166
Scholarios, George, 328
School of Edessa, 297
“School of the Persians,” 290
Schrader, Eberhard, 363
Second Council of Lyons in 1274, 327
See of Constantinople, 325
Selamlik, 127
Seleucia, city of, 491
Seleucia-Ctesiphon, 305
Seleucids, the, 316
Seleucus Nicator, 491
Seleucus, the Chaldean astronomer, 503
Selim I, Sultan, 108, 117
Seljuk Sultans of Rum, 172
Semiramis, 381
family and connections of, 386
“Semiramis of the North,” the, 61
Sennacherib, 375
Septimus Severus, 14, 194, 297
Serbians, against the Turks, 148
Serpent Column from Delphi, 59
Seven Sleepers, legend of the, 197
Shamsi-Adad V, 380
Simeon, castle of, 256
“Siren of the Nile,” 205
Sister of Charity, 247
Sisters of St. Francis from Lons, 292
Skobeleff, General, 28
Smith, George, 351
Sobieski, John, 13
Solyman the Magnificent, 108
Solyman Pasha, 78
Sons of St. Dominic, 303
Sons of St. Francis, 142
Sanusiyahs, the, 246
Stamboul, 48
Stanley, Dean, 337
Stoics, 201
Stone of Nebi Yunus, 352
Strabo, 201
Suez Canal, 153
Sunnites, the, 445
Syrians, the, 272
Syrian Uniates, 310

- Tabriz, city of, 41
- Tallyrand, 34
- Tarsus, 190, 202

- once the center of Greek thought and knowledge, 201

- Tartars, 306
- Taurus Mountains, 183
- Tekrit, 392
- Telloh, city of, 364
- Temple of Fame, 6
- Tenedos, 87
- Ten Thousand Greeks, the, 171
- Terrestrial Paradise, dispute as to, 447
- “Testament of Leo XII,” 335
- Teufelsmauer, Devil’s Wall, 9
- Teutonic Powers, 162
- Thaddée, Father, 403
- Thapsacus, 281
- Thare, 294
- “The Great River” of the Jews, 282
- Theodora, daughter of Cautacuzenos, 114
- Theodora, Empress, 102
- Theodosius II, Emperor, 257
- “The Round City,” 411
- “The Terrible Turk,” 148
- Thévenot, Jean de, 391
- “Thirty pieces of silver,” 295
- Thracian Hellespont, 77

- Tiglath-Pileser I, King of Assyria, 293, 386

- Tigris, the, 278
- Timok River, 27
- Timur, 113, 216
- Tobacco, use of, forbidden by Moslems, 178
- Tomi, 37
- Tonietti, Sig. A., 154
- Tower of Babel, mound of Babil not the, 479
- Trade routes of the Near East, 253
- Trajan, Emperor, 298
- Trampe, Herr, 168
- Treaty of San Stephano, 63
- Trojan War, 319
- Troubadours, the, 222
- Troy, glory of, immortal, 93
- plain of, 88

- “Turk,” applied by Osmanlis when referring to a brutal man, 112

- Turks, propaganda against, 123

- treatment of the women, 131

- Turkey, Great Powers cannot, without trouble, treat, as pariah nation, 213

- Tyre, city of, 217

- Uniate Copts, 313
- Uniates, 308
- Urban VIII, Pope, 404
- Urfa, 284
- “Uriah the Hittite,” 275
- Ur of the Chaldees, 294

- Vale of Bozanti, 188
- Valle, Pietro della, 357, 478
- Vasco da Gama, 73, 264
- Venice, 58
- Via Sacra, of Babylon, 497
- Vienna, 13
- Villamil, Emeterio, 453
- Violet, M. H., 399
- Vladimir, King of Russia, 339
- Volga River, 32
- Voltaire, 269
- on the Koran, 225
- von Bieberstein, Baron Marschall, 158
- von Hammer-Purgstall, 304
- von Moltke, 156
- von Pressel, Wilhelm, German engineer, 166
- von Siemens, Dr. George, 156

- Wahabis, the, 179
- Wallachians, 114
- Whirling dervishes, 173
- “White City” of Serbia, 21
- Whitman, Sidney, on the Turks, 147
- Wiseman of Westminster, 369
- Wo Lag das Paradies, 466
- Wolf of the Capitol in Rome, bronze, 59

- Worship, freedom of, allowed by the Turks, 145

- Xenocrates, 97
- Xenophon, 46, 189, 281
- Xerxes, 59, 77, 83

- Yashmak, veil worn by Moslem women, 128

- Zab, the, 388
- Zenobia, “Queen of the East,” 194
- Zeno, Emperor, 201, 297
- Zeus, 45, 91
- Zikr ul Aawaze, 376
- Zobeide, tomb of, 440
- Zoroaster, religion of, 256

FOOTNOTES:

[1] When in meditation during the solitary night, I contemplate the waves, there arises in the bright moonlight the pretty water nymph from the Danube, from the beautiful blue Danube.

[2] He loved to wander over unknown places and to see unknown rivers, his curiosity lessening the fatigue.

[3] Le Rhin, Letter XIV.

[4] Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, 294, 295.

[5] 01., III, 13–15.

[6] The Danube, p. 71 (by W. Beattie, London, 1843).

[7] Cf. A History of the Life of Richard, Coeur de Lion, King of England, Vol. II, p. 419 (by G. P. James, London, 1854).

[8] Adventure XXII.

[9] History of the House of Austria from the Foundation of the Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburgh to the Death of Leopold the Second, Vol. IV, pp. 440, 441 (by W. Cox, London, 1820).

[10] Cf. Voltaire’s Précis du Siècle de Louis XV, Chap. VI (Paris, 1828). The application to Maria Theresa of the title Rex—King—instead of Regina—Queen—was in accordance with a peculiar custom in Hungary which required that her signature on all public documents should be Maria Theresa Rex.

[11] Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. XXII, p. 692. Another Englishman declares: “The Latin is so common in Hungary that during my travels I frequently heard the servants and the postillions converse and dispute with great fluency in that language.” Cox, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 440.

[12] Tour of Austria, p. 372 (London, 1844).

[13] Another saying frequently accompanies this, to wit: Nullum vinum, nisi Hungaricum—Hungarian is the only wine.

[14] Nevill Forbes, in The Balkans, A History of Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Roumania, Turkey, p. 48 (Oxford, 1915).

[15] The Balkans, p. 6 (Oxford, 1915).

[16] It is curious to remember that Attila’s first attack upon the Roman Empire “was delivered at the very spot upon the Danube where the Germanic powers in August, 1914, began their offensive. Attila directed his armies upon the frontiers of modern Servia at the point where the Save joins the Danube, where the city of Singidunum rose then and where to-day Belgrade stands.” Cf. Attila and the Huns, p. 37 (by Edward Hutton, New York, 1915).

[17] See the Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, pp. 411–419 (by C. W. Russell, London, 1858).

[18] Cf. Historical Geography of Europe, p. 70 (London, 1881).

[19] Ibid., p. 71.

[20] While I knew the honesty and truthfulness of McGahan too well ever to question his statements regarding the cruelties of the Turks which he so vividly described, I have never had any doubt that most of the atrocities that so shocked the world at the time were provoked by the people of the Balkans themselves. Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks had organized a systematic propaganda for the dismemberment of Macedonia and “when those methods flagged a bomb would be thrown at, let us say, a Turkish official by an agent provocateur of one of the three players, inevitably resulting in the necessary massacre of innocent Turks, and an outcry in the European press.” Cf. Nevill Forbes, op. cit. p. 66.

“The Bulgarian Atrocities,” according to another well-informed writer, “were a clever and unscrupulous piece of diplomacy on the part of the Russian Foreign Office and of the Pan-Slavist Committees. In May, 1876, the Bulgarian Committees at Bukharest and Odessa organized an insurrection which broke out simultaneously in many of the large towns of Bulgaria, accompanied by abominable atrocities on Moslems, ‘designedly committed by the insurgents as being the means best calculated to bring on a general revolution in Bulgaria, by rendering the position of the Christians, however peaceably inclined, so intolerable under the indiscriminate retaliation which the governing race were sure to attempt, as to force them in self-defence to rise.’” W. E. D. Allen in The Turks in Europe, p. 166 (London, 1919).

[21] “Of all the men,” writes Forbes, “who have gained reputation as war correspondents I regard McGahan as the most brilliant.” “He used to be called ‘The Cossack correspondent’ because of the swiftness of his movements. Frank Millet names him ‘Will-o’-the-wisp of war writers.’ George Augustus Sala pronounced him one of the most cosmopolitan men he had ever met—‘a scholar, a linguist, a shrewd observer, a politician wholly free from party prejudice, a traveler as indefatigable as Schyler, as dashing as Barnaby, as dauntless as Stanley.’” “No man of his age in recent years,” avers his friend, Lieutenant Greene, “has done more to bring honor on the name of America throughout the length and breadth of Europe and far into Asia.—I suppose that he and Skobeleff stood at the head of their respective professions.

“Year after year the praises of this bold adventurer and vivid writer are chanted in rude verse by the peasants of the Balkans, and every year the anniversary of his premature death is commemorated by the singing of a requiem mass in the cathedral at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria. When he was riding among the Bulgarian villages in war time the peasants used to crowd about and kiss his hands, hailing him as their liberator, and there were many of the Bulgars who agitated for the choice of this wandering writer as the head of the principality whose creation his dispatches had done so much to establish.” Cf. Famous War Correspondents, Chap. IV (by F. L. Bullad, Boston, 1914).

[22] After Trajan had conquered the Dacians he established in the newly acquired territory a large body of Roman colonists. But they were by no means all of Latin blood, for they were drawn, according to Eutropius, from all parts of the Roman Empire—ex toto orbe romano. Numerous votive inscriptions found in the country show that among the colonists besides those from Italy, were representatives from Gaul, Germany, Dalmatia, Phrygia, Galatia, Africa, Egypt, and far-off Palmyra, But, notwithstanding this complexity of ethnical stock, it was always those of Latin blood and Latin speech that dominated.

[23] For an illuminating account, with a map, of this much discussed campaign of Darius against the Scythians, see The Geographical System of Herodotus, Vol. I, sec. 7, 8 (by J. Rennell, London, 1830). Cf. also The Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III, pp. 434, 435 (by G. Rawlinson, New York, 1881); The History of Herodotus, Melpomene, 87–143; E. H. Bunbury’s A History of Ancient Geography Among the Greeks and Romans from the earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I., pp. 202–206, 217 (London, 1883).

[24] Cf. Le Danube, Aperçu historique, économique et politique, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917).

[25] See Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).

[26] Cf. The Orient Question, Appendix C (by Prince Lazarovich-Hebelianovich, New York, 1913).

[27] Cf. Baicoianu, op. cit., p. 14. See also for an illuminating discussion of this same subject La Question du Danube, Histoire Politique du Bassin du Danube; Études des divers régimes applicables à la navigation du Danube (by G. Demorgny, Paris, 1911).

[28] A venerable legend has it that Achilles met here the shade of Helen of Troy whom he had loved in life, by hearsay, although he had never seen her.

[29] These alleged appearances of Achilles and the Dioscuri, referred to by Arrian, were evidently the lambent electrical discharges known as St. Elmo’s Fires. They are also called corposant, Helena, and, when in pairs, the Dioscuri—namely, Castor and Pollux.

[30] Tristia, Lib. III, Elegia, III.

[31] Tristia, Lib. II, Elegia, IX.

[32] For the various names of the Euxine or Black Sea, cf. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 3 (trans, by H. Yule, London, 1903); Cathay and The Way Thither, Vol. II, p. 98 (printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1913).

[33] So paramount from the twelfth to the fifteenth century was the commerce of Genoa and Venice that an Italian writer does not hesitate to declare that, “during four centuries, the Genoese and Venetians were the arbiters of the destinies of Europe; that they alone thronged the trade-routes of Asia and Africa; that they alone controlled the commerce of these continents; that they alone civilized their barbarous inhabitants and dispelled the darkness of the Middle Ages.” Nuova Istoria della Repubblica di Genova, del Suo Commercio e della Sua Letteratura dalle Origini all’ Anno 1797, Vol. I, p. 7 (by Michel-Giuseppe Canale, Florence, 1858).

In marked contrast to this division of the commerce of the world between Genoa and Venice, the Venetian author, Fabio Mutinelli, would claim a mercantile monopoly for his countrymen. “To them alone,” he writes, “are earth and sea equally open; they alone are the channel of all the riches and the furnishers of all the world which poured into their hands all the money which it possessed.” Del Commercio dei Veneziani, p. 126 (Venice, 1835).

For interesting accounts of the Euxine trade routes during the period in question the reader may consult with profit Histoire du Commerce de la Mer Noire (by Elie de la Primaudaie); Le Danube, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917); Intercourse Between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome (by H. G. Rawlinson, Cambridge, England, 1916); Travels of Marco Polo, Vol. I, Bk. I, Chap. IX (by Henry Yule, London, 1903). This masterly work is specially valuable for its numerous maps indicating the routes of Marco Polo, as well as those of the elder Polos through Asia. See also Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Vol. II, pp. 76, 78, 158 ff. (by Wilhelm Heyd, Stuttgart, 1879).

[34] Canto V, strophe v. Compare Byron’s graphic description of a storm on the Euxine with that given by Ovid in which he vividly portrays the struggling winds as they furiously rush against one another from all points of the compass.

[35] The Sweet Waters of Asia and the Sweet Waters of Europe on the Upper reaches of the Golden Horn are so called in contradistinction to the salt waters of the Bosphorus.

[36] Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 136 (by E. A. Grosvenor, Boston, 1895).

[37] Among the Ottomans and other eastern peoples the capital of Turkey is usually known as Stamboul, or Istamboul, a corruption of Constantinople. It is also called Constantineh. Frequently it is referred to as Roma Nova—New Rome. In the official documents of the Greek Patriarch this name is still retained. The Slavs love to speak of it as Tsargrad—the Castle of Cæsar. To Mohammedan poets, who are prodigal in the epithets which they apply to it, it is the City of Islam, the Portal of Felicity, the Gate of Happiness, the Mother of the World.

The municipal government of Constantinople embraces all the cities and villages fringing the Bosphorus from the Euxine to the Sea of Marmora, including the Princes Islands. But, although the superficial extent of the municipality—counting the water expanse of the Strait, the Golden Horn and the northern part of the Marmora—is quite large, its actual land area is comparatively restricted.

[38] Voyage en Orient, Tom. III, p. 190 (Brussels, 1835).

[39] Through South America’s Southland, Chap. IV (New York, 1916).

[40] For an elaborate account of Justinian’s marvelous temple see The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople, Chaps. III, IV, XI (by Lethaby and Swainson, London, 1894).

[41] Annalium, Pars V, p. 498 (by M. Glycas, Bonn).

[42] History of Architecture, Vol. II, p. 321 (London, 1867).

[43] Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto II, Stanza 77.

[44] The name given by the Italians to the official residence of the Grand Signor in Constantinople. The Turks use the word Serai, which is derived from the Persian serai, signifying palace—a word which is applied to any residence of Sultan. In English seraglio is frequently, but erroneously, confused with harem.

[45] The Eastern Question, p. 139 et seq. (by J. A. R. Marriot, Oxford, 1917). Whatever may be said regarding the genuineness of the famous “Political Testament” of Peter the Great “there can be no question that it accurately represented the trend and tradition of Russian policy in the eighteenth century. Constantinople was clearly indicated as the goal of Russian ambition. The Turks were to be driven out of Europe by the help of Austria; a good understanding was to be maintained with England and every effort was to be made to accelerate the dissolution of Persia and to secure the Indian trade. Whether inherited or not these were the principles which for nearly forty years inspired the policy of Peter the Great’s most brilliant successor on the Russian throne, Catherine II.” Marriot, op. cit., p. 138.

[46] Cf. Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I, p. 268 (by Albert Vadal, Paris, 1869). The famous Field Marshal von Moltke expressed a similar opinion when he wrote, in 1846, “Rom wurde eine Weltstadt durch seine Männer, Konstantinople durch seine Weltstellung”—Rome was a world-city because of her men, Constantinople because of her world location. Gesammelte Schriften und Denkwürdigkeiten des General-Feldmarschalls, Tom. I, p. 165 (by Grafen Helmuth von Moltke, Berlin, 1892). Mr. D. G. Hogarth, in his valuable work, The Nearer East, declares: “No other site in the world enjoys equal advantages, nor perhaps ever will enjoy them. For the Isthmus of Suez is beset by deserts, and that of Panama has a climate not to be compared. Constantinople not only has an open and most fertile environment and easy access to the interior of both Europe and Asia, but its position between two seas and exposure on the side of Russia gives it an almost northern climate. Add to this a dry, sloping site, a superb harbor, an admirable outer roadstead, easy local communication by way of the Bosphorus and an inexhaustible water supply, and it is easy to agree that those who founded Chalcedon but left Byzantium to others, were indeed blind.” Pp. 240, 241 (New York, 1902).

[47] Beaconsfield boasted on his return from Berlin to England that he had secured “peace with honor.” McGahan, the brilliant war correspondent, declared as soon as he read the treaty, that “it was not worth the paper on which it was written.” An English writer, forty years later, stigmatized it as a treaty that “was concluded in a spirit of shameless bargain, with a sublime disregard of elementary ethics and in open contempt of the right of civilized peoples to determine their own future. It was essentially a temporary arrangement concluded between rival imperialist states. And it sowed the seeds of the crop of ‘Nationalist’ wars in which the Balkan peoples were to be embroiled for the next half century.” The Turks in Europe, p. 179 (by W. E. D. Allen, London, 1919).

[48] Cent Projects de Partage de la Turquie, 1281–1913 (by T. J. Djuvara, Paris, 1913).

[49] The distinguished Russian scholar, Prince Eugène Nicolayevich Trubetskoy, expresses in a single sentence the dominant idea of his countrymen when he declares: “The possession of the Straits”—the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles—“may become indispensable for Russia in order to secure her daily bread; the possession of Tsargrad as the condition of her power and importance as a State.” See his lecture Saint Sophia, Russians’ Hope and Calling, p. 8 (London, 1916).

[50] “The eternal Eastern Question,” writes the historian Freeman, “will never be settled till the Greek nation once more has its own. We claim for that nation that whole extent of land in Europe and Asia where the Greek race and speech is the race and speech of the Christian population; and with that we claim for them their own ancient capital, the city of the Constantines, the Leos, and the Basils. We claim all this on the score of simple justice, on the score of that general philanthropy which, when Greeks are concerned, is not ashamed of the name of philhellenism.”

Again, he declares: “The fact that Constantinople has been and is and ever must be the head of South-eastern Europe is a practical fact which stares us in the face. And while this fact may, with those who look below the surface, awaken some fears which do not lie on the surface, allay some fears which do. Constantinople can never be the head of a province; it must be the head of an empire. But it does not follow that it can now be the head of an universal empire. Its annexation by a distant power would, in all moral certainty lead to the dismemberment of the power that annexed it.” Historical Essays, Third Series, pp. 376, 277 (London, 1879).

[51] Syria, the Desert and the Sown, p. X (by G. L. Bell, London, 1908).

[52] Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 403 (by E. A. Grosvenor, Boston, 1895).

[53] This tragic event is vividly pictured by the poet Shelley when in his lyrical drama, Hellas, he sings:

A chasm
As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul;
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one
Of regal part has cast himself beneath
The stream of war. Another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap, and with his iron mace
Directs the torrent of that tide of men.
And seems—he is—Mohamet.

[54] According to the eminent Austrian historian, Von Hammer-Purgstall, the city sustained, from the time of its foundation until its capture by Mohammed II, no fewer than twenty-nine sieges. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. II, pp. 428, 521–523 (Paris, 1835).

[55] Op. cit. p. 251.

According to Augier de Busbecq, the scholarly Flemish diplomat, who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, spent eight years at the Ottoman Court, Constantinople “is a city which nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world. It stands in Europe, looks upon Asia, and is within reach by sea of Egypt and the Levant on the south and the Black Sea and its European and Asiatic shores on the north.” Letters, Vol. I, p. 123 (trans. by D. Forster, Paris, 1881).

[56] Frederic Harrison, The Fortnightly Review, June, 1919, pp. 840, 841.

[57] Became a Greek by ceding to the Pastor. Paradiso, XX, 57.

[58] Frederic Harrison, The Fortnightly Review, April, 1894, pp. 439, 440.

[59] Cf. the author’s Great Inspirers, p. 16 (New York, 1917).

[60] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, Chap. LIII.

[61] Op. cit., Vol. VI, Chap. LXVI. “Indeed,” declares a recent writer, “when we consider that this state—the Byzantine Empire—was for a thousand years the defence of Europe against Asiatic invaders, which beat back the Arabs and Seljouks, and checked for a century the advance of the Ottomans, when at the height of their power; that during this period it represented civilization in the midst of barbarism, and maintained a wide commerce by land and sea; that by its missionaries both the Russians and the South Slavonic peoples were evangelized, and the Cyrillic alphabet invented; that to its care in preserving and multiplying manuscripts the existence of a great part of our classical literature is due; and finally, that it was the birthplace of Italian painting, and that its architecture has exercised a greater power than any other style, reaching in its effects from Spain to India; we can hardly overestimate its influence on the world’s history.” History of Greece From Its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864, Vol. I, p. vii (by George Finlay, Oxford, 1877).

[62] Among the more distinguished Hellenists besides Lascaris and Chrysoloras, whose labors in Italy contributed enormously towards initiating and developing the work of the Renaissance, and who reflected undying honor on the Greek name, must be mentioned Theodore Gaza, Gemistus Plethon, John Argyropoulos, George of Trebizond, Demitrius Chalcondyles, and Cardinal Bessarion—who were all, as Hody, the noted Hellenist of Oxford, declared, “viri nullo ævo perituri.”

[63] Marriott, op. cit., Chap. II.

[64] Napoleon et Alexander I, L’Alliance Russe sous Le Premier Empire, Tom. I, p. 306 et seq. (by Albert Vandal, Paris, 1896).

[65] Note to “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto III, strophe XCI.

[66] How different is now the condition of the Trojan plain from what it was in ancient times! Then according to Schliemann it contained “eleven flourishing cities, all of which were probably autonomous and of which five coined their own money. If we consider further that the eleven cities, besides two villages, existed here simultaneously in classical antiquity and that one of these—the city of Ilium itself—had at least seventy thousand inhabitants, we are astounded and amazed how such large masses of people could have found the means of subsistence here, whilst the inhabitants of the present seven poor villages of the plain have the greatest difficulty in providing for their miserable existence. And not only had these ancient cities an abundance of food but they were also so populous and so rich that they could carry on wars and, as their ruins prove, they could erect temples and many other public buildings of white marble; Ilium especially must have been ornamented with a vast number of such sumptuous edifices.” Troja, Results of the Latest Researches and Discoveries on the Site of Homer’s Troy, pp. 345, 346 (New York, 1884).

[67] “The main contention was that the Iliad and the Odyssey were a collection of songs composed at different times and of very unequal values and that, like the Niebelungen Lied, they could be resolved into shorter lays, each celebrating the deeds of individual heroes. The more famous of these heroes, Achilles for example, like Siegfried, had, it was maintained, their ultimate origin in mythological personages, once worshiped as divine.” Schliemann’s Excavations, an Archæological and Historical Study, p. 17 (by C. Schuchhardt, London, 1891).

[68]

Troy—O horror!—the common grave of Europe and Asia,

Troy—the untimely tomb of all heroes and heroic deeds.

LXVIIIA.

[69] Herodotus. Book VII, 43.

[70] Troy, or Ilium, as the excavations of Schliemann and Dörpfeld have shown, was destroyed and rebuilt no fewer than seven times. During the Roman period it was known as Ilium Novum and was honored as the city of Æneas and consequently, as the parent of Rome. It was because of this fabulous origin of the Romans that Constantine first planned to establish the seat of empire on the plain of Troy instead of locating it on the site occupied by Byzantium between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. Fortunately he gave his preference to the spot where has since stood the noble city which still bears his name.

Ilium Novum was for a long time the seat of a bishopric, but, since it was plundered by the Turks, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, it has lain in ruins.

For illuminating accounts of Schliemann’s epoch-making investigations see, besides the Troja above mentioned, his Troy and its Remains (New York, 1876); Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans (New York, 1881); and Schuchhardt’s work already quoted.

Dr. Schliemann has justly been acclaimed the creator of prehistoric Greek archæology. “He has introduced,” writes Oxford’s distinguished Orientalist, “a new era into the study of classical antiquity, has revolutionized our conceptions of the past, has given the impulse to that ‘research of the spade’ which is producing such marvelous results throughout the Orient and nowhere more than in Greece itself. The light has broken over the peaks of Ida and the long-forgotten ages of prehistoric Hellas and Asia Minor are lying bathed in it before us. We now begin to know how Greece came to have the strength and will for that mission of culture to which we of this modern world are still indebted. We can penetrate into a past of which Greek tradition had forgotten the very existence. By the side of one of the jade axes which Dr. Schliemann has uncovered at Hissarlik, the Iliad itself is but a thing of yesterday. We are carried back to a time when the empires of the Assyrians and the Hittites did not as yet exist, when the Aryan forefathers of the Greeks had not as yet, perhaps, reached their new home in the south, but when the rude tribes of the neolithic age had already begun to traffic and barter, and travelling caravans conveyed the precious stone of the Kuen-lun from one extremity of Asia to another. Prehistoric archæology in general owes as much to Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries as the study of Greek history and Greek art.” Professor A. H. Sayce, in the introduction to Dr. Schliemann’s Troja, pp. viii, ix.

[71] According to Suetonius and Horace both Julius Cæsar and Augustus, like Constantine the Great, contemplated making Ilium—Troy—the capital of the Roman Empire.

Lucan not only makes Julius visit the Ilium of his day and “each story’d place survey”—

Circuit exustæ nomen memorabile Trojae—

but also has him register a solemn vow to restore Priam’s city to its ancient state and honors—

Restituam populos, grata vice mœnia reddent

Ausomidæ Phrygibus, Romanaque Pergama surgent.

So proud, indeed, were the Romans of Ilium and of their descent from Æneas that their countrymen, under the command of Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, on getting their first view of the home of their forefathers from the Trojan shore, were so moved, Virgil informs us, that they exultingly exclaimed:

O patria, O divom domus Ilium et incluta bello

Mœnia Dardanidum!

“The dignity and power of Ilium being thus prodigiously enhanced we must find it but natural,” observes Grote, “that the Ileans assumed to themselves exaggerated importance as the recognized parents of all conquering Rome.” History of Greece, Vol. I, p. 328.

[72] Purgatorio, XXII, 102.

[73] Troy, Its Legend, History and Literature, p. 122 (by S. G. Benjamin, New York, 1916).

[74] Highlands of Turkey, Vol. I, p. 22 (by H. F. Tozer, London, 1869). (2) Odyssey, Vi, 51 et seq.

[75] So impressed was Kinglake, after visiting the Trojan plain, with the accuracy of the poet’s description of the most salient features of the landscape that he declared: “Now I know that Homer had passed along here.” Eothen, Chap. IV.

[76] “He who would understand the poet must visit the poet’s country.” Regarding Homer’s birthplace an anonymous poet long ago wrote:

Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ,

Orbis de patria oertat, Homere, tua.

But in whichever of these place the immortal bard was born, if in any of them, it is quite evident to even the casual visitor to Troy that the poet was thoroughly familiar with its environment which he describes with such marvelous precision.

[77] Iliad, XI, 89, 90.

[78] Thus the distinguished geographer, Elisée Reclus, in speaking of the Mysian Olympus, says positively: “West of the Galatian Olympus, this is the first that has received the name of Olympus, and amongst the fifteen or twenty other peaks so named, this has been chosen by popular tradition as the chief abode of the gods.” The Earth and Its Inhabitants. Asia, Vol. IV, p. 261 (New York, 1885). “This,” declares another writer, “is ‘the Olympus crowned with snow’ up ‘whose lofty crags the everliving gods mounted, Jove first in ascension.’” The Sultan and his subjects, Vol. II, p. 226 (by R. Davey, New York, 1897). Cf. also Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 30 (by R. W. Walsh, London, 1836). Lady Mary Wortley Montague calls the Mysian Olympus:

The Parliament seat of heavenly powers.

[79] Ibid., XIV, 251–257.

[80] Ibid., XIV, 317.

[81] Mr. Gladstone, that enthusiastic student of Homer and of

“Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays,”

in his preface to Dr. Schliemann’s notable work on Mycenæ does not hesitate to declare: “There is no preliminary bar to our entertaining the capital question whether the tombs now unearthed and the remains exposed to view are the tombs and remains of the great Agamemnon or his compeers who have enjoyed through the agency of Homer such a protracted longevity of renown.... The conjecture is that these may very well be the tombs of Agamemnon and his company.”

Dr. Schliemann, writing on the same subject, tells us: “I have never doubted that a King of Mycenæ, by name Agamemnon, his charioteer Eurymedon, a princess Cassandra and their followers were treacherously murdered either by Ægisthus at a banquet, ‘like an ox at the manger,’ as Homer says, or in the bath by Clytemnestra, as the later tragic poets represent; and I firmly believed that the murdered persons had been interred in the Acropolis” of Mycenæ.... “My firm faith in the traditions made me undertake my late excavations in the Acropolis and led to the discovery of the five tombs with their immense treasures.” Mycenæ; a Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycenæ and Tyryns, pp. 334, 335 (London, 1878).

[82] Plinii Epistulae No. 97. “Nequi enim dubitabam, qualecumque esset quod faterentur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri.”

[83] The Koran: Commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, p. I (Philadelphia, 1870).

[84] The reason why the Ottoman whose home is on the West of the Bosphorus desires to be buried in the cemetery of Scutaria is that “he considers himself a stranger and a sojourner in Europe and the Moslem of Constantinople turns his last lingering look to this Asiatic cemetery where his remains will not be disturbed when the Giaour regains possession of this European city, an event which he is firmly convinced will sometime come to pass. Thus the dying Turk feels a yearning for his native soil; like Joseph in the land of Egypt he exacts a promise from his people that ‘they would carry his bones hence’ and like Jacob, says ‘bury me in my grave which I have in the land of Canaan.’” Constantinople, p. 13 (by R. Walsh, London, 1836).

[85] Mohammed enjoined his followers to visit graveyards frequently. “Visit graves,” he says, for “of a verity they shall make you think of futurity.” Again, he declares: “Whoso visiteth the graves of his two parents every Friday, or one of the two, he shall be written a pious child, even though he might have been in the world, before that, disobedient to them.”

[86] The world has long admired the noble qualities of heart and mind of Florence Nightingale but admiration for her has been greatly enhanced by the recent publication of certain letters of hers, previously unknown, which she wrote to one of her associates in the care of the sick and wounded soldiers of the Crimean War. I reproduce a part of one of which she addressed to the Mother Superior of a band of Catholic sisters who were her collaborators in the great work of mercy to which she devoted herself with such sublime self-abnegation:

“Your going,” she writes, “is the greatest blow I have yet had. But God’s blessing and my love and gratitude go with you, as you well know. You know well, too, that I shall do everything I can for the Sisters whom you have left me. But it will not be like you. Your wishes will be our law. And I shall try to remain in the Crimea for their sakes as long as any of us are here. I do not presume to express praise or gratitude to you, Reverend Mother, because it would look as if I thought you had done the work not unto God but unto me. You were far above me in fitness for the General Superintendency, both in wordly talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications which God values in a superior. The being placed over you in our unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my fault. Dearest Reverend Mother what you have done for the work no one can ever say. But God rewards you for it with Himself. If I thought that your valuable health would be restored by a return home, I should not regret it. My love and gratitude will be yours wherever you go. I do not presume to give you any tribute but my tears.” The letter concludes with the words, “The gratitude of the Army is yours.” Dublin Review, October, 1917.

[87] Anatolia is from the Greek word 'Ανατολπ which, like the Latin Oriens, signifies the eastern land, the land of sunrise. It is the modern name of Asia Minor which the Ottomans call Anadoli.

[88] For an interesting account of the two œcumenical councils of Nicæa see Hefele’s scholarly Histoire des Conciles, Tom. I, Livre II and Tom. III, Livre XVIII (trans. by Dom H. Leclercq, Paris, 1910).

[89] Cf. The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 93 (by W. M. Ramsay, London, 1890).

[90] “The fate of these cities,” observes a recent traveler in Anatolia, “is that of numerous others whose names are a part of classic history. Everywhere throughout Asia Minor decaying ruins mark the sites where art and culture were united with barbaric power. Everywhere are evidences of past refinement, splendor and greatness. And over all the prostrate columns and broken entablatures, the domed mosques and black-green cypresses, the fertile valleys and the great desert, the dark-visaged men and the silent, veiled women lingers the spell, undefinable but wondrously fascinating, of Asia; the cradle of the human race, the land of luxurious magnificence, the abode of mighty empires that rose and crumbled long before the western world had emerged from darkness; the birthlace, too, of subtle mysticism and of every religion that has soothed the soul in anguish and comforted it with hope.” Asia Minor, p. 317 (by W. A. Hawly, London, 1918).

[91] See the author’s Woman in Science, p. 12 et seq. (New York, 1913).

[92] Ionia and the East, pp. 8, 9 (by D. G. Hogarth. Oxford, 1907). Another eminent Orientalist, H. R. Hall, expresses substantially the same view when he tells us that “It was in Ionia that the new Greek civilization arose; Ionia, in whom the old Ægean blood and spirit most survived, taught the new Greece, gave her coined money and letters, art and poesy, and her shipmen, forcing the Phœnicians from before them, carried her new culture to what were then deemed the ends of the earth.” The Ancient History of the Near East from the Earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis, p. 79 (London, 1916).

[93] The Story of Turkey, p. 78 (by Stanley Lane-Poole, New York, 1888).

[94] The historian Hammer-Purgstall tells us that the ablest generals and statesmen under the reigns of Selim and Solyman the Magnificent—those who raised the Ottoman Empire to its acme of prosperity—were renegades. During this period no fewer than eight out of ten of the grand viziers were likewise apostates. “Si donc la puissance ottomane foula aux pieds tant de nations, ce resultat ne doit pas être attribué au caractère indolent et grossier des Ottomans, mais à l’esprit de ruse et de finesse qui distingue les peuples grecs et slaves, a la témérité et a la perfidie des Allanais et des Dalmates, à la persévérance et à l’opiniâtreté des Bosnien et des Croates, enfin à la valeur et aux talents des renégats des pays conquis.” Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. VI, p. 452–454 (Paris, 1835).

[95] The Story of the Barbary Corsairs, p. 66 (by Poole and Kelly, New York, 1893).

[96] Op. cit., Tom. I, p. 18.

[97] Op. cit., p. 346 et seq.

[98] Tableau Général de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. II, p. 217 (Paris, 1790).

[99] The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 117 (by H. A. Gibbons, New York, 1916).

[100] Freeman writes to the same effect when he declares “between renegades, Janissaries and the mothers of all nations, the blood of many a Turk must be physically anything rather than Turkish.” Op. cit., p. 187.

[101] A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, Vol. III, p. 475 (Oxford, 1877). Among these causes Finlay indicates three which deserve special attention. “First, the superiority of the Ottoman tribe over all contemporary nations in religious convictions and in moral and military conduct. Second, the number of different races which composed the population of the country between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, the Danube and the Ægean. Third, the depopulation of the Greek Empire, the degraded state of its judicial and civil administration and the demoralization of the Hellenic race.”

[102] Gibbons, op. cit., p. 173.

[103] No one is more familiar with the Ottoman people or their history than Professor William Ramsay who does not hesitate to declare: “It has almost always been by the strength and skill of Christian allies that the Turks have vanquished the Christians:

But Turkish force and Latin fraud

Would break their shield, however broad.”

Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Years Wandering, p. 271 et seq. (London, 1897).

“The Christians were crushed by the arts and arms of their own brethren; Constantinople fell, not before the Saracen or the Turk but before warriors of Greek and Slavonic blood.” Op. cit., p. 272.

[104] Gibbons, op. cit., p. 302.

[105] Ibid., p. 123.

[106] H. A. Gibbons, op. cit., p. 81.

[107] Sura II, 257.

[108] Sura X, 99, 100.

[109] The erudite Assemani, Librarian of the Vatican Library, writing of certain persecutions of the Christians by Mohammedans, declares: “Non raro persecutionis procellam excitarunt mutuæ Christianorum ipsorum simultates, sacerdotum licencia, præsulum fastus, tyrannica magnatum potestas, et medicorum præesertim scribarumque de supremo in gentem suam imperio altercationes.” Biblotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana, Tom. III, Pars, II (Rome, 1719–1728).

[110] The Preaching of Islam, a History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith, pp. 422, 423 (by T. W. Arnold, London, 1913).

[111] Ibid., pp. 79, 80.

Of all who have made a careful study of the character and religion of the Mohammedans of Asia, no one probably, is better qualified to express an opinion on the subject under consideration than M. A. de Gobiñeau. As the result of thorough investigation during several years residence among them, he does not hesitate to declare that if one separates religious doctrines from political necessity which has often spoken and acted in its name, there is no religion that is more tolerant, one might almost say more indifferent regarding mens’ faith than Islam. “Cette disposition organique est si forte qu’en dehors des cas ou la raison d’État mise en jeu a porté les gouvernments mussulmans à se faire arme de tout pour tendre à unité de foi, la tolerance la plus complète a été la regle fournie par le dogme.... Qu’on ne s’arrête pas aux violences, aux cruautés commises dans une occasion ou dans une autre. Si on regarde de prés, on ne tardera pas à y découvrir des causes toutes politiques ou toutes de passion humaine et de tempérament chez le souverain ou dans la population. Le fait religieux n’y est invoqué que comme pretexte et, en réalité, il reste en dehors.” Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Central, pp. 24, 25 (Paris, 1865).

What has been said of the tolerance of the Osmanlis or of the peoples of Central Asia the distinguished Orientalist, Prince Caetani, claims for the Arabian followers of the Prophet. “Gli Arabi,” he writes in his monumental work Annali dell’ Islam, Vol. V, p. 4 (Milan, 1912), “nei primi anni non perseguitarono invece alcuno per ragioni di fede, no si diedero pena alcuna per convertire chicchessia, sicche sotto l’Islam, dopo le prime conquiste, i Christiani Semiti goderono d’una tolleranza religiosa quale non si era mai vista da varie generazioni.”

[112] L’España Sagrada, Teatro Geografico de la Iglesia de España, Tom. XXXVII, p. 312. Cardinal Hergenröther hold the same view when he declares that Islam was a Strafe—punishment—for the degenerate Christians of the Orient whose moral corruption, religious schism, and desecration of sacred things through arbitrary state-power had paved the way for it. Handbuch der Allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte, Tom. I, p. 748 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884).

The distinguished historian, F. X. Funk, expresses a similar opinion when he writes: “The Carthaginians were safely gathered under the standard of the Prophet and the conquerors were free to continue their victorious march on the Barbary States and the West of Africa, the many divisions and enmities to which Christological disputes had given rise among the Eastern Christians greatly facilitating their task.” A Manual of Church History, Vol. I, p. 132 (London, 1909).

[113] “Estimates of population,” observes Marriott, “are notoriously untrustworthy, but it seems probable that at a time when Henry VIII ruled over about four million people the subjects of Sultan Suleiman numbered fifty million.” The Eastern Question, p. 89 (Oxford, 1917).

“After the conquest of Constantinople,” writes Finlay, “the Ottomans became the most dangerous conquerors who have acted a part in European history since the fall of the western Roman Empire. Their Dominion, at the period of its greatest extension, stretched from Buda on the Danube to Bussora on the Euphrates. On the north, their frontiers were guarded against the Poles by the fortress of Kamenietz, and against the Russians by the walls of Azof; while to the south the rock of Aden secured their authority over the southern coast of Arabia, invested them with power in the Indian Ocean, and gave them the complete command of the Red Sea. To the east, the Sultan ruled the shores of the Caspian, from the Kour to the Tenek; and his dominion stretched westward along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, where the farthest limits of the regency of Algiers, beyond Oran, meet the frontiers of the empire of Morocco. By rapid steps the Ottomans completed the conquest of the Seljouk sultans in Asia Minor, of the Mamlouk sultans in Syria and Egypt, of the fierce corsairs of northern Africa, expelled the Venetians from Cyprus, Crete, and the Archipelago, and drove the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem from the Levant, to find a shelter at Malta. It was no vain boast of the Ottoman sultan that he was the master of many kingdoms, the ruler of three continents, and the lord of two seas.” History of Greece, Vol. V, p. 6 (Oxford, 1877).

[114] The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 23 (by W. M. Ramsay, London, 1890).

[115] L’Islamisme et la Science, p. 19 (Paris, 1883).

[116] Count Henry de Castries, in L’Islam, Impressions et Études, p. 121 (Paris, 1912).

[117] “It is an amusing fact,” writes an English woman who had an intimate knowledge of Turkey, “that an idea of impropriety is attached by Europeans who have never visited the East, to the very name of harem, while it is not less laughable they can never give a reason for their prejudice. How little foundation exists for so unaccountable a fancy must be evident at once when it is stated that harem, or woman’s apartment, is held so sacred by the Turks themselves, that they remain inviolate even in cases of popular disturbance, or individual delinquency; the mob never suffering their violence to betray them into an intrusion on the wives of their victims; and the search after a fugitive ceasing the moment that the door of the harem separates him from his pursuers.” Julia Pardoe, in The Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 126 (London, 1839).

Another English woman, Grace Ellison, who is familiar with the life of the harem and who has given public lectures in London on Turkish life, was seriously told by the secretary of a certain society: “You must not put the word ‘harem’ on the title of your lecture. Many who might come to hear you would stay away for fear of hearing improper revelations, and others would come hoping to hear those revelations and go away disappointed!” Cf. A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions, p. 16 (by Zeyneb Hanoum, Philadelphia, 1913).

[118] For an illuminating account of an Assyrian harem in the time of Sargon, more than seven centuries B. C., see Histoire de l’Art dans Antiquité, Tom. II, p. 435, et. seq. (by G. Perrot and Chipiez, Paris 1884). See also the account of the prehistoric palace of the Kings of Tiryns, as given in Schliemann’s Tiryns, p. 239, et. seq. (New York, 1885). According to Dr. Dörpfeld and other eminent archæologists this palace, the oldest in Greece, is distinctly oriental in plan and its smaller megaron was obviously a harem. Cf. also Schuchardt’s Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 31. For interesting descriptions of visits to harems in Turkey and Syria, consult the Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 125, et seq. (by Julia Pardoe, London, 1839), and the Inner Life of Syria, Chap. XI (by Lady Isabel Burton, London, 1884). Both of these women during their sojourn in the East, had exceptional opportunities for studying the real life of the harem where they were always cordially welcomed by its inmates.

The custom of wearing the veil, it may here be remarked, dates back almost as far, if not fully as far, as the harem. Cf. Genesis, xxii:65, and Isaiah, iii:23. Nor is the wearing of the veil in the Orient to-day confined entirely to Moslem women. Christian and other non-Moslem women wear it and have worn it from time immemorial. How erroneous, therefore, is the statement, so often made, that it was Mohammed that imposed the veil on the women of the Orient and inhumanly incarcerated them in the harem!

[119] Observations on the Mussulmans of India, p. 168 (London, 1917).

[120] Everyday Life in Turkey, p. 108 (London, 1897).

The Princess Christina Belgiojoso who spent three years in making a careful study of the people of Asia Minor writes: “The household of the Turkish peasant resembles that of the Christian peasant and, I am sorry to add, the former would often serve as a model for the latter. With equal fidelity, the advantage is in favor of the Turk, for his fidelity is neither imposed on him by civil or religious law, nor by public opinion, nor by local manners, customs and usages; he is led to it simply through the goodness of his nature to which any idea of causing grief to his associate would be repugnant.

“The Turkish peasant cherishes his companion as parent and as lover; never does he knowingly or willingly oppose her; there is no provocation to which he will not cheerfully submit through love for her.... I have seen women old, decrepit, infirm and hideous, led, comforted and adored by fine old men with long, flowing, silvery beards, strong, serene eye and as erect as mountain firs.” Oriental Harems and Scenery, p. 108–110 (New York, 1862).

[121] A well-known English journalist, Sidney Whitman, who was long on terms of intimacy with some of the most distinguished men of the Ottoman Empire, tells us that “The stranger, whatever his opportunities, only comes into contact with one-half of the Mohammedan population; the other is barred from his observation, from his very sight. In the course of all my visits to Turkey I never had an opportunity of approaching a Turkish woman within speaking distance.” Turkish Memories, p. 267 (London, 1914).

Writing from Constantinople, where she made a special study of the Turks, their manners and customs, the gifted and brilliant Lady Mary Wortley Montague, tells her correspondent in England, “It is a particular pleasure to me here to read the voyages of the Levant which are generally so far removed from the truth and so full of absurdities. I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an account of the women whom it is certain they never saw and talking wisely of men, into whose company they are never admitted, and very often describe mosques which they dared not even peep into.” Letters, Vol. II, p. 5 (London, 1793).

As wife of the British ambassador to the Porte, Lady Mary had the entrée of the homes of the Turks, rich and poor, where she was always cordially received and hospitably entertained. Besides this, she was familiar with the language of her hostesses of the harems which she visited and was thus able to become far more intimately acquainted with the people than those who must needs depend on unreliable interpreters. For these reasons her sprightly pictures of the life of the Turkish women have always had special value and one can easily understand her admiration for them and for many of their customs which are so different from those of her own country—England. She would have fully endorsed what her distinguished countrywoman, Lady Isabel Burton wrote many years afterwards: “As a rule I met with nothing but courtesy in the harems and much hospitality, cordiality and refinement.” The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton: The Story of Her Life Told in Part by Herself and in Part by W. H. Wilkins, Vol. II, p. 452 (New York, 1897).

[122] Turkey and the Turks, p. 84, et seq. (by Z. D. Ferriman, New York, 1911).

“There has been,” writes an American woman who has had exceptional opportunities for studying the condition of women in Turkey, “a vast amount of pity wasted upon the Moslem woman. It may surprise even the woman suffragist to learn that the laws of Mohammed confer upon women a greater degree of legal protection than any code of laws since the middle Roman law. The more recent liberties and protection granted to married women by the laws of divorce and the exclusive property rights now in the United States alone can be properly compared to those in force in, Turkey.” In the Palaces of the Sultan, pp. 448, 449 (by Anna Bowman Dodd, New York, 1903).

[123] Ibid.

[124] The Evil of the East, or Truths about Turkey, p. 42 (London, 1888).

[125] See the North American Review.

[126] Lieutenant Wood in his “Journey to the Source of the Oxus,” p. 194 (London, 1872), writes: “Nowhere is the difference between European and Mohammedan society more strongly marked than in the lower walks of life. The broad line that separates the rich and poor in civilized society is as yet but faintly drawn in Central Asia. Here unreserved intercourse between their superiors has polished the manners of the lower classes and, instead of this familiarity breeding contempt, it begets self-respect in the dependent.... Indeed, all the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect and a natural gravity of deportment which differs as far from the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an English clown.” These characteristics of the people of Central Asia, which so impressed the gallant explorer of the Oxus, are much more striking in the inhabitants of Anatolia.

Another author writes: “The fine manners of all classes of Mohammedans in Constantinople were a constant source of admiration to me. It was as if the grace and dignity of past times—of Courts of the eighteenth century—had taken refuge in Stamboul. Your Caiquejee, your Cafeje and the very boot-blacks, if they are Mohammedans, know how to be unobtrusively polite and well-bred towards each other, and even towards the Giaour himself, if he treats them civilly. The older fashioned, the more prejudiced, the Turkish gentleman, the finer are his manners, the more gracious and delightful his welcome.” The Sultan and His Subjects, Vol. I, pp. 280, 281 (by Richard Davy, New York, 1897).

[127] “The houses of the great Turkish ladies,” declares that keen observer, Lady Montague, “are kept clean with as much nicety as those in Holland.” Letters, Vol. II, p. 24 (London, 1793).

[128] Destruction of the Greek Empire, p. 524 (London, 1903).

[129] Diary of a Turk, p. 64 (London, 1903).

Writing to the poet, Pope, Lady Montague declares: “I can assure you that the Princesses and great ladies pass their time at their looms embroidering veils and robes, surrounded by their maids, which are always very numerous, in the same manner as we find Andromache and Helen described.” Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 110.

[130] Op. cit., pp. 54, 55, 98, 99.

[131] Letters, Vol. I, p. 104.

[132] The noted traveler and Orientalist, Sir Richard Burton, graphically defines the meaning of the word Kaif, so frequently heard in the Near East as “The savoring of animal existence; the passive enjoyment of mere sense; the pleasant languor, the dreamy tranquillity, the airy castle-building which in Asia stands in lieu of the vigorous, intensive, passionate life of Europe. It is the result of a lively, impressible, excitable nature and exquisite sensibility of nerve—a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern regions where happiness is placed in the exertion of mental and physical powers; where niggard earth commands ceaseless sweat of brow; and damp, dull air demands perpetual excitement, exercise or change, or adventure, or dissipation for want of something better. In the East man requires but rest and shade; upon the banks of a bubbling stream or under the cool shelter of a perfumed tree he is perfectly happy smoking a pipe, or sipping a cup of coffee, or drinking a glass of sherbert, but, above all things, deranging his body and mind as little as possible; the trouble of conversations, the displeasures of memory and the vanity of thought being the most unpleasant interruptions to his Kaif. No wonder that Kaif is a word untranslatable in our mother-tongue.” Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, pp. 23, 24 (Boston, 1859).

[133] Ferriman, op. cit., p. 334. Professor W. M. Ramsay, than whom no one has a more intimate knowledge of the Osmanlis, writes: “Whenever any work has to be done for which absolute honesty is required, there is always a Turk employed; they are human watchdogs whom everybody employs and trusts.” Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Tears Wanderings, p. 43 (London, 1897).

Dr. Schliemann bears the same testimony to their honesty and trustworthiness in his Troja, pp. 10, 11.

[134] Turquie Agonisante, p. 49 (Paris, 1913).

[135] Les Massacres d’Arménie, pp. 19, 20 (Paris, 1918).

[136] Ansayrii, Vol. II, p. 144 (London, 1851). Cf. Schliemann’s Troja, p. 338.

[137] The Odyssey, XIV, 57, 58.

[138] Don Quixote, Part I, Chap. XL.

[139] Cf. Pierre Loti in Turquie Agonisante, p. 49 (Paris, 1913).

[140] A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, Vol. V, p. 161 (Oxford, 1877). Finlay gives the following quotation from the Turco-Græcia, p. 487, of Crusius who writes as vigorously in favor of the Osmanlis as Knolles or Pierre Loti.

“Et mirum est inter barbaros in tanta tantæ urbi colluvie nullas cædes audiri, vim iniustam non ferri, ius cuivis dici. Ideo Constantinopolin Sultanus refugium totius orbis scribit: quod omnes miseri ibi tutissime lateant: quodque omnibus, tam infimis quam summis, tam Christianis quam infidelibus iustitia administretur.” Could the verdict of history be more explicit than in the remarkable statements here quoted?

[141] See also his informing brochure, Les Massacres D’Arménie (Paris, 1918).

[142] In Persia, according to the eminent traveler and Orientalist, Arminius Vambery, “Inferior officials cheat the people, and the latter again avail themselves of every opportunity to cheat the officials. Every one in that country lies, cheats and swindles. Nor is such behavior looked upon as anything immoral or improper; on the contrary, the man, who is straightforward and honest in his dealings is sure to be spoken of contemptuously as a fool or madman.” The Life and Adventures of Arminius Vambery, written by Himself, p. 284 (London, 1914).

How the Persians have degenerated since the days of Cyrus and Darius! Then, according to Herodotus, their sons were carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year in three things alone—to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth—“παιδεύονσι δε τους πᾶιδας, απ πενταετέος αρξάμενοι μέχρι εικοσαέτεος, τρία μουνα, ἱππεύειν καὶ τοξεύειν καὶ άληθίξεσθαι.” I, 136.

[143] It is interesting to note here that in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce which was concluded in 1535 between France and the Sublime Porte one of the articles reads: “It is forbidden to molest the French in matters of their religion which they have full liberty to practice.” This guarantee of religious freedom included the Christians of all other nations—a guarantee with which the Ottoman government has always faithfully complied. Cf. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. I, p. 171, 173 (by the Vicomte de la Jonquière, Paris, 1914).

[144] Quoted from Turkey and the Ottomans, p. 142, et. seq. (by Lucy M. Garnett, New York, 1911).

[145] Cf. Turkish Memories, p. 128, et passim (by Sidney Whitman). See Through Armenia on Horseback, Chap. VIII (by G. H. Hepworth, New York, 1918), and In the Palaces of the Sultan, pp. 426, 427 (by Anna Bowman Dodd).

[146] Op. cit., p. 108.

[147] Ibid., p. 116.

[148] Op. cit., p. 231.

[149] November 29, 1912.

[150] Le Chemin de Fer de Bagdad, p. 226 (Paris, 1915).

[151] Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition carried on by Order of the British Government during the years 1835, 1836 and 1837, p. 360 (London, 1868).

[152] Ibid., p. viii.

[153] Lord Palmerston, it is interesting to observe in this connection, did not hesitate to declare in Parliament that the construction of the Suez Canal, as planned by De Lesseps, was physically impracticable and that the project was but a trap set for gullible capitalists.

[154] “Ismaili to Koweit Ry.,” National Review, p. 464, May, 1902.

[155] Nineteenth Century, p. 1084, June, 1909.

[156] Ibid., p. 1085.

[157] Nineteenth Century, p. 966 et seq., May, 1914.

[158] June, 1901, p. 629.

[159] June, 1901, p. 629.

[160] Nineteenth Century, p. 961, May, 1914.

[161] Chéradame, op. cit., p. V.

[162] “Le tres distingué M. Eugène Gallos de la Société de Géographie de Paris qui, avec M. Le Général Dolot, ont parconru en 1914 la Syrie et la Mesopotamie peuvent affirmer qu il y avait la-has une seconde France, aimant inlassablement celle qui est en train d’ écrire sa plus belle page dans l’histoire des nations.” Bagdad, Son Chemin de Fer, Son Importance, Son Avenir, p. 25 (by Émile Aublé, Paris, 1917).

[163] The Geographical Journal, p. 33 et seq., July, 1917.

[164] The Fortnightly Review, p. 777, May, 1911.

[165] Speaking in the British Parliament April 8, 1903, Lord E. Fitzmaurice went still further when he declared: “Bound up with the future of this (Bagdad) Railway there is probably the future political control of large regions in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf.”

[166] The Fortnightly Review, p. 216, February, 1914.

[167] “Les Gouvernment français et anglais refuserent formellment leur approbation et leur appui et conseillerent a leur nationaux de s’en abstenir.” E. Aublé, op. cit., p. 15.

[168] The Nineteenth Century, p. 1090 et seq., June, 1909.

It is gratifying to know that this anti-German feeling was not shared by Sir Clinton and his associates and by clear-visioned men like Sir Edwin Pears who did not hesitate to declare: “The Germans, in inviting British coöperation from the first, have acted fairly and loyally.” The Contemporary Review, p. 589, November, 1908.

[169] M. Aublé, op. cit., p. 16, referring to this matter, writes: “Si en elle—même l’enterprise du Chemin de Fer de Bagdad est resté telle qu’elle s’est presentée au début, une œuvre allemande, c’est parce qu’on n’a pas voulu profiter des offres allemandes pour lui donner un caractère international.”

[170] The Nineteenth Century, p. 1312, June, 1914.

[171] Ibid., p. 1313. After all negotiations looking towards internationalization of the Bagdad Railway had failed, M. Geraud, who is evidently a monarchist, wrote: “We cannot help regretting that the two powers who held the protectorate of the Orient—France her old religious protectorate, and England the protectorate of Anatolia sanctioned by the Cyprus Convention—should, in the space of one generation, have laid down such beneficent weapons.... In order that so much destruction could be consummated, all that was responsible in England and France was the rule of democracy.”

[172] Cf. his interesting brochure, Les Chemins de Fer in Turquie d’Asie (Zurich, 1902).

[173] Revue de Géographie, p. 398, May, 1902.

[174] According to Herodotus it was a three months’ journey from Ephesus to Susa—a somewhat greater distance than from Constantinople to Bagdad.

[175] Süddeutsche Monatshefte, September, 1915. Cf. The Quarterly Review, p. 149, January, 1917.

[176] Der Kampf um die Dardanellen (Stuttgart, 1916).

[177] The Quarterly Review, p. 528, October, 1917.

[178] For an interesting article on this subject, see “Plato in the Folk-lore of the Konia Plain,” by F. W. Hasluck, in the Annual of the British School of Athens, No. XVIII.

[179] Called Rum—Rome—because it was, before its conquest by the Seljuks, a portion of the Roman-Byzantine Empire.

[180] See Turkey in Europe, p. 185 (by C. Eliot, London, 1908).

[181] In the Koran, Sura V., it is written, “O believers! surely wine and games of chance and statues, and divining arrows are an abomination of Satan’s work! Avoid them that ye may prosper.”

[182] Cf. Mishcat-Ul-Masabih, or a Collection of the Most Authentic Traditions Regarding the Actions and Sayings of Mohammed, Vol. II, pp. 368–370 (trans. from the Original Arabic by Capt. A. N. Mathews, Calcutta, 1809). “The Angel Gabriel did not visit Mohammed as he promised to do one night because of the presence of a puppy, saying to Mohammed ‘we angels do not go into a house in which are pictures or dogs.’” Vol. II, p. 368.

[183] Sismondi, writing of the Eastern story-tellers, among whom are women as well as men, informs us they sometimes “excite terror or pity, but they more frequently picture to their audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of the eastern imagination.... The physicians frequently recommend them to their patients in order to soothe pain, to calm agitation or to produce sleep after long watchfulness; and these story-tellers, accustomed to sickness, modulate their voices, soften their tones and gently suspend them as sleep steals over the sufferers.” Historical View of the Literature of Southern Europe, Vol. I, p. 62 (Bohn Edition).

[184] The Sheik-ul-Islam issued a vigorous fetwa against it in which he declared that its use “was contrary to the Koran” and that “smoking was a hideous and abominable practice of the Giaours, which no true Believer should adopt.”

[185] “The Eastern nations are generally so addicted to both that they say ‘a dish of coffee and a pipe of tobacco are a complete entertainment’; and the Persians have a proverb that coffee without tobacco is meat without salt.” Sale, The Koran, p. 88, “Preliminary Discourse.”

[186] “Most people who have travelled in the Levant are enthusiastic in their praises of the Turkish coffee which they drank out there. There is no reason why coffee prepared in the Turkish style should not become popular here. There is no difficulty about making it. That the coffee may have the delicious flavor it has in the Levant, the beans must be freshly roasted and ground very fine. The water must be boiled in a tin or copper coffee-pot. To supply, say four or five persons with coffee in tiny cups, two or three teaspoonfuls of the powder should be put into the pot while the water is actually boiling therein. Some people do not like sugar in their coffee, but if sugar is required, it should be put into the boiling water and allowed to melt before the coffee is added. Great sweetness is not appreciated by connoisseurs in coffee drinking. When the ground coffee is added to the boiling water, the pot should be taken off the fire and the coffee stirred up in the water with a teaspoon. Then it should be put on the fire again until the froth rises up. It is then poured into the cups. It is better to pour out the coffee slowly, placing the pot on the fire at short intervals, and thus getting more froth for pouring out into the cups, as the taste of the coffee is supposed to be better with the yellowish froth on the surface. It is on account of this idea that greedy people in Turkey choose those cups that have the most froth when coffee is handed round on a tray, leaving those with less to the others who are waiting their turn to be served.” Halil Halid’s Diary of a Turk, p. 244 (London, 1903).

[187] In marked contrast to this wildly lyrical praise of the fragrant and delicious beverage made from the Arabian berry, is the denunciation which was hurled against it by the orthodox followers of Islam who declared it to be a menace to public morals and one of the four ministers of the Devil—the other three being wine, opium, and tobacco. “During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries coffee-drinkers were persecuted more rigorously in Constantinople than wine-bibbers have ever been in England or America. Their most unrelenting enemy was the bloody Murad IV—himself a drunkard—who forbade the use of coffee under pain of death. He and his nephew, Mehmed IV, after him used to patrol the city in disguise, à la Harun-al-Rashid, in order to detect and punish for themselves any violation of the law.... A personage no more straitlaced than Charles II caused a court to hand down the following decision: ‘The Retayling of Coffe may be an innocente Trayde; but as it is used to nourisshe Sedition, spredde Lyes, and scandalyse Greate Mene, it may also be a common Nuissaunce.’” Constantinople Old and New, p. 24 (by H. G. Dwight, New York, 1915).

[188] The Beauties of the Bosphorus, p. 127 (London, 1839).

[189] Cf. his Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 439 et seq. (New York; Géographie Botanique Raisonnée (Paris, 1885).

[190] Historical Sketches, Vol. I, p. 116, 117 (by Cardinal Newman, London, 1901).

[191] Cf. Discovery in Greek Lands, p. 57 et seq. (by F. H. Marshall, Cambridge, 1920). See also A Century of Archæological Discoveries, p. 166 ff. (by A. Michaelis, New York, 1908).

Nothing impressed us more during our journey through Anatolia than the utter destruction of those superb cities of which a Roman author once wrote,

Magnificas Asiæ perreximus urbes.

Of many of these even the sites were unknown until they were recently discovered by the archæologists of Europe. The site of the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus was not identified until 1869, although this celebrated structure was once classed as one of the seven wonders of the world. Nowhere in Asia Minor does one find anything to compare with the stately temples of Pæstum, Girgenti, and Segesta which, with the exception of the wonderful monuments in Athens, are the most remarkable and best preserved groups of ancient Greek architecture in existence.

[192] The region through which they marched was described in the graphic language of an old chronicler as Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam, sterilem, inamœnam.

[193] The History of the Crusades, Vol. 1. p. 126 (New York, n. d.).

[194] Ibid., p. 257.

[195] Ibid., p. 258.

[196] Called by Cicero Tauri-Pylæ.

[197] As legend has it, Charlemagne sleeps in Odenberg, in Hesse, where crowned and armed and girt with his trusty sword, La Joyeuse, he awaits the advent of Anti-Christ when he will awake and deliver Christendom.

Bonaparte, it is supposed in certain parts of France, will again return to restore the country to its pristine glory. When Louis Napoleon submitted the plebiscite to the countrymen, many gave their vote under the impression that it was in support of his famous uncle.

[198] Lares et Penates or Cilicia and Its Governors, p. 79 (by W. B. Barker, London, 1853).

[199] Barker, op. cit., p. 82.

[200] The legend about people sleeping preternatural lengths of time has an honored place in the folklore of many nations in both the East and the West. We have already noted the traditions concerning the long sleeps of Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Napoleon, and other distinguished characters. But many other instances might be enumerated showing the prevalence of similar tales in many lands from the sleepers of Sardis, mentioned by Aristotle, to Rip Van Winkle, immortalized by Washington Irving.

[201] Cf. Strabo, XIV, 5; and Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, II, 5. For an account of Asurbanipal, in the light of recent Assyrian discoveries, see Graven in the Rock, Chap. XIV (by S. Kinns, London, 1891).

[202]

Talk of our souls and realms beyond the grave,

The very boys will laugh and say you rave.

[203] History of Greece, Vol. X, p. 311 (by W. Mitford, London, 1810).

[204] The Greek word for pinion is tarsos.

[205] Cf. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, I. 6; VIII. 7. 2. The Jewish historian was probably misled by the similarity of sounds of the two words and ventured to solve what has always been a riddle to historians and Scripture commentators.

[206] “Oppidum autem Britanni vocant,” says Cæsar, referring to the capital of Cassivellaunus, now London, “cum sylvas impeditas vallo atque fossa munierunt, quo incursiones hostium vitandæ causa convenire consuerunt.” De Bello Gallico, Lib. V, Cap. 21.

[207] Strabo, Geography, XIV, 51.

[208] J. B. Lightfoot in Philippians, Appendix on St. Paul and Seneca, p. 271.

[209] The Cities of St. Paul, Their Influence on His Life and Thought, pp. 88, 89 (London, 1907).

[210] The Heathen World and St. Paul, p. 20 (by E. H. Plumptre, London, n.d).

[211] Acts of the Apostles, xvii; 6.

[212] In one of his beautiful homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, St. John Chrysostom, the greatest of pulpit orators, declares: “I honor Rome for this reason; for, though I could celebrate her praises on many other accounts;—for her greatness, for her beauty, for her power, for her wealth, for her warlike exploits, yet, passing over all these things, I glorify her for this reason, that St. Paul in his lifetime wrote to the Romans, and loved them, and was present among them and conversed with them, and ended his life among them. Wherefore the city is on this account renowned more than all others; on this account I admire her, not on account of her gold, her columns or her other splendid decorations.” Oeuvres Complètes de Saint Jean Chrysostome, Tom XVI, p. 308 (Paris, 1871).

[213] Across Asia Minor on Foot, pp. 35, 351 (by W. J. Childs, New York, 1917).

[214] The massacre in Constantinople which so horrified the civilized world was, like that in Adana, provoked by the revolutionary activities of the Armenians. After having boldly announced their intention of applying the torch to the city and “reducing it,” as their posted placards phrased it, “to a desert of ashes,” a party of audacious young conspirators proceeded to blow up the Ottoman Imperial Bank, while others of their associates made the Psammatia quarter flow in the blood of helpless inhabitants. During eighteen hours of terror the carnage which the Armenians caused by their use of dynamite and by throwing bombs from the windows upon the Turkish soldiers, who were detailed to suppress the outbreak, rivaled anything recorded in the worst days of the Paris Commune of 1871. Cf. Turquie Agonisante, p. 174 (by Pierre Loti).

Without pretending to absolve the exasperated Turks for their part in this appalling massacre, I may ask “what would the people of New York do if a foreign mob from the East Side with the red flag at their head were to attempt to blow up the Subtreasury Building and to make the same use of high explosives in their wanton destruction of life and property as did the Armenians in their ghastly work in Constantinople?” The answer will be sufficient attenuation for the conduct of the infuriated Turks on this frightful occasion. And yet, according to the reports flashed through the world at the time, this massacre, like that at Adana and at numberless other places, was laid to the charge of the “unspeakable Turk.” It was the old, old story; the Turk is always guilty, the Armenian never.

[215] A Wandering Scholar in the Levant, pp. 147–150 (London, 1896).

[216] Pierre Loti tells of a French consul in Asia Minor who barely escaped assassination at the hands of an Armenian agitator who, when questioned regarding his attempt on the life of the functionary, coolly replied: “I did this in order that the Turks might be accused of it and in the hope that the French would rise up against them after the murder of their consul.” Les Massacres d’Arménie, p. 50 (Paris, 1918).

[217] The Diary of a Turk, p. 130.

[218] D. G. Hogarth, op. cit., p. 77.

[219] Ibid., 65.

[220] Halil Halid’s Diary of a Turk, p. 129 (London, 1903). “Alors,” declares Pierre Loti, “comme des lions exaspérés ils se dechaînent contre ceux que, depuis des siècles, on leur a denoncés comme les plus dangereux responsables de tous les malheurs de la patrie.... Hélas! oui, les Turcs ont massacré! Je pretends toutefois que le recit de leur tueries a toujours été follement exagéré et les details enlaidis à plaisir; je pretends aussi—et personne là-bas n’osera me contredire—que la beaucoup plus lourde part des crimes commis revient aux Kurdes dont je n’ai jamais pris la defense.” Op. cit., p. 22–24.

[221] Commenting on this subject Professor, now Sir William Ramsay, writes, “Lord Salisbury protests in the strongest terms that Britain has never entertained any schemes of acquisition in Asia Minor. There is, however, probably no Russian or German or Frenchman who believes him.... The protestations that Britain entertains no designs in Asia Minor merely make people abroad all the more sure that a British statesman’s word can never be trusted.” And, referring to her creation of a new consular department to aid her in compassing her designs, he observes “as a piece of statesmanship, crafty and unscrupulous, but able, it was a master-stroke; though I think no one among us will ever look back to it without blushing for the jockeying by which it was effected.” Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Years Wanderings, pp. 142–144 (London, 1897).

In the light of recent events how significant—almost prophetic—are these words of Sir William on British policy and diplomacy regarding Turkey!

[222]

Where men once dwelt, a dreary lake is seen,

And coots and bitterns haunt the waters green.

Metamorphoses, VIII, 24, 25.

[223] Count Marcellinus, one of the first ministers of Justinian, vividly describes, in a single sentence, the frightful depredations of Attila when this dreadful “Scourge of God” Pene totam Europam, invasis excisique civitatibus atque castellis, conrasit. This sentence perfectly describes the depredations of Timur and Jenghiz Khan during their terror-inspiring careers in Western Asia. Of Jenghiz Khan the Arabian traveler, Ibn Batuta, writes that he “came into the countries of Islamism and destroyed them.” The same authority says that after destroying such great cities as Bokhara and Samarcand “he killed the inhabitants, taking prisoners the youth only and leaving the country quite desolate. He then passed over the Gihon and took possession of all Khorasan and Irak, destroying the cities and slaughtering the inhabitants.” His son, Hulaku, laid Bagdad in ruins, whence he proceeded with his followers to Syria, continuing his depredations “until divine Providence put an end to his career.” The Travels of Ibn Batuta, pp. 87, 88, 89 (trans. by S. Lee, London, 1829).

The English historian, Marshman, writing of the elder Mongol conqueror, declares: “From the Caspian to the Indus, more than one thousand miles in extent, the whole country was laid waste with fire and sword by the ruthless barbarians who followed Jenghiz Khan. It was the greatest calamity which had befallen the human race since the Deluge and five centuries have been barely sufficient to repair that desolation.” History of India from Remote Antiquity to the Accession of the Mogul Dynasty, Vol. I, p. 49 (London, 1842).

“Well might the Mussulman and Christian world shrink down upon its knees in the presence of such a terrible visitation. ‘We pray God,’ writes Ibin al Athir, ‘that He will send to Islam and to the Mussulmans someone who can protect them, for they are the victims of the most terrible calamity, the men killed, their goods pillaged, their children carried off, their wives reduced to slavery or put to death, the country in fact, laid waste.’ Juveni says that in the country traversed by the Mongols, only a thousandth part of the population remained and where there were previously one hundred thousand inhabitants there remained but a hundred. ‘If nothing interferes with the growth of the population in Khorasan and Irak Ajem from now to the day of resurrection,’ he adds, ‘it will not be the tenths of what it was before the conquest.’” History of the Mongols, Part III, p. i (by H. Howorth, London, 1888).

Jenghiz Khan and “his followers tramped over the fairest portions of the earth with the faggot and the sword in their hands, forestalling the day of doom and crumbling into ruin many old civilizations. His creed was to sweep away all cities as the haunts of slaves and of luxury, that his herds might freely feed upon grass whose green was free from dusty feet. It does make one hide one’s face in terror to read that from 1211 to 1223 eighteen million four hundred and seventy thousand human beings perished in China and Tangut alone at the hands of Jenghiz and his followers; a fearful hecatomb which haunts the memory until one forgets the other features of the story.” Howorth, op. cit., Part I, p. 113.

[224] Pliny in his Historia Naturalis, II, 86, writes: Maximus terræ memoria mortalium extitit motus, Tiberii Cæsaria principatu; XII urbibus Asiæ una nocte prostatis.

[225] History of Greece From Its Conquests by the Romans to the Present Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864, Vol. I, p. 224 (by George Finlay, Oxford, 1877).

[226] I do not ignore the atrocities which the Turks, especially during the last few decades, are alleged to have committed in Armenia and elsewhere. But until reliable testimony as to the Ottoman side of the question is forthcoming it is only fair to the accused for one to suspend judgment.

[227] Mahomet et le Coran, p. vii (Paris, 1865).

[228] “Neque in hoc me falli opinor cum hodieque non paucos ex nostris, alioquin non indoctos, Mahumeticarum rerum tam rudes videam, ut Mahumetanos Idolatras, Lunæque ac Mahumeti adoratores existiment, aliasque de Agarenica secta ejusque Auctore neptias effutiant.” Alcorani Textus Universus, Tom. I, p. 6 (Patavii, 1698).

Padre Lodovico Marracci, who was a religious of the order of the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, was the confessor of Pope Innocent XII. It was in obedience to the command of this Pontiff that he published his great work on the Koran on which he spent forty of the best years in his life. It embraces three folio volumes with the text of the Koran in Arabic, accompanied by a Latin translation and copious notes, and is notable as being the most successful of the earlier attempts to make the Koran and Mohammedanism known to the Christian world.

[229] Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed, Vol. II, p. 181 (Berlin, 1862).

[230]

A mil Franceis fait bien oerchier la vile,

Les sinagoges et les mahumeries:

A mailz de fer, à ouignèes qu ’il tindrent,

Fruissent Mahum e trestutes les ydles.

Lai CCXCVI.

[231]

A. I. josdi s’ala d’ un fort vin enivrer;
De la taverne issi; quant il s’en volt aler,
En une place vit. I. fumier reverser;
Mahomes si colcha, ne s’en volt trestorner:
Là l’estranglèrent porc, si com j’oï conter;
Por ce ne volt juis de char de porc goster.
Vv. 5547 et seq. (Paris, 1860).

[232] Porcorum verum esum, justa prorsus ratione, contemnunt qui morsibus eorum dominum consumserunt. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Tom. IV, p. 130 (Paris, 1879).

[233] “As a sample of the controversial works of the theologians of the Reformed Church on this subject,” Mr. R. B. Smith in his interesting work on Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 79 (London, 1876), calls attention to “the following modest title-page of a ponderous work written in 1666: Anti-Christus Mahometes: ubi non solum per Sanctam Scripturam, ac Reformatorum testimonia, verum etiam per omnes alios probandi modos et genera, plene, fuse, imvicte solideque demonstratur Mahometem esse unum illum verum, magnum de quo in Sacris fit mentio, Antichristum.”

[234] Mohammedanism, p. 12 (New York, 1916).

[235] Historia Orientalis, Dedicatio, p. 5 (by J. H. Hottinger, Zurich, 1660).

[236] “Quod vero dissimulandum non est, licet quidam docte, satis solideque scripserint, nonnulli ex rerum Sarracenicarum ignorantia, vera plerumque omittentes, ficta ac fabulosa in medium protulerunt, quæ Mahumetanis risus excitarent eosque in errore suo obstinatiores efficerent.” Alcorani Textus Universus, Tom. I, p. 1 (Patavii, 1698).

[237] Referring to the widespread errors concerning Mohammed and his teachings the eminent Orientalist, Adrian Reland, wrote more than two centuries ago: “Quotidie magis magisque experior mundum decipi velle et præconceptis opinionibus regi”—I daily become more and more convinced that the world wishes to be deceived and is governed by preconceived opinions. De Religione Mohammedica, p. xxii (Utrecht, 1705). Is there not still room for improvement in this respect?

[238] “Mohammed litt an einer Krankheit, welche in jener ausgepragten Form, wie bei ihm, in unseren Gegenden bisweilen bei Frauen, aber selten bei Mannern vorkommt, Mann hat ihr verschiedene Namen gegeben; Schönlein heisst sie hysteria muscularis.” Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 207.

[239] “Nulla porro falsa doctrina eat quæ non aliqua vera intermisceat.” Quæst, Evang. II. 40.

[240] Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschicte, Vol. I, p. 748 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884).

“It can be readily understood how the sight of the Muslim trader at prayer, his frequent prostrations, his absorbed and silent worship of the Unseen, would impress the heathen African, endowed with that strong sense of the mysterious such as generally accompanies a low stage of civilization. Curiosity would naturally prompt inquiry and the knowledge of Islam thus imparted might sometimes win over a convert who might have turned aside had it been offered unsought, as a free gift.” The Preaching of Islam, p. 418 (by T. W. Arnold, London, 1913).

This view was emphasized by good old Father Marracci more than two centuries ago when he wrote: “Si ethnicus humani intellectus captum excedentia, vel naturali conditioni et imbecilitati dificillima, si non impossibilia, ... cum Alcoranica doctrina comparaverit, statim ab his refugiet et ad illa obviis ulnis accurret.” Op. cit., Tom. II, p. 9.

[241] Cf. J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, op. cit., p. x.

[242] De Heresibus Liber, Patrologia Græca, Vol. XVIV, Col. 763 et seq. (Migne Edition).

[243] “Summa vero hujus hæresis intentio est ut Christus Dominus ut neque Deus neque Dei Filius esse credatur; sed licet magnus Deoque dilectus homo tamen purus et vir quidem sapiens et propheta maximus. Quæ quidem olim diaboli machinatione concepta primo per Arium seminata deinde per istum Satanam, scilicet Machumet, provecta, per Antichristum vero ex toto secundum diabolicam intentionem complebitur.” Petri Venerabilis Opera Omnia, col. 655, Patrologia Latina, Vol. Tom. CLXXXIX (Migne Edition).

[244] “Seminator di scandalo e di scisma.” Inferno, XXVIII, 35.

[245] C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism, p. 129, et seq. (New York, 1916).

[246] The duty of the imam “is to stand in front of the congregation, facing the Kibleh or Mecca-pointing niche, at the appointed hours of devotion, that is ordinarily, as every one knows, five times a day, when he recites aloud the public prayers, marks time for the various devotional postures, and, in a word, acts as fugleman to the worshipers ranged behind him, from whom, however, he is distinguished by no special dress, caste or character! Primus inter pares; but nothing more. The Khatib, or preacher, usually reads out of an old, well-thumbed manuscript sermon book, or, though much more rarely, delivers extempore the Friday discourse, a short performance, seldom exceeding ten minutes in duration.... Once outside the mosque, the imam, the khatib, or whoever else may have officiated during the prayers, is a house-mason, a green-grocer, or pipe-maker, or anything else, as before.” Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 91, et seq. (by W. G. Palgrave, London, 1872).

[247] Op. cit., p. 82.

[248] The word “mosque” is derived from the Arabic masjid which signifies a place of worship.

[249] For a full description of Beith Allah—house of God—and the holy Kaaba, “Navel of the World,” as the Arabian geographer, Ibn Haukal, calls it, see Sir Richard Burton’s A Pilgrimage to El Medina and Mecca, Chaps. XXIV, XXV.

[250] Cf. Aspects of Islam, p. 199 et seq. (by D. B. MacDonald, New York, 1911).

[251] Bibliothèque Orientale, Tom. II, p. 81 (by Barthèlemy d’Herbelot, The Hague, 1777).

[252] D’Herbelot, op. cit., Tom. II, p. 106.

[253] D’Herbelot, op. cit., Tom. II, p. 351.

[254] Op. cit., p. 122, et seq.

[255] Mohammed and Islam, p. 45 (by Ignaz Goldziher, trans, by K. C. Seelye, New Haven, 1917).

[256] Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 334. et seq. (by R. B. Smith. London, 1876).

[257] Studies in a Mosque, p. 169 (London, 1893).

[258] “The spiritual energy of Islam is not, as has been so often maintained, commensurate with its political power. On the contrary, the loss of political power and worldly prosperity has served to bring to the front the finer spiritual qualities which are the truest incentives to missionary work. Islam has learned the uses of adversity and so far from a decline in worldly prosperity being a presage of the decay of this faith, it is significant that those very Muslim countries that have been longest under Christian rule show themselves most active in the work of proselyting. The Indian and Malay Mohammedans display a zeal and enthusiasm for the spread of the faith, which one looks for in vain in Turkey and Morocco.” T. W. Arnold, op. cit., p. 426, 427.

[259] According to Dr. Hubert Jansen’s painstaking Verbreitung des Islams, the number of Mohammedans in the world in 1897 was 259,680,672.

[260] “Si les Mussulmans et les Chrétiens me prâtaient l’oreille, je ferais cesser leur divergence, et ils diviendraient frères à l’extérieur et à l’intérieur.” Rappel à l’Intelligent, Avis à Indifferent, p. 105 (Paris, 1858).

[261] An American writer, referring to the Italian campaign in Tripoli, asks: “Is there rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash away the stain on Italy’s fair name made deep and black by ruthless massacre?” G. F. Herrick in Christian and Mohammedan, p. 236 (New York, 1912).

And an English author writing of the British war on the Gold Coast declares: “Our ‘prestige’ serves as an excuse for committing what we should condemn as crimes in any other nation. It is an entity that has juggled us into the belief that to destroy what we cannot retain is the prerogative not of barbarism, but of civilization and Christianity.... Truly this war will be a damnosa hereditas to posterity, alike whether we accept or disclaim the fearful responsibilities in which it has involved us.” R. B. Smith, op. cit., p. 258.

[262] “Aggredior vos non, ut nostri sæpe faciunt, armis sed verbis; non vi, sed ratione; non odio, sed amore.” Peter the Venerable, op. cit., col. 673. “I attack you, not as our people often do with arms, but with words; not by force but by reason; not in hate but in love.” These are the words with which Peter the Venerable opens his first book against Mussulmans and shows what should be the attitude of the missionary that would have a hearing with a people who are as proud and sensitive as are the followers of Mohammed.

[263] For a helpful map, indicating the course of the Royal Road, the reader is referred to the third volume of Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies (New York, 1881). Much light is also thrown on this interesting subject by Rennell’s valuable work, The Geographical System of Herodotus, Vol. I, Sec. 13 (London, 1830).

It is well, in reference to this subject, to recollect that the ordinary policy of the Asiatic monarchies was not that of holding immense continuous areas of territory, but the comparatively simpler one of safeguarding the great highways of communication. “It is important to remember this in connection with rapid conquest like that of Alexander. To conquer the Achæmenian empire did not mean the effective occupation of all the area within its extreme frontiers—that would have been a task exceeding one man’s lifetime—but the conquest of its cultivated districts and the holding of the roads which connected them.” Cf. The House of Seleucus, Vol. I, p. 22 (by E. R. Bevan, London, 1902).

[264] Mishkab V, 6. Hughes’ Dictionary of Islam, p. 635 (London, 1885).

[265] Mohammedanism, p. 85 (New York, 1916).

[266] Missionary Review, 1889, p. 302.

[267] Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, p. 299 (by Richard F. Burton, Boston, 1858).

[268] “But for the earthquakes which have here and there rent the walls and caused the roofs to fall in nothing would be missing except the woodwork carried off by the builders of more recent cities. The removal of the basalts and other hard materials drawn from the quarries of the district would have been too troublesome and expensive.” The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Vol. IV, p. 285 (New York, 1885).

[269] “Nel far le mercanzie, non si contano, ma si pesano casse intere di denari; e non si fa mai compra o vendita dove non corran quaranta, cinquanta, ottanta o centomila que piu a minuto non si parla e sarebbe vergogna.” Viaggi di Pietro della Valle, Vol. I, p. 331 (Brighton, 1843).

When one remembers the purchasing power of money in the time of the illustrious patrician compared with what it is now, the sums mentioned were indeed considerable.

[270] Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 353.

[271] The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies, Vol. I, p. 48 (pub. by the Hakluyt Society, London, 1885). “Merchants come thither”—Ormuz—“from India with ships loaded with spicery and precious stones, pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants’ teeth and many other wares, which they sell to the merchants of Hormos”—Ormuz—“and which these in turn carry all over the world to dispose of again. In fact ’tis a city of immense trade.” The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Vol. I, p. 107 (trans. by H. Yule, London, 1903).

[272] Hakluyt’s Voyages, Vol. V, p. 446 (Glasgow, 1904).

[273] “Mettendo attorno al campo della carovana ... molte sentinelle che tutta la notte scorrevano intorno e gridavano, (secondo la lors usanza) agli amici que stessero all ’erta ed ai nemici che non si accostassero.” Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 353.

[274] See Vol. I, p. 7.

[275] “Vivendi licentia, inquies, illos allicit. Ita puto: sed aliquid aliud est quod illos sub boni verique specie decipiat. Habet nimirum hæc superstitio quidquid plausibile ac probabile in Christiana Religione reperitur et quæ naturæ legi ac lumini consèntanea videntur. Mysteria illa fidei nostræ quæ primo aspectu inchedibilia et impossibiblia apparent, et præcipue quæ nimis ardua humanæ naturæ consentur, penitus excludit.” Op. cit. Tom. I, p. 4.

[276] Dictionnaire Philosophique, s. v. “Mahometanisme.”

[277] Mankind and the Church, p. 289 (by G. A. Lefroy, London, 1907).

[278] “A certain solidarity characterizes not only family relations but all Moslem society. There are no paupers; almsgiving is not a mere theoretical obligation but an essential religious duty really discharged. It may be replied that there are many beggars. There are and the spectacle is very unpleasant; but from the beggars’ point of view, could they, given their misfortunes, have a better life? If one has twisted limbs or any incurable malady, including laziness, is it not more healthy, interesting and lucrative to sit begging at street-corners than to be the inmate of a charitable institution? One thing is certain—Moslem beggars never starve.” Turkey in Europe, p. 176 (by Sir Charles Eliot, London, 1908).

[279] Lieutenant Wood, the gallant explorer of the Oxus, referring to this subject, writes: “Often ... have I observed that the Mohammedans, both old and young, however worn out by fatigue or suffering from hunger and thirst, have postponed all thought of self-indulgence to their duty to their God.

It is not with them the mere force of habit; it is the strong impression on their minds that the duty of prayer is so important that no circumstance can excuse its omission.” Journey to the Source of the Oxus, p. 93 (London, 1872).

[280] These good reports about Mohammedans are not of recent date. Read what Ricoldus de Monte Crucis, a Dominican missionary among them in the thirteenth century, has to say of them: “Quis enim non obstupescat si diligenter consideret quanta ... devotio in oratione, misericordia ad pauperes, reverencia ad nomen Dei et prophetas et loca sancta, gravitas in moribus, affabilitas ad extraneos, concordia et amor ad suos.” Peregrinatores Medii Ævi Quatuor, p. 131 (by J. C. M. Laurent, Leipsic, 1864).

[281] Regarding the Armenian’s capacity for business, Mr. Curzon has wittily remarked, that, while “it takes four Turks to cheat one Frank, two Franks to cheat one Greek and two Greeks to cheat one Jew, it takes six Jews to cheat one Armenian.” Researches in the Highlands of Turkey, Vol. I, p. 8 (by H. F. Tozer, London, 1869).

According to Dr. Schliemann, however, the palm for business ability must be awarded to the Greeks from the island of Lesbos. “The Lesbian Greeks,” he tells us, “have the reputation of being the shrewdest merchants in the world; as a proof it is alleged that in cities the commerce of which is in the hands of Lesbians not a Jew is to be found.” Troja, p. 324.

[282] The learned Benedictine, Father Parisot, has recently collected the vocabulary of this interesting dialect which is threatened with early extinction.

[283] This peculiarity is explained by the fact that when the Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century tens of thousands of Jews migrated to Salonica and Constantinople where Spanish is still spoken by large numbers of their descendants.

[284] A like superstition attaches to nearly all similar remains of antiquity not only in Syria but in Egypt as well. Some are reputed to have special virtues for those suffering from tic-douloureux or from rheumatism for which affections they are said by Orientals to possess even greater curative properties than their famous panacea—the bezoar stone.

[285] Ibn Butlan, a noted Arabian physician, and a Christian, of Bagdad, who visited Aleppo in the middle of the eleventh century thus refers to this curious tradition: “In the lower part of the castle is a cave where he”—Abraham—“concealed his flocks. When he milked these, the people used to come for their milk crying ‘Halaba ya la’?—Milked yet or not?—asking thus one of the other, and hence the city came to be called Halab—Milked.” Cf. G. le Strange’s Palestine Under the Moslems, p. 363 (London, 1890).

[286] The Hittites, p. 12 (London, 1903).

[287] Genesis xxiii.

[288] Ezekiel xvi: 3.

[289] Kings ii: 12.

[290] St. Jerome in the beginning of his commentary on the gospel of St. Matthew, pertinently observes in this connection: “Notandum est ... nullam sanctarum assumi mulierum sed eas quas Scriptura reprehendit: ut que propter peccatores venerat, de peccatoribus nascens, omnium peccata deleret. Unde et in consequentibus Ruth Moabitis ponitur et Bethsabee uxor Uriæ.”

[291] Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 147 (London, 1822).

[292] Cf. The Language of the Hittites in The Times Literary Supplement, p. 180 (London, April 3, 1919).

[293] When the speech of the Hittites ceased to be a living tongue cannot even be surmised. St. Paul heard it in Lystra of Lycaonia, but how much later it may have continued to be spoken in certain other parts of Asia Minor cannot now be determined. As a people they doubtless long survived and, although they were gradually absorbed by neighboring races, “it is believed that some of them still exist, with their early distinctive characteristics, among the hills of the anti-Taurus range.”

We are likewise in ignorance as to when the languages of Egypt and Babylonia gave place to those of their conquerors. According to Sayce “the Egyptian hieroglyphics were still written and read in the time of Decius, the cuneiform characters of Babylon were employed in the age of Domitian.” The Ancient Empires of the East, p. ix (New York, 1886).

[294] According to recent investigations this was probably what is now known as the Wady el ’Arish and not the Nile, as usually supposed.

[295] Genesis xii: 5.

[296] Sayce’s Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 410 (London, 1898). Lucius Ampelius writing in his Liber Memorialis, Cap. II, of the origin of the constellations, refers to a more extraordinary legend in connection with the Euphrates. “Pisces ideo pisces quia bello Gigantum Venus perturbata in piscem se transfiguravit. Nam dicitur et in Euphrate fluvio ovum piscis in ora flumimis columba adsedisse dies plurimos et exclusisse deam benignam et misericordem hominibus ad bonam vitam. Utrique memoriæ causa pisces inter sidera locati.”

[297] For an interesting report on the excavations made at Djerabis on behalf of the British Museum, see the beautifully illustrated monograph Carchemish (by D. G. Hogarth, London, 1915).

[298] It is to this legend that is due the Mussulman name—Nimroud Dagh—the Mountain of Nimrod—of the elevation on which stands the citadel of Urfa.

[299] In the “Testament of St. Ephrem,” as given by Assemani, occurs the words “Benedicta civitas, ... Edessa sapientum mater, quæ ex vivo Filii ore benedictionem per ejus discipulum accepit. Illa igitur benedictio in ea maneat donec Sanctus apparuerit.” Bibliotheca Orientalis, Tom. I, p. 141 (Rome, 1719).

[300] Cf. Histoire Politique, Religieuse et Littéraire d’ Edesse jusque à la Première Croisade, p. 81 (by R. Duval, Paris, 1892).

[301] Ecclesiastical History, Bk. I, Chap. XIII.

[302] An ancient manuscript in the British Museum contains a service book of Saxon times, in which the letter of Our Lord to Abgar follows the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. At the end of the letter, which is in the Latin version of Rufinus, occurs the words: “Sive in domu tua, sive in civitate tua, sive in omni loco nemo inimicorum tuorum dominabit. Et insidias diaboli ne timeas et carmina inimicorum tuorum destruuntur (sic), et omnes inimici tui expellentur a te: sive a grandine, sive a tonitrua (sic) non noceberis, et ab omni periculo liberaberis: sive in mare, sive in terra, sive in die, sive in nocte, sive in locis obscuris. Si quis hanc epistolam secum habuerit, securus ambulet in pace.” Cf. Ancient Syriac Documents Relative to the Earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edessa and the Neighboring Countries, from the Year after Our Lord’s Ascension to the Beginning of the Fourth Century, Discovered, Edited, Translated and Annotated by the late W. Cureton, p. 154 (London, 1864). See also The Book of Cerne, p. 205, et seq. (by the erudite Benedictine, Dom. A. B. Kuypers, Cambridge, England, 1902).

[303] For a critical discussion of the “Legend of Abgar” see Les Origines de l’Eglise d’Edesse et La Légende d’ Abgar (by the learned Sulpician, L. J. Tixeront, Paris, 1888).

“The practice of keeping this letter as a philactery prevailed in England till the last century.... ‘The common people’ there have had it in their houses in many places in a frame with a picture before it and they generally with much honesty and devotion regard it as the word of God and the genuine epistle of Christ.’... I have a recollection of having seen the same thing in cottages in Shropshire.” Cureton, op. cit., p. 155.

[304] In the province of Osrhoene, about a day’s journey from Edessa, was a celebrated mart called Batne, where the Indians and the Seres came to trade with the Edessenes and rich merchants from other cities at an annual fair which was held in this place in the month of September. Here, Ammianus Marcellinus informs us “magna promiscuæ fortunæ convenit multitudo ad commercanda quæ Indi et Seres aliaque plurima vehi terra marique consueta.” Rerum Gestarum, Lib. XIV, Cap. III, 3.

For an illuminating map showing the importance of Edessa as a trade center during Roman times, see V. Chapot’s La Frontière de L’Euphrate de Pompée à la Conquête Arabe, facing p. 402 (Paris, 1907).

[305] L. J. Tixeront, op. cit., p. 7, et seq.

[306] Cf. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Record and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, p. 200 (by T. G. Pinches, London, 1908).

[307] Genesis xi: 31.

[308] Ibid., 17.

[309] Purgatorio, XXVII, 94–108. Dante but follows the teaching of the Angelic Doctor who, writing on the active and the contemplative life, declares: “Istæ duæ vitæ significantur per duas uxores Jacob: activa quidem per Liam, contemplativa vero per Rachelem; et per duas mulieres quæ Dominum hospitio receperunt: contemplativa quidem per Mariam, activa vero per Martham.” Summ. Theol. Pars II, 2dæ, Q CLXXIX, Art. i.

[310] Cf. The Book of the Bee, p. 95–97, from the Syriac of Mar Solomon, Bishop of Basra (trans. by E. A. W. Budge, Oxford, 1886).

[311] Students of history will remember that the Emperor Carcacalla was assassinated at Haran by one of his soldiers while on a visit to the temple of the Moon. The Roman general Crassus suffered a crushing defeat at the same place and was treacherously slain in the vicinity while in a conference with a Persian satrap.

[312] “Quæ jam a Mithradati regni temporibus, ne Oriens a Persis occuparetur, viribus restitit maximis.” Lib. XXV, Cap. IX.

[313] Cf. Assemani, op. cit., Tom. III, Part II, p. 927, et seq.

Nisibis, “la grand metropole nestorienne, vit naïtre dans ses murs la première Université théologique, les premiers cours publics de théologie. Ce phenomene qui excitait l’admiration et étonnement du quæstor sacri palatii de Justinien ne peut que nous donner une idée avantageuse de la culture du clerge nestorien a cette époque de son histoire.” Le Christianisme dan l’Empire Perse sous la Dynastie Sassanide, (224–632), p. 301 (by J. Labourt, Paris, 1904).

[314] Dion Cassius, History of Rome, Bk. I, XVIII, 26.

[315] Genesis xxxv: 8.

[316] “In such circumstances,” writes one who knew the desert well, “the mind is influenced through the body. Though your mouth glows and your skin is parched with heat, yet you feel no languor, the effect of humid heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone and your spirits become exuberant; your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you stir up all the energies of your soul—whether for exertion, danger or strife. Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded: the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of civilization are left behind you in the city.... All feel their hearts dilate and their pulses beat strong as they look down from their dromedaries upon the glorious desert. Where do we hear of a traveler being disappointed by it? It is another illustration of the ancient truth that Nature returns to man, however unworthily he has treated her. And believe me, when once your tastes have conformed to the tranquillity of such travel, you will suffer real pain in returning to the turmoil of civilization. You will anticipate the bustle and confusion of artificial life, its luxury and its false pleasures with repugnance. Depressed in spirits you will for a time after your return feel incapable of bodily or mental exertion. The air of cities will suffocate you and the care-worn and cadaverous countenances of citizens will haunt you like a vision of judgment.” Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah, Vol. I, pp. 150, 151 (by Richard F. Burton, London, 1893).

[317] A celeritate Tigris incipit vocari. Ita appellant Medi sagittam. Pliny, Naturalis Historia, VI, XXVII.

[318] We have seen in a previous chapter how unfounded is this statement.

[319] The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 60 (trans. by H. Yule, London, 1903).

[320] Geschichte der Ilchaner, Vol. I, p. 191 (Darmstadt, 1842).

[321] Acts of the Apostles, ii: 9, 11.

[322] See map III of Heussi and Mulert’s Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte for the extensive territory occupied by the Nestorian Church during its greatest development.

[323] The dwelling of the Patriarch, as described by a noted traveler of the last century, “is solidly built of hewn-stone and stands on the very edge of a precipice overhanging a ravine through which winds a branch of the Zab. A dark vaulted passage led us into a room scarcely better lighted by a small window closed by a greased sheet of coarse paper. The tattered remains of a felt carpet, spread in a corner, was the whole of its furniture. The garments of the Patriarch were hardly less worn and ragged. Even the miserable allowance of 300 piastres, about £2 10s., which the Porte had promised to pay him monthly on his return to the mountains was long in arrears, and he was supported entirely by the contributions of his faithful but poverty-stricken flock. Kochanes was, moreover, still a heap of ruins.” Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert, p. 363 (by A. H. Layard, New York, 1856).

[324] “La progression des Chrétians a été la suivante; en 1750, zéro; en 1856, de 30,000 a 40,000; en 1900, 66,000. Tout donne à espérer que le retour définitif des Nestoriens à la foi portera bientot et définitivement ce nombre, si ce n’est deja un fait accomplit, a 140,000.” Les Missions Catholiques Francaises au XIXe Siècle, p. 271 (Paris, 1900).

[325] For the dogmatic definitions of the Church at the General Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon against the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches see Denzinger’s Enchiridion, pp. 52, 65.

[326] The word Copt is apparently derived from the middle part of the Greek word Aigyptos which means Egyptian. It is, however, always used to indicate a member of the Egyptian Monophysite Church.

[327] Melchite is a Græco-Syriac word which signifies imperial. It was given at the outbreak of the Monophysite schism to those Christians in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt who accepted the decrees of Chalcedon and remained loyal to the Emperor in Constantinople and to the Catholic Church. The name is now applied to the Uniates of these lands.

[328] Cf. Verfassung und gegenwärtiger Bestand Sämtilicler Kirchen des Orients, p. 384 (by I. Silbernagl, Regensburg, 1904).

[329] The Orthodox Eastern Church, p. 19 (by A. Fortescue, London, 1908).

[330] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 15.

[331] Not having a hierarchy, the Protestants in Turkey do not constitute a Millet. The Porte has consequently organized them, consisting chiefly of a small number of converted Armenians, and Syrians, into a special group under the Minister of Police.

[332] Among Orientals a common designation of Franks, which, since the time of the Crusades, has been applied to all the inhabitants of Western Europe.

[333] Paradiso, VI, I, 2.

[334] Addressing once a company of bishops Constantine declared: “You are bishops whose jurisdiction is within the Church; I also am a bishop ordained by God to overlook whatever is external to the Church.” Eusebius, The Life of Constantine, IV, 24.

[335] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 28.

[336] The Churches Separated from Rome, p. 151 (by L. Duchesne, New York, 1907).

“For three centuries after the foundation of New Rome,” writes Freeman, “Latin remained the tongue of government, law and warfare; and down to the last days of the Empire survivals of its use in that character still lingered on.... But Greek was from the beginning the tongue of literature and religion; and, even under Justinian himself, it began to creep into use as an alternative language of the law of Rome.—Gradually the Greek tongue displaced Latin for all purposes, but not till it had received a large infusion of Latin technical terms.... Save this technical Latin infusion the tongue of Constantinople was thoroughly Greek. The strange spectacle was there to be seen of an Emperor of the Romans, a Patriarch of New Rome, a Roman Senate and People glorying in the Roman name, and deriving their whole political existence from a Roman source, but in whose eyes the speech of Ennius and Tacitus and Claudian was simply the despised idiom of Western heretics and barbarians.” Historical Essays, Third Series, pp. 248, 249 (London, 1879).

[337] How great was their exasperation at the Pope’s action is evinced by the language they addressed to Luitprand, Archbishop of Cremona, when, in 968, he went on an embassy to Constantinople. “But,” they indignantly declare, “the mad and silly Pope does not know that St. Constantine transferred the imperial scepter, all the senate and the whole Roman army hither, and that at Rome he left only vile creatures such as fishermen, pastrycooks, bird-catchers, bastards, plebeians and slaves.” Cf. Fortescue, op. cit., p. 94.

[338] Cf. Le Schisme Oriental du XI Siècle, p. 275 (by L. Brehier, Paris, 1899).

[339] Now that the crash had come “one asks oneself what else the Legates could have done. They had waited long enough, and, if ever a man clearly showed that he wanted schism, it was Cerularius. He had already excommunicated the Pope by taking his name off the diptychs. We should note that this is the only sentence that the Roman Church pronounced against the Eastern Communion. She has never excommunicated it as such nor the other patriarchs. If they lost her communion it was because they too, following Cerularius’ example, struck the Pope’s name from their diptychs.” Fortescue, op. cit., p. 185.

[340] Although Innocent III, preacher of the Crusade, promptly excommunicated the Crusaders for their perfidy and treachery, the Greeks, nevertheless, persisted in declaring that His Holiness was the real cause of their misfortunes.

[341] According to the custom that subsequently prevailed it was the Grand Vizier who, in the Sultan’s name, gave the berat to the newly appointed Patriarch. As to bishops-elect it was obligatory that they should receive their berat from the government before their consecration.

[342] Thus, during the seventy-five years between 1625 and 1700, there were no fewer than 50 patriarchs whose average tenure of office was a year and a half. Compare this with the long reign—seventy-two years—of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII whose average tenure of office was twenty-four years—just thirty-six times as long as that of the unfortunate Patriarchs in question.

[343] Hom. II in Ephesios.

[344] “The Holy Father,” as Mgr. Duchesne beautifully declares, “has put all his heart into it; I might almost say, he had put only his heart into it.” Op. cit., p. 41.

[345] “Eo vel magis quod non ingenti discrimine seiunguntur: imo, si pauca excipias, sic cetera consentimus, ut in ipsis catholici nominis vindiciis non raro ex doctrina, ex more, ex ritibus, quibus orientales utuntur, testimonia atque argumenta promanus.”

[346] Inferno XXVIII, 35.

[347] Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, pp. 2, 30 (London, 1861).

The testimony of Professor H. Gelzer, likewise a Protestant, is almost the same as that of Dean Stanley. Writing of the monastic establishments of the Orthodox Church he pertinently inquires: “While the Catholic Orders as teaching and nursing bodies have become an important element in the civilization of the nineteenth century, what have Athos, Sinai, Patmos or Megaspilion been doing? The Greeks often bitterly complain of the mighty progress of Catholic propaganda, but they must themselves admit that the best schools and hospitals in Turkey belong to the Catholic Orders.” Von Heiligen Berge und aus Makendonien, p. 2 (Leipsig, 1904).

[348] Das Testament Leos XIII, in Reden und Aufsätze, Vol. II, p. 279 (Geissen, 1904).

[349] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 432, 433.

[350] Psalms, xliv: 10, “Neque aliud fortasse mirabilius est,” declares the Sovereign Pontiff, “ad catholicitatis notam in Ecclesia Dei illustrandam, quam singulare quod ei præbent obsequium dispares cæremoniarum formæ nobilesque vestustatis linguæ, ex ipsa Apostolorum et Patrum consuetudine nobiliares; fere ad imitationem obsequii lectissimi quod Christi divino Ecclesiæ auctori, exhibitum est nascenti, quum Magi ex varii Orientis plagis devecti venerunt ... adorare eum.”

[351] St. Paul to the Ephesians, iv: 13.

[352] St. John’s Gospel, xvii: 20, 21.

[353] Jonah, iv: 11. Those “that knew not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left,” is supposed to refer to young children.

[354] Genesis x: 11.

[355] iii: 19.

[356] ii: 13–15.

[357] Anabasis, Bk. III, Chap. 4. Cf. also Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 139 et seq. (by W. F. Ainsworth, London, 1844).

[358] Charon, 23.

[359] Even Cicero, declares: “Et apud Herodotum, patrem historiæ ... sunt innumerabiles fabulæ.” De Legisbus Lib. I, Cap. I.

[360] Arabian writers, it is true, had agreed “during nine hundred years, in identifying the mounds on the east bank of the Tigris opposite Mosul with the ruins of Nineveh” but their views were so far from meeting with general acceptance that so late as 1843 the great French explorer, Botta, was convinced when he uncovered the wonderful palace of Sargon II, King of Assyria, B. C. 721–705, that the site of Nineveh was occupied by the ruins of Khorsabad. But the noted English investigator, Layard, “contrary to the teachings of Arabian and Syrian historians and local tradition,” was equally positive that “the ruins of Nineveh were buried under the mound of Nimroud,” which is twenty miles to the south of the actual site of the famous Assyrian capital which was so long the rival and eventually the conqueror of Babylon. Cf. By Nile and Tigris, Vol. II, p. 8 et seq., 15, 16 (by E. A. Wallis Budge, London, 1920).

[361] The Buried City of the East: Nineveh, Preface (London, 1851).

[362] Nineveh and Its Palaces. The Discoveries of Botta and Layard Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ, p. 1 et seq. (by J. Bonomi, London, 1852).

[363] “At the end of the seventeenth century, B.C., Asurbanipal’s sculptors at Nineveh were representing horses which the frieze of the Parthenon can hardly equal, and lions which no sculptor has ever surpassed in careful observations and truthful delineation.” The Ancient History of the Near East, p. 536 (by H. R. Hall, London, 1913).

[364] vi: 1.

[365] See his Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 342–345 (London, 1853); cf. also Hormuzd Rassam’s Asshur and the Land of the Nimrod, p. 31 (New York, 1897), which gives an account of the discovery of more tablets, among which were the famed Deluge tablets.

[366] Relaçam em que se tratam as guerras e grandes victorias que alcançou o grãde rey da Persia Xa Abbas do grão Turco Mahometto and seu Filho Amethe, pello Padre F. Antonio de Gouvea (Lisboa, 1611).

[367] Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part II, pp. 1533, 1534 (London, 1625).

[368] As to the signification of the strange, wedge-shaped character described by the noted Italian traveler, Pietro della Valle admits that he knows nothing. In the fifteenth chapter of his Viaggi he frankly declares: “E queste iscritzioni in que lingua e lettera siano non si sa perchè è caratere oggi ignoto.”

[369] Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, p. 145 et seq. (London, 1638).

[370] Chardin became an English citizen and achieved such fame as a traveler that a tablet was dedicated to his memory in Westminster Abbey bearing the legend “Sir John Chardin—nomen sibi fecit eundo.”

[371] Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th Century, pp. 23, 24 (by H. V. Hilprecht, Philadelphia, 1903).

How Grotefend achieved such marvelous success when others, apparently more competent than he, had failed has been explained by the fact that “he early displayed a remarkable aptitude for the solution of riddles: a peculiar talent which he shared in common with Dr. Hincks, who also acquired great distinction as a cuneiform scholar.” The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 169 (by A. J. Booth, London, 1902).

Dr. R. W. Rogers, in his instructive work, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. I, p. 61 (New York, 1915), referring to the same subjects, writes:

“It were difficult, if not impossible, to define the qualities of mind which must inhere in the decipherer of a forgotten language. He is not necessarily a great scholar, though great scholars have been successful decipherers. He may know but little of the languages that are cognate with the one whose secrets he is trying to unravel. He may, indeed, know nothing of them, as has several times been the case. But the patience, the persistence, the power of combination, the divine gift of insight, the historical sense, the feeling for archæological indications, these must be present, and all of these were present in the extraordinary man, Grotefend, who now attacked the problem that had baffled so many.”

[372] Hilprecht, op. cit., p. 71; cf. A Memoir of Major General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, pp. 143–148, 153–157 (by his brother, Canon George Rawlinson, London, 1898); Booth, op. cit., pp. 106–114.

[373] Although it was supposed that this prize, awarded by so learned a body as the French Institute, would be tantamount to une sanction qui devrait dissiper toutes les susceptibilités, many remained as skeptical as ever and continued “to decry a language in which one can never know if a syllable is ideographic or phonetic, and, when phonetic, which of two or three different values it may have in that place.” Cf. A. J. Booth, op. cit., p. 416.

[374] Op. cit., pp. 118, 119.

[375] New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land, p. 10 (by B. T. Evetts, New York).

[376] The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 110 (by M. Jastrow, Philadelphia, 1915).

[377] A few years before his death, when presiding at the commencement exercises of the College of Dole, in the Department of the Jura in which he was born and brought up, Pasteur told his youthful audience: “When one has studied much, one comes back to the faith of a Breton peasant; as to myself, had I studied more I should have the faith of a Breton peasant-woman.” The Ave Maria, February 14, 1920.

[378] Bible, Science and Faith, p. 314, 315 (Baltimore, 1895). Cf. also Evolution and Dogma, Chap. VIII (by J. A. Zahm, Chicago, 1896).

[379] Babel und Bibel, p. 4 (Leipzig, 1903).

[380] A name which, as we have seen, is also applied to the Euphrates.

[381] Cf. R. I. Wilberforce in The Five Empires, Chaps. XV, XVIII (London, 1852).

[382] Alexander the Great, p. 368 (by B. I. Wheeler, New York, 1900).

[383] Creasy’s Decisive Battles of the World, p. 79 (New York, 1899).

It was at Arbela, where was to be settled once for all the question of world supremacy, that Alexander, when counseled by his generals to make a night attack on Darius, gave the famous answer οὐ κλέπτο τἠν νίκην—I steal no victory—words that were his motto during his eventful and brilliant career.

[384] Voyages en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes, Vol I, p. 185 (Paris, 1677).

[385] Die Bedeutung des heutigen Namen’s Kal. ‘at Schergat ist bis jetzt unaufgeklärt geblieben und durfte vielleicht eine Altassyrische Reminiscenz bergen. Vom Mittelmer zum Persischen Golf. Vol. II, p. 210 (by M. von Oppenheim, Berlin, 1900). His countryman, Baron Thielmann, writing of the same ruins a quarter of a century earlier, declares: “This great field of ruin with its pyramid looks truly venerable, but science has as yet made no discoveries here which could help us solve the mystery of this remnant of an ancient era.” Journey in the Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in Asia, Vol. II, p. 136 (London, 1875).

[386] Cf. Sayce Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 122 (London, 1898).

[387] See Jastrow, op. cit., p. 229.

[388] See W. Andræ’s Der Anu-Adad-Tempel in Assur (Leipsic, 1909); and his Die Festungswerke von Assur (Leipsic, 1913).

[389] Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 328.

[390] See Die Stelenreien in Assur, p. ii (by Walter Andræ, Leipsic, 1913).

[391] “Many other works of Semiramis,” writes Strabo, “besides those of Babylon, are extant in almost every part of this continent, as, for example, earth-works which are called mounds of Semiramis, walls and fortresses, aqueducts and cisterns for water, stair-like roads over mountains, canals communicating with rivers and lakes; roads and bridges.” Geography, Bk. XVI, Chap. II.

[392] Polyænus Strategemeta, VIII, 26.

[393] Cf. La Légende de Semiramis, pp. 22, 23 (by François Lenormant), in Mémoires de l’Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Tom. XL (1873).

[394] A. H. Sayce in Herodotos, with Notes, Introductions and Appendices, p. 105 (London, 1883).

[395] Ibid., p. 303.

[396] Ibid., p. 362.

[397] Mr. Robertson Smith in The English Historical Review, Vol. II, p. 305, April, 1887.

[398] Op. cit., p. 317.

[399] As many fantastic stories are related about Dietrich von Bern—Theodoric the Great, King of the East Goths—as there are about Semiramis. As the Assyrian queen was said to have been nursed by doves in her infancy and to have been transformed into a dove after her death so, the German legends have it, Dietrich von Bern was descended from a spirit and made his exit from the world on a black horse. In Lusatia the mythical Wild Huntsman who, during violent storms, rides furiously across the heavens is called Dietrich von Bern. Living so long after Semiramis it is more surprising that his life should be made the theme of Middle High German poems and Old Norse sagas than that the Assyrian queen should have been made the subject of oriental myth and Greek legend.

[400] Lehmann-Haupt in his interesting and illuminating lecture on Die historische Semiramis und ihre Zeit, which was delivered before the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in Berlin, February 6, 1910, declares: “Von der sagenhaften Ümhüllung befreit, sehen wir Semiramis vor uns als eine Herrschergestalt, die zu einer Zeit, da sonst der Frau eine Beteiligung am öffentlichen Leben versagt war, die Geschichte zweier, vornehmlich durch ihre Klugheit und Umsicht verbundener Reiche in Krieg und Frieden entscheidendend und durchgreifend geleitet hat.” P. 68 (Tübingen, 1910).

How different is this conclusion of the learned German, which is based on the brilliant discoveries of Andræ and his colleagues, from that of the distinguished Orientalist, F. Lenormant, who, as the result of an exhaustive study of Semiramis, makes the ex cathedra statement “ce personage divin ... doit être definitivement rayé de l’histoire—this divine personage ought to be definitely expunged from history.” Op. cit., p. 68.

[401] Geography, Bk. XVI, Chap. I, IX.

[402] Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, Bk. VII, Chap. VII.

[403] Voyage au Levant, Tom. III, p. 200 (Amsterdam, 1727).

[404] Ibid., III, p. 183.

[405] So hot is it in Susa, the Greek geographer writes, that “lizards and serpents at midday in the summer ... cannot cross the streets quick enough to prevent their being burnt to death midway by the heat.” Op. cit., Bk. XV, Chap. III.

[406] “There are few sights more appalling than a sandstorm in the desert, the ‘Zauba’ah,’ as the Arabs call it. Devils or pillars of sand, vertical and inclined, measuring a thousand feet high, rush over the plain lashing the sand at their base like a sea surging under a furious whirlwind; shearing the grass clean away from the roots, tearing up trees which are whirled like leaves and sticks in the air, and sweeping away tents and houses as if they were bits of paper. At last the columns join at the top and form, perhaps three thousand feet above the earth, a gigantic cloud of yellow sand which obliterates not only the horizon but even the midday sun. These sand-spouts are the terror of travelers.” Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I, p. 114 (by Richard F. Burton, Benares, 1885).

[407] Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh with a Journal of a Voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad, Vol. II, p. 148 (London, 1836).

[408] Journey in the Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in Asia, Vol. II, p. 138 (London, 1875).

[409] Convito, IV., 2.

[410] Divina Commedia, IV, v. 121, et seq.

[411] Moore’s Lalla Rookh, p. 181 (New York, 1890).

[412] Life and Letters of E. B. Cowell, p. 318 (by G. Cowell, London, 1904).

[413] Daniel, iii.

[414] Op. cit., II, 139.

[415] Gertrude L. Bell, in Amurath to Amurath, p. 246 (London, 1911).

[416] “Le Khalife, alors tout-puissant, vivait là au milieu de ses milices et de tous les grands scheiks de son royaume, plus entouré de courtisans que Louis XIV à Versailles. Il réservait d’ailleurs toutes ses faveurs à ceux qui venaient embellir Samara en coustruisant quelques belles residences dans le voisinage du palais.” Description du Palais de Al-Moutasim Fils d’Haroun-al-Raschid à Samara et de Quelques Monuments Arabs connus de la Mesopotamia, p. 23 and plate XIV (par M. H. Violet, Paris, 1909). Cf. Sarre und Herzfeld’s illuminating monograph on Samara.

[417] Cf. Von Oppenheim, op. cit., II, p. 221.

[418] Op. cit., p. 381.

[419] Cf. Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia, Vol. II, p. 152 (by W. F. Ainsworth, London, 1842).

[420] Les Missions Catholiques Françaises au XIXe Siècle, Tom. I, p. 223, et seq. (Paris, 1900).

[421] Cf. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. I, p. 172 et seq. (by the Vicomte De la Jonquière, Paris, 1914).

[422] Du Caucasus au Golfe Persique à travers l’Arménie, le Kurdistan et la Mesopotamie, p. 458 et seq. (by P. Müller-Simonis and H. Hyvernat, Washington, 1892).

[423] See the interesting work of Mme. Dieulafoy on La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane, p. 576 et seq. (Paris, 1887).

[424] Turquie Agonisante, p. 137 (Paris, 1913).

[425] Baghdad during the Abbassid Caliphate from Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources, pp. 12–14 (by G. Le Strange, Oxford, 1900).

[426] Le Strange, op. cit., p. 64 et seq.

[427] Le Strange, op. cit., p. 71.

[428] The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 63 (translated and edited by H. Yule, London, 1903).

[429] Bibliothèque Orientale, Tom. I, p. 326 (The Hague, 1777).

[430] Op. cit., I, 72.

[431] History of the Mongols from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century, Part III, p. 127 (by H. H. Howorth, London, 1888).

[432] See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, on a Greek Embassy to Bagdad 917, A. D. (January, 1897).

[433] Cf. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. LII.

[434] At this period, Sir Richard Burton tells us, London and Paris were in a state of quasi-savagery and “their palatial halls were spread with rushes.”

[435] Bagdad, at the zenith of its grandeur under Harun-al-Rashid, was the worthy successor of Babylon and Nineveh. It “had outrivalled Damascus, ‘the Smile of the Prophet,’” and “was essentially a city of pleasure, a Paris of the ninth century.” “Thither flocked from all parts of the oriental world the most noted and capable poets, musicians and artificers of the time; and the first thought of the Arabian or Persian craftsman who had completed some specially curious or attractive specimen of his art was to repair to the capital of the Muslim world, to submit it to the Commander of the Faithful from whom he rarely failed to receive a rich reward for his labors. Surrounded by pleasure-gardens and groves of orange, tamarisk, and myrtle, refreshed by an unfailing luxuriance of running streams, supplied either by art or nature, the great city on the Tigris is the theme of many an admiring ode or laudatory ghazel; and the poets of the time all agree in describing it as being, under the rule of the great Caliph, a sort of terrestrial paradise of idlesse and luxury, where, to use their own expressions, the ground was irrigated with rose-water and the dust of the roads was musk, where flowers and verdure overhung the ways and the air was perpetually sweet with the many-voiced song of birds, and where the chirp of lutes, the dulcet warble of flutes and the silver sound of singing houris rose and fell in harmonious cadence from every corner of the streets of palaces that stood in vast succession in the midst of their gardens and orchards, gifted with perpetual verdure by the silver abundance of the Tigris, as it sped its arrowy flight through the thrice-blest town.” Thousand and One Nights, Vol. IX, pp. 333, 334 (translated by John Payne, London, 1884).

[436] Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe, Vol. I, p. 30 (New York, 1827).

[437] Haroun-Al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, p. 53 (by E. H. Palmer, London, 1881).

[438] Palmer, op. cit., p. 83.

[439] This crime, declares Sir Richard Burton, “stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded in history and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject to this our day.” Thousand and One Nights, Vol. X, p. 142 (Benares, 1885).

[440] Sismondi, op. cit., I, 30.

[441]

Tamed Greece to tame her victress now began,

And with her arts fair Latium over-ran.

Horace, Epistles, Book II, 1.

[442] Gibbon, op. cit., Chap. LII.

[443] See D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, s. v. “Honain.”

[444] Cf. A History of Greece, Vol. II, p. 224 (by G. Finlay, Oxford, 1877).

[445] The History and Conquests of the Saracens, p. 157 (London, 1877).

[446] Longfellow has chosen the grim episode said to have been connected with the tragic death of Al-Mostassem at the hands of Hulagu Khan for one of his well-known poems in which he makes his victor and executioner address the avaricious Caliph in the following words:

I said to the Caliph, “Thou art old,

Thou hast no need of so much gold;

Thou shouldst not have heaped and hidden it here,

Till the breath of battle was hot and near,

But have sown through the land these useless hoards,

To spring into shining blades and swords,

And keep thine honor sweet and clear.”

*****

Then into his dungeon I locked the drone,
And left him there to feed all alone,
In the honey cells of his golden hive;
Never a prayer, nor a cry, nor a groan,
Was heard from those massive walls of stone,
Nor again was the Caliph seen alive.

[447] Freeman, op. cit., p. 132.

[448] “Tamerlan fit passer au fil de l’epée tous sea Habitants, n’ epargnant ni age, ni sexe, ni condition et fit raser rez pied, rez terre tous ses principaux bätimens.” D’Herbelot, op. cit., s. v. “Timour.”

[449] Cf. Gibbon, op. cit., Chap. LXV. “The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his”—Timour’s—“abominable trophies—by columns or pyramids of human heads.” Ibid., Chap. LXV. “The people of Ispahan supplied seventy thousand human skulls for the structure of several lofty towers.” Ibid., Chap. XXXIV.

[450] Howorth, op. cit., Part III, p. 1.

[451] Cf. Benjamin of Tudela, op. cit., p. 98 et seq. According to the Babylonian Talmud which “became the main factor in the history and development of Judaism,” the Jews of Babylon passed for a purer race than those of Palestine.

[452] “Tous les pays,” it is said in the French translation of the Babylonian Talmud, “sont comme de la pâte relativement à la Palestine, mais ce pays l’est relativement à la Babylonie.” Cf. Géographie du Talmud, p. 320 (by A. Neubauer, Paris, 1868).

[453] The clever Ottoman author, Halil Halid, pertinently writes in reference to this subject: “In the language of diplomacy the French term ‘action civilisatrice’ may still have an impressive sound, but owing to the free use made of it by every politician and journalist, the sense of the term has been much contaminated with vulgarity. The dignified charm of the English political literature dealing with the affairs of the East has also begun to degenerate into something like a commonplace. The notion intended by the term is this, that when one of the mighty Powers of Christendom finds it incumbent upon itself to take under its patronizing ægis the internal affairs of a Muslim nation, which is incapable of holding its own, freedom, justice and the spread of civilization will either immediately or gradually follow the introduction of its good rule and signs of the public well-being will spring up here, there and everywhere.

“There is no necessity to cite here any examples of the astounding work which the civilizing Powers are doing in Eastern countries, as any one who studies the political settlement of these countries can find ample instances for himself. It should only be remarked that all the pains taken in this direction are at the expense of the sovereign rights and national independence of the people which submit to the civilizing tutelage.” The Crescent versus the Cross, pp. 184, 185 (London, 1907).

[454] “Neejdee horses are especially esteemed for great speed and endurance of fatigue; indeed in this latter quality none can come up to them. To pass twenty-four hours on the road without drink and without flagging is certainly something; but to keep up the same abstinence and labor conjoined under the burning Arabian sky for forty-eight hours at a stretch is, I believe, peculiar to animals of the breed.” Personal Narrative of a Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia, p. 310 (by W. G. Palgrave, London, 1869).

[455] The most prized horses in Arabia belong, it is said, to the Khamsa, namely, to one of the Kehilan breeds, which, according to tradition, are descended from Mohammed’s five favorite mares.

[456] Cf. E. Reclus, Asia, Vol. IV, p. 466 (New York, 1855).

[457] Op. cit., pp. 25, 26.

[458] See La Province de Bagdad, p. 108 (by Habib K. Chicha, Cairo, 1908).

[459] “Who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise, in Eden towards the East, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life?” De Principiis, Bk. IV, Chap. I.

[460] De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. VIII, Cap. I.

[461] Wo lag das Paradies, p. 44 (Leipsic, 1881).

[462] Lib. II, dist. 17, c. 5, “Unde volunt in orientali parte esse paradisum, longo interjacente spatio vel maris vel terræ a regionibus quas incolant hominea secretum, et in alto situm, usque ad lunarem circulum pertingentem, unde nec aquæ diluvii illuc pervenerunt.”

[463] Cf. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 255 et seq. (by S. Baring Gould, London, 1892).

[464] The Voyage and Travaile of Sir John Mandeville, Chap. XXX.

[465] See Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, pp. 141–147 (translated by R. H. Major and printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1870).

[466] La Nouvelle Revue, April 15, 1893.

[467] Atlantis, The Antediluvian World, p. 455 (New York, 1884).

[468] Popular Science Monthly, p. 678, September, 1883.

[469] Paradise Found, p. 433 (by W. F. Warren, Boston, 1885).

[470] The Human Species, p. 175–177 (New York, 1890).

[471] Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient, Tom. I, p. 96 et seq. (Paris, 1881).

[472] See chapter on The Site of the Garden of Eden, in Science and the Church (by J. A. Zahm, Chicago, 1896), from which I have extensively drawn for the present treatment of the subject.

[473] Cf. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Tom. IV, Col. 2121 (pub. by F. Vigoroux, Paris, 1908).

[474] See Reise der K. preussichen Gesellschaft nach Persia, Tom. I, p. 146 (by H. Brugsch, Leipsic, 1862).

[475] Cf. Dom Calmet, Commentaire littéral sur la Genèse, p. 61 (Paris, 1715).

[476] Duo sunt amnes qui in unum coeunt deinde abeunt in diversas partes. Ita flumen unum est in confluente; duo autem inferioribus alveis sunt capita, et duo versus mare postquam rursus longius dividi incipiunt. See his Commentarius in Genesin. The map of Babylonia, which accompanies the text renders the author’s view quite clear, although it does not specify the site of the Garden of Eden.

[477] See The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 95, 96 (by A. H. Sayce, London, 1894). Cf. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, Chaps. I, II (by T. G. Pinches, London, 1908); The Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 305 (by George Smith, London, 1876).

[478] Ibid., p. 97.

[479] Op. cit., pp. 97, 98.

[480] Modern Science and Bible Lands, pp. 197, 198 (New York, 1889).

[481] Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Propheten Muhammed, Vol. II, p. 317, et seq. (Berlin, 1890).

[482] Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, p. 273 et seq. (Munich, 1901).

[483] “E chiaro che il narratore nel detto brano della Genesi ha avuto, dinazi agli occhi un luogo ben noto, e si e data la pena di discriverlo mimutamente, affinche non potessero surgere dubbi sul paese che egli voleva indicare.” Studi di Storia Orientale, Vol. I, p. 121 (Milan, 1911).

[484] Referring to the discovery of the word Eden—Edina—in cuneiform inscriptions the distinguished Assyriologist, T. G. Pinches, op. cit., p. 72, writes: “That we shall ultimately find other instances of Eden as a geographical name, occurring by itself and not in composition with another word, as in the expression Sipar Edina, and even a reference to gannat Edinni, ‘the Garden of Eden,’ is to be expected.”

[485] Purgatorio, XXXIII, 145.

[486] So called because of an Eastern tradition that it was the plantain and not the apple which was the forbidden fruit in Paradise. It is also known as Adam’s fig.

[487] Paradise Lost, Bk. IV.

[488] Nature herself confesses to have given the tenderest hearts to the human race, as she gave them tears; this is the best part of our faculties. Satire XV, vv. 131–133.

[489] According to Dr. Fries, an eminent German scholar, all games of ball are traceable back to an old light myth which was presumably Babylonian in origin: “Alles Ballspiel,” he writes, “ja bis herab zum Lawn-Tenis auf denselben Gedanken-den Lichtkampf-zurückgeht.” Studien zur Odyssee, Vol. I, p. 324 (Leipsic, 1910).

[490] The Excavations at Babylon, p. 15 (London, 1914).

[491] “But the devils believed not, they taught men sorcery and that which was sent down to the two angels at Babel, Harut and Marut.” The Koran, Sura II, 96.

[492] Chap. XIII, vv. 19–21. In lieu of the word “satyrs” the Vulgate has pilosi—the hairy ones—which is more in keeping with the original Hebrew text.

[493] Genesis xi: 4.

[494] Ερημία μεγάλη ἐστιν ἡ μεγάλη πόλις, Bk. XVI, I, 5.

[495] The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Vol. X, Part I, p. 63 (collected by Richard Hakluyt, Edinburgh, 1889).

[496] “The inhabitants of these parts are as fond of attributing every vestige of antiquity to Nimrod as those of Egypt are to Pharaoh.” Rich, Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon (London, 1818).

[497] Op. cit., Tom. I, p. 382 et seq.

[498] That Della Valle had no doubt that the mound of Babil was really the ruin of the Tower of Babel is quite evident from the positive statement which he makes to this effect: “che sia quella Babel antica è la torre di Nembrotto, non c’è dubbio, secondo me, perche oltre che il sito lo dimostra, da’ paesani ancora oggidi è conisciuta per tale, ed in Arabico è chiamata volgarmente Babel.” Op. cit., p. 384.

[499] Koldewey, op. cit., p. 11, et seq.

[500] Op. cit., p. 101.

[501] Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, Vol. II, p. 365 (by Robert Ker Porter, London, 1822).

[502] Op. cit., p. 317. The Jews of Babylonia call the tower of Birs-Nimrud “Nebuchadnezzar’s prison,” for what reason is not clear.

[503] The Old Testament in the Light of Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, p. 138 (by T. G. Prinches, London, 1908).

[504] Observations Connected with the Astronomy and Ancient History, Sacred and Profane, on the Ruins of Babylon, p. 2 (by T. Maurice, London, 1816).

[505] Ibid., Vol. II, p. 336.

[506] Cf. Expedition de Mesopotamie, Vol. I, Lib. I (Paris, 1863).

[507] See also Die Tempel von Babylon and Borsippa, p. 59 (by Dr. Koldewey, Leipsic, 1911), that speaks of Oppert’s verkehrter Stadtplan von Babylon and who declares that Borsippa, as an independent city, bore the same relation to Babylon as does Charlottenburg to Berlin.

[508] The History of Herodotus, Bk. I, 178, 179.

[509] Library, Lib. II, Chap. VII.

[510] Rich, op. cit., p. 43.

[511] De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, Lib. V, Cap. I.

[512] The Geographical System of Herodotus Examined and Explained, p. 347.

[513] Op. cit., p. 2.

[514] Im Lande des Einstigen Paradieses, p. 30 (Stuttgart, 1903). According to Oppert the great wall of Babylon embraces an area fifteen times as great as that of Paris in 1850 and as extended as that of the entire department of the Seine. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 234.

[515] Op. cit., p. 5.

[516] Op. cit., II, 8.

[517] Koldewey, op. cit., p. 54.

[518] Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, Bk. VII, Chap. XXVI.

[519] According to the measurements of Rich, the current of the Euphrates runs at a medium rate of about two knots an hour while that of the Tigris has a maximum velocity of full seven knots.

[520] Commentary on Isaias, Bk. V, Chap. XIII, Patrologiæ Latinæ, Vol. XXIV (Migne, Paris, 1865).

[521] Op. cit., Bk. I, Chap. 181.

[522] Geography, Bk. XVI, Chap. I, Sec. 5.

[523] Op. cit., p. 196.

[524] Ibid., p. 196.

[525] “Principio Assyrii”—the Chaldeans—“propter planitiem magnitudinemque regionum quos incolebant, cum cœlum ex omni parte patens et apertum intuerentur, trajectiones motusque stellarum observaverunt.” De Divinatione, Lib. I.

[526] Op. cit., Lib. V, Cap. I.

[527] Op. cit., p, 103.

[528] For a description of the ruins of Cuzco and the Great Chimu, as compared with those of Babylon, see Along the Andes and Down the Amazon, Chaps. XIII, XV (by J. A. Zahm, New York, 1911).

[529] The History and Conquests of the Saracens, p. 2 et seq. (by E. A. Freeman, London, 1877).

[530] Babel and Bibel, p. 36, 37 (London, 1903).

[531] The Archæology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 111 (London, 1908).

[532] Entitled Der babylonische Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur (1892).

[533] Pliny, speaking of Belus, says: “Inventor hic fuit sideralis scientiæ, Naturalis Historiæ,” Lib. VI. Cap. 30.

[534] Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, p. 8 (New York, 1912).

[535] See especially Astronomisches aus Babylon, oder das Wissen der Chaldäer uber den gestirnten Himmel (by J. Epping, in collaboration with J. Straszmaier, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1889); Die Babylonische Mondrechnung (by F. Kugler, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1900).

[536] Cf. Dumont op. cit., p. 60.

[537] A comparison of the lunar periods as given by Babylonian and by modern astronomers will show how exact were the calculations of the observers of ancient Chaldea.

Periods as calculated by Babylonian astronomers:

Mean sidereal month | 27 days, | 7 hours, | 43’ 14″
Mean synodic month | 29 days, | 12 hours, | 44’ 31.3″
Mean draconitic month | 27 days, | 5 hours, | 5’ 35.8″
Mean anomalistic month | 27 days, | 13 hours, | 18’ 34.9″

Periods as calculated by modern astronomers:

Mean sidereal month | 27 days, | 7 hours, | 43’ 11.5″
Mean synodic month | 29 days, | 12 hours, | 44’ 2.9″
Mean draconitic month | 27 days, | 5 hours, | 5’ 36″
Mean anomalistic month | 27 days, | 13 hours, | 18’ 39.3″

From the foregoing figures it is seen that the maximum difference of time, as given by ancient and modern observers, is less than a half minute; the minimum one-fifth of a second! See Kugler’s Die Babylonische Mondrechnung, pp. 24, 40, 46.

[538] Kugler op. cit., p. 206.

[539] Hammurabi’s code which is carefully engraved on a large stele of black diorite was found by M. de Morgan and the distinguished Dominican archæologist, Father Scheil, among the ruins of Susa—the Susan of the Bible—whither it had been carried from Babylon as loot by the Elamites. When found in December, 1901, and January, 1902, it was in fragments but the parts were easily rejoined. In October, 1902, there appeared an admirable translation of it by Father Scheil which everywhere excited the greatest interest among scholars both of the Old and the New World. In many respects, it is the most interesting and valuable inscribed monument of old Babylonia which has yet been brought to light.

[540] Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters, pp. vii, viii (by C. H. W. Johns, New York, 1904).

[541] Op. cit., p. 186.

[542] Apocalypse, xvii: 5; xviii: 21.

[543] Daniel iv: 27, 28.

[544] Chap. li: 58.

[545] Chap. li: 37.

[546] Chap. li: 62.

[547] Psalm cxviii: 89.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM BERLIN TO BAGDAD AND BABYLON ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

- FROM BERLIN TO BAGDAD AND BABYLON
- FOREWORD
- CONTENTS

- CHAPTER I ON THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE DANUBE

- From Ratisbon to Budapest
- The Architect
- From Budapest to the Black Sea

- CHAPTER II THE EUXINE AND THE BOSPHORUS IN STORY, MYTH AND LEGEND

- CHAPTER III ROMA NOVA
- CHAPTER IV THE HELLESPONT AND HOMER’S TROY
- CHAPTER V THE CRADLE OF THE OSMANLIS

- CHAPTER VI HOME LIFE OF THE OSMANLIS IN ANATOLIA

- CHAPTER VII THE BAGDAD RAILWAY

- CHAPTER VIII IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE CRUSADERS

- CHAPTER IX IN HISTORIC CILICIA CAMPESTRIS

- CHAPTER X ISLAM, PAST AND PRESENT

- CHAPTER XI ALONG THE TRADE ROUTES OF THE NEAR EAST

- CHAPTER XII FROM THE EUPHRATES TO THE TIGRIS

- CHAPTER XIII THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST

- Nestorian, Monophysite and Other Eastern Churches

- The Orthodox Churches

- Reunion of the Eastern Churches with the Holy See

- CHAPTER XIV NINEVEH AND ITS WONDERS

- CHAPTER XV FLOATING DOWN THE TIGRIS ON A KELEK

- CHAPTER XVI BAGDAD
- CHAPTER XVII MOTORING IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
- CHAPTER XVIII BABYLON
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX
- FOOTNOTES:
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE