Gertrude Lowthian Bell

“ The khânjî, a friend of Fattûḥ’s, was unfeignedly glad to see us, and his khân looked good, but better still the patch of ground behind that stretched down to the water’s edge. Here with the consent of mine host we pitched our tents, in full view of an exquisite little island, green with corn and shaded by palm-trees; and whatever love you bear the desert there can be no doubt that green growing things are pleasant to the eye, and that the spirit rests comfortably upon the assurance that a good dinner, not tinned curry, will shortly be forthcoming. ”

“ Still further north the three halls of the palace of the khalifs stand amid an immense area of shapeless mounds, and far away a second spiral tower, the minaret of Abu Dulâf, lifts its head out of the plain. The waters of the Tigris bring no colour to the vast landscape; the dead and silent world is like a battlefield, wherein men fought out the secular contest with the wilderness, and lost, and left it empty of all but ruins. ”

“ The great curtain of wall, the face of the right wing, rises stark and gaunt out of the desert, bearing upon its surface a shallow decoration of niches and engaged columns which is the final word in the Asiatic treatment of wall spaces, the end of the long history of artistic endeavour which began with the Babylonians and was quickened into fresh vigour by the Greeks. Tradition has it that the whole wall was covered with precious metals. The gigantic vault, built over empty space without the use of centering beams, is one of the most stupendous creations of any age. ”

“ I looked back upon the ancient mound of Hît, the palm-groves, and the dense smoke of the pitch fires rising into the clear air, and as I looked our zaptieh came out to join us—a welcome sight, for the Mudîr might well have repented at the eleventh hour. Now no one rides into the desert, however uncertain the adventure, without a keen sense of exhilaration. ”

“ We rode up the bank of the Tigris, and when we came opposite to Tell Nimrûd there, by good fortune, was a ferry-boat, plying across the river with the men and flocks of the Jebbûr. The cause of their migration to the left bank was hopping about our feet—locusts, newly issued from the rocky ground and swarming over every blade of grass and corn.
“In two days there will be no pasture, and our flocks will die,” explained an aged shepherd. “Let the consul cross!” he shouted, as the ferry-boat drew up beside the bank and half the tribe clambered into it. ”

“ Said Fattûḥ: “What is that?” But none of us could answer.
We went on through the smiling sunny landscape and the green corn, where the peasants stood by the irrigation trenches, their work suspended, their faces turned towards that ominous sound, and presently we met an old man. He too listened.
“Why are they firing cannon in Môṣul?” I asked.
“God knows!” he answered, and wrung his hands together. “Perhaps it is news from Stambûl. One man says one thing and one another, and God knows what is true.” ”

“ The grace and ordered symmetry of these façades are as devoid of monotony as are the palace walls of the early Venetian renaissance, to which they are closely related, and here as in Venice the crowning beauty of colour is added to that of form and proportion. But it is colour of the sun’s own making; the sharp black outline of a window opening, the half tones of a carved panel lying upon the smooth brightness of the masonry soberly enhanced by the occasional use of a darker stone, either in courses or in alternate voussoirs. ”

“ The Tigris in high flood washed the foot of the temple mound; far away to the north ran the snow-clad barrier of mountains whence its waters flow—a barrier which Nature planted in vain against the valour of the Assyrian armies; and across the river the fertile plain stretched away in long undulations to where Arbela lies behind low hills. Bountiful gods had showered their gifts upon the land. ”

“ At the northern limit of the enclosure stands a high square tower, up which, if you would know Aleppo, you must climb. From the muedhdhin’s gallery the town lies revealed, a wide expanse of flat roof covering the bazaars, broken by dome and minaret, by the narrow clefts of streets and the courts of mosque and khân. The cypresses of Abu Bekr stand sentinel to the north; from that direction Tîmûr entered through the Bâb el Ḥadîd. In the low ground beyond the Antioch Gate, the armies of the Crusaders lay encamped; the railway, an invader more powerful than Baldwin, holds it now. ”

“ Almost all the coins that were brought to me were Arab.
My tents were pitched outside the city wall, at the extreme limit of the Roman empire, a frontier line which you must travel far to find. Did Julian, with the ominous news from Gaul in his hand, feel any misgiving when he ordered the building of the bridge over which his army was to pass to the irrevocable destruction that Sallust predicted in his letters? “No human power or virtue,” says Ammianus Marcellinus, “can prevent that which is prescribed by Fate.” ”

“ In spite of the flickering shade of the palm-trees it was stifling hot, and I looked with regret over the broken mud wall of our garden into the clean stretches of the open desert. But the splendours of the sunset glowed between the palm trunks; in matchless beauty a crescent moon hung among the dark fronds, and we lay down to sleep with the contentment of those who have come safely out of perilous ways. ”

“ There was a small pitch-well an hour away to the south-east, and if springs that burn when the tinder touches them are more logical than spirits that issue from a bottle when the seal is broken, then the explanation of Fawwâz may be accepted. But at that moment I could not stay to think the problem out, for if it was hot riding, sitting still was intolerable, and we were not anxious to linger when every half-hour’s march meant half-an-hour of dangerous country behind us. From noon to sunset the desert is stripped of beauty. ”

“ For more than a thousand years after the fall of Babylon no man building in its neighbourhood was at the pains to construct brick-kilns, but when he needed material he sought it in Nebuchadnezzar’s city. Greek, Persian and Arab used it as a quarry, and as you climb the stairs of the German house you will become aware of the characters that spell the king’s name upon the steps beneath your feet. The small courts and chambers, which were no doubt occupied by retinues of officials and servants of the palace, formed a bulwark of defence for the king. ”

“ The setting sun threw a magic cloak of colour and soft shadows over the sandhills of the Wâdî Burdân, and under the starlight my companions lingered round the camp fire, smoking a narghileh and telling each other wondrous tales. When I joined them Fattûḥ was holding forth upon the evil eye, a favourite topic with him. I knew by heart the tragedy of his three horses who died in one day because an acquaintance had looked at them in their stable.
“And if your Excellency doubts,” said Fattûḥ, “I can tell you that there is a man well known in Aleppo who has one good eye and one evil. ”

“ Often enough I have contemplated with amazement, in some lonely ḳishlâ or ḳarâghôl, the patient Oriental acceptance of whatever fate may be allotted by the immediate or the ultimate authority; and many an hour has passed, far from unprofitably for the understanding of the East, while a marooned garrison has shown me, with a pitiful and childlike eagerness, its poor little efforts to while away the weary days—here a patch of garden snatched from the wilderness, where only a hand-to-hand struggle with the drifting sand can keep the rows of wizened onions from total extinction ”

“ The princes who drew the line of massive masonry about her flanks and led her armies against the emperors of the West, the merchants who gathered the wealth of inner Asia into her bazaars and bartered it against the riches of the Levant Company have handed down the spirit of enterprise to the latest of her sons. They drive her caravans south to Baghdâd, and east to Vân, and north to Konia, and in the remotest cities of the Turkish empire I have seldom failed to find a native of Aleppo eager to provide me with a local delicacy and to gossip over local politics. ”

“ They were real hills which lay before us, not the bare desert ridges which were all the heights we had seen since we crossed over Lebanon on the way to Aleppo. Here were the buttresses of mightier ranges than Lebanon, the alps of Kurdistân which end the land of the two rivers. As we climbed upwards, the corn grew greener, the grass deeper, the flowers more brilliant along the edge of trickling streams. ”

“ Murawwaḥ drew himself up on his hungry mare. “Thieves!” he cried. “Thieves are dogs. How can you compare the Arabs with them? We will not bow our heads to any government. To the Arabs belongs command.” And he slashed the air defiantly with his tamarisk switch as he proclaimed the liberties of the wilderness, the right of feud, the right of raid, the right of revenge—the only liberty the desert knows.
Three hours and a half from ’Ajmîyeh we stopped at a naoura, Natârîyeh, to water our horses, and just beyond it we were overtaken by half-a-dozen angry men from Rawâ, mounted and carrying rifles. ”

“ A glory so dazzling, so abrupt a decline, can scarcely be paralleled on any other page of history. Encompassed by a league-long expanse where the surface of the waste is tumbled into confused masses of mounds or marked{209} off by the vast rectangular enclosures of palace and garden, stands the modern town of Sâmarrâ, no better than a walled village, except that above its mean roofs hang the incomparable domes of the Shî’ah sanctuary, one a-glitter with gold, the other jewelled with precious tiles. ”

“ Cruel and bloody as Ottoman rule has shown itself upon these remote frontiers, it is better than the untrammelled mastery of Arab beg or Kurdish âghâ, and if the half-exterminated Christian sects, the persecuted Yezîdîs, the wretched fellaḥîn of every creed, who sow in terror crops which they may never reap, are to win protection and prosperity, it is to the Turk that they must look. He, and he only, can control the warring races of his empire, and when he has learnt to use his power impartially and with rectitude, peace will follow. ”

“ Human victims cried out under nameless tortures; the tide of battle raged against the walls, and, red with carnage, rose into the palaces. Splendour and misery, triumph and despair, lifted their head out of the dust.
One hot night I sat with my hosts upon the roof of their house. The Tigris, in unprecedented flood, swirled against the mound, a waste of angry waters. Above us rose the zigurrat of the god Asshur. It had witnessed for four thousand years the melting of the Kurdish snows, flood-time and the harvest that follows ”

“ For the past twelve years a little group of German excavators has lived and worked among the mounds of Babylon. To them I went, in full assurance of the hospitality which they extend to all comers. The traveller who enters their house, sheltered by palm-trees, on the banks of the Euphrates, will find it stored with the best fruits of civilization: studious activity, hard-won learning and that open-handed kindness which abolishes distinctions of race and country. ”

“ Damascus is the capital of the desert, Aleppo of the fertile plain. Damascus is the city of the Arab tribes who conquered her and set their stamp upon her; Aleppo, standing astride the trade routes of northern Mesopotamia, is a city of merchants quick to defend the wealth that they had gathered afar. So I read the history that is written upon her walls and impressed deep into the character of her adventurous sons.
At Aleppo the current of the imagination is tributary to the Euphrates. ”