Travellers to the East-What they are to expect when they get there; or how their Expectations will be disappointed-Life with the Turks-Life with the Arabs-The Missionary—His success-Arguments of a young Convert-Missionaries unsuc- cessful with the Druses-My Hostess-Her Stories-The Par- venu and the Door of his new House-The Frank and the Devil-Return of Fever-And to Beyrout-Scenes there-The Lady and the Mercer-Relations, by the Old Man, of Lady Hester Stanhope-Progress of Civilisation in Beyrout-Illus- trated by several particulars-Frank Doctors and Azrael the Angel of Death-Final Destination of Lawyers, as prescribed by the Turks-Fountains of the East-Regard in which Water is held there-Turkish Burials and Tombs-Visits of Relatives to the Graves-Ceremonies of Marriage in the East-Some strange Customs on such occasions-The Ansayrii-Refuge of their Mountains-Marriages of Christians amongst each other —The Practice of Mussulmans in that particular-Character of TRAVELS IN THE EAST, 1850-51. CHAPTER I. Residence of the Pasha-Foundation of Mosul-Its Situation-Its Mode of Communication with the other side of the River Reside at the Encampment of Mr. Layard—Tiyari Nestorian ChristiansTheir Assassination by the Koords—Antiquity of the Chaldean Christian Church-An Appeal on behalf of those that yet remainThe Jabour Tribe. و THE Pasha resides in a large serai some half mile lower down the river ; it is, as most serais are, a vast pile of building which has probably never been repaired since the day it was built. This is one of the things that cannot fail to strike a traveller : he mounts to a Pasha's palace through a court full of dirt, loungers of all sorts sitting about, up rotten stairs that totter with his weight, to a room whereof the walls are whitewashed, --or rather have been, and ought to be again and so also with the room where sits the great man. The curtains, of the commonest stuff, are held by a VOL. II. B 2 THE FOUNDATION OF MOSUL. couple of nails over the windows, which are half broken, and patched with paper or rag; the floor covered with rude mats, the divan probably of red baize, ill-fitting, and out of order. The character of the natives here—the type,—it would be impossible to describe—they are so various, and so dissimilar. Their dress, also, is peculiar in each of the races. The Turks, as elsewhere, also the Christians and the Koords, wear the short, straight-cut felt jacket, and an enormous turban of the native manufactured handkerchiefs, of brilliant colours. The Yezidis seemed neater and cleaner than any, with their many-coloured garments and large dark turban. The foundation of Mosul is veiled in obscurity. Gibbon assumes it to be the western suburb of Ninus, the city that succeeded Nineveh. There is at Mosul a curious old Syriac MSS., which says it rose on the ruins of that great city, and that but little space intervened between the fall of the one, and the rise of the other. Had we the book of Xisuthus,* buried at Sippara, these things would be plain to us ; but this antiquity of Mosul must be exaggerated, or else Nineveh can hardly be the * The history of the world before the flood was written by Xisuthus, who was warned in a dream by the god Cronos to do so. He was told to bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara. This is the Perisabora of ancient geographers, and Anbar, the ruins of which are still to be seen close to the castle of Felugra, south-west of Bagdad on the road to Babylon. THE HOUSES OF MOSUL. 3 Larissa of Xenophon. It is well known and constantly occurs in Saracenic history, that Salla el Deen, the Great, besieged it, and Jenghiz Khan ; Tamerlane of course poured out her blood ; and the remains of the batteries may still be seen on the mound of Koyunjik, where, in 1743, Nadir Shah planted his cannon when he bombarded the town. Since then it has experienced no great shocks; it has, however, suffered from that slow decay which, reform as they will, falls on every place and town beneath the withering sway of the Turk. The houses at Mosul seem built now exactly as those of ancient Nineveh, judging from the ruins as laid open for inspection by the excavations; and from inspection of the others, this would in great part account for the ruins being covered as they The houses are built of sun-dried bricks, or merely rammed mud formed into bricks on the wall itself, and vaulted over. Sometimes small stones are used in their composition. Within, all round the court, are slabs of roughly carved coarse alabaster, of about ten or twelve feet high ; in fact, except the rough scratched work of the one now used, and the elaborate travail of the other, those now are the same as those found at the mounds. are. و |
