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.

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

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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.

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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 are. 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 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.

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THE SITUATION OF MOSUL.

From its scarcity, very little wood enters into the building of the houses; in fact, except for the doors and windows, none. The mere fall of the walls and roofs would bury the slabs, and an accumulation would occur above this from natural causes.

The water used in the town is brought up on mules or horses, in enormous leathern sacks: this water, though of a bad colour, is sweet and good.

Mosul is situated on the western bank. Το afford communication with the opposite side there is a bridge of boats; these are moored head and stern abreast, nearly close together, with a platform on each; two or three boats are connected by one part of this. This, during my stay, was out of repair, so the passage was effected by boats, numbers of which plied across. The bridge of boats is secured on the townward side to a waterport, on the other it met a low stone pier that stretched across the shallower portion of the river. Thus, here it was confined within narrower limits than usual, leaving but a small space for the boats to span. During the period of the freshets in the river these are always removed, and few years pass that the river does not overflow the wharf on the eastern side, flooding the flat land within it.

The boats used for the passage are large and