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The genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me; I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating: but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long, hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the sides of it.
We are indebted to Clavigo for the first information of this new route of the commerce between India and Europe, by Sultania: it is supposed to have been adopted on the destruction of Bagdat by the Moguls; but we learn from other travellers that, towards the end of the fifteenth century, Sultania was remarkable for nothing besides the minarets of a mosque, which were made of metal, and displayed great taste and delicacy of workmanship.
When the river Tigris is well replenished with water, the passage from Babylon or Bagdat to Basora may be made in eight or nine days, less or more according to circumstances; we were fourteen or fifteen days, because the water was low, and when the waters are at the lowest it requires eighteen days. Having no rocks or shoals in the river, the voyage may be continued day and night.
In 1591, when the English Levant Company endeavoured to establish a trade over land to India, and for that purpose carried some of their goods from Aleppo to Bagdat, and thence down the Tigris to Ormus and to Goa, they found that the Venetians had factories in all these places, and carried on an extensive and lucrative trade.
On the outside of the door stood Jeroslaus, duke of Susdal in Russia, a great many dukes of the Kithayans and Solangi, the two sons of the king of Georgia, the envoy of the caliph of Bagdat, himself a sultan, and more than ten other Saracen sultans.
The city is extremely populous, and hath none to compare with it, except Bagdat, the mighty city of the Ismaelites . In it is the magnificent temple of St Sophia, where dwells the patriarch of the Greeks, who do not agree in doctrine with the pope of Rome.
Bagdat belonged formerly to Persia, but is now subject to the Turks. Over against Bagdat, on the other side of the Tigris, is a very fair village, to which there is a passage across from Bagdat by a long bridge of boats, connected by a vast iron chain made fast at each side of the river.
From Constantinople, Benjamin continued his journey to Tyre, Jerusalem, and the Holy Land, and thence to Damascus, Balbeck, and Palmyra, which he calls Tadmor, and in which, he says, there then were 2000 Jews. He next gives an account of Bagdat, the court of the caliph, and the condition of the Jews there.
The country round produces abundance of white rice and dates, with which they supply Bagdat and all the country, sending likewise to Ormus and India.
We left Tripoli on the 14th of this month of May, and arrived here at Aleppo on the 20th; and with Gods help we begin our voyage to-morrow for Bagdat and Basora, and so to India.
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