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Updated: May 8, 2025
Every few days the officer Yusuf would visit me and talk of many matters, for we became friends. Only of Heliodore and Martina he could or would tell me nothing, nor of when we were to set out on our journey to Baghdad. I asked to be allowed to speak with the Patriarch Politian, but he answered that this was impossible, as he had been called away from Alexandria for a little while.
When war broke out he was living in Baghdad, where he had learned French and English at one of the Mission Schools there, for he was a Christian. When Turkey came in, he fled from Baghdad with many others who wished to avoid conscription. He travelled down the river to Basra. He described the journey as very bad, with little food and a constant fear of being caught.
The delicacy and extreme gravity of such functions as she, from time to time, was called upon to fulfill, when the city of Baghdád was swept by the hurricane which the heedlessness and perversity of Mírzá Yaḥyá had unchained, as well as the tender solicitude which, at so early an age, she evinced during the period of Bahá’u’lláh’s enforced retirement to the mountains of Sulaymáníyyih, marked her as one who was both capable of sharing the burden, and willing to make the sacrifice, which her high birth demanded.
I likewise bought for myself a beast and we fared forth and crossed the deserts from country to country till I reached Baghdad. Here I went in to the Caliph and, after saluting him and kissing hands, informed him of all that had befallen me; whereupon he rejoiced in my safety and thanked Almighty Allah; and he bade my story be written in letters of gold.
Half-way between Bassora and Baghdad, the lofty mountain chain of Luristan becomes visible. When the atmosphere is clear, the summits, 10,000 feet high, and covered with perpetual snow, may be seen. Every step in advance leads to the scene of the great deeds of Cambyses, Cyrus, Alexander, etc.: every spot of ground has historical associations.
Our experts, however, reported that it was of very poor quality and worth practically nothing. Several days later I embarked at Baghdad on one of the river boats. I took Yusuf with me to Busra to put me aboard the transport for Egypt.
The same landing difficulties are experienced at Astara and Lenkoran, the places of call between Enzelli and Baku. Should there be any intention of eventually making a railway from the coast to Kasvin and Hamadan, there to meet a line to Baghdad, then it would be the best course in every way to connect Resht with Baku by a railway along the coast, passing through Astara and Lenkoran.
The Euphrates still flows by Hit and through Babylon; the Tigris passes near Opis, and at Baghdad runs at the foot of an embankment made to confine it by Nebuchadnezzar. The changes traceable are less in the main courses than in the branch streams, which perpetually vary, being sometimes left dry within a few years of the time that they have been navigable channels.
In the strict sense, the term Mesopotamia should be limited to the territory lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris above their junction, in the neighborhood of Baghdad, and extending northwards to the confines of the Taurus range; while the district to the south of Baghdad, and reaching to the Persian Gulf, may more properly be spoken of as the Euphrates Valley; and a third division is represented by the territory to the east of the Tigris, from Baghdad, and up to the Kurdish Mountains; but while this distinction is one that may be justly maintained, in view of the different character that the southern valley presents from the northern plain, it has become so customary, in popular parlance, to think of the entire territory along and between the Euphrates and Tigris as one country, that the term Mesopotamia in this broad sense may be retained, with the division suggested by George Rawlinson, into Upper and Lower Mesopotamia.
Another notable gift is the bronze statue of Edward VII, donated by Sir Albert Sassoon, son of a public-spirited banker from Baghdad, who took up his residence in Bombay. A newcomer among the city's office buildings is "Roosevelt House," advantageously situated near the Apollo Bunder.
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