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Updated: May 13, 2025
Rapidly traversing the shrubless, herbless plains of Mesopotamia, they reached at length the town of Mosul, the point from which travellers proceed to visit the ruins of Nineveh. These have been so carefully explored and ably described by Layard and the late George Smith, that it is needless to quote Madame Ida Pfeiffer's superficial observations at any length.
They consist of massive fragments of walls and columns, strewn on either side of the Euphrates. On the 17th of June our heroic traveller joined a caravan which was bound for Mosul, a distance of three hundred miles, occupying from twelve to fourteen days. The journey is one of much difficulty and no little danger, across a desert country of the most lifeless character.
Ahmed explained: "God bless you and give you long life. I am old, and may die to-day." She told us that she came from Mosul, away beyond the Syrian desert, to die in Jerusalem. We visited the synagogue of the Caraite Jews, a small polygamous sect, numbering in this assembly about thirty persons.
Their shoes were worn out, they were very ragged, and, what was of greater significance, they were badly nourished. The length of their line of communications had evidently severely strained them. Supplies had to come overland all the way from Nisibin, which is more than a hundred miles beyond Mosul. The broken country made the transportation a difficult problem to solve.
People of every rank, men of all sects and religions, watched the progress of his disease with the most earnest anxiety. The French Consul visited him almost daily. The Turkish authorities sent to inquire for him, and some came in person. One, who arrived immediately after his decease, could not refrain from tears when he heard of it. A leading Jacobite remarked, that all Mosul was weeping.
After sending the servant a second time, he came back with the announcement that the Agha would examine their baggage, take what he pleased, and send them on to another Agha; but would not allow them to return to Mosul. The whole affair was conducted with a politeness of manner which was highly creditable to the Agha, and calculated to put us very much at our ease.
The tribes of the Desert, who were held in check during the Egyptian occupancy, are now so unruly that much of the commerce between the latter place and Baghdad goes northward to Mosul, and thence by a safer road to this city.
On account of the anarchy around us, we had travelled together barely two days, but on a bed of sickness, and surrounded by men of blood, I had learned to prize the company of a Christian friend. Yet, while Providence called him back to Constantinople, to me it seemed to cry, 'Onward to the mountains!" Dr. Grant resolved to go to Mosul.
The reapers who were still busy within the grassy walls of fallen Ninevah, came up to us as we passed, with their sickles on their heads, to present the offering of the first fruits of harvest. We hurried on, however, and stopped for the night at a small village little more than an hour from the gate of Mosul."
As to the great hinterland lying between Mesopotamia and the Syrian coast, it was to be "independent Arab under two spheres of influence," British and French; the French sphere embracing all the rest of Syria from Aleppo to Damascus, the English sphere embracing all the rest of Mesopotamia the region about Mosul.
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