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"The Arab lands," writes Djelal Noury Bey in a recently-published work, "and above all Irak and Yemen, must become Turkish colonies in which we shall spread our own language, so that at the right moment we may make it the language of religion.
From their fighting singly, when required, in the cause of the prince or noble who maintains them, the name is commonly translated champion; but when employed by a weak but arbitrary and cruel prince to remove by stealth obnoxious persons whom he dares not to attack openly they may be compared more properly to the Ismaelians or Assassins, so celebrated in the history of the Crusades, as the devoted subjects of the Sheikh al-jabal, or Old Man of the Mountain, as this chief of Persian Irak is vulgarly termed.
He directed that his army should be paid in coin brought from the province of Khorasan, and that it should be struck in his own name, which virtually amounted to an assumption of the independent sovereignty of that country. The armies of the Turks occupied some of the finest parts of the province of Irak and all Azerbaijan.
Southern Mesopotamia the Irak of the Arabs and Babylonia of the Greeks lies desolate like the North, but is a contrast to it in every other respect. Its aspect is towards the Persian Gulf, and Rohrbach grudgingly admits that down the Tigris to Basra, and not upstream to Alexandretta, is the natural channel for its trade.
In spite of many pompous declarations that this was only the beginning of greater conquests in Asia Minor and Irak, he retired as soon as the Ilkhan Kaikhatu sent a strong detachment of troops against him. Later on he threatened the Prince of Armenia-Minor with war, and obliged him to hand over certain border towns. He also exchanged some threatening letters with Kaikhatu.
Where be the kings who Irak peopled and the four quarters of the globe possessed? Where be they who abode in Ispahan and the land of Khorasan? The voice of the Summoner of Death summoned them and they answered him, and the Herald of Destruction hailed them and they replied, Here are we!
It is difficult to understand how an English army could effectively protect either Asia Minor or Mesopotamia from Russian invasion. The occupation of Kars has given Russia the command of the Tigris and Euphrates, and with them of Armenia, Kurdistan and Irak, so that our protection could hardly be extended beyond the sea-coast of Asia Minor and the Persian Gulf.
Now I was returning to Irak, having with me a hundred loads of rarities of Ind; but, as I drew near Baghdad, the seat of your sovereignty and the abiding-place of your peace and your justice, there came out upon me Bedouins and Kurds banded together from all parts, who slew my men and robbed me of all my goods. This is what hath befallen me."
Then he put off his trousers and the rest of his clothes and lay down, in a shirt of fine waxed cloth and a coif of blue stuff of Merv, upon a mattress of satin, embroidered on both sides with gold and quilted with Irak silk, having under his head a pillow stuffed with ostrich-down. In this guise, he was like the full moon, when it rises on its fourteenth night.
Von Falkenhayn despatched the following telegram from Constantinople on August 25, 1917, to German General Headquarters: The possibility of a British attack in Syria has had to be taken into consideration from the beginning. Its repercussion on the Irak undertaking was obvious.
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