What changes of history have left their records in ruins and names and legends on the great alluvial plains of Northeastern Arabia! The two rivers still bear their Bible names, the Euphrates and Dijleh, or Hiddekel, but nothing else is left which could be called paradise. What impresses the traveller first and most is that so large an extent of this fertile region lies waste and unproductive under an effete rule. The splendor of the past can scarcely be believed because of the ruin of the present. Everywhere are traces of ancient empires and yet it seems incredible as we watch the half-naked Arabs ploughing through the mud-banks with their wild cattle and primitive implements.

Was this the cradle of the human race? Babylon and Nineveh are here for the archaeologist; Ctesiphon, Kufa and Zobeir for the historian; Bagdad and Busrah (or Bassorah) for old Arabian romance; and Ur of the Chaldees for the Bible student. Since Haroun Rashid went about in disguise how many yet stranger Arabian nights has Bagdad seen! How surprised Sinbad the sailor would be to see the decay of Busrah, yet with a dozen “smoke-ships” in its harbor!

Mesopotamia, called by the Arabs El Jezira, was formerly limited to the land lying between the two rivers and south of the old wall by which they were connected above Bagdad. From this point to the Persian Gulf the district was and is still known as Irak-Arabi, to distinguish it from the Irak of Persia. Commonly, however, the name of Mesopotamia (Mid-River-Country) is given to the whole northeastern part of Arabia. It has a total area of 180,000 square miles and presents great uniformity in its physical as well as its ethnical characteristics. Arabs live and Arabic is spoken for three hundred miles beyond Bagdad as far as Diarbekr and Mardin; but we limit our description to the region between Busrah and Bagdad including the delta at the mouth of the rivers.

Near Bagdad the two giant rivers, after draining Eastern Asia Minor, Armenia and Kurdistan, approach quite near together; from thence the main streams are connected by several channels and intermittent watercourses, the chief of which is the Shatt-el Hai. At Kurna the two rivers unite to form the Shatt-el-Arab which traverses a flat, fertile plain dotted with villages and covered with artificially irrigated meadow-lands and extensive date groves. As far up as Bagdad the river is navigable throughout the year for steamers of considerable size. It is entirely owing to the enterprise of English commerce and the Bagdad-Busrah steamship line that the country, so gloomily described by Niebuhr, in 1792, and even by Chesney in 1840, has been developed into new life and prosperity. Even Turkish misrule and oppression cannot do away utterly with natural fertility and productiveness; and if ever a good government should hold this region it would regain its ancient importance and double its present population.

Two features are prominent in the physical geography of this region. First the flat almost level stretches of meadow without any rise or fall except the artificial ancient mounds[36]. The second is the date-palm. The whole length of the country from Fao and Mohammerah to the country of the Montefik Arabs above Kurna is one large date plantation, on both sides of the wide river. Everywhere the tall shapely trees line the horizon and near the lower estuary of the Shatt-el-Arab they are especially luxuriant and plentiful. Formerly every palm-tree on the Nile, was registered and taxed; but to count every such tree on the Shatt-el-Arab would be an unending task.

The proper coat-of-arms for all lower Mesopotamia would be a date-palm. It is the “banner of the climate” and the wealth of the country. There may be monotony in these long groves and rows of well-proportioned columns with their tops hidden in foliage, but there certainly is nothing wearisome. A date garden is a scene of exceeding beauty, varying greatly according to the time of the day and the state of the weather. At sunrise or sunset the gorgeous colors fall on the gracefully pendant fronds or steal gently through the lighter foliage and reflect a vivid green so beautiful that once seen, it can never be forgotten. At high-noon the dark shadows and deep colors of the date-forests refresh and rest the eye aching from the brazen glare of sand and sky. But the forest is at its best, when on a dewy night the full moon rises and makes a pearl glisten on every spiked leaf and the shadows show black as night in contrast with the sheen of the upper foliage.

It was an Arab poet who first sang the song of the date-palm so beautifully interpreted by Bayard Taylor:

Mark Twain compared the palm-tree to “a liberty-pole with a haycock” on top of it. The truth lies between the poet and the “Innocent” traveller, for the date-tree is both a poem and a commercial product; to the Arab mind it is the perfection of beauty and utility.

The date palm-tree is found in Syria, Asia Minor, nearly all parts of Arabia and the southern islands of the Mediterranean, but it attains to its greatest perfection in upper Egypt and Mesopotamia.[37] Some idea of the immense importance of this one crop in the wealth of Mesopotamia may be gained from the statement of an old English merchant at Busrah, that “the entire annual date-harvest of the River-country might conservatively be put at 150,000 tons.”

The date-tree consists of a single stem or trunk about fifty to eighty feet high, without a branch, and crowned at the summit by a cluster of leaves or “palms” that drop somewhat in the shape of a huge umbrella. Each of these palms has long lanceolate leaves spreading out like a fan from the centre stem which often attains a length of ten or even twelve feet. In a wild state the successive rows of palms, which mark the annual growth of the tree, wither and contract but remain upon the trunk, producing with every breath of wind the creaking sound so often heard in the silence of the desert-night. But where the palms are cultivated the old stems are cut away as fast as they dry and are put to many different uses. The trunk of the palm-tree therefore presents the appearance of scales which enable a man, whose body is held to the tree by a rope noose, to climb to the top with ease and gather the fruit. At a distance, these annual rings of the date-palm appear as a series of diagonal lines dividing the trunk. Palm-trees often reach the age of a hundred years. The date-palm is dioecious; but in Mesopotamia the pistilate-palms far exceed in number the staminate. Marriage of the palms takes place every spring and is a busy time for the husbandman as it is no small task to climb all the trees and sprinkle the pollen.

Arabs have written books and Europeans have composed fables on the thousand different uses of the palm-tree. Every part of this wonderful tree is useful to the Arabs in unexpected ways. To begin at the top:—The pistils of the date-blossom contain a fine curly fibre which is beaten out and used in all Eastern baths as a sponge for soaping the body. At the extremity of the trunk is a terminal bud containing a whitish substance resembling an almond in consistency and taste, but a hundred times as large. This is a great table delicacy. There are said to be over one hundred varieties of date-palm all distinguished by their fruit and the Arabs say that “a good housewife may furnish her husband every day for a month with a dish of dates differently prepared.” Dates form the staple food of the Arabs in a large part of Arabia and are always served in some form at every meal. Syrup and vinegar is made from old dates, and by those who disregard the Koran, even a kind of brandy. The date-pit is ground up and fed to cows and sheep so that nothing of the precious fruit may be lost. Whole pits are used as beads and counters for the Arab children in their games on the desert-sand. The branches or palms are stripped of their leaves and used like rattan, to make beds, tables, chairs, cradles, bird-cages, reading-stands, boats, crates, etc., etc. The leaves are made into baskets, fans and string and the bast of the outer trunk forms excellent fibre for rope of many sizes and qualities. The wood of the trunk, though light and porous, is much used in bridge-building and architecture and is quite durable. In short, when a date-palm is cut down there is not a particle of it that is wasted. This tree is the “poor-house” and asylum for all Arabia; without it millions would have neither food nor shelter. For one half of the population of Mesopotamia lives in date-mat dwellings.

Although everywhere the date-culture is an important industry, Busrah is the centre of the trade, for here is the principal depot for export. The three best varieties of dates known at Busrah are the Hallawi, Khadrawi and Sayer. These are the only kinds that will stand shipping to the European markets. They are packed in layers in wooden boxes, or in smaller carton boxes. The average export to London and New York from Busrah for the past five years has been about 20,000 tons, nearly one half of which was for the American market. Other important varieties are Zehdi, BÉrem, Dery and Shukri. These are packed more roughly in matting or baskets, and are sent along the whole Arabian coast, to India, the Red Sea littoral and Zanzibar. There are over thirty other varieties cultivated near Busrah for local consumption. Some of them have curious names such as: “Mother of Perfume,” “Sealed-up,” “Red Sugar,” “Daughter of Seven,” “Bride’s-finger,” “Little Star,” “Pure Daughter”; others have names which it is better not to translate.

Palgrave and others, with whose verdict I agree, pronounced the Khalasi date of El Hassa superior to all other kinds. It has recently been introduced into Mesopotamia. Palgrave says, “the literal and not inappropriate translation of the name is ‘quintessence’—a species peculiar to Hassa and easily the first of its kind.” The fruit itself is rather smaller than the usual Hallawi date, but it is not so dry and far more luscious. It is of a rich dark amber color, almost ruddy, and translucent; the kernel is small and easily detached, the date tastes sweet as sugar and is as far superior to the date bought in the American market as a ripe Pippin is to dried apple-rings.

At Busrah the date season opens in September and keeps every one busy until the vast harvest is gathered and shipped. The dates for export to Europe and America are of prime quality, a box of half a hundred-weight on board the steamer is worth about three or four shillings wholesale. All poor, wet, and small dates are packed separately in mats or bags, and are sent to India as second-quality. The poorest lot are sent in mass to the distilleries in England. Thus nothing is lost. Date-packers, who put the fruit in layers, receive three or four kameris for packing a box. The best packers can only pack four boxes a day, so that their wages are about a kran (about ten cents) per day. They live cheaply on the fruit, and bring all their family, babes and greybeards with them to lodge for the season in the date-gardens. The date season in Busrah begins in the early or middle part of September and lasts for six or eight weeks. The price of the date-crop varies. It is usually fixed at a meeting held in some date-garden where the growers and buyers play the bull and the bear until an agreement is reached. The prices in 1897 were, in the language of the trade: “340 Shamis for Hallawis, 280 Shamis for Khadrawis, and 180 Shamis for Sayer.” Seventeen Shamis are equal to about one pound sterling, and the prices quoted are for a kara, about fifty hundred-weights.

The culture of the date has steadily increased for the past fifteen years. In 1896 the greater part of the country was inundated by heavy floods and over a million date-trees are said to have been destroyed; new gardens are being planted continually. The Arabs of Mesopotamia display great skill and unusual care in manuring, irrigating and improving their date-plantations, for they realize more and more that this is no mean source of wealth. One recent use to which export dates are put is in the manufacture of vinegar, it would seem, since the beet-sugar industry has proved so profitable, that there must be some method by which good sugar could be manufactured from date-syrup.

Mesopotamia is rich not only in date-groves but in cereals, wool, gums, licorice root and other products. The export of wool alone in 1897 was valued at £288,700. And the total exports the same year, for the two provinces of Bagdad and Busrah, were put at £522,960. Busrah is the shipping place for all the region round about, and ocean steamers of considerable size are always in Busrah harbor, during 1897 four hundred and twenty-one sailing vessels and ninety-five steamships cleared the port, with a total tonnage of 131,846; ninety-one of the steamships were British.

The population of the two vilayets is given by Cuinet, who follows Turkish authorities, as follows:

In Bagdad vilayet nearly four-fifths of the Moslem population belongs to the Sunnite sect, while in Busrah vilayet three-fourths of them are Shiahs. The Sabeans are generally reckoned among the Christians, although these are already sufficiently divided into Latin, Greek Orthodox, Greek, Syrian, Chaldean Catholic, Armenian Gregorian, Armenian Catholic and Protestants—the last in the smallest minority possible and the others chiefly distinguished by mutual distrust and united hatred of Protestantism.

The vilayet of Bagdad is divided again into three Sandjaks or districts of Bagdad, Hillah and Kerbela, and that of Busrah likewise into those of Busrah, Amara Muntefik and Nejd[38]. Of these six districts that of Bagdad is the largest in area and importance and is the centre of military power for both vilayets. The boundaries of Bagdad Sandjak go as far as Anah on the Euphrates toward the north and include Kut-el-Amara on the south with both banks of the Tigris. Hillah and Kerbela are along the Euphrates with irregular boundaries while the Muntefik Sandjak with its provincial town of Nasariya separates them from that of Busrah. The Sandjak of Amara begins a few miles north of the junction of the two rivers, and the whole frontier toward Persia is entirely undefined or at least “in litigation,” as the Turkish official maps have it.

The two Turkish provinces have all the involved machinery of Turkish civil and military administration. There are plenty of offices and office-holders and constant changes in both. Each province has a governor-general or Wali and (outside of the governor’s sandjak) each district has its mutaserrif-pasha either of the first or second class—those one has to deal with generally prove to be of the latter. Then there are Kaimakams for smaller districts or cities, and finally mudirs for villages. At the seat of government, called the Serai, there is an administrative council, including the NÄib or kadi, corresponding to chief-justice; the defterdar or secretary of finance; the mufti or public interpreter of Moslem law; the nakib, etc., etc., etc. There are several courts of justice of different rank; the custom-house administration is on the e pluribus unum plan and ne plus ultra system. Besides these there are the “Regie des tabacs” or the tobacco-monopoly, the post and telegraph administration, the sanitary offices, the salt-inspectors, and, at Kerbela, the Tarif of corpses levied on imported pilgrims. To describe all these satisfactorily would require a volume.