'Handbook of Mesopotamia. Vol. I. 1918' [‎74] (83/568)

74
HISTOKY
was preserved. Babylonia was the richest province of the empire
and had the reputation of being the richest country in the world.
The city of Babylon remained the great market and industrial centre
which she had been in the days of the Babylonian kingdom. The
spring residence of the Persian court was at Susa (Shush, near Dizful).
In 331 b.c . Alexander the Great invaded Mesopotamia, defeated
the Persian king between Mosul and Erbil, and entered Babylon and
Susa. Alexander undertook irrigation and drainage works on the
Euphrates, and seems to have contemplated the development of
the Tigris as a commercial highway. He is said to have planned the
improvement of the waterway of the middle Tigris, and he may have
entertained the plan, afterwards carried out by Seleucus, of trans
ferring to the banks of the Tigris the capital of Babylonia. He
actually founded a port at the head of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. in the neigh
bourhood of Mohammareh.
When after Alexander's death at Babylon in 323 b.c . his empire
broke up, one of his marshals, Seleucus, acquired Mesopotamia
together with Iran, Syria, and part of Asia Minor. It was Seleucus
who shifted the centre of trade and industry in Babylonia from the
Euphrates to the Tigris. No doubt he was moved to this step by
the superior advantages of the Tigris as a channel for water-borne
traffic. But inasmuch as it was always a natural necessity that there
should be a centre in northern Babylonia round which its dense
population could gather, and at which merchants, passing along the
trade-routes that here crossed each other from the four corners of the
earth, could meet and do business, he selected a site only 40 miles
north of Babylon and 18 miles south of the modern Baghdad, on the
right or western bank of the Tigris. Seleucia grew rapidly in size
and importance. It was equally suitable with Babylon for the pur
poses of inter-continental land trude and better adapted for water-borne
traffic; moreover it was one of the capitals of the Seleucid kingdom.
Without any sensible pressure on the part of royal authority, the
population of Babylon gradually migrated to Seleucia; and after
the lapse of two or three generations little more than mounds and
ruins were left to mark the site of the older city. Seleucia remained
a centre of Hellenism long after Babylonia had reverted to Asiatic
rule.
From 312 b.c . Mesopotamia was for 175 years a possession of the
house of Seleucus, and then again passed under an Asiatic govern
ment. The Parthian dynasty, which, originating in Khorassan, had
gradually extended its power westwards over the Iranian plateau
at the expense of the Seleucid empire, made repeated attempts to
seize Mesopotamia, and succeeded at last, when the Seleucids had