'Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf. Vol I. Historical. Part IA & IB. J G Lorimer. 1915' [‎1491] (1642/1782)

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illuBtration of this it may be mentioned that the Mesopotamia!! lion, now
apparently extinct^ then still existed.
So lately as i874 a lion and two or three lionesses had been* shot
from the deck of one of the British river steamers on the Tigris.
The Turkish authorities had made some progress, however, in paci-
fying and settling the country j and the situation in this respect was
summed up, in 1878, in the following well-considered words :
I have no sympathy with the Tu rks in Arabia, and still less with their administra
tion. It is utterly corrupt; but I do not think their theory of government theie is a
bad one. The protection of the peaceable tribes and the repression of the warlike ones ;
encouragement to all who will cultivate the soil; security for the high roads and
military occupation of the villages ; alliances entered into with the Bedouin chiefs, and
inducements offered them to act as the police of the desert ;—nothing, in idea, could
be better or more European. It is only in practice that the Turks fail, and that, I
fear, from incurable causes. Yet they have not wholly failed. Prom a military
point of view, the Pashas can boast with some truth that, compared with twenty
years ago, no country has made more rapid steps towards civilisation. The power of
the Bedouin tribes has within that period been seriously checked, if not broken ; and
it is quite conceivable that in another 20 years, at the same rate of progress, the
Anazeh will have disappeared from the upper Syrian desert, and the Shammar have been
reclaimed to settled life in Mesopotamia. Ou the day when the alluvial valley of the
Euphrates shall be completely cultivated, and their access to the river cut off in summer,
the true Bedouins must retire to the Nejd, whence they came, or abandon their
independent life. Turkish optimists are excusable if they count on this. But for my
part, I do not believe in the regeneration of Turkey, or even in the maintenance of its
military power for any length of time.
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In the towns perhaps the most remarkable feature of the time was a Urban condi-
sudden movement in the direction of modern education among the large ^ 10ns,
indigenous Jewish community of Baghdad, whose mother tongue is
Arabic. When a Jewish school was founded there in 1864 by the Alliance
Isra6lite Universelle of Paris, it was at first regarded with some suspicion
by the more old-fashioned Jewish families ; but its later progress was
rapid. By 1878, under the management of M. Garat, himself a native of
Baghdad educated at Paris, it had attracted 172 pupils; the instruc
tion given was excellent; and the curriculum included the English
* Captain Clements, who afterwards commanded the Blosse Lynch took part
in this adventure. The animals were found on a piece of land cut o£E by floods at a
parf. of tl.e river where there was no jungle. One of the lionesses sprang into the
water and was killed in a,ttemptii)g to board the steamer. A lion and a lioness were
killed near Dair-az-Zor on the Euphrates at the end of 1877. Lady Anne Blunt's Be
douins of the Euphrates, Yol. II, pages 280-281.
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