'Report on the Development of Mesopotamia with Special Reference to the Regeneration of the River Systems' [‎4] (10/50)

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country became a swamp. These waters wliich had once c nourished
her and run about her plantations, and sent out channels unto all
the trees of the field' now stagnated, and became as great a
curse as they had been a blessing. Such is this region as we see it
to-day."
(8) Sir Mark Sykes, in his book " The Caliphs' Last Heritage," attributes the
destruction of the counry to the Mongol inroad in 1258 A, D., and graphically
describes the episode in the following words :—
Sweeping on to the south-west the huge force poured into Irak and surround
ed Baghdad itself. The wealth of ages lay at the conqueror's feet.
Baghdad was besieged—schism and rebellion broke out within—the
irresistible forces thundered without—Baghdad fell. The town
was sacked and burnt—the inhabitants were massacred—the women
carried oft" into slavery—the Abbasid caliph was executed—gold
was thrown about like lead, and long streams of caravans marched
eastward carrying away the incredible booty. The most fatal
accident of all, in this colossal disaster, was the irretrievable ruin of
the whole system of irrigation of Mesopotamia. Baghdad was
destroyed and with it the very sources of life. Mesopotamia, which
had known wealth for perhaps five thousand years, now sank
back into desert and swamp. This is a calamity almost beyond
human comprehension—a populous land reduced to emptiness ;
the granary of the world, a wilderness of reeds and sands, The
region whence Semite, Elamite, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian,
Seleucid, Parthian, Sassanian, Omayyad and Abbasid had success
fully drawn perennial riches, became, under the devastating hand
of Hulagu, a place of mounds and sherds, a waste of unfruitful waters
intersecting arid plains of dust and scrub. Having destroyed the
work of three hundred generations of men in a single year Hulagu
retired to Persia, leaving a famine ^nd desolation which endure to this
* A thousand mule loads of gold and jewels to Persia, or a thou
sand penniless architects, philosophers, dyers and tanners in Cairo
were as nothing in compensating force to the disappearance of canals
which for 5,000 years had supported abundant life and produced
certain and perennial prosperity. Henceforward we must look at
Mesopotamia not as a centre of vitality but as an hiatus in the
scheme of things."
(9) It is possible that the change in the course of the Tigris was deliberately
brought about by the Mongol raiders led by Hulagu, but in any case it seems to me
probable that a gradual deterioration of the canals had been proceeding for
thousands of years. The canals at the time when Baghdad was at the height of its
prosperity were admittedly far inferior to those of the old Babylonian and
Sassanian times. Sir William Willcocks, in his book, points out that never in the
history of Mesopotamia has the whole country been under irrigation at one and
the same time. The centre of cultivation was at first in the lower reaches of the
two rivers between Nippur and Ur of the Chaldees ; then it travelled to the tract
between Sippara and Babylon. In Persian times the centre was Ctesiphon, while
Basra, Wasit and Kufa in the lower part of the delta were the first capitals of the
Arabs, and Baghdad became the centre in the time of the Caliphs.
Sir William Wilcocks attributes the complete obliteration of the ancient canals
to the heavy silt deposits, and it is not unlikely that the centre of cultivation