'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎326r] (654/862)

PORTS AND INLAND TOWNS
5°7
and minor creeks, which are part of the palm belt of the Shatt al
Arab. The river is here about 300-400 yards wide and the palm belt
from 2 to 3 miles. The population is extremely mixed but preponder
antly Arab, both Sunni and Shia, with large colonies of Persians
and Jews, and some Indians. The climate (p. 172) is particularly
difficult for Europeans.
History
Sea trade from the Shatt al Arab to India was first established in
the time of Alexander the Great (p. 227). The earliest known settle
ment near modern Basra was the Graeco-Parthian trading station of
Apologos {Arabic Ubulla), but Basra itself was founded in a.d. 638
by the Moslem conquerors (p. 241), 9 miles inland from the Shatt al
Arab on the desert verge, near the present town of Zubair. The
estuary was reached by two canals, north-east by the Nahr Maqil
and south-east by the Nahr al Ubulla. Basra soon became a great
city, port, and market town, famous for its mosques, public library
and copying house, and the centre of a rich agricultural zone, watered
by canals from the Shatt al Arab and far wider than the present strip
of riverain cultivation. At its greatest the city measured more than
3 miles square, but some districts were destroyed when it was
sacked by the Zanj rebels (p. 244) in a.d. 871 and by the Carmathians
(p. 253) in 923. Some of its prosperity survived the first Mongol
invasions, but by the fourteenth century its finest mosque was 2 miles
from the inhabited centre. Later, old Basra dwindled away and even
its out-port of Ubulla declined from a flourishing town to a large
village, to which the name of Basra was transferred. In 1583 Ralph
Fitch found this a small but active port of some 10,000 houses,
enclosed by mud walls, ‘a town of great trade of spices and drugs
which come from Ormuz. Also there is great store of wheat, rice
and dates growing thereabouts wherewith they serve Babylon and all
the country, Ormuz and all the parts of India.’ Under the Turks
Basra gained the standing of a provincial capital, but from 1600 to
1668 direct Ottoman rule was ousted by the local Afrasiyab dynasty.
They encouraged arts and learning, dispensed justice, kept Basra
secure from Persian invasion, and enriched the city by welcoming
British, Portuguese, and Dutch traders (p. 263). There was also
trade up the Tigris ‘with great trouble and expense’ to Baghdad,
Mosul, and Diyarbekir and across the desert with the Levantine
cities and Egypt. Capitulations, first signed at Istanbul in 1661,
permitted British trading establishments at Basra (p. 264).