"كتيّب بلاد الرافدين. المجلد I. ١٩١٨" [‎٧‎٨] (٥٦٨/٨٧)

78
HISTORY
turies to come, anything like what they are at the present day.
Northern Irak remained well irrigated; some districts in upper
Mesopotamia were still rich and productive; the government of
the Abbasid Caliphs, till it lost its vigour and power, attended care
fully to what had been saved from the wreck of the older world;
and it required six centuries of subsequent Mongol and Turkish
misrule and apathy to bring the country to its present miserable
condition.
Mesopotamia was but a province of the Arabian empire from
the battle of Kadisiyeh, a. d . 636, till a.d . 762. The Caliphs of the
Omayyad dynasty had their capital at Damascus. But it was during
this period that northern Irak became the holy land of the Shiahs.
The converts to Islam in Mesopotamia and Persia brought something
of older religions and philosophies to their new faith, and the
character of their Mohammedanism showed itself in the rapid
growth among them of sects and strange mysticisms. In the dis
sensions that arose in Islam over the Caliphate this neo-Moslem
spirit devoted itself to the claims of 'Ali and his*family. It was too
undisciplined to give 'Ali or his sons the victory over the Omayyads,
but it gathered strength from its defeats. At Kufeh 'Ali was mur
dered, at Kerbela Husein his son was slain, and on their deaths the
religious fervour of the Shiahs has been nourished. (See also on this
subject pp. 125-7.)
The Abbasid caliph Mansur, after the destruction of the Omayyad
dynasty, which ruled from Damascus, perceived that a new capital
was needed for the new dynasty. The decay of the Arab tribal
system, on which the military power of the Omayyads depended,
and the support given to the Abbasids by the neo-Moslems of the
former Sassanian territories, decided him to move the seat of govern
ment to Mesopotamia. The causes which led to the selection of the
sites of Babylon, and subsequently of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, which
are mentioned above, were still in force, and accordingly Mansur, in
a. d . 762, founded Baghdad on the Tigris, 20 miles above Ctesiphon.
For the same reasons that led to the rapid growth and permanence of
its predecessors, Baghdad soon rose to eminence. It was second only
to Constantinople in size during the Middle Ages, and was unrivalled
for splendour throughout western Asia. Wars and sieges, the
temporary removal of the seat of government to Samarra ( a. d . 836-
892), and even the almost entire destruction of the city by the
Mongols in a.d . 1268, have never permanently affected the supre
macy of Baghdad in Mesopotamia.
The country shared in the general prosperity of the golden age
of Islam, which culminated during the reign of the Caliph Harun