Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/43

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 23 Abbassides were never tempted to reside either in the birth- place or the city of the prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and polhited with the blood, of the Ommiades ; and, after some hesitation, Almansor, the brother and successor of SafFah, laid the foundations of Bagdad, ^^ the Imperial seat of his posterity during a reign of five hundred years. ^- The chosen spot is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the ruins of Modain ; the double wall was of a circular form ; and such was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and the adjacent villages. In this citij of peace/''^ amidst the riches of the East, the Abbassides soon dis- dained the abstinence and frugality of the first caliphs, and as- pired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian kings. After . 31 The geographer d'Anville (I'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 121-123), and the Oriental- ist d'Herbelot (Bibliotheque, p. 167, 168), may suffice for the knowledge of Bag- dad. Our travellers, Pietro della Valle (torn. 1. p. 688-698), Tavernier (torn. i. p. 230-238), Thevenot (part ii. p. 209-212), Otter (torn. i. p. 162-168), and Niebuhr (Voyage en .rabie, torn. ii. p. 239-271), have seen only its decay ; and the Nubian geographer (p. 204), and the travelling Jew, Benjamin of Tudela (Itinerarium, p. 112-123, a Const, I'Empereur, apud Elzevir, 1633), are the only writers of my ac- quaintance, who have known Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides. [See Ibn Serapion's description of the canals of Baghdad, translated and annotated by Mr. Le Strange, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, X. S. vol. 27 (1895), p. 285 sgt^., and Mr. Le Strange's sketch plan of the city {id., opposite p. 33).] ■^-The foundations of Bagdad were laid a.h. 145, A.D. 762; Mostasem [Mus- tasim, 1242-1258], the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to death by the Tartars, a.h. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of February. =■* Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem [Dar al-Salam]. Urbs pacis, or, as is more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers, Eiprji-oTroAi; (Irenopolis). There is some dispute concerning the etymology of Bagdad, but the first syllable is allowed to signify a garden, in the Persian tongue ; the garden of Dad, a Christian hermit, whose cell had been the only habitation on the spot. [' ' The original city as founded by the Caliph A!-Mansur was circular, being surrounded by a double wall and ditch, with four equidistant gates. From gate to gate measured an Arab mile (about one English mile and a quarter). This circular city stood on the western side of the Tigris, immediately above the point where the Sarat Canal, coming from the Nahr 'Isa. joined the Tigris, and the Sarat flowed round the southern side of the city." " In the century and a half which had elapsed, counting from the date of the foundation of the city down to the epoch at which Ibn Serapion wrote, Baghdad had undergone many changes. It had never recovered the destructive effects of the great siege, when Al-Amin had defended himself, to the death, against the troops of his brother Al-Mamun ; and again it had suffered semi-depopulation by the removal of the seat of government to Samarra (A.ii. 836-892). The original round city of Al-Mansur had long ago been absorbed into the great capital, which covered ground measuring about five miles across in every direction, and the circular walls must, at an early date, have been levelled. The four gates, how- ever, had remained, and had given their names to the first suburbs which in time had been absorbed into the Western town and become one half of the great City of Peace." Mr. Guy Le Strange, /oc. it/., pp. 288, 289-90.]