'The lands of the Eastern Caliphate Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem conquest to the time of Timur' [‎72] (103/586)

72
'IRAK.
[CHAP.
who followed in his footsteps in the early part of the 8th (14th)
century, gives a long account of this famous bridge of boats at
Hillah, the double iron chains of which were secured at either end
to immense wooden piles. He praises the town markets, and his
account is fully borne out by Mustawfi, his contemporary, who
speaks of Hillah as beginning to occupy the east as well as the
west bank of the Euphrates. It was surrounded by date-groves
and hence had a damp climate. Mustawfi adds that the popula
tion of Hillah were all bigoted Shi'ahs, and they possessed a
shrine (Makam) here, where they believed that, in the fulness of
time, the promised Mahdi, who had disappeared at Samarra in
264 (878), would reappear and convert all mankind to their faith
(see above, p. 56) ^
Returning once more to the account given by Ibn Serapion
in the 4th (10th) century of the Sura canal, this, as already
said, passed to the west of the great ruins of Babylon, or
Babil. These ruins Mukaddasi describes as then occupied by
the site of a village near a bridge of boats, and Mustawfi gives
a long account of the great magicians who had lived in Babil, and
of the well at the summit of the hill in which the fallen angels
Harilt and Martit were imprisoned until the day of judgment.
Above Babil, the last of the many canals flowing from the
Euphrates to the Tigris branched from the Stira. This waterway,
now known as the Shatt-an-Nil—'the Nile Stream'—Ibn Sera
pion calls the Great Sarat, the name is the same as that of the
more famous canal of West Baghdad (see p. 66) in the upper
reach lying to the west of the city of Nil. From its point of origin
the Great Sarat flowed eastward past many rich villages, throwing
off numerous water channels, and shortly before reaching the city
of Nil a loop canal, the Sarat Jamasp, branched left and rejoined
the main stream below the city. This loop canal had been re-dug
by Hajjaj, the famous governor of Trak under the Omayyad
Caliphs, but took its name, as was reported, from Jamasp, the
chief Mobed, or Fire-priest, who in ancient days had aided King
Gushtasp to establish the religion of Zoroaster in Persia. The
1 I. S. 10, 16. Ykb. 309. 1st. 85, 86. I. H. 166, 168. Muk. 121.
\ak. ii. 322; iii. 861; iv. 123. I. J. 214. L B. ii. 97. Mst. 138.