'History of the Indian Navy. (1613-1863).' [‎415] (434/622)

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
415
the Hindeyeh marshes, tracing down the old bed of the Tigris
as far as Kut-el-Amara; this he found distinctly marked, from
the mass of ruins on each bank, like a range of hills, fully
justifying the old Arab proverb, that u a cat could jump from
house-top to house-top all the way from Bussorah to Bagdad."
Lieutenant Colling wood writes to us:— u Captain Selby and
myself surveyed a tract of the marshes of the Tigris to see
if the Hudd was capable of navigation into the heart of the
district, inhabited by the Albu Mahomed,* a wild race of men,
* Of the tribes wlio inhabit Mesopotamia, the principal are the Anizeh, the
Shammar, the Thuffiah, and the Khuzail, of which the two former roam the
Great Desert from Syria southwards to about the parallel of 31° N. Lat.; the two
latter, south of that parallel, and on both sides of the Eiver Euphrates. There
are also the large tribes of the Montefik, Albu Mahomed, and Beni-Lam, but
they are fellah Arabic for ‘peasant’. It was used by British officials to refer to agricultural workers or to members of a social class employed primarily in agricultural labour. or cultivating tribes, and cannot be classed with the Bedouin
above-named, whose life is purely pastoral, and whose occupation is plunder.
These tribes, like the Persians, belong to the Shiah sect of Islam, whose principal
places of pilgrimage are Kadumein, about four miles from Bagdad, and Meshed
Ali, on the shores of the Bahr-i-Nejf, an inland sea supplied by the waters of the
Euphrates. Meshed Ali is beautifully situated on the cliffs which form the
eastern shore of the sea of Nejf. " Ages ago," says Captain Selby, " and before
the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris had brought down from the mountains of
Armenia the deposit which now forms the delta of the two rivers, the Persian Grulf
must have extended up to the Bahr-i-Nejf at least, and now, when with narrowed
limits it does not attain to within one hundred and sixty miles of this spot, the
cliffs still remain, imperishable monuments of the wonderful geographical changes
continually at work in our globe. Having, on a former occasion, examined the
stream by which the Bahr-i-Nejf is fed from the Euphrates, I determined, when
the time arrived for the survey of the sea itself, to ascend it by the Shat Atshan,
the channel through which its Svaters again return to the parent stream. Hiring
a small boat of about ten tons at Bussorah, to enable us to pass the marshes, in
which during the autumn eighteen inches of water only could be found, I ascended
the Euphrates to about the parallel of Wurka, and there entered the embouchure,
I may call it, of the waters of the sea of Nejf. For two days we had entirely left
the haunts of man, and were tracking upward through as desolate a country as
can be imagined. The left bank of the river a dense jungle, the haunt only of
the lion, the hyena, and the wild boar; the right a trackless waste, the view
bounded by the wonderful wave of sand that, creeping onwards imperceptibly
from the west, and at an angle of 60° with the horizon, and having a height of
about forty feet, is gradually wresting from man for ever such fertile plains west
of the Euphrates as still are left." Commander Selby examined the country
inhabited by the Albu Mahomed, situated in the delta formed by the junction of
the Tigris and Euphrates at Koorna, where tradition places the Grarden of Eden.
The Albu Mahomed are Madan (or Marsh) Arabs, their whole wealth consisting
in the milk of their immense herds of buffalo, which is made into ghee, a kind of
clarified butter, and exported in great quantities to India and adjacent countries,
and they also cultivate a little rice and wheat on the few spots of dry land in the
marshes they inhabit. " To the Turkish Grovernment," says Captain Selby, " the
country of the Albu Mahomed was a terra incognita, for so great is the hatred
borne, I may say, by all the Arab tribes to the Turk, that to examine the country
scientifically was never contemplated by them. I had always a great desire to do
so; and as I had ingratiated myself in many ways with them, and had landed
and visited Eaasil, then Sheikh, I accepted an opportunity which offered, and,
accompanied by a kind friend and brother officer, my assistant. Lieutenant Colling-
wood, left the banks of the Tigris, and, pursuing one of the numerous canals which
are cut from the river for irrigation, arrived at the head-quarters of one whose
very name was a terror to the whole country. The grace which marks the
reception of a stranger by a Bedouin Sheikh was entirely wanting here ; and
I could not but feel the truth of the saying of the Arab tribes in refer-