'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎58] (169/258)

58 COMMANDER F. JONES’S
without.* The decline of the place is well marked on the face of them, for
we observe all shades of patchwork during successive centuries even to the
“ wattle and dad” embankments hastily thrown up as stop-gaps where, to
prevent smuggling, the authorities have been too poor to give a more sub
stantial repair. It has ten round towers half enclosed within the outer wall,
which, where they are situated, forms a semi-line around them. These are
solid constructions of brick with embrasures and some few cannon on each.
Many of these are of large calibre, long and heavy, and fine specimens in
copper and brass of the ornamented gems, such as were cast in the flourishing
periods of the Turkish empire. Most of them were cast in Baghdad, which
cannot now boast of a foundry capable of making a small ordinary cannon.
There are some iron pieces of various nations, brought doubtless by the Tigris
from Basreh, where they have been procured from foreign ships. Most of the
pieces are sadly honey-combed, and their enormous vents shew they have
had much use in their day. Little damage need be apprehended from them
now, crippled as they are in carrige, some of them even lying on the platform
without any at all. There is some talk of converting them into copper and
brass money, but the difficulty is now to break them up for coining, and to
remove them bodily with Baghdad men and appliances seems to be out of
the question. Many date their construction from two centuries back. The
wall itself rises from a fosse originally about eighteen feet deep to the same
height above the plain beyond.
A strong embankment girts the ditch on the outside, and situated at irregular
intervals between the round towers are buttresses or half bastions of equal
dimensions to give strength to the escarpe or revetment of the wall, so well as
to protect it by a flanking fire, being like the wall itself loopholed for musketry.
On the inside, this wall is exposed only for thirteen feet, the rest being con
cealed by a thick rampart of earth, which strengthens it and serves, at the
same time, to protect the enciente from inundations of the rivers which fill
the moat and press hard upon the fortifications. The wall affords some shel
ter to its defenders by being poorly arched somewhat in the form of case
mates ; over these is a road way a few feet broad, the top of the wall, which
is embattled, acting as a parapet above it. Four gates, with solid bridges!
over the ditch originally led to the plains beyond. Three only are now open,
namely, the north-west one, or Bab-al-Moadhem ; J the south-east one, or
Bab-as-Sherki; and the middle gate Bab-al-Wastani; the Babal Telism
* In the Nushat-al-QuIub of Abdallah Mustafi we read of a wall of lime and kiln-burnt
bricks, surrounded by a ditch, having been erected by Mustadhir iiillah, the eighteenth Khaiif, in
about 300 A. H. or A. D 913.
f In execrable repair.
j Named thus from facing the village of Moadhem, the burial place of a popular Sunni
lawgiver and saint, bearing that title which signifies “ honored.''