'DIARY OF A TOUR IN THE PERSIAN GULF AND IN TURKISH ARABIA, DECEMBER, 1906 (WITH MAP)' [‎14v] (28/106)

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in the extreme and their ideas of cleanliness
of an elementary description. But if they
were dirty, their’s was a picturesque dirt,
less squalid and disgusting than that of a
similar stratum of society in more civilised
parts of the world.
So for five long days our voyage continued,
its monotony only broken by an occasional
passing steamer or dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. , or by the rarer
appearance of a riparian village, the child
ren of which invariably ran along the banks
asking for presents of the dates which
formed so large a part in the dietary of our
Arab passengers. At length, on the morn
ing of Thursday, the 20th, we reached
Bagdad. I had previously wired up to
Major Ramsay, the British Resident, tell
ing him of our approaching visit, and he
was good enough to come off for us in a
boat and to ask us to stop with him during
our stay in the place. Accordingly, we
went at once to the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. , a fine large
house built on the river bank. The British
Resident is a big man in Bagdad, with
a large guard of Indian soldiers and his
own gunboat anchored in front of the
house. We enjoy these privileges because
we have had representatives in the place
for so long, almost before the Turkish
authority was even as slight as it now is.
The representatives of other powers, and
pretty well every nation has a consul or
agent here, are creatures merely of yester
day, and loom small in the public eye as
compared with the British man. And so
at last we made our entry in Bagdad.
Properly to appreciate Bagdad and all
that its name implies one must be steeped
in its traditions, acquainted with its his
tory, and have studied the masterpiece of
Arabic literature with which its name is so
intimately connected. Bagdad, compared
to the hoary antiquities in its immediate
neighbourhood, is almost a place of mush
room growth. Yet it was founded* by
the second Abbaside Caliph, on the ruins
of an earlier Babylonian town, more than
300 years before William the Conqueror
set sail for the English coast. It was built
then from materials of the most remote
antiquity, quarried from more majestic
ruins. In the period of its greatest glory ;
when the immortal Haroun-er-Rashid was
Commander of the Faithful ; when its arts
and commerce were at their highest point
and its wealth was renowned throughout
the nations ; when its merchant princes
extended their operations to the remotest
lands and distant monarchs sent embassies
to the great Caliph and trembled at his
* 763 A.D.
f 783—809 A.D.
Bagdad:
Its associations
and history.