G70 EUPHE.ATES Hit, 1 which may be fixed on as the point of demarcation between the middle and lower divisions of the river, stands at the head of the alluvial deposit. It is distant about 750 miles by the windings of the river from the point where the Euphrates breaks through the Taurus range, and the further course of the stream measures about 550 miles to the sea. The hills and cliffs and rocky banks which have hitherto lined the river disappear, and, with the exception of one limited tract a short distance above Babylon, named El Hasvva, there is not a stone or a pebble to be seen on the sur face of the desert all the way to the sea. In the immediate vicinity of Hit a large canal was taken off on the right bank of the river, which followed the extreme skirt of the alluvium the whole way to the Persian Gulf, and thus formed an outer barrier, strengthened at intervals with watch towers and fortified posts, to protect the cultivated land of the Sowad against the incursions of the desert Arabs. This gigantic work, the line of which is still to be traced throughout its course, was formerly called the Khandak- Sabur, or " Sapor s trench," being historically ascribed to the Sassanian king, Shapiir Dhuiaktaf, but it is known in the country as the Cherra-Saideh, and is in popular tradi tion believed to have been excavated by Bokhtunasr (Nebuchadnezzar) for his favourite " sultdneh," Saideh, "the fortunate." The great irrigating canals, however, which especially distinguished Babylonia, were derived from the left bank of the river, and watered the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Many of them must have been of the most remote antiquity, as the majority of the primi tive capitals such as Kutha, and Niffer. and Larsa, &c., sister cities of.Babylon were built upon their banks, and are thus proved to bo of a later date than the canals. In the time of the Arabs the chief canals were the Nahr Isa, the Nahr Sarsar, the Nahr Malca (the royal river of the Greeks), and the Nahr Kutha, and the cuts from these main channels, reticulating the entire country between the rivers, converted it into a continuous and luxuriant garden. The most important canal, however, was the large stream which left the Babylonian branch of the Euphrates just above the city, and under the name of the Arakhat- (Archous of the Greeks and Serrdt and Nil ot the Arabs) ran due east to the Tigris, irrigating all the central part of the Jezireh, and sending down a branch as far south as Niffer. At the present day it is easy to distinguish these great primitive water courses from the lateral ducts which they fed, the former being almost without banks, and merely traceable by the winding curves of the layers of alluvium in the bed, while the latter are hedged in by high banks of mud, heaped up during centuries of dredging. Not a hundredth part of the old irrigation system is now in work ing order. A few of the mouths of the smaller canals are kept open so as to receive a limited supply of water at the rise of the river in May, which then distributes itself over the lower lying lands in the interior, almost without labour on the part of the cultivators, giving birth in such localities 1 The true name of this place seems to have been Ihi, which is often found in the Talmud in the compound form of Ihi-da-kim, or /At of the Bitumen," from the famous bituminous sprint in the vicinity. Herodotus wrote the name as "Is, with the Greek nominatival ending, while in Hit we have the Arabic feminine suffix. Isidore gives the form of AefiroJus ; Ptolemy has I5^dpa, Ammianus Dia- cira, and Zosimus Aei/c.pa, the thre? last forms all referring to the itumen springs. The name has not been recognized in the Assyrian inscriptions, though it is curious to observe that in Pro to- Babylonian Jitumen was named Ittu, a form very much resembling the modern Hit. 2 The Assyrian Arakhat means " the road," and is thus precisely synonymous with the Arabic Serrdt, while the Bedouin of the prespnt day apply to different portions of this canal the names of Derb and fc&fe, with the same meaning. At the time of the Arab conquest the name o, SerrU-el-Jamasb was that chiefly in use, but in later times ie upper and lower divisions of the canal were more often called the
- o Zabe, after the famous river of that name in Assyria.
to the most abundant crops ; but by tar the larger portion of the region between the rivers is at present an arid, howling wilderness, strewed in the most part with broken pottery, the evidence of former habitation, and bearing nothing but the camel thorn, the wild caper, the colocynth- apple, wormwood, and the other weeds of the desert. It must further be borne in mind that the course of the river and the features of the country on both banks are subject to con stant fluctuation. Between Hit, it is true, and Felugia (near the ancient Perisabor, Aiibdr of the Arabs) which is at the head of the canal system, no great change is possible owing to the height of the river banks, but lower down every thing depends on the care bestowed on the artificial embankments of the stream. When the Euphrates, for instance, breaks through at Felugia, and fills the Saklawleh canal (in the line of the old Nahr Isd) the whole country west of Baghdad is submerged, and a still more important flooding occurs lower down near Mussaib, at the head of the modern Hindieh canal. Here in all ages there has been a great bifurcation of the river. We may infer that the right arm was the original bed, and the left arm, on which Babylon was built, the artificial derivation, because from the earliest times, as we learn from the cuneiform inscriptions, the Babylon stream has always been called the river of Sippara and not the Euphrates. In the time of Alexander, it is true, the nomenclature had been reversed, the right arm being then known as the Pallacopas, which means an artificial canal; 3 but under the Arabs and until comparatively modern times, the old distribution has again prevailed, the Euphrates being always described in his tory as the river which flowed direct to Kufa(near the modern Nejef, the tomb of Ali), while the present stream, passing along the ruins of Babylon to Hillah and Diwanieh, has been universally known as the Nahr Surd, a mere corrup tion of the ancient title of Sippara.* At the present day the preservation of the embankments at the point of bifurca tion demands the constant care of the Baghdad Government. The object is to allow sufficient water to drain off to the west ward for the due irrigation of the lands cultivated by the Khezzail Arabs below Nejef, while the Hillah bed still retains the main volume of the stream, and is navigable to the sea: but it frequently happens that the dams at the head of the Hindieh are carried away, and that a free channel being thus opened for the waters of the river to the westward, the Hillah bed shoals to 2 or 3 feet, and is everywhere ford- able. But whether the main body of the stream may flow in the right arm or in the left, the lower portion of the Euphrates that is, a tract of 200 miles in length intervening between Diwanieh and the junction of the two great rivers at Korna, forms and has always formed a succession of reedy lagoons of the most hopeless character. These were the Paludes Chaldaici of antiquity, the El Balihdt of the Arabs, and they are best known to us at present as the Lemlun marshes, though that name is by no means of general application. It may be doubted if the fall of the 3 The first element of this compound may be compared with the Hebrew J^3, "division," a root which has also produced the Arabic name of Peluyia; and in the second element we may perhaps recognize the 5)13 or Jowf, which was the name given to the natural depression now filled by the " sea of Nejef." 4 The two Sipparas, represented in the Bible by the dual form of Sepharvaim, were situated on the Euphrates near the point of bifurca tion, but the exact spot cannot now be recognized, owing to the frequent destniction and reformation of the banks of the river in this part of its course. Under the form of Sur&n or Surd, the place became famous in the Middle Ages as the site of a great Jewish academy, while the bridge by which the river was crossed on the high road from Baghdad to Kufa was also known as the Jisr-Surd. The name still appertains to some remains, of no great mark or extent, immediately above the site of Babylon, but the old city of Sippara was probably higher up the river, and not far from the modern town
of Mufsdib.