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CHAPTER VIII.
Mosul is considered by Rennell, and after him by Ainsworth, to be a corruption of the Mes-Pylæ of Xenophon; but the correctness of this derivation appears to me very doubtful. The common tradition is, that the present appellation was given to it by the Saracen conquerors of Mesopotamia, who remained here some time before they proceeded northward, and because it was the principal resting-place between Diarbekir and Baghdad the capital of the Caliphs.[1] El-Yakooti, the famous geographer, in his Moajem-ool-Beldân says, that Mosul was anciently called Noo or Nev Ardasheer, (New Artaxerxes,) a name most probably given to it by the Medes after they had wrested this country from the Assyrians; or it may be by the later Persians who were defeated near the ruins of Nineveh by the Roman army under Heraclius, a.d. 627. Strabo speaks of a Persian city called "Artagira," and Ptolemy refers to the same under the title of "Artasisgarta,"[2] as being situated on the confines of Upper Armenia and Assyria, on the eastern banks of the Tigris. There is therefore some reason for believing that Ardasheer succeeded Nineveh and occupied its site, and that when the town was removed to the opposite bank of the Tigris the
