MESOPOTAMIA—WILLCOCKS. 409 
Tigris, or the modern Hai branch. Ammianus Marcellinus, who 
traversed the whole length of the delta in the fifth century of our 
era, describes the country as a forest of verdure from end to end. 
The centers of development varied from period to period. While 
during the earliest times Tel Lo, Senkere, and Ur of the Chaldees 
were the heart of the country; Sippara and Babylon took their place 
in Babylonian times; and Opis and Ctesiphon in that of the Persians. 
In the seventh century of our era the Arabs overthrew the Persian 
Government, and substituted Kufa, Wasit, and Basra, as capitals in 
place of the earlier cities. These soon gave place to Baghdad, which 
till to-day has remained the most important town in the delta. 
Baghdad saw its greatest days about A. D. 800, in the reign of 
Harun-el-Rashid. Under the Arabs the prosperity of the country 
steadily declined, but the final blow was given by the Mongols under 
Zengis Khan and the Tartars under Timur, in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries. Previous disasters had drenched the country in 
water; it was now drenched in blood. In the anarchy and confusion 
which ensued all the great works of antiquity were swept away one 
after another, until not a single one remains to-day. Nimrod’s 
earthen dam on the Tigris was breached, and the level of the water 
in the river fell some 25 feet, leaving the great Nahrwan and Dijail 
canals dry and waterless. Both banks of the Tigris in the upper 
part of the delta became a desert. The Tigris, lower down its course, 
fared no better. Near Kut the river breached its left bank .and 
wasted itself in the marshes on the Persian frontier, while the ancient 
channel past Wasit and Tel Lo received a limited supply of water 
only in flood time. The ancient dike across the Sakhlawia branch 
of the Euphrates was breached, and Western Baghdad with its irri- 
gation system was wiped out. All the canals taking water from the 
Euphrates, which had come down from a remote antiquity, the Issa, 
Sarsar, Melcha, Kutha, Araktu, Surat, Nil, and Nars, silted up and 
ceased running; and finally, in our day the Euphrates of Babylon 
has dwindled into an insignificant stream, and the whole of the 
waters of the river are flowing through the Nejef marshes. The 
Tigris and Euphrates, left to themselves, have deserted the high- 
lands which they irrigated in old days, and are now traversing the 
lowlands and marshes along the extreme east and west of the delta. 
Things would have been far more desperate than they actually are 
had not a new crop been introduced into the country which has per- 
mitted of large areas of swamp being turned into valuable fields. 
When rice first appeared in the delta no one can tell, but it is the 
most valuable crop in the country to-day after the date crop. 
The delta of the two rivers has an area of some 12,000,000 acres, of 
which about 9,000,000 are desert and 2,500,000 acres fresh-water 
swamp. In the upper parts of the delta there are stretches of culti- 
