56 ALEPPO TO DEIR-EL-ZOR. 



continues up the right bank of the Khabur river, which 

 is crossed at Shehdadi, [and then traverses the desert 

 steppe of Central Mesopotamia to the Sinjar Mountains 

 and Mossul. It is, however, by neither of these routes 

 that it is proposed to construct the Baghdad railway. 

 Running almost due east from Killis, it will pass 

 through Harran and Ras-el-Ain, and leaving Mardin 

 to the north reach Mossul by Nissibin. It had been my 

 intention to travel by this latter route, but circum- 

 stances decided otherwise. For rumour had been busy 

 of late, which by the beginning of the New Year left 

 little room for doubt, that the whole of the country in 

 the vicinity of Ras-el-Ain, as far south as the Jebel 

 Abdul Azziz, was in a state of seething irritation. It 

 was said that Ras-el-Ain itself had become the centre 

 of a vast encampment of upwards of 15,000 tents, 

 and that there the arch- brigand Ibrahim Pasha, with 

 a swarm of Hamidiyeh myrmidons and an allied force 

 of Anazeh Arabs, M^as waiting in readiness for the ex- 

 pected onslaught of a horde of Shammar Arabs, they 

 in their turn accompanied by their Kurd allies. 



During the previous year the Shammar tribe had 

 suffered heavily at the hands of the notorious Ibrahim, 

 and, acting on the principle of an eye for an eye and 

 a tooth for a tooth, were now rallying their forces, bent 

 on retaliation in the form of battle, murder, and sudden 

 death. Had the prospect been merely that of an inter- 

 tribal fight among the Arabs, it is possible that a 

 traveller might have passed through with impunity ; 

 but from all accounts it mattered little to the Hamidi- 

 yeh Kurds, who under pretence of serving the empire 

 bear their royal title, and receive arms and ammunition 

 from the Government, who fell into their net, all alike 

 being considered equal and legitimate prey. 



I was not altogether surprised, therefore, when on 



