cii. XXIV.] The Shammar Invasion. 



I 77 



numerous flourishing towns, of whicli Jilber and 

 Ealiaba on the Euphrates alone, had in his day a 

 population, besides their other inhabitants, of four 

 thousand Jews, while Tudmur had two thousand, 

 El Haddr, fifteen thousand, and Okbera on tlie 

 Tigris, ten thousand. Most of these cities ha^-c 

 now entirely disappeared. What their exact con- 

 dition may have been five centuries later we have 

 no record to inform us, but it seems certain that 

 their final overthrow dates only from the Shammar 

 conquest. This occurred in the middle of the 1 7th 

 centur}^ 



Almost exactly two hundred years ago, Sultan 

 Mahomet IV. beino^ then eno-ao-ed with the siege of 

 Vienna, the southern frontier of his empire was over- 

 run by these Bedouins, who had already marched up 

 from the Nejd and occupied the Hamad. They 

 found the frontier unguarded, took and destro3'ed the 

 city of Tudmur, and Ijroke up the line of its desert 

 communications with Bagdad and Damascus. They 

 then crossed the hills, defeated the Modli, the most 

 warlike of the tribes of the Upper Desert, and re- 

 duced the lesser ones to submission. The valley of 

 the Euphrates Avas next swept clear by them, and the 

 towns made tributary to themselves instead of to 

 the Sultan. The last vestiges of cultivation dis- 

 appeared from the right bank of the river, and 

 Bedouin law became supreme as far north as Bir esli 

 Sheykh. During tAventy years, however, so the 

 Arabs say, the Moali carried on the war for their 



