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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



The present custom-house at Bagdad 

 is a wing of the old palace of Harun-al- 

 Rashid ; yards of scrawling Arabic char- 

 acters, cut in marble panels, still adorn 

 its historic walls. Crowding through a 

 maze of baled goods, derricks, naked 

 Arabs, pack-mules, camels, and strange 

 smells, the new-comer emerges from the 

 custom-house only to hunt in vain for 

 the "main street that leads uptown." 



Bagdad arteries of traffic are mere 

 alleys, often so narrow that two donkeys 

 cannot pass. Once I saw Turkish sol- 

 diers try to move artillery through Bag- 

 dad. The streets were so narrow the 

 horses had to be unhitched, and men 

 moved the guns about by hand. 



A great wall encircles Bagdad, with 

 guarded gateways, as in medieval days. 

 Flat-roofed, huddled Moorish houses, 

 many almost windowless and each sur- 

 rounding its own open court, are a dis- 

 tinct feature of the older parts of Bag- 

 dad. On these flat roofs Arabs spend 

 the summer nights with tom-toms, flutes, 

 water-pipes, and dancing women. Fac- 

 ing the river, removed from the Arab 

 town, are built the imposing foreign 

 consulates, mercantile offices, and the 

 sumptuous homes of rich Jews, Arme- 

 nians, Greeks, and Syrians — the men who 

 have made New Bagdad. 



ALI BABA's age is PASSE;d 



But the Bagdad of Ali Baba's day, 

 with the splendor of Aladdin's enchanted 

 age, is gone forever. The palaces, the 

 mosques, and minarets are mostly in 

 ruins. Even the tomb of lovely lady Zo- 

 beida, favorite wife of Harun-al-Rash- 

 id, is tumbled down and decayed. It 

 is into modern monuments to New Bag- 

 dad — into roads, bridges, public build- 

 ings, irrigation works, army organiza- 

 tion, dredging the Tigris, etc. — that the 

 Young Turks are putting their money. 



With Bagdad's tumultuous past, since 

 its founding by El Mansur in 731, the 

 modern Bagdaddis are not concerned. 

 Every one knows, of course, that Bagdad 

 was for centuries the capital of the whole 

 Mohammedan world, visited annually by 

 shahs, nawabs, and Indian princes ; that 

 it was a maelstrom of vice, so weakened 

 by its own excesses that when Halagu, 



grandson of Jenghiz Khan, swooped 

 down upon its carousing nobles they fell 

 stupid victims to his Tatar ax. 



Modern Bagdad is in safer hands ; 

 no dissipated royalty guards its gates. 

 Sober, clear-headed men, drilled in the 

 best schools of modern Europe, able to 

 hold their own anywhere, administer the 

 affairs of this important Turkish prov- 

 ince of Bagdad. As late as 1830 the Ti- 

 gris overflowed its banks, swept through 

 Bagdad, and drowned 15,000 people in 

 one night. This could not happen now ; 

 a great levee, built by skilled Turkish 

 engineers, surrounds the town. 



If the "Forty Thieves" started opera- 

 tions in Bagdad nowadays they would go 

 to jail; Sinbad himself would be asked 

 to "tell it to the Danes." Dashing Zo- 

 beida, with her fast social set, would 

 sigh in vain for the gay life of old. Mod- 

 ern Bagdad has no time for scandal and 

 duels ; it has found its work. 



BAGDAD A WATCH-TOWE:r FOR THE: POWJJRS- 



In the awakening of the Middle East 

 Bagdad has assumed a position of con- 

 siderable importance. Here England,: 

 Russia, and Germany established their 

 diplomatic sentinels, as at Teheran ; and 

 from Bagdad they looked on at short 

 range, following each other's every move 

 in the great game of Middle Eastern 

 politics. Bagdad has become a sort of 

 watch-tower for the Powers on the out- 

 skirts of civilization. Here the agents of 

 land-hungry nations watched the throes 

 of the awakening East, waiting for the 

 imminent shifting of a map that has re- 

 mained unchanged for centuries. 



So Bagdad today is important, not be- 

 cause of its romantic past or because 

 Sinbad lived here, but because it has be- 

 come the busy center of a great field of 

 action — the theater of international war 

 for political and commercial supremacy 

 in the Middle East. 



From the northwest, by way of El 

 Helif and Mosul, is approaching the fa- 

 mous "German Bagdad Railway," des- 

 tined to link India with Europe and 

 bring Bagdad close to Paris. 



Ordinarily Bagdad's streets are as safe 

 at night as those of New York or Lon- 

 don. The Sixth Turkish Army Corps,. 



