Plioto b}' Frederick Simpich 



ONli Oi-^ BAGDAD S ANCIJiNT GATe;S 



After the fall of the caliph who built it, this gate was walled up and has never been 

 used since. "A great wall encircles Bagdad, with guarded gateways, as in medieval days. 

 Flat-roofed, huddled Moorish houses, many almost windowless and each surrounding its 

 own open court, are a distinct feature of the older parts of Bagdad. On these flat roofs 

 Arabs spend the summer nights with tom-toms, flutes, water-pipes, and dancing women" 

 (see text, page 552). 



During the Ramazan feast the bazaar 

 is open all night. For a month Moslems 

 fast all day, eating only at night, when 

 the great signal guns at the Serai boom 

 out that it is sunset. Bagdad's bazaar 

 on Ramazan nights is a picturesque, 

 noisy, riotous place, Avhere it is not diffi- 

 cult to find trouble. 



RESTORING THE GARDEN OE EDEN 



- Fifty miles west of Bagdad, along the 

 Euphrates, lies the region now com- 

 monly regarded as the Garden of Eden. 

 To irrigate this Eden and to reclaim mil- 

 lions of fertile acres around Bagdad is 

 the stupendous task to which the Turk- 

 ish government has addressed itself. 



At Mussayeb, on the Euphrates, I saw 

 4,000 Arabs digging like moles in the 

 Babylonian plain, making a new channel 

 for the river. In the dry bed of this arti- 



ficial channel an enormous dam is being 

 built. Steel and machinery from Amer- 

 ica are in use. When all is ready, the 

 Euphrates will be diverted from its old 

 bed and turned into this new channel, 

 the dam raising the water to the level re- 

 quired for irrigation. 



Nebuchadnezzar's vast irrigation sys- 

 tem, which once watered all Babylonia, 

 can still be easily traced for miles about 

 Bagdad. One giant canal, the Narawan, 

 runs parallel with the Tigris for nearly 

 300 miles ; it is 350 feet wide, and all 

 about it the take-offs and laterals may 

 still be identified. Herodotus says he 

 found a "forest of verdure from end to 

 end" when he visited Mesopotamia. 



THE OED ORDER PASSING 



Already the river Arabs are taking to 

 irrigation by modern methods ; the na- 



560 



