256 
TOMB OF ZOBIEDE. 
alone on its own separated spot; but the revered corse within, 
having been not only the favourite queen of their great caliph 
Haroun-al-Raschid, but in many respects the benefactress of 
the city, it is probable that from veneration to her memory, 
this became a chosen cemetery of the dying inhabitants, for 
successive generations. The tomb * is built of brick, of a high 
octagonal shape, surmounted by a lofty superstructure in the 
form of a cone. This latter part of the building is elaborately 
indented with ranges of small arabesque niches, rising one over the 
other, till they reach the top. On issuing forth, a view presents 
itself vast and sublime, but far from pleasurably so. The sky 
burnt above, and the hot brown desert below, spread on all sides; 
not an object appearing, to break the dreary expanse to the 
farthest horizon, till the eye, in wandering round, met a lonely 
and huge dark mass, rising from the verge of the waste to the 
north-west, like an enormous rock, and which the natives call 
Akarkouff. Withdrawing the sight from that black pile, and 
along the intervening stretch of desert, to the immediate scene 
around me, I looked on the city on both sides of the river ; its 
sombre and irregularly roofed dwellings, varied here and there 
by a dome or a minaret; its embattled walls, dark towers, and 
gardens at intervals breaking the dun line of the streets. These 
cultivated spaces yield a variety of excellent fruits; pomegranates, 
grapes, figs, and olives, with the abundant date-tree ; and min¬ 
gling’ their verdant tracts with the animated current of the 
Tigris, partially shaded by the palm-groves which grow on its 
steep banks, they presented a cheering object in the dismal 
waste. But beyond, not an habitable spot appeared for countless 
See Plate LXVII. 
