Identifier: cradleofmankindl00wigrrich (find matches)
Title: The cradle of mankind; life in eastern Kurdistan
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Wigram, W. A. (William Ainger), 1872-1953 Wigram, Edgar Thomas Ainger, Sir, 1864-1935
Subjects: Kurds Kurdistan -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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oa church) stands in another village ; and at the end of ashort days journey we turned aside to visit some yet morestriking remains. The mountains at this point ravel out on to the plainin a line of gently sloping spurs, and from between two ofthese issues a broad and shallow but never-failing stream.The spurs immediately westward of it are conspicuouslygashed across with wide deep transverse trenches ; andas we draw nearer we perceive that the ridge on each sideof the river is crested with a ruined rampart, and that thehollow enclosed between them is a regular sugar bowl ofhuge disjointed stones. Here and there out of the chaosrises the fragment of a mighty tower or a massive skeletonarchway, and presently we can descry a few wretchedKurdish hovels half hidden among the debris of the greatdevastated city. Such is now the fortress of Daras, once the Metz orBelfort of its age. In the year 503, after the disastrous campaign whichwitnessed the fall of Amida and the failure to recapture n
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SHEIKH ADI. The upper end of the buildings showing the forecourt and entrance gateway : and(apparently) the Proprietor, seated on the wall above. No. 3 THE BUILDING OF DARAS 49 Nisibis, the Emperor Anastasius took his generals severelyto task for that they did not prosper nor succeed in thewar according to his will under the Lord. The unfortunategenerals protested that they could not reasonably expectto defeat a potentate who was manifestly commissionedby Providence to chastise the backsliding Romans—es-pecially when he had such a large army. But they closedtheir jeremiads with one eminently practical suggestionviz.—that it was quite hopeless to attack Nisibis unlessthey had a strong base of operations close by. This notionappealed to Anastasius—a great believer in fortification,and the builder of the famous Long Walls, the ByzantineLines of Tchatalja. After some consideration he fixedupon Daras as the site of his new fortress ; and (as it waschurch property) he bought it honest

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