by Gavin Young
By now the united tribes of southern Iraq were a force to be reckoned with. Powerful tribal confederations had been formed. In the mid and lower Tigris area, for example, the great Beni Lam confederation of hair-tented tribes came into being when Hafadh – a great-grandson of a certain Lam – split, due to some dispute, with his overlord of the Hawaiza districts. The Albu Mohammed groupings, south-east and south-west of present-day Amara, which later were to be in conflict with the Beni Lam for decades, also originated in the seventeenth century. Of the Beni Lam, the famous eighteenth century Arabian traveller, Carsten Niebuhr, wrote: ‘A great tribe … they receive duties upon goods carried between Basra and Baghdad. These Arabs sometimes pillage caravans. The Pasha of Baghdad then sends troops against them, and sometimes chastises them by beheading their chiefs. But the successors of these Schiechs (Sheikhs), who have been beheaded, are always as great enemies to the Turks, and as zealous to maintain their liberty, as their predecessors have been.’
The most powerful confederation of all was founded on the lower Euphrates. After a long period of feud and bloodshed, the principal tribes – the Beni Malik, the Ajwad and the Beni Said – in the area between Samawa and the Hor al Hammar – were united under the family of Al Shabib. The whole grouping was famous by 1770, even outside Iraq, as the Muntafiq. Niebuhr mentions that their paramount sheikh was residing at Nahr al Antar near Qurna, and says that they dominated a large number of subaltern tribes, including ‘people of the buffalo’. He observed that ‘the lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates are intersected by numerous canals and are inhabited only by tribes practising agriculture, or Moaedan’.
Of the ordinary people, Niebuhr says: ‘They are poor, as must naturally be the condition of the subjects of those sheikhs who live comfortably themselves, but are not disposed to suffer their peasantry to grow rich.’ (The man who wrote this was no liberal before his time, but the son of a yeoman of Denmark.) Yet even if they were poor, they could fight. In 1775, three years after Niebuhr’s book was published, a full-scale Persian attack on Basra was resisted by an interesting gallimaufry of defenders – Turks, Armenians and Carmelite monks fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Janissaries, Negroes and, last but certainly not least in martial importance, Marsh Arabs. Sheikh Thamir al Sadun of the Muntafiq had brought his men in force into beleaguered Basra. His brother, Abdullah, occupied Zubair. Both towns fell at last. But three years later, the Muntafiq inflicted a devastating defeat on an invading Persian force of 12,000 infantry and cavalry. The Muntafiq sheikh, Thamir, lured the Persians into a trap near Samawa, and, when they were bogged down in the Marshes, charged in with his tribesmen and slaughtered them by the hundred. It was said that only three Persian survivors reached Basra and that the bones of the fallen marked the battle site for a generation.
To this Niebuhr adds: ‘The tribe derive their name from one Montefik who came from Hejaz and was descended from a family who were illustrious before the days of Mahomet. One thing certain is that descendants of this Montefik have been foreigners (residents) in this country from time immemorial.’ (There is, however, considerable uncertainty – despite the admirable Nieburh’s point-blank assertions – about the meaning and origins of the word Muntafiq, which in local dialect is often pronounced Muntafids. Some hold that ‘Muntafiq’ derives from the Arabic word Ittifaq (agreement).)
Niebuhr also comments on two tribes situated eastwards from the Euphrates. The sheikh of one was named Fontil, the other Hamoud. ‘They can muster 2000 cavalry, and a proportionate number of infantry. The Pasha of Baghdad has recently made war on these people, with various success…. Those tribes which are of a pure Arab race live on the flesh of their buffaloes, cows and horses and on the produce of some little ploughing…. These are denominated Moaedan.’
In the light of our knowledge of the political evolution of Iraq, it is interesting now to read what Niebuhr wrote in 1770 – that: ‘The frequent wars between several tribes and the Pasha of Baghdad, although viewed as rebellion by the Ottoman officers, are proof of the independence of the Arabs.’
The obscure children of the reeds had grown up. What were they originally but peaceful spear-fishers of Sumer, then sanctuary-givers to refugees from Assyrian ‘kings of the Universe’ and from the Mongolian horsemen of the Steppes? Later the intrusive Shahs and Khans of Persia found a different sort of population. Centuries of unwelcome arrivals – foreign soldiers, tax-gatherers, cattle-rustlers, the predatory henchmen of tyrannical overlords – had bequeathed them an intense suspicion of visitors. They had become, as I found later, brilliant dissimulators. I have observed them talking to officials with an exquisite politeness, as dead-pan and watchful as poker-players.
But another change had occurred. Transformed by constant infusions of the fiery blood of Arabian tribes from Khalid bin Walid and the Caliph Ali’s time onwards, the Madan still fished, kept buffaloes and grew rice but they had become fighters, too. Pashas learned to think twice before sending expensive armies to put them in their place. The Marsh people had become Marsh Arabs with the shrewd will-o’-the-wisp spirit of their desert kinsmen. Seba – lion – they call a brave man; but they say cunning people are mithel firan – like mice, cautiously, silently, living on their wits under the ground. And so, the beau ideal of the Madan is half-mouse, half-lion: an odd creature but, in its special habitat, not an easy one to snare.
4 The First Europeans
The Marsh Arabs were virtually unknown even in the early 1950s, yet for centuries outsiders, including Europeans, had passed by, and occasionally through, the great reed-beds. Naturally they caught tantalizing glimpses of the Marsh people and were fascinated by them. But they were moving on foot or horse to some distant destination that might take months to reach, and had no time to hang about. Anyway, it was thought inadvisable to loiter among such strange people in such a remote place. Even so, several travellers took the trouble to note down their impressions of the region of Basra and the Marshes. The earliest of these ‘modern’ travel notebooks dates back to the seventeenth century, and that is my excuse for skipping at this point back to a man who wrote about Mesopotamia some 200 years before Niebuhr. Like most travellers, this man spent some time in and about the city of Basra – the city and its surrounding area closely complement each other – so I include his observations on Basra as well. He is to be found, pestered by mosquitoes and face to face with his first Marsh Arabs.
‘Being suspicious of some Arabian Maedi’s, that is, Vagrants or Vagabonds (so call’d because they abide with Droves of Buffles) … for more security we removed a mile further.’ So, in 1625, wrote the bold but cautious Italian nobleman, Pietro della Valle, and in doing so broadcast to the European world, probably for the first time, the word Maedi (or as one would write it today, Madi), the adjective deriving from Madan. Della Valle, who had travelled even further east, was now on his precarious way from Basra to Aleppo. He had spent the previous night under the stars on the edge of the marshes: a most unsatisfactory night, he noted in his diary the next morning. ‘We lodged in a place where the multitude of Gnats suffered us to sleep but little.’ Earlier he had remarked on the ‘many dry lakes and land with abundance of canes … and certain reeds and verdant fields.’ He had also complained of the bitterness of the water thereabouts.
Still, there were compensating sights of interest. ‘The Chaldean Lake is on our right hand,’ he observed. ‘I saw upon the ground an abundance of Sea-shells, shining within, like Mother-of-Pearl, some whole, and some broken; I wonder’d how they came so far from the Sea. I saw also many pieces of Bitumen, scatter’d up and down, which is produc’d in that brackish soil by the overflowing of the water at some time of the year: I have a piece of it by me to shew.’ He also picked up some seals and pieces of black marble with cuneiform writing on them.
In a new spate of travel-writing, seventeenth-century men like della Valle opened doors long closed on the Near East. The glorious Renaissance in Europe, the discovery of the Americas, had thrust places like Mesopot
amia out of Western minds. If people in Paris, London, Rome or Madrid considered ‘The East’ at all, their thoughts flew to the Indies which the thrilling sea-voyages of Vasco da Gama and Diaz had disclosed. Now land-travel was becoming fashionable; it was sometimes more arduous and more interesting than sea-travel. Accounts of journeys almost incredible in their daring were being published by officers, merchants, archaeologists and simple adventurers who preferred, or were obliged by circumstance, to take the overland route home from the Far East. It was a long, tricky haul. Travelling west from India you were almost bound, unless you made a long mountainous detour through Kurdistan, to pass through Basra and up the course of the Euphrates or the Tigris across Syria to the Mediterranean. You took Arab guides, guards and porters from Basra and lots of money. You joined a camel caravan (for safety in numbers) and all being well you reached Aleppo in seventy days.
It was sensible to stay awhile in Basra. Arab guides and perhaps guards had to be recruited from there and it was worth taking time to check their credentials: guides had been known to send news of your impending arrival to marauding tribesmen they were in touch with, who would arrange to ambush you in the desert. It was really best to wait until a caravan had assembled and go with that. Pietro della Valle found Basra (or Bassora as he called it) large and prosperous, but ill-built. ‘The people are Arabians with some Turks intermix’d.’ There were also some Sabaeans – he erroneously labelled them ‘Christians of St John’ – who ‘speak a harsh Chaldee, besides Arabick which is in general use, which language they also call Mandai (or Mandean).’ He admired the verdure of date-trees and cultivated fields and the grand houses and handsome gardens on the canals. On the Shatt al Arab he saw ‘Portugal ships’ at anchor which had come to lend the Pasha of Basra a hand in warding off an invading Persian Army, led by the Khan of Shiraz; at that very moment the Persians were advancing from the Marsh region of Hawaiza to capture Qurna. In return for a generous payment the Portuguese naval commander, Gonsalvo de Silveiro, had dispatched three ships-of-war to Qurna to shell the Persians. Partly because of them, perhaps, and with news of dissension at home, the Khan called off his campaign in the nick of time. The Pasha marched his men, banners streaming and trumpets proudly snarling, back to Basra in triumph.
Basra had been, in One Thousand and One Nights, the city of Sinbad the Sailor: ‘a towne of great trade of spices and drugges’, Ralph Fitch noted in 1583. During a series of visits from 1638 on, a French nobleman, J. B. Tavernier, described things more exactly: ‘The Prince of Balsara [up to the twentieth century the spelling varied wildly] is so good a Husband, that he lays up three millions of livres in the year. His chief revenue is in four things, Money, Horses, Camels, and Date-trees; but in the last consists his chiefest wealth.’ Basra had long been a small but glittering emporium on the East-West trade route. ‘So much liberty and good order in the city,’ wrote Tavernier, ‘that you may walk all night long in the streets without molestation. The Hollanders bring spices every year. The English carry pepper and some few cloves; but the Portugals have no trade at all thither. The Indians bring Calicuts, indigo, and all sorts of merchandise. In short there are merchants of all countries from Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo, Damascus, Cairo and other parts of Turkie, to buy such merchandise as come from the Indies, with which they lade the young camels which they buy in the place: for thither the Arabians bring them to put them to sale. They that come from … Moussel, Baghdad, Mesopotamia, and Assyria send their merchandise up the Tigris by water, but with great trouble and expense.’ Implicit in that passage is the fact that the Dutch and British (of the East India Company) had by this time virtually replaced the Portuguese as dominant foreigners in the Gulf, which they had had the run of for a century and where they were universally hated for their cruelty and rapacity. The ‘great trouble and expense’ refers to the Jack-in-the-Box habits of the tribes of the lower Tigris and Euphrates – the Muntafiq and the Beni Lam and Albu Mohammed, as well as the remoter Madan tribes.
These tribesmen, exotically bearded and ringletted, were forever bobbing up and demanding a hefty toll as the price of further passage through their territories. Sometimes tribesmen accosted passers-by firmly but courteously; at other times they displayed a surly impatience. It depended on their mood. In their blackest mood a traveller might be stripped to his underwear. At any rate, almost anyone might get the shock of a lifetime when a posse of apparently ferocious and hostile tribesmen, brandishing spears and swords, came charging down out of the desert or the reeds. So, as I have said, it was worth spending a few days preparing for the trip in Basra – assuming all was well there.
For things were not always well in Basra. The city was the victim of flood, plague and invasion at regular intervals until the twentieth century. Invading Persian armies stormed out of Shiraz, seized the great port and expelled Turkish Pashas; successive Pashas of Baghdad sent down Janissary armies which chased the Persians back across Arabistan. A great deal of blood was shed by all concerned. Whoever held the city, from its depths arose awesome smells from hopelessly inadequate sanitation. Pestilence lurked in its bazaars. Yet its peculiar beauty rose above these drawbacks: visitors sang Basra’s praises in book after book. By 1797, ‘Bussora (yet another variation in spelling) was very large and extremely populous’, according to John Jackson, Esq., who stepped off there on his way from India to London. He jotted down: ‘Bazaar nearly two miles long … European manufactures scarce and dear (people prefer those of England to all others) … a Roman Catholic Church – the people of that persuasion are not in the least molested.’ His eulogy continued: ‘A party of us went a-shooting…. Beside the date (we found) there were great quantities of pomegranets nearly all ripe; and abundance of oranges, limes and lemons which gave out a fragrant smell…. I was very much pleased with this little journey; and though I had lately been in the island of Ceylon among the cinnamons … I certainly should give the preference to this place. A most delightful spot. The inhabitants, too, were remarkably civil.’ Arriving in 1817, after one of the many Basra plagues, Lieutenant William Heude of the Madras Military Establishment, expected trouble there – he had been warned that foreigners were unwelcome. To his relief, as he wrote home later, ‘we never met with the slightest annoyance or incivility’. He stayed with the British Resident, Dr Colquhoun, who kept forty to fifty Arab horses, and as he departed for Baghdad, ‘our bark glided smoothly down the stream, passing the little date gardens on its bank, where many a wealthy lascivious Turk sat reclining in the full enjoyment of coffee, slothfulness and his chubook (water-pipe)’. The coffeehouses, too, were full of lounging Janissaries, puffing pipes.
Skipping a period of about a hundred years, another Briton, this time a naval artist, expressed scepticism about the claims of Basra to the title ‘Venice of the East’ because of its canals. And surely not every house, he complained, could be the former abode of Sinbad the Sailor, as everybody claimed. But even he succumbed to the spirit of the place – ‘Basra can boast no architecture, but Nature can surpass in beauty anything that Venice can show. The artificially dug channels among the gardens are beautiful beyond description; the date glades reflect in the still water, dream-like and enchanting.’ He saw, particularly at twilight, mystery and romance in the old houses, the water, the gondola-like boats; and he reflected it all in his remarkable sketches.
For those early travellers, the tentative way north followed two routes. One wavered over the dusty plain to the small town of Zubair (where Ali the Barmecide of One Thousand and One Nights is buried) and from there north across the desert to the Euphrates: della Valle took this route. The other followed the Shatt al Arab to Qurna and thence up the Tigris to Baghdad or on the westward-running Euphrates to Suq-esh-Shiukh, Samawa, Hilla and Baghdad. At Qurna (also spelled Corny, Koorna and Kurnah by successive diarists) by 1800, a ramshackle Turkish ship-of-war habitually lay in the Tigris to prevent merchant vessels passing without paying customs. Now and again it fired off a gun to give a spurious impression of alertnes
s, but it was not sea-worthy. Every traveller remarked on the lush beauty of Qurna. Colonel Chesney, on a series of British expeditions in 1835, 1836 and 1837 to chart the waters of both the Tigris and Euphrates, remarked on the particular excellence of the dates of this part of the lower Euphrates (Pliny, however, had written that in his day the Tigris, not the Euphrates, was ‘the most fertile of the East’ – solum Orientis fertilissimum). Chesney also commented on the depth and width of the Shatt al Arab at the confluence of the two great rivers. The water ran at five to six knots here. (In 1857 a fleet of the largest British Indiamen, including the Eastern Monarch of 2000 tons, managed to reach Qurna with an armed force under General Outram in a campaign against the Persians.)