RACE FOR BAGDAD.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 November 1915, Page 5

RACE FOR BAGDAD.

CITY OF THE CALIPHS. THE GARDEN OF EDEN. TO FLOURISH ONCE MORE. One of the most astonishing tilings about the great war is the net-like extent of its ramifications. In the old times a big naval battle or a great land struggle was tho deciding factor, but to-day the nations war from Archangel, in the frozen North, right round the globe to Samoa, in the sunny Pacific. One of the most interesting side struggles of this war is the race between Turkey and Great Britain for Bagdad, in Turkish Arabia, near the Persian frontier, hard by the traditional site of the Harden of Eden. Here on the classic soil of Babylon, Nineveh, and Opis, once flourished the pick of the human race; here was the centre of tho world's wealth, power and civilisation. Bagdad stands in a plain almost without a tree and almost without a village, but here once more men are turning to restore the once fertile country to its present glory. At the present moment, however, Bagdad, which has been in Turkish possession since 1638, is important for what it represents rather than for what.it is. As tho Rome newspaper Tribuna says, the occupation of Bagdad will probably be one of the most important events of the war. The effect of such an occupation would be tremendous among the Moslems, And so the gallant little Anglo-Indian expedition has been toiling up from the. Persian Gulf to beat tlie Turk in the race for the City of the Caliphs. 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. Facing the river, removed from the Arab town, are built the imposing foreign consulates, mercantile offices, and the sumptuous homes of rich Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Syrianß—the men who have made new Bagdad. ALI BABA'S AGE IS PAST. But the Bagdad of Ali Baba's day, with the splendour of Alladin's enchanted age, is gone for ever. The palace*, the mosques, and minarets are mostly in ruins. Even the tomb of lovely Lady Zobeida, favorite wife of Harun-al-Rashid, is tumbled down and decayed. It is into modern monuments to New Bagdad—into roads, bridges, public buildings, irrigation works, army organisation, dredging the Tigris, etc.—that the Young Turks are putting their money. With Bagdad's tumultuous past, since its founding by El Mansnr in 731, the modern Bagdaddis are not concerned. Everyone 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 Tartar axe. If the "Forty Thieves" started operations in Bagdad nowadays they would go to gaol; Sinbad himself would lie asked to "tell it to the marines." Dashing Zobeida, with her fast social set, would sigh in vain for the gay life of old (says an American writer). A WATCH-TOWER FOR THE POWERS. In the awakening pf the Middle East Bagdad has assumed a position of considerable 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-towei' for Powers on the outskirts of civilisation. Here the agents of landhungry nations watched the throes of the awakening East, waiting for the imminent shifting of a-map that has remained unchanged for centuries. So Bagdad to-day is important, not because of its romantic past, or because Sinbad lived there, but because it has become the busy centre of a great field of action—the theatre of international war for political and commercial supremacy in the Middle East. From the north-west, by way of El Helif and Mosul, is approaching the famous "German Bagdad Railway," destined to link India with Europe and bring Bagdad close to Paris. THE PEOPLE, TOO, ARE CHANGED. People still flock to the ancient shrines of Sheik Abd-ul-Kadir and Abu Hauefah, the Shia frnams, and* hordes pour through from Persia en route to Holy Nedjef; but the sort of men whose quick wits and ready swords lent lustre to the stirring tales in the Arabaian Nights have departed. In their shoes stand shrewd Jews and Armenians, who ship wool, dates, and rugs to America, and import "piece good*" at the rate of £1,000,000 a year from Manchester. To ride a galloping camel one mile would break every bone in their soft bodies, and the mere sight of an old-time Bagdad blade would give them congestive chills. At nightfall the narrow streets of Bagdad are still noisy with the duil rattle of tom-toms and the shrill notes o' the Arab flute. Painted ladies in ear-rings, anklets, and baggy trousers s ; ng and dance on the flat roofs; but t'l.i earrings and anklets are imported lrcm Austria; the lady herself came from Port Said, and her dance is better staged by half the cities of America ly women who have never seen the East — the home of "le danse du ventre." Her "act" would not be well received in any other place than Bagdad. Along ths Tigris are many coffee shops, where brokers sit at night smoking bubbling "narghiles" and talking trade. Even their red fezzes come from Germany Oil in their lamps comes from the Yankee octopus—in British bottoms, of course. Only their red, turned-up shoes, their bright keffeyas, and their long!lowint» abbas were made in Bagdad. Squads of Armenians and Chaldean youths ctvoli by, with here and there a bevy of gitls, all clad in semi-European clothes, significant of a changing East. BAGDAD'S BUSY BAZAARS. The shopping streets seem like tunnels, they are arched overhead with bricks to keep out the heat; thus they run, like subways, up and down the bazaar quarter. Through these long, stifling, faintly lighted tunnels throngs the eternal crowd of men, mules, and camels On each side are stalls no larger than telephone booths. Crosslegged in each booth his waves piled high about him. sits the Arab or Jew trader. Brown women, their faces hid by yashnuks, upsst the ordered piles of goods and haggle shrilly. Here, as in Pekin's famous "Pipe Street," men, selling similar war«», are grouped, tofiothw.

Up from a myriad of th'oats comef conversation in Arabic, Armenian, Turk* ish, Kurdish, and Persian; in Greek* Hindustani, and French. "Bailackl* your guide yells to loaf erg In your path 4 •Get out of the way." "BariMK Bf' fcndil" if the loafer is more than merj clay. ARABIAN HUAtCI!. The peddlers have a sense of humorf the flower vender shouts, "Salih Ham** tak!" literally, "Appease your mother-in-law." The roast-pea man shouts out, 'Cmm Ennarcin!" or "Mother of Two Fires," meaning the peas are twice roasted. Slow-moving camels do not "keep close to the kerb," as police re-. gulations requirX of them • elsewhere. Here arc no tranle\ rules; the rudest and strongest only mole with freedom. They and the vagabond dogs, thousand* of whom sleep in the filth underfoot, ar» undisturbed.

Often you may see a fine rug lying flat in the filth of the narrow street* ground beneath the tramp of men and beasts; but there is method in this. eigners make Oriental rugs, bright and 1 new, in Persia, and sell them through. Bagdad. Since an "old" rug Is worth, more, wily brokers have hit on this shameful way to make a new rug loole old; the latest art effort thus soon becomes a "rare old rug" so far as th* eventual owner knows.

In short side streets are gaudy places where night is turned to day and much coffee is consumed. Hera fakirs cat swords, pull live toads front soiled turbans, and roll chickens into snakes.

Giant Kurds, called "hnmals," do the) carrying. I saw one Kurd carry 7001 pounds on his back, a pelt passed ovetf the load and beneath his bent head toj balance the weight. A hamal in sum« mer lives almost wholly on "khiyar'' (raw cucumbers), eating over - thr«a| pounds daily. The bazaar folk cat strange thing* Strips of fat from the f«t-tail sh«ep| are much eaten; then there is goat sau< sage, manna, gourds, citrons, skins of dried dates and figs* mutton, beef, everything but pork. Nai one starves; beggars are few. Much! grain comes down from the Tigris otj kcleks (rafts). I;

COPPERSMITHS AND SHOEMAKERS) Old time arts flourish here, too« Coppersmiths, naked to the waist; hani* mer furiously in the subdued glow ,cl their forge?, making vases, urns, an 4 kettles of quaint beauty. Some of th« trays they make arc live feet across, Bedouins 'fancy these; they say huge vessels indicate huge generosity. Hera is much fine camel gear, too, and muls bridles decorated with colored shells, and pistol holster* all silk-embroidered. In one shop I saw over 400 »hoem»k« ers, every man turning out exactly th«j same kind of shoe—the eternal red ones with curved toes. Much ancient armor, weapons, Babylonian coins, and other alleged antiquities are offered for sale. Most of this junk is made "fresh every hour" in Birmingham, especially for the, Bagdad trade. Worldly-wise Jews, real. ising that rare things cannot be had; in abundance, are meeting the curia d# mand in a business way.

RESTORING THE GARDEN OF EDEtf, Fifty miles west of Bagdad, along the) Euphrates, lies the region now commonly regarded as the Garden of Eden. To irrigate this Eden and to reclaim millions of fertile acres of land round Bagdad is the stupendous task to which the Turkish Government has addressed itself.

At Mussayeb, on the Euphrates, I saw 4000 Arabs digging like mole* in thn Babylonian plain, making a new channel for the river. In the dry bed of this artificial channel an enormous dam is being built. Steel and machinery are in use. When all is ready, the Euphrates will be diverted from its old bed, and turned into this new channel, tho dam raising the water to the level re< quired for irrigation. Nebuchadnezzar's vast irrigation system, which mice watered all Babylonia, can still be traced for miles about Bagdad. One giant canal, the .Karawau, runs parallel with the Tigris for nearly 300 miles; it is 3,>0 feet wide, and (ill about it the take-offs and laterals may still he identified. Herodotus says he found a "forest of verdure from end to end" when he visited Mesopotamia.

THE OLD ORDER PASSING. Already the river Arabs are taking irrigation by modern methods; the na- , tivc "cherrid," consisting of a goatskin i drawn over a pulley for lifting water from the river, is disappearing; so i* the Euphrates water wheel. Oil-engine* and pumps are fast coining into u-v; more than 300 outfits were sold to Ar.i'j farmers about Bagdad in 1900-1010. It is estimated that the work of puttin,;; this vast area into shape for , modern irrigation farming will call for a total outlay of C2C,0OO,l)0O. The total area that could lie successfully irrigated aggregates l-2,a00.!M)fl acres; but the projeet under immediate contemplation embraces only 11/iOO.OOO acres. ' The co-t i per acre, therefore, on the work planned' v would be slightly more than £7 10* per acre. It is estimated that the land could he leased at a figure that would bring in a !) per cent, return on the investment, Preliminary contracts wenlet in 11112. but the outbreak of the war has resulted in the suspension i £ the work, for the time 'being, at leas.. South of Bagdad, in the Karun river region, oil wells have been sunk, p!pa lines laid, and refineries built.

Bitumen or asphalt lakes and sprinjl abound, along tiio northern reaches f>: the Tigris, ami will contribute to the prosperity of Bagdad as developed. About fifty foreigners—Britith, (.'«.'- man, Russian, Italiau, and Frenchlived in Bagdad before the war. Twelu of those foreigners are consuls ur consular agents; the rest are engaged mostly in trade. Arabs do not readily pick up a foreigner's name, but identify hir-i usually by his work. The licorice 'buy.' for example, is known far nnd wide «. Abu Bus, "Father of the Licorice." There was also "Father of the Rugs,' 1 the "Father of the Steamers," and the. dentist was called the "Father of ths Teeth," '.