Middletown transcript., 1870-07-16
DAGDAD.

A correspondent of the New York Her.
aid, writing from Bagdad, gives some in
tercsting account of the city of the Ca
liphs:
Among the natives life runs on in the
same smooth channel that it did in the time
of Haroun al Raschid. The rich loaf
away their time in the BATH in the harem
and in the divan, everywhere smoking
nargeelahs and drinking coffee and SOL
emnly chatting. And the poor, rising at
day break at the call of the priests, from
the half score of minarets, perform their
ablutions, spread their little devotional
carpet, say their prayers and then betake
themselves to their various avocations.
Laboring, not very actively, as it seems
to US, until sunset, each man goes home
to his pibob or pilaf, melons and oranges,
his coffee and hubble-bubble, served to
him by the fair hands of his brace of wives.
The Bagdadees have no amuscments ex-
cept such as they find in talking politics
in the coffee shsps, or in laughing at the
msfortunes of their acquaintances, or in
telling stories in the society of their wives,
or in wedding or funeral. Every
night the Pacha's band (for there is tur-
ksh band here plays in front of the Sc
raj, but the Bagdadees do not care to lis
ten to it. A company of Italian acrobats
and singers have also come here and fitted
up house as theatre, but are playing
only to empty benches. And newspa-
per, published in Turkish and Arabic, by
the Pacha's printer, amusing as are the
lies it tells of the wonderful prowess of
the troops fighting against the Arabs,
finds no subscribers and subsists only by
official advertisements. Your Bagdsdee
has no soul for music, no taste for the ira
peze or the ballet, no appetite for journal
istic sensations. Society here, indeed,
has reached, as Chinese society did a cou
pie of thousand years ago, the fossil stage
of existence.
Bagdad, as I have already said is a
few markets accessible to the people of
Central Asia and Persia, and caravans are
constantly setting out for Aleppo and Da-
mascus, for Mosul and Diarbeker, for
Teheran and Ispahan. Its seaport is, Of
course, Bassorah, 500 miles away; but a
couple of steamship lines make communi-
cation easy and speedy A great deal of
bulky produce is still, however, sent down
the river on RATS, or brought up in buga-
las-small Arab vessels towed by rope
against the current by dozen Arabs. The
chief articles of export are wool and grain
The imports are mostly English and
French dry goods, cutlery, Indian fabrics,
&c. The trade in European goods passes
each year more and more out of the hands
of the European houses into the hands of
American and Jewish and Arab mer-
chants, who have agencies in India and
Europe. The custom duties are now very
light-a uniform ad Udlorens tariff of eight
per cent. One great obstacle in the way
of foreign traders is the complex system
of currency prevailing in Bagdad. There
is no regular currency, but any money of
any country is current. Payment of a
small parcel of goods will perhaps be
made in Austrian and Mexican dollars, in
Mahomed shah kerauns, in Turkish med
jidies, in Indian rupees, and in French
francs. Scarcely any gold is in circula-
ton. Owing to this variety of coins cur
rent, the government fixes a specific rate
of exchange, at which it will accept pay
ment of imports in alien money, and in
which it will in its turn make payments.
But this rate is very different to the gen
eral rate of exchange, fixed by the mer
chants in the bazaar; indeed this latter
rate fuctuates very greatly. Indian ru-
pees are perhaps the best currency for the
traveller to take with him to Bagdad.
The antiquities of Bagdad have been SC
often and so exhaustively described that
shall not infict an elaborate account Of
them upon the reader The tower from
I which criminals used to be thrown; the
gate, now closed up, at which thirty-three
thousand Persian throats were cut by the
Sultan Morad; the Tombs of Sheikh
Omer Shahab-ood-d and Sheikh Ma
ruff; no doubt when any one is in Bagdad
those are all well worth seeing, though i
: is not worth while to go to Bagdad to set
. them.
The great sight, though, is the tomb o
1 the Lady Zobide. AS work of art this
, is not very imposing it is graceful ant
u beautiful, that is all. In shape it is octa,
gonal, with slender dome springing to
hight of sixty or seventy feet. The inte
If rior is lighted by openings in the roofs
: protected from the rain, by slight projec
r tions. There are three simple tombs o
: ruined brickwork, once, no doubt, covered
n with marble, which has since been carried
t away The central one is that of the Lad,
Zobeide, consort of Haroun al Raschid:-
Poor as it may be when viewed from
c merely architectural standpoint, this ruin
ed mausoleum gives the traveller NOR
It pleasure than the mosque of Mossa-el-Ha
v dem.
About nine miles from Bagdad there i
an immense Babylonian ruin, which. ac
- cording to tradition, is the Tower of Ba
. bel. (There is another Tower of Babe
:, - near Hillah, but antiquarians doubt th
. authenticity of both.) 1t is called Aga
goof. 1t is simply a shapeless mass O
cun- ba II ad bricks worn auav Mt the has