volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Site of Nineveh Never Forgotten. 9
with the ruins of Nineveh. Mas'udi says (ii, 92) that
Ninawi (Nineveh) was opposite Mosul, and that in his
time (a.h. 332 = a.d. 943) it consisted of heaps of ruins,
among which were villages and cultivated lands. Ibn
Hawkal speaks of the Rustah of Ninawi (ed. de Goeje,
p. 145), where of old stood the city on the east of the
Tigris facing Mosul, to which Jonah was sent, and says
the ruins of its walls are still visible. ^ Mukaddasi
(ed. de Goeje, p. 146) says that the ruins of the ancient
city of Nineveh are close by the Mosque of Jonah.
Abu'l-Fid§. (p. 285) says that the ruined Ninawi to which
Jonah was sent is opposite Mosul. Yakut (iv, 870)
identifies Ninawi with the village of Yunis bin Mattai,
and says (iv, 682) that Mosul, " the Gate of 'Irak," and
the " Key of Khurasan," is a very old city on the banks
of the Tigris, and that opposite to it, on the east bank,
is Ninawi. Ibn Batutah (ii, 137) says that the ruins
near Nabi Yunis are those of the famous city of Ninawt.
In the seventh century there must have been some strong
fort on or close to the site of Nineveh, for Biladhuri, in
his Fatuh al-Buldan (ed. de Goeje, p. 331), says that
when 'Amr ibn al-Khattab 'Utba had taken Mosul
(a.h. 20 = A.D. 640), he attacked the people of Ninawi,
and captured its fortress on the east bank. Ibn al-
Athir (ed. Tornberg, ii, p. 418) also mentions this fortress,
for in speaking of the Fortresses of Ninawi and Mosul, he
says that the former was the Eastern Fortress and the
latter the Western. Among the Syrian Christians there
has never been any doubt about the site of Nineveh, and
some of their greatest writers speak of Mosul and Athur
and Nineveh as if they were one and the same place.
From the days of Benjamin of Tudela (1173) downwards,
all the great European travellers who visited Mosul never
doubted that the miles of long low mounds which they
saw on the eastern bank of the Tigris represented the
^ Ibn Jubayr describes the" great ruin" of Ninawi, the city of
Yunis, which he himself saw, and mentions the line of its walls, and
the places of its gates, and the mounds of earth of its lofty towers.
Travels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. Wright, p. 238.