volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Rauwolf's Description of Mosul. 33
to note that Ibn Batutah seems to have seen no trace of
the damage which Changiz Khan did to the town of Mosul
when he captured it (a.h. 654 — a.d. 1256), and when he is
said to have put to death between seven and eight hundred
thousand of its inhabitants. The town suffered greatly at
the hands of Timur-i-Leng (a.h. 796 = a.d. 1393), who
practically left it a heap of ruins. The Persians held it
in the early years of the sixteenth century, but the Turks,
under Salim, took it in 1516. and from that time the trade
and importance of the town declined.
In Rauwolf's time (died 1596) the town was still of
importance. He says : " We went into the famous
City Mossul {sic) . . . over a Bridge made of
Boats. This is situated in the Country of the
Curters (Kurds). ... It belongeth to the Turkish
Emperour, as all the rest hereabout. There are some
very good Buildings and Streets in it, and it is pretty
large ; but very ill provided with Walls and Ditches, as
I did observe from the top of our Camp which extended
to it. Besides this, I also saw just without the Town
a little Hill, that was almost quite dug through, and
inhabited by poor People, where I saw them several
times creep in and out as Pismires do in Ant-hills.
In this place and thereabout, stood formerly the Potent
Townn of Nineve (built by Ashur) which was the
Metropohs of Assyria, under the Monarch of the first
Monarchy to the time of Sennacherib and his Sons,
and was about three Days' Journey in length."^
According to Tavernier (born 1605, died 1689),
Mosul was not worth visiting, and when he was there it
had lost most of its importance. ^ He says : " Moussul
is a City that makes a great show without, the Walls
being of Free-stone ; but within it is almost all ruin'd,
having only two blind Market-places, with a little Castle
upon the Tigris, where the Basha lives. In a word, there
is nothing worth a Man's sight in Moussul, the place being
* Travels, Ray's Collection, p. 204.
^ But compare Thevenot's description of M6sul, which was printed
in 1674. {Suite du Voyage, p. 95.)