volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Secret Excavations at Nabi YUnis. 37
other the mound became associated with Jonah's name,
and it is probable that a church was built on the mound
in the early centuries of the Christian era, and when the
" Fortress of Nineveh," i.e., Kuyunjik, and Mosul were
captured by the Arabs about a.d. 640, the followers of
the Prophet respected the church and the tradition, and
absorbed both of them by building a mosque. Whether
this be so or not, the mound of Nabi Yunis has enjoyed
great fame as a most holy place for centuries, and large
numbers of Arabs, Kurds and Persians, many having
been brought considerable distances, are buried not only
on the hill itself, but in the ground about it. No Wall
of Mosul or of Baghdad has ever succeeded in wholly
overcoming public opinion against the excavation of
the mound, and no European ambassador has been able
to persuade the Porte to agree to it. But the villagers of
Nabi Yunis have managed to excavate secretly small
parts of it during the last hundred and twenty years,
not so much with the object of finding antiquities, as
of finding alabaster bas-reliefs to bum into lime for the
repair of the mosque of Jonah and their own houses.
F. Vincenzo Maria, who also visited Mosul in the
seventeenth century, describes the town as "picciola,
ristretta, e povera d'habitazioni." Vincenzo went across
the river to look at the ruins of Nineveh, but they did not
interest him, and he saw only great heaps of earth and
masses of " burnt stones '
'
' scattered about . ' Fui un giorno
per vederla {i.e., V antica Ninive), ma come non discernevo,
che confusi montoni di terra, con un' infinita di pietre
cotte disordinate, sparse per ogni parte senza trovar
cosa degna di memoria, me ne tornai, pensando a che
segno giongino le cose piu grandi e piii celebrate dal
Mondo." (// Viaggio all' Indie Orientali, Venice, 1683,
p. 80.) On the other hand, about half a century later.
Otter 1 says : " Les kiervanserais, les palais, et les autres
edifices, batis de pierres dures, sont assez beaux. ... La
ville est riche, et les habitans sont braves."
In 1743 Mosul was bombarded for forty-one days by
^ I, 136. He was born 1707, and died 1748.