volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

in Northern Mesopotamia. 41
islands, and the waters of the Tigris flooded all the lower
parts of the town of Mosul, and filled the sarddbs, and
even the ditch or moat outside the town walls. For
many weeks all travelling in the desert ceased. When the
river went down large lagoons, many square miles in
extent, were left on both sides of the Tigris, and they
caused fevers in abundance all that year. All stores of
grain were destroyed, and the stocks of textile fabrics
heaped up in the khans and in the shops in the baz^r
were ruined. Many houses and other buildings collapsed
as soon as the waters receded, and in this state they were
found when Badger^ visited Mosul a few years later.
In 1880 there was another famine in Northern Mesopotamia,
and its serious effects are well described by Sachau,*
who was travelling to M6sul at the time. In Mosul there
was no food to be had in the bazar, and the men whom he
sent to buy food for himself and forage for his beasts
returned day after day with empty hands. The distress
was reUeved in a measure by the British Consuls and
American Missionaries, who telegraphed to Europe and
America for assistance. And the severity of the famine
may be judged by the dispatch of Colonel Miles who,
in January, 1880, telegraphed from M6sul to London,
saying, " Extensive relief measures urgently requisite ;
numbers of deaths ;
children being sold or abandoned
people flocking in from neighbouring villages, all starving."
The American Missionaries sent similar dispatches
from Erzerum, Wan, Diar Bakr, Urmi, and other places.
The response in England and America was prompt, and,
thanks to the stream of money which flowed into Turkey
in Asia, thousands of lives were saved. In the courtyard
of the British Consulate at Mosul great cauldrons of food
were kept boiling over the fire all day for months, and
Mrs. Russell, the Consul's wife, distributed food daily to
hundreds of starving folk, without the least regard
to their nationality and religion. The only passport
p. 62.
^ See his account of M6sul in Nestorians and their Rituals, vol. i,
» Reise, p. 344 f