volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Great Mosque of Mosul. 45
and it frequently unrolled itself and let the burning contents
fall all over the smoker. The dogs of Mosul were
legion, and there must have been many score in the bazar
some were fierce and pugnacious, and these seemed
alone ;
to be descended from Kurdish and other mountain
varieties.^
There are many mosques and prayer-houses in the
town, but none seemed to me to be of interest architecturally.
The most striking features of the mosques
are the minarets, which, when seen from a distance,
give a very picturesque appearance to the town. Most
of them, however, do not stand straight, and the tower of
the Great Mosque, which is commonly called " Al-Hadba,"
i.e., the " crooked," has a distinct bulge in it. Some of
the minarets and domes were formerly ornamented with
coloured glazed tiles, arranged in striking patterns, and
others with stone mosaics, but little more than fragments
of such decorations remained in situ when I saw
these buildings. A minaret wholly covered with bright,
greenish-blue glazed tiles must have been a very striking
object. I saw no evidence of any attempt made to keep
the Muslim buildings in repair, and I could not discover
that there was any fund for the upkeep of their fabrics
in existence ; the policy seemed to be to let a wall, or a
doorway, or a dome go to ruin, and then repair it.
The Dominican Fathers possess a fine pUe of buildings
and do a great work.
Mosul lies on the west bank of the Tigris exactly
opposite that portion of ancient Nineveh
represented by the great mound of Kuyunjik ;
which is
the space
between Kuyunjik and the river is about a mile and a
half. The principal means of communication between
the town and the east bank is the bridge of boats. These
are pointed at each end, and are moored by iron chains
^ The people of Mosul curse all dogs except the selHiki, or greyhound,
but with the strange inconsistence of the Oriental, many of
them, Christians and Muslims alike, buy bread in the bazar every
Friday, and feed the starving dogs on their way out from the town
to the cemeteries to visit the tombs of their dead. I found that the
men who spent most money in this way were Muslims.