TCD MS 3416 page 9
[April 1916]
nations, nothing being manufactured in the country; we found, therefore, that the prices of matches, sugar, tea & other stores, in fact everything that we most needed, were forbiddingly high. It was very interesting to find that the shop people, providing no Turkish official was at hand, were only too keen to accept Indian paper money in preference to the Tureu-German War notes – but this can be easily understood. As oriental cities go, Baghdad is one of the most striking: there is a total absence of western architecture, and the many hundreds of minarets and domes of the gilded Mohammedan mosques, bathed in sunlight, rising out of this great Arabian City, which is surrounded by date palm gardens of varying shades of green, with the winding Tigris flowing through the heart of town, present a magnificent spectacle. It recalls to one the Romances of the “Arabian Nights”; particularly so, perhaps, on an evening when a bright azure sky is gradually darkening on the rising of a full moon. But the fact remains that if you enter the bazaars you will find them filthy & smelly, human beings with awful diseases lie about the streets, in fact it is symbolical of the type of city one would expect to find in a country like Turkey where civilization had barely begun to tread. To the north west of the Town is the tomb of