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The ancient road between Aleppo in modern Syria and Baghdad in present-day Iraq connects two great centres of civilization, the Mediterranean world and the mysterious regions of Mesopotamia and beyond. In times of peace, caravans loaded with merchandise would ply the trails across the rolling plains; in times of war, armies would battle for control of the route. More potent than merchants or generals, the prophets of new inventions, new ideas and new religions have passed down this road between east and west, bearing with them the mixed blessings of human progress.
The origins of the peoples who have lived along this road and the story of their evolution over time are still being pieced together by archaeologists who dig into the countless mounds that dot the countryside. Each mound and its periphery holds relics of vanished societies - most recently the Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Ottoman empires, followed by British, French and German colonialism. The sequence of these civilizations was broken only once, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Mongol invaders destroyed the irrigation systems that for centuries had enabled the populations to exist. This book depicts the people and places along the ancient Aleppo-Baghdad road during the Ottoman period that emerged from the chaos left by the Mongols. From 1639 until 1917 the entire region was governed from Istanbul (then called Constantinople) by Turkish rulers who had adopted many European habits and encouraged visits by merchants and travellers from the West.
Inevitably, the newcomers with their sketch-pads (raw material for engravers who stayed at home) and the photographers who followed them saw their surroundings through western eyes. Present-day critics may smile at some of their efforts, but frequently they captured scenes or images that have disappeared forever. Among these elusive images are the pictures of Europe's last effort to control the ancient road - the Baghdad Railway - conceived by Sultan Abdul Hamid and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Lavishly illustrated with contemporary engravings and photographs, many of them previously unpublished, the book records the life of each a staging point along the ancient road and, in some cases, reveals the antiquities it concealed as well as contemporary and subsequent endeavours to reconstruct the past. As this fascinating book shows, the Ancient Road has outlived many changes in world affairs, and will continue to flourish as a link between east and west.
JOHN S. GUEST was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Harvard Business School. He was born an Englishman but later took American citizenship. He is the author of The Euphrates Expedition and Survival Among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis, both published by Kegan Paul.
I. The Western Approaches to Aleppo.
II. Aleppo and its Surroundings.
III. From Aleppo to the Euphrates.
IV. Urfa and Harran.
V. The Road to Nisibin.
VI. The Upper Tigris Valley.
VII. Nineveh and Mosul.
VIII. Down the Tigris.
IX. The Royal Road.
X. The City of Peace.
XI. The End of the Road.
Epilogue.
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