Identifier: cradleofmankindl00wigrrich (find matches)
Title: The cradle of mankind; life in eastern Kurdistan
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Wigram, W. A. (William Ainger), 1872-1953 Wigram, Edgar Thomas Ainger, Sir, 1864-1935
Subjects: Kurds Kurdistan -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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he province of Mosul. Akra displays itself mostimposingly to a traveller approaching from the westward,and indeed forms a striking spectacle from whatever pointit is viewed. Behind it a group of steep-pitched ridges aregabled out from the main mountain chain like a range ofgigantic dormers, and drop down in rugged hipped ends tothe level plain far below. Their crests are hacked andindented like the dissipated saw of the Bab Ballads,and the intervening gorges are half choked with theavalanches of boulders which have cascaded down theirflanks. The lower portions of these gorges are filled withtrees which grow in the terraced garden plots alongsidethe little rivulets, but the upper slopes are all bare andtawny like broken craters of half-baked clinker brick. One of the most prominent of these ridges breaks downinto a sort of saddle, and surges up again into a rocky knollbefore its final descent to the plain ; and across this saddleare hung the houses of Akra, with the ruined fragments of
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o C C4 ;y; o O(U ;h o CUD 4:: tuoc o o AKRA 129 its ancient citadel crowning the highest point of the rockyridge above. The bulk of the town overflows into theravine on the western side, where the houses are rangedround the sweep of the hollow like the stepped seats of anamphitheatre. So steep are the slopes on which they liethat the roof of each house serves as a front yard to itsnext door neighbour, or perhaps one should say to itsneighbour on the next story ; and the streets are ail sonarrow that they are quite undiscernible from a distance,though one of them is in fact wide enough to accommodatea rudimentary bazaar. Akra does not boast a khvdn, but our zaptiehs had alreadydecided for us at what house we were to spend the evening.We were to put up with the malmudir, the departmentaltreasurer ; * and one of our escort had already spurredahead to inform that worthy functionary of the treat thatwas in store for him. This seemed rather an arbitraryproceeding, but the malmudir quite acq

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