that developed the Muʽtazilite (Motazilite) sect. Naṣībīn was the scene of another revolt (793) under a Khārijite leader. Hārun’s son Motaṣim displeased the people by creating a bodyguard of Turks, and therefore transferred his seat to Sāmarrā. This put the caliphs fatally at the mercy of their guards.
Mesopotamia fell partly under the power of Ạhmad ibn Tūlūn of Egypt and his son; but before the end of the 9th century the Ḥamdānids, descendants of the Arab tribe of Tāghlib, were in possession of Mārdīn, and in 919 one of them was governor of Diār Rabiʽa. Later the brothers Nāṣir ad-Daula and Saif ad-Daula ruled over Mesopotamia and Decline of Caliphate. North Syria respectively. Meanwhile the caliph Mottaqi appeared as a fugitive at Mōṣul, Naṣībīn, Raḳḳa (944). The Ḥamdānids were followed by the ʽOqaylids, who had their seats at various places, such as Mōṣul, Naṣībīn, Raḳḳa, Ḥarrān, between 996 and 1096. By 1055 the Seljūḳs had taken the caliph under their charge. They arrived at Jerusalem in 1076, the first crusaders reached Asia in 1097, and Bit Adini became the countship of Edessa (q.v.). The power of the Seljūḳs quickly disintegrated. The son of a slave of the third Seljūḳ sultan, Zangi, governor of ʽIrāk, made himself gradually (Mōṣul, Sinjār, Jezīra, Ḥarrān) master of Mesopotamia (1128), capturing Edessa in 1144. Mesopotamia fell to one of his sons, Saif ad-Din, and branches sprang up at Sinjar and Jezīra. To the same period belong other Atābeg dynasties; Begtigīnids at Ḥarrān, Tekrīt, &c.; Ortoḳids at Edessa, ʽĀna, &c., with Mārdīn as their headquarters. By 1185–1186 Saladin had made Egypt supreme over all these principalities, thus achieving what the XVIIIth and XIXth Egyptian dynasties had attempted in vain. Mesopotamia remained in the hands of the Ayyūbite family till the appearance of the Mongols. The petty principalities were unable to unite to resist the terrible attack, and Jezīra, Edessa, Naṣībīn, Māridīn, &c., fell in 1259–60. The leading men of Ḥarrān emigrated into Syria, the rest were carried into slavery, and the ancient town was laid in ruins. It was the Mamluk rulers of Egypt that checked the death-bringing flood. Near Bira was the scene of one of their victories (in 1273), and their authority extended to Karkīsiyā. The Ortoḳid dynasty survived the Mongol inundation, and it was in the 14th century that its laureate Ṣafiy ad-Dīn al-Ḥillī flourished. From the Mongol invasions of the 13th century western Asia has never recovered. Then, before the next century was out, came the invasion of Timur (1393–94). The Ortoḳids were followed by the Ḳaraḳuyunli. In 1502 Mesopotamia passed for a time into the hands of the Ṣafawid shah, Ishmael; but in 1516 it came under the Osmanli Turks, to whom it has belonged ever since. The inroad of the Persians in the 17th century was confined to the south.
Since Mesopotamia finally came into the power of the Ottoman sultans considerable changes in the population have occurred. About that time parts of a confederation of tribes which had taken the name of Shammar from a mountain in their neighbourhood, moved northwards from Central Arabia in search of better pasture, &c. Successfully Nomad Arabs. displacing their forerunners, they made themselves at home in the Syrian steppe—until their possession was in turn disputed by a later emigrant from Arabia, for whom they finally made room by moving on into Mesopotamia, over which they spread, driving before them their predecessors the Ṭai (whose name the Mesopotamian Aramaeans had adopted as a designation for Arab in general), partly north of the Sinjār, partly over the Tigris. Others they forced to abandon the nomadic life, and settle by the Khābūr (e.g. the Jebur) or the Euphrates. These adjustments, it is supposed, had been effected by 1700.
In 1831 ʽAli, a newly appointed Turkish governor of Bagdād, induced Ṣufūg the chief of the Jerbā, the more important division of the Shammar, to help him to dislodge his predecessor, Dāūd, who would not vacate his position, but then refused them the promised payment. To defend himself from the enraged Shammar ʽAli summoned the ʽAnaza from across the Euphrates. Having also succeeded in detaching part of the Shammar under Shlōsh, he told the ʽAnaza he no longer needed their help. In the futile attempt of the three parties to dislodge the ʽAnaza Shlosh lost his life; but with the help of the Zubeid the other two succeeded, and Ṣufūg was now supreme “King of the Steppe,” levying blackmail as he pleased. Other methods of disposing of him having failed, the Porte made his nephew a rival sheikh; but he basely assassinated him. Ṣufūg then suffered the same fate himself at the hands of the pasha, but has since become a hero. Two of his sons became involved in a quarrel with the government, in consequence of which for years all Mesopotamia was in danger, till the second was put to death in 1868, and Ferḥān, the eldest son, a peaceable man who had been made pasha, became supreme. One of Ṣufūg’s widows had fled to her Ṭai kindred in Central Arabia with her youngest son Fāris; but when he grew up she brought him back in the seventies, and he immediately attracted a great following. He kept to the far north of Mesopotamia to avoid his brother Ferḥān; but finally half-sedentary tribes on the Khābūr and the Belīkh became tributary, to him, and a more or less active warfare sprang up between the brothers, which ended in a partition of Mesopotamia.
Ferḥān and the South Shammar claimed the steppe south-east of a line from Mōṣul to Mayādin (just below Ḳarḳīsiyā), and Faris and the North Shammar the north-west. Since Ferḥān’s death the Porte has favoured one after another of his many sons, hoping to keep the South Shammar disunited, especially as they are more than the others. The Shammar have been in undisputed mastery from Urfa to the neighbourhood of Bagdād, practically all tribes paying khuwwa to them, and even the towns, till the government garrisoned them. Some 60 of these more or less nomadic communities, of one or two thousand tents (or houses) each, representing a population of several hundred thousands are described by Oppenheim. Each has its recognized camping ground, usually one for summer and another for winter. Most of them are Arab and Mahommedan. Some are Christian and some are not Arab: viz. Kurds, Turkomans or Circassians. For some years the Porte has been applying steady pressure on the nomads to induce them to settle, by increasing the number of military posts, by introducing Circassian colonies, as at Ras al-ʽAin, sometimes by forcible settlement. More land is thus being brought under cultivation, the disturbing elements are being slowly brought under control, and life and property are becoming more secure.
Security is what the country chiefly needs. Hence its primary interest in the railway scheme, with a view to agricultural development and perhaps the growth of cotton; Sir W. Willcocks’ irrigation schemes had not up to 1910 affected “Mesopotamia” directly. Apparently the real problem is one of population adequate to Present Time. effect the improvements demanded. The new régime introduced in 1908 seems to justify a hopeful attitude. Apart from the disturbing effects of recent events in Persia, an exposition of present conditions would show progress. Exact statistics are not available because the vilayet of Mōṣul (35,130 sq. m., 351,200 pop.) takes in on the east territory with which we are not concerned, and omits the Osroene district, which goes with Aleppo. Urfa is a town of 55,000; Mōṣul, 61,000, Bagdād, 145,000. The exports of Mōṣul for 1908 were (in thousands of pounds sterling): United Kingdom 195, India 42, other countries 52, parts of Turkey 218; the imports: United Kingdom 56, India 16, other countries 35, parts of Turkey 24. The language is in most parts Arabic; but Turkish is spoken in Birejiḳ and Urfa, Kurdish and Armenian south of Dīarbekr, and some Syriac in Ṭūr ʽAbdīn. There are Christian missionary institutions of European origin in various places, such as Urfa, Mārdīn, Mōṣul. An interesting survival of early faiths is to be found in the Yezīdīs of the Sinjār district.
Authorities—Land and People: full references to Greek, Latin, Arabic and other writers are given in Ritter, Erdkunde x. 6–284, 921–1149; xi. 247–510, 660–762; for the conditions since the Arab conquest, Guy le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (1905), chiefly pp. 86–114, is especially useful. Of recent works the following are valuable: E. Sachau, Reise in Syrien u. Mesopotamien (1883); M. v. Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf, vol. ii (1889). We may mention further D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East (1902), passim; K. Regling, “Zur historischen Geographie des mesopotamischen Parallelograms” (Sarug district), in Klio, I. 443–476; M. Sykes, “Journeys in North Mesopotamia” in, Geog. Journal, xxx. 237–254, 384–395; “The Western Bend of the Euphrates,” op. cit. xxxiv. 61–65 (plans of two castles); D. Fraser, Short Cut to India (1909); W. Kurz, “Beurteilung der Aussichten auf eine Wiederbelebung der Kultur der Euphrat- und Tigrisniederung, ” in Deutsche geographische Blätter, xxxi. 147–179 (1908); E. Pears, “The Bagdad Railway,” in Contemp. Rev., 1908, 570–591; K. Baedeker, Palestine and Syria (1906), pp. 389–412. The annual Consular Reports most nearly bearing on Mesopotamia are those for Aleppo, Mōṣul, Bagdād and Basra.
Maps.—The following deserve special mention: v. Oppenheim, op. cit., a most valuable large scale folding map in pockets of volumes; Sachau. op. cit.; M. Sykes, Geog. Journ. xxx. opp. p. 356, and xxxiv. opp. p. 120; Hogarth, op. cit., orographic, &c.
Excavations at ʽArbān: A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Babylon (1849–1851), pp. 230–242; at Tell Khalaf: M. v. Oppenheim, Der Tell Halaf (1908), in the Der alte Orient series (see an account by J. L. Myres in Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, ii. 139–144; at Asshur: Sendschriften der deutsch. or. Gesellsch., and W. Andrae,
