Page 108 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

Basra, during the early days of the 19th century, was a strag­
gling, dilapidated city, containing not more than 100,000 inhabi­
tants, of whom about half were Arabs, the remainder being
Persians, Turks, Armenians, Indians andjews. There were very
few Europeans living in the town, except occasionally one or two
of the Carmelite fathers who had a church and a hospital. The
town was built along the banks ol the Tigris, and on the creeks
and canals which were fed from the river. It was surrounded by
high walls, with towers at intervals, all in a poor state of repair,
yet strong enough to be a defence against the attack of ill-armed
Arab tribes. Only a quarter of the area enclosed by the walls
was occupied by buildings. Gardens, full of vegetables, brilliant
green lucerne, fruit trees and date groves filled the remaining
space.
The houses were made with mud bricks, dried in the sun, with
roofs carried on the trunks of date palms, which do not lend
themselves to this purpose, but neither stone nor timber for build­
ing was obtainable in the neighbourhood of Basra. Buckingham,
who spent over three months in Basra in 1816, describes the
houses as ‘badly constructed, mostly deficient in what arc held by
the occupiers to be conveniences of comforts’. The climate, he
says, was ‘for half the year intolerable’, and the town was ‘defdcd
by filth enough to engender by itself the most pestilential diseases,
inhabited by an ignorant, wretched and ugly race of people’.
Yet, in spite of the unsalubrious conditions, he surprisingly adds:
‘it is usual for invalids to come from India to Basoora for the
restoration of their health, and if the seasons are properly chosen,
there arc few constitutions which would not benefit from the
change.’ He mentions ‘the bracing winter climate, fine fruits, a
variety of vegetables and a constant supply of the choicest game’.
There has always been very good shooting near Basra, and in
1803, when Samuel Manesty was the British Resident, his shoot­
ing parties were famous even in England.
When Loch visited it, Basra was a place of importance to the
British, being their principal trading station in the Gulf though,
at various times, it had held second place to Bushire. It was the
land terminus of ‘the Direct Route’ between Europe and India.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, many travellers went by
land from Aleppo, and from other Levant ports, either via Bagh­
dad or direct to Basra, whence the Company’s cruisers sailed
88

—