[Footnote 14: See further, Chap IV. The fact that from time to time other cities of Akkad had secured the leadership, suggests that the forces which eventually placed Babylon at the head of the country were already beginning to be felt. They were doubtless checked in no small degree by the absence of an internal administration of any lasting stability during the acute racial conflict which characterized the period.] [Footnote 15: The city was founded by the second Abbasid Caliph in 762 A.D.] [Footnote 16: For a period of fifty-six years (336-392 A.D.) the Caliphate was removed to Sâmarrâ. The circumstances which led to the transference may be traced directly to the civil war which broke out on the death of Harûn-ar-Rashîd; cf. Le Strange, _op. cit.,_ p. 32.] CHAPTER II THE CITY OF BABYLON AND ITS REMAINS: A DISCUSSION OF THE RECENT EXCAVATIONS The actual site of Babylon was never lost in popular tradition. In spite of the total disappearance of the city, which followed its gradual decay under Seleucid and Parthian rule, its ancient fame sufficed to keep it in continual remembrance. The old Semitic name Bâb-ilî, "the Gate of the Gods," lingered on about the site, and under the form Babil is still the local designation for the most northerly of the city-mounds. Tradition, too, never ceased to connect the exposed brickwork of Nebuchadnezzar's main citadel and palace with his name. Ḳaṣr, the Arab name for the chief palace-mound and citadel of Babylon, means "palace" or "castle," and when in the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela visited Baghdad, the Jews of that city told him that in the neighbouring ruins, near Hilla, the traveller might still behold Nebuchadnezzar's palace beside the fiery furnace into which Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah had been thrown. It does not seem that this adventurous rabbi actually visited the site,[1] though it is unlikely that he was deterred by fear of the serpents and scorpions with which, his informants said, the ruins were infested.