It would be injustice to this gallant and long-suffering body of
men not to present the reader with a minute description of the full
length of their stupendous march. Up to the moment when the Greeks
enter Karduchia, the line of march may be indicated upon evidence
which, though not identifying special halting-places or localities,
makes us certain that we cannot be far wrong on the whole. But after
that moment, the evidence gradually disappears, and we are left with
nothing more than a knowledge of the terminus, the general course,
and a few negative conditions.
Mr. Ainsworth has given, in his Book IV. (Travels in the Track of the
Ten Thousand, p. 155 seq.) an interesting topographical comment on
the march through Karduchia, and on the difficulties which the Greeks
would have to surmount. He has farther shown what may have been their
probable line of march through Karduchia; but the most important
point which he has established here, seems to be the identity of
the river Kentritês with the Buhtan-Chai, an eastern affluent of
the Tigris—distinguishing it from the river of Bitlis on the west
and the river Khabur on the south-east, with both of which it had
been previously confounded (p. 167). The Buhtan-Chai falls into the
Tigris at a village called Til, and “constitutes at the present day,
a natural barrier between Kurdistan and Armenia” (p. 166). In this
identification of the Kentritês with the Buhtan-Chai, Professor Koch
agrees (Zug der Zehn Tausend, p. 78).
If the Greeks crossed the Kentritês near its confluence with the
Tigris, they would march up its right bank in one day to a situation
near the modern town of Sert (Mr. Ainsworth thinks), though Xenophon
takes no notice of the river of Bitlis, which nevertheless they must
have passed. Their next two days of march, assuming a direction
nearly north, would carry them (as Xenophon states, iv. 4, 2) beyond
the sources of the Tigris; that is, “beyond the headwaters of the
eastern tributaries to the Tigris.”
Three days of additional march brought them to the river
Teleboas—“of no great size, but beautiful” (iv. 4, 4). There appear
sufficient reasons to identify this river with the Kara-Su or Black
River, which flows through the valley or plain of Mush into the Murad
or Eastern Euphrates (Ainsworth, p. 172; Ritter, Erdkunde, part
x. s. 37. p. 682). Though Kinneir (Journey through Asia Minor and
Kurdistan, 1818, p. 484), Rennell (Illustrations of the Expedition of
Cyrus, p. 207) and Bell (System of Geography, iv. p. 140) identify it
with the Ak-Su or river of Mush—this, according to Ainsworth, “is
only a small tributary to the Kara-Su, which is the great river of
the plain and district.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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