[Illustration: BAB-UL-TOP AND AUCHON MARKET, MOSUL.] To-day its most uncharitable detractor cannot say that. Despite its filth, the meanness of its bazaars, its unpleasant climate, and the Turks, it is a very important place, and a populous one, counting 90,000 souls, by a late and reliable computation. If the purpose of this book were to talk trade, it were possible to descant upon its leather craft, its cigarette-paper manufacture, its carpenters and masons; and it is but due to the Christians to say, that whatever commercial importance it possesses is due to their efforts, and to their efforts alone. [Sidenote: MOSUL] Here, of all the cities of Syria and Mesopotamia, the Christians enjoy more freedom from persecution than any other population of the same persuasion forced to live side by side with Musulmans. They themselves attribute this desirable state of affairs to the fact that both Muslim and Christian are Arab in language and sympathy, and above all are bound together by the bond of fellow-townsmanship that is often so strong a consolidating feature of isolated towns in the East. At all events the statement is supported by the immunity they have enjoyed from molestation during all the massacres of Christians that have occurred within the last two centuries. They affirm that on one such occasion the Turks endeavoured to rouse the Musulmans of the surrounding districts to enter the town and slay the Christians, and did their utmost to incite the Muslim townspeople to assist in the massacre, but so far from their proposals being met with consent, they were warned that any attempts of the kind would see Christian and Musulman combined. Nowadays, when Mosul is a city fairly well kept in order, when street murders are of not more than weekly occurrence, the place is full of the Turk, who seeks a post in a city where the hostile Kurd and nomad Arab cannot offend his dignity by their disrespect, nor menace his person with their ever-ready rifles. The language of the place is Arabic, but Turkish is understood, as is also Kurdish, for Kurdistan is not far away, and the wild characters one meets sometimes in the bazaars tell of the proximity of the tribes.