“It may truly be said that Qadisiyya and Nihavand were avenged on the banks of the Zab,” says a great authority, alluding to the battles one hundred and ten years before, when Zoroastrian Persia was broken before the Arabs of the new faith of Muhammad, whose descendants in their time were to become the subjects of those Persians to whom, in the folly of their own ignorance and savagery, they had applied the name Ajam--‘the Barbarians.’ From our position on the Greater Zab it was a day’s journey (ten to twelve hours in the saddle) to Arbela, or Erbil, as the modern style has it,[25] and we crossed the river early, and by sunset were arrived. The situation of the town is in a low hollow at the foot of a small range of hills, behind which rise a higher ridge of the Zagros. Consequently, it would not be visible across the rolling plain, were it not for the huge mound that marks the buried ruins of the city of the goddess Ishtar. The particular afternoon we approached it was a typical spring day. In the plain we had slight showers, but as we approached the mountains, we began to draw into the region about which the thunder-storms circled. Our first view of Erbil was remarkable. Heavy clouds were driving along by and over the mountains, from which the rain descending in grey curtains shrouded the landscape. Brilliant lightning flashes showed up crags of hills among the clouds, and a rainbow attempted to arch the scene. We were searching among the confusion of showers for a sight of the town, when a heavy cloud and its pendant shower passed, leaving a patch of travelling sunshine behind; and, as a curtain that sweeps by, with the muttering of thunder, this veil swept from before Erbil, and shining red and lurid in the sunshine we saw its mound--mysterious, and indistinct, backed and flanked by tortured black clouds and their downpouring rain. For an instant we saw it thus, and then from overhead occurred a cloudburst. The clouds descending in a funnel-shaped deluge hid the mound, and a din of thunder broke out about it, brilliant lightnings playing the while, making a tumult of the elements fitting in its grandeur to the memory of that great goddess of all, Ishtar of Arbela. We were just in time to see the little town by daylight. There are no signs of antiquity about it now, except some Muhammadan ruins. All those of Assyria are safely conserved in the mighty mound upon which the modern Turkish ruler has built his castle. The height of the mound is very considerable, rising far above the roofs of the highest houses, a mound so great as to appear natural; one would never credit the fact that it covers the works of man, had we not seen the palaces of the Assyrians elsewhere. Here, where was the great temple that during a thousand years and more received the homage of all races and monarchs, there is every reason to believe that the accumulated embellishment and offering must have made there a shrine unequalled, perhaps, anywhere in Asia.