If there is anything precious in Islamic history it is not the wars...

If there is anything precious in Islamic history it is not the wars, the politics, the brilliant expansion, the glorious conquests, or even the intellectual spoils which our ancestors gathered. In these matters, our history, like all history, has its lights and shades. What we need especially to emphasize is the spirit of the organization, of brotherhood, of undaunted courage in moral and spiritual life.

Plan of discourse I propose first to give you an idea of the geographical setting and the historical background. Then I want very briefly to refer to the actual events that happened in the Muharram, and finally to draw your attention to the great lessons which we can learn from them. Geographical Picture In placing before you a geographical picture of the tract of country in which the great tragedy was enacted, I consider myself fortunate in having my own personal memories to draw upon.

They make the picture vivid in my mind, and they may help you also. When I visited those scenes in 1928, I remember going down from Baghdad through all that country watered by the Euphrates River. As I crossed the river by a bridge of boats at Al-Musaiyib on a fine April morning, my thoughts leapt over centuries and centuries.

To the left of the main river, you have the old classic ground of Babylonian history; you have the railway station of Hilla; you have the ruins of the city of Babylon, witnessing one of the greatest civilizations of antiquity. It was so mingled with the dust that it is only in recent years that we have begun to understand its magnitude and magnificence. Then you have the great river system of the Euphrates, the Furat as it is called, a river, unlike any other river we know.

It takes its rise in many sources from the mountains of Eastern Armenia and sweeping in great zig-zags through the rocky country, it finally skirts the desert as we see it now. Wherever it or its interlacing branches or canals can reach, it has converted the desert into a fruitful cultivated country; in the picturesque phrase, it has made the desert blossom as the rose. It skirts around the Eastern edge of the Syrian Desert and then flows into marshy land.

In a tract not far from Kerbela itself there are lakes which receive its waters and act as reservoirs. Lower down it unites with the other river, the Tigris, and the united rivers flow in the name of the Shatt-al-Arab into the Persian Gulf. To be continued! NOTES: ————————————————————————— 1.