Tigris, one of the four rivers of Paradise, twice mentioned in Scripture under the name of Hiddekel (; ), which signifies 'the rapid Tigris.'
The Tigris rises in the mountains of Armenia, about fifteen miles south of the sources of the Euphrates, and pursues nearly a regular course south-east till its junction with that river at Korna, fifty miles above Basrah (Bassorah). The Tigris is navigable for boats of twenty or thirty tons' burden as far as the mouth of the Odorneh, but no further; and the commerce of Mosul is consequently carried on by rafts supported on inflated sheep or goats' skins. The Tigris, between Bagdad and Korna, is, on an average, about two hundred yards wide; at Mosul its breadth does not exceed three hundred feet. The banks are steep, and overgrown for the most part with brushwood, the resort of lions and other wild animals. The middle part of the river's course, from Mosul to Korna, once the seat of high culture and the residence of mighty kings, is now desolate, covered with the relics of ancient greatness in the shape of fortresses, mounds, and dams, which had been erected for the defense and irrigation of the country. At the ruins of Nimrod, eight leagues below Mosul, is a stone dam quite across the river, which, when the stream is low, stands considerably above the surface, and forms a small cataract; but when the stream is swollen, no part of it is visible, the water rushing over it like a rapid, and boiling up with great impetuosity. It is a work of great skill and labor, and now venerable for its antiquity. At some short distance below there is another Zikr (dyke), but not so high, and more ruined than the former. The river rises twice in the year: the first and great rise is in April, and is caused by the melting of the snows in the mountains of Armenia; the other is in November, and is produced by the periodical rains.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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