| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Syria, the land of Lebanon
Author: Leary, Lewis Gaston
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Syria, the land of Lebanon" ***
LEBANON ***
SYRIA
THE LAND OF LEBANON
_By LEWIS GASTON LEARY_
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY
ANDORRA, THE HIDDEN REPUBLIC
THE CHRISTMAS CITY
SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON
[Illustration: Evening in the harbor of Beirut]
SYRIA
THE LAND OF
LEBANON
BY
LEWIS GASTON LEARY, PH.D.
FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN THE AMERICAN
COLLEGE, BEIRUT, SYRIA
Author of _The Real Palestine of To-day_,
_Andorra, the Hidden Republic_, _etc._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1913
Copyright, 1913, by
MCBRIDE, NAST & CO.
_Second Printing
January, 1914_
Published, November, 1913
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
TO HIM WHO FIRST TURNED MY THOUGHTS
TOWARD SYRIA
MY FORMER PRECEPTOR AND ALWAYS
LOYAL FRIEND
GEORGE L. ROBINSON
PREFACE
Although Syria possesses a rare natural beauty and boasts a wealth of
historic and religious interest, its fame has been so overshadowed by
that of the neighboring Land of Israel that most travelers are content to
take the easy railway journey to Baalbek and Damascus, and know nothing
of the wild mountain valleys and snow-capped summits of Lebanon or the
many ancient shrines of a country whose history reaches far back of the
classic days of Greece.
It is therefore with great pleasure that I accede to the request of the
publishers of my “Real Palestine of To-day” and supplement the earlier
work by the present companion-volume on Syria; so that, though the books
may be read independently, the two together may give a complete view of
the lands of the Bible.
The chapter on Palmyra is from the pen of Professor Harvey Porter,
Ph.D., of the Syrian Protestant College; and for many of the hitherto
unpublished photographs I am indebted to other members of the faculty
of that institution. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to _The World
To-day_, _The New Era_, _The Sunday School Times_, _The Newark_ (N.
J.) _News_, and especially to _Travel_ and _Scribner’s Magazine_, for
permission to include material which originally appeared in these
publications.
In the writing of Arabic words, my aim has been smooth reading, rather
than a systematic transliteration of the numerous sounds which are not
found in English. As an aid to pronunciation, it should be noted that the
stress always falls upon a syllable bearing a circumflex accent.
It will be seen that this book is written from a more intimate and
personal viewpoint than the volume on Palestine. I could not write
otherwise of the country which was for years my own home and where to-day
I have many cherished friends among both Syrians and Franks. In fact, I
must write very slowly; for every now and then I lay down my pen and,
with a homesick lump in my throat, dream over again the happy days in
that land of wondrous beauty which I still love with all my heart.
LEWIS GASTON LEARY
Pelham Manor, N. Y., October 15, 1913.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE WHITE MOUNTAIN 1
II THE LEFT-HAND LAND 6
III THE CITY OF SATURN 26
IV THE SPIRIT OF OLYMPIA 44
V ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 60
VI THE LAND OF UZ 72
VII THE EARTHLY PARADISE 88
VIII THE PORT OF THE WILDERNESS 95
IX THE RICHES OF DAMASCUS 110
X THE DESERT CAPITAL 128
XI SOME SALT PEOPLE 144
XII THE CEDARS OF THE LORD 163
XIII THE GIANT STONES OF BAALBEK 184
XIV HAMATH THE GREAT 201
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Evening in the harbor of Beirut _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Along the coast north of Beirut 4
Looking up the western slopes of Lebanon 5
Lebanon soldiers 16
Village of Deir el-Kamr 17
Bay of Beirut and Mount Sunnin 26
Pine groves of Beirut 27
Bridge over the Dog River 36
Procession in Beirut 38
Students of the American College 48
Cape of Beirut viewed from Lebanon 49
Old Bridge over the Barada River 70
Cascade in the Yarmuk Valley 71
A caravan 82
Damascus—a distant view 83
Damascus—one of the more modern avenues 100
A Syrian café 101
Damascus—court of a private residence 112
Damascus—Moslem cemetery 113
Damascus—The Street called Straight 120
Damascus—The Omayyade Mosque 121
Palmyra—General view of the ruins 134
Palmyra—the Triple Gate 135
Funeral procession of the patriarch 160
A summer camp in Lebanon 161
The Cedar Mountain 170
Source of the Kadisha River 171
The oldest Cedar of Lebanon 182
Baalbek—the six great columns 183
Baalbek—the stone in the quarry 198
Hama—the Orontes River 199
MAPS AND PLANS
The railway from Beirut to Damascus 62
Cross-section of Syria 64
The Hauran 74
The temples of Baalbek 194
SYRIA
THE LAND OF LEBANON
_Syria, The Land of Lebanon_
CHAPTER I
THE WHITE MOUNTAIN
Far off on the eastern horizon the thin haze of an October dawn gently
blended into denser masses of silvery white, which rose like dream
mountains above the edge of the placid azure sea. The soft, ethereal
shapes did not change their outlines, however, as clouds do; and, as
the steamer drew nearer to them, the rounded forms gradually took on an
appearance of bulk and solidity. These were no mere piles of morning
mist, but the massive shoulders of the ancient, famous, glorious range
whose strange silvery tint when viewed from afar caused it long, long ago
to be called _Lebanon_—the “White Mountain.”
As we approached the shore, the sun rose into a sky of brighter blue than
ever domed Italian seas, and great waves of color swept downward over the
round white mountainsides. I have traveled since in many lands; I know
the beauty of Amalfi’s cliffs, the rich tints of the southern coast of
Spain, the mystic alpenglow on the snow-clad peaks of Switzerland and
the delicate opalescence of the Isles of Greece; but I have never seen—I
never expect to see—another glory of earth which can compare with the
wondrous coloring of the mountains of Lebanon.
We watched floods of red and orange sweep across the lofty summits and
then brighten into crowns of mellow gold. We looked into gorges tinged
with a purple so rich and deep that the color itself seemed almost a
tangible thing. Nearer still we drew, and at the foot of the mountains
there came into view dark forests of evergreen and broad, sloping
orchards set here and there with tiny villages of shining white. Then
there appeared long lines of silvery surf and yellow sand; and we skirted
the northern edge of a rock-bound promontory to the crowded harbor of
Beirut.
* * * * *
The wording of the Old Testament might lead one to infer that Lebanon
is a single mountain, and the modern Syrians also familiarly refer to
it as _ej-Jebel_—“The Mountain.” It is not, however, an isolated peak,
but an entire range, which begins at the northern border of Palestine
and stretches for a hundred miles along the easternmost shore of the
Mediterranean. The narrow coastal plain cannot be distinguished at a
distance. Straight out of the water the thousand summits rise in ever
loftier ranks up to the level profile of the central ridge, two miles
above the sea.
This “goodly mountain,” which dying Moses longed to see, became to Hebrew
poets the consummate symbol of all that was most strong and virile, most
beautiful and enduring. The springs of Lebanon, the forests of Lebanon,
the glory of Lebanon—of these they dreamed and, in ecstatic eulogy or
lofty spiritual hope, of these they loved to sing. “Thou art a fountain
of gardens, a well of living waters, and flowing streams from Lebanon,”
exclaims the hero of the Song of Songs. “The smell of thy garments is
like the smell of Lebanon.” The bride, too, sings of her lover, “His
aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.”[1] In more solemn vein,
the prophets who spoke of the coming Day of Jehovah drew imperishable
imagery from these northern mountains. “The desert shall rejoice,
and blossom as the rose.... The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto
it.”[2] Israel “shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as
Lebanon.... They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall
revive as the grain, and blossom as the vine: the scent thereof shall be
as the wine of Lebanon.”[3] “The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee,
the fir-tree, the pine, and the box-tree together.”[4]
Toward evening I strolled out to the end of the cape and looked for the
first time upon what those of us who have called Beirut our home may be
pardoned for believing to be the loveliest prospect in all this beautiful
world. From this point can be viewed eighty miles of a coast which in
the time of Abraham had already seen the rise and fall of many a proud
civilization. To the south is the ancient city of Sidon, thirty miles
away, and the rocky point of Sarepta and, in the dim distance, the bold
headland of the “Ladder of Tyre.” To the north, beyond the gorges of the
River of Death and the Dog River, is the River of Adonis, where the loves
of heaven and earth were celebrated many centuries before there were
Greeks in Greece. Still farther north, Jebail—ancient Byblos—disputes
Damascus’ claim to be the oldest of cities; and thirty-five miles away
the view of the coast is closed by the cape which the Greeks called
_Theoprosopon_, the “Face of God.” The Syrians, however, have named this
_Ras esh-Shukkah_ or the “Split-off Point,” and say that it was torn
away from the mountain and thrown bodily into the sea during the great
earthquake of July 9, 551, A. D. In this land of fearful cataclysms, the
story is quite possible of belief.
[Illustration: View along the coast north of Beirut]
[Illustration: Looking up the western slopes of Lebanon]
At the west is the expanse of the “Great Sea.” At the east, just back
of the cape, are the great mountains. Everything along the shore of the
Mediterranean is warm, almost tropical in its verdure, and resplendent
in the orient hues painted by the Syrian sun. The lower slopes of
Lebanon are soft with vineyards and groves of olive, fig and mulberry.
Above the green orchards and white villages are dark pine forests, and
somber gorges cut deep between smooth, swelling moorlands. Higher still
the desolate, lonely slopes are quite bare of vegetation; yet, in the
clear atmosphere, they seem as soft as if they were overlaid with bright
velvets and shimmering silks. Last of all, the eye is drawn up to the
summits of Keneiseh and Sunnin, tinged with orange and purple in the
summer sunset, and in winter covered with vast sheets of snow.
From the tropics to the chill barrenness of the arctics—it is all
comprehended in one glorious panorama. What an Arabic poet wrote of
yonder towering Sunnin is true of the whole range—
“He bears winter upon his head,
Spring upon his shoulders,
Autumn in his bosom,
While summer lies slumbering at his feet.”
But Lebanon is more than a splendid spectacle. There would be no Syria,
no fertile mother of the olive and orange, no land of the long martial
history, no tale of ancient culture or modern enterprise, save for the
Mountain, whose lofty peaks break the rain-clouds borne hither by the
west winds and drop their precious moisture on the thirsty soil below.
CHAPTER II
THE LEFT-HAND LAND
The Arab geographer always faces towards the east. So the southernmost
portion of the Arabian peninsula is to him the _Yemen_ or “Right,” and
this northern district of ours is called _esh-Shâm_ or the “Left-hand
Land.” The name _Surîya_ or “Syria,” an ancient corruption of “Assyria,”
is also, however, frequently employed, especially by the Turks.
As this territory is not a modern political unit, its limits are
variously defined, both by natives and foreigners. The whole country
between Asia Minor and Egypt is often called Syria, and its inhabitants,
who have the same language and customs and are of practically the
same—very mixed—blood, are known as Syrians. But from the historical
viewpoint it is perhaps more exact to distinguish between Palestine and
Syria, and confine the latter name to the territory which lies to the
north of the Hebrew boundary-town of Dan.
Syria then, as we shall use the word, extends from the southern slopes of
Mount Hermon to the Bay of Alexandretta, a distance of about two hundred
and fifty miles. It is a long, narrow country. At the west is the
Mediterranean; at the east is the Syrian Desert; within these boundaries,
the width is never more than fifty miles.
The wealth and power of Syria have always been found in its southern
half—the country of Lebanon. Here the mountains are divided into two
parallel ranges by the long valley which the Greeks called “Hollow
Syria.” Between this valley and the Mediterranean is Lebanon; between the
valley and the desert is the twin range of Anti-Lebanon.[5] The western
mountains rise gradually toward their northern, end, where they attain an
elevation of over 11,000 feet. The eastern chain, however, reaches its
culmination in its southernmost peak, Mount Hermon, which is 9,000 feet
above the sea. On the coastal plain beside Lebanon lie the ancient cities
of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos and the modern ports of Beirut and Tripoli. On
a peninsula of fertility watered by the streams of Anti-Lebanon, Damascus
stands between the mountains and the desert. The rest of Syria is made up
of lofty summits, rocky gorges resounding with the tumult of cave-born
torrents, high wind-swept pasture lands and broad, fertile valleys
slanting up between the mountains.
The lovelorn Syrian does not sing dolefully of a sweetheart who “lies
over the ocean.” To him the typical barrier is not the sea. _Beni
ubenik ej-jebel_ runs the plaintive lament—“Between me and thee is
the mountain.” The country is more crowded with towering peaks than
Palestine or Greece, but it is more fertile than either. No other region
of equal size has such a variety of vegetable life; no other land is more
healthful; and to those of us who have lived in the shadow of Lebanon,
none is more beautiful.
Syria, as we have defined it, includes one entire _vilâyet_, or province,
of the Turkish Empire and parts of three others. Its extreme northern
portion is included in the great Vilayet of Aleppo, which stretches
far across the desert to Mesopotamia. Anti-Lebanon and most of Hollow
Syria lie within the Vilayet of _esh-Shâm_, or “Syria.” This important
province, whose capital is Damascus, takes in all the arable land east of
the Jordan as far as the southern end of the Dead Sea. The independent
_Mutesarrifîyet_, or sub-province, of Lebanon is practically co-extensive
with this range, but touches the Mediterranean only for a few miles and
has no seaport. Almost the entire coast belongs to the Vilayet of Beirut,
which reaches from Mount Akra, a hundred and fifty miles north of the
provincial capital, to within sight of the harbor of Jaffa and includes
nearly all of Palestine west of the Jordan River.
In the absence of any census, we can hardly do more than guess at the
population of Syria. It is probably above two million. The Turkish
residents are for the most part government officials, and there are
few Jews outside of Beirut and Damascus. The mass of the inhabitants
are descendants of the Syrians, or Arameans, of Biblical times; but the
native blood has been mixed with that of many other races. It is scarcely
correct to call these people “Arabs,” except in the sense that they are
an Arabic-speaking race. In countenance, as well as customs, they differ
considerably from their less civilized cousins who roam the neighboring
deserts.
The ecclesiastical bodies of Syria are numerous, jealous and extremely
fanatical. In striking contrast to the awkward reticence of the West
regarding religious matters, every Syrian not only counts himself an
adherent of the faith into which he was born, but he thrusts that fact
upon your attention and, on the slightest provocation, is ready to fight
for his belief. A man’s ancestors, descendants and home may be cursed
with all the wealth of Oriental vituperation, and he will probably accept
this as a mere emphatic conversational embellishment. But let the single
word _dinak!_ “thy religion!” be spoken with a curseful intonation to a
follower of a different faith, and the spirit of murder is let loose.
Islam is, of course, the official religion of the government; but
in the southern half of the country the majority of the inhabitants
are Christians. The most powerful church is the Greek Orthodox; next
in importance come the Maronites and Greek Catholics, who render
allegiance to the Pope of Rome. Nearly a dozen other sects, exclusive
of the Protestants, are actively working and hating and scheming in
Syria. Many of the members of these Oriental churches are sincere and
devout; but, on the whole, the organized Christianity of Syria, like that
of neighboring Palestine,[6] has been so inextricably entangled with
political ambitions, sectarian jealousy and civil warfare that its moral
and religious teachings are in danger of being completely neglected.
Syrian Mohammedanism is also divided against itself, though not to such
a hazardous degree as is Syrian Christianity. Many villages in northern
Lebanon are occupied by adherents of the schismatic Shiite sect. These
Metawileh, as they are called, bear an unenviable reputation for their
ignorance, dishonesty, brutality and, what is very unusual in Syria,
their lack of hospitality. They will refuse accommodations to a traveler
and are accustomed to break the earthenware drinking-jug which has been
defiled by the touch of a stranger. Still farther north there survive
a few settlements of the Ismailians, who during the Middle Ages were
known as the _Assassins_—literally, “hashish-smokers.” Their character
is sufficiently indicated by the fact that the only thing they gave the
Western world was the word “assassin.”
In the mountains which bear their name are a hundred thousand Nusairiyeh,
who migrated hither many centuries ago from Mesopotamia and still hold
to a strange, mystic nature-worship. Traces of the vile phallic cults of
ancient Syria are also found among the wilder regions of the north.
The sixty thousand Druses of central and southern Lebanon are frequently
confused with the Moslems by careless writers; on the other hand they are
sometimes referred to as a Christian sect. As a matter of fact, they are
neither. Although this faith originated among followers of Islam, the
early Druses suffered many persecutions at the hands of the Moslems, who
classed them as “infidels,” while their feuds with the Christian populace
of Lebanon have led to some of the most cruel and bitter struggles of
modern times.
In the eleventh century an insane ruler of Egypt named Hakim Biamrillah
declared himself to be the _Imâm_, or incarnation of the Deity, and
his preposterous claims found an enthusiastic prophet in a Persian
resident of Cairo called ed-Durazy, from whom is derived the familiar
name “Druse.” The adherents of this sect, however, call themselves
_Muwahhidîn_, or “Unitarians.” Such was the wrath of the Egyptian Moslems
at ed-Durazy’s preaching that he was forced to flee to the mountains of
Syria, where the new faith spread rapidly among the inhabitants of Hermon
and southern Lebanon. Shortly after ed-Durazy’s flight the caliph Hakim
mysteriously disappeared. Doubtless he was assassinated; but the Druses
believe that he is miraculously concealed until the appointed day of his
final revelation as the victorious _Mahdi_.
The peculiar doctrines of the Druses were systematized by a companion
of the prophet’s exile, Hamzeh ibn Ahmed, since known as the “Guide.”
The tenets of this faith are still, however, only partly understood
by Western scholars; for its most important beliefs are kept in great
secrecy, none of the women and only a very small proportion of the men
are initiated into its esoteric teachings, converts to other faiths are
practically unknown, and the Druses hold that, in conversation with a
Moslem or a Christian, it is permissible for them to pretend acquiescence
in the other’s statements.
Their extreme emphasis on the unity of God, whom they divest of
all attributes, goes even beyond that of Mohammedanism. Yet this
is accompanied by a belief in the divine self-revelation through a
succession of incarnations which began with Adam and ended with the
Caliph Hakim and included Jesus and Mohammed. They also hold the
doctrine of transmigration of souls and think that many of them will be
reincarnated in the heart of China, where, according to their strange
tradition, there are multitudes of Chinese Druses. They do not practice
the Moslem virtues of prayer, fasting, formal almsgiving and the
pilgrimage to Mecca; but the few initiates rigorously abstain from both
wine and tobacco.
Probably all that most Druses know about their religion is that they are
Druses. Yet their feeling of separation from the other inhabitants of the
country, which amounts to a sense of racial difference, has made them the
most proud and independent—not to say ungovernable—class in the Turkish
Empire. The faces of the Druse men are the handsomest and haughtiest
in Syria, and their forms are tall and stalwart. They are a brave,
intellectual, courteous, hospitable people; they treat their wives far
better than do the Moslems, and in time of war they never massacre women.
Some of the Druse emirs whom I have met are refined, correctly dressed,
well-educated gentlemen who are as much at home on the boulevards of
Paris as they are among their own mountains. Yet anything more than a
superficial acquaintance with them is prevented by the suave hypocrisy
which their religion inculcates; their otherwise admirable courage is
marred by heartless cruelty and a relentless carrying out of the ancient
law of blood for blood; and the splendid organization with which they
meet the aggressions of an alien enemy is weakened by their interminable
intertribal feuds. The history of the great Druse families of Lebanon is
stained by many an awful record of treachery, fratricide and massacre.
In the summer of 1860, twenty years of intermittent altercations between
the Druses and Maronites culminated in an outbreak of fearful religious
warfare. The Druses were perhaps no braver than their opponents; but they
showed better discipline, had more able leaders and, from the beginning,
were encouraged by the support of the Moslem government. So the war
soon developed into a mere succession of massacres of the unfortunate
Maronites. Turkish officials connived at these outrages, and Turkish
regiments, presumably sent to restore order in the troubled districts,
either disarmed the Christians and then turned them over to be dealt
with by their enemies, or else themselves added to the horrors of the
slaughter by killing even the women whom the Druses had spared. Maronite
monasteries were sacked and their monks put to death with barbarous
tortures, a hundred villages were burned, and multitudes of unarmed
peasants who had sought protection in the courtyards of government
buildings were allowed to be shot down by their relentless enemies. It
will never be known just how many Christians were slain during that awful
summer. Seven thousand are said to have perished in Damascus alone; and
some conception of the vast number of survivors who were left homeless
and destitute is gained when we learn that the Anglo-American Relief
Committee of Beirut had upon its lists the names of twenty-seven thousand
refugees.
The Christian nations were shocked into activity by the terrible tidings
from Syria. Fifty European warships soon reached the harbor of Beirut,
and an army of ten thousand French soldiers was landed. Just in time
to avoid foreign intervention, however, the sultan sent two of his own
regiments from Constantinople to quell the disturbance, and shortly
afterwards the grand vizier himself came to Syria with additional troops.
These soldiers were but a handful in comparison with the Druse army or
even the Turkish regiments which had been assisting in the slaughter;
but when the mysterious, unwritten messages go forth from Constantinople
commanding that a massacre shall be stopped—or shall be begun—they are
understood at once in the most inaccessible mountain villages of the
empire.
As soon as order was restored, the conscription, from which holy Damascus
had been exempt since the days of Mohammed, was strictly enforced as a
punitive measure; and over twenty thousand Damascene Moslems were sent
in chains to the coast, whence they were transported to regiments in
distant provinces of Turkey. Furthermore, a levy of a million dollars
was laid upon the city, and its governor and a hundred prominent Moslem
residents were hanged for their share in the massacres, as were also a
few officials in other parts of the country. Not a single Druse, however,
was executed for partaking in the awful slaughter.
The European powers now insisted that there should never be another
Moslem ruler over the Christians of Lebanon, and such pressure was
brought to bear upon the Turkish government that the district was
made a practically independent province. Its governor must be, like
the Maronites, a Latin Christian, although, in justice to the Druse
population, he may not be an inhabitant of Syria. His appointment
is subject to the approval of the six great powers and he cannot be
removed without the consent of their ambassadors at Constantinople.
The province pays no taxes to the imperial government, nor may Turkish
troops be stationed within its boundaries except under certain stringent
restrictions. Lebanon has its own army of volunteer militia; and the
free, independent bearing of these mountaineers is in striking contrast
to that of the underpaid, underfed and poorly clothed conscripts of the
regular army.
The rulers appointed under the new régime have not all been equally
capable and honest. Some have understood the language of _bakhsheesh_ as
well as their Turkish predecessors. The commercial growth of the province
has also been hampered by the lack of a seaport. Yet since 1861 the
mountaineers, Druses and Maronites alike, have enjoyed an unprecedented
quiet and an increasing material prosperity. The old feudal wars have
ceased, the tyrannical political power of the Maronite hierarchy is
greatly diminished, education is rapidly advancing and the valuation of
property in the Lebanon district has greatly advanced. In the words of
Lord Dufferin, who was a member of the international commission which
framed the new plan of government, “until the present day the Lebanon
has been the most peaceful, the most contented and the most prosperous
province of the Ottoman Dominion.”
[Illustration: A guard of Lebanon soldiers]
[Illustration: The village of Deir El-Kamr, where no Druse dare dwell]
Yet the cruel past has not entirely sunk into oblivion. The Maronite
village of Deir el-Kamr, for instance, has still one mosque; but no
Moslem dwells there, nor dare a Druse pass through this neighborhood
where the massacre of unarmed Christians lasted until more than two
thousand corpses lay within the enclosure of the government-house. On
the other hand, there are Druse hamlets where no Maronite would trust
himself. Ten years ago, when Beirut was in one of its periodic tumults,
five thousand Lebanon soldiers, stalwart, brave and well-armed, encamped
just outside the city limits, waiting for one more anti-Christian
outbreak—which fortunately did not come—as an excuse for wiping out the
Moslem population. Looking across a deep gorge of Lebanon, I once saw
a file of Turkish soldiers laboriously making their way up the steep
mountainside. They were seeking a murderer, so I was told, but a murderer
of no common mettle; for from his inaccessible retreat among the cliffs
he had sent to the government of Beirut a bold acknowledgment of his
crimes, accompanied by the threat that whenever in the future a Christian
should be assassinated in that city he would immediately descend to the
coast and take the life of a Moslem in exchange.
On a stormy winter night I sat by the charcoal fire in a Maronite hut
high up among the mountains, and heard read from a grimy, much-thumbed
manuscript a long poem which described the brave part played by that
village in the struggles of fifty years ago. The sonorous Arabic
sentences had almost an Homeric ring. Like the list of Grecian ships
sounded the rhythmic roll of the local heroes of half a century gone by.
And as the dull light of the fire shone on the circle of dark, bearded
mountaineers, the grim lines of their faces showed that the valor of the
village had not weakened with the passing years, nor had the wrongs of
the village fathers been forgot.
* * * * *
To the traveler, bewildered by strange customs and by peculiar ways of
doing familiar things, this seems indeed a “Left-hand Land.” The Syrian
holds a loose sheet of paper in his palm and writes from right to left.
Yet numbers are written, like ours, from left to right. In beckoning,
the fingers are turned downward. To nod “No” the head is jerked upward,
and added emphasis is sometimes given by a sharp cluck of the tongue.
The carpenter draws his saw toward him on the cutting stroke. The
oarsman likes to stand up and face the bow of his boat. When digging,
one man holds the handle of the shovel while two others do most of the
work by pulling it with ropes. Except in cities which have felt European
influence, it is the men who wear skirts or flowing bloomers, and the
women who wear trousers. Keys are put into the locks upside down. In
entering a house, the hat is kept on the head, but the shoes are removed.
Grown men greet one another in public with embraces and kisses. You see
them walking along hand in hand, or smelling little nosegays. Yet these
acts are not necessarily indicative of effeminacy. For all you know,
these same fellows may occupy their leisure moments with highway robbery.
The slightest difference of opinion gives rise to excited vituperation
and offensive gesticulation; but a blow is seldom given. When a Syrian
does smite, he employs no half-way measures: he smites to kill. I only
once saw a blow struck in anger: then a club four inches thick was,
without warning, brought down with full force upon the head of an
unfortunate boatman.
In this topsy-turvy land, parents take the name of their first-born son,
and use it even in signing legal papers. The gate-keeper at the American
College, for instance, was never called anything but Abu Mohammed, “the
Father of Mohammed.” When a son is despaired of, the public humiliation
is sometimes avoided by inventing one. It is quite possible that Abu
Zeki or Abu Saïd has no children at all.
The daughters of the family are often called after jewels or flowers or
constellations; yet, except in Protestant families, the birth of a girl
is not an occasion for rejoicing. One father insisted on christening an
unwelcome girl baby Balash, which might be translated “Nothing doing!”
Another parent, who already had six daughters, was so disgusted at the
advent of a seventh that he named her Bikeffeh, “Enough!” A Maronite
proverb says, “The threshold mourns forty days when a girl is born.”
Nevertheless the lot of the Christian woman, even in communities where
Christianity means hardly more than a political organization, is usually
far better than that of her Moslem sisters.
Surnames are very indefinite and shifting matters. If Musa has a son
named Jurjus, the boy will naturally be known as Jurjus Musa. But the
father will, of course, change his own name to Abu Jurjus. Many surnames
are taken from occupations. Haddad or “Smith” is here, as in every
country, one of the most common. Others are derived from localities.
Hanna Shweiri is “John from Shweir,” and Suleiman Beiruti is “Beirut
Solomon.” Real family or clan names, however, are not uncommon,
especially among the aristocracy.
As a man becomes more prosperous he will often drop his commonplace
appellation in favor of a more dignified one, which perhaps revives an
ancient but long neglected designation of his family. This easy putting
on and off of names sometimes leads to considerable confusion. I once
asked all over a mountain village for the house of a friend whom I had
known in Beirut, and met with the most positive assurances that no such
person lived there. Fortunately I happened to remember that my friend’s
father was a baker. “John Baker! Oh, yes, everybody in town knows _him_!
But that other fellow you’ve been asking about—we never heard of him.”
The mountain boys, especially, used often to take new surnames when they
came to college. Sometimes they afterward exchanged these for still
better ones. So a facetious professor greeted a returning student with
“Well, Eliya, what is your name _this_ year?” An exasperated inquirer,
who had vainly tried to pin down a certain youth to a satisfactory
statement of his chosen titles, finally exclaimed, “Now, tell me, what
_is_ your name?” Then came the maddeningly irritating answer which so
frequently tempts the Occidental to commit homicide, “As you like, sir!”
Another young man, who had narrowly escaped expulsion for his various
misdeeds, decided to turn over a new leaf; so he came back to the college
the next autumn with a different name—and made it good. The Syrian
understands better than do we the full content of the divine promise of
“a new name.”[7]
At first this seems a land of inexplicable contrasts. I could write of
its ravaging pestilences so that one would find it hard to believe that
Syria is notable for its healthfulness. I could record fearful massacres
until the reader would think me foolishly daring for never carrying a
weapon during all my travels. I could—quite truthfully—tell how a Syrian
landscape lacks so many of the old familiar aspects of our home scenes,
and give no hint of the glorious panoramas of this fertile, well-watered,
bright-colored land—where the mountains sit with their feet in the
Great Sea and their heads among the glorious clouds, while mantles of
shimmering silver fall above their richly tinted garments.
As is the land, so are its people; not easy to understand and justly
appraise. They are cruel and cunning and prefer to destroy an enemy by a
sudden rush of overwhelming odds rather than to meet him in equal combat.
Yes, this is true of many of them; yet they have a childlike delight
in sweet scents, bright colors, beautiful flowers and simple games.
Although they may live in poverty and squalor, they are very frugal and
temperate. They are ignorant; but when the opportunity comes they study
with a pathetic earnestness and an unrivaled quickness. At half-past
three of cold winter mornings I used to hear a servant going the rounds
of my dormitory to waken the young men, at their own request, so that
they might spend four hours before breakfast at their books. Some of
those same indefatigable students have since led their classes in great
American and European universities.
It is true that the Syrians nurse vengeful feuds for generation after
generation. That is partly because family ties are so wonderfully strong
among them. “I and my brother against my cousin; I and my cousin against
my neighbor,” runs the proverb. When two brothers are in the same class
at school or college, they seldom have other chums, but insist upon
sitting side by side in the classroom, and during their free hours they
wander about the campus with arms around each other’s shoulders. If an
elder brother goes away to make his fortune in some distant country, he
never forgets the loved ones at home; but year after year the remittances
will come, until all the younger children have been educated or have been
brought across the sea to share in the opportunities of the new land of
promise. A trusted American missionary had at one time in his possession
no less than five thousand dollars which had been sent from America for
the parents and younger children of a single mountain village.
The ambition of the Syrian is as boundless as his daring, and his
courageous persistence is a buttress to his splendid capacity for
both business and scholarship. The son of any laboring man may, for
all one knows, become a high Egyptian official, a wealthy merchant of
the Argentine, a French poet or the pastor of an American church. The
“Arab” dragoman of your tourist party may be the proud father of a boy
whose learned works in choicest English you hope sometime to read, or
whose surgical skill may be called upon to carry you through a critical
operation. These are not fanciful possibilities. I have particular names
in mind as I write; and the tale of the bravely endured hardships of some
of these sons of Syria who have made good in many a far-off land would
match the romantic story of the early struggles of Garfield or Lincoln.
The hospitality of the Syrians is no mere form or pretense, but a
sincere, winsome joy in ministering to the poor and the stranger. Their
courtesy is fortified by an invincible tact and a very keen knowledge of
human nature. Their speech, the strange guttural Arabic which sounds so
uncouth to the passing stranger, is one of the most beautiful, expressive
and widespread of languages, and has a wealth of fascinating literature.
Their religious fanaticism is grounded in an intense, unshakable belief
in the fact and the necessity of a divine revelation; and he who in the
heat of a ferocious bigotry will kill his neighbor is willing, if need
be, to die himself for the faith, whether it be in open warfare or by the
tortures of a slow martyrdom.
The native ideals of truthfulness and business honor are not, to be
frank, those of Anglo-Saxon nations. It is not considered very insulting
to call a Syrian a liar. But even in the Western business world all is
not truth and uprightness, and these men and women have an excuse which
we have not. For centuries their land has been ruled by a government
based upon untruth and injustice, and very often the only protection for
life or property lay in evasion and deceit. The wonder is that, in spite
of all, there are still so many Syrians who would swear to their own hurt
and change not, and who boldly urge upon their people the eradication of
what is perhaps their greatest racial shortcoming.
In brief, with all his faults, which we of the West are apt to
over-emphasize because they are not the same as our faults, the Syrian
is frugal, temperate, ambitious, adaptable, intellectually brilliant,
capable of infinite self-sacrifice for any great end, essentially
religious, generously hospitable, courteous in social intercourse and, to
his loved ones, extremely affectionate and faithful.
When to these admirable racial traits is added a sincere acceptance of
the moral teachings of religion, then, whatever his creed, the Syrian
makes a friend to be cherished very close to your heart.
CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF SATURN
“And behold, I am now in Beirut.” Thus wrote Prince Rib-addi to his
royal master, Pharaoh Amenhotep, thirty-three centuries ago; and when
the Tell el-Amarna Letters were sent from Syria to Egypt, about 1400
B. C., Beirut had long been one of the chief commercial cities of the
eastern Mediterranean. According to a Greek tradition, it was founded in
the Golden Age by the Titan Kronos, or Saturn, the father of Zeus. The
tutelary deity of the seaport, however, was Poseidon (Neptune), another
son of Saturn, who is represented on its coins driving his sea-horses, or
standing on the prow of a ship with his trident in one hand and a dolphin
in the other.
[Illustration: The Bay of Beirut and Mount Sunnin]
[Illustration: Among the pine groves of the Cape of Beirut]
The authentic history of the city begins with the records of its
conquerors. Rameses II. of Egypt and Sennacherib of Assyria commemorated
their successful Syrian campaigns by inscriptions still existing on the
cliffs of the Dog River, just north of Beirut. Centuries later, Alexander
the Great marched his conquering army through the city, Pompey added
it to the Roman Empire, and Augustus visited here his son-in-law, the
local governor. It was in Beirut that Herod the Great appeared as the
accuser of his two sons, who were thereupon convicted of conspiracy
and put to death by strangling. Vespasian passed through its streets
in triumphal progress on his way to assume the imperial crown, and in
its immense amphitheater Titus celebrated his capture of Jerusalem by a
magnificent series of shows and gladiatorial contests. During the First
Crusade, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and ruler of the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem, wrested the city from the Moslems after a long siege and
put its inhabitants to the sword. Seventy years later, the greatest of
all Saracen leaders, Saladin, recaptured the city from the Christians.
The names of the mighty warriors who since then have fought for the
possession of this old, old seaport are less familiar to Western readers;
yet few cities have had for so many centuries such intimate association
with the most renowned characters of history. There is a local tradition
that Christ Himself visited Beirut on the occasion of His journey “into
the borders of Tyre and Sidon,” and during the Middle Ages there was
exhibited here a miracle-working picture of Him, which was said to have
been painted by Nicodemus the Pharisee.
The inner harbor, still known as _Mar Jurjus_ or “St. George,” is
associated with what is perhaps the oldest of all myths. This took on
varying forms during the millenniums of its progress westward from the
Euphrates to the Atlantic. We find it first in the Babylonian Creation
Epic, which tells of the destruction of the chaos-monster by the solar
deity, Marduk. When the Greeks took over the ancient Asiatic mythology,
it was Perseus, child of the sun-god, who slew the dragon at Jaffa
and released the beautiful Andromeda. In the sixth century A. D., the
exploit was transferred to St. George, whose victory over the sea-monster
was perhaps an unconscious parable of the overthrow of heathenism by
Christianity.
St. George appears to have been a real person, who suffered martyrdom
about the year 300, possibly at Lydda in Palestine, where his tomb is
still shown. Singularly enough, this Syrian Christian has not only been
the patron saint of England since Richard Cœur de Lion came to the Holy
Land on the Third Crusade, but is also a very popular hero of the Moslems.
The historic character had, of course, nothing to do with any dragon, and
it was only many centuries after his death that he became identified with
the hero of the ancient Semitic myth, under its Perseus form. A mighty
monster, so the story runs, had long terrified the district of Beirut,
and was prevented from destroying the city only by receiving the annual
sacrifice of a beautiful virgin. One year the fateful lot fell upon the
daughter of the governor. When the poor girl was taken to the appointed
place, she knelt in prayer and besought God to send her a deliverer.
Whereupon St. George appeared in shining armor and, after a tremendous
battle, slew the monster, delivered the maiden, and freed the city from
its long reign of terror. Whether, like his prototype Perseus, he married
the rescued virgin, the story does not relate. We are told, however,
that the grateful father built a church in honor of the valiant champion
and also instituted a yearly feast in commemoration of his daughter’s
deliverance. During the Middle Ages, this was celebrated by Christians
and Moslems alike. Beside the Dog River can still be seen the ruins of an
ancient church and a mosque, both of which marked the supposed locality
of the contest; and here also is a very old well, into which the body of
the slain dragon is said to have been thrown.
The word _Beirût_ is doubtless derived from the ancient Semitic
place-name _Beeroth_,[8] which means, “wells,” and throughout the Arab
world such a designation immediately calls up a picture of fertile
prosperity. The triangular cape on whose northern shore the city
is situated projects from the foot of Lebanon five miles into the
Mediterranean and has an area of about sixteen square miles. This level
broadening of the coastal plain appears in striking contrast to the
country just north and south of it, where there is often hardly room
for a bridle-path between the cliffs and the sea. Beirut itself has
a population of nearly 200,000, and within sight are many scores of
flourishing villages. Indeed, with the possible exception of Damascus and
its environs, this is the most densely populated, intensely cultivated
and prosperous district in either Syria or Palestine.
The southwest side of the cape is bordered by great piles of sand, which
is said to have been brought hither by wind and tide all the way from
Egypt. Perhaps it did not travel so far as that; but after every heavy
rain a yellow stream runs northward through the Mediterranean close to
the shore and deposits its sediment when it strikes the edge of the
cape. The rapid shifting of these sand dunes under the influence of
the prevailing west winds is a continual menace to the city, and the
surrounding orchards would soon be overwhelmed if it were not for a
series of closely-planted pine groves which, since the first trees were
set out here in the seventeenth century by the Druse prince Fakhreddin,
have served as a barrier against the inroads of the wind-swept sand.
Back of the dark line of protecting pines, millions upon millions of
olive trees appear as one great mass of shimmering green. When Ibrahim
Pasha, the Egyptian conqueror of Syria, looked down from Lebanon upon the
country about Beirut, he exclaimed that three seas lay beneath him; the
blue Mediterranean, the yellow waste of sand and the silvery surface of
the olive forest which floods the fertile plain.
Near the lighthouse on the point, where perpendicular cliffs rise two
hundred feet out of the Mediterranean, the storm waves have cut a number
of lofty caverns. The water in most of these is so filled with fallen
rocks that, except when the sea is absolutely calm, it is unsafe to take
a boat into them; but the series of deep, gloomy caves is a challenge
to the swimmer. Beneath the surface of the crystal water can be seen
huge boulders covered with brilliant sea-anemones and sharp-spined
sea-urchins. From the liquid pavement the roof arches up into the
darkness like the nave of an old cathedral, or like some ruined palace
of Neptune. Occasional ledges provide convenient resting-places where
one can sit and watch the pigeons flying in and out, or listen to the
twitter of the swallows and the chatter of the frightened bats. The
caves sometimes harbor larger denizens than these. More than once, when
swimming before them, I have been startled to see the dog-like head of a
seal appear in the water close beside me.
Slanting up into the walls of these caverns are narrow tunnels where
the softer rock has been worn away by the seeping of the surface water
from above. If one cares to risk losing a little skin from the elbows
and knees, it is possible to climb many yards up these steep, slippery
shafts. One day, while walking along the top of the cliff, I came
upon the upper end of a natural chimney whose formation appeared so
unusually regular that I became curious to see what it might lead to.
So I slid down twelve or fifteen feet and dropped into the ashes of a
recent fire which had been built in the center of a cozy little cave
high above the water. The rocky point of the cape, honeycombed with dark
passages and secret hiding-places, is a favorite resort of smugglers,
especially on moonless nights; and in the bazaars of the city you can
buy many articles which have not been submitted to the extortions of the
Turkish custom-house. While I was a resident of Beirut, the “king of the
smugglers,” who lived near me, killed three revenue officers who were
interfering with his illicit trade. Bribery and intimidation, however,
soon removed all danger of prosecution for his various crimes; and a
few days later I saw him driving defiantly along the Shore Road in his
elegant carriage.
Beirut has suffered so severely from earthquakes, as well as from
besieging armies, that there remain no traces of very old buildings
except some columns of reddish Egyptian granite. Only a few of these
can now be seen above ground or lying under water at the bottom of the
harbor, where doubtless they were rolled by earthquake shocks; but from
the frequency with which they appear whenever excavations are made,
there must be a multitude of them scattered all over the site of the
ancient city.
Among the mountains just back of the cape are the ruins of a Roman
aqueduct, which supplied the city from a spring in the valley of the
Beirut River, six miles away. The ravine was bridged by a series of six
arches, arranged in four tiers. The lowest of these had two spans; the
highest had twenty-five, and rose a hundred and sixty feet above the
river-bed. On the west bank, the water was carried through a tunnel cut
in the solid rock of the mountainside. This opening is now filled with
fallen stones, and of the aqueduct itself there remain only a few broken
arches at the eastern end; yet the massive ruin, rising high above the
river amid these desolate, lonely surroundings, still suggests the wealth
and enterprise of the centuries long gone by.
During the last forty years Beirut has been abundantly provided with
water piped from the Dog River by an English company. So pure is this
supply that since its use became common the city has not known a single
outbreak of cholera or plague, though the surrounding country has often
been devastated by these diseases. One memorable year we watched a
fearful epidemic creep up the coast toward us, curve inland round the
edge of the district supplied with Dog River water, and then sweep back
again to the seashore and continue its terrible journey northward.
The Dog River was in ancient times known as the _Lycus_ or “Wolf” River.
It is said to have received its present name from a marvelous statue
of a dog set above the cliffs, which opened its stone mouth and barked
lustily at the approach of a hostile ship. Indeed, to this very day a
vivid imagination can discern the likeness of a huge mastiff in a certain
boulder, now submerged in the center of the stream.
The pass up its rocky gorge has been trod by many a great army. The
well-preserved bridge which now spans the stream was built by the
sultan Selim four hundred years ago; but a Latin inscription on the
cliff indicates that a military road was constructed here by Marcus
Aurelius as early as the second century, and on the sheer rocks at the
left bank of the river are cut panels whose records far antedate the
days of Roman supremacy. Ashur-nasir-pal, Shalmaneser, Tiglath-pileser,
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Rameses—such are the strange sounding names
given to the forms in bas-relief which still lift above the rushing
stream the scepters of their long-vanished power. The boastings of Greek
and Arabic conquerors are also found along this path of ancient armies
and—what seems in such surroundings a weak anti-climax—upon a panel which
originally bore one of the Egyptian inscriptions now appears the record
of the French expedition of 1860.
Four miles from the mouth of the Dog River, its principal tributary
bursts from a cave which extends far into the heart of Lebanon. Within
this are found stalactites of every shape and color, natural columns
as large and almost as symmetrical as those of the Parthenon, enormous
cathedral-like chambers, labyrinthine passages without number, deep icy
pools, and cascades whose dull thunder reverberates through the dark
depths of the mountain. With the aid of portable rafts, adventurous
explorers have penetrated this wonderful cavern for nearly a mile; but
at that distance there was no diminution of the volume of the stream or
any other indication that they had come at all near to the source of
the mysterious underground river. The light of their torches but dimly
revealed the roaring torrent ceaselessly speeding out from dark, distant
channels like those
“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
Although the Bay of Beirut opens to the Mediterranean at an obtuse
angle, it is so well protected from storms by the long cape that it
provides the safest anchorage between Port Saïd and Smyrna. I remember
only one tempest which blew so strongly that anchors could not hold and
steamers had to leave the port for the open sea. The harbor is crowded
with shipping of all sizes and shapes, from the little coastwise barks
and the queer, low Egyptian boats with their one triangular sail to the
great transatlantic liners which bring multitudes of tourists on cruises
to the Holy Land. About four thousand merchant vessels clear the port
annually. Since the dawn of history, Damascus has sent its exports hither
by the ancient caravan road. For the past eighteen years there has been a
railway across the mountains, and its recently completed branch to Aleppo
will doubtless attract more and more of the trade of northern Syria.
The exports from Beirut amount each year to over $4,000,000. About
one-third of this value is made up of raw silk; other important
commodities are olive oil, licorice and fruit. The character of the chief
imports is determined by the fact that the mountains are almost denuded
of large forest trees. Immense quantities of timber, metal girders,
firewood and petroleum must therefore be brought from abroad. The
dependence of Syria upon other countries for the materials used in modern
construction was illustrated in the building of the American Girls’
School in Beirut. The lumber came from Maine, the doors and windows from
Massachusetts, the desks and chairs from New York, the clay tiles from
France, the zinc roof of the cupola from England, and the glass from
Austria.
[Illustration: Bridge over the Dog River built by Sultan Selim]
[Illustration: Procession in the Serai Square of Beirut in celebration of
the granting of a constitution to the Turkish Empire in 1909]
The cream-colored sandstone for this and a multitude of other structures
was, however, quarried near Beirut. The stone makes a fine building
material, as it is easily worked, attractive in appearance and very
durable. But unfortunately it is at first quite porous, and newly-erected
houses are dangerously damp until the rains of two or three winters have,
on their way through the walls, first dissolved a certain amount of the
stone and then deposited it in the interstices. So the Syrian proverb
says, “When you build a house, rent it the first year to your enemy, the
second year to your friend, and the third year move into it yourself.”
The traveler who journeys to Beirut from the west is naturally impressed
by its scenes of Oriental life; but to one who has come hither from
Lebanon or Damascus or even from Jerusalem, it seems almost a European
city. Here is a French gas company, an English waterworks, a German
hospital and an American college; here are post and telegraph offices, a
harbor filled with shipping, and the terminus of a busy railway system.
Four lines of electric tram-cars furnish quick transportation through
the main streets to the attractive suburbs, and many of the wealthier
residents possess automobiles. A score of printing-presses are at work
and daily newspapers are sold by shouting newsboys. There are a dozen
good hotels; and well-equipped stores, run on European lines, are rapidly
crowding out the tiny shops of the typical Oriental merchant. Gaudy
billboards extol the virtues of French cosmetics, English insurance
companies and American sewing machines, phonographs and shoes, or
announce the subjects of the moving-picture dramas for the coming week.
Carriages throng the principal thoroughfares, the better class of
citizens wear European costumes, and no passenger-steamship drops anchor
in the harbor without being met by the red-shirted boatmen and suave
interpreters of the enterprising tourist-agencies.
To the casual visitor, Beirut seems therefore a very peaceable,
matter-of-fact place. He does not experience the feeling of
half-confessed uneasiness which marked his strolls through the native
quarters of other Oriental cities. Yet the busy every-day life of the
seaport moves upon the thin crust of a seething volcano of hate, which
all too often breaks out into murderous rage.
The Moslem inhabitants are, of course, backed by all the power of the
government, legal and illegal; but they are much inferior in numbers and
in wealth to the Christian population. Religious jealousy is therefore
never far from the boiling-point. Any insult or violence offered by an
adherent of the one faith to a believer in the other is the signal for a
long series of reprisals and counter-reprisals, and there is always the
possibility that these may culminate in general rioting and massacre.
The morning I first landed in Beirut, the Christian watchman of the
American Press was found almost literally cut in pieces. The assassin was
absolutely identified by the print of his bare foot in a mass of soft
mortar; but, being a Moslem, the authorities quickly released him and,
without any evidence whatever, arrested a near relative of the dead man.
The poor fellow had a perfect alibi, yet he was kept in prison until the
family signified their willingness to have the police department refrain
from any further investigation of the murder. This is a favorite method
of procedure when a Moslem is guilty of a crime against a Christian.
It used to be a rare week that we heard of no assassinations, and a rarer
year that knew no general rioting. One winter there was a murder each
night for six weeks, Christians and Moslems being killed alternately.
So regular was the succession of reprisals that a friend whom I had
invited to make an evening visit with me postponed the trip on the
ground that “this is the night for a Christian to be killed.” Frequent
rumors would reach us of impending invasions of the Christian Quarter
by Moslem mobs, and more than once the portentous war-cry of _Din! Din
Mohammed!_—“The Faith! The Faith of Mohammed!”—rang in the ears of the
terrified Christians. The morning I ended my residence in Beirut it was
a prominent Moslem who was assassinated at the door of his own home. A
few days afterwards, murderous mobs swept through the city chanting, “Oh,
how sweet; oh, how joyful to cut the Christians’ throats!” The empty
cartridges picked up after the slaughter were of the make imported
exclusively for the use of the Turkish soldiers at the government
barracks.
The undying religious hatred and frequent violence do not, however,
endanger the lives of European or American residents, and probably never
will do so unless some insane mob should get quite beyond the control of
its leaders. Islam has learned the power of foreign warships. It should
also be added that the native Protestants are hardly ever molested, save
by accident, during these internecine conflicts; for the Moslems realize
that this portion of the population never takes any part in religious
strife. Even in the terrible summer of 1860, when all Syria was drenched
with blood, only nine Protestants were killed.
During the past few months there has developed a new and unexpected phase
of Beirut strife. Since the revolution of the Young Turks, a vigorous
demand for political righteousness and even-handed justice has, in spite
of all set-backs, been growing steadily among every race and faith of
the empire. In Syria the new ideals and hopes found expression in the
organization of a “Committee of Reform,” which demanded such elemental
rights as the appointment of an Arabic-speaking governor of Beirut and
the use of the vernacular in the courts of justice. Up to the present
time, the governor has always been a Turk, and Turkish judges have
understood the language of bribery better than the Arabic pleas of poor
men who appeared before them.
Last spring the differences between the people of Beirut and the
government became so acute that the city was put under martial law by
the pasha, who also issued a proclamation dissolving the local branch of
the Reform Committee and forbidding further gatherings of the citizens
or discussion in the public press. Every newspaper of the city protested
against these despotic acts by printing an issue which was absolutely
blank, save that in the center of the first page there appeared the
odious proclamation. Since then the governor has been recalled and, on
the surface, the city is more quiet. But the startling, unhoped-for
feature of this latest contest is that—for the first time in the
sanguinary history of Beirut—Moslems and Christians and Jews have for
the moment put aside their ancient feuds, that they might present a
united front to the aggressions of the tyrannical local government. This
spirit of union, even more than the desire for political reform which
gave it birth, promises a new era of peace and prosperity for the most
progressive city of beautiful, blood-stained Syria.
As has been said, however, the ordinary traveler sees no evidences
of strife in the streets of Beirut. The largest and most conspicuous
class of people whom he meets are not assassins or revolutionists, but
students. This is no new thing, for the city has long been famous as
a seat of learning. From the third to the sixth centuries A. D., its
law school was the greatest in the Roman Empire, excelling even that
of the capital and numbering its students by the thousand. One of the
three commissioners who prepared the _Institutes_ of Justinian was
Professor Dorotheus of Beirut. In the early Saracen centuries, also, the
city attained much scholarly fame and sent forth many of the foremost
authorities on Moslem law and doctrine.
At the present day it is the greatest educational center in the Near
East. Besides the schools maintained by each of the native churches
and the mosque-schools and government academies, and institutions
supported—presumably for political reasons by Italy and Russia, there
are schools or colleges of the French Sisters of Charity, Sisters of
the Holy Family, Ladies of Nazareth, Lazarists, Franciscans, Capuchins
and Jesuits, the German Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, the British Syrian
Mission, the Church of Scotland Mission to the Jews, and the American
Presbyterian Mission, not to mention a number of others which have been
organized by private individuals of missionary and philanthropic spirit.
The total number of students who are being educated along modern lines is
over twenty thousand.
Yet in this city of schools and colleges, if the stranger tells his
coachman to drive to _el-Kulliyet_—“the College”—he will be taken without
question to an institution which is incorporated under the laws of
the State of New York; and a short visit here will show why this is
acknowledged to be _the_ college of Beirut. Upon a beautifully situated
campus of fifty acres, twenty imposing stone buildings house the seven
departments of what is really a large, well-equipped university of eighty
instructors and nearly a thousand students, with observatory and library
and scientific laboratories and hospitals, as well as literary, dramatic,
musical and scientific societies and its own printing-press and monthly
magazine.
Many important things are being learned and done at the Syrian Protestant
College; but what strikes the observant visitor as most admirable of all
is the spirit of the institution, a spirit of thoroughness and manliness
and loyal fraternity and encouraging optimism. More than anything else
in Beirut—yes, more than anything else in western Asia—the “S. P. C.,”
as its students and alumni call it, stands for the best gifts of Western
civilization and for a new hope which, lighted first in beautiful
Syria, is already beginning to shine on many a land far out of sight of
heavenward-reaching Lebanon.
CHAPTER IV
THE SPIRIT OF OLYMPIA
Mount Lebanon looks to-day upon such a contest as it has never seen
before. Yet Syria has witnessed many struggles. From the time men first
began to fight, this land has hardly had opportunity to learn what peace
and quiet mean. There are people on the campus of the American College
this afternoon who can remember when the slopes of the mountain ran with
blood; some of the best sprinters know what it is to flee for their
lives, and even this week there has been killing on the streets of Beirut.
The contest to-day, however, is a new thing under the Syrian sun. It
is not the first time that athletic games have been held—there was a
field-day as far back as 1898—but this time the preparations have been of
an unusual character. During the whole week, men have been busy rolling
and marking the track and removing every stick and pebble from the
football field. The classrooms have been emptied of all their chairs and
benches, and the faculty committee has erected four grand stands, seating
over a thousand people. These will not begin to accommodate all the
spectators, however, and students living in dormitories that front on the
athletic field find that they have suddenly become very popular among the
ladies of the city.
The football teams have ordered sweaters and shin-guards from England,
and the Beirut tailors have been puzzling their brains over queerly
shaped garments for the sprinters. The medals on exhibition in the
college library were struck in Boston especially for this occasion, and
bear on their faces the college emblem, a cedar of Lebanon. Besides the
prizes for each event, the American consul will give a gold medal to the
champion all-round athlete. Best of all, the governor of Lebanon has
promised to attend and has sent his famous military band to provide the
afternoon’s music. When to these various good things is added the glory
of a Syrian springtime, and a campus set high on a bluff overlooking the
blue Mediterranean, with Mount Lebanon raising its snow-capped summits
high in the background, it is an occasion and a setting to quicken the
slowest pulse.
To-day is so full of excitement, however, that nobody thinks very much
of anything outside the athletic field. The governor’s band has come
early, with all kinds of instruments, especially those which make a
very loud noise. A tent has been erected for them in the center of the
field, and over the tent is a little American flag. The East is always
so incomprehensible and contradictory that it occasions no particular
surprise that a Syrian military band should be playing Sousa marches
under the American colors.
But it looks as if we had at last succeeded in making the East hustle a
little. All Beirut seems to be crowding into the campus. It is almost a
part of his religion for an Oriental never to do anything on time; yet
the grand stands are already full, and the soldiers stationed at the
gate-house can hardly hold the crowds back long enough for the porter
to collect their tickets. The scene is dazzling, dizzying, bewildering,
like Coney Island and the Derby and the Yale-Princeton game all jumbled
together.
There must be at least five thousand strangers on the college grounds,
and every color of the spectrum is here, especially the very brilliant
ones. The military band, with their blue uniforms and red fezes, seem
almost shabby and dull in comparison with the more garish coloring all
around them. The seats are mostly filled with women, whose showy dresses
are hideous individually and beautiful as part of the general color
scheme. Moslem harems are here with their weird veils, and there are many
pretty Levantines in rich, inappropriate silks and satins. In Syria,
however, the ladies do not monopolize the bright garments. Handsome
young Turkish officers swagger along under yards of gold lace, merchants
from the city are wearing their best and baggiest satin trousers and
embroidered waistcoats and broad silk sashes, while the sons of Egyptian
millionaires sport the elegantly fitting coats and tinted vests which
now form the favorite costume of the streets of Cairo. The color spreads
over the field and up the grand stands, with bright splashes along the
sides of the dormitories. Long strips of red and white bunting flaunt
the college colors; American and British and Greek and Turkish flags
wave above, and the students’ windows are decorated with their national
emblems or class banners.
Early in the afternoon an American tutor, while ushering the women of
a Moslem harem across the campus, suggested, in rather labored Arabic,
that they pass around the back of one of the dormitories so as to avoid
the crowd. Imagine his surprise and consternation when one of the ladies
replied, “No, thank you; I’d rather go around in front”—and said it in
perfect English, with just a suspicion of a Yankee twang! Who was hidden
behind that black veil? What foolish, tragic venture had brought it about
that an American girl should dwell behind the latticed windows of a
Moslem seraglio?
But the students have no intention of being obscured by their guests.
They are out a thousand strong, with their best clothes and their loudest
voices. They represent every race and tongue and faith of the Near East,
with here and there a stranger from Europe or South America. At first
thought, it seems as though they could never be amalgamated, even for
an afternoon. Here, for example, are a dozen names, representing as many
nationalities; Hafiz Abd-ul-Malik, Neshan Hamyartsumian, Ahmed Zeki,
Basileios Theodoropolous, Tahir Huseini, Carlos d’Oliveira, Aldo Villa,
Mordecai Elstein, Emmanuel Mattsson, Joseph Miklasievicz, Eugène Faure,
Emile Kirchner. As to religion, they are Moslems, Jews, Druses, Babites,
and Christians of every sect. Some of the languages they speak are
Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Chaldean, Persian, Greek, Yiddish, English,
Swedish, Bulgarian, Abyssinian, Italian, German, French, Portuguese,
Spanish, Polish and Russian. As to geographical distribution, they come
from the Balkans in the north and from Baghdad, forty days’ journey to
the east; from a thousand miles up the Nile, and from New York and Brazil
in the west.
Probably no other institution in the world includes such a mixture of
antagonistic peoples and religions, and, until quite recently, the
members of each of the more largely represented races kept closely
together. It used to be seldom that a Jew, for instance, associated with
an Armenian outside of class hours. In the evenings the Greek students
would gather in one another’s rooms, or march around the campus arm in
arm, singing their national songs. The Egyptians, most of whom were of
very wealthy families, promenaded together, discussing the fleshpots of
Cairo. Even among the Syrians, who have always formed the majority of the
student body, there were lines of division between the men from Tripoli
in the north and from Sidon or Jedeideh in the south. If these groups
are considered as being separated by latitudinal lines, there were also
the longitudinal divisions between Christian and Moslem and Jew; and
sometimes long-cherished feuds broke into flame and pitched battles took
place on the campus.
[Illustration: Students of the American College celebrating an athletic
victory]
[Illustration: The Cape of Beirut viewed from Mount Lebanon]
Not the least benefit arising from the introduction of American athletic
sports has been a weakening of these ancient racial and religious
barriers. The antagonisms still exist, strong and danger-breeding; but
there has been a large advance made toward a more catholic college
spirit. It would not be true to say that athletics has been the only
cause, or even the chief cause of this change; for by precept and
example, by religious instruction and social intercourse, the faculty are
continually molding the characters of these young men. Yet it is true
that in the case of more than one recalcitrant student whom no other
influence seemed able to touch, the latent manliness has been brought out
through his newly awakened interest in sports.
Most Orientals are very averse to physical exercise. Their traditional
idea of enjoyment is to sit under an awning, drinking coffee and playing
backgammon. That a man should go out and run around a track in shameless
nakedness, and this with no hope of gain, only strengthens their
conclusion that all Franks are mad. The Syrians are an imitative people,
however, and some years ago the influence of the younger instructors
tempted a few of the preparatory boys out for foot-races. But you cannot
run a hundred-yard dash with long, baggy trousers and a silk robe which
flops about your ankles. Even if you “gird up the loins” by tucking your
skirts into your sash, the effect is more startling than speedy. Soon,
one by one, the students ordered trousers from the city tailors. At first
these garments were poorly cut and viewed with suspicion; but to-day
there are hardly three men in the academic and graduate departments who
wear the native costume outside of their rooms, and many of the students
dress with an elegance that their professors cannot afford to emulate.
It was football, however, that did the most toward unification of the
heterogeneous student body. The value of team-work is a comparatively new
idea to western Asia and eastern Europe. Since the days of Alcibiades
and Absalom the old ideal has been that of “every man for himself.” If
it had not been so, the history of the world might have been different.
It was comparatively easy to understand the joy of winning a foot-race
or a tennis tournament; but to play an untheatrical part in a match,
obeying the captain and working for the good of the team—that was a very
different thing. The students always play the association game, and it
used to be the ambition of every youth to get the ball, and carry it down
the field all by himself, while the audience cheered, “Bravo, bravo!” So
the faculty arranged matches with the crews of visiting British warships,
and from sad experience the college learned the value of side plays and
frequent passes, and began to see dimly that good football is played, not
with the legs and mouth alone, but with the head, and that hard team-work
is better than grand stand exploits.[9] That lesson may some day change
the map of Asia.
The physical director of the college now has under his charge no fewer
than eighteen football teams, besides twelve basketball teams, six hockey
teams, four baseball teams and a cross-country running club; thirty men
play at cricket regularly, forty-seven hold certificates or medals of
the (British) Royal Life Saving Society, and there are a hundred and
thirty-five entries for to-day’s field and track events.[10]
It makes one homesick to hear the cheers. With the exception of an
occasional “meet” with some mission school, like those at Jerusalem and
Sidon, there is no opportunity to compete with rival institutions.
Indeed, there is no other college in the Near East which would have any
chance of winning in competition with the “S. P. C.” So the enthusiasm
finds a vent in cheering for the various schools of the university and
for the class champions. Three of the departments—the preparatory,
academic and medical—are each as large as many an American college. The
competition among these runs very high, and to-day a banner is to be
given to the one whose members shall score most points. Now the various
department “yells” have stopped for a moment, and an upper classman
starts the college cheer, just as inane to read and just as soul-stirring
to hear as are those of Harvard or Yale or Princeton. There is a good
deal of singing, too. The college song, like that of Cornell, is set to
the tune of “Annie Lisle,” but the words are full of local allusions—
“Far, far above the waters
Of the deep blue sea,
Lies the campus of the college
Where we love to be.
“Far away, behold Keneiseh!
Far beyond, Sunnin!
Rising hoary to the heavens,
Clad in glorious sheen.”
Suddenly an usher comes running from the gate-house with the news that
the governor’s carriage is in sight. It can hardly be true, however; for
it still lacks a few minutes of two o’clock, and it would be contrary to
Syrian custom for an official of such exalted rank to arrive at the same
time with ordinary people. Probably he will come at about three o’clock,
and stay a half hour or so, just to assure the college of his good-will.
Indeed, this will be the first time that a governor has even put in an
appearance at the annual games. But, after all, the usher is right. The
pasha is coming—three minutes ahead of time! There is hardly a consul
on the dignitaries’ platform; even the American representative has not
arrived yet, and there would be no one properly to welcome the governor,
if the president of the college did not throw dignity to the winds and
sprint across the campus to meet him.
The escort rides in at a slow canter, with sabers glistening and
accouterments clattering. First come young officers, handsome and
foppish, their bosoms heavy with gold lace and medals, and their Arab
stallions snorting and prancing; then follows the guard of grizzled,
sunburned Lebanon soldiers, clothed in blue Zouave uniforms and holding
repeating-rifles across the pommels of their saddles. Behind the soldiers
are carriages containing the members of the staff and their ladies; and
last of all, attended by outriders, the carriage of his excellency. The
pasha is a thin little old man with a gray beard and shrewd, tired eyes;
and, in striking contrast to his gayly caparisoned escort, he is quietly
dressed in a dark business suit. He is a Pole by birth, a Roman Catholic
by religion, a Turkish soldier by profession, and a gentleman by instinct
and breeding. A son of the governor is also here. He is an attaché of
the Turkish embassy at Paris, and one would take him for a cultured
Frenchman. The wife of the attaché is a young American woman, a member of
one of our best-known and wealthiest New York families.
Among the other guests in the seats of honor are a Greek priest, a
Moslem _mollah_ and a Druse emir. The senior missionary is telling the
professor of philosophy how Yale used to play football back in the
fifties, while the lady of the German consul is talking babies to the
senior missionary’s wife. The Welsh doctor, who used to live in Brazil,
is talking French to the Italian professor from Cairo. The exporter of
Damascus rugs is swapping Dakota stories with the Syrian editor who took
the Arab troupe to the Chicago Exposition.
And in the middle of the field the official announcer is lifting up a
megaphone to shout across the babel of tongues—
“Winner of the dromedary race, Saladin; second, Haroun al Raschid; third,
Sinbad. The next event will be the high jump on enchanted carpets!”
At least, that is what one would expect to hear amid this brilliant
theatrical setting. But instead the call comes in faultless English—
“All out for the hundred-yard dash!”
In the finals of this race there are four men; a Greek, an Egyptian
and two Syrians. Khalil Meshaqah, of the medical school, wins in ten
and two-fifth seconds, without spikes, and on a dirt track[11] without
guiding ropes. The college is not ashamed of its athletic records. Among
its prize winners this afternoon are the best jumper of the Island of
Cyprus, the champion swimmer of Alexandria, and the Greek who won the
hundred-meter race in the recent Pan-Hellenic Games at Athens. On the
first few field-days the Greeks carried everything before them; indeed,
on one occasion three Greeks from Cyprus made more points than all
the other students combined. Now, however, after only a few years of
training, some splendid athletes are being developed among the Syrians,
Armenians and Egyptians. Of the six men who win most points to-day, four
are Syrians, one is a Greek and one is a Scotchman.
The announcer comes out again into the center of the field and shouts
through his megaphone, first in English and then in Arabic—
“The discus has just been thrown one hundred and ten feet, breaking the
college record!”
So the campus bursts into a new uproar of shouting and singing, and the
students make quite unnecessary inquiries as to “What’s the matter with
McLaughlan?” while somebody tries to explain what it is all about to
the Turkish governor, who understands neither English nor Arabic, and
the governor’s daughter-in-law looks as if she were thinking of Travers
Island.
It would take too long to describe all the events of the day: how Nedrah
Meshaqah wins the thousand-yard “campus race,” how Iatrou keeps the
shot-put in the Greek ranks, or how Bedr breaks the record for the high
jump. The real significance of the occasion is that it is all so like the
field-meets of our American colleges at home.
The only typically Syrian event is the jareed-throw—and the javelin has
since been included among American field-events. The jareed is a blunt
dart about four feet long and an inch in diameter, and it is always
thrown underhand. The Arabs use it in various games, somewhat as the old
Greeks employed the javelin. At the college it is thrown for distance;
and this is one of the most interesting contests, as it requires not only
strength and quickness but a peculiar knack which it is almost impossible
for a foreigner to learn. It looks very easy to one who has tossed
baseballs all his life; yet when the American first attempts to throw
the short, light stick, he sends it whirling around like a windmill. But
watch that young Druse sheikh, as he carefully balances the jareed upon
his finger, and then grasps it gently but firmly at the approved spot.
A few slow swings of the arm to get the direction, a lean backward
until the stick nearly touches the ground behind, then a jump forward
and a throw so long that his hand moves fully nine feet in a straight
line before it lets the missile go with a furious rifling motion—and the
jareed darts up and off with a queer little nervous twist like an angry
snake, and drops nearly two hundred feet away, with a force that would
have broken a man’s skull.
It is a proud moment for thirty Eastern athletes when they step up to the
platform where the governor and his staff are sitting, and receive their
medals from the Norwegian wife of the American consul and the American
daughter-in-law of the Turkish pasha. Everything is over now except the
football game, and the governor has stayed through it all, thus giving a
most signal mark of his interest and approval. He indicates his wish to
retire, and the crowd gives way for his escort. The carriages drive up
to the grand stand with much snapping of whips, and the outriders prance
gayly around on their restive Arabs. But just then the football teams run
out into the field, resplendent in their new uniforms; and the governor
repents of his decision to leave, sinks back into his seat and motions
the carriages to drive away.
The captain of the medical team is a great, bearded Syrian, six feet
tall. The captain of the collegiate eleven is two inches taller, also a
Syrian in name and very proud of his country and race, but with a sense
of humor and a knowledge of team-work which he probably inherited from
his American mother. One of the full-backs is a very sturdy fellow who
was born in Cyprus of a French mother and speaks Greek as his native
tongue; but there is a canny twinkle in his eye and a burr in his speech
which make it seem quite natural that his name should begin with “Mac.”
Many brilliant plays are made by the son of an Egyptian millionaire, the
Druse sheikh who won the jareed throw, and an American from Jerusalem.
The collegiate eleven is composed of four Syrians, three Egyptians,
an Armenian, a Scotchman, an American and an Austrian; but racial and
religious differences are forgotten as they play together for the honor
of their side. It is a hard game, yet a very fair one, and when the
“Medics” win by a score of two goals to one, even the college men lustily
cheer the victors.
As the gay-colored crowd breaks over the field, his fellow-students seize
the captain of the winning team and carry him around on their shoulders,
singing and shouting all the while. Medical banners wave, medical hats
and fezes are thrown into the air and medical men cheer until they can
cheer no more. Soon the other students join in, and department rivalries
are forgotten in a loud enthusiasm for _alma mater_. At the dinner
hour the usual rules of decorum are for once relaxed, and the happy
pandemonium continues until bedtime. Then at last, tired and sleepy
and voiceless, the college settles down to a long rest, after the best
field-day that has ever been held in the Turkish Empire.
CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS
Railways and carriage-roads in Syria are chiefly due to French
enterprise. The _Société Ottomane des Chemins de Fer de Damas, Hama
et Prolongements_ has less rolling stock than its lengthy name might
lead one to expect, and its slow schedule is not always observed with a
mechanical Western exactness. Although Damascus is barely fifty miles
from Beirut, the journey thither takes ten hours; for the constantly
curving railway measures more than ninety miles and the total rise of
its numerous steep grades is over 7,000 feet. This single, narrow-gauge
road, which is carried over two high mountain ranges, is an admirable
example of modern engineering, and the scenery through which it passes is
a source of unbroken delight.
As we zig-zag up the western slope of Lebanon there appear, now at our
right and now at our left, a succession of beautiful panoramas which
differ one from the other only in revealing a constantly widening
horizon. Rich, populous valleys, lying deep between the shoulders of the
mountains, slope quickly downward to the coast where, farther and farther
below us, the silvery-green olive orchards and golden sands of Beirut
reach out into the ever-broadening azure expanse of the Mediterranean.
Sometimes great masses of billowing clouds drift up the valleys, so
that for a while we seem to be traveling along a narrow isthmus between
foaming seas. The people of Aleih—a charming summer resort where the
mountainside is so steep that there is no room for a curve and the train
has to back up the next leg of the ascent—are the butt of many a popular
tale. One day, so the wits of the neighboring villages relate, these
foolish fellows mistook the rising tide of mist for the sea itself, and
the whole populace prepared to go fishing.
Another time a number of residents of Aleih went to Beirut to buy shoes.
On their way back they all sat on a wall to rest; and when they were
ready to go on again, behold, the new shoes were all exactly the same
size, shape and color, and no man could tell which of the feet were his.
So there they sat, in sad perplexity as to how they should ever reach
home, until a passer-by, to whom they explained their difficulty, smote
the shoes smartly one after the other with his stick and thus enabled
each person to recognize his own feet.
A third Aleih story also exemplifies the ridiculous exaggeration which
so delights a Syrian audience. It seems that the only public well in
the village used to be the subject of frequent quarrels between the
inhabitants of the upper and lower quarters. So finally the sheikh
stretched a slender pole across the middle of the opening and commanded
that thenceforth each of the two opposing factions was to draw only from
its own side. For a time all went peaceably; but one dark night a zealous
partisan was discovered diligently at work dipping water from the farther
side of the pole and pouring it into his half of the well!
[Illustration]
Shortly after leaving Aleih, the train turns straight east and climbs
with labored puffings up the shoulder of Jebel Keneiseh to the
watershed, 4,800 feet above Beirut. It is very much cooler now. In
mid-summer, refreshing breezes blow down from unseen snowbanks among the
mountaintops. In winter—if, indeed, the traffic is not entirely blocked
by drifts which choke the railway cuts—the journey is memorable for
its piercing, inescapable cold, and the natives who gather idly at the
stations wear heavy sheepskin cloaks and keep their heads and shoulders
swathed in thick shawls, though, strangely enough, their legs may be bare
and their frost-bitten feet protected only by low slippers.
At last the jolting of the rack-and-pinion ceases, the train quickens its
speed, passes through two short tunnels, swings around a high embankment;
and over the crests of the lower hills we see a long, narrow stretch of
level country, bordered on its farther side by a wall-like line of very
steep mountains. The profile of the “Eastern Mountains”—as we behold
them from this point we can hardly avoid using the Syrian name for
Anti-Lebanon—seems almost exactly horizontal, and the resemblance of the
range to a tremendous rampart is heightened by the massive buttresses
which reach out at regular intervals between the courses of the winter
torrents.
The valley before us is that which the Greeks named _Coele-Syria_ or
“Hollow Syria.” In modern Arabic it is called the _Bikaʿ_ or “Cleft.”
Just as in Palestine the Jordan River and its two lakes are hemmed in by
mountains which rise many thousand feet above, so in Syria the Bikaʿ
stretches between the parallel ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. There
is, however, one striking difference between the two valleys. That of
the Jordan is a deep depression, and the mouth of the river is nearly
1,300 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, the
central valley of Syria throughout its entire length lies considerably
above sea-level, and at its highest point reaches an elevation of about
4,000 feet. The Bikaʿ, which is seventy miles long and from seven to
ten miles wide, is exceedingly fertile, and in it rise the two largest
rivers of Syria. Near their sources the Orontes and Leontes pass within
less than two miles of each other; yet the former flows to the north
past Kama and Aleppo, while the latter turns southward and reaches the
Mediterranean between Tyre and Sidon.
[Illustration: Conventionalized cross-section of Syria from Beirut (B) to
Damascus (D). The horizontal distances are marked in miles, the vertical
in feet.]
The Bikaʿ extends north and south as far as we can see and is apparently
as level as a floor. There are hardly any trees on it, only two or three
tiny hamlets and no isolated buildings. The Syrian farmers prefer to
dwell on the hillsides; for there the water of the springs is cooler, it
is easier to guard the villages against marauding bands, and all of the
arable land below is left free for cultivation. So the great flat fields
of plowed earth or ripening grain which fill the valley seem the pattern
of a long Oriental carpet in rich reds and browns and greens and yellows,
unrolled between the mountains.
As we pass from the shadow of a last obstructing embankment, there bursts
upon our vision the glorious patriarch of Syrian peaks. Twenty-five miles
to the south the splendid crest of Hermon towers into the cloudless sky a
full mile above the surrounding heights.
The familiar Hebrew name of this famous mountain means the “Sacred One,”
and the expression “the Baal of Hermon,”[12] seems to indicate that in
very ancient times it bore a popular shrine. The Jews also knew it by its
Amorite title _Senir_, the “Banner.” Modern Syrians sometimes refer to it
as the “Snow Mountain,” for its summit is capped with white long after
the summer sun has melted the drifts from the lower peaks. Most commonly,
however, it is called _esh-Sheikh_, which means “the Old Man,” or rather
“the Chieftain,” for age and authority are indissolubly associated in
the thought of the Arabic-speaking world.[13]
Hermon is by far the most conspicuous landmark in all Palestine and
Syria. I have seen it from the north, south, east and west. I have
admired it from its own near foothills and from a hundred and fifty miles
away. Viewed from every side it has the same shape—a long, gently rising
cone of wonderful beauty; wherever you stand, it seems to be squarely
facing you; and from every viewpoint it dominates the landscape as do few
other mountains in the world.
This sacred peak influenced the religious idealism of many centuries.
Upon its slopes lay Dan, the farthest point of the Land of Promise.
“From Dan to Beer-sheba,” from the great mountain of the north to the
wells of the South Country, stretched the Holy Land. Hebrew poets and
prophets sang of the plenteous dew of Hermon, its deep forests, its
wild, free animal life. Upon its rugged shoulders the Greeks and Romans
continued the worship of the old Syrian nature-gods. Hither, in the tenth
century, fled from Egypt Sheikh ed-Durazy and made it the center of the
new Druse religion. Above its steep precipices the Crusaders built two
of their largest castles. But one most solemn event of all uplifts the
sacred mountain even closer to the skies; for on some unnamed summit of
the “Chieftain” the supreme Leader stood when the heavens opened for His
transfiguration.
We cross the valley rapidly to the junction-station of Rayak and
then, again ascending, penetrate the Eastern Mountains by a winding
river-course which, as we follow it higher and higher, affords fine
views over the Bikaʿ to the range of Lebanon through which we were so
long traveling. Directly opposite us stands Jebel Keneiseh, bare, brown
and forbidding, while beside it rises the loftier Sunnin. When viewed
from the coast, this noble mountain reveals one long, even slope to
its topmost crest; but its back is made up of a multitude of rounded
eminences, so that it resembles an enormous blackberry. Twenty miles
to the north of Sunnin, near the famous Cedars of Lebanon, the range
culminates in a group of snow-capped peaks which lack the impressiveness
of Hermon’s haughty isolation, yet which actually rise two thousand feet
above even the Sheikh Mountain.
After crossing the watershed of Anti-Lebanon, we turn south through the
lovely little vale of Zebedani. At our left are the highest summits
of the range; at our right are precipitous cliffs which, save for a
glimpse of the snows of Hermon, shut off the distant view; but between
these heights is a scene of quiet, comfortable beauty. The tract is
well-watered and fertile, and its wheat-fields are as level as the
surface of a lake. Indeed, there surely must have been a lake here once
upon a time. Along the eastern edge of the grain-land are charming,
green-hedged gardens and closely planted orchards and long lines of
poplar trees, while low-bent vines hug the sunny slopes at the mountain’s
foot. This high but sheltered valley is one of the few places in Syria
where really fine apples are grown, and the grapes and apricots of
Zebedani are famous throughout the whole country.
In a small marshy lake among the hills that border the rich, slumbrous
little plain there rises one of the world’s greatest rivers; great not
in size—at its widest it is hardly more than a mountain brook and no
ship has ever sailed its waters—but great because it has made one of
the proudest cities of earth; for this slender stream which winds so
leisurely through the wheat-fields of Zebedani is the far-famed Abana,
and Abana is the father of Damascus.
At the lower end of the valley, the brook turns sharply eastward through
a break in the mountains, and we follow it swiftly down a succession of
narrow chasms and wild ravines, all the way to the end of our journey.
The first two hours of our ride we traveled but twelve miles: the last
two hours we slide forty miles around short, confusing curves. Sometimes
there are distant views of bare, reddish summits; often we are hemmed in
by the dense growth of trees which border the stream; but we are never
far from the rushing waters of the Abana.
There is ancient history along our route, not to speak of legends
innumerable. The little village of Suk Wadi Barada or “Barada Valley
Market,” was once called Abila, and was the chief city of the Tetrarchy
of Abilene, the fixed date of whose establishment helps us to compute
the chronology of the Gospels.[14] The valley itself is still known here
as Abila; and therefore, through a characteristic confusion of names,
the Moslems locate the grave of Abel on the summit of an adjoining hill.
Cain, they say, was at his wits’ end how to dispose of the dead body of
his brother, for burial was of course unknown to him; so the murderer
carried the corpse on his back many days, seeking in vain a place where
he might securely conceal the evidence of his crime. At last, according
to the Koran, “God sent a raven which scratched upon the ground, to show
him how he might hide his brother’s corpse.”[15]
Across the ravine from Suk Wadi Barada we can see the remains of an
ancient road hewn in the solid rock, and a ruined aqueduct which some
say was built by Queen Zenobia to carry the water of the Abana across
the desert to Palmyra. It is almost certain, however, that both road and
aqueduct, as well as the tombs whose openings appear higher up in the
cliff, were constructed in the second century by the Romans.
Ain Fijeh, the next important village, bears a peculiarly redundant name,
which reminds us of German Baden-Baden. The first word is Arabic and
the second is a corruption of the Greek _pege_, and both mean “spring.”
But, after all, “Spring Spring” is not such a bad name; for there gushes
from a cave in the rock such an abundant fountain that the Abana here
increases threefold in volume, and mediæval Arab geographers, as well as
the modern inhabitants of the mountains, are unanimous in considering
this the principal source of the river. From the cold, clear spring, a
small tile aqueduct has for the last few years carried drinking-water
to Damascus. Unfortunately, however, only a few of the more important
buildings are as yet supplied from this source, and the common people
are loath to journey to the public fountains when there are all over the
city so many nearer—and dirtier—streams from which to draw. “The Moslems,
especially, prefer to drink water which runs in the open rather than that
which is piped,” said a native physician in answer to my questions as to
the health of Damascus. “So, you see,” he added facetiously, “my practice
has not suffered appreciably since the completion of the aqueduct.”
[Illustration: An old bridge over the Barada River]
[Illustration: Cascade falling over the edge of the Hauran into the
Yarmuk Valley]
As we descend the narrow, winding valley of the Abana, it becomes more
and more choked with verdure. We now begin to understand why the Greeks
called this the _Chrysorrhoas_ or “Golden River.” If we take advantage of
one of the lengthy stops to step across the track and plunge our hands
into its icy waters, we realize the fitness of its modern Arabic name,
_Baradâ_—the “Cold Stream.” Occasionally we still glimpse far above
us grim, treeless heights; but, between the cliffs, dense thickets or
closely planted orchard trees line the river-banks. Now the Abana is a
roaring, foaming torrent; now it flows chill, deep and silent; but always
it hurries as if it were racing with the train. This, in its turn, goes
more rapidly. It twists and swings and bumps as it takes dangerously
short curves at—for a Syrian train—full speed. We pass into the shadow of
a beetling precipice and, beneath the thick foliage which overhangs it,
the river runs black as ink. Then, suddenly, we have left the gloom of
the mountains and are out in the bright sunlight which floods a boundless
plain. We have crossed to the eastern edge of Syria and before us, just
beyond the orchards of Damascus, lies the desert.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAND OF UZ
To appreciate truly the significance of Damascus, one should approach
it from the east, across the thirsty wilderness which stretches between
the Euphrates and the Syrian mountains. The long, wearisome journey
would be worth while if only for the first glimpse of the city as it
appears to the wondering eyes of the desert-dweller. But the twentieth
century visitor may be excused if he prefers to save time and strength by
utilizing the railway. To-day there is even a choice of routes. He can
travel to Damascus from the west comfortably, or from the south speedily.
But the adverbs are not interchangeable.
We have already taken the slow, beautiful journey from Beirut across
the two mountain ranges. The other railway between Damascus and the
coast starts from the seaport of Haifa, at the foot of Mount Carmel,
and follows at first a fairly easy grade through the historic Plain of
Esdraelon to the Jordan Valley at Beisan. From here it runs northward
along the river to the Sea of Galilee,[16] then in a general easterly
direction up the valley of the Yarmuk to the plateau of the Hauran, where
the Haifa branch joins the main line of the Mecca railway. Although the
distance to Damascus by this route is a hundred and seventy-seven miles,
or almost twice that from Beirut, the journey takes no longer. But in
warm weather it is not a very comfortable trip, for more than half the
time the train is below the level of the sea.
From Semakh, which lies at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee six
hundred feet below the Mediterranean, the railway ascends the Yarmuk
gorge through the most wild and desolate scenery imaginable. The entire
region northeast of Galilee is volcanic. Prehistoric flows of molten rock
extended over large areas, and the subsequent erosion of the river has
cut through a solid layer of hard basalt from ten to fifty feet thick,
whose perpendicular black cliffs appear in striking contrast to the
irregular outlines of the softer limestone beneath.
For two hours after leaving the Sea of Galilee we do not pass a human
habitation; indeed, for the first few miles there is no evidence of
vegetable life except now and then a small clump of bushes at a bend of
the stream. As the train puffs slowly up the bed of the steep, twisting
ravine, all that can be seen is the narrow torrent rushing madly along
between white walls of lime or chalk, above these a smooth, regular
layer of shining black basalt and, as we look straight up or down the
valley, a few bare, brown mountaintops showing above the nearer cliffs.
After a while, however, oleanders appear along the riverside, and for
mile upon mile their thick foliage and gorgeous flowers add the one touch
of life to the wild, lonely landscape. We pass a strange monolithic
pyramid a hundred feet high, which has been carved by some freak of the
winter floods. A little farther on, a recent landslide has covered the
bottom of the valley with black stones and soot-like dust. Even early in
the morning it is hot and stifling in this breezeless trench below the
level of the ocean.
[Illustration]
As we rise higher, however, scattered olive trees appear among the
oleanders by the riverside, and a few little patches of thin wheat are
seen among the rocks. A small herd of black, long-haired goats are
drinking in the stream. We are startled to behold a rude oil-well. A
dozen men are gathered at each railway station, though the villages from
which they have come are still invisible on the heights above us. Then
the valley suddenly turns and broadens, and we see against the cloudless
sky the clean-cut profile of the highland country toward which we have
been so long ascending. The track now leaves the river’s bank and, in
great loops, quickly mounts the side of the valley. From the edge of the
plateau there comes tumbling a magnificent succession of cascades, which
finally roar under a railway bridge and break in spray at the bottom of
the gorge far below us. Another broader waterfall drops in a solid sheet
of silver from the unseen land beyond the level summit of the precipice.
Our train twists up a last steep grade, straightens out on the level
ground—and, after looking for three hours at the close cliffs which
hemmed in a narrow valley, it gladdens our eyes to gaze now on the vast
prospect which is revealed in the shimmering light of the noonday sun.
Before us stretches the Hauran, the ancient Land of Bashan, a rolling sea
of soft brownish earth and waving wheat: From time immemorial this has
been the chief granary of western Asia. Until we become accustomed to
the new perspective, we can not distinguish a village or tree or living
creature. Here and there a few apparently low hills show their summits
above the horizon. The Arabs, who came from the high eastern desert,
called this the _Haurân_, or “Depression,” because it lies flat between
the mountains. But to us who have climbed hither from a point 2,500 feet
below, the broad acres of Bashan seem set far up among the lonely skies.
An endless, level, undivided expanse of wheat; dim summits far away;
fertility and spaciousness and freedom and strong, ceaseless wind—this is
the Hauran.
Muzeirib, the first station on the plateau, is the terminus of the
earliest railway from Damascus to the Hauran, which was completed by the
French in 1895. During recent years this has suffered severely from the
competition of the Hejaz Railway begun in 1901 by Abdul Hamid; for the
Turkish line is somewhat cheaper, has better connections, and enjoys
the odor of sanctity. In fact, its chief avowed object is ultimately
to connect Damascus with Mecca and thus provide transportation for the
multitude of the Faithful who each year make the pilgrimage to the holy
city. Only Moslems were employed on the construction of this sacred
railway, large numbers of Turkish soldiers were detailed as guards and
laborers; and, besides special taxes which were levied, voluntary
subscriptions for the pious enterprise were sent in from all over the
world of Islam. On account of the revolution of the Young Turks and the
troublous times which followed the enforced abdication of Abdul Hamid, no
work has been done on the railway for several years. Already, however,
it extends 823 miles to Medina, which is four-fifths of the distance to
Mecca; but non-Moslems are strictly forbidden to travel beyond Maʿan, 285
miles from Damascus, without a special permit from the government.
Derʿa, where we join the Hejaz main-line, has since the earliest days of
Christianity been identified with Edrei, the capital of Og, the giant
king of Bashan.[17] Beneath the ancient citadel, which stands some
distance to the south of the station, is a wonderful labyrinth of caves,
with real streets and shops as well as dwelling-places. This underground
city doubtless was intended as a refuge for the entire population of the
capital in time of siege, but it has not been used for many centuries.
As our train now turns northward from Derʿa, Mount Hermon comes into full
view at our left, in all its splendor of towering summit and dazzling
whiteness, and the lofty blue cone with its long streaks of summer snow
stays with us for the rest of the day.
Thirty miles to our right, Jebel Hauran, also known as the “Druse
Mountain,” rises from the level sea of grain like a long, low island.
At such a distance we find it difficult, even in this crystal air, to
realize that the isolated mountain is really forty miles long and only a
little short of six thousand feet high. It is one of the few localities
in the region where are still found the once famous “oaks of Bashan.”[18]
Since the religious struggles which drenched Syria with blood in 1860,
many thousand Druses have migrated from Lebanon to the Hauran, where
the special retreat and stronghold of this proud, brave, relentless
people is the mountain which bears their name. Hither they flee from
the conscription; here they defy the hated tax-collector, flaunt their
contempt of the weak Turkish government and, as is their wont everywhere,
waste their own strength in bitter family feuds.
A very ancient and plausible Christian tradition, which since the rise of
Islam has also been accepted implicitly by the Moslems, identifies the
Hauran with the “Land of Uz” where dwelt the patriarch Job. Three towns
on the western slopes of the Druse Mountain perpetuate his story. Bishop
William of Tyre, writing in the twelfth century, mentions the popular
belief that Job’s friend Bildad the Shuhite dwelt at Suweida, and the
inhabitants of this village boast that the patriarch himself was their
first sheikh. At Kanawat a group of very old ruins is commonly known as
the “Convent of Job,” and at Bosra, the ancient capital of the Hauran,
there is a Latin inscription in his praise. Probably this belonged to a
sixth century leper asylum; for the suffering patriarch early came to be
considered the special patron of those who, like himself, were afflicted
with the most mysterious and loathsome of diseases.
But it is in the plain that memories of this Biblical drama cluster most
closely. Nawa, twenty miles northwest of Derʿa, has for two thousand
years been honored as Job’s birthplace. An hour’s ride to the south of
this village there stood fifteen hundred years ago a splendid church
dedicated to the Man of Uz, and part of the ruined “Monastery of Job” is
still in good enough condition to be used as Turkish barracks. Near by is
shown the rock on which he leaned while arguing with his three friends—it
is a small basalt monument erected by Rameses II.—also the stone trough
in which he washed after his afflictions were ended, and the tomb of the
patriarch and his wife.
In spite of the naïve and often impossible localization of particular
incidents of the story of Job, it is quite possible that the very old
tradition is correct, and the mysterious Land of Uz across which roamed
the herds and flocks of “the greatest of all the Children of the East”
was this same free, fertile tableland along which we are now traveling.
Before the Hauran was so largely given over to agriculture, it must
have been an ideal grazing country; it has always been subject to
forays by robber tribes from the desert;[19] and the “great wind from
the wilderness” which smote the dwelling of Job’s eldest son[20] would
perhaps nowhere else blow with such fury as on this high, open plateau.
There was just such a great wind from the wilderness the last time I went
to Damascus. The Hauran bears a deserved reputation for coolness and
healthfulness; but that day, as happens two or three times each summer,
there was a sirocco. The wind was indeed blowing—blowing a furious gale
of perhaps thirty-five miles an hour; but it came straight from the
eastern desert and scorched as if it had been a blast from an opened
furnace door. I did not have a thermometer with me; but, from sirocco
experiences elsewhere, I should judge that the temperature in the train
was not under a hundred and five degrees. The drinking-water that we had
brought for the journey became warm and nauseating; but we put it to good
use in soaking the back of our necks, where it evaporated so quickly in
the dry, burning wind that it stung like ice for a few seconds, and then
was gone. Strange as it may seem, the only other way to mitigate the heat
was to shut the car windows and _keep the breeze out_.
There were fortunately some interesting incidents to enliven the long,
hot ride over the monotonous plain. We did not see any of the renowned
“strong bulls of Bashan,”[21] or any other cattle grazing on the plain,
but we watched slow caravans bearing wheat to the coast, as they have
been doing for millenniums past. They could never carry all the grain
that this productive district might harvest, and the railways should
prove a rich boon to the Hauran. We pondered curiously as to why the
stations were never by any chance just at the towns and why the track
should swing far to the right and left in great curves, as if it were
ascending a difficult grade, when the only engineering problem involved
in its construction could have been solved by laying a ruler on the
map and drawing a straight line down the center of the level plain.
A fellow-traveler explained to us that the course of the railway had
not been determined by the usual considerations, such as economy of
construction and the desirability of passing through the most densely
populated districts, but by the amount of _bakhsheesh_ which wealthy
landowners would pay the government in order to have the line pass
through their estates.
We stopped an unconscionable length of time at every station, for no
evident reason; and when we did get ready to start there were so many
vociferous warnings that very naturally none of them was heeded by the
passengers who had got off for refreshments. So finally the rapidly
moving train would be chased by a crowd of excited peasants, most of
whom carried big bundles and wore long, hampering garments. Several were
left behind at lonely stations. There would be another train—to-morrow!
Of course, all the dogs ran after us. Provided they are well-fed, dogs
and children are exactly the same the world over; and these were not the
starved, sullen curs which lie in Oriental gutters, but were wide-awake,
fun-loving fellows who ran merrily alongside the train for a half-mile
from the town, and had no difficulty in understanding our English shouts
of encouragement. As we were pulling out of one of the stations, a very
reverend, gray-bearded old farmer stole a ride on the running-board;
but he misjudged the quickly increasing speed of the train, and, when
he at last decided to jump off, rolled head-over-heels down the steep
embankment. The last we saw of him, he was gazing after us with a
ludicrously dejected countenance whose every lineament expressed stern
disapproval of the nervous haste of these degenerate modern days.
As a rule the other travelers were too hot and tired to afford us much
entertainment; but one new arrival, not finding a seat elsewhere, tried
to force his way into the harem-compartment which Turkish railways always
provide for the seclusion of Moslem ladies. The lord and master of the
particular harem occupying this compartment resented the intrusion with
such a frenzy of threatening gesticulation and insulting malediction that
the members of our party who were unaccustomed to the ways of the East
expected to see murder committed forthwith. The conductor, who interposed
as peace-maker, was—as is usual on this holy railway—a Turk who knew no
Arabic, and he consequently had great difficulty in determining what the
quarrel was about; but the Syrians have a healthy fear of any one wearing
a uniform, so the trouble was finally adjusted without bloodshed.
[Illustration: Long, slow caravans have always been crossing the Hauran]
[Illustration: Damascus in the midst of its far-reaching orchards]
After we became accustomed to the peculiar features of the landscape we
could now and then distinguish a village. Yet at a very short distance
the largest settlements were blurred into the brown plain; for the houses
are all built of a dull black basalt and, save for one or two square
towers, the compact hamlets are hardly to be distinguished from rough
out-croppings of rock. All of the dwellings look like deserted ruins:
some of them are. All seem centuries old: many have been occupied for
more than a thousand years, for the hard basalt seems never to crumble.
The extraordinarily rich earth of the Hauran is only disintegrated lava,
and as we near the end of the plain we pass tracts where presumably
more recent eruptions have not yet been weathered into fertile soil.
Two or three miles to the east of the railway a long line of dark rock
some thirty feet high marks the western edge of the Leja, which in New
Testament times was known as the Trachonitis[22] or “Rocky Place.” From
now-extinct volcanoes at the northern end of the Druse Mountain there
flowed these three hundred and fifty square miles of lava, which has
broken in cooling into such a maze of irregular fissures that its surface
has been likened to that of a petrified ocean. Yet this rugged region
contains also little lakes, and pockets of arable soil, and numerous
ruins of villages and roads and bridges which point to a considerable
population in former days. _Lejâ_ means “hiding-place” or “refuge,” and
the Druses call this forbidding district the “Fortress of Allah.” The
entire lava mass is honeycombed with caves. Indeed, the people of the
Hauran say that one who knew the labyrinth of subterranean passages could
make his way from one end of the Leja to the other without once appearing
above ground. It is no wonder that this immense natural citadel, with
its unmarked trails, its innumerable hiding-places in dark caves or
deep-cut fissures of the rock, and its easy dominance over the dwellers
on the level plain below, has always been a thorn in the side of whatever
government pretended to rule the Hauran. Eighty years ago the Druses of
the Leja, although they were outnumbered by the attacking force twenty to
one, routed with terrible slaughter the entire army of Ibrahim Pasha, the
great Egyptian conqueror.
The description of the Leja and its inhabitants which was written in the
first century A. D. by Josephus would serve for any period in its wild
history. “It was not an easy thing to restrain them, since this way of
robbery had been their usual practice, and they had no other way to get
their living, because they had neither any city of their own, nor lands
in their possession, but only some receptacles and dens in the earth, and
there they and their cattle lived in common together: however, they had
made contrivances to get pools of water, and laid up corn in granaries
for themselves, and were able to make great resistance by issuing out on
the sudden against any that attacked them; for the entrances of their
caves were narrow, in which but one could come in at a time, and the
places within incredibly large and made very wide; but the ground over
their habitations was not very high, but rather on a plain, while the
rocks are altogether hard and difficult to be entered upon unless any
one gets into the plain road by the guidance of another, for these roads
are not straight, but have several revolutions. But when these men are
hindered from their wicked preying upon their neighbors, their custom is
to prey one upon another, insomuch that no sort of injustice comes amiss
to them.”[23] Josephus’ diction is as involved as the labyrinthine trails
of the Leja, but his facts are still correct.
Further evidences that we are in a volcanic region are found in the round
black stones, about the size of large bowling-balls, which now begin
to appear on the plain. At first they do not seriously interfere with
cultivation, for the farmers gather them into heaps along the edges of
their fields. A few miles farther on, however, there are so many that
there has been no attempt to remove them and the light plow has simply
scratched whatever narrow strips of earth might lie between the rocks.
At last they cover the land as far as we can see, with hardly their own
diameter separating them. There must be ten thousand of them to the acre.
Millions upon millions of black spots dot the nearer landscape and in the
distance merge into an apparently solid mass of dark, hard sterility.
By this time most of the passengers in our coach have become very tired
and irritable, though the loud breathing of some indicates that they
have fallen into a restless slumber. Several are quite sick from the
heat. At half-past five in the afternoon the sun has lost none of its
midday glare, and the noisy wind from the desert still scorches with its
furnace breath. On either side, the monotonous multitude of round black
rocks strew the brown, burnt earth. The hills, which constantly draw in
closer to us, seem as if they might have fair pasture-land on their lower
slopes; but, save for the shining white dome of one Moslem tomb, they
bear nothing higher than scattered grass and dusty thorn-bushes. We climb
slowly over the watershed in the narrow neck of the plain, then speed
swiftly down a steep incline; and, lo, we behold a veritable paradise of
running water and heavily laden orchard trees, above which the glory of
the setting sun gilds a forest of slender minarets.
CHAPTER VII
THE EARTHLY PARADISE
According to the Moslem wise men, Jebel Kasyun is a very sacred mount;
for upon it Abraham dwelt when there was revealed to him the supreme
doctrine of the unity of God. Long before that, however, Adam lived
here: some say that he was formed from the earth of this very mountain,
and that the reddish streaks upon its sides are nothing less than the
indelible bloodstains of murdered Abel.
Yet as we stand by the little shrine known as the Dome of Victory, which
crowns the summit, we are not thinking of ancient legends. Below us lies
a scene of entrancing interest and of a peculiar beauty which is unlike
that of any other beautiful prospect in the world.
Back of us are the mighty, rock-buttressed Mountains of the East, from
whose sterile heart is rent a deep, dark ravine which thunders with the
cascades of the Abana. Then, issuing from its narrow defile, Abana is
suddenly tamed. It spreads fan-like into seven quiet branches; and these
in turn divide and subdivide into a myriad life-giving streams which
sink at last in wilderness sands, but, ere they sink, make the desert to
rejoice and blossom as the rose.[24]
In the foreground of the picture, Damascus seems like an immense silver
spoon laid on a piece of soft, green plush. The long, slender handle,
which is made up of the modern peasant-markets, stretches away two miles
southward. The nearer bowl is the site of the ancient city. Above its
monotonous succession of solidly massed houses are seen high, cylindrical
roofs which cover the most important bazaars; in the very center stands
the famous Omayyade Mosque with its splendid dome and spacious court and
three lofty towers, while a multitude of other graceful minarets—it is
said that they are exactly as many as the days of the year—rise above the
most mysterious and fascinating of Moslem capitals. Surely the traveler
must be ignorant of history and bereft of sentiment who does not feel a
deep, strange thrill as he first looks upon the great city which since
the dawn of history has sat in proud strength between the mountains and
the desert.
From the viewpoint of physical geography, Syria is Lebanon; but
politically, commercially and socially, it is still true that “the head
of Syria is Damascus.”[25] Indeed, the city is now hardly ever called by
its real name, _Dimeshk_. It is simply _esh-Shâm_—Syria!
History does not recall a time when Damascus did not nestle here among
the orchards which sweep out to the edge of the desert. The Moslem
tradition that it was founded by Eliezer, the chief servant of Abraham,
points to far too late a date. Josephus tells us that it was built by Uz,
the grandson of Shem the son of Noah, and that when Abraham came hither
from Ur with an army of Chaldeans, he captured the already old capital
and for a time reigned here as king of Syria.[26] “The name of Abram is
even now famous in the country of Damascus,” adds the Jewish historian.
Eighteen hundred years later, that is still true.
Without discussing further its legendary claims to supreme antiquity, it
is safe to say that Damascus is the oldest important city in the world
with an unbroken history reaching to the present day. The fame of its
artificers and gardeners is embodied even in our English language; for
we speak of Damascus steel, the damask plum, damask rose, damask color,
damask decoration and damaskeened metal-work. Many of the greatest men of
earth have trodden its streets or fought before its walls or worshiped at
its shrines. Abraham the Hebrew, Tiglath-pileser the Assyrian conqueror,
Herod the Great, Paul of Tarsus, Khaled the “Sword of Allah,” Baldwin of
Flanders, Louis VII. of France, Nureddin the Syrian, Saladin the Kurd,
Tamerlane the Tartar—such are only a few of the names which come to mind
as we gaze upon the time-stained, battle-worn, but still rich and haughty
city. To tell adequately the story of this most ancient of capitals would
necessitate covering all the centuries of human history.
At the foot of the hill we shall find a tram-car waiting to take us
to a modern hotel with electric lights and city-water, and in the
evening we can hear a phonograph in any one of a hundred cafés, or
visit moving-picture shows in the Serai Square, where a tall column
commemorates the completion of the telegraph-line to Mecca. Yet, for all
these recent innovations from the Western world, the real Damascus is
quite unchanged. It is still the most brilliant, entrancing, fanatical
and intolerant of Moslem cities, the one which best preserves the manners
and customs of the early centuries of Islam. Indeed, this is to-day the
typical Arabian Nights city; for Cairo, where those thrilling fairy tales
were first related, is rapidly becoming Europeanized through British
influence, Constantinople is thronged with Greeks and Armenians and
intimidated by foreign embassies, and the glory of Baghdad has long since
departed. But Haroun al-Raschid and his faithful vizier might wander
through the tortuous mazes of the bazaars of Damascus and recognize
hardly an essential change from the life of a Moslem capital of a
thousand years ago.
Its Oriental characteristics have been thus preserved, and will doubtless
be preserved for many years to come, because of all great Arabic-speaking
cities Damascus is least dependent on the West. An impassable wall might
cut it off entirely from intercourse with Europe, and still it would
thrive and wax strong on the wealth of its own orchards and its commerce
with the lands across the Syrian desert.
As we view the wide prospect from the Dome of Victory, the city seems
a whitish island, half hidden by the billows of an ocean of luxuriant
foliage. Far as the eye can see—far as the dim blue hills which mark the
eastern horizon—the plain is flooded with leaves and blossoms. At closer
view we shall recognize the fig and pomegranate, the mulberry, pistachio,
peach, almond and apricot, the tall poplar and waving cypress and bending
grape-vine and short, gnarled olive tree. But from Jebel Kasyun we
perceive only one great expanse of warm, rich verdure; all shapes and
colors are merged into a soft, level green.
Behind us rise the bare, chalky cliffs of Anti-Lebanon. Beyond those low
azure hills at the east is the cruel desert. But between the mountains
and the desert hills lies the hundred square miles of the _Ghûta_—the
“Garden” of Damascus. No language is too extravagant for the Arabic
writers who describe this land of fruits and flowing waters. It is “the
most excellent of all the beautiful places of earth,” exclaims the
learned Abulfeda; and the famous geographer Idrisi says, “There are grown
here all sorts of fruits, so that the mind cannot conceive the variety,
nor can any comparison show what is the fruitfulness and excellence
thereof, for Damascus is the most delightful of God’s cities in the whole
world.” Indeed, this is the place which, among all the habitations of
men, comes nearest to the description of the Moslem paradise—
“The people of the Right Hand!
Oh, how happy shall be the people of the Right Hand!...
In extended shade,
And by flowing waters,
And with abundant fruits,
Unfailing, unforbidden ...
Gardens beneath whose shades the rivers flow.”[27]
The prophet who sang thus of the celestial delights of the Faithful once
stood, it is said, on the summit of this sacred mountain and gazed with
wondering admiration, as we are gazing, on the bounteous splendor of the
Garden of Damascus. But Mohammed refused to go down into the city for
fear lest, having tasted the joys of this earthly paradise, he might lose
his desire for the heavenly.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PORT OF THE WILDERNESS
Although it is ninety miles by railway from navigable water, Damascus
partakes of the characteristics of a seaport. It is, in fact, the port
of the wilderness. Just to the east of its fertile “garden” is the
Syrian desert, across which slow caravans have always been coming and
going—traveling from the rich river-bottoms of Mesopotamia, from Persia
and India, and even from far distant China, to bring the riches of Asia
to the overflowing warehouses of Damascus. The lands from which the
city derives its prosperity cannot compete with European industries,
and so only a small proportion of their products is now sent westward
across the Mediterranean. Yet Damascus remains still the metropolis of
the desert peoples. From the viewpoint of the peasant or Bedouin Arab,
it is a very modern place; and to the stranger who can see beneath the
alluring glamour of its Orientalism, its chief characteristics are
abounding prosperity and noisy activity. This oldest of cities is no
mere interesting ruin or historical pageant. Even in the fast-month of
Ramadan, its streets are as crowded as the most congested shopping
district of London or New York or Paris.[28]
The most characteristic feature of the bazaar is its smell—that peculiar,
inescapable blending of licorice and annis and pungent spices and heavy
perfumes, combined with a vague odor of age and staleness which pervades
the dust-laden air, and sometimes with an odor not at all vague which
arises from the filth of unswept streets. It is not when I “hear the East
a-callin’” but when I _smell_ the East that the waves of homesickness
sweep deepest over me. I love the scent of the bazaar. Sometimes I catch
a whiff of it through the open door of a little basement store in the
Syrian Quarter of New York; and in a moment my thoughts are five thousand
miles away among the old familiar scenes.
The next most vivid impression of the bazaar is its weird combination of
bright coloring and gloom. The narrow, winding street is guarded from the
glaring sun by striped awnings and old carpets which reach across from
house to house. Some few of the chief thoroughfares, like the “Street
called Straight,” are enclosed by great cylindrical roofs of corrugated
iron. You are indoors and yet out-of-doors. The light is dim; but it
is daylight, and you feel that all the while the sun is shining very
brightly overhead. Along the fronts of the shops and hanging on ropes
which stretch across the street, are shining brasses and pieces of inlaid
woodwork and cloths of the most gorgeous orient hues; but the rear of
these same shops is usually wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Sometimes
there is visible only a square black hole surrounded by a frame of gaudy
silks. When you pass a blacksmith’s forge, with shadowy figures moving
among the sparks at the back of the inky darkness, it seems like a
glimpse into inferno.
Most of the shops are tiny affairs only six or eight feet square, which
open on the street for their entire width and have the floor raised to
about the height of the customer’s waist. The resemblance of a bazaar to
a long double row of pigeon-holes is increased by the manner in which
the box-like recesses follow continuously one after the other, with no
doorways between, as the entrance to their upper stories is by ladders in
the rear.
In the middle of his diminutive emporium, the typical Damascus merchant
sits all day cross-legged, smoking his water-pipe, reading from a
Koran placed before him on a little wooden book-rest, and eternally
fondling his beard. Frequently he says his prayers. Sometimes he varies
the monotony of a dull day by chatting with a fellow-merchant in a
neighboring shop fully ten feet away. The Jews and Christians of the
city may be annoyingly importunate; but the Moslems, who form the large
majority, seem insolently careless as to whether the passing stranger
pauses to examine their goods or not. Over their places of business they
hang gilded invocations to “the One who giveth sustenance,” and then
leave matters entirely in His hands. If nothing is sold all day, it is
the will of Allah: if a customer does come, it is the will of Allah—that
he shall be overcharged as much as possible.
Shopping in Damascus is not an operation to be hurried through with
careless levity. If you appear a promising customer, the merchant will
set coffee before you and, while you and he are drinking together, will
talk about anything under the sun except business. When you ask him
the price of an article, he may tell you to keep it for nothing, just
as did Ephron the Hittite when Abraham was bargaining for the Cave of
Machpelah.[29]
If, however, you offer a fair amount for that same “gift,” he will
protest that to accept such a paltry sum would necessitate his children’s
going hungry and naked. So he names a price about double what he expects
to get, and you suggest a sum equal to half what you are willing to pay.
Then follow vociferous exclamations, indignant gesticulations, and
sacred oaths, while his price slowly comes down and yours slowly goes up,
until at last they almost, though not quite, meet. Neither will change
his “last word” by a single piaster. Negotiations are at an end. You
turn scornfully to leave the shop of the extortioner, while the merchant
commends his business to God and resignedly begins to wrap up the goods
and return them to their shelves. He does this very deliberately,
however, and just then—because you two are such good friends, whose
appreciation of noble character finds its ideal each in the other’s
life—you decide to split the difference, the purchase is completed, and
you part with mutual protestations that only a deep, fraternal regard
forces you—and him—to conclude the bargain at such a ruinous figure.
“It is bad, it is bad, saith the buyer;
But when he is gone his way, then he boasteth.”[30]
Perhaps the shop-keeper will still, however, detain you for a glass of
sherbet. If he does, then you have probably paid too much, after all.
A friend of mine was obliged to spend no less than two weeks in
purchasing a single Persian rug; but during those two weeks the price
went down ninety dollars. One winter I had occasion to buy, at different
times, several small picture frames. They were all exactly the same
size, shape and material, were obtained from the same salesman at the
same shop, and in the end I paid for them the same price to a piaster.
Yet the purchase of each one necessitated a half-hour of excited
bargaining.
It should be understood, however, that there is really nothing dishonest
about such a procedure as that described above; for neither party is
misled in the least by the other’s protestations, and neither believes
that he is deceiving the other. It is just the leisurely, intensely
personal Oriental way of doing business. After you once become used to
it, bargaining in the bazaars is far more full of excitement and human
interest than buying something in the West, where fixed prices are
distinctly marked. If you are so crude as to ask a Moslem merchant to
tell under oath what he paid for an article, he will often speak the
exact truth. But be sure to swear him by a formula which he considers
binding. Every detail of a Syrian business transaction is embellished
by one or more of the fervent oaths of the East. The traveler from the
Occident, however, needs only one: the “word of an Englishman”[31] is
still accepted at face value. Indeed, a generation ago, Moslems who
would unblushingly call upon almighty God to witness to the most patent
falsehoods, could be trusted to speak the exact truth when they swore by
the beard of a certain upright English merchant of Beirut.
[Illustration: One of the more modern avenues of Damascus]
[Illustration: A typical Syrian Café]
No picture can ever adequately represent the bazaar, not even a moving
picture; for besides the unending kaleidoscopic changes of coloring, as
brightly dressed peddlers and purchasers move hither and thither, there
is a ceaseless, deafening, indescribable and untranslatable tumult of
sound. Yet to one who understands Arabic, this is more than noise: it is
music, poetry and romance. The hawker of each commodity uses a peculiarly
worded appeal which, in eloquent circumlocution, extols the virtues of
his wares. These calls are usually rhyming; often they include one of the
ninety-nine sacred titles of Allah, and frequently they are sung to a set
tune. Back and forth through the perilously crowded streets they go—boys
with great trays of sweetmeats on their heads, men with tubs of pickled
vegetables, peasants bearing heavy loads of fresh figs, water-carriers
stooping low under their goatskin bottles, peddlers of cakes and nuts
and sherbets and the nosegays which the Syrian gentleman loves to
hold—literally under his nose—as he strolls through the city. All are
shouting their wares. “Oh, thirsty one!” “Oh, father of a family!” “Oh,
Thou who givest food!” “Allay the heat!” “Rest for the throat!” When
Abraham passed through Damascus he doubtless heard these same cries.
If we are driving, as is possible in the wider bazaars, our gallant
coachman adds to the din as he proudly snaps his long whip, toots the
strident automobile horn which is now affixed to all Damascus carriages
and, in courteous gentleness or bawling rage or sighing relief, keeps up
an unintermitting flow of Arabic adjuration to the passers-by whom he
almost, but never quite, runs down. “Look out for your back! Hurry up,
uncle! Your back, your back!—may your house be destroyed! Your right,
lady! Your left, sir! Slowly, oh, inmates of the harem! Oh, pilgrim,
your back! Child, beware! Your back, my friend! _Your back!_ YOUR BACK!
E-e-eh! A-a-ah!”
High above the other calls rises now and then the shrill, nasal song of
the vender of sweetened bread, _Allah er-Razeek!_—“God is the Nourisher!”
A half-naked beggar changes his pathetic whine to a lusty curse as he
slinks out of the way of a galloping, shouting horseman. Any one who
feels in the mood kneels down anywhere he happens to be and prays aloud.
As a kind of accompaniment to the vociferous chorus there sounds the
continuous tinkling of the brass bowls which are rattled against each
other by the lemonade-sellers. And—very frequently in Damascus—there
pierces through the deafening tumult the thin, penetrating chant of
the muezzin who, from his lofty minaret or from the mosque door in the
crowded, narrow street, calls to the greedy bazaar to think on the
things that are unseen and eternal.
The great conflagration of 1911 destroyed the heart of the business
district by the Omayyade Mosque, and those who knew the city of a few
years ago find it sadly strange to climb over the heaps of dusty rubbish
which cover once familiar streets. But during the rebuilding, which is
progressing rapidly, there is no appreciable diminution of business, and
the intricate maze of the bazaars still presents scenes of marvelous
variety and endless fascination. There is the Water-pipe Bazaar, where
_narghileh_ bowls are made out of cocoanuts ornamented with gold and
silver, the Draper’s Bazaar filled with shoddy European stuffs, the
Saddle Bazaar with its brightly covered Arabic saddles and gorgeous
accouterments, the almost forsaken Bazaar of the Booksellers, where
now hardly a half-dozen poorly stocked booths hint at the intellectual
conquests of the Damascus of centuries gone by, and the Spice Market,
whose long rows of bottles scent the air with their essences and attars.
The Silk Bazaar is the most brilliant, and its gaudiest patterns are hung
out for the inspection of admiring Bedouin visitors. The Second-hand
Bazaar of the auctioneers is commonly known as the Louse Market, not
because of the uncomplimentary suspicion which first suggests itself, but
from a very small and agile coin known by that name, which is frequently
used in increasing the bids.
As we pass along one street after another, we see open-front bakers’
shops where paper-like loaves are sold, still hot from the oven, and
confectioners’ booths filled with all manner of sherbets and jellies
and delicious preserved fruits and the infinite variety of sweet,
indigestible pastry in which the Syrians delight. In one little square
there are great piles of thin apricot paste which look exactly like
bundles of brown paper. The merchant offers us a sample to taste, but
we are not quite sure as to the quality of the dust that has been
settling upon it all the morning. A long towel hung over yonder doorway
indicates that it is the entrance to a _hammâm_ or public bath, within
whose steaming court we can see brown, half-naked forms reclining on
dingy divans. The intricate lattice-work of overhanging balconies guards
the harems of the merchants from the vulgar gaze of the crowds below.
This little gate, curtained by a hanging rug and edged with a line of
slippers, leads from the deafening tumult of the bazaar to the solemn
quiet of a cool, spacious mosque.
From time immemorial the merchant-artisans of Damascus have been united
in powerful associations. There is even a guild of beggars, though, to
do them justice, these are neither so numerous nor so importunate as
in most Syrian cities. On the other hand, the curs which infest the
busiest streets are innumerable and are disgusting in appearance beyond
any other dogs I have ever seen. Yet these sore, starved racks of bones,
with hardly the energy to get out of the way of a passing carriage,
have organizations of their own. At any rate, they recognize definite
boundaries; and a dog who ventures outside the territory occupied by his
own clan does so at peril of his life. One evening a friend of mine, who
is a good mimic, was so unwise as to bark lustily just as he entered our
hotel. In a moment every cur in the district was giving voice; and far
into the night, as unhappily was all too strongly impressed upon us, they
kept up their vociferous search for the unknown intruder.
But it is never quiet in Damascus. Most Orientals go to bed very early.
Jerusalem is like a city of the dead by half-past eight in the evening.
The Damascenes, however, seem to need no sleep, and the noises of the
streets never cease. The only noticeable change in their volume is that,
when the shops close, just before sunset, the tumult suddenly increases.
Then, hour after hour, you can hear the heavy murmur of the multitude,
broken occasionally by the voice of someone singing, or by a chorus of
loud cheers. An interminable succession of songs and marches, all of them
fortissimo and in a strident minor key, shatter what ought to be the
midnight stillness as they rattle from phonographs whose Arabic records
are prepared by the German subsidiary of an American talking-machine
company. Very far off, a dog lifts up his voice in a faint howl which
starts a pandemonium of barks and growls and yelps all over the
neighborhood. The freshening breeze rustles among the orchards; then
it slams a window shut. The bell of a tram-car rings sharply; carriage
horns give loud double toots which just fail of forming any known musical
interval, and always there is the sound of water—rushing, purling,
rippling, splashing—the eternal anthem of Damascus’ greatness.
So when his second day in this noisy city draws to a close, the wise
traveler decides that, as there is no use trying to get to sleep early,
he will go out and himself share in the midnight enjoyments. I do not
know how many cafés there are in Damascus: I should be quite ready to
believe anyone who told me that there were ten thousand. They are said to
be the finest in Syria. Indeed, the Damascenes boast that the first of
all coffee-shops was established in their city, and also that sherbet was
invented here.
The best cafés are situated beside the main branch of the Barada. Those
near St. Thomas’ Gate have very attractive shaded gardens, where the
tables are set out under spreading trees and are surrounded by tiny
streams of running water. An evening visit to one of these riverside
resorts is a memorable experience, and it is quite safe; for, unless
corrupted by European influence, no Moslem ever touches alcoholic
beverages, and one need therefore fear none of the drunken roughness
which is associated with the “cafés”— which of course are not cafés at
all—of Christian America. The Damascene seeks his recreation amid an
atmosphere of ease and leisure and refined enjoyment. If a patron wishes
to dream away the whole evening over one cup of coffee or a five-cent
_narghileh_, there is no one to object. Itinerant musicians beguile the
hours of darkness with plaintive minor ditties sung to the accompaniment
of the guitar or zither; story-tellers spin endless fairy tales to
circles of breathless listeners, and—alas!—the tireless phonograph roars
its brassy songs. Many of the regular habitués of the place are absorbed
in interminable games of backgammon. Coffee, fruit syrups, pastry,
candy, nuts, cool water-pipes and mild cigarettes—such are the favorite
refreshments of the fierce, fanatical Moslem!
As the cups in which the coffee is served are tiny, handleless things,
hardly larger than a walnut, they are usually set in holders of filigree
work. These are, as a rule, made of brass, but in homes of wealth they
may be silver or even gold. The liquor is often flavored with rose-water
and is very thick and sweet, though it will be prepared _murr_ if anyone
has such an outlandish taste as to prefer it “bitter.” The unpalatable
sediment which fills a good third of the cup must on no account be
stirred up. Many a stranger has found to his cost that the coffee is
served exceedingly hot; and it is a necessity as well as a sign of good
breeding to keep the lips from quite touching the surface and to suck up
the drink with a loud hissing noise. In a private house, this formality
should by no means be neglected, even if the coffee has become cooled, as
the omission would be equivalent to a criticism of the host.
Around the coffee-pot centers the social life of the Moslem world. It has
an important place in every kind of ceremonial and festive occasion, from
the circumcision of the child to the funeral of the old man. The merchant
offers it to his prospective customer. The desert sheikh starts his
women grinding the beans in a large wooden mortar as soon as a stranger
enters his tent. Not to give coffee to a guest would signify that he was
unwelcome.[32] It is invariably served at the beginning of a call. Later
on, sherbet is brought in, and then the visitor knows that it is time for
him to leave.
Coffee sometimes plays a more serious part in Eastern affairs. Its heavy
sweetness disguises varied and deadly poisons. The bacilli of typhoid
fever are said, in this scientific generation, to be drunk unsuspectingly
by many a venturesome meddler in affairs of state. The death penalty
is seldom inflicted in the Turkish Empire. Deposed ministers and
irrepressible busybodies and troublesome reformers are merely imprisoned
or exiled. Often they are sent to Damascus. Then, shortly, they die of
indigestion or heart failure.
CHAPTER IX
THE RICHES OF DAMASCUS
The great khans, or wholesale warehouses, of Damascus lie in the center
of the city near the Omayyade Mosque. As a rule they are not detached
structures, but are hidden by the surrounding shops and are entered
through tunnels which pierce the sides of the bazaars. The finest of
them is the Khan Asad Pasha, which was erected a hundred years ago by
the governor whose name it bears, and is still owned by his family.
This is one of the few really impressive pieces of Arabic architecture
in Syria, rich and massive, yet effectively adapted to the purposes for
which it was intended. The building is constructed of alternate courses
of dark brown and yellow limestone, and its principal entrance is a high,
vaulted “stalactite” gateway covered with beautiful carvings. The central
court is a hundred feet across and, as one comes suddenly from the dim
light of the crowded bazaar, it seems of an astounding brightness and
spaciousness. The pavement is divided into squares by four pillars, and
from these spring the arches of nine lofty domes, which are ornamented
with elaborate arabesques and pierced by a number of small windows. On
the sides of this great court, and also on a gallery above, are the
offices of wholesale merchants and brokers, and at the rear are situated
smaller courts and the vaulted storerooms of the khan. Around the central
fountain between the pillars of the largest dome and crowding through
the gateway and thronging the street outside, a vociferous throng of
muleteers and camel-drivers are unloading the caravans which have come
from Beirut on the coast and from northern Aleppo and across the desert
from the Euphrates, bearing the choicest merchandise of the East, and
some few machine-made products of the West, to swell “the riches of
Damascus.”[33]
There are real merchant-princes in this busy trading-center, and some of
them live in royal splendor. The houses of the Damascus rich are truly
palatial; but the stranger would never guess it from their exteriors, for
the Syrian home has no elaborate façade and pretentious approach, such
as the Franks delight to build. The prime object of the architect is to
achieve the most absolute retirement for his patron. No window ever looks
into that of a neighboring residence; no passer-by ever glimpses through
an opened door the interior of a private dwelling. If the Englishman’s
house is his castle, the Syrian’s is his retreat.
You pass along a dirty alley to an insignificant wooden door in a high
stone wall. Just inside is the porter’s cell; then comes a dark, vaulted
passageway, which either has a sharp bend in it or else is screened at
the farther end; then—
The open court which you enter may be three hundred feet across. Its
tessellated pavement is of white marble inlaid with arabesques of darker
stone. In the center is a fountain with designs of colored limestone
set into its marble walls. Potted flowers bloom luxuriantly in the warm
sunlight, and birds sing to the accompaniment of the splashing water. In
the grateful shade of small fruit trees are placed bright rugs and soft
cushions and tabarets made of rare woods inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The
many lofty windows in the red and yellow striped walls of the surrounding
dwelling are curtained with gorgeous silks.
At one side, usually the south, a spacious alcove reaches to the height
of the second-story ceiling. This _liwân_, or drawing-room, is entirely
open to the court; but its floor is raised a foot or two above the
pavement outside, and its decorations are as rich and elaborate as if
it were a huge, glittering jewel-box. No figures of men or animals are
seen, for Moslems are forbidden to make representations of any living
creature in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under
the earth;[34] yet it is astonishing what splendid effects are evolved
by their architects from the limited elements of Arabic script, geometric
designs, foliage, fruits and flowers. In the _liwân_ this arabesque
ornamentation is profuse and elegant. The lower walls are built of
alternate layers of differently colored stones, into which are set mosaic
panels as intricate in design as the priceless rugs which lie upon the
marble pavement. The woodwork of the room is all minutely carved, and
inlaid with bits of glass and mother-of-pearl and sometimes even with
jewels. The upper walls are frescoed in blue and green and gold, and from
the gilded beams of the ceiling hang chandeliers of silver and beaten
brass.
[Illustration: Court and Liwân of a Damascus residence]
[Illustration: Cemetery where members of Mohammed’s family are buried]
This half out-of-doors alcove gives access to the rooms which we
should think of as being really in the house. Some of these may
be even more lavishly decorated than the _liwân_, and all are
comfortably furnished—according to the Syrian idea of comfort. Into
the apartments of the ladies, however, no male guest may enter. These
are _hareem_—“forbidden.” Indeed, it is very likely that they are in a
separate building, which opens on an inner court whose existence the
casual visitor does not even suspect. No men save her nearest relatives
are supposed ever to look upon the unveiled face of a Moslem woman.
This prohibition, however, is of necessity little observed among the
poor, hard-working peasants and the desert Bedouins; and in the cities
the universal characteristics of the female sex have not been entirely
obliterated by the law of Islam. An unusually thin gauze almost always
reveals a remarkably beautiful face, and I have seen veils coquettishly
dropped—of course by accident—even in the bazaars of fanatical Damascus.
Yet among the upper classes the thought of social intercourse between the
sexes is so repellent that no good Moslem ever willingly alludes to his
wife. If he is absolutely forced to speak of her, he apologizes by saying
_Ajallak!_—“May God lift you up!”—that is, from the degradation of having
to hear such a thing mentioned. He uses the identical expression when he
refers to anything else unfit to be spoken of in conversation between
gentlemen. “Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with
which God hath gifted the one above the other,” said the Prophet.[35]
There is no place for female suffrage in the world of Islam!
If we think of Damascus as the port of the desert, then its wharves lie
along the Meidan. This narrow handle of the spoon-shaped city, which
stretches far southward on both sides of the _Derb el-Haj_ or “Pilgrim
Road” to Mecca, is a comparatively modern quarter; but it is most akin
to the wilderness, and its one long avenue is thronged with Children
of the East who have journeyed far to visit what they firmly believe to
be the world’s largest and most beautiful city. Long caravans, weary,
dusty and heavily laden, are led into the Meidan by wild-looking, shaggy
Bedouins. A little flock of sheep on its way to the slaughter-house is
driven by no gentle shepherd, but a black-bearded giant armed with rifle
and dagger and club. Groaning camels kneel in the street while immense
sacks of wheat are untied from their backs and rolled into the vaults of
the grain-merchants. We see here the choicest mares of Arabia ridden by
tall, stalwart Hauran Druses whose cruel, handsome faces, wrapped around
with flowing headgears of spotless white, look down upon the hurrying
crowds with a haughty contempt. Yonder group of strangely dressed fellows
with red and white cloths bound about their brows are Chaldeans from
Baghdad. The shops here seem very poor and shabby in comparison with the
bazaars of the older quarters; but the simple country folk, and even the
proud Bedouin Arabs, stand spellbound before the astounding wealth and
bewildering tumult of the great city.
The south end of the Meidan is known as the Gate of Allah—though it
has no gate; for it is here, amid impressive ceremonies, that there
starts the annual Pilgrimage to Mecca.[36] Back to the same _Bab Allah_
straggle, four months later, a sick and exhausted remnant who have
survived the journey to the holy city, to bear henceforth the envied
title of _haj_ or “pilgrim.” Then cholera or plague breaks out with
renewed virulence.
Of the ancient fortifications of Damascus, only a short, ruinous piece
now remains. The city is surrounded, between the houses and the orchards,
by an almost unbroken succession of cemeteries. In the burying ground of
the Orthodox Greeks is the small, unimpressive tomb of St. George, who is
said to have assisted the Apostle Paul in his escape over the wall. This
cannot, of course, be the same St. George who killed the dragon, as the
hero of that famous exploit was not born until nearly three hundred years
after the time of Paul.
In the large Moslem cemeteries at the southeast of the city are the tombs
of Mohammed’s muezzin, two of his nine wives, and his favorite child,
Fatima. Not far from the sepulcher of the Prophet’s daughter, though
outside of the cemetery, is buried an unfortunate Jew who aspired to
the hand of Fatima. The presumptuous lover is said to have been stoned
to death, and his grave is now entirely hidden under a great heap of
the rocks which passing Moslems still cast upon it as a sign of their
contempt.
Just outside of Damascus, also, is a sad house of “life more terrible
than death.” It was once, they say, the residence of proud Naaman, and it
is still tenanted by lepers who, alas, have known no Elisha and washed
in no healing Jordan. My Syrian friends were afraid even to enter its
court, but I talked with eight of the thirty or forty inmates. Some were
voiceless and shapeless—grotesque, horrible caricatures of humanity.
But there was still a “little maid” in the House of Naaman. Miriam was
a pretty, slender girl, just beginning to burst into the bloom of early
Eastern adolescence. She seemed the very incarnation of health and
youthful joy, and could hardly stop laughing long enough for me to take
her photograph. Yet I could not laugh with her; for on the rich brown of
her cheek was a tiny pinkish swelling, and close beside her graceful form
crouched an awful figure, loathsome, unsmiling and unwomanly, like which
she would some day be.
Over the now closed Kisan Gate at the southeast corner of the city wall
is a small, bricked-up window, through which tradition says that St.
Paul was let down in a basket. Unfortunately for the story, this part
of the fortification dates from the Turkish occupation. The bend of
the wall includes, however, as it probably has always done, the Jewish
Quarter. The Hebrews of Damascus are unique among their coreligionists
of Palestine and Syria in that they are not comparatively recent
immigrants drawn back to the land of their fathers by Zionist ideals, but
are descended from ancestors who settled here in very ancient times.[37]
Some of them bear family names which can be read in the earliest census
lists of the Old Testament. Many of them are very estimable people; but I
cannot describe the quarter where they live, further than to state that
it is the most filthy and malodorous place I have yet visited. I am not
especially squeamish; I have often, for the sake of the human interest
found there, traveled in Mediterranean steerages and lived in the slums
of great capitals; but after a brief glimpse of the Jewish Quarter of
Damascus, I beat an ignominious retreat. There are said to be houses
there whose interiors are wonderfully beautiful; but I am not going back
to see them.
There are in all five “quarters” in Damascus: the Christian and the
Jewish at the east, the peasant market of the Meidan at the south, the
suburb of el-Amara north of the Barada, and the Moslem heart of the city.
The “Street called Straight,”[38] which cuts across the center of the
bazaar district from east to west, may roughly be considered the dividing
line between the Jewish and the Christian Quarters. The flippant jest to
the effect that the writer of the Acts said only that the thoroughfare
was “called” straight, is hardly justified by the facts. This is, in
fact, the straightest, longest street in all Damascus, as well as one
of the widest. It was once divided into three parallel roadways by
Corinthian colonnades, some few remains of which can still be found.
To-day it is covered for half its length with a high, arching metal roof,
and contains many of the largest and most modern stores in the city.
Beside this busy bazaar the Damascus Moslems show the tomb of the
disciple Ananias, whose memory they hold in great respect. His reputed
residence, which lies some distance away in the center of the Christian
Quarter, is in charge of Latin monks. All that remains of the house is a
low, cave-like chapel, twenty or more feet below the street. By itself,
however, this fact furnishes no argument against the correctness of
the location; for the level of every crumbling, undrained Syrian city
constantly rises century by century.
Turning now into the Moslem Quarter, we pass through a tasteful little
garden, closely planted with shade trees, and enter an unpretentious
building. Here rests one of the greatest Moslem heroes and the most
formidable opponent of the Crusaders—the invincible Salah ed-Din, whose
sonorous name we Franks pronounce “Saladin.” It seems very strange that
the tomb of this valiant champion of Islam was long unhonored, if not
entirely unknown, by the inhabitants of Damascus, until it was discovered
fifty years ago by an American missionary. The original casket of walnut
has since been replaced by an exquisitely carved marble sarcophagus, upon
which lies a cover of green silk. In a niche of the wall at the foot of
the tomb now hangs the large bronze wreath given by the German Emperor in
memory of his visit to Damascus. One hopes that it was a Christian spirit
of forgiveness which prompted the placing of a Maltese cross on this
tribute to the Crusaders’ greatest foeman. But as soon as the Christian
emblem was noticed by the custodian of the tomb, the wreath was removed
from its original position on the sarcophagus.
[Illustration: The street called Straight]
[Illustration: The Bride’s Minaret of the Omayyade Mosque]
The one notable ancient building in Damascus is the great mosque of
_Neby Yahya_ or “St. John,” better known to the Western world as the
Omayyade Mosque. The site where this stands has probably always been
marked by a place of worship, and the present structure is some of those
immemorial religious edifices which, so far as we definitely know, was
never built, but only rebuilt. It was doubtless here that there stood
the House of Rimmon in which Naaman, captain of the host of the king of
Syria, bowed down with his royal master.[39] About the year 400 A. D.
the then Roman temple was transformed into the Church of St. John the
Baptist. When Damascus fell into the hands of the Omayyade Dynasty in
the seventh century, the Christian house of worship was converted into
a mosque of such miraculous splendor that the vast multitude of human
artists and artisans who labored upon it were later believed to have
been assisted by the genii. All Syria was ransacked for ancient columns
to adorn the new structure. The pavement was of the most expensive
marbles, the prayer-niches and pulpits were set with jewels, the carved
wooden ceiling was inlaid with precious metals, and six hundred hanging
lamps of solid gold cast their mellow light upon the exquisite mosaic
decorations. Since then, the building has been burned and burned again,
and at each restoration has lost something of its former magnificence.
Yet still it ranks with St. Sophia of Constantinople, the Dome of the
Rock at Jerusalem and the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, as one of the greatest
of Moslem sanctuaries.
Time would fail to tell of its size and splendor, its holy impressiveness
to Moslem eyes, and the inspiring views from its lofty minarets. In its
great court rise the Dome of the Hours and the Dome of the Fountain,
which is believed to mark a point on the Pilgrim Route exactly half-way
between Constantinople and Mecca, and the Dome of the Treasure, where,
hidden jealously from infidel eyes, are kept the sacred books and the
records of the mosque. Above tower three minarets, which are known as
the Western, the Bride’s and—strange as this name may at first seem—the
Minaret of Jesus. The Moslems, however, believe that ʿIsa, as they call
Him, was one of the greatest of the prophets, hardly, if at all, inferior
to Mohammed himself;[40] and the “Son of Mary” is held in unusual
reverence by the inhabitants of Damascus, who say that He will stand upon
this minaret at the Last Judgment.
The mosque itself extends along the entire southern side of the court.
I know of no other non-Gothic structure which seems so well fitted
to uplift one’s thoughts in solemn, spiritual worship of the unseen
God. Here are no confusing chapels, no gaudy pictures or distracting
statues, no gilded altar lit by smoking candles, no thin blue clouds of
slowly rising incense. All is clean, bright, commodious, and yet of an
appropriate richness and beauty. A careful inspection shows that the
architects used the ground-plan of a basilica with aisles and transepts;
but, in spite of the two rows of columns and the heavier pillars which
support the central “Dome of the Eagle,” the chief and lasting impression
of the mosque is its ample, unbroken spaciousness.
The building is larger even than the visitor first thinks: a hundred
and fifty paces will hardly take him from one end of it to the other.
Its stone floor is entirely covered by rugs, whose variegated patterns
have worn to a dull, somber tint. From the lofty ceiling a multitude of
lamps and several gigantic chandeliers are hung by long chains, so low
that they just clear the head of a tall man. Between two of the columns
stands a lavishly decorated, domed structure which is said to contain the
head of John the Baptist, after whom the mosque is named. The shrine is
about the size of the Chapel of the Sepulcher at Jerusalem, but it seems
smaller on account of the far larger building which surrounds it. In the
south wall of the mosque—toward Mecca—are four shallow prayer-niches, and
near the middle of this side stands a tall, graceful pulpit, whose minute
and elaborate inlays of silver and ivory and mother-of-pearl make it a
marvel of chaste richness. Unlike all Oriental churches and most other
mosques, there is comparatively little gold used in the decoration of
this great building. The prevailing colors are cool white and blue and
silver, and the really immense amount of mosaic and inlaid work seems
hardly more than delicate tracery upon the broad, unbroken surfaces.
Such is the Great Mosque when it is empty, a fitting place for quiet
communion and solemn contemplation of the vastness and unhurried power
of the Almighty. But when you behold this same building thronged with
strangely garbed, proud, intellectual-looking and intensely devout
men—women are seldom seen in mosques—you feel the grip of something
portentous, irresistible, relentless. Long lines of turbaned figures
facing toward the holy city of Arabia, now bending low together like a
field of wheat swept by the summer breeze, now standing erect with arms
outstretched toward Allah the Merciful and Compassionate, reciting their
confession of faith in shrill, quick tones which lose their individuality
in a tremendous momentum of sound like the wave-beat of the sea—these
thousands of worshipers have firm hold on a great truth, though it be
but a half-truth; they believe in their religion with an impregnable,
unquestioning confidence, and they render to its precepts an implicit
obedience such as is not enforced by any Christian sect in the world.
They would gladly die for the faith of Islam, and nothing but the strong
restraint of European armaments holds them back from again raising the
standard of the Prophet and setting forth on a new _jahâd_, or holy war,
in obedience to the sacred mandate, “When ye encounter the unbelievers,
strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among
them.... As for the infidels, let them perish, and their works shall
God bring to nought.... And their dwelling the hell fire!... Be not
faint-hearted then, and invite not the infidels to peace!”[41]
Be he preacher or statesman, that man is a fool and blind who does
not realize the tremendous vitality and undiminished strength of
Mohammedanism, the power instinct in its half-truths, and the
unsleeping menace of its essential antagonism to all the “infidel”
world. Politically, Islam is being rapidly shorn of its power; but as a
religion—a religion for which men will cheerfully give their lives it
has lost no whit of its potency. As the cry of the muezzin echoes across
the earth to-day from Japan to Gibraltar, there are, not fewer, but many
millions more who obey its call than there were four centuries ago when
Mohammed II. hurled his Turkish regiments against the ramparts of a then
Christian Constantinople.
The Omayyade Mosque, as has been said, was once a church. In the marble
wall beside its most beautiful prayer-niche is set a large mosaic panel,
among whose intricate geometric traceries there stand out distinctly
three large Maltese crosses. The Moslem artist apparently copied the
design from some earlier decoration without realizing that he was
including the hated symbol of Christianity. So the worshipers in the
Great Mosque who face towards Mecca face also the Cross!
But the strangest feature of this ancient sanctuary is seldom viewed by
travelers; for it is hard to reach, and dragomans are averse to taking
the necessary trouble. You must go to the Joiners’ Bazaar, which lies
just south of the mosque, and borrow a long ladder. Setting this up in
the busy street, you then climb through a small hole which has been
broken in the wall just under the roof of the covered bazaar, and step
out upon a dusty housetop. Here is seen a bit of an old stone portal,
elaborately carved with leaves and flowers, and bearing on its lintel the
unexpected Greek inscription, standing out clearly in capital letters—
THY KINGDOM, O CHRIST, IS AN EVERLASTING KINGDOM, AND THY
DOMINION ENDURETH THROUGHOUT ALL GENERATIONS.
It is a startling, suggestive sentence to read upon the wall of the
greatest mosque of fanatical Moslem Damascus. But you have to get up on
the housetops before you can read the promise that is written there.
CHAPTER X
THE DESERT CAPITAL
Just half-way along the ancient caravan route which runs northeast
from Damascus to the Euphrates River are the ruins of one of the most
remarkable cities of history; for here, in the midst of the desert,
Palmyra attained a wonderful degree of wealth and culture, and a military
power which for a time rivaled that of Rome itself.
The road thither is nearly always in the desert. This is not, however, a
level waste of sand; on the contrary, it is often quite a hilly country,
where for hours at a time the traveler passes along narrow valleys
between steep, rugged heights. The trail has been beaten so hard by the
tread of innumerable caravans that one could ride all the way to Palmyra
on a bicycle. In fact, tourist agents used sometimes to take parties
there by automobile. But this practice was soon abandoned, because
break-downs were frequent, and there were no garages where repairs might
be made. Our own party traveled on horseback, with the heavy luggage
carried by several donkeys and one very lively pack-camel who took
advantage of every possible opportunity to run away across the desert.
However you may go to Palmyra, it is not an easy journey. In summer the
sun is fearfully hot, and in winter the wilderness wind is piercingly
cold; the water along the route, while perhaps not actually unhealthful,
is warm and evil-tasting and full of animal life; unless you carry your
own tent you must sleep in hovels which are filthy and insect-ridden, and
marauding bands of Bedouins hover about, watching for a chance to rob the
luckless traveler.
Two days’ journey from Damascus, near the ancient and now very squalid
village of Karyatein, are a number of ruins which date from Græco-Roman
times. One of these, an extensive sanitarium, is known as the “Bath of
Balkis”—the traditional name of the Queen of Sheba. Within the enclosure
is a vaulted room with a paved floor, in the middle of which an opening
some ten inches in diameter sends forth a current of moist, hot,
sulphurous air. The heat of this room was so suffocating that we could
endure it only for a moment; but the air is believed to be beneficial
for certain diseases, and in Roman days the place was very popular as a
health resort.
From Karyatein the trail strikes across a broad plain between two
mountain ranges. This plain is about fifty miles, or eighteen
camel-hours, long, and its springs are very few and very poor. The
Syrian Desert shows no vegetation in summer except a low salsolaceous
thorn-bush, which the Arabs burn for its soda ash. This plant is called
_al-kali_, whence comes our word “alkali.” It was formerly extensively
used in the manufacture of soap; but on account of the importation of
cheaper materials it no longer has any commercial value.
In the middle of the day the heat was intense. Our heads were protected
from the direct rays of the sun by thick pith helmets, but the reflection
of the cloudless sky upon the whitish marl of the plain scorched our
faces and the flies were a torment to all except the camel, whose thick
hide seemed proof against their attacks.
We had planned to replenish our canteens at Ain el-Wuʿul; but the wells
there proved to be choked with locusts, and at Ain el-Beida, which
we reached after fourteen hours in the saddle, we found the water so
strongly impregnated with sulphur that it tasted like a dose of warm
medicine. This was the last spring in the district, however, so we had no
choice but to drink the nauseating stuff.
A small garrison of Turkish soldiers was stationed in this out-of-the-way
place to protect caravans against the Bedouins, who roam the desert in
the hope of plundering unwary travelers. These robber tribes view their
nefarious occupation as a legitimate business, a feature of desert life
which has become, so to speak, legalized by immemorial custom. They
regard the traveler exactly as the hunter does his prey—a bounty sent by
Providence, which it would be ungrateful for them not to accept. They
will strip their victim to the skin, but are careful not to take his life
unless resistance is offered. They leave him naked in the wilderness
under the protection of Allah, who must take the responsibility, should
the poor fellow perish from hunger and thirst and exposure.
Early the next morning we saw a band of such Arab raiders passing across
the plain a few miles west of us, and all day we proceeded with the
greatest caution, for fear they might swoop down upon us. We afterwards
learned that their last foray had been unsuccessful, and consequently
they were returning to their encampment in an unamiable frame of mind
which would have boded ill to us if we had happened to cross their path.
Midway between Ain el-Beida and Palmyra, we made a détour to visit some
mountains a little distance to the left of the trail. We found here two
altars about six feet high, bearing bi-lingual inscriptions in Greek and
Palmyrene, which related that they had been erected on March 21 of the
year of Palmyra 425 (114 A. D.), and were dedicated to the “Most High
God.” Near by could be seen the broken base of a third monument, but
there were no other indications of human handiwork. We concluded that
these altars must mark the course of the ancient highway, which the city
was under obligation to maintain and protect.
The hills on either side of the plain now drew very much nearer to us
and, as we approached the narrow pass which leads to the desert city,
we saw beside the road several strange mortuary towers. These are as
characteristic a feature of the environs of Palmyra as are the tombs on
the Appian Way of the approach to Rome. Several of the structures are in
a fair state of preservation and show clearly the original form and use.
They were each of three or four stories, the upper floors being reached
by inside stairways. Each story consisted of one square room surrounded
by _loculi_ for the reception of the dead, and before these, or standing
within the room, were statues of the persons entombed in the niches.
The statues either have been badly mutilated by the Arabs, who have a
religious aversion to all such “idolatrous” representations, or have been
destroyed by the vandalism of ignorant dealers in antiquities who, when
they found it inconvenient to carry off whole figures, would break them
and smuggle away the fragments. Many such heads, arms and feet have found
their way to the coast cities of Syria, and some few have been sold to
European palaces and museums.
Our long journey down the pass ended at a low saddle between the hills,
and we at last looked down upon Palmyra itself. Just below us stretched
a vast, confused mass of broken, reddish stones, from which rose here and
there a group of graceful columns or the massive wall of a ruined temple.
Back of the city were the desert hills; before it lay the desert plain.
Built by a spring at the crossroads of the wilderness—surely no other of
the world’s great capitals had so strange a site as this one!
The thrilling story of Palmyra’s rise and fall has been enshrined in
poetry and romance and has inspired the painter’s genius. The city lay,
as has been said, midway between Damascus and the Euphrates, on the most
fertile oasis along the ancient caravan route. It thus early became the
center of the trade between the Mediterranean countries and the heart of
western Asia. If, as is probable, the Tadmor or Tamar (Palm City) of the
Bible[42] is the same as Palmyra, then it was built (or, more probably,
rebuilt) by Solomon; but it does not again emerge into historical notice
until about the beginning of the Christian era, when Mark Antony led
an unsuccessful expedition against it. Still later, the Roman emperors
recognized Palmyra as an important ally and buffer-state against the
inroads of the Parthians. In the third century the Empire was thrown into
a state of anarchy by continual contests between rival claimants for the
throne; so, though in theory distant Palmyra was only a “colony,” it was
in fact given, or better, allowed to assume, a practical independence.
Its ruler Odenathus II. bore the title of Augustus, which was inferior
only to that of Emperor. After his death he was known as the “King of
kings.” In reality, he was the absolute ruler of a sovereign state.
When Valerian had been put to rout by Sapor of Persia, it was Odenathus
who decisively defeated the invaders, saved the Roman Empire from what
seemed certain overthrow, and incidentally added Mesopotamia to his
own royal domains. This king of Palmyra would doubtless have proved a
formidable rival of the emperor, had not his life been cut short by
assassination in the year 266.
Odenathus was succeeded by his son Vahballathus; but the real ruler
was his widow Bath Zebina, better known to the Western world by the
Greek form of her name, Zenobia. If we consider her intellectual power,
administrative ability and personal character, Zenobia ranks as one of
the greatest, if not the greatest, of all queens. She was as gifted
in military affairs as Semiramis, as strong a ruler as Elizabeth, as
beautiful as her ancestor Cleopatra, more learned than Catherine, and her
private life was never touched by the breath of calumny.
[Illustration: A few of the ruins which crowd the site of ancient
Palmyra]
[Illustration: The Triple Gate and the Temple of the Sun]
She is described as of surpassing loveliness, according to the Oriental
type of beauty, with sparkling black eyes, pearly teeth and a commanding
presence. She spoke Greek and Coptic fluently and knew some Latin, in
addition, of course, to her native Aramean. She drew up for her own use
an epitome of history, delighted in reading Homer and Plato, and beguiled
her leisure by discussing philosophy with the famous scholar Longinus,
whom she persuaded to take up a permanent residence at her court.
Her physical endurance was remarkable. While her husband was living,
she was accustomed to accompany him on his hunting expeditions. After
the death of Odenathus, she habitually rode at the head of her armies
on a fiery stallion, from which, however, she would often dismount, so
that she might share the fatigue of the march with the common soldiers.
It is no wonder that such a leader—beautiful, pure, brave, queenly
yet friendly—inspired in her armies an intense personal loyalty and
an unquestioning assent to her most daring plans. Without a murmur
they followed their beloved queen into the fearful struggle with the
world-empire.
At the very beginning of her reign, she threw down the gauntlet to Rome.
The sway of Palmyra already extended over Armenia and Mesopotamia. An
army of 70,000 men now defeated the Roman legions by the Nile and annexed
Egypt. Zenobia next pushed her victorious banners northward to the very
shores of the Bosphorus. When the newly elected emperor Aurelian insisted
that she should formally acknowledge his sovereignty, her answer was a
bold defiance and a proclamation of herself and her son as supreme rulers
of the whole East.
Aurelian, however, was of different stuff from his weakling predecessors.
In the year 272 he brought an immense army to Syria, defeated the forces
of Zenobia at Antioch and then, following quickly after the retreating
Palmyrenes, routed them again near the city of Emesa (modern Homs) and
demanded of Zenobia that she surrender. The haughty answer was that her
enemy had not yet even begun to test the valor and resources of Palmyra.
So the great army of Rome laid siege to the desert stronghold. The winter
and spring wore on, and Zenobia was still unconquered. Whenever Aurelian
summoned her to capitulate, she responded with another bold defiance.
But at last it became clear that her capital was doomed; so the queen,
escaping the vigilance of the Roman sentries, slipped away from the city
and fled across the desert toward the Euphrates. Just as she reached the
bank of the river, however, she was overtaken and brought back captive.
Yet her proud spirit remained unbroken. When Aurelian reproached her
for her obstinate and useless rebellion, she answered with calm dignity
that the course of events had indeed proved his supremacy, but that the
previous emperors had not shown themselves to be superior to her, and she
had therefore been justified in opposing their authority.
In spite of the stubborn resistance of the city, Aurelian did not now
destroy Palmyra or treat its inhabitants cruelly. But when he reached
the Bosphorus on his way back to Rome, word came that the Palmyrenes had
already revolted and had slain the Roman garrison left by the conqueror.
Thereupon he quickly retraced his march and recaptured the city without
difficulty. This time the enraged emperor ordered the beautiful capital
to be razed and allowed his soldiers to engage in an awful massacre.
Neither women nor children were spared, and when the avenging army
finally left the unhappy city, its splendid buildings were but heaps of
dusty rubbish, among which hid a miserable remnant of its heartbroken
inhabitants. Thus departed forever the glory of Palmyra.
The heart of the world has been touched by the pathetic spectacle of
proud, beautiful Zenobia led captive through the streets of Rome to grace
Aurelian’s triumphal procession. Yet the emperor seems to have treated
his captive with unusual consideration and respect, and he generously
bestowed upon her a large estate near Tivoli. There, in the company of
her two sons, she passed the rest of her days quietly, though we dare not
hope happily.
Palmyra was afterwards partially rebuilt by Diocletian and was fortified
by Justinian, who made it a garrison town; but it never regained its
former prosperity. The city was overrun by the desert Arabs, and suffered
severely during the conflicts among the rival Moslem conquerors of
Syria. In the year 745 it was again destroyed; in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries it suffered from severe earthquakes; in 1401 it was
plundered by the Tartar Tamerlane; in the sixteenth century it was taken
by the Druses, and in the seventeenth it was razed by the Turks. For many
generations the ancient city on the oasis was completely unknown to the
Western world, though the wandering Bedouins delighted to talk of the
marvelous ruins in the midst of the great desert.
Modern Tadmor—for it has taken again its old Semitic name—is but a
wretched Arab hamlet of perhaps three hundred inhabitants, whose
mud-plastered hovels lie in the midst of imposing ruins. Fully a square
mile of the plain is strewn with the débris of temples, palaces and
majestic colonnades. Many columns are still standing, after having braved
the wars and earthquakes of sixteen centuries; but by far the greater
number of them lie prone on the ground, half buried by the drifting dust.
The most prominent object that meets the eye is the Great Temple of Baal,
the sun-god, which stands on a high platform overlooking the plain.
Although Aurelian himself had this edifice restored after the final
subjugation of Palmyra, it has since been badly damaged by earthquakes
and defaced by the fanaticism of Moslem iconoclasts. Yet eight of its
tall fluted columns and practically all of one side-wall enable us to
guess what must have been the beauty of this structure when it was the
chief sanctuary of Zenobia’s capital.
Other ruins rise above the intricate mass of fallen columns which cover
the area occupied by the ancient city. This huge pile of carved stones
surmounted by a broken portico was once the royal palace. Yonder curving
colonnade includes the fragments of the theater. Smaller temples are
recognized here and there, and on the hillside at the edge of the oasis
can be seen a number of the tall, square towers which were built as
burial-places for the wealthier families.
But the chief architectural glory of ancient Palmyra was its far-famed
Street of Columns. This imposing avenue stretched from the western edge
of the oasis to the Temple of the Sun, a distance of about three-quarters
of a mile. On each side of it was a continuous, elaborately carved
entablature, supported by nearly four hundred columns of reddish-brown
limestone. About two-thirds of the way up these columns were corbels
which, as the inscriptions still show, bore statues of prominent
citizens. At every important crossing, whence other colonnaded avenues
stretched to the right and left, four massive granite pillars supported a
vaulted _tetrapylon_ or quadruple gate.
Over a hundred of the columns of this beautiful avenue are still standing
in their places, and large portions of the entablature remain unbroken.
One can easily follow the course of the colonnade and understand its
relation to adjoining structures; and the traveler must be sadly lacking
in imagination who cannot sometimes, as the light of the twentieth
century day grows dimmer, see a dream city of wondrous, unbroken beauty
stand proud again beneath the calm, still gleaming of the desert stars.
Not shattered stones but well-built homes and busy bazaars spread far
outward from the foot of the mountain; a multitude of graceful pillars
stand upright around the palaces and temples of a mighty capital, and
between the long lines of statues on the reddish shafts of the great
colonnade a splendid vista reaches to the triumphal arch and then,
through its triple portals, to where the Temple of the Sun keeps silent
watch over a city of imperial grandeur and a queen who sees visions of
world-wide dominion.
The few hundred residents of Tadmor are of Arab blood, but the Bedouins
of the surrounding desert consider them a poor, degenerate race, as
doubtless they are. Shortly before we visited the village, its sheikh
had made a wonderful trip to Paris as guest of a French lady who had
previously traveled through the desert under his guidance. It seemed
very strange, in this lonely little hamlet among the ruins of a
vanished people, to hear an Arab sheikh tell stories—and he loved to
tell them—about his adventures in the most modern of twentieth century
capitals.
We were so fortunate as to be invited to a great feast which the sheikh
gave the entire village in honor of his birthday. Feeding the poor in
this wholesale way is regarded by the Arabs as a deed of great merit. A
slaughtered camel provided the _pièce de résistance_ of the banquet. In
the center of the room was placed an enormous tray piled with a mountain
of _burghul_, or boiled wheat, into which had been inserted huge pieces
of camel’s meat. A large funnel-shaped depression had been scooped out
in the top of the pile and filled with melted butter. This percolated
through the mass and added the final touch of flavor to what was—if you
liked it—a most rich and delicious repast. The anxious villagers were
then admitted in groups of eight or ten. They immediately squatted around
the tray, thrust their hands into the mass, grasped as much as they
could, plunged it into their mouths and, in order not to lose any time,
swallowed it with as little mastication as possible. One greedy fellow
got an unusually large chunk of camel’s meat into his throat and, as a
consequence, nearly choked to death before his comrades relieved him by
strenuous blows upon his back.
In order to visit Hama, we returned from Palmyra by another route; and,
as a large part of this journey was to be across a trackless, waterless
and absolutely uninhabited desert, we engaged a Bedouin to act as our
guide.
Not long after setting out, we passed through a gap in the hills a
quarter of a mile wide, whose sides were almost as perpendicular as if
they had been walls shaped by the hand of man. The locality is called
_Marbat Antar_, that is, “Antar’s Hitching-place.” Antar is the hero of
many a fabulous exploit among the Arabs, much as was Hercules among the
Greeks; and the prodigies of valor which he performed in defense of his
tribe are celebrated in song and story. Among other wonderful feats, he
is said to have leaped his horse across this deep ravine from cliff to
cliff.
The first day’s journey homeward brought us to el-Wesen, a well where we
had expected to lay in a supply of water for the long ride across the
arid wilderness; but, to our intense disappointment, we found the water
foul with dead locusts. Our Arabs, however, swallowed the nauseating
fluid with great gusto, apparently rejoicing that they could obtain both
food and drink in the same mouthful; and, as it was a case of necessity,
we managed to cook some food with the water, and even drank a little of
it in the form of very strong tea which disguised somewhat the insect
flavor.
The next morning we were ready for the start at four o’clock and
traveled all day through a rolling, treeless country, which in summer is
absolutely bare of vegetation. At sunset we halted for two hours in order
to rest and feed the animals. Then we mounted again for an all-night
ride; for we did not dare sleep until we had come to water. There was
no trail visible to us, but our guide held steadily on through the
darkness. During the long night we could see ahead of us his white camel,
keeping straight on the course with no apparent aid save the twinkling
stars above. There was such danger of falling in with one of the robber
tribes which infest this district that we were warned not to speak above
a whisper. The poor donkeys also received a hint not to bray. Each of
them had a halter looped tightly around his neck. As soon as an animal
was seen to raise his nose in preparation for an ecstatic song, some one
would quickly tighten the noose and, to our amusement and the donkey’s
very evident disgust, the only sound to issue from his throat would be a
thin gurgling whine.
As the night drew on we became so sleepy that we could hardly sit in the
saddles, and before morning dawned we were burning with thirst. Our guide
led us to another spring. Not only was it full of long-dead locusts, but
a wild pig was wallowing in the filthy water! Even the Arabs refused to
drink from the pool that had been defiled by the unclean beast. There was
nothing to do but to push on again. We had been twenty-six hours in the
saddle, with nothing to drink save “locust-tea,” when at last we came
to a little village by a running stream of clear, limpid water—and our
desert journey was safely over.
CHAPTER XI
SOME SALT PEOPLE
Whenever the genial American consul-general spoke of a certain godly
Scotch-woman who was laboring for the uplift of Syria, a not irreverent
twinkle would come into his eye as he paraphrased the words of the
Gospel—“She is one of those salt people.”
I should like to write a book about the men and women of many races
and many ecclesiastical affiliations whose lives are bringing a varied
savor and moral asepsis to the land of Syria. It would contain tales of
thrilling romance and brave adventure and a surprising number of humorous
anecdotes, besides the record of quiet self-devotion which is taken for
granted in all missionary biographies. Such a lengthy narration falls
without the scope of the present work. Yet any description of Syria and
its people would be incomplete which did not include at least a few
glimpses of the men and women who, more than all others, are molding
the thought and uplifting the ideals and helping to solve the critical
problems of the land of Lebanon.
Earnest faith, noble character and uncomplaining self-sacrifice are not
sufficient equipment for the Syrian missionary. These qualities are
indeed needed, and as a rule are possessed in generous measure. But he
who is to exert any permanent influence for good upon this proud, sturdy,
persistent, quick-witted race, with its almost cynical proficiency in
religious argumentation, must also be strong of body, alert of intellect,
tactful in social intercourse, and withal of an adaptability born not of
vacillation but of a firm hold on the essentials of life.
Among the American missionaries, for instance, have been found champion
athletes, splendid riders and marksmen, _raconteurs_ of surprising
mental agility, phenomenal linguists and surgeons of magnificent daring.
One gained world-wide fame as an author and another as a scientist.
A third was the best Arabic scholar of his century, if not of any
century. Well-known American colleges have called—in vain—for presidents
from Syria; and an important embassy of the United States was thrice
offered to a missionary, who preferred, however, to keep to his chosen
life-work—at eight hundred dollars a year. These men and women are not
laboring here because there is no other field of endeavor open to them.
They are very intelligent, competent, refined, brave, adaptable people,
with deep knowledge of many other things besides religion, a broad vision
of the world’s affairs, and almost invariably a keen sense of humor;
people whom it is an education to know and a glad inspiration to own as
friends.
* * * * *
In 1855 a leaky sailing vessel landed a cargo of rum and missionaries
at Beirut. The rum was drunk up long ago; but one of the passengers, a
tall, wiry Yankee, is still bubbling over with the joy of life. When I
met Dr. Bliss again in Syria last summer, he told me with quiet chuckles
of enjoyment how, shortly after he came to the East, one of the older
missionaries remarked, “Daniel Bliss isn’t practical and his wife won’t
live a year in this climate.” After nearly sixty years, the beloved wife
is still with him; and as for being practical—there stands the great
university which he has built!
Others helped him from the beginning—wise and generous philanthropists
like William E. Dodge and Morris K. Jesup in America and the Duke of
Argyll and the Earl of Shaftesbury in Great Britain—but two thousand
alumni scattered over the five continents will tell you that the Syrian
Protestant College is first and foremost a monument to the foresight and
tact and self-sacrifice and patience and indomitable enthusiasm of “the
Old Doctor.”
It was at first very small. A half-century ago there were but a few
pupils gathered in a hired room. To-day the faculty and administrative
officers alone number nearly four score, and a thousand men and boys are
studying _in the English language_. The institution is emphatically
Christian, but it is as absolutely non-sectarian as Harvard or Columbia.
Every great religion and sect of the Near East, including Mohammedanism
and Judaism, is represented in the student body; and it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that every student and graduate honors Daniel Bliss
next only to God. As he walks through the streets of the city, men stop
to kiss his hands which embarrasses him exceedingly. Perhaps they love
him so much because they are so sure that he loves them. Orientals
are very quick to detect a stranger’s underlying motives, and many
a smooth-speaking philanthropist has been weighed by them and found
wanting. But, during nearly sixty years’ residence in Beirut, Dr. Bliss
has lived such a life that his devotion to Syria and his affectionate
interest in Syrians has become a tradition handed down from father to son.
He has known dark days and fought hard battles, yet he has never lacked a
buoyant optimism, born partly of trust in God and partly of a strong body
and a healthful mind. He has no patience with dismal, despondent prophets
of evil. I never knew a man with a larger capacity for enjoyment. Good
music always moves him powerfully. He keeps in touch with the latest
European and American periodicals. He likes new books, new songs, new
stories and, especially, new jokes. Active, alert, quick at repartee, he
is passionately fond of the society of young people, and they repay the
liking with interest.
A visitor to the college was once speaking of the attractive horseback
rides through the country around Beirut. “But,” he added, as he looked
up at the white-haired president, “I suppose you don’t ride any more.”
“No,” answered Dr. Bliss with a resigned sigh, “I haven’t been on a horse
for—three days!”
He is getting on in years now, and a recent stoop has taken a fraction of
an inch from his six feet of spare, hard bone and muscle. A decade ago he
resigned the presidency of the college, whereupon, to his great delight,
his son was elected to fill the vacancy. “See what my boy is doing!”
he exclaims, as he shows visitors the new buildings which are going up
almost at the rate of one a year. So now the Old Doctor just walks about
the campus which he loves, and from beneath his shock of thick white
hair beams an irresistibly infectious enjoyment of this superlatively
beautiful world, where anybody who has the mind can work so hard and get
so much fun out of it.
Did I say that Dr. Bliss is old? Not he! He would indignantly deny the
imputation. It is true that he celebrated his ninetieth birthday last
August, but what of that? He recently expressed an intention to live to
be a hundred. When he was a stalwart youth of four score I heard him
remark, “Let the aged people talk about the good old times if they want
to. I have no patience with such old fogies. _I_ believe that the world
is getting better every day.”
* * * * *
Ras Baalbek is a little village some twenty miles north of the famous
temples. Its thousand inhabitants are exceedingly ignorant and bigoted
Oriental Catholics. The only native Protestant family is that of the
school-teacher. There is also one American citizen—an adopted brother of
ours who accumulated a few hundred dollars in the United States, learned
a few words of English, and then returned to his birthplace, where he
keeps the village khan, which has an evil reputation as a gambling-house.
The Ras is cold in winter, hot in summer, and filthy at all seasons. The
houses are built half of mud and half of stone; the streets are filled
with unmitigated mud. A legion of fierce curs fill the night with their
howling, and rush out of dark corners to snap at unsuspecting strangers.
It was not an inviting town, but we had heard that two American ladies
were spending the winter there in missionary work; so, after we had
turned over our horses to our fellow citizen of the khan and had dug
passably clean collars out of our dusty saddle-bags, we went to pay them
an evening call. Their house was not hard to find, for it was the finest
in all the village, a commodious mansion with two rooms, one built of
stone and the other of mud.
When the door opened for us, we passed immediately from Syria to America
and, under the influence of the warmth and refinement and hospitable
cheer of the mud-walled room, our sentiments toward Ras Baalbek underwent
a complete and permanent change. These quiet-speaking, refined ladies did
not look at all like martyrs of the faith. It was hard to realize that
they had immured themselves in the midst of a dirty, ignorant, fanatical
community, and were living in circumstances of very real hardship and
peril. In the street just outside, the dogs were yelping noisily. From
a neighboring roof a stentorian voice called out what corresponded to
the evening edition of a local newspaper. The village was informed that
the robber-tribe of Beit Dendish was ravaging the valley, a prominent
resident had been murdered the preceding night, and Abu somebody-or-other
had lost one of his goats. In the bright, warm room, however, we talked
of American friends and American books, and discussed the probable
outcome of the Yale-Princeton game.
After supper we all went to the house of the native teacher for a little
prayer meeting. He was a young married man with several children, but
his housekeeping arrangements were very simple. There was but one room.
The floor was of mud, the ceiling was mud and straw, the walls were mud
and stone. In one corner was a big pile of mattresses and blankets; in
another was a small pile of cooking utensils, and one wall was hollowed
out to serve as a bin for flour. The teacher’s children lay on mattresses
spread upon the bare floor and slept quite soundly through all the
talking and singing.
As there were no other Protestants in the village, the attendance was
naturally small. Two or three neighbors slipped in quietly and seated
themselves by the door. These Catholics were probably drawn here merely
by curiosity to see the American ladies and their visitors; but they sat
reverently through the service and seemed to pay very close attention,
though their dark, inscrutable faces gave no hint as to what they thought
of the proceedings.
It was not an inspiring audience; but the ladies met each newcomer with
a bright smile and a tactful word of greeting. We sang strange-sounding
words to an old, familiar tune, after which one of the missionaries
read a few verses from the Bible and added a brief explanation of their
meaning. The second hymn was set to an Arab air that sounded a little
startling to our Western ears. Then came a short closing prayer, followed
immediately by very lengthy Oriental salutations, as the two strangers
were introduced to the people of the Ras.
We should have liked to stay several days and investigate at first-hand
the work among women, of which we had heard encouraging reports; but we
had to ride away early the next morning. The two missionaries walked
out to the edge of the village with us, where the older lady gave us a
ridiculously large lunch and a pleasant invitation to “call again the
next time you are passing!” The younger—she was very young—pretended to
weep copiously at our departure, and wrung bucketfuls of imaginary tears
out of her handkerchief. Then the two cheery figures went back up the
hill to their long, lonely winter of exile.
* * * * *
On the last Sunday of the Old Year the air was just crisp enough to make
walking an exhilarating delight. It was one of the days, not infrequent
in the rainy season, when the clouds draw away for a time, while earth
and sky, cleansed and refreshed by the recent showers, shine with the
refulgence of the rarest mornings of our Western springtime.
As we went out of the old city of Homs, the clearness of the atmosphere
was like transparency made visible. The horizon was as clean-cut as that
of the ocean. Off to the west were the heights inhabited by the cruel
and fanatical Nusairiyeh; straight in front of us to the south was the
“Entering In of Hamath,” lying low and narrow between Anti-Lebanon on our
left and the snow-clad summits of highest Lebanon on our right; while to
the east the great wheat-fields of the “Land of Homs” rolled away over
the horizon to the unseen desert. Our goal, the little village of Feruzi,
shone so white and distinct that it was hard to realize that it was over
an hour’s journey away.
We were four: two Americans, the native pastor of the Protestant
congregation at Homs, and an old, old man. The pastor was a noble fellow,
who shortly afterward showed heroic mettle during a fearful cholera
epidemic which ravaged his city. The old man, however, was the more
picturesque figure.
He was clothed in baggy trousers of faded blue, with a large turban on
his head and a heavy, formless sheepskin mantle over his shoulders; his
bare feet were thrust into great yellow slippers which flopped clumsily
as he walked. We should once have been inclined to treat him with some
condescension; but fortunately we had learned the Oriental lesson of
reverence for old age, and we American college graduates soon found
there were many things that this unschooled Syrian mechanic could teach
us. What dignity and quietness marked his speech and manner! How calm
and trustful was his attitude toward the future! He was one of the
first Protestants in this district, and many were the stories he could
tell of the early days of struggle and persecution. He had never been
rich—I doubt if he earned thirty cents a day; yet he spoke as one who
had observed much and reflected much and, although many kinds of trouble
had come to him, his contentment and faith were an inspiration to us.
As we were his guests, we were of course treated with the greatest
friendliness, yet we could see that in his eyes we were mere boys, who
knew little of the problems of life. And, to tell the truth, before the
day was over we were more than half inclined to agree with him.
Feruzi is one of the few remaining villages in the country which are not
Syrian, but the older Chaldean in blood and language. Its inhabitants,
who number about a thousand, appear quite different in feature as well
as dress from the people of the surrounding district. Their costume is
a peculiar one, remarkable for its warm colors and long, queerly cut
trimmings. The women remind one of American Indians, and the faces of
the men are of unusual fierceness. It seemed quite natural that there
should be a Chaldean church here, big and gaudy, yet ugly and ill-kept,
with a much-prized copy of the Scriptures in the Syriac tongue chained
to the lectern; but we saw no structure resembling a Protestant place of
worship, and among the crowds that followed us curiously about it was
impossible to find any one who looked like a Presbyterian elder.
Yet when we turned into the room set apart for the use of the Protestant
congregation, some of the wildest and most dangerous-looking men
followed. It was a small place, not over twenty feet square, low and
dark, and quite bare save for a rough matting on the floor and a chair
and a table for the preacher. In a few minutes it was crowded to
suffocation. There were over ninety people in the little room. The men
sat on one side and the women on the other; but all of us sat on the
floor and were so packed together that any change of position was quite
impossible, except for a few mothers with babies, who sat near the door.
Throughout the long Christmas sermon the cramped audience showed a
reverence and an attentiveness that would have shamed many an American
congregation. Suppose that a full-blooded Arab in his flowing native
dress, should enter one of our churches at home—what a craning of necks
there would be, and how few persons would be able to recall the text! We
appeared just as outlandish to the people of Feruzi; yet, although we sat
at the back of the room, not a person turned to look at us, except that
the man at my side would always help me find the place in the hymn book.
It was not indifference, but consideration for the stranger and respect
for the occasion; and we who had come merely to see an unusual sight,
stayed to worship God with these new friends, and went away with a fuller
realization of the meaning of Christmas.
After the service was over, however, there could be no charge of
indifference brought against these Chaldean villagers—and here too
American congregations might well learn from them. The same men who
just now had seemed to ignore our existence came crowding around to
greet us as “brethren.” They inquired about our life at Beirut and our
own wonderful country far beyond the western ocean; they expressed a
complimentary surprise at the extent of our travels; they sympathized
tenderly with the homesickness which comes so strongly at Christmas-time
and expressed kindly wishes for our dear ones in America; they pressed
upon us the poor hospitality that it was in their power to offer. In
short, out of church as in church, the people of Feruzi acted like the
devout, courteous and friendly Christians that they were.
When at last we had to leave, they all followed us out to the village
limits, and one or two—such is the pleasant Oriental custom—walked on
with us for a mile on our homeward journey. When the last strange, dark
Chaldean had said “God be with you, brother!” we went on in the beautiful
calm of evening a little more quietly than we had come, with a clearer
understanding of the brotherhood of man, and a deeper faith in the
teachings of man’s great Brother.
* * * * *
To those who look to see an effective Gospel brought again to the Near
East through a reawakening of the ancient Oriental churches, it is
encouraging to know that even now there are prelates who are earnest,
sincere and capable. Such a one was Butrus Jureijery, the first bishop of
Cæsarea Philippi and later the patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church.
From beginning to end he was a thoroughgoing Catholic. Indeed, the most
striking incident of his early career was an argument with a Protestant
Bible-seller, which developed into a fierce fistic combat, with the
result that the governor of Lebanon exiled both parties from their native
town of Zahleh.
Some years later, after he had been ordained priest, Butrus journeyed to
Rome and presented to the Holy Father a novel petition.
“We Catholics,” he said, “build our church upon St. Peter, the first
bishop, the rock, the holder of the keys; and we remember that the
apostle’s divine commission was given by Christ at Cæsarea Philippi on
the slopes of Mount Hermon. How is it that the original bishopric of the
Christian Church, the first see of Peter, has been so long allowed to
remain unoccupied?” Now Butrus is the Arabic pronunciation of Peter. So
he continued, “Here am I, bearing the very name of the greatest apostle,
a native of the holy land of Lebanon, and ready to take up the arduous
labors which shall reclaim for the church its first, long neglected
bishopric.”
The pope was so struck by the force of the argument that he promised to
consecrate the young priest as bishop of Cæsarea, or Banias, as it is now
called. Then the bishop-elect went through France, preaching a kind of
new crusade. His idea was novel and striking, and met with enthusiastic
approval. Indeed, with such eloquence did he appeal for the proposed
diocese that he became immensely popular throughout all France, and gifts
for the Bishopric of Banias continued to flow in from that country as
long as Butrus lived.
In 1897 the highest ecclesiastics of the Greek Catholic Church gathered
in solemn convention at Serba to elect a new patriarch. Butrus Jureijery
was the people’s choice; but the odds against him seemed overwhelming. He
was too active and too honest for the hierarchy. The Turkish government
was inimical to him, the powerful Jesuit order fought him, the papal
nuncio objected to his nomination, and the bishops, almost to a man,
opposed him.
For once, however, the Syrian peasants defied their ecclesiastical lords.
Word was sent to the convention that its members need not return to
their dioceses unless they cast their votes for Butrus. So, in spite of
government, Jesuits, papal nuncio, and the wishes of the very electors
themselves, the enterprising bishop of Banias became “Patriarch of
Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria and the Whole East,” and, subject to a
hardly more than nominal allegiance to the Vatican, the supreme head of
a great church whose five million adherents are scattered throughout the
Near East from Hungary to Persia and from the Black Sea to the upper Nile.
He had been elected as the “People’s Patriarch,” and such he remained.
A religious and political autocrat, with every opportunity and every
precedent for using his office to enrich himself and his family, he
remained poor and honest to the end. This means more than the American
reader realizes. Throughout the East, political or ecclesiastical office
is supposed to afford a quasi-legitimate means of amassing wealth. Few
princes of the church have ended their lives in poverty, nor have their
families known want. Yet when Butrus died, his own brother would have
been unable to attend the funeral, if a popular subscription had not
raised sufficient money to buy him a decent coat.
Butrus was progressive as well as honest. His personal beliefs did not
change, but, as he grew older, he showed a more liberal spirit toward
those who differed with him. He entered into no more fist-fights with
his opponents; on the contrary, he treated them with the greatest
courtesy. He was the first Greek Catholic patriarch, for instance, to
return the calls of the Americans in Beirut or to visit the English
Mission at Baalbek. Indeed, at one time four of the seven teachers
in his own patriarchal school were Protestants. A thorough churchman
himself, he learned to fight dissent with its own weapons; not anathema,
excommunication and seclusion, but education, honesty and progress. He
presented the spectacle of a man devout of heart and noble of purpose,
but differing with some of the rest of us in his theological beliefs.
Such are honored by all who hold character above creed.
He was loved by his people and admired and respected by the members of
all other communions; but with his own bishops he had to wage unceasing
warfare, and the contest drove him into an early grave.
Then they clothed the dead man in his richest robes, heavy with gold
and jewels. They put his pontifical staff in his hand and set him on
his throne in his palace, and for three days all the world thronged
to see him. There were foreign consuls, come to do honor to the wise
statesman, Protestant missionaries who esteemed the great Catholic for
his honesty and courage, careless young people drawn by news of the
strange spectacle, and thousands upon thousands of Butrus’ beloved poor,
who kissed his cold hand and prayed to him with absolute confidence that
he would still be their friend and protector.
On a bright, beautiful Easter Sunday I watched his funeral procession
pass through the streets of Beirut. In a way, this last journey was
typical of his life and character. For the first time in many long
centuries, all sects ignored their differences so that they might
together do honor to the prelate who was greater than his church. Roman
Catholic, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Maronite and Armenian marched
together; and as the cortège passed the little Protestant Church, its
bell was tolled “in order that,” as its pastor said, “the Turkish
soldiers in the barracks yonder may know that, after all, we Christians
are one.”
[Illustration: The dead Patriarch being driven through the streets of
Beirut in his gilded chariot]
[Illustration: A summer camp in Lebanon]
First came three companies of Turkish soldiers and sixty gorgeously
dressed consular guards; then children from the church schools,
black-robed Jesuits, humble mourners from the patriarch’s native town
of Zahleh, men bearing wreaths and banners sent from sister churches;
then more children singing a plaintive Arabic hymn. There were present
two patriarchs of other communions, more than a dozen bishops and three
hundred and fifty priests, and the solemn dignity of the procession, so
different from the loud, hysterical wailing at most Syrian funerals,
seemed to impress even the Moslem spectators on the housetops along the
line of march.
Last of all came Butrus himself, not lying within a black-draped hearse
but, as if in triumphal procession, seated in a gilded chariot hung with
bright banners and wreaths of flowers. The patriarch sat upright in his
gorgeous robes, his staff grasped firmly in one rigid hand and a crucifix
in the other. I stood within ten feet of the chariot as it passed by, and
there was nothing in the least harrowing in the sight; on the contrary,
it was wonderfully dignified and impressive. I could hardly realize that
the patriarch was dead; he sat there so naturally with his long gray
beard resting upon his golden vestments, and his large, calm features
seemed still to be animated by the vital power of his dauntless spirit.
Afterwards there were long addresses lauding the character and good deeds
of the dead man; the bishops who had shortened his life said masses
for the repose of his soul; and then, still clothed in his robes of
state, they placed him on a throne in a vault under the pavement of the
cathedral choir. There he sits in solemn, lonely grandeur, like some
Eastern Barbarossa waiting for the time when the spirit of the Christ
shall be re-born in the church which he so loved, for which in his own
earnest way he so unceasingly labored, and for which at last he died.
CHAPTER XII
THE CEDARS OF THE LORD
We had watered our horses, eaten the last olive and the last scrap of
dusty bread that remained in the bottom of our saddle-bags, and were
shivering and impatient and irritable; for a sea of beautiful but
chilling clouds was rolling around us, and as yet there was no sound
of the far-off tinkle that would herald the approach of the belated
mule-train which bore our tents and food.
Then suddenly, just as the sun was setting, a friendly breeze swept the
clouds down into the valleys; and in a moment fatigue, vexation and
hunger were forgotten, as we contemplated one of the most beautiful
panoramas in all Lebanon. Before us the mountain sloped quickly to a
precipice whose foot lay unseen, thousands of feet below, while just
across the gorge, so steep and lofty and apparently so near as almost to
be oppressive, towered _Jebel el-Arz_—the Cedar Mountain. The whole range
was bathed in a wonderful golden hue, more brilliant yet more ethereal
than the alpenglow of Switzerland. Soon the gold faded into blue, and
that to a Tyrian purple, a color so royal that those who have not seen
cannot believe, so deep and strange that, to those who have seen, it
seems almost unearthly. One must gaze and gaze in a vain attempt to
fathom its unsearchable depths, until the purple darkens into black, and
the watcher stands silent, as if the setting sun had for a moment swung
open the door that leads into the eternal.
“Where are the cedars?” I asked a member of our party who had visited
them before.
“Over there, directly in front of you!”
“But the mountain seems to be one bare, empty mass of rock!”
“Look closer—yonder—where I am pointing!”
Yes, there they are, apparently hung against the face of the rock in
such a precarious situation that a loosened cone would drop clear of the
little ledge and fall all the way to the bottom of the valley. You see
just a tiny patch of dark green against the mountainside—as big as the
palm of your hand—no, as large as a finger nail—like a speck on the lens
of a field-glass. Such is the first view of the group of ancient trees
which are still known as the “Cedars of the Lord.”
While we were engrossed with the mountain scenery, the baggage-train at
last appeared. Then came that most satisfyingly luxurious experience, a
camp dinner after a long, wearisome day in the saddle. We supplemented
our canned food by purchases made at the near-by village of Diman, where
we procured delicious grapes, tomatoes, fresh milk, and new-laid eggs at
six cents a dozen.
After dinner a young Maronite priest came up from the convent to visit
us. Father Abdullah proved to be the private secretary of the patriarch,
who has a summer residence at Diman. It was an unanticipated experience
for us to meet, high up in this wild mountain region, a Syrian priest
who, after graduating from the Maronite College at Beirut, had spent
seven years in advanced Latin studies at Paris and had then read
archæology at the British Museum. Father Abdullah’s English, however,
was a broken reed; so most of our conversation was carried on in French,
with an occasional lapse into Arabic. He said that his long residence at
Paris had naturally brought him into closest sympathy with the French,
but that nevertheless he considered the English superior in practicality
and energy. He had recently made an independent archæological study of
the surrounding district, and entertained us by telling some of his own
theories concerning the very early history of Lebanon. Later in the
evening, as a further evidence of his friendship, he sent us a great
basket of fresh figs.
While we were enjoying this delicious gift, the fog rolled up again
from the west and filled the gorge until we looked across the billowing
surface of a milk-white sea, above which only a few of the loftiest peaks
appeared as lonely islands. Such was the marvelous purity of the air
at this altitude that even at night the sky was still a deep blue and
the full moon touched the rocks with delicate tints of orange and rose,
while, to complete the soft beauty of the scene, a double lunar rainbow
swung its cold silvery arcs above the summit of the Cedar Mountain.
Then the wind freshened, the rising fog-waves overflowed from the valleys
and the penetrating chill of our cloud-bound mountainside drove us to the
shelter of our tents.
When we reached the cedar grove the next noon, we found that our first
impressions had been wrong concerning everything except the supreme
beauty of the mountain setting. Far from being situated upon a narrow
shelf on a perilously steep slope, the trees are securely enthroned amid
surroundings of massive grandeur. The watershed of Lebanon here curves
around so that it encloses a tremendous natural amphitheater about twelve
miles long and over six thousand feet in depth, with its inner, concave
side facing the Mediterranean. High up on this crescent-shaped slope,
the Kadisha or “Holy” River issues from a deep cave and falls to the
bottom of the valley in a succession of beautiful cascades. Around the
amphitheater run a succession of curving ledges, like titanic balconies,
which near the bottom are small and fertile, but which become longer and
broader and more barren toward the wind-swept summits. The highest of
these, which lies nearly seven thousand feet above the sea, is eight
miles long and at its widest three miles across. Though it is really
broken by hundreds of hills, these are dwarfed into insignificance by the
great peaks which rise behind them, and in a distant view the surface of
the plateau seems perfectly level.
Here, amid surroundings of rare beauty and yet of solemn loneliness, is
set the royal throne of the king of trees. Just back of the cedars the
mountains rise to an elevation of over 11,000 feet. Around them is vast
emptiness and silence. No other trees grow on this chill, wind-swept
height. No underbrush springs up among their rugged trunks. The last
cultivated fields stop just below, and the nearest village is out of
sight and sound, far down the mountainside. A few goatherds lead their
flocks to a near-by spring that is fed from the snow-pockets of the Cedar
Mountain; but at night the wolves can be heard howling hungrily, and by
the end of the year the snow drifts deep around the old trees and the
passes are closed for the winter.
Yet downward from the cedars is a prospect of warm, fertile beauty. You
look deep into the dark green valley of the Kadisha, and then across the
lower mountains to where, thirty miles away, the “great sea in front
of Lebanon”[43] rises high up into the sky; and during one memorable
week in the summer you can see, a hundred and fifty miles across the
Mediterranean, the jagged mountain peaks of the island of Cyprus outlined
sharp against the red disk of the setting sun.
When the Old Testament writers wished to describe that which was
consummately beautiful, rich, strong, proud and enduring, they drew
their similes from Hermon and Lebanon, and the climax of the “glory of
Lebanon” they found in the “cedars of God.”[44] Would they express the
full perfection of that which was choice,[45] excellent,[46] goodly,[47]
high and lifted up,[48] they pictured “a cedar in Lebanon with fair
branches, and with a forest-like shade.... Its stature was exalted above
all of the trees of the field; and its boughs were multiplied, and its
branches became long.... All the birds of the heavens made their nests in
its boughs; and under its branches did all the beasts of the field bring
forth their young.... Thus was it fair in its greatness, in the length of
its branches ... nor was any tree in the garden of God like unto it for
beauty.”[49]
The cedar of Lebanon must not be confounded with the various smaller
trees which in America are known as “cedars.” It is own brother to the
great deodar or god-tree of the Himalayas and the forest giants on
the high slopes of the Atlas, Taurus and Amanus ranges. In the days
when Hiram of Tyre provided timber for Solomon’s Temple, large cedar
woods spread over Lebanon, and apparently grew also on the sides of
Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; but generation after generation these trees
became fewer in number. Even in the sixth century, Justinian found it
difficult to secure sufficiently large beams for the Church of the Virgin
(now the Mosque el-Aksa) in Jerusalem. Many efforts were made to preserve
the trees, which had long been considered of a peculiar sanctity. High
up on the rocky sides of Lebanon, Hadrian carved his imperial command
that the groves should be left untouched. Modern Maronite patriarchs have
excommunicated those who cut down the “trees of God.” But the roving
goats who nibble the tender young saplings have regarded neither emperor
nor patriarch. Now there is little timber of any kind in Syria, and the
profiles of the mountains cut sharp against the sky. Of the cedars there
remain only seven groups, the finest of which is the one we are visiting,
above the village of Besherreh.
A former governor of Lebanon, Rustum Pasha, protected this grove against
roving animals by a well-built stone wall, and in recent years the number
of young trees has consequently slightly increased. But the really old
cedars grow fewer century by century; indeed, young and old together,
their number is pathetically few. Twelve of the very largest are usually
counted as the patriarchs of the grove. The mountaineers say that these
had their origin when Christ and the eleven faithful Disciples once
visited Lebanon, and each stuck his staff into the earth, where it took
root and became an undying cedar. In all there are about four hundred
trees. A local tradition says that they can never be counted twice
alike; and, in fact, I have yet to find two travelers who agree as to
the number. We need not, however, seek a miraculous explanation of this
peculiar lack of unanimity. It is doubtless due to the fact that several
trunks will grow so close together that no one can say whether they
should be considered as a single tree, or as two or more. When no fewer
than seven trunks almost touch at the bottom, it is quite impossible to
tell whether they sprang originally from one seed or from many.
Yet though the cedars are few in number, these few are kingly trees.
Their height is never more than a hundred feet; but some have trunks
over forty feet around, and mighty, wide-spreading limbs which cover a
circle two or three hundred feet in circumference. Those which have been
unhindered in their growth are tall and symmetrical; others are gnarled
and knotted, with room for the Swiss Family Robinson to keep house in
their great forks. Some years ago a monk lived in a hollow of one of the
trunks. When you climb a little way into a cedar and look out over the
whorl of horizontal branches, the upper surface seems as smooth and soft
as a rug, upon which have apparently fallen the uplifted cones. Indeed,
the close-growing foliage will bear you almost as well as a carpeted
floor. Eighty feet above the ground, I have thrown myself carelessly
down, not upon a bough, but upon just the network of interlacing twigs,
and rested as securely as if I had been lying in an enormous hammock.
[Illustration: The Cedar Mountain. The grove shows as a small, dark patch
at the right]
[Illustration: The source of the Kadisha River. The rocks in the
background mark the edge of the plateau on which are situated the Cedars
of Lebanon]
Most of the cedars are crowded so closely that their growth has been
very irregular. Sometimes two branches from different trees rub against
each other until the bark is broken; then the exuding sap cements them
together, and in the course of years they grow into each other so that
you cannot tell where one tree ends and the other begins. Just over
my tent two such Siamese Twins were joined by a common bough a foot
in diameter. Near by I found three trees thus united, and another
traveler reports having seen no fewer than four connected by a single
horizontal branch which apparently drew its sap from all of the parent
and foster-parent trunks. Even more remarkable is a cedar which has been
burned completely through near the ground, and yet draws so much sap from
an adjoining tree that its upper branches continue to bear considerable
foliage.
The wood is slightly aromatic, hard, very close-grained, and takes a
high polish. It literally never rots. The most striking characteristic
of the cedars is their almost incredible vitality. The oldest of all are
gnarled and twisted, but they have the rough strength of muscle-bound
giants. Each year new cones rise above the broad, green branches, and
the balsamic juice flows fresh from every break in the bark. In the words
of the Psalmist, they still bring forth fruit in old age, and are full
of sap and green. “There is not, and never has been, a rotten cedar. The
wood is incorruptible. The imperishable cedar remains untouched by rot or
insect.” This is not the extravagant statement of a hurried tourist, but
the sober judgment of the late Dr. George E. Post, who was recognized as
the world’s greatest authority on Syrian botany. The whole side of one of
the largest trees has been torn away by lightning, but the barkless trunk
is as hard as ever. The single enemy feared by a full-grown cedar is the
thunderbolt. “The voice of Jehovah ... breaketh in pieces the cedars of
Lebanon.”[50] One or two trees felled by this power have lain prostrate
for a generation; but their wood will still turn the edge of a penknife.
Here and there, visitors to the grove have stripped off a bit of bark and
inscribed their names on the exposed wood. “Martin, 1769,” “Girandin,
1791”—the edges of the letters are as hard and clear-cut as if they had
been carved last season.
It is no wonder that the ancients chose this imperishable timber for
their temples. The cedar roof of the sanctuary of Diana of Ephesus is
said to have remained unrotted for four hundred years, while the beams
of the Temple of Apollo at Utica lasted almost twelve centuries.
Probably the wood is so enduring because it grows so slowly. When you are
told that a slender shoot, hardly shoulder-high, is ten or twelve years
old, you begin to speculate as to the probable age of the patriarchs of
the grove. On a broken branch only thirty inches in diameter I once, with
the aid of a magnifying glass, counted 577 rings—577 years. And some of
the cedars are forty feet and over in girth! Certainly these must be a
thousand years old, probably two thousand. We are tempted to believe that
one or two of the most venerable were saplings when the axemen of Hiram
came cutting cedar logs for the Temple at Jerusalem. The most rugged and
weather-beaten of them all, called the Guardian—surely this hoary giant
of the forest has lived through all the ages since Solomon, and from his
lofty throne on Lebanon has calmly looked down over Syria and the Great
Sea while Jew and Assyrian, Persian and Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Arab
and Crusader and Turk, have labored and fought and sinned and died for
the possession of this goodly land!
The trees rise on half a dozen little knolls quite near to the edge
of the plateau; and within a few minutes’ climb are a number of tall,
steeple-like rocks which, through the erosion of the softer stone, have
become almost entirely cut off from the main mass of the mountain.
One such group, known to American residents of Syria as the “Cathedral
Rocks,” is reached by following a knife-edge ridge far out over the
valley. There is barely room for a narrow foot-path along the top, and a
misstep would mean a fall of many hundred feet; but at its western end
the ridge broadens out into a group of slender, tower-like cliffs. When
you stand on the farthest of these there is a feeling of spaciousness
and isolation as if you were indeed upon the loftiest pinnacle of some
gigantic cathedral, though no man-built spire towers to such a dizzy
height.
A half-hour of hard and, in places, dangerous climbing down from the
cedars brings one to where the Kadisha River bursts from a cave in the
rock. Like many another cavern in Lebanon, this is of great depth and has
never been thoroughly explored. We contented ourselves with penetrating
it a few hundred feet; for it was impossible to avoid slipping into the
stream now and then, and the water, fresh from the snow-pockets on the
summits above, was only twelve degrees above the freezing-point. The
entrance is barely ten feet in diameter, but the cave soon divides into
several branches, one of which is beautifully adorned with translucent
stalactites and, about seventy yards from the mouth, leads up to a large
rock-chamber. The river flows out from the mountain with great rapidity
and, just below the source, leaps over a precipice in a white waterfall
forty feet high, so delicate and lacelike in its beauty that it is known
as the “Bridal Veil.”
Farther down the valley, the monastery of Kanobin hugs the side of a
cliff four hundred feet above the river-bed. This is literally “_the_
monastery” (Greek, _koinobion_), and is one of the oldest in the land.
It is said to have been founded over sixteen hundred years ago by the
Roman emperor Theodosius the Great, and for centuries it has been the
nominal seat of the Maronite patriarchs. In 1829, Asad esh-Shidiak, the
first Protestant martyr of Lebanon, was walled up in a near-by cave. This
unfortunate man was chained to the rock by his Maronite persecutors and
about his neck was fastened one end of a long rope which hung out through
an opening in the cave by the roadside. Each Catholic who passed by gave
the rope a vicious tug, and Shidiak soon died of torture and starvation.
The valley of the Holy River is full of old hermits’ caves; but these are
now untenanted, and we found no monks even at the great convent. In a
parallel valley, however, is a monastery which is still crowded and busy.
Deir Keshaya boasts a printing-press, a good library and a staff of a
hundred monks. This religious retreat has the most secluded and beautiful
situation imaginable. It lies in a very narrow cañon hemmed in by sheer
rocks. Yet, though surrounded by nature in its most grand and forbidding
aspects, the narrow strip of cultivated land along the river bank is
rich with verdure, a veritable Garden of the Lord.
The monastery not only spreads along the face of the cliff, but
penetrates far into the mountain. What you see of it from without is
hardly more than the façade of a huge, rambling structure whose principal
part consists of natural caves and chambers rudely cut in the native
rock. Through a little wooden door we were admitted to the largest
cavern, where we saw, hanging from staples set securely into its walls,
a number of great, cruel chains. People who are possessed of devils are
fastened here by the neck and ankles, and during the night an angel comes
and drives away the demon. The treatment has never been known to fail;
for if the morning finds the sufferer still uncured, that merely shows
that he did not have a devil after all, but was just an ordinary lunatic
for whom the monastery did not promise relief.
Back of the cedars, there are also many fascinating excursions. The
ranges of Syria being geologically “old” mountains which are worn and
rounded, you can, by taking a somewhat circuitous route, reach almost
any summit on horseback, but it is much more fun to go straight up the
steepest slopes on foot. About 2,500 feet above the grove is a line of
gently rolling plateaus whose stones have been broken and smoothed by
millenniums of snow and ice. You see acre after acre entirely covered
with clean, flat fragments which measure from one to five inches in
length. Viewed from a distance, their appearance is exactly like that of
the soft surface of a wheat-field. The only vegetable life consists of
tiny bunches of a low, hardy plant with wooly gray-green leaves. We saw
one little butterfly fluttering about lonesomely in the vast desolation.
Sheltered from sun and wind just under the highest ridges are
snow-pockets—great, funnel-shaped depressions which during the hottest
summer send down their moisture through the mountain mass to the
cave-born rivers of western Syria. One who has not been there would
never suspect how cold it can be in mid-summer on these higher slopes of
Lebanon. The direct rays of the sun are, of course, very hot, and the
wise traveler protects his head by a pith helmet. Yet the gloomy gorges
are always chilly, the wind is biting, and the nights are positively
cold. When tenting among the cedars, I slept regularly under heavy
blankets, and once or twice reached down in the middle of the night and
pulled over me the rug which lay beside my cot. The first time we climbed
the mountain back of our camp, the wind was so cold and penetrating that
we could remain only a few minutes on the summit, though we wore the
heaviest of sweaters and had handkerchiefs tied over our faces.
At another ascent, however, we were more fortunate, for we found only a
slight breeze blowing on the summit. The “Back of the Stick,” as the
natives call this highest ridge of Lebanon, affords a view over the top
of all Syria. Northward stretches the long succession of rounded summits,
down to the left of which can be seen the white houses of the seaport of
Tripoli. To the south are other lofty peaks, though all are lower than
ours. Jebel Sunnin, which seems so mighty when viewed from the harbor of
Beirut, now lies far below us. Mount Hermon rises still majestic seventy
miles away, yet even the topmost peak of great Hermon is not so high as
the spot on which we stand. To the east, across the long, broad valley
of the Bikaʿ, rises the parallel range of Anti-Lebanon. Westward the
magnificent amphitheater which we have come to think of as peculiarly our
own opens out to where the Mediterranean, like a sheet of beaten gold,
seems to slope far up to the azure sky.
Yet, after a while, we turned from this wonderful panorama to indulge
in childish play. With a crowbar brought for the purpose, we dislodged
large rocks from the summit and sent them spinning down the eastern side
of the mountain. Some of them must have weighed several tons, and they
tumbled down the slope with tremendous momentum. The first thousand feet
they almost took at a bound; then, reaching a more gentle decline, they
would spin along on their edges. Now they would strike some inequality
and, leaping a hundred yards, land amid a cloud of scattering stones;
now they would burst in mid-air from centrifugal force, with a noise
like a cannon shot; now some very large stone, surviving the perils of
the descent, would arrive at the base of our peak and, on the apparently
level plateau below, would very slowly roll and roll and roll as if it
possessed some motive power of its own. Several days later we met a
wandering shepherd who told us that, while dozing beneath the shade of
a cliff far down the mountainside, he had been suddenly awakened by a
terrific cannonading and had sat there for hours in trembling wonderment
at the demoniac forces which were tumbling Mount Lebanon down over his
head.
One evening we strolled out to the edge of our plateau and saw the whole
countryside a-twinkle with lights. It was the anniversary of the Finding
of the True Cross. When St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great,
discovered the precious relic sixteen hundred years ago, beacons prepared
in anticipation of the success of the search were lighted and the glad
news was thus flashed from Jerusalem to the emperor at Constantinople.
In commemoration of that joyous event, annual signal fires still burn
along the land of Lebanon. Far down in black gorges we saw the lights
flash out. North and south of us, unseen villages on the hillsides
kindled their beacons. Higher up, in wild pine forests, the lonely
charcoal-burners made their camp-fires blaze brighter; and even on the
bare, bleak summits there shone here and there tiny gleams of light. Amid
the solemn quiet of our mountain solitude, we watched the beacons flash
out around us and below us and above, until all Lebanon seemed starred
with the bright memorials of the Cross which this old, old land, through
long centuries of oppression and ignorance and bigotry, has never quite
forgot.
We spent a month in the cedar grove, and never had a dull day. At dawn we
could look out of the tent to where the green branches framed a charming
bit of blue, distant sea. After breakfast the studious man would climb up
into his favorite fork and ensconce himself there with pen and ink and
paper and books and cushions. The adventurous man would scramble up to
the topmost bough of some lofty tree and stretch out on its soft twigs
for a sun-bath. The lazy man would curl up against a comfortable root, to
smoke and dream away the morning hours. Sketching and photographing and
mountain climbs were interspersed with unsuccessful hunting expeditions
and aimless conversations with Maronite priests who had come up to
visit their little rustic chapel in the grove. After supper came the
camp-fire, with its cozy sparkle and its friendly confidences and the
black background of the forest all around. Then, by eight o’clock at the
latest, we snuggled into our blankets and, in the crisp, balsam-scented
air, slept the clock around. Sometimes the full moon shone so brightly
that the whole mountain would take on a soft silver glow, against which
colors could be distinguished almost as well as by day. Now and then
there would be a cold, foggy morning; but the trees kept out the mists
and, although a solid wall of white surrounded us, within the grove it
was clear and dry and homelike.
The shelter, the support, the background, the inspiration of all the
camp life, were the great, solemn trees. After a while you come to love
them, or rather to reverence them. They are so large, so old; they have
such marked individuality. The cedars are regal rather than beautiful.
Rough and knotted and few in number, at first sight they are a little
disappointing; but, like the mountains around them, they become more
impressive day by day. These thousand-year-old trees seem to stand aloof
from the hurry and bustle of the twentieth century, as though they were
absorbed in thoughts of earlier, and perhaps wiser, days. After you have
lived for a time beneath their shade, their solemn magnificence begins to
quiet your spirit; and when the glorious moonlight floods the mountain
and casts black shadows down the deep gorges that drop away to the
distant sea, it is easy to behold in the witching light the picture that
these ancient trees saw in the long ago. Dark groves of cedars nestle
once more in the valleys and sweep over the mountaintops in great waves
of green; a stronger peasantry speaks a different tongue in the fields
below that are brighter and the orchards that are heavier with fruit; and
from the depths of the moon-painted forest there comes the ring of ten
thousand axes that are hewing down the choicest trunks for the Temple of
the Lord.
Then the vision fades, and with a sense of personal loss and a regret
that is almost anger, you look out again from under the dark branches of
the little grove to the bleak, bare mountainside, and the wind in the
topmost boughs seems to sing the lament of Zechariah—
“Wail, O fir tree,
For the cedar is fallen,
Because the glorious ones are destroyed:
Wail, O ye oaks of Bashan,
For the strong forest is come down.”[51]
Yet still some glorious ones of the strong forest rise proudly on their
throne in Lebanon. This tree, so beautiful that it is pictured on the
seal of the college at Beirut, has been called the Symmetrical Cedar.
These many trunks, apparently springing from a single root, we know
as the Seven Sisters. Those two that stand side by side without the
wall at a little distance from the main group, are the Sentinels. On
a hillside are St. John and St. James, immense, fatherly trees with
trunks forty-five feet in circumference and gigantic forks in which a
dozen people could sit together. Then there is the Guardian, oldest and
largest of all, its great trunk twisted and gnarled by struggles against
the storms of ages, the names which famous travelers carved a century ago
not yet covered by its slowly growing bark. But the knotted, wrinkled,
lightning-scarred giant is crowned by a garland of evergreen, and the
venerable tree, which perhaps heard the sound of Hiram’s axemen, may
still be standing proudly erect when the achievements of our own century
are dimmed in the ancient past.
[Illustration: The Guardian, the oldest Cedar of Lebanon]
[Illustration: The six great columns and the Temple of Bacchus]
“The Cedars of the Lord”—we understand now why the peasantry of Lebanon
call them thus. It has become our own name for them too. Long before we
ride downward from their royal solitude to the Great Sea and the great
busy world, we have come to think of them as in deed and truth,
“The trees of Jehovah ...
The cedars of Lebanon, which He hath planted.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE GIANT STONES OF BAALBEK
The most impressive of all the ancient temples of Syria can now be
reached by a comfortable railway journey from either Damascus or Beirut.
But this way the traveler comes upon the ruins too quickly to appreciate
adequately their splendid situation and marvelous size. I shall always be
thankful that, on my first visit to Baalbek, I approached it very slowly
as I rode from our camp among the cedars of Lebanon. For the longer you
look at these temples and the greater the distance from which you behold
them, the more fully do you realize that whatever race first built a
shrine here chose the spot which, of all their land, had the largest,
noblest setting for a sanctuary; and the better also do you understand
that these structures had to be made unique in their grandeur because
anything less imposing would have seemed paltry in comparison with the
surrounding glories of nature.
Where the Bikaʿ is highest and widest and most fertile, on a foothill of
Anti-Lebanon which projects far enough to give a commanding outlook in
all directions, stands Baalbek, the City of the Sun-God. Far northward
Hollow Syria leads to the open wheat-lands of Homs and Hama; at the south
it sinks gently to the foot of Hermon. Back of the city are the peaks
of the Eastern Mountains, and across the level valley rise the highest
summits of Lebanon. It is no wonder that the approaching traveler finds
it difficult at first to realize the magnitude of the ruins. Any work
of man would be dwarfed by the magnificent heights which look down upon
Baalbek. But what an inspiration these same mountains must have been to
the unknown architect who conceived the daring grandeur of the Temple of
the Sun!
When I viewed the ruins from the summit of the highest mountain of
Lebanon, their columns did not seem especially large. Then I remembered
that there are few structures whose details can be distinguished at all
from a point twenty miles away. After descending many thousand feet
through rocky ravines and dry water-courses, we came out on the Bikaʿ and
again saw the temples. They now appeared of moderate size and very near.
It was hard to believe that a few minutes’ canter would not bring us to
them and, as we rode across the monotonous level of the valley, it seemed
as if each new mile would surely be the last. When I had traveled for an
hour straight toward their slender columns and found them apparently as
far away as ever, I began to understand that these temples must be of a
bigness beyond anything that I had ever seen before.
While we were looking toward Mount Hermon, whose conical summit rose from
behind the southern horizon, the hot, shimmering air began to arrange
itself in horizontal layers of varying density, and before our wondering
eyes there grew a picture of cool and shady comfort. Four or five miles
away a grove of date-palms stood beside a beautiful blue lake in which
were a number of little islands, each with its cluster of bushes or its
group of trees; and, just beyond the islands, the rippling water laved
the steep sides of Mount Hermon. It was a cheering sight for the tired
traveler. This was no freak of an imagination crazed by privation and
exhaustion. Everything was as clear-cut and distinct as were the temples
of Baalbek. We knew very well that there was no lake in the Bikaʿ and
that Mount Hermon was not within fifty miles of where it seemed to be;
yet we agreed upon every detail of the wonderful mirage. We counted the
wooded islets; we pointed out to each other the beauty of the shrubbery
and the symmetry of the waving palm trees; we remarked upon the sharp
reflections of the branches in the clear water. Then, while we looked,
the islands began to swim around, the bushes shrank together, the trees
shifted their positions, the blue water faded into a misty white, old
Hermon receded far into the background—and soon all that was left were
two or three dusty palms bowing listlessly over the dry, brown earth in
the sizzling heat.
I had always thought of Baalbek as a magnificent ruin in the midst of a
wilderness; at best, I expected to find huddled beneath the temples a
tiny hamlet like that at Palmyra. But as we came nearer to the spot of
green about the columns, it grew larger and larger, and finally opened
out into a prosperous-looking town of five thousand inhabitants besides,
as we discovered later, a garrison of Turkish soldiers and a host of
summer visitors. The bazaars were busy and noisy, and the half-dozen
hotels were filled with the cream of Syrian society. Gay young prodigals
from Beirut clattered recklessly along on blooded mares, or lolled back
in rickety barouches, talking French to pretty girls whose silk dresses
were so nearly correct that our masculine eyes could not detect just what
was the matter with them.
The German archæologists who were then excavating among the ruins told us
that the hotel where we had planned to lodge was incorrectly constructed
and would surely fall down some day, and advised us to take rooms at
the more substantial building where they were dwelling. Here we found
one of those typically cosmopolitan companies which add so much variety
to life in Syria. Besides the Germans, there was a suave little Turkish
gentleman, a very amiable Armenian lady, a radiantly beautiful Hungarian,
an English “baroness” who did not explain where she had obtained
this obsolete title, and a couple of those innocently daring American
maiden-ladies who blunder unprotected through foreign countries whose
languages they do not understand, and yet somehow never seem to get into
serious trouble.
Everybody but the American ladies spoke French, so we had several
delightful evenings together. With the Armenian we discussed the recent
massacres when the Turkish gentleman was not by. The Hungarian lady
discoursed heatedly upon the thesis that the Magyars are not subjects
but allies of the Austrian Empire. The baroness told us thrilling tales
of social and political intrigues on three continents, some of which we
believed. The Germans interpreted enormous drawings of their excavations,
and my traveling companion and I sang negro songs to the accompaniment of
a tiny, wheezy melodion.
Baalbek is deservedly popular as a summer resort; for its elevation
is nearly four thousand feet and, even in August, there are few
uncomfortably warm days. In fact, the city has long borne the reputation
of being the coolest in Syria. The Arab geographer Mukadassi, who lived
in the tenth century, wrote that “among the sayings of the people it is
related how, when men asked of the cold, ‘Where shall we find thee?’ it
was answered, ‘In the Belka,’[52] and when they further said, ‘But if we
meet thee not there?’ then the cold answered, ‘Verily, in Baalbek is my
home.’”
The most attractive features of the city, next to its refreshing climate,
are its unusual number of shaded streets and its copious supply of pure,
cold water. Both of these are somewhat rare in Syria. In this land of
generous orchards, there are very few shade-trees; and during the long,
rainless summer the flow of the springs is usually husbanded with great
care. In Baalbek, however, the water is allowed to run everywhere in
almost reckless abundance. It gushes out of a score of fountains; it
drives the mills, waters the gardens and rushes alongside the streets in
swift, clear streams. Our own supply for drinking was drawn from one of
the springs; but we were told that even the water in the deep roadside
gutters was clean and healthful.
On account of the natural advantages of its situation, it is probable
that Baalbek has been in existence ever since the time when men first
began to build cities. The sub-structures of the acropolis are literally
prehistoric, that is, they antedate anything that we know at all
certainly about the history of the place. In the Book of Joshua[53]
we find three references to “Baal-gad in the valley (Hebrew, _Bikaʿ_)
of Lebanon,” but the identification of this place with Baalbek is far
from certain. The Arab geographers of the twelfth century, who were
tremendously impressed by the grandeur of the ruins and the fertility of
the surrounding district, believed that the larger temple was built by
Solomon, who also had a magnificent palace here, and that the city was
given by him as a dowry to Balkis, Queen of Sheba. Benjamin of Tudela, a
Spanish rabbi who visited Syria in the year 1163, wrote that when Solomon
was laying the heaviest stones, he invoked the assistance of the genii.
It may possibly be that the foundations are even older than the time of
Solomon; but there is no historical notice of the city which goes back
of the Roman period. Coins of the first century A. D. indicate that it
was then a colony of the Empire and was known as Heliopolis, the Greek
translation of the Semitic name Baalbek.
During the early centuries of our era Heliopolis became exceedingly
prosperous and, indeed, famous. The emperor Antoninus Pius is said to
have erected here a temple to Jupiter which was one of the wonders of
the world, and coins struck in Syria about 200 A. D., in the reign of
Septimius Severus, bear the representations of two temples. During this
period the worship of Baal became popular far beyond the borders of
Syria, and the Semitic sun-god was identified with the Roman Jupiter. The
empress of Severus was daughter of a priest of Baal at Homs, only sixty
miles north of Baalbek. When her nephew Varius[54] usurped the throne,
he assumed the new imperial title of “High Priest of the Sun-God” and
erected a temple to that deity on the Palatine Hill. At Baalbek itself
the worship was accompanied by licentious orgies until the conversion of
Constantine the Great, who abolished these iniquitous practices, erected
a church in the Great Court of the Temple of the Sun, and consecrated a
bishop to rule over the still heathen inhabitants of the new see.
Since then, the history of Baalbek has been parallel to that of every
other stronghold in Syria, a history of battles and sieges and massacres
and a long succession of conquerors with little in common except their
cruelty. When the Arabs captured the city in the seventh century, they
converted the whole temple area into a fortress whose strategic position,
overlooking the Bikaʿ and close to the great caravan routes, enabled
it to play an important part in the wars of the Middle Ages. Many a
great army has battered at this citadel. Iconoclastic Moslems have done
all they could to deface its carvings and statues, earthquake after
earthquake has shaken the temples, scores of buildings in the present
town have been constructed from materials taken from the acropolis,
columns and cornices have been robbed of the iron clasps that held their
stones together, and for many years the Great Court was choked with the
slowly accumulating débris of a squalid village which lay within its
protecting walls.
Yet neither iconoclast nor sapper, artilleryman nor peasant, has been
able to destroy the majesty of the temples of Baalbek. The malice of the
image-breaker cannot tumble down thousand-ton building-blocks and grows
weary in the effort to deface cornices eighty feet above him. Mosques
and khans, barracks and castle walls have been built out of this immense
quarry of ready-cut stone, yet the supply seems hardly diminished. The
cannonballs of the Middle Ages fell back harmless before twenty feet
of solid masonry, and only God’s earthquake has been able to shake the
massive foundations of the Temple of Baal.
The old walls of the acropolis provide many a tempting place for an
adventurous clamber. Beside the main gateway at the eastern end you can
ascend a winding stairway, half-choked with rubbish; then comes some hard
climbing over broken portions of the upper fortifications and a bit of
careful stepping around a narrow ledge on the outside of a turret. But
it is well worth a little exertion and risk to reach the top of this
majestic portal, where you can lie lazily among great piles of broken
carvings and watch the long shadows of the setting sun creep over what
have been called “the most beautiful mass of ruins that man has ever seen
and the like of which he will never behold again.”
Our superlative expressions are prostituted to such base uses that it is
hard to find words to picture adequately these colossal structures. To
say that they are most majestic, gigantic, stupendous, is only to trifle
with terms. The mere partition-wall beneath us is nineteen feet thick, a
single stone in one of the gate-towers is twenty-five feet long, and the
entrance stairway, now half-buried beneath an orchard, is a hundred and
fifty feet wide. Everything about us is immense; yet the parts are so
nicely proportioned that at first their size does not seem very unusual.
The German archæologists warned me against jumping carelessly from one
stone to another. “The distance between them will be greater than you
think.” You have to revise your ordinary judgments of perspective before
you can realize that yonder little alcove in the Great Court is as big
as an ordinary church, or can make yourself believe that the outlines of
the Temple of the Sun enclose an area as large as that of Westminster
Abbey, or can break the habit of thinking condescendingly of the “Smaller
Temple”—which is one of the finest Græco-Roman edifices in existence.
Suddenly you see the acropolis in its real immensity and beauty, and then
you understand how the most scholarly of all Syrian travelers could say
that the temples of Baalbek “are like those of Athens in lightness, but
far surpass them in vastness; they are vast and massive like those of
Thebes, but far excel them in airiness and grace.”[55]
[Illustration: The Acropolis of Baalbek—1, The Propylæa; 2, The
Forecourt; 3, The Court of the Altar; 4, The Basilica of Constantine;
5, The Great Altar of the Temple; 6, Byzantine Baths; 7, The Temple of
Jupiter-Baal; 8, The Six Standing Columns; 9, The Great Stones in the
Foundation Wall; 10, The Temple of Bacchus.]
From the entrance stairway at the east to the Great Temple at the west,
the arrangement is grandly cumulative. Each succeeding architectural
feature is larger and more beautiful than that which precedes it. As you
view the acropolis from above the portico, your eye is drawn on and on,
past the symmetrical forecourt and the great Court of the Altar, under
delicately chiseled arches and graceful cornices, through the Triple
Gate and the temple portal, up to the culmination of it all—the six tall
columns which still rise above the ruins of the Temple of the Sun. No!
this is not yet the climax of the glories of Baalbek; for beyond those
slender shafts the hoary head of Lebanon, towering far into the sky, at
once dwarfs and dignifies, enslaves and ennobles, the puny massiveness of
the sanctuary of Baal.
The Great Court, or “Court of the Altar,” is littered with sculptured
stones—pedestals of statues, inscriptions in Greek and Latin, broken
columns, curbs of old wells and fragments of fallen cornices. On each
side of the few remains of the Basilica of Constantine are Roman baths,
which are carved in a graceful, profuse manner, very like those at Nîmes
in southern France.
The sculptors seem to have worked in three shifts. The first were mere
stone-cutters who removed surplus material, shaping a hemisphere where
a head was to appear in bas-relief, and indicating the rough outlines
of leaves and flowers. The second set of workmen carved the design more
carefully, leaving it for the third, the master-artists, to give the
final touches. In the temple baths we can see traces of the work of all
three classes. One part of the carving is finished to the last crinkle
of a rose leaf; another is but roughly blocked out by a mere artisan. It
seems that the full plan for the courts was never carried to completion.
Some think, indeed, that the only portion of the Great Temple itself
which was finished was the peristyle.
A little to the southwest of the Court of the Altar stands the Temple
of Bacchus. This suffers the fate of great men whose fame is eclipsed
by that of their greater brothers. Yet this “Smaller Temple,” as it
is commonly called, is larger than the Parthenon, and is surpassed in
the beauty of its architecture by no other similar edifice outside of
Athens. It was originally surrounded by forty-two columns, each fifty-two
and a half feet in height. A number of these have been overthrown by
earthquakes and cannonballs, but on the north side the peristyle is still
nearly perfect. One of the columns on the south side has fallen against
the temple, yet, although made up of three drums, the parts are held so
firmly together by iron clamps that it has broken several stones of the
wall without itself coming to pieces.
Intricate stone-cut tracery runs riot over the double frieze, the fluted
half-columns and niches, and the variously shaped panels which form the
roof of the peristyle. There are flowers and fruits and leaves, vines
and grapes and garlands, men and women, gods and goddesses, satyrs and
nymphs, and the youthful god himself, surrounded by laughing bacchantes.
Most elaborate of all is the carving around the lofty central portal,
which is probably more exquisite in detail than anything else of its kind
in existence. The door-posts are forty feet high, yet they are chiseled
with such a delicacy that they seem almost as light as a filigree of
Damascus silver-work. Upon the under side of the lintel a great eagle
holds a staff in its claws, while from its beak droop long garlands of
flowers, the ends of which are held by genii.
Of the Temple of Jupiter-Baal, which was the principal structure of
the acropolis, only six columns are now standing; but these six can be
seen far up and down the Bikaʿ. As you stand beside them and look up,
the columns appear of tremendous bulk, as indeed they are; yet their
proportions are so elegant that at a little distance they seem almost
frail. When you view them from many miles away, they appear as tenuous
as the strings of a colossal harp, awaiting the touch of Æolus himself
to set them vibrating in tremendous harmony. Now the columns, crossed by
the cornice above, resemble a titanic gate ready to swing open to the
Garden of the Gods; now they are seen in profile, like a giant finger
pointing upward. When the evening glow falls upon them, the stone takes
on a yellowish tinge and the slender shafts look like a golden grating
which some old master has put between the panels of his daring picture
of brazen clouds and dazzling mountaintops. Even the long colonnades of
Palmyra lack something of the peculiar grandeur of the six columns of
Baalbek, as they stand guard over the ruined Temple of Baal, with nothing
to rival their towering grandeur save the eternal peaks of Lebanon.
Yet, though these columns are the most beautiful things in Baalbek, they
are not its greatest marvel; for in the foundations of the acropolis are
stones so immense that we can only guess at the means employed to quarry
and transport and lift into place these huge masses of rock.
Parallel to the north side of the Temple of the Sun is an outer wall
ten feet thick and composed of nine stones, each thirty feet long and
thirteen feet high; in the west foundation-wall of the acropolis are
seven other stones of equal size, not lying upon the ground but set on
lower tiers; and just above these is a series of three stones which are
probably the largest ever handled by man.
[Illustration: The stone in the quarry of Baalbek]
[Illustration: The Orontes River at Hama]
These tremendous three were so renowned in ancient times that the temple
above them came to be known as the _Trilithon_. They are each thirteen
feet high, probably ten feet thick, and their lengths are respectively
sixty-three, sixty-three and a half, and sixty-four feet. It is hard to
realize their true dimensions, however; for these enormous blocks are set
into the wall twenty-three feet above the ground, and are fitted together
so closely that you can hardly insert the edge of a penknife between
them. Look at them as long as you will, you can never fully see their
bigness. Yet if only one were taken out of the wall, a space would be
left large enough to contain a Pullman sleeping-car. Each stone, though
it seems only of fitting size for this noble acropolis, weighs as much
as many a coastwise steamer. If it were cut up into building blocks a
foot thick, it would provide enough material to face a row of apartment
houses two hundred feet long and six stories high. If it were sawn into
flag-stones an inch thick, it would make a pavement three feet wide and
over six miles in length.
The quarry from which was taken the material for the temples is about
three-quarters of a mile from the acropolis. Here lies a still larger
stone which, on account of some imperfection, was never completely
separated from the mother rock. By this time we have no breath left for
exclamations; hyperbole would be impossible; the simple measurements are
astounding enough. The _Hajr el-Hibla_,[56] as it is called, is thirteen
feet wide, fourteen feet high, seventy-one feet long, and would weigh
at least a thousand tons. It does not arouse our wonderment, however, as
much as do those other stones, only a little smaller, which were actually
finished and built into the wall.
How, indeed, were such huge blocks moved from the quarry to the
acropolis? How were they lifted into place and fitted so nicely together?
The question has not been answered to our entire satisfaction. We must
acknowledge that those old Syrians—if they _were_ Syrians—could perform
feats of engineering that would challenge the science of the present
day. The most plausible guess is that a long incline was built all the
way from the quarry to the temple wall and then, through a prodigal
expenditure of time and labor, the blocks were moved slowly up the
regular slope, a fraction of an inch at a time, by balancing them back
and forth on wooden rollers. But it is almost as easy to believe with the
natives that there were giants in those days, and that the great stone
which is still in the quarry was being carried along under her arm by a
young woman, when she heard her baby cry, and so dropped her burden and
left it there to be the wonderment of us puny folk.
CHAPTER XIV
HAMATH THE GREAT
Now that the French railway system has at last extended its operations
into northern Syria, the old cities of Homs and Hama will doubtless soon
lose much of their naïveté and Oriental color and become filled with
dragomans who speak a dozen languages and shopkeepers who have a dozen
prices for the unwary tourist. Up to the present, however, the district
has been little touched by Western civilization, and we saw there a
picture of Syrian life and customs, and especially of unspoiled Syrian
politeness, not to be found in more accessible cities.
We traveled from the seaport of Tripoli to Homs in a big yellow
diligence, drawn by two horses and three mules, and driven by a couple
of unkempt brigands who, in the absence of a sufficiently long whip,
urged on their steeds by throwing heavy stones taken from a well-filled
bushel-basket which was kept under the seat. The Syrians ordinarily throw
like girls, and with as good an aim; but these men, while the coach was
rolling and creaking like a ship in a storm, could strike the left ear of
the farthest mule without any danger either to its own skull or to the
other animals.
This ugly, noisy conveyance, which took us sixty miles in eleven hours,
seemed quite out of place as a part of the Syrian landscape, and we
noticed that it surprised the rest of the country as much as it had
us. The camels were the most astonished. Along the road would be seen
approaching a distant caravan, led by a white-bearded old man riding a
ridiculously small donkey. Behind him, the long line of great animals
walked and chewed in a slow rhythm, and looked out upon the world with
a solemn gaze which made us flippant sons of a young republic feel like
crawling away somewhere and hiding for a few thousand years until we had
acquired a little mellowness.
But our mules represented the spirit of modern progress; on a down grade,
it was progress at the dizzying speed of ten miles an hour. Now, viewed
from the front, a camel looks like an overgrown chicken, and when he is
startled he acts just like a flustered fowl. So we had the interesting
experience of frightening half to death thirty of these great, clumsy
creatures, who scampered and scattered over the road in every direction
except the right one, ran into one another and knocked off carefully
balanced loads, and tied up the connecting ropes into intricate knots
which would challenge the genius of an Alexander to untangle, while a
dozen or so stalwart Arabs cursed us with a choice of vituperation
not to be found in our more stolid West—cursed with a long, deep,
comprehensive curse which included us and our fathers, the diligence’s
father and mother and distant relatives, and laid special emphasis upon
the awful destruction which was sure to overtake the religion of the off
mule.
About an hour’s journey from Tripoli there is a very old pool of sacred
fish, references to which are found in works of travel as early as the
sixth century. According to the present tradition, the souls of soldiers
who have died fighting for Islam are reincarnated in these fish. The
Moslems accordingly hold them in the greatest reverence; and if anyone,
particularly if a Christian, should harm them, he would almost certainly
be torn to pieces by an infuriated mob. While thousands of men and women
in the neighboring villages may be suffering the pangs of hunger, wealthy
zealots will buy great piles of bread for the fish; often, indeed, they
provide in their wills for a certain number of loaves to be thrown each
week into the pool. The fish, which are about a foot in length, are fat
and bloated as a consequence of this over-feeding, and are unspeakably
ugly in form and color. We estimated that there were between four and
five thousand of them in the little pool; and it was a sight not soon
to be forgotten, as they crowded after the crumbs which we threw them,
pushing and fighting so that they were often forced quite out of their
element and for many square yards the water was completely hidden by the
loathsome, wriggling mass.
After eight hours’ drive along the valley that leads from Tripoli into
the interior, a sudden turn of the road brought into full view the great
plain of northeastern Syria. We were entering this through a break in
its western wall, the pass which divides Lebanon from the Nusairiyeh
Range, inhabited by its cruel, half-pagan tribes. At our right, the
southern margin of the plain was distinctly marked by the abrupt ending
of Anti-Lebanon and of the nearer Bikaʿ. The place where the central
valley of Syria opens suddenly to the broad expanse of wheat country was
known of old as the “Entering In of Hamath,” and was the northernmost
point to which the Kingdom of Israel ever extended.[57] At the left, low
hills rise slowly up to the horizon; in front, the plain rolls out to the
unseen desert and the ruined palaces of Palmyra.
It is one of the world’s greatest battlefields that lies below us, so
vast that Waterloo and Gettysburg might be fought in different corners
and hardly see the smoke of each other’s cannonading. But no modern
conflict has engaged such hosts as were drawn up here in martial array.
They came from the desert capital, came up from Palestine and Egypt by
way of the Entering In of Hamath, came as we have come, through the
narrow pass leading from the Mediterranean. Back at the beginning of
wars, the trained armies of Egypt fought the Hittite and the Chaldean
here. After Babylonian and Persian, Jew and Syrian and Greek had become
mere subjects of imperial Rome, it was here that Zenobia, the beautiful,
talented, ambitious queen of Palmyra, received her crushing defeat at the
hands of Aurelian. Here, centuries later, Crusader and Saracen battled
for the land they both called Holy; here chivalrous Tancred led his
armies and valiant Saladin won decisive victories.
Two things stand out from the general brownness of the plain. Just below
us is the dazzling white acropolis of Homs, and ten miles to the south
is the deep blue of the lake once called _Qadesh_, the “Holy,” which was
dammed up in its little valley by a long-vanished race and worshiped
before history began.
We saw the bright reflection from the smooth sides of the mound long
before we could distinguish the town lying beneath it, and for a while we
were puzzled as to what it was—this huge, symmetrical object rising so
abruptly from the great, flat plain, and seeming doubly immense because
of the clear air and the absence of any neighboring elevation with
which to compare its height. The acropolis is, indeed, no insignificant
structure. The people of Homs believe it to be entirely artificial, and
its appearance is in favor of such an hypothesis. The circular hill is
almost a thousand feet in diameter and its platform stands a hundred feet
above the plain. The sides rise so steeply that it would be impossible
to scale them without a ladder; and, to make the summit absolutely
inaccessible to an enemy, all the outer slope of the mound formerly
bore a slippery coating of small, square basalt blocks. At present the
platform is reached by a long, winding path; but even this is so steep
as to be almost dangerous in places. During the Crusades the fortress of
Homs was held alternately by the Christians and the Saracens; and it has
suffered from so many assaults that nothing of the old castle now remains
save a few fragments of tumbling wall and a ruined gateway.
As we came down into the plain and had a nearer view of the acropolis,
we seemed to distinguish a multitude of houses beneath it; but the
difficulty of getting a true perspective had deceived us. The city lay
beyond and lower; what we now saw were not houses but graves. It was a
great metropolis of the dead; thousands and tens of thousands of mounds
were crowded close together at the foot of the fortress-hill. Some few
were surmounted by stone canopies; but most of them were simple Moslem
graves, ranged in long ranks looking toward the sacred city of Mecca,
with one stone at the head and another at the foot, for the two angels
to rest upon as they weigh the good and evil deeds of the dead. As one
approaches nearly every great Syrian city, this is the order of interest
and impressiveness; first the ruins of former power and grandeur, then
the graves of those who trusted in that power and gloried in that
grandeur, last the modern town with its poverty and squalor and ignorance.
In Greek times “Emesa,” as it was then called, was a place of no little
size and importance, and during the Roman era one of its sons wore the
imperial purple[58] and one of its daughters became empress.[59] The
modern city contains some sixty thousand inhabitants, the large majority
of whom are Moslems. The Christians are nearly all Orthodox “Greeks,”
but there is also a tiny Protestant community. We were guests of the
native pastor, and later it lent a new impressiveness to our memories of
Homs when we learned that our host was stabbed the very week after our
visit. Fortunately, however, the wound was not a mortal one. The city
is the market-place of _Ard Homs_, “the Land of Homs,” and its bazaars
are crowded with _fellahîn_ from all the country round about. The chief
industry is the weaving of silks. The citizens claim that there are five
thousand looms, and it is easy to believe this statement; as we walked
along the streets, which were well-paved and cleaner than those of most
Syrian towns, there were whole blocks where every house resounded with
the whirring of wheels and the clicking of shuttles.
The home of our host, like almost every other residence in Homs, opened
on a court which was separated from the street by a ten-foot wall. We
rose at three o’clock the next morning to catch the diligence for Hama,
said good-by all around in the lengthy Arabic fashion—and discovered
that the key to the one gate was lost. Thereupon arose great bustle and
confusion; the women rushed around looking everywhere for the missing
key, while the worthy pastor brought a clumsy ladder to help us over the
wall. But just as we were preparing to carry our heavy luggage up the
ladder, the key was found, and a hard run brought us to the diligence
with half a minute to spare.
This second coach had only two mules and one horse, and was a much
smaller affair than that which had brought us from Tripoli. Although the
driver was a Moslem to whom alcoholic beverages are strictly forbidden,
he was considerably more than half-drunk. He had neglected to fasten
the harness properly and, while we were rattling down a steep hill,
the tangle of straps and strings dropped off one beast and dangled
under his heels. Then, as soon as the harness was repaired, our driver
let his reins fall among the flying hoofs. He took these mishaps very
philosophically; much more so, to tell the truth, than we did. Doubtless
he pitied us Western infidels for our evident nervousness and lack of
faith. Suppose that the coach should indeed upset—it would be the will of
Allah, and who were we to object!
We had but one fellow-traveler, a fat old Moslem wearing the turban of a
_haj_ who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He was a most companionable
fellow who insisted upon explaining to us all the points of interest
along the road; and the fact that his explanations were usually wrong did
not in the least detract from our enjoyment of his company. Every time
the diligence stopped—and, with our drunken driver and worn-out harness,
this was quite often—the Haj would laboriously descend, spread out his
handkerchief upon some clean, level spot alongside the road, and turn
toward Mecca to recite his prayers. He must have been a very holy man.
The road from Homs to Hama runs almost due north, a straight white line
cutting across the green fields. It is one of the oldest highways in the
world. For at least five thousand years caravans have been passing along
it just as we saw them—long strings of slow-moving camels laden with
brightly colored bags of wheat. One could almost imagine that Pharaoh
was again calling down the corn of Hamath to fill his granaries against
the impending seven years of famine. But even here the old things are
passing. Just beyond the line of camels, a longer line of peasant women,
with dirty blue dresses kilted above their knees, were carrying upon
their heads baskets of earth and stone for the road-bed of the new French
railway. The carriage road is French, too; and a very good road it is.
We noticed some men repairing it with a most ingenious roller. A huge
rounded stone, drawn by two oxen, had its axle prolonged by a twenty-foot
pole, at the end of which a bare-legged Syrian was fastened to balance
the contrivance. If the stone had chanced to topple over, the spectacle
of the captive road-maker dangling at the top of the slender flag-staff
would have been well worth watching.
All along the journey we were reminded of the fact that this was not
only the East, but the old, old East. The soil is fertile, but the very
wheat-fields are different from ours. Only a few yards in width, they are
often of prodigious length; the thin green strips sometimes stretch away
until in the far distance they are lost over the curve of the treeless
plain. At one place the road is cut through a hill honeycombed with
rock-tombs, which the Haj said were of Jewish origin. Every now and then
we passed a _tell_, or great hemispherical mound built up of the rubbish
of dozens of ruined towns which, one after the other, were built upon
the same site. Even as late as Roman times, this was a densely populated
and prosperous district. There is now no timber available for building
purposes, and so in a number of villages the houses are constructed with
conical roofs of stone. Where the rock happens to be of a reddish tinge,
the windowless structures remind one of nothing so much as a collection
of Indian wigwams; where the stone is white, as at Tell Biseh, it
glitters and sparkles like a city cut out of loaf sugar.
“Hamath the Great,” as the prophet Amos called it, is still the most
important city between Damascus and Aleppo. It is larger than Homs and
seems more prosperous, but the difference between the two is not marked
enough to prevent considerable mutual jealousy. Hama is especially busy
in the early morning, when the market squares are crowded with kneeling
camels and the bazaars are bright with newly opened rolls of rich silks,
which may be bought at ridiculously low prices—if the purchaser knows how
to bargain.
You see the same types in other Syrian cities—rough camel-drivers, veiled
ladies, ragged peasants, underfed soldiers, Moslem wise men and reverend
Arab sheikhs. Along tourist-beaten routes, however, the picture lacks
somewhat of perfection because of the Hotel d’Orient or Hotel Victoria in
the background, and, just as you have warmed to an enthusiastic interest
in the bright scenes of Oriental life, a pert young fellow in French
clothes is apt to ask you into his shop or offer to guide you through the
bazaars at ten francs a day. But while we were in Hama there was, so far
as I know, no other Frank in the city, only one other pair of European
trousers, and but two natives who spoke any English. There is not even a
resident missionary, and on the rare occasions when American ladies visit
the city, they adopt the local costume, veil and all, in order to avoid
annoying curiosity.
The citizens enjoyed us fully as much as we did them. Everywhere we went
we were followed by a train of a dozen or two, and when we stopped to
look at anything the crowd threatened to interfere with traffic—not that
this would have seemed a serious offense to the Oriental mind! They were
so interested in our every movement that I could never get room to use
my camera until my friend would walk a little way off with an intense
expression on his face and draw the cortège after him. Yet these people
were not in the least noisy or rude and—I almost hesitate to make such
a startling statement about a Syrian city—I do not remember being once
asked for _bakhsheesh_.
The inhabitants of Hama bear the reputation of being very proud and
fanatical; but we did not find them so. We stayed with a young physician,
a recent graduate of the college at Beirut; and in the evening a number
of his friends dropped in to see us. As our own supply of Arabic was not
at that time equal to the demands of a long conversation, we essayed one
or two gymnastic tricks, only to be immediately outdone by our Syrian
acquaintances. Then the ice was broken, and we settled down to a long
evening of rough games, which always ended in somebody having his hand
slapped with a knotted handkerchief. These strangely garbed men with
their brown, wrinkled faces, entered into it all with such a childlike
enjoyment that we were soon laughing and shouting as we had not done
since the Christmas days of boyhood; and the little brazier, with its
bright bed of charcoal that sent fearsome shadows of turbaned heads and
long mustachios dancing on the white walls overhead, seemed a natural
substitute for the Yule log which that very night was burning in the home
across the seas.
As the Christians form a quite insignificant minority of the population
of Hama, they receive a degree of consideration from their Moslem
neighbors such as is not granted in cities where the two religions are
more nearly balanced and where jealousy and hatred consequently lead
to frequent reprisals. Our host, Dr. Taufik, told us that some of his
warmest friends were young Moslems. He has a large practice among the
harems of the city, and has performed heroic operations upon their
inmates. One afternoon he guided us through a narrow, winding lane
filled with evil-smelling garbage, to a rude door not over five feet
high. This was the entrance to the finest house in Hama, the residence
of one of the doctor’s Moslem patients. Indeed, Dr. Taufik told us, with
perhaps more of civic pride than strict accuracy, that it was the most
magnificent dwelling in all Syria. The great central hall was decorated
in mosaics of colored marble and overlaid with gold-leaf in intricate
patterns of sumptuous beauty. Yet, as is so often the case in the East,
the only approach to this splendid residence was through filth and odors
which would hardly have been tolerated in the worst slums of an American
city.
We later visited the home of another wealthy Moslem, also a patient
of the doctor. This time we found the master of the house seated in
the middle of the state drawing-room—being shaved. He is the only man
I have ever seen who looked dignified while in the hands of a barber.
Even with lather all over his face, he sat with the bearing of a prince
of the blood giving audience to his favorites. His attitude toward us
was marked by the most kindly courtesy. He allowed us to indulge in the
untidy American habit of wearing shoes in the house, and, although it was
the fast-month of Ramadan and he himself could eat nothing until sunset,
delicious sweetmeats were served us in delicate cut-glass dishes set on
a heavy silver tray. After we had watched our host put on his furs and
drive off behind his two beautiful Arab stallions, we asked Dr. Taufik
how much wealth was necessary for one to live in such luxury, and what
was the business of his Moslem friend. “Oh, he does not work at all,” was
the answer. “He does not need to, for he has property which brings him
an income of forty thousand piasters a year”—which equals a little over
fourteen hundred dollars!
Hama has an acropolis somewhat larger than that of Homs, but it is less
symmetrical in shape and is not so well preserved. From the summit is
seen the same far-reaching historic plain; but the attention is soon
drawn back to the city which lies just below. If the visitor has resided
in Syria, it is not the twenty-four minarets which hold his gaze, not
even the Great Mosque, which is one of many shrines that claim to guard
the bones of John the Baptist; but beautiful and interesting above all
is the river which winds its slender cord of blue through the heart of
the city. Rising on the eastern slopes of Lebanon, then passing northward
through Hollow Syria and the Entering In of Hamath, dammed up by the
old Hittites to form the Holy Lake by Homs, growing slowly as it flows
through the “Land of Hama” until at Antioch it is almost deep enough for
modern shipping—the Orontes fathered three of the great cities of the
ancient world.
There are few real rivers in this land. Although they make Damascus so
fertile, Abana and Pharpar are hardly more than noisy creeks. It is true
that parts of Lebanon fairly sweat with springs, but hardly half a dozen
of these reach the coast except as winter torrents whose stony beds dry
up completely when the summer comes. The Jordan in the far south, the
Leontes, which flows into the Mediterranean between Tyre and Sidon, and
the Orontes in the north—these complete the tale of Syrian rivers, and
Hama is the only city in the country whose stream appears as a prominent
feature in the landscape. It winds and twists so that you meet it at
almost every turn of the street. Along one bank, a line of closely
latticed windows mark the harems of the wealthier citizens; farther on, a
little group of women are washing clothes under the shade of the cypress
trees; yonder a weary train of mules are standing knee-deep in the cool
water, while a crowd of naked boys are sporting in the shallow stream
with as much energy and enjoyment as any truant brothers of the West.
It is perhaps because the Orontes goes to the northward instead of
flowing south, as do the other important Syrian rivers, that it is now
known as _el-ʿAsi_, “the Rebel”; or the name may have been given, as some
old Moslem writers suggest, because its channel is so low that the stream
cannot be used for irrigation unless its water is artificially raised.
There is a noise so loud and constant that you have almost ceased to
hear it—a dull, grave diapason, fuller and deeper than the heaviest
organ-stop. Now, slowly and painfully, it forces up a few tones of the
scale, then drops sullenly to its key-note. “Do mi sol, DO DO DO. Do sol
la, DO DO DO”—on through the day and the night and the century. It is the
music of the _naʿûra_, the water-wheels of the Orontes. You see them now
and then in southern villages, but as other cataracts are to Niagara,
so are all other water-wheels to the water-wheels of Hama. Great wooden
frames revolving painfully upon wooden axles as, by means of buckets
along the circumference, the river lifts itself up to the level of the
terraces above—these wheels approach very near to perpetual motion. We
stand amazed before one that is forty feet high, until the eye travels
down the river to another wheel of sixty feet; and our guide takes us
out to the edge of the city where a monster ninety feet in diameter is
playing its slow, solemn tune.
It is impossible to shut out the sound of their creaking. I know of
travelers who have been so distracted by the incessant, inescapable noise
that they could not sleep in Hama; but we found the music of the wheels
very soothing, like the distant roar of the ocean or a slow fugue played
on some cyclopean organ. Now they are in unison, now repeating the theme
one after another, now for a brief moment in a sublime harmony never
to be forgotten, then once more together in the unison of a tremendous
chorus. As we drift to sleep, the song of the river calls us back, back,
back to the Beginning of Things.
“Do mi fa, DO DO DO.” What care the wheels whether Saracen or Crusader
conquer in the fight below! “Do fa sol, DO DO DO.” The chariots of
Zenobia are rattling across the plain—or is it the fleeing cohorts of
the Assyrian host? “Do sol la, DO DO DO.” The dark regiments of Pharaoh
are coming up from the south, and the Hittite city rushes to arms. “Do
mi sol, DO DO _do_ do.” And old Orontes is slowly pushing around the
great wheels of the dream city, while the Iliad is unsung, and Cheops is
unquarried, and the fathers of Abram still dwell in Ur of the Chaldees.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Song of Songs 4:11f, 5:15.
[2] Isaiah 35:1f.
[3] Hosea 14:5, 7.
[4] Isaiah 60:13.
[5] See map, page 62, and cross-section, page 64.
[6] See further the author’s _The Real Palestine of To-day_, chapter III.
[7] Rev. 2:17, etc.
[8] Cf. Deut. 10:6, Josh. 9:17.
[9] In 1913, the college team defeated the champions of the British
Mediterranean Fleet.
[10] The above figures are for the current year, 1913. With this
exception, however, the chapter is not in any sense a composite, but
describes the happenings of one actual field-day held during the author’s
residence in Beirut.
[11] Since this record was made, a new athletic field with a cinder track
has been laid out adjoining the campus.
[12] This is the correct rendering of Judges 3:3.
[13] C. R. Conder, the eminent Palestinian archæologist, points out that
Arabic grammar necessitates our translating _Jebel esh-Sheikh_ “Mountain
of the Sheikh,” and derives the appellation from the fact that in the
tenth century the founder of the Druse religion took up his residence in
Hermon (Hastings, _Dictionary of the Bible_, _s. v._ “Hermon”). But no
one who has seen the white head of the tall, strong mountain can help
thinking of Hermon as itself the proud, reverend sheikh of the glorious
tribe of Syrian peaks.
[14] Cf. Luke 3:1.
[15] Sura 5:34.
[16] See the author’s _The Real Palestine of To-day_, chapter XV, “The
War-path of the Empires,” and XVIII, “The Lake of God’s Delight.”
[17] Numbers 21:33.
[18] Isaiah 2:13, etc.
[19] Job 1:15, 17.
[20] Job 1:19.
[21] Psalm 22:12, etc.
[22] Luke 3:1.
[23] _Antiquities of the Jews_, XV. 10.1.
[24] It is the Abana, or Barada, which waters by far the greater portion
of this fertile district. The identification of the Pharpar, which Naaman
mentioned also as one of the “rivers of Damascus” (II Kings 5:12), is
uncertain. It may have been one of the branches into which the Abana
divides as it passes through the city. More probably, however, it was
the river now known as the Awaj; for this is the only other stream in
the vicinity whose size is comparable to that of the Abana and, though
it flows some seven miles south of Damascus, it is used for irrigating a
considerable tract of the surrounding orchard-country.
[25] Isaiah 7:8.
[26] _Antiquities of the Jews_, I.6.4; I.7.2.
[27] The _Koran_, Sura 56:26f; 61:12.
[28] Estimates of the population of the city vary from 150,000 to a
more probable 300,000. Of this number, some 10,000 are Jews, 30,000 are
“Greek” and “Latin” Christians, and a few score are Protestants. At least
four-fifths of the population is Mohammedan, and Islam is dominant and
uncompromising in Damascus, as it is not in cities like Constantinople
and Cairo, where Moslem fanaticism is to a greater or less degree held in
check by the constant menace of interference by Christian powers.
[29] Genesis 23:11.
[30] Proverbs 20:14.
[31] This includes the American, for all who speak the English language
are ordinarily classed as _Ingleezy_.
[32] Some years ago, our minister to Turkey, who had been promised an
audience with Abdul Hamid, was made to wait half a day in an anteroom
of the palace _without being offered coffee_. So far as I know, that
fact was never published; for the American newspapers seem to have quite
missed the significance of the omission, and our representative himself
apparently did not realize that he had been publicly insulted. But the
experienced diplomat who was then in charge of our Department of State
cabled the minister, in case of further affront, to leave Constantinople
immediately.
[33] Isaiah 8:4.
[34] According to the most strict Moslem teachers, the commandment of the
Prophet (the _Koran_, sura 5:92, etc.) would prohibit the use of even the
carved figures of the chess knights.
[35] The _Koran_, sura 4:38.
[36] In this effete generation, however, those who have the inclination
and the money may take the sacred railway as far as Medina, and for many
years the majority of the pilgrims from outside of Syria have traveled by
steamer to Jeddah, the seaport of Mecca—under the direction of an English
tourist agency!
[37] See further the author’s _The Real Palestine of To-day_, chapter VII.
[38] Acts 9:11. The ancient name has survived, or possibly has been
revived, and the thoroughfare is still called _Derb el-Mustakîm_ or
“Straight Street.” Its more common name, however, is _Suk et-Tawîleh_,
the “Long Bazaar.”
[39] II Kings 5:18.
[40] Jesus is frequently mentioned in the Koran as a prophet, though His
divinity is denied and the Christian Trinity is misunderstood by Mohammed
as consisting of the Father, Son and Virgin Mary. Characteristic passages
are: “O Mary! Verily God announces to thee the Word from Him: his name
shall be Messiah Jesus the Son of Mary, illustrious in this world and
in the next, and one of those who have near access to God. And He will
teach him the Book, and the Wisdom, and the Law, and the Evangel, and he
shall be an apostle to the Children of Israel” (Sura 3:40, 43). But—“It
beseemeth not God to beget a son” (Sura 19:36). “God shall say, O Jesus,
Son of Mary, hast thou said unto mankind, Take me and my mother as two
gods, besides God?” (Sura 5:116). “Jesus is no more than a servant whom
We favored” (Sura 43:59).
[41] The _Koran_, sura 47:4, 9, 13, 37.
[42] I Kings 9:18.
[43] Joshua 9:1.
[44] Psalm 80:10.
[45] Jeremiah 22:7.
[46] Song of Songs 5:15.
[47] Ezekiel 17:23.
[48] Isaiah 2:13.
[49] Ezekiel 31:3f.
[50] Psalm 29:5.
[51] Zechariah 11:2f.
[52] East of the Jordan, between Jabbok and Arnon rivers.
[53] Joshua 11:17, 12:7, 13:5.
[54] Varius Avitus Bassanius, who took the name Heliogabalus upon his
appointment as high priest of the sun-god, was born at Homs, A. D. 204,
usurped the imperial throne at the death of his cousin Caracalla in 218
and, after a brief reign marked chiefly by its infamous debaucheries, was
murdered by the Prætorians in 222.
[55] Edw. Robinson, _Biblical Researches in Palestine_, III. 517.
[56] Literally, “the stone of the pregnant woman.” Bearing in mind the
meaning of the popular name, the reader will easily understand just how
and why I have modified the frank, Oriental form of the story which
follows.
[57] Many eminent scholars, however, follow Edward Robinson (_Biblical
Researches_, III. 568) in identifying the “Entering In of Hamath” (Judges
3:3, I Kings 8:65, etc.), not with the northern end of the Bikaʿ, but
with the east-and-west valley between the Lebanon and Nusairiyeh ranges,
through which we have just come. While I incline more and more toward
the view given in the text above, the question must be decided by one’s
feeling as to which would be the more striking and appropriate landmark,
rather than by any direct evidence. The territory included would be
practically the same in either case.
[58] Heliogabalus. See foot-note, page 191.
[59] Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus.
INDEX
Roman numerals refer to chapters, Arabic to pages
Abana River, 67-71, 88f, 106
Abila, 69
Abilene, Tetrarchy of, 69
Ain el-Beida, 130
Ain Fijeh, 70
Ain el-Wuʿul, 130
Aleih stories, 61f
Aleppo, Province of, 8
Anti-Lebanon, 7, 63, 67-71, 178, 204
Aurelian, 135-137, 205
_Assassins_, the, 10
Awaj River, 89n
Baalbek, XIII
Climate, 188
Great stones, 198-200
History, 189-191
Ruins, 192-197
Situation, 184f
Baal-gad (Baalbek), 189
Barada, see _Abana_
Bashan, Land of, 75
Bedouins, 129-131, 143
Beirut, City, 7, III
Bay, 35
Cape, 29
Caves, 31
Commerce, 36
History, 26f
Modern aspects, 37f
Name, 29
Olive orchards, 30
Political strife, 40f
Religious strife, 38f
Sand dunes, 30
Schools, 41-43
Water supply, 33
Beirut, Province of, 8
Bikaʿ, 63-65, 184f, 178, 204
Bliss, Daniel, 146-149
Bosra, 78
Butrus, Patriarch, 156-162
Byblos, 4, 7
Cathedral Rocks, 174
Cedar Mountain, 167, 176-179
Cedars of Lebanon, XII
Chrysorrhoas, see _Abana_
Coele-Syria, see _Bikaʿ_
Coffee, 107-109
Committee of Reform, 40
Cross, Festival of, 179
Damascus, VII-IX, 7, 15
Ananias, Tomb of, 119
Bargaining in, 98-101
Bazaars, 96-104
Beggars, 104
Cafés, 106f
Cemeteries, 116
Commerce, 95, 111
Dogs, 104
Dome of Victory, 88
Fame of, 90
Fertility, 92f
Gate of Allah, 115
Healthfulness, 70
History, 91
Jews, 118
Khans, 110
Kisan Gate, 117
Lepers, 117
Meidan, 114-116
Modern aspects, 91
Name, 90
Night noises, 105f
Omayyade Mosque, 89, 120-127
Population, 96n
Quarters, 118
Residences of rich, 111-113
St. Thomas’ Gate, 106
Saladin, Tomb of, 119f
Street called Straight, 118f
Street calls, 101f
Water supply, 70
Damascus, Province of, 8
Death, River of, 4
Deir el-Kamr, 17
Derʿa, 77
Diman, 164
Dog River, 4, 33-35
Caves of, 34f
Druse Massacres, 14-17, 78
Druse Mountain, 77f
Druses, 11-17, 78, 84, 115, 138
ed-Durazy, 11, 67
Earthquakes, 4, 32, 102
Eastern Mountains, see _Anti-Lebanon_
Edrei, 77
Emesa, see _Homs_
Feruzi, 152, 154-156
Fish, Sacred, 203f
George, St., 27-29, 116
Ghuta of Damascus, 93
Greek Catholic Church, 9
Greek Orthodox Church, 9
Hama, 64, 211-218
Hamath, see _Hama_
Hamath, Entering In of, 152, 204
Hauran, 75-87
Hauran, Jebel, 77
Hejaz Railway, 76f, 81
Heliopolis (Baalbek), 190
Hermon, Mount, 7, 65-67, 77, 178
Hollow Syria, see _Bikaʿ_
Homs, 136, 152, 190, 205-208
Homs, Lake of, 205
Institutes of Justinian, 42
Islam, see _Mohammedanism_
Ismailians, 10
Jebail, 4
Jesus Christ, 12, 27, 67, 122, 170
Job, the Patriarch, 78-80
Kadisha River, 166, 174
Kanawat, 78
Kanobin, Monastery of, 174
Karyatein, 129
Kasyun, Mount, 88
Keneiseh, Mount, 5, 52, 62, 67
Keshaya, Monastery of, 175f
Lebanon Mountains, I, 60-63
Lebanon, Province, 8, 16f
Leja, 83-85
Leontes River, 64
Maronites, 9, 14-17
Metawileh, 10
Mirage in Bikaʿ, 186
Missionaries, XI
Mohammedanism
Attitude to Jesus, 122
Images forbidden, 112f
Position of women, 113f
Power of, 194f
Muzeirib, 76
Palmyra, X, 69
History, 133-138
Modern Village, 138, 140
Ruins, 138-140
Tombs, 132
Persons incidentally mentioned:
Abdul Hamid II., 76f, 108n
Abel, 69, 88
Abraham, 88, 90f, 98, 101
Abulfeda, 93
Adam, 88
Alexander the Great, 26
Amenhotep, Pharaoh, 26
Ananias, 119
Antar, 142
Antoninus Pius, 190
Antony, Mark, 133
Argyll, Duke of, 146
Asad Pasha, 110
Ashur-nasir-pal III., 34
Augustus, 26
Aurelius, Marcus, 34
Baldwin of Flanders, 26, 91
Balkis, Queen of Sheba, 129, 190
Benjamin of Tudela, 190
Bildad the Shuhite, 78
Cain, 69
Constantine the Great, 129, 191
Diocletian, 137
Dodge, Wm. E., 146
Domna, Julia, 190, 207
Dorotheus, Professor, 42
Eliezer, 90
Esarhaddon, 34
Fakhreddin, 30
Fatima, 116
Hadrian, 168
Hakim Biamrillah, 11
Hamzeh ibn Ahmed, 11
Helena, St., 179
Heliogabalus, 191n, 207
Herod the Great, 26, 91
Hiram of Tyre, 168, 173, 183
Ibrahim Pasha, 30, 84
Idrisi, 93
Jesup, Morris K., 146
John the Baptist, 121, 123, 215
Josephus, 84, 90
Justinian, 42, 137, 168
Longinus, 135
Louis VII. of France, 91
Mohammed, 12, 93f, 116
Mukadassi, 188
Naaman, 89n, 117, 120
Nicodemus, 26
Nureddin, 91
Odenathus II., 134
Og, king of Bashan, 77
Paul, St., 91, 116f.
Pompey, 26
Post, Dr. Geo. E., 168
Rameses II., 26, 34, 79
Rib-addi, 26
Richard Cœur de Lion, 28
Robinson, Edw., 195, 204n
Rustum Pasha, 168
Sapor of Persia, 134
Selim, Sultan, 34
Sennacherib, 26, 34
Severus, Septimius, 190, 207n
Shalmaneser II., 34
Solomon, 133, 190
Tamerlane, 91, 137
Tancred, 205
Theodosius the Great, 175
Tiglath-pileser III., 34, 91
Titus, 26
Uz, 90
Vahballathus, 134
Valerian, 134
Varius, see _Heliogabalus_
Vespasian, 26
William II. of Germany, 120
William of Tyre, 78
Phallic worship, 11
Pharpar, 89n
Pilgrim Route, 114, 122
Protestants, 40
Qadesh, see _Homs, Lake of_
Railways, 60, 72f, 76f, 82, 210
Ras Baalbek, 149-152
Ras esh-Shukkah, 4
Rayak, 67
Saladin, 27, 91, 119f
Semakh, 73
Sirocco, 80
Smuggling, 32
Suk Wadi Barada, 69
Sunnin, Mount, 5, 52, 67, 178
Suweida, 78
Syria, II
Boundaries, 6
Manners and customs, 18-22
Names, 6
Population, 8
Provinces, 8
Religions, 9-13
Syrian Desert, 7, 95, 129-132, 141
Syrian Protestant College, IV, 42f, 146f
Syrians, 16, 22-25
Tadmor, see _Palmyra_
Tell el Amarna Letters, 26
Tell Biseh, 211
Trachonitis, see _Leja_
Transfiguration, the, 67
Tripoli, 8, 178, 201
Uz, Land of, 78
Vilayets of Syria, 8
el-Wesen, 140
Women, position of, 90, 113f
Yarmuk Valley, 73-75
Zebedani Valley, 67f
Zenobia, Queen, 69, 134-137, 205
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Syria, the land of Lebanon" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.