ALONG THE TRADE ROUTES OF THE NEAR EAST
_Beautiful old stories,_
_Tales of angels, fairy legends,_
_Stilly histories of martyrs,_
_Festal songs and words of wisdom;_
_Hyperboles, most quaint it may be,_
_Yet replete with strength, and fire,_
_And faith--how they gleam,_
_And glow and glitter!_
HEINE.
Apart from its imposing monuments of the storied past, few things in
the Near East are of greater interest or suggest more subjects for
reflection to the serious traveler than do its trade routes which, for
the most part, follow the same course as they did when Abraham fared
forth from Ur of the Chaldees into the land of Canaan and when the
messengers of the Great King sped along the Royal Road from Susa to
Sardis.
Now as then the roadways follow the lines of least resistance. But,
owing to the peculiar topographical conditions of many parts of the
Near East, the traveler’s choice of direction is necessarily limited.
In the broad and inhospitable desert his course will necessarily depend
on the location of the few existing springs and wells and wadis, while
in the mountainous regions it will, in great measure, be governed by
a few and widely-separated passes. In many cases, too, where broad
and deep rivers are to be crossed, the direction taken, especially
during the season of rains and floods, will vary with the condition of
often-changing and frequently treacherous fords.
The celebrated Royal Road, of which Herodotus gives so graphic an
account, is a case in point. The student of ancient history is
surprised when he first observes its circuitous course between the
one-time capital of Persia and the famous emporium of Crœsus, but the
reason of it becomes evident when he learns something of the character
of the country through which it passed. He then discovers that the
prehistoric travelers--long centuries before the days of Cyrus and
Darius and Xerxes--who first selected this long and roundabout route
between the plains of Mesopotamia and the shore of the Ægean--a route
which took them over high mountains and pitiless deserts and dangerous
morasses--did simply what a modern railroad engineer would do under
similar circumstances--chose for their venturesome journey the line of
least resistance.[263]
It must, however, here be observed that the word “road,” as used in
the Orient, rarely has the same meaning which we attach to the term.
There a road is rarely anything more than the line of route marked by
the footprints of travelers or beasts of burden. Even the Royal Highway
between Susa and Sardis was nothing more than this. It was only when
the Romans--the great road builders of antiquity--became masters of
western Asia that its leading cities were connected by roads in our
conception of the word. Now, however, only traces of these splendid
highways constructed by the Cæsars exist, and roads available for
wheeled vehicles are still almost as rare in most parts of the Near
East as they were in the time of Tigranes or Tiglath-Pileser.
But, although the great majority of eastern roads have never felt a
spade or pick-ax, and are nothing more than evanescent footprints in
spongy swamp or shifting sand, nevertheless there hangs over most
of them an air of legend and romance and historic association which
stimulates the mind of the traveler in a preëminent degree and affords
as much food for thought as he can find in any of the great highways of
the more civilized regions of the modern world.
We had wished to go from Tarsus to Antakia, formerly the capital of
Syria, which in the days of its greatest splendor was known as “Antioch
the Beautiful,” “The Crown of the East,” “The Metropolis and Eye of
Christendom.” Here the followers of Christ were first called Christians
and here for a long time was one of the most influential seats of the
Christian Church. For generations it ranked next to Rome and Alexandria
as the most important emporium in the great empire of the Cæsars.
During a long period it was also the western terminus of the great
trade route over which was borne
_The wealth of Ormus and of Ind_
for distribution among the marts of Greece and Rome. But lack of time
prevented us from visiting the scattered remains of this once famous
city and we perforce boarded a train on the Bagdad Railway and started
for Aleppo, whose history is in some respects scarcely less eventful
than that of the erstwhile capital of the Seleucids.
We left the Cilician Plain by way of the Bagdad Railroad, which took
us over several well-constructed steel bridges and through a number
of tunnels in the Amanus Range. One of these tunnels, said to be the
longest in Turkey, is more than three miles in length. The roadbed,
bridges, tunnels, stations, and rolling stock of this noted line
compare favorably with those of the best railways in Europe and show,
better than words, what great trade development in the Near East
its projectors had in contemplation when they put their millions in
the Bagdad Railroad. Will they ever receive any return for their
stupendous investment? And, if so, when? Echo asks “When”?
The scenery along the railroad in the Amanus Range and in the plain
on the way to Aleppo is much like that of the Taurus Mountains and of
Cilicia Campestris, where one can truly say with the poet Bryant
_There is a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,_
_And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea._
Everywhere one comes upon places that are famous in history, both
sacred and profane. Everywhere one passes through lands that during
thousands of years, witnessed the devastations of Assyrians and
Hittites, Persians and Greeks, Romans and Parthians, Mongols and
Saracens and Turks. And everywhere are ruins of Christian temples and
monasteries which recall the glories of the early Church, the triumphs
of her martyrs, and which serve as silent reminders of the days when
Roman governors persecuted the followers of the Crucified because they
were regarded as dangerous to the Empire and when Sassanian satraps
demanded their blood on the ground that they were the foes of the
religion of Zoroaster. Of many of these houses of worship but little
now remains except a few crumbling arches or disintegrating pillars and
doorways. Of others all that is left is buried under a brush-covered
tell where a half-famished goat is seeking a little sustenance or
whence a Turkoman shepherd is watching his nearby flock.
Notwithstanding, however, the fact that most of the churches and
monasteries have long ceased to be more than heaps of dusty rubbish,
there are still a few edifices of the long ago in a comparatively good
state of preservation. Among these one of the most notable is that
of Kal’at Sim’an to the northwest of Aleppo and but a short distance
from the railway. Kal’at Sim’an--which is the Arabic for the Castle of
Simon--is a monastery church which dates from the fifth century and is
unquestionably the most admirable group of ruins in northern Syria.
According to tradition this magnificent _mandra_, or monastery,
was erected about the pillar on which the noted St. Simeon Stylites
spent thirty-six years of his life and where, by his extraordinary
austerities and superior holiness of life, he was the edification of
countless thousands from far and near. Among these were the Emperor
Theodosius II and his consort, the Empress Eudocia, as well as other
distinguished personages of the Byzantine capital.
It may here be remarked that the Simeon Stylites here referred to was
not--as is often thought--unique in his strange mode of life. He was
but the first of the long line of stylitæ, or pillar saints, whose
peculiar asceticism and undoubted sanctity made so deep an impression
on their pleasure-loving contemporaries not only in Asia but in Europe
as well.
But more extraordinary than the ruins of churches and monasteries
which greet the traveler in every part of the Levant, are the imposing
monuments which are due to the Crusaders and which are found in
surprising numbers from southern Palestine to northern Mesopotamia.
Crowning precipice-encircled heights and protecting strategic passes,
they are marvels of architectural beauty and massive grandeur. Those,
particularly, which belonged to the great Military Orders vie in
vastness and solidity with the great strongholds which are the glory
of the Rhine and the Danube. They were not only highly fortified
strongholds with bastions, barbicans, and donjons which served as
places of refuge to the surrounding population in times of stress and
danger, but were also lordly palaces with spacious halls and noble
chapels and chapter houses worthy of the great castles of France and
England.
No less remarkable than the massiveness and grandeur of these venerable
ruins are the charming locations which they occupy. And then the
picturesque names which were given them by their Frankish builders!
Among them were such appellations as Blanchegarde, Chateau Pelerin, La
Pierre du Desert, and Castle Belvoir, to the last of which the Arabs
gave even a more poetical name when they called it Kokab el-Hawa--Star
of the Air. Built on the commanding flanks of snow-capped Hermon and
cedar-famed Lebanon these lordly strongholds of the Crusaders and of
the Knightly Orders of the mediæval times have about them all the
glamour and chivalry and romance which envelope the most noted castles
of the Tyrolean Alps or the Tuscan Apennines. As I contemplated these
fascinating ruins and the superb sites which they so adorn and recalled
the stirring scenes which they witnessed and that too, in one of the
most romantic epochs of the world, I often wondered that they had not
more frequently supplied themes for the poet and the novelist. Tasso
in his _Jerusalem Delivered_ gives us some idea of the marvelous
richness of material here awaiting the writer of fiction no less than
the literary artist in the domain of sober history and archæology.
Where, indeed, could a true romanticist find better locations for
the plots of his stories than in the wonderful old castles of Kal’at
el-Hosn, Kal’at-es-Subebeh, or Burj Safita--grandiose yet fairylike
in their lofty aeries--which have been the houses of the bravest
Knights who have ever couched a lance and which, despite their present
dilapidated condition, for centuries have been the admiration of
travelers from all parts of the world. And what land more readily lends
itself to tales of romance than that in which are found such famous
places as Antioch and Carmel, Tyre and Ascalon and Jerusalem--places
which witnessed the most brilliant exploits of the Crusaders and whose
names have so long been identified with the most glorious names of
Christian chivalry?
It is a long step from the superb monuments of the Crusades to the
highly revered tekkehs or mezars which abound in all Moslem countries.
In the Near East they are seen everywhere--along the public highway,
in the most crowded quarters of large cities and in almost deserted
sections of the country. These tekkehs, which frequently serve the
purpose of both tombs and shrines, are interesting for two reasons,
both of which show how certain religious practices of modern Islam
are totally at variance with the teachings of the Koran and with the
traditional doctrines of the Prophet.
According to strict Moslem law, the erection of tombs and monuments
over the graves of the followers of Islam is strictly forbidden.
The orders of the Prophet, as given in the “Traditions,” are “to
destroy all pictures and images and not to leave a single lofty tomb
without lowering it to within a span from the ground.”[264] And yet,
notwithstanding this ordinance which the reforming Wahabis have
strenuously endeavored to enforce, the Mohammedans are noted for the
magnificent monuments which they have erected to the memory of their
distinguished dead. Many of their mosque tombs are the most gorgeous
mortuary monuments in existence.
But building tombs over the graves of the dead, contrary as it is to
the spirit of Islam, is far less reprehensible than making them shrines
or places of pilgrimage. “May Allah’s wrath,” said Mohammed, “fall
heavy upon the people who make the tombs of their prophets places of
prayer.” This malediction seems, however, to have fallen upon deaf ears
for, as Hurgronje declares:
Almost every Moslem village has its patron saint; every country
has its national saints; every province of human life has its
own human rulers who are intermediate between the Creator and
common mortals. In no other particular has Islam more fully
accommodated itself to the religions it supplanted. The popular
practice was, to a great extent, favored by the theory of the
intercession of the pious dead, of whose friendly assistance
people might assure themselves by doing good deeds in their
names and to their eternal advantage.[265]
In Bagdad, the “City of the Saints,” the number of shrines is
particularly large. They are frequented by pilgrims from all parts,
who prostrate themselves before the tombs of the saints to whose
shrines they often make liberal offerings and where the more devout
pray and chant hymns for hours at a time. “The Moslem,” as Kuenen tells
us, “seeks what his faith withholds from him and seeks it where the
authority which he himself recognized forbids him to look for it.”[266]
According to a widespread opinion the bodies of the departed Moslem
saints are not supposed to undergo corruption. For it is a common
belief, confirmed by countless traditions, that when the tombs of
saints and martyrs are accidentally opened their remains have the
appearance of being freshly buried: “their faces are blooming,
their eyes are bright and blood would issue from their bodies, if
wounded.”[267]
Not only is the Moslem saint not dead, in our acceptation of the term,
but his tomb is his house in which he continues to live and in which
he receives the petitions of those who have recourse to him in their
difficulties. And yet more. According to the implicit belief of his
devotees he can leave his tomb, go on long journeys and return again.
Firmly believing in a great invisible organization of saints and in the
picturesque al-Khader, who is reputed to wander continuously through
the lands of Islam performing everywhere the will of Allah, and in
the countless deceased but still very active and ubiquitous saints,
the life of the pious Mussulman is indeed, as has truly been observed
“hedged around everywhere by the Unseen.”
Our journey from Tarsus to Aleppo was a rarely enjoyable one. At every
turn of the road we saw something of unique historic or legendary
interest. Everything--mountain crags, swirling rivers, foaming
torrents, moss-covered castles, crumbling churches, that would have
enraptured a Hobbema or a Ruysdael--held so much of glamour and
romance that we seemed all the while to be traveling in a veritable
fairyland. High above the dark gray crest of Amanus were motionless
masses of bright, cumulus clouds which, under some magic influence
seemingly, had grouped themselves into the forms of Norman donjons
and Saracen strongholds. And hovering near these fantastic shapes,
fashioned from the mountain vapor, was the figure of the giant rock
of eastern fable. “Verily,” I said to my companion, “we are in the
land of the jinn and they are here giving us an exhibition of their
power over inanimate nature.” Having the authority of Mohammed for
their belief in these supernatural beings of smokeless fire, is it
surprising to find the untutored Mussulman ascribing to their agency
what he cannot conceive as being done by human means? It is the jinn
“riding in the whirlwind,” that cause, he firmly believes, the gyrating
pillars of sand to sweep over the desert and the portentous waterspouts
to rise from the troubled sea, as it is the jinn that transform clouds
into countless forms of animate and inanimate nature, which oriental
fancy so readily discerns in a cloud-dappled sky. Should one then be
surprised at the exquisite pleasure which the wonder-loving followers
of the Prophet find in the recital of the famous stories of “A Thousand
Nights and a Night”--stories in which the marvelous is so conspicuous
and in which the jinn play so important a rôle?
While traveling this once densely populated region, we recalled a
saying of the Arabs that in the triangle comprised between Hama,
Antioch, and Aleppo are found the remains of no fewer than three
hundred and sixty-five cities. This statement is, doubtless, an
exaggeration but we were willing to accept the estimate of Reclus that
there are within this area “over a hundred Christian towns dating from
the fourth to the seventh century and still almost intact.”[268]
Then there are the countless dome-covered tekkehs which stud the
landscape--each with a Kiblah and frequently with a tomb and lighted
lamp. Around many of them we note small groups of women who have,
presumably, come to make offerings of oil and fruit and coin to the
guardian and to implore the aid, if not the intercession, of the local
saint.
Besides these ever-interesting objects there are humble homes of the
country folk, every one of which rejoices in its fig, plaintain, or
mulberry tree. Frequently the scene is sprinkled with nomad tents and
enlivened by flocks and herds which dot the green expanse, and by long
lines of swaying camels which slowly bear their heavy burdens along the
long-neglected highway, still continuing their service of thousands
of years, notwithstanding the arrival of their great competitor--the
iron horse. The increasing demands of trade and the need of rapid
communication make the construction of railways in Asia as necessary
as in other parts of the world, but the lover of the picturesque will
hope that the time will never come when the locomotive will entirely
displace the camel, which seems to be an essential feature in every
eastern landscape. This thought comes to me with special insistence
as the shriek of the railway whistle announces our arrival at Aleppo,
where a train of cars--in place of a caravan of camels--appears to be
as incongruous as at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem.
While in Aleppo we were the fortunate guests of the Franciscan friars,
the best and most gentle of hosts. They received us with the same
cordial hospitality which they had so graciously extended to me in
Egypt and the Holy Land a third of a century before. Thanks to their
long residence in Aleppo and their thorough knowledge of the manners
and customs of its people, they enabled me to see more of the Aleppines
during my short sojourn among them than would otherwise have been
possible. I shall never forget the extreme kindness of the courteous
and learned Padre Agostino, whose knowledge of everything in and about
Aleppo continually reminded me of his learned confrère, Frère Lieven de
Hamme, who was my constant guide and friend during the happy weeks I
spent many years before in the holy city of Jerusalem and its environs.
There is, however, a great difference between the two cities. Jerusalem
is a city of sacred monuments and holy memories while Aleppo is noted
as Syria’s busiest interior mart. At present its population is about
one hundred and thirty thousand but in the heyday of its prosperity it
counted no fewer than three hundred thousand souls. It was then the
great _entrepôt_ of trade between the Orient and the Occident.
Then great caravans brought silks from China, carpets and tapestry from
Persia, spices, drugs, pearls, and precious stones from India and the
Spice Islands of the Malay Archipelago. It was then headquarters for a
large colony of Venetian, Dutch, French, and English merchants who here
exchanged the products of the West for the prized merchandise of the
East.
Pietro della Valle, the distinguished Roman traveler who visited Aleppo
in 616, was immensely impressed by the magnitude of its commercial
transactions. So great was the amount of money involved that, he
says, it was never counted but always weighed in boxes. And no one,
he assures us, ever spoke of sales or purchases that did not amount
to sums which ranged, at the lowest, from forty to a hundred thousand
scudi.[269]
For a long time Aleppo was one of the chief trade centers in the
East of the Levant and East India companies. During the period of
their greatest prosperity the amount of business transacted here
was enormous. For, in addition to these two great organizations, the
British Factory here counted no fewer than eighty firms, besides
which all the leading countries of Europe had here their factories or
organizations of factors or agents for the purpose of securing their
share of the great trade of the Orient.
At that time a great part of the commerce of the Far East came to
Aleppo by way of Basra and Bagdad. Then the population of Basra
exceeded two hundred thousand whereas it does not now count more
than one-fourth of that number. The number of Bagdad’s inhabitants
has diminished in proportion. The great decrease in the commercial
importance of these two cities was partly due to war and pestilence.
But the great discovery by Vasco da Gama of an all-sea route between
the West and the East and the opening of the Suez Canal reduced the
overland traffic between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf to a
small fraction of what it was in the palmy days of the great European
factories of Aleppo, Basra, and Bagdad. According to the plans of its
projectors, the Bagdad Railway is to restore this overland trade to its
former magnitude and even greatly add to its amount and value.
It is difficult for the modern traveler as he passes along the present
overland routes between Aleppo and Basra to form any true conception
of the stupendous scale on which the old caravan trade between the
two emporia was formerly conducted. Although the distance between
the two places is nearly eight hundred miles and most of the road
passes through the inhospitable Syrian and Arabian deserts and the
difficulties to be encountered, at the time of which we are speaking,
were as grave as they were manifold, the number of merchants and
capitalists who ventured fortune and life in this forbidding and
dangerous part of the world seems almost incredible. And the magnitude
of the caravans and the value of the merchandise they transported in a
single journey was yet more astonishing.
In the caravan with which Della Valle traveled there were, he informs
us,[270] fifteen hundred persons and forty or more large tents. That of
the celebrated French traveler, Tavernier, counted six hundred camels
and four hundred men. When in 1745 the Englishman, William Beawes,
crossed the desert there were two thousand camels! But this was far
less than the number that was in the caravan of his countryman, John
Eldred, when a century and a half earlier he made the journey from
Bagdad to Aleppo with four thousand camels “laden with spices and
other rich merchandise.” But the largest of these caravans was much
smaller than the one which in 1750 went from Bagdad to Aleppo and which
was composed of five thousand camels and eleven hundred men. When
trade between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean was most brisk,
caravans of from two to five thousand camels crossed the desert twice
a year between Aleppo and Bagdad. The Dutch traveler, John Huyghen Van
Linschoten, attributes the great prosperity of Ormuz to the fact that
it was located on the great trade route to India.[271]
The value of the merchandise carried by these caravans was often very
great. Thus we are told of the caravan of an English trader, one
Carmichael, which consisted of thirty mules, fifty horses, and twelve
hundred camels, “six hundred of which were laden with merchandise
valuing nearly 300,000 pounds. The caravans that carried on the trade
between Aleppo and Mocha were,” in the words of a writer of the time,
“esteemed indifferently rich if they carry less than two million
dollars or one hundred thousand ducats of gold either Hungarian,
Venetian, or Moorish.”
The foregoing statements are illuminating in the information supplied
respecting the size of the caravans and the amount of merchandise they
transported, but they give us no idea of the great fatigues and dangers
that were incurred in the long journeys through the cheerless deserts
which were inhabited for the most part by hostile and plunder-seeking
Bedouins. The Venetian traveler, Cæsar Frederick, throws some light
on the character of the country which the caravans had to traverse.
Returning in 1581 from his long wanderings of eighteen years in India
and beyond he tells us that:
From Babilon to Aleppo is forty days’ journey, in which they
make thirty-six days over the Wilderness, in which thirty-six
days they neither see houses, trees nor people that inhabit it,
but only a plaine and no signe of any way in the world.... I say
in thirty-six dayes we passe over the wildernesse. For when we
depart from Babilon two dayes wee passe by villages inhabited
until we have passed the river Euphrates. And then within two
dayes of Aleppo we have villages inhabited.[272]
As a precaution against attacks by Arab robbers, Pietro della Valle
informs us that it was always necessary to post at night a strong guard
around the caravan. “During the entire night this guard runs around the
camp shouting--as is their custom--to their friends to be on the alert
and their enemies to keep away.”[273] How conducive to sleep was all
this to the anxious and way-worn members of the caravan!
But
_While beasts and men together o’er the plain_
_Moved on--a mighty caravan of pain_,
they were not entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Although
it was long generations before the invention of the telegraph and
the telephone, they were able to keep up communication with their
friends by means of homing pigeons of which the caravan bashis released
one every other day of the journey through the desert. By means of
these pigeons, which had been used in the East since the days of the
Crusades, the leaders of caravans, Linschoten records, were able to
keep up regular communication not only with Bagdad, Basra, and Aleppo
but also with far distant Constantinople.
Although the great camel trains which were formerly so indispensable
to the merchant of the Levant have long given place to the lines of
steamships that now connect the East and the West by way of the Suez
Canal and the Cape of Good Hope, the Syrian and Arabian deserts still
witness as large caravans as were ever known in the most flourishing
period of overland traffic between Aleppo and Bagdad. Such caravans are
now, however, but little used for the purpose of commerce but rather
for transporting the countless thousands of pious pilgrims who annually
visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Doughty in his _Travels in Arabia Deserta_ gives us a most
picturesque description of a pilgrim caravan which he was allowed to
accompany over what he calls “the old gold and frankincense caravan
path to Arabia the Happy.” This, he declares, “is the most considerable
desert caravan in the Eastern World.” The caravan with which he
journeyed was, he tells us, composed of “a slow-footed multitude” of
six thousand persons, ten thousand camels, mules, hackneys, asses, and
dromedaries, nearly two miles long with a breadth in the desert of
about one hundred yards.[274]
During the last few years, however, the Hedjaz Railroad has in great
measure taken the place of the large pilgrim caravans that formerly
went from Syria to the two sacred cities of Arabia. The northern
terminus of this road is at Aleppo. Although it is planned to extend
it to Mecca, it has so far been completed only to Medina. Its
construction is chiefly due to the late Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, who
saw in it a power-means of furthering the projects of Pan-Islamism.
The Shah of Persia, the Khedive of Egypt, and the Sherif and Ulema of
Mecca cordially joined in this great enterprise. Contribution from rich
and poor towards the work came in from all parts of the Moslem world.
Lucknow contributed $140,000; Madras and Rangoon, $300,000; while an
Indian Prince spent no less than $200,000 on the Medina station alone.
No fewer than seven thousand soldiers were engaged in the construction
of this railway which was to combine the two most holy cities of the
Mohammedan world more closely to the Osmanli Caliphate than ever before
and which was to further the cause of Pan-Islamism more effectively
than could anything else whatever.
One feature of the Hedjaz Railway trains, which strongly appeals to
the devout pilgrims, is its prayer car. For them it is virtually a
mosque on wheels. But the majority of the pilgrims appreciate the road
still more because it enables them to reach the sacred cities of their
heart’s desire without incurring the many fatigues and dangers that are
incident to the slow-moving caravans. For what with the plague, the
cholera, the treacherous Bedouins, and the exposure to the withering
desert sun the mortality of the pilgrims to Mecca is enormous.
To the observant traveler in the East few things are more interesting
than to contemplate the pilgrim caravan as it
_Winds slowly in one line interminable_
_Of camel after camel_,
or is more suggestive of serious thoughts regarding Moslem belief and
practice.
Many there are who account for the wide spread of Islam, which now
numbers two hundred and fifty million adherents, by declaring that it
is an easy and sensual religion. But even good Padre Marracci, who
was one of the first to make an exhaustive study of the religion of
Mohammed, saw that this explanation was not satisfactory.[275] The
obligation incumbent on every Mussulman to give liberal alms--which
is imposed both by the Koran and by tradition; to observe the strict
and very trying fast of Ramadan,--abstaining during the day from
water and tobacco even though engaged in the severest kinds of manual
labor, and to make at least once during his lifetime the arduous and
perilous pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca, would seem rather to act as an
effective deterrent to the acceptance of the religion of the Prophet.
To those who account for the success of Islam on the theory that
“it attracts by pandering to the self-indulgence of men,” Voltaire
addresses the pertinent question:
Were there imposed upon you a law that you should neither eat
nor drink from four in the morning until ten at night through
the whole month of July; ... that you should abstain from wine
and gaming under penalty of damnation; that you should make
a pilgrimage across burning deserts; that you should bestow
at least two and a half _per cent_ of your revenue on
the poor; and that having been accustomed to eighteen wives,
you should suddenly be limited to four--would you call this a
sensual religion?[276]
Those who lay such stress on self-indulgence as a factor in the success
of Mohammedanism forget that “a motive of sensuality could never, of
itself, make the fortune of a religion.” They forget what a strong
appeal the very simplicity of the Moslem creed makes to a man naturally
religious. For, reduced to its simplest expression, Mohammedanism
embraces but two fundamental dogmas--belief in God and belief in a
future life. “A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological
complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary
understanding, might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a
marvelous power of winning its way into the consciences of men.” They
forget that proselytism is to every Mussulman in a certain measure
innate; that every follower of Mohammed is by nature a missionary; that
in the pursuit of this avocation he spares neither labor nor expense;
that so intense is his conviction that one is forced to “notice and
admire the kind of chivalrous pride which the average Mohammedan takes
in his faith.”[277]
Nor is this all that will impress the candid observer. Leaving out of
consideration the lives of the more unworthy followers of Mohammed,
he will find much in Islam that he is forced to respect and admire.
Whatever he may think of Moslem teaching, he cannot help admire the
devotion, the zeal, the earnestness, the spirit of sacrifice which
characterize so large a number of Mussulmans. There are, for instance,
no poorhouses among them, for the indigent are abundantly provided for
otherwise.[278]
But more remarkable still is the importance which they attach to prayer
and the fidelity with which they, five times a day, recite the orisons
prescribed by their religion. Mohammed is said to have called prayer
the key to Paradise and to have declared it to be of more value in the
eyes of Allah than fasting, almsgiving, or a pilgrimage to Mecca. When
we see his followers regularly saying their daily prayers wherever they
may be, even before satisfying their cravings for much needed food and
drink, we must conclude that they take the reputed saying of their
Prophet very much to heart and have no doubt of its supreme moment and
efficacy.[279]
It is because of their profound religious earnestness, their abiding
charity towards the poor and suffering and their many natural virtues
that those who know them best have such good reports to give of
the Mohammedans,[280] and would fain see them better known among
our western people, and will welcome the day when the prejudices
and animosities of ages shall disappear and when every soul-loving
Christian shall constitute himself a missionary to assist the followers
of Islam towards becoming members of the One Fold and finding peace and
happiness under the One Shepherd.
Outside of her people, I can truthfully say with Della
Valle that I found very little in Aleppo that was specially
_riguardevole_--noteworthy. But the people, especially those I was
able to visit in their homes, were most charming. And of never-failing
interest were the representatives of many lands whom I met in the
streets and mosques and bazaars. In the last named places were
Asiatics and Africans of every race and sect and costume, “with
their expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow cunning
wrists”--wild Bedouins, lordly Turks, grim-visaged Kurds and Turkomans,
handsome and athletic Persians and Circassians, artful Greeks, astute
Armenians,[281] crafty Jews--“all with eyes glittering with the yellow
fires of greed” and all, as in the days of the city’s former commercial
prosperity, bent on trade but in transactions far more limited.
I found an additional interest here in the reflection that Aleppo is on
the linguistic frontier--extending from Alexandretta to Biredjik on the
Euphrates--which separate the peoples of the flowery Arabic speech from
those of the more laconic but no less vigorous Turkish. South of this
line Turkish ceases to be heard except in the offices of the civil and
military administrations of the Ottoman government.
The Syrians, like the Arabs, are Semites, but of their ancient tongue,
the Aramaic, little now remains except a sort of dialect which is
now confined to only a few villages on the eastern declivities of
the Anti-Libanus.[282] Syriac, it is true, is still the liturgical
tongue of the Maronites and Jacobites as it was for centuries that of
other oriental Christians of Semitic origin. But, if a small number
of priests still understand Syriac, no one any longer speaks it. For
Syrians as well as for Arabs the language of conversation has for a
long time been the vulgar Arabic. The Christians, however, speak a less
pure form than the Moslems, for the adherents of Mohammed, by their
constant reading of the Koran, become familiar with the more literary
forms of classical Arabic.
During the Seleucid and Byzantine domination, the predominant language
of educated people in Syria and Asia Minor was Greek. But in these, as
well as in other regions formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, we
now find the most extraordinary anomalies of linguistic distribution.
Thus there are in Anatolia villages whose sole inhabitants are Greeks
who belong to the Orthodox Church and where the Greek language is so
little understood that the priests, in order to be understood by their
people, are obliged to preach and read the services of the church in
Turkish. In Cyprus, on the contrary, there are Turkish villages whose
inhabitants speak only Greek. But this is no more singular than to
find--a frequent occurrence--Turkish newspapers printed in Greek or
Armenian characters. These literary curiosities are, however, eclipsed
by a Jewish newspaper in Constantinople which is printed in Hebrew
characters although the language is Spanish.[283]
I have said that outside of her people I found very little in Aleppo
to attract attention. I, of course, visited the great mediæval
castle--called the Citadel--that dominates the city and from the summit
of which one has a magnificent view of the surrounding country. But
this impressed me far less than a small block of basalt which I saw in
the south wall of a mosque near the Citadel and which bears a curious
inscription like those which have, during the last few decades, been
brought to light in ever-increasing numbers throughout the greater part
of both Syria and Anatolia. By the superstitious natives it is held in
great veneration, for it is supposed to offer a sovereign remedy for
all ophthalmic affections. We were assured that the smoothness of the
stone’s surface was due to the frequent practice of the afflicted of
rubbing their eyes upon it.[284]
The character of this inscription was not new to me for I had seen
many similar ones in the Imperial Museum of Constantinople and
elsewhere, but its location in this commercial capital of the Near East
transported me in fancy back to a period antedating the time when the
Patriarch Abraham, according to tradition, was wont to milk his flocks
in a cave of the citadel and distribute the milk in alms among the
poor.[285] Then Aleppo was in the possession of a power that ranked
with Egypt and Assyria; a power which, nearly two thousand years B. C.,
overthrew the first Babylonian dynasty and made an alliance, on equal
terms, with Rameses II, the greatest of the Pharaohs; a power which, in
its palmy days, bore rule over the greater part of Syria and Asia Minor.
Until lately it was believed by scholars that there were only two
great civilizations in the ancient East--Egypt and Babylonia. But
recent discoveries in Sinjerli, Boghaz-Keui, and many other places
have proved conclusively that there was a third civilization which was
synchronous with those of the Nile and the Tigris and which, in the
days of its splendor, prevailed from Nineveh to Smyrna and Ephesus
and from the headwaters of the Orontes to the lower reaches of the
Halys. Far back in the Mycenean period, when the Cyclops, according to
legend, were building the massive acropolis of Tiryns, and when, as
far as “the first pale glimmer of Greek tradition” will enable us to
judge, the people of Greece “were awakening to intellectual life,” this
third civilization--until a half century ago entirely unsuspected--was
erecting monuments which are to-day the amazement of the learned world
and which have prepared it for revelations as startling as any of those
that followed the decipherment of the Rosetta stone by Champollion
or the unlocking of the secrets of the cuneiform inscriptions of
Mesopotamia by Grotefend and Rawlinson.
In this extended region lived an extraordinary people whose cultural
development may probably, according to Messerchmid,[286] “be dated
about the third millennium” before our era, and who were known by the
ancient Egyptians as the Kheta and by the Assyrians as the Khatti.
They were the same people who are spoken of in the Old Testament as
Hittites and who are supposed to have, at an early date, extended their
migrations as far south as northern Arabia. It was, in the opinion of
many investigators, from a Hittite--Ephron--that Abraham bought “the
double cave looking towards Mambre” near Hebron, as a family burial
place.[287] Referring, apparently to the foundation of Jerusalem the
prophet Ezekiel declares that her “father was an Armorite and her
mother a Hittite.”[288] There is also reason to believe that the
ill-fated “Uriah the Hittite,” the husband of Bethsabee, the mother of
Solomon, belonged to the same race.[289] And it was because she bore
a son to King David that Bethsabee, the wife of a Hittite, became an
ancestress of the Savior of the world.[290]
But these and other obscure references in Scripture to the Hittites
threw practically no light on the wonderful people who, during the
past half century have been engaging the attention of many of the
ablest archæologists and orientalists of Europe and America. In 1812
the famous Swiss traveler, Burckhardt, discovered in Hamath, Syria, a
black basaltic block on which were strange hieroglyphic signs.[291]
But it was not until sixty years later, when other similar monuments
were found in the same place, that scholars began to realize their
importance. Systematic investigations were then instituted by
individuals and learned societies and it was not long until their
labors were rewarded by the most extraordinary finds. Not only
hieroglyphic inscriptions, like those on the blocks found at Hamath,
were brought to light but also remains of cities with large palaces and
fortresses adorned with sculptures of the most surprising character.
Further research by such eminent orientalists as Halevy, in France;
Hrozny of Austria; Jensen and Winckler, in Germany; Sayce and Hogarth,
in England, showed that the builders of these forgotten cities and
the authors of the strange script which was written in boustrephedon
fashion were no other than the people of whom the Bible speaks of as
the Hettites or Hittites.[292] All our knowledge of this mysterious
people, outside of the brief references to them in the Sacred Text,
is what has been gained since the publication in this country of the
first Hittite inscriptions in 1872. We now know that as a power “The
Land of the Hittites” became a memory of the past when the Assyrians
took possession of Carchemish and when, following their capture of
this celebrated stronghold, they entered Asia Minor in 718 B. C.--but
a few years after the foundation of Rome. Thenceforward the region so
long inhabited by the Hittites was ruled in succession by Assyrians,
Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks.
Notwithstanding, however, the fact that scholars now have at
their disposition many and valuable Hittite monuments they have,
nevertheless, thus far sought in vain for a bilingual inscription that
will serve as a key to the Hittite language and which will force the
Hittite sphinx to reveal her long-guarded secret. This much desired
key may any day be uncovered by the spade of the archæologist. What
the results of such a discovery will be can only be conjectured. Many
who are competent to judge think they will compare in importance with
those that followed the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and
the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia--that they will
disclose an intimate relation between the culture of the Hittites and
the earliest civilizations of Cyprus and Crete, Greece and Italy, and
that they will contribute immensely to our knowledge of the earliest
connection of the peoples of Western Asia with those of southeastern
Europe and of their influences on one another in the divers domains of
religion, art, literature, and politics.[293]
As I gazed on the mysterious block of basalt at Aleppo with its
soon--one hopes--to-be-deciphered inscription and thought of the
wonderful Hittite records that have been unearthed during the last few
years and the promise which they hold of priceless contributions to the
history of our race, I recalled what the distinguished French savant,
the late Vicomte E. M. de Voguë, once said of the East, “_L’Orient,
qui ne sait plus faire d’histoire, a le noble privilège de conserver
intacte celle d’autrefois_,” the Orient which no longer makes
history has the noble privilege of preserving intact that of former
times.