AMURATH TO AMURATH
HUNTING CAMPS IN WOOD AND WILDERNESS
By H. HESKETH PRICHARD, author of “Through the Heart of Patagonia,”
etc. Illustrated in Colour and Black-and-white by E. G. CALDWELL,
Lady HELEN GRAHAM, and from numerous Photographs. In one Volume.
Crown 4to, price 15_s._ net.
A VOICE FROM THE CONGO
By HERBERT WARD. With many Illustrations. In one Volume. Demy 8vo,
price 10_s._ net.
THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC
(_Popular Edition._)
By Sir ERNEST SHACKLETON, C.V.O. Fully Illustrated with Coloured
and Black-and-white Illustrations, and a Map. In one Volume. Crown
8vo, price 6_s._ net.
ON AND OFF DUTY IN ANNAM
By GABRIELLE M. VASSAL. With many Illustrations from Photographs.
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LONDON:
WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF RABBÂN HORMUZD.]
AMURATH
TO AMURATH
BY
GERTRUDE LOWTHIAN BELL
_Author of “The Desert and the Sown,” &c._
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MCMXI
_Copyright London, 1911, by William Heinemann_
[Illustration: arabic]
We wither away but they wane not, the stars that above us rise;
The mountains remain after us, and the strong towers when we are gone.
Labîd ibn Rabî’ah.
PREFACE
DEAR LORD CROMER,
When I was pursuing along the banks of the Euphrates the leisurely
course of oriental travel, I would sometimes wonder, sitting at night
before my tent door, whether it would be possible to cast into shape the
experiences that assailed me. And in that spacious hour, when the
silence of the embracing wilderness was enhanced rather than broken by
the murmur of the river, and by the sounds, scarcely less primeval, that
wavered round the camp fire of my nomad hosts, the task broadened out
into a shape which was in keeping with the surroundings. Not only would
I set myself to trace the story that was scored upon the face of the
earth by mouldering wall or half-choked dyke, by the thousand vestiges
of former culture which were scattered about my path, but I would
attempt to record the daily life and speech of those who had inherited
the empty ground whereon empires had risen and expired. Even there,
where the mind ranged out unhindered over the whole wide desert, and
thought flowed as smoothly as the flowing stream--even there I would
realize the difficulty of such an undertaking, and it was there that I
conceived the desire to invoke your aid by setting your name upon the
first page of my book. To you, so I promised myself, I could make clear
the intention when accomplishment lagged far behind it. To you the very
landscape would be familiar, though you had never set eyes upon it: the
river and the waste which determined, as in your country of the Nile,
the direction of mortal energies. And you, with your profound experience
of the East, have learnt to reckon with the unbroken continuity of its
history. Conqueror follows upon the heels of conqueror, nations are
overthrown and cities topple down into the dust, but the conditions of
existence are unaltered and irresistibly they fashion the new age in
the likeness of the old. “Amurath an Amurath succeeds” and the tale is
told again.
Where past and present are woven so closely together, the habitual
appreciation of the divisions of time slips insensibly away. Yesterday’s
raid and an expedition of Shalmaneser fall into the same plane; and
indeed what essential difference lies between them? But the
reverberation of ancient fame sounds more richly in the ears than the
voice of modern achievement. The banks of the Euphrates echo with
ghostly alarums; the Mesopotamian deserts are full of the rumour of
phantom armies; you will not blame me if I passed among them “trattando
l’ombre come cosa salda.”
And yet there was a new note. For the first time in all the turbulent
centuries to which those desolate regions bear witness, a potent word
had gone forth, and those who had caught it listened in amazement,
asking one another for an explanation of its meaning. Liberty--what is
liberty? I think the question that ran so perplexingly through the black
tents would have received no better a solution in the royal pavilions
which had once spread their glories over the plain. Idly though it fell
from the lips of the Bedouin, it foretold change. That sense of change,
uneasy and bewildered, hung over the whole of the Ottoman Empire. It was
rarely unalloyed with anxiety; there was, it must be admitted, little to
encourage an unqualified confidence in the immediate future. But one
thing was certain: the moving Finger had inscribed a fresh title upon
the page. I cannot pretend to a judicial indifference in this matter. I
have drawn too heavily upon the good-will of the inhabitants of Asiatic
Turkey to regard their fortunes with an impartial detachment. I am eager
to seize upon promise and slow to be overmastered by disappointment. But
I should be doing an equivocal service to a people who have given me so
full a measure of hospitality and fellowship if I were to underestimate
the problems that lie before them. The victories of peace are more
laborious than those of war. They demand a higher integrity than that
which has been practised hitherto in Turkey, and a finer conception of
citizenship than any which has been current there. The old tyranny has
lifted, but it has left its shadow over the land.
The five months of journeying which are recounted in this book were
months of suspense and even of terror. Constitutional government
trembled in the balance and was like to be outweighted by the forces of
disorder, by fanaticism, massacre and civil strife. I saw the latest
Amurath succeed to Amurath and rejoiced with all those who love justice
and freedom to hear him proclaimed. For ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd, helpless as he
may then have been in the hands of the weavers of intrigue, was the
symbol for retrogression, and the triumph of his faction must have
extinguished the faint light that had dawned upon his empire.
The confused beginnings which I witnessed were the translation of a
generous ideal into the terms of human imperfection. Nowhere was the
character of the Young Turkish movement recognized more fully than in
England, and nowhere did it receive a more disinterested sympathy. Our
approval was not confined to words. We have never been slow to welcome
and to encourage the advancement of Turkey, and I am glad to remember
that we were the first to hold out a helping hand when we saw her
struggling to throw off long-established evils. If she can win a place,
with a strong and orderly government, among civilized states, turning
her face from martial adventure and striving after the reward that waits
upon good administration and sober industry, the peace of the world will
be set upon a surer basis, and therein lies our greatest advantage as
well as her own. That day may yet be far off, but when it comes, as I
hope it will, perhaps some one will take down this book from the shelf
and look back, not without satisfaction, upon the months of revolution
which it chronicles. And remembering that the return of prosperity to
the peoples of the Near East began with your administration in Egypt, he
will understand why I should have ventured to offer it, with respectful
admiration, to you.
GERTRUDE LOWTHIAN BELL.
_Rounton, Oct. 1910._
NOTE
The greater part of Chapter IV appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, and
half of Chapter VIII in _Blackwood’s Magazine_; I have to thank the
editors of these journals for giving me permission to reprint my
contributions to them. I am indebted also to the editor of the _Times_
for allowing me to use, in describing the excavations at Babylon and at
Asshur, two articles written by me which were published in the _Times_.
The Geographical Society has printed in its journal a paper in which I
have resumed the topographical results of my journey down the Euphrates.
The map which accompanies this book is based upon the map of Asiatic
Turkey, recently published by that society, and upon a map of the
Euphrates from Tell Aḥmar to Hît which was drafted to illustrate my
paper.
Mr. David Hogarth, Mr. L. W. King, Mr. O. M. Dalton and Professor Max
van Berchem have furnished me with valuable notes. To Sir Charles Lyall,
who has been at the pains to help me with the correcting of the proofs,
I tender here my grateful thanks for this and many another kindness.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I ALEPPO TO TELL AḤMAR 1
II TELL AḤMAR TO BUSEIRAH 35
III BUSEIRAH TO HÎT 77
THE PARTHIAN STATIONS OF ISIDORUS OF CHARAX 108
IV HÎT TO KERBELÂ 115
THE PALACE OF UKHEIḌIR 147
V KERBELÂ TO BAGHDÂD 159
VI BAGHDÂD TO MÔṢUL 198
THE RUINS OF SÂMARRÂ 231
VII MÔṢUL TO ZÂKHÔ 247
VIII ZÂKHÔ TO DIYÂRBEKR 289
IX DIYÂRBEKR TO KONIA 327
INDEX 361
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE MONASTERY OF RABBÂN HORMUZD _Frontispiece_
ALEPPO, THE CITADEL _To face_ 10
ALEPPO, HITTITE LION IN CITADEL 10
BASALT EAGLE IN THE FRENCH CONSULATE 10
ALEPPO, JÂMI’ ESH SHAIBÎYEH, CORNICE 11
FIRDAUS, MEDRESSEH OF EL MALIK EẒ ẒÂHIR 11
ALEPPO, JÂMI’ EL ḤELAWÎYEH 12
FIRDAUS, A TOMB 12
ALEPPO, A MAMLÛK DOME 13
ALEPPO, A MAMLÛK DOME 13
KHÂN EL WAZÎR 14
KHÂN ES SABÛN 14
WINDOW OF A TURBEH, FIRDAUS 15
GATE OF CITADEL, ALEPPO 15
ALEPPO, THE GREAT MOSQUE 26
TELL AḤMAR FERRY 26
TELL AḤMAR 27
CARCHEMISH FROM THE BIG MOUND 27
TELL AḤMAR, HITTITE STELA 30
TELL AḤMAR, EARTHENWARE JAR 30
SERRÎN, NORTHERN TOWER TOMB 31
SERRÎN, SOUTHERN TOWER TOMB 31
SERRÎN, NORTH TOWER TOMB, PLAN AND ELEVATION SHOWING MOULDINGS 36
INSCRIPTION IN CAVE NEAR SERRÎN 40
WIFE AND CHILDREN OF A WELDEH SHEIKH 46
PLAN OF MUNBAYAH 45
MUNBAYAH, WATER GATE 47
NESHABAH, TOWER TOMB 47
MAḤALL ES ṢAFṢÂF 49
ḲAL’AT JA’BAR 50
ḲAL’AT JA’BAR, MINARET 50
ḲAL’AT JA’BAR, HALL OF PALACE 51
ḲAL’AT JA’BAR, BRICK WALL ABOVE GATEWAY 51
ḤARAGLAH 53
ḤARAGLAH, VAULT 52
RAḲḲAH, EASTERN MINARET 52
RAḲḲAH, PLAN OF MOSQUE AND SECTIONS OF PIERS 57
RAḲḲAH, MOSQUE FROM EAST 53
RAḲḲAH, ARCADE OF MOSQUE, FROM NORTH 53
RAḲḲAH, CAPITALS OF ENGAGED COLUMNS, MOSQUE 56
RAḲḲAH, PALACE 56
RAḲḲAH, DETAIL OF STUCCO ORNAMENT, PALACE 57
RAḲḲAH, DOMED CHAMBER IN PALACE 57
RAḲḲAH, BAGHDÂD GATE FROM EAST 58
RAḲḲAH, INTERIOR OF BAGHDÂD GATE 58
RAḲḲAH, BAGHDÂD GATE RECONSTRUCTED 59
ḤALEBÎYEH 59
IRZÎ, TOWER TOMB 83
IRZÎ, TOWER TOMB 84
NAOURA OF ’AJMÎYEH 84
THE INHABITANTS OF RAWÂ 85
’ÂNAH FROM THE ISLAND OF LUBBÂD 94
’ÂNAH, A FISHERMAN 95
HÎT, PITCH-SPRING 95
HÎT 104
HÎT, THE SULPHUR MARSHES 104
MINARET ON ISLAND OF LUBBÂD 105
MINARET AT MA’MÛREH 105
MADLÛBEH 105
MA’MÛREH, MINARET 106
HÎT, THE BITUMEN FURNACES 108
THE EUPHRATES AT HÎT 108
THE WELL AT KEBEISAH 109
’AIN ZA’ZU 109
ḲAṢR KHUBBÂZ AND RUINS OF THE TANK 118
ḲAṢR KHUBBÂZ, THE GATEWAY 118
ḲAṢR KHUBBÂZ, A VAULTED CHAMBER 119
THEMAIL 119
ḲAṢR KHUBBÂZ 120
THEMAIL 130
MUḤAMMAD EL ’ABDULLAH 134
KHEIḌIR, MA’ASHÎ AND SHEIKH ’ALÎ 134
BARDAWÎ 136
BARDAWÎ FROM SOUTH-WEST 135
BARDAWÎ, EAST END OF VAULTED HALL 135
SHETÂTEH, SULPHUR SPRING 138
ḲAṢR SHAM’ÛN, OUTER WALL 138
UKHEIḌIR FROM NORTH-WEST 139
UKHEIḌIR, INTERIOR FROM SOUTH-EAST 139
UKHEIḌIR, GROUND PLAN 149
UKHEIḌIR, THE BATH 150
UKHEIḌIR, SECOND STOREY 152
UKHEIḌIR, THIRD STOREY 152
UKHEIḌIR, NORTH-EAST ANGLE TOWER 142
UKHEIḌIR, STAIR AT SOUTH-EAST ANGLE 142
UKHEIḌIR, INTERIOR OF SOUTH GATE 142
UKHEIḌIR, CHEMIN DE RONDE OF EAST WALL 143
UKHEIḌIR, NORTH GATE, FROM OUTSIDE 143
UKHEIḌIR, FLUTED DOME AT A 146
UKHEIḌIR, FLUTED NICHE, SOUTH-EAST CORNER OF COURT D 146
UKHEIḌIR, GREAT HALL 147
UKHEIḌIR, COURT D AND NICHED FAÇADE OF THREE-STOREYED
BLOCK 148
UKHEIḌIR, VAULT OF ROOM I 149
UKHEIḌIR, ROOM I 149
UKHEIḌIR, CUSPED DOOR OF COURT S 150
UKHEIḌIR, CORRIDOR Q 150
UKHEIḌIR, VAULTED END OF P, SHOWING TUBE 150
UKHEIḌIR, VAULTED CLOISTER O´ 150
UKHEIḌIR, GROIN IN CORRIDOR C 151
UKHEIḌIR, SQUINCH ARCH ON SECOND STOREY 151
UKHEIḌIR, NORTH SIDE OF COURT M 152
UKHEIḌIR, SOUTH-EAST ANGLE OF COURT S 152
UKHEIḌIR, WEST SIDE OF B^{3} 153
UKHEIḌIR, DOOR LEADING FROM V TO W, SEEN FROM SOUTH 153
BABYLON, THE LION 170
BABYLON, ISHTAR GATE 171
BABYLON, ISHTAR GATE 171
CTESIPHON, FROM EAST 180
CTESIPHON, FROM WEST 180
CTESIPHON, REMAINS OF VAULT ON WEST SIDE OF SOUTH WING 181
GUFFAHS OPPOSITE THE WALL OF SELEUCIA 184
BAGHDÂD, THE LOWER BRIDGE 184
BAGHDÂD, TOMB OF SITT ZOBEIDEH 185
BAGHDÂD, INTERIOR OF SPIRE, SITT ZOBEIDEH 185
BAGHDÂD, BÂB EṬ ṬILISM 190
BAGHDÂD, DETAIL OF ORNAMENT, BÂB EṬ ṬILISM 190
BAGHDÂD, MINARET IN SÛḲ EL GHAZL 191
WÂNEH, IMÂM MUḤAMMAD ’ALÎ 202
WÂNEH, IMÂM MUḤAMMAD ’ALÎ 202
ḲÂDISÎYAH FROM SOUTH-EAST 202
SÂMARRÂ, RUINED MOSQUE FROM SOUTH 203
SÂMARRÂ, FROM MALWÎYEH 203
SÂMARRÂ, RUINED MOSQUE, INTERIOR OF SOUTH WALL 203
ABU DULÂF, FROM EAST 212
ABU DULÂF, INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH 212
NAHRAWÂN CANAL 213
IMÂM DUR 213
IMÂM DUR 215
TEKRÎT FERRY 216
COFFEE-MAKING, SHEIKH ’ASKAR 216
TEKRÎT, THE ARBAÎN 217
KHÂN KHERNÎNA, MIḤRÂB 217
KHÂN KHERNÎNA, DETAIL OF FLAT VAULT 218
KHÂN KHERNÎNA, VAULT, SHOWING TUBE 218
KHÂN KHERNÎNA, SETTING OF DOME 219
TELL NIMRÛD 219
ḲAL’ÂT SHERGÂT, THE ZIGURRAT AND RUINS OF NORTH WALL 222
SÂMARRÂ, MOSQUE 232
SÂMARRÂ, INTERIOR OF SOUTH GATE, RUINED MOSQUE 223
SÂMARRÂ, RUINED MOSQUE, SMALL DOOR IN WEST WALL 223
SÂMARRÂ, RUINED MOSQUE, SOUTH-WEST ANGLE TOWER 232
SÂMARRÂ, RUINED MOSQUE, WINDOW IN SOUTH WALL 232
SÂMARRÂ, MOSQUE, DETAIL OF PIER, SOUTH DOOR 233
SÂMARRÂ, RUINED MOSQUE, BIG DOOR IN NORTH WALL 233
SÂMARRÂ, EL ’ASHIḲ, WEST END OF NORTH FAÇADE 233
EL ’ASHIḲ 236
SÂMARRÂ, EL ’ASHIḲ FROM NORTH 238
SÂMARRÂ, EL ’ASHIḲ FROM SOUTH 238
EL ’ASHIḲ, DETAIL OF NICHING ON NORTH FAÇADE 238
ṢLEBÎYEH 239
SÂMARRÂ, ṢLEBÎYEH 239
SÂMARRÂ, ṢLEBÎYEH, SETTING OF DOME 239
SÂMARRÂ, BEIT EL KHALÎFAH 240
SÂMARRÂ, BEIT EL KHALÎFAH 240
SÂMARRÂ, BEIT EL KHALÎFAH, DETAIL OF VAULT OF SIDE CHAMBER 240
BEIT EL KHALÎFAH, FRAGMENT OF STUCCO DECORATION ON ARCH 241
SÂMARRÂ, BEIT EL KHALÎFAH, STUCCO DECORATION 241
SÂMARRÂ, BEIT EL KHALÎFAH, FRAGMENT OF RINCEAUX WORKED IN
MARBLE 241
SÂMARRÂ, BEIT EL KHALÎFAH, STUCCO DECORATION 241
STUCCO DECORATIONS, SÂMARRÂ 242
SÂMARRÂ, STUCCO DECORATION 242
SÂMARRÂ, STUCCO DECORATION 242
SÂMARRÂ, FRAGMENT OF POTTERY 242
SÂMARRÂ, FRAGMENT OF POTTERY 242
ABU DULÂF 244
ABU DULÂF, ARCADE 243
ABU DULÂF, NICHED PIER OF NORTHERN ARCADE 243
MÔṢUL 248
MÂR AHUDÂNÎ 258
MÔṢUL, MAR JIRJIS 249
MÔṢUL, MÂR TÛMÂ 249
MÔṢUL, MÂR TÛMÂ 258
MÔṢUL, MÂR SHIM’UN 258
MÔṢUL, PLASTER WORK IN ḲAL’AT LÛLÛ 258
MÔṢUL, TOMB OF THE IMÂM YAḤYÂ 259
ḲARAḲÔSH, DECORATION ON LINTEL OF MÂR SHIM’ÛN 264
ASSYRIAN RELIEFS AT BAVIÂN 272
’ALÎ BEG 273
THE KHÂTÛN AT THE DOOR OF SHEIKH ’ADÎ 273
SHEIKH ’ADÎ 274
ZÂKHÔ 275
BRIDGE OVER THE KHÂBÛR 275
ḤASANAH, ASSYRIAN RELIEF 290
SHAKH, ASSYRIAN RELIEF 290
NOAH’S ARK 291
JEZÎRET IBN ’UMAR, GATE OF FORTRESS 296
JEZÎRET IBN ’UMAR, BRIDGE 296
JEZÎRET IBN ’UMAR, FOUNTAIN OF MOSQUE 297
JEZÎRET IBN ’UMAR, RELIEFS ON BRIDGE 297
PARTHIAN RELIEF, ḲAṢR GHELLÎ 289
PARTHIAN RELIEF, FINIK 298
THE HILLS OF FINIK 299
STELA AT SÂREH 306
ḲAL’AT ḤÂTIM ṬÂI, CHAPEL 306
MÂR AUGEN 307
THE BISHOP OF MÂR MELKO 314
KHÂKH, THE NUN 314
NARTHEX OF MÂR GABRIEL 315
KHÂKH, CHURCH OF THE VIRGIN 315
KEFR ZEH, MÂR ’AZÎZÎYEH; PARISH CHURCH 315
ṢALÂḤ, MÂR YA’ḲÛB; MONASTIC TYPE 316
KHÂKH, CHURCH OF THE VIRGIN 318
KHÂKH, CHURCH OF THE VIRGIN, CAPITALS 318
KHÂKH, CHURCH OF THE VIRGIN, DOME ON SQUINCH ARCHES 318
THE CHELABÎ 319
FORDING THE TIGRIS BELOW DIYÂRBEKR 319
DIYÂRBEKR, MARDÎN GATE 322
DIYÂRBEKR, YENI KAPU 322
DIYÂRBEKR, CHEMIN DE RONDE, NORTH WALL 323
DIYÂRBEKR, COURT OF ULU JÂMI’ 323
ARGHANA MA’DEN 328
GÖLJIK 328
KHARPÛT, THE CASTLE 329
IZ OGLU FERRY 329
MALAṬIYAH ESKISHEHR 336
VALLEY OF THE TOKHMA SU 336
TOMB AT OZAN 337
OZAN, TOMB 341
THE GORGE AT DERENDEH 340
TOMB NEAR YAZI KEUI 340
TOMARZA, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA FROM SOUTH-EAST 341
TOMARZA, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA, SETTING OF DOME 341
TOMARZA, WEST DOOR OF NAVE, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA 346
SHAHR, DOORWAY OF SMALL TEMPLE 346
FATTÛḤ 347
ON THE ROAD TO SHAHR 347
SHAHR, TEMPLE-MAUSOLEUM, UPPER AND LOWER STOREYS 348
SHAHR, TEMPLE-MAUSOLEUM 348
SHAHR, THE CHURCH ON THE BLUFF 348
AVSHAR ENCAMPMENT 349
ḲAIṢARÎYEH, THE CITADEL 349
MOUNT ARGAEUS FROM NORTH-WEST 354
NIGDEH, TOMB OF HAVANDA 355
NIGDEH, TOMB OF HAVANDA, DETAIL OF WINDOW 355
TOMB OF HAVANDA 356
MAP OF TURKEY IN ASIA 370
AMURATH TO AMURATH
CHAPTER I
ALEPPO TO TELL AḤMAR
_Feb. 3--Feb. 21_
A small crowd had gathered round one of the booths in the saddlery
bazaar, and sounds of controversy echoed down the vaulted ways. I love
to follow the tortuous arts of Oriental commerce, and moreover at the
end of the dark gallery the February sun was shining upon the steep
mound of the citadel; therefore I turned into the saddlers’ street, for
I had no other business that afternoon than to find the road back into
Asia, back into the familiar enchantment of the East. The group of men
round the booth swayed and parted, and out of it shouldered the tall
figure of Fattûḥ.
“May God be exalted!” said he, stopping short as he caught sight of me.
“It is well that your Excellency should witness the dealings of the
saddlers of Aleppo. Without shame are they. Thirty years and more have I
lived in Aleppo, and until this day no man has asked me to give two
piastres for a hank of string.” He cast a withering glance, charged with
concentrated animosity, upon the long-robed figure that stood, string in
hand, upon the counter.
“Allah!” said I warily, for I did not wish to parade my ignorance of the
market value of string. “Two piastres?”
“It is good string,” said the saddler ingratiatingly, holding out what
looked like a tangled bundle of black wool.
“Eh wah!” intervened a friend. “’Abdullah sells nought but the best
string.”
I took a seat upon a corner of the counter and Fattûḥ came slowly back,
shaking his head mournfully, as one who recognizes but cannot amend the
shortcomings of mankind. The whole company closed in behind him, anxious
to witness the upshot of the important transaction upon which we were
engaged. On the outskirts stood one of my muleteers like a man plunged
in grief; even the donkey beside him--a recent purchase, though acquired
at what cost of eloquence only Fattûḥ can know--drooped its ears. It was
plain that we were to be mulcted of a farthing over that hank of string.
Fattûḥ drew a cotton bag out of his capacious trousers.
“Take the mother of eight,” said he, extracting a small coin.
“He gives you the mother of eight,” whispered one of the company
encouragingly to the saddler.
“By God and the Prophet, it cost me more! Wallah, it did, oh my uncle!”
expostulated the saddler, enforcing his argument with imaginary bonds of
kinship.
Fattûḥ threw up his eyes to the vault as though he would search heaven
for a sign to confound this impious statement; with averted head he
gazed hopelessly down the long alley. But the vault was dumb, and in all
the bazaar there was no promise of Divine vengeance. A man touched his
elbow.
“Oh father,” he said, “give him the mother of ten.”
The lines of resolution deepened in Fattûḥ’s face. “Sir, we would
finish!” he cried, and fumbled once more in the cotton bag. The suspense
was over; satisfaction beamed from the countenances of the bystanders.
“Take it, oh father, take it!” said they, nudging the saddler into
recognition of his unexampled opportunity.
The hank of string was handed over to Ḥâjj ’Amr, who packed it gloomily
into the donkey’s saddle bags, already crammed to overflowing with the
miscellaneous objects essential to any well-ordered caravan on a long
journey. Fattûḥ and Ḥâjj ’Amr had been shopping since dawn, and it was
now close upon sunset.
I climbed down from the counter. “With your leave,” said I, saluting the
saddler.
“Go in peace,” he returned amicably. “And if you want more string Fattûḥ
knows where to get it. He always deals with me.”
The crowd melted back to its avocations, if it had any, and the
excitement caused by our commercial dealings died away.
“Oh Fattûḥ,” said I, as we strolled down the bazaar with the donkey.
“There is great labour in buying all we need.”
Fattûḥ mopped his brow with a red handkerchief. “And the outlay!” he
sighed. “But we got that string cheap.” And with this he settled his
tarbush more jauntily, kicked the donkey, and “Yallah, father!” said he.
If there be a better gate to Asia than Aleppo, I do not know it. A
virile population, a splendid architecture, the quickening sense of a
fine Arab tradition have combined to give the town an individuality
sharply cut, and more than any other Syrian city she seems instinct with
an inherent vitality. The princes who drew the line of massive masonry
about her flanks and led her armies against the emperors of the West,
the merchants who gathered the wealth of inner Asia into her bazaars and
bartered it against the riches of the Levant Company have handed down
the spirit of enterprise to the latest of her sons. They drive her
caravans south to Baghdâd, and east to Vân, and north to Konia, and in
the remotest cities of the Turkish empire I have seldom failed to find a
native of Aleppo eager to provide me with a local delicacy and to gossip
over local politics. “Here is one who heard we were from Aleppo,” says
Fattûḥ with an affected indifference. “His brother lives in the next
street to mine, and he has brought your Excellency some apples. But they
are not like the apples of Aleppo.” Then we exchange a greeting warm
with fellow-citizenship and the apples are flavoured with good-will,
even if they cannot be expected to vie with the fruit of our own
countryside.
It was at Aleppo that I made acquaintance with the Turkey which had come
into being on July 24, 1908. Even among those whose sympathies were
deeply engaged on behalf of the new order, there were not many Europeans
who, in January 1909, had any clue to public opinion outside
Constantinople and Salonica. The events of the six stirring months that
had just elapsed had yet to be heard and apprehended, and no sooner had
I landed in Beyrout than I began to shed European formulas and to look
for the Asiatic value of the great catchwords of revolution. In Aleppo,
sitting at the feet of many masters, who ranged down all the social
grades from the high official to the humblest labourer for hire, I
learnt something of the hopes and fears, the satisfaction, the
bewilderment, and the indifference of Asia. The populace had shared in
the outburst of enthusiasm which had greeted the granting of the
constitution--a moment of unbridled expectation when, in the brief
transport of universal benevolence, it seemed as if the age-long
problems of the Turkish empire had been solved with a stroke of the pen;
they had journeyed back from that Utopia to find that human nature
remained much as it had been before. The public mind was unhinged; men
were obsessed with a sense of change, perplexed because change was slow
to come, and alarmed lest it should spring upon them unawares. The
relaxation of the rule of fear had worked in certain directions with
immediate effect, but not invariably to the increase of security. True,
there was a definite gain of personal liberty. The spies had disappeared
from official quarters, and with them the exiles, who had been condemned
by ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd, on known or unknown pretexts, to languish helplessly
in the provincial capitals. Everywhere a daily press had sprung into
existence and foreign books and papers passed unhindered through the
post. The childish and exasperating restrictions with which the Sultan
had fettered his Christian subjects had fallen away. The Armenians were
no longer tied to the spot whereon they dwelt; they could, and did,
travel where they pleased. The nâmûsîyeh, the identification
certificate, had received the annual government stamp without delay, and
without need of bribes. In every company, Christian and Moslem, tongues
were unloosed in outspoken criticism of official dealings, but it was
extremely rare to find in these freely vented opinions anything of a
constructive nature. The government was still, to the bulk of the
population, a higher power, disconnected from those upon whom it
exercised its will. You might complain of its lack of understanding just
as you cursed the hailstorm that destroyed your crops, but you were in
no way answerable for it, nor would you attempt to control or advise it,
any more than you would offer advice to the hail cloud. Many a time have
I searched for some trace of the Anglo-Saxon acceptance of a common
responsibility in the problems that beset the State, a sense the germs
of which exist in the Turkish village community and in the tribal system
of the Arab and the Kurd; it never went beyond an embryonic application
to small local matters, and the answers I received resembled, _mutatis
mutandis_, that of Fattûḥ when I questioned him as to the part he had
played in the recent general election. “Your Excellency knows that I am
a carriage-driver, what have I to do with government? But I can tell you
that the new government is no better than the old. Look now at Aleppo;
have we a juster law? wallah, no!”
In some respects they had indeed a yet more laggard justice than in “the
days of tyranny”--so we spoke of the years that were past--or perhaps it
would be truer to say a yet more laggard administration. The dislocation
of the old order was a fact considerably more salient than the
substitution for it of another system. The officials shared to the full
the general sense of impermanence that is inevitable to revolution,
however soberly it may be conducted; they were uncertain of the limits
of their own authority, and as far as possible each one would shuffle
out of definite action lest it might prove that he had overstepped the
mark. In the old days a person of influence would occasionally rectify
by processes superlegal a miscarriage of the law; the miscarriages
continued, but intervention was curtailed by doubts and misgivings. The
spies had been in part replaced by the agents of the Committee, who
wielded a varying but practically irresponsible power. How far the
supremacy of the local committees extended it was difficult to judge,
nor would a conclusion based upon evidence from one province have been
applicable to another; but my impression is that nowhere were they of
much account, and that the further the district was removed from the
coast, that is, from contact with the European centres of the new
movement, the less influential did they become. Possibly in the remoter
provinces the local committee was itself reactionary, as I have heard it
affirmed, or at best an object of ridicule, but in Syria, at any rate,
the committees existed in more than the name. Their inner organization
was at that time secret, as was the organization of the parent society.
They had taken form at the moment when the constitution was proclaimed,
and had undergone a subsequent reconstruction at the hands of delegates
from Salonica, who were sent to instruct them in their duties. I came
across one case where these delegates, having been unwisely selected,
left the committee less well qualified to cope with local conditions
than they found it, but usually they discharged their functions with
discretion. The committees opened clubs of Union and Progress, the
members of which numbered in the bigger towns several hundreds. The club
of Aleppo was a flourishing institution lodged in a large bare room in
the centre of the town. It offered no luxuries to the members, military
and civilian, who gathered round its tables of an evening, but it
supplied them with a good stock of newspapers, which they read gravely
under the shadow of a life-sized portrait of Midhat Pasha, the hero and
the victim of the first constitution. The night of my visit the newly
formed sub-committee for commerce was holding its first deliberations on
a subject which is of the utmost importance to the prosperity of Aleppo:
the railway connection with the port of Alexandretta. To this discussion
I was admitted, but the proceedings after I had taken my seat at the
board were of an emotional rather than of a practical character, and I
left with cries of “Yasha Inghilterra!” (“Long live England!”) in my
ears. I carried away with me the impression that whatever might be the
future scope of its activities, the committee could not fail, in these
early days, to be of some educational value. It brought men together to
debate on matters that touched the common good and invited them to bear
a part in their promotion. The controlling authority of the executive
body was of much more questionable advantage. Its members, whose names
were kept profoundly secret, were supposed to keep watch over the
conduct of affairs and to forward reports to the central committee: I
say _supposed_, because I have no means of knowing whether they actually
carried out what they stated to be their duties. They justified their
position by declaring that it was a temporary expedient which would
lapse as soon as the leaders of the new movement were assured of
official loyalty to the constitution, and arbitrary as their functions
may appear it would have been impossible to assert that Asiatic Turkey
was fit to run without leading-strings. But I do not believe that the
enterprise of the committees was sufficient to hamper a strong governor;
and so far as my observation went, the welfare of each province
depended, and must depend for many a year to come, upon the rectitude
and the determination of the man who is placed in authority over it.
Underlying all Turkish politics are the closely interwoven problems of
race and religion, which had been stirred to fresh activity by exuberant
promises. Fraternity and equality are dangerous words to scatter
broadcast across an empire composed of many nationalities and controlled
by a dominant race. Under conditions such as these equality in its most
rigid sense can scarcely be said to exist, while fraternity is
complicated by the fact that the ruling race professes Islâm, whereas
many of the subordinate elements are Christian. The Christian population
of Aleppo was bitterly disheartened at having failed to return one of
their own creed out of the six deputies who represent the vilayet. I
met, in the house of a common friend, a distinguished member of the
Christian community who threw a great deal of light on this subject. He
began by observing that even in the vilayet of Beyrout, though so large
a proportion of the inhabitants are Christian, the appointment of a
non-Moslem governor would be impossible; so much, he said, for the boast
of equality. This is, of course, undeniable, though in the central
government, where they are not brought into direct contact with a Moslem
population, Christians are admitted to the highest office. He complained
that when the Christians of Aleppo had urged that they should be
permitted to return a representative to the Chamber, the Moslems had
given them no assistance. “They replied,” interposed our host, “that it
was all one, since Christians and Moslems are merged in Ottoman.” I
turned to my original interlocutor and inquired whether the various
communions had agreed upon a common candidate.
“No,” he answered with some heat. “They brought forward as many
candidates as there are sects. Thus it is in our unhappy country; even
the Christians are not brothers, and one church will not trust the
other.”
I said that this regrettable want of confidence was not confined to
Turkey, and asked whether, if they could have commanded a united vote,
they would have carried their candidate. He admitted with reluctance
that he thought it would have been possible, and this view was confirmed
by an independent witness who said that a Christian candidate, carefully
chosen and well supported, would have received in addition the Jewish
vote, since that community was too small to return a separate
representative.
As for administrative reform, it hangs upon the urgent problem of
finance. From men who are overworked and underpaid neither efficiency
nor honesty can be expected, but to increase their number or their
salary is an expensive business, and money is not to be had. How small
are the local resources may be judged from the fact that Aleppo, a town
of at least 120,000 inhabitants, possesses a municipal income of from
£3,000 to £4,000 a year. Judges who enjoy an annual salary of from £60
to £90 are not likely to prove incorruptible, and it is difficult to see
how a mounted policeman can support existence on less than £12 a year,
though one of my zaptiehs assured me that the pay was sufficient if it
had been regular. In the vilayet of Aleppo and the mutesarriflik of Deir
all the zaptiehs who accompanied me had received the arrears due to them
as well as their weekly wage, but this fortunate condition did not
extend to other parts of the empire.
The plain man of Aleppo did not trouble his head with fiscal problems;
he judged the new government by immediate results and found it wanting.
I rode one sunny afternoon with the boy, Fattûḥ’s brother-in-law, who
was to accompany us on our journey, to the spring of ’Ain Tell, a mile
or two north of the town. Jûsef--his name, as Fattûḥ was careful to
point out, is French: “I thought your Excellency knew French,” he said
severely, in answer to my tactless inquiry--Jûsef conducted me across
wet meadows, where in spring the citizens of Aleppo take the air, and
past a small mound, no doubt artificial, a relic perhaps of the
constructions of Seif ed Dauleh, whose palace once occupied these
fields. Close to the spring stands a mill with a pair of stone lions
carved on the slab above the door, the heraldic supporters of some
prince of Aleppo. They had been dug out of the mound together with a
fine basalt door, like those which are found among the fourth and fifth
century ruins in the neighbouring hills; the miller dusted it with his
sleeve and observed that it was an antîca. A party of dyers, who were
engaged in spreading their striped cotton cloths upon the sward, did me
the honours of their drying-ground--merry fellows they were, the typical
sturdy Christians of Aleppo, who hold their own with their Moslem
brothers and reckon little of distinctions of creed.
“Christian and Moslem,” said one, “see how we labour! If the
constitution were worth anything, the poor would not work for such small
rewards.”
“At any rate,” said I, “you got your nâmûsîyeh cheaper this year.”
“Eh true!” he replied, “but who can tell how long that will last?”
“Please God, it will endure,” said I.
“Please God,” he answered. “But we should have been better satisfied to
see the soldiers govern. A strong hand we need here in Aleppo, that the
poor may enjoy the fruits of their toil.”
“Eh wah!” said another, “and a government that we know.”
Between them they had summed up popular opinion, which is ever blind to
the difficulties of reform and impatient because progress is necessarily
slow footed.
We passed on our return the tekîyeh of Abu Bekr, a beautiful Mamlûk
shrine with cypresses in its courtyard, which lift their black spires
proudly over that treeless land. The brother of the hereditary sheikh
showed me the mosque; it contains an exquisite miḥrâb of laced stone
work, and windows that are protected by carved wooden shutters and
filled with old coloured glass. Near the mosque is the square hall of a
bath, now fallen into disrepair. Four pendentives convert the square
into an octagon, and eight more hold the circle of the dome--as fine a
piece of massive construction as you would wish to see. The sheikh and
his family occupied some small adjoining rooms, and the young wife of my
guide made me welcome with smiles and lemon sherbet. From the deep
embrasure of her window I looked out upon Aleppo citadel and
congratulated her upon her secluded house set in the thickness of
ancient walls.
“Yes,” she replied, eagerly detailing the benefits of providence, “and
we have a carpet for winter time, and there is no mother-in-law.”
Aleppo is the Greek Berœa, but the town must have played a part in the
earlier civilizations of North Syria. It lies midway between two Hittite
capitals, Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Cadesh on the Orontes, in the
heart of a fertile country strewn with mounds and with modern mud-built
villages. The chief town of this district was Chalcis, the modern
Kinnesrîn, a day’s journey to the south of Aleppo, but with the
development of the great Seleucid trade-route between Seleucia on the
Tigris and Antioch on the Orontes, which Strabo describes as passing
through Hierapolis, Aleppo, being on the direct line to Antioch, must
have gained in importance, and it was perhaps for this reason that the
little Syrian village saw the Seleucid foundations of Berœa. The Arabic
name, Ḥaleb, retains a reminiscence
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--ALEPPO, THE CITADEL.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--ALEPPO, HITTITE LION IN CITADEL.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--BASALT EAGLE IN THE FRENCH CONSULATE.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--ALEPPO, JÂMI’ ESH SHAIBÎYEH, CORNICE.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--FIRDAUS, MEDRESSEH OF EL MALIK EẒ ẒÂHIR.]
of the original local appellation, which never slipped out of memory and
finally conquered the Greek Berœa. Mohammadan tradition recognizes the
fact that Ḥaleb was the ancient name of the city in the foolish tale
which connects it with the cows of Abraham, the root of the word Ḥaleb
being the verb signifying to milk, and the Emperor Julian knew that
Berœa was the same as Chaleb. Aleppo is not without evidences of a
remote antiquity. Every archæologist in turn has tried his hand at the
half obliterated Hittite inscription which is built, upside down, into
the walls of the mosque of Ḳiḳân near the Antioch gate; among the ruins
of the citadel are two roughly worked Hittite lions (Fig. 2; Mr. Hogarth
was the first to identify them), and I found in the French Consulate a
headless eagle carved in basalt which belongs to the same period (Fig.
3). The steep escarpment of the castle mound is akin to the ancient
fortified sites of northern Mesopotamia. Julian mentions the acropolis
of Berœa. It was protected in a later age by a revetment of stone slabs,
most of which were stripped away by Tîmûr Leng when he overwhelmed the
town in 1401 and laid it in ruins. I know of only one building in Aleppo
the origin of which can be attributed with certainty to the
pre-Mohammadan period, the Jâmi’ el Ḥelâwîyeh near the Great Mosque
(Fig. 6). It has been completely rebuilt; the present dome, resting on
pendentives, with a tambour broken by six windows, belongs to one of the
later reconstructions, but the beautiful acanthus capitals must be
ascribed to the fifth century on account of their likeness to the
capitals in the church of St. Simeon Stylites, a day’s journey
north-west of Aleppo. The great school of architecture which they
represent affected the builders of Islâm through many a subsequent age,
and you will find the Mamlûks still flinging the leaves of the
wind-blown acanthus about the capitals in their mosques. In the tenth
century Aleppo was the chief city of the Ḥamdânid prince Seif ed Dauleh,
a notable patron of the arts. It was he who built the south gate in the
walls, the Bâb Kinnesrîn, and rebuilt the Antioch Gate after its
destruction by Nicephorus Phocas; he repaired the citadel, set the
shrine of Ḥussein upon the hill-side west of the town, and erected his
own splendid dwelling outside the walls to the north. His palace was
ravaged before his death, his gates and mosques have been rebuilt, and
there remains for the period before Saladin little or nothing but the
mosque inside the citadel, built in 1160 by Nûr ed Dîn, the greatest of
the Syrian atabegs, and the Jâmi’ esh Shaibîyeh near the Antioch Gate,
which, in spite of its ruined condition, is one of the loveliest
monuments of the art of Islâm in the whole town of Aleppo (Fig. 4).[1]
Along the top of the wall and carried uninterruptedly round the square
minaret, runs a Cufic inscription, cut in a cavetto moulding. Below it
is a band of interlacing rinceaux, unsurpassed in boldness and freedom
of design, and above it a heavy cymatium, borne on modillions and
adorned with rinceaux. The classical outline of the cornice, together
with the exquisite Oriental decoration, give it a singular hybrid
beauty. This mosque apart, the finest buildings are due to the Ayyûbids,
and chiefly to El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, the son of Saladin, who ruled in
Aleppo at the end of the twelfth century. Beyond the walls to the south
of the city, in the quarter of Firdaus, the descendants of Saladin held
their court, and though their palaces have disappeared--how much more we
should know of Mohammadan architecture if each successive conqueror had
not ruined the house of his predecessor!--the suburb is still
resplendent with mosques and tombs. Here stands the Medresseh of El
Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, with an arcade borne on capitals that retain a
reminiscence of classical form though they are hung with a garland of
leaves that are closer to the Sasanian than to the Greek (Fig. 5).[2]
Near it is the mosque of Firdaus built by the king’s widow when she was
regent for her son. Over the miḥrâb of this mosque is a bold entrelac
decoration which is to be found also in the shrine of Ḥussein, a
building that
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--ALEPPO, JÂMI’ EL ḤELAWÎYEH.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--FIRDAUS, A TOMB.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--ALEPPO, A MAMLÛK DOME.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--ALEPPO, A MAMLÛK DOME.]
owes its present form to El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir.[3] The mosque of Eṣ Ṣâliḥîn
shelters a gigantic footprint of Abraham, and about it lie the tombs of
the pious who sought a resting-place near the site sanctified by the
patriarch--tombstones worthy of a museum, carved with Cufic inscriptions
and with vine scrolls and bunches of grapes. And falling now into
unheeded decay are other memorials of the dead, their walls covered with
delicate tracery and their windows filled with an exquisite lacework of
stone (Fig. 7). They were great builders these princes of Islâm, Ayyûbid
and Mamlûk, and in nothing greater than in their mastery of structural
difficulties. The problem of the dome, its thrust and its setting over a
square substructure, received from them every possible solution; they
bent the solid stone into airy forms of infinite variety (Figs. 8 and
9). Their splendid masonry satisfied the eye as does the wall of a Greek
temple, and none knew better than they the value of discreet decoration.
The restraint and beauty of such treatment of the wall surface as is to
be found in the Khân el Wazîr (Fig. 10) or the Khân es Sabûn (Fig. 11)
bear witness to a master hand. The grace and ordered symmetry of these
façades are as devoid of monotony as are the palace walls of the early
Venetian renaissance, to which they are closely related, and here as in
Venice the crowning beauty of colour is added to that of form and
proportion. But it is colour of the sun’s own making; the sharp black
outline of a window opening, the half tones of a carved panel lying upon
the smooth brightness of the masonry soberly enhanced by the occasional
use of a darker stone, either in courses or in alternate voussoirs. If
you are so fortunate as to have many friends in Aleppo, you will find
that the domestic architecture is no less admirable, and drinking your
coffee under panelled ceilings rich with dull golds and soft deep reds,
you will magnify once again the genius of the artificers of Asia.
The walls and gates of the city, though they are not so well preserved
as those of Diyârbekr, are fine examples of mediæval fortification. To
the north a prosperous quarter lies beyond the older circuit and the
heraldic lions of the Mamlûks look down upon streets crowded with
traffic. Armorial bearings played a large part in the decorative scheme
of the Mohammadan builders. The type characteristic of Aleppo is a disk
projecting slightly from the wall, carved with a cup from the base of
which spring a pair of leaves. Upon the cup there are strange signs
which are said to have been imitated from Egyptian hieroglyphs, a motive
introduced by the Mamlûks; but I have noticed a variety of coats of the
same period, such as the whorl which fills the disk upon the Bâb el
Maḳâm, and the pair of upright pot-hooks, set back to back, upon the
Jâmi’ el Maḳâmât in the Firdaus quarter. These disks, together with
bands of inscriptions, are the sole ornaments placed upon the city
gates.
The sombre splendour of the architecture of Aleppo is displayed nowhere
better than in the Bîmâristân of El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, which was built as a
place of confinement for criminal lunatics and is still used for that
purpose. The central court terminates at the southern end in the lîwân
of a mosque covered with an oval dome; before it lies the ceremonial
water-tank, if any one should have the heart to wash or pray in that
house of despair. A door from the court leads into a stone corridor, out
of which open rectangular stone chambers with massive walls rising to a
great height, and carrying round and oval domes. Through narrow window
slits, feeble shafts of light fall into the dank well beneath and shiver
through the iron bars that close the cells of the lunatics. They sit
more like beasts than men, loaded with chains in their dark cages, and
glower at each other through the bars; and one was sick and moaned upon
his wisp of straw, and one rattled his chains and clawed at the bars as
though he would cry for mercy, but had forgotten human speech. “They do
not often recover,” said the gaoler, gazing indifferently into the sick
man’s cell, and I wondered in my heart whether there were any terms in
which to reckon up the misery that had accumulated for generations under
El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir’s domes.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--KHÂN EL WAZÎR.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--KHAN ES SABÛN.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--WINDOW OF A TURBEH, FIRDAUS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--GATE OF CITADEL, ALEPPO.]
Like the numismatic emblem of a city goddess, Aleppo wears a towered
crown. The citadel lies immediately to the east of the bazaars. A
masonry bridge resting on tall narrow arches spans the moat between a
crenelated outpost and the great square block of the inner gatehouse.
Through a worked iron door, dated in the reign of El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, you
pass into a vaulted corridor which turns at right angles under an arch
decorated with interlaced dragons (Fig. 13), and ends at another arched
doorway on which stand the leopards of Sultan Baybars, who rebuilt the
castle in the thirteenth century. Above the entrance is a columned hall,
grass-grown and ruined; passages lead down from it into vaulted chambers
which would seem to have been repaired after Tîmûr had sacked Aleppo.
Some of the blocks used in the walls here are Jewish tombstones dated by
Hebrew inscriptions in the thirteenth century, and since it is scarcely
possible that Baybars should have desecrated a cemetery of his own day,
they must indicate a later period of reconstruction. The garrison was
supplied with water from a well eighty metres deep which lies near the
northern edge of the castle mound. Besides the well-hole, a stair goes
down to the water level, near which point vaulted passages branch out to
right and left. Tradition says that the whole mound is raised upon a
substructure of masonry, but tradition is always ready with such tales,
and the only inscription in the passages near the well is Cufic. At the
northern limit of the enclosure stands a high square tower, up which, if
you would know Aleppo, you must climb. From the muedhdhin’s gallery the
town lies revealed, a wide expanse of flat roof covering the bazaars,
broken by dome and minaret, by the narrow clefts of streets and the
courts of mosque and khân. The cypresses of Abu Bekr stand sentinel to
the north; from that direction Tîmûr entered through the Bâb el Ḥadîd.
In the low ground beyond the Antioch Gate, the armies of the Crusaders
lay encamped; the railway, an invader more powerful than Baldwin, holds
it now. Turn to the east, and as far as the eye can see, stretch rolling
uplands, the granary of North Syria, and across them wind the caravan
tracks that lead into inner Asia. There through the waste flows the
Euphrates--you might almost from the tower catch the glint of its
waters, so near to the western sea does its channel approach here.
I have never come to know an Oriental city without finding that it
possesses a distinctive personality much more strongly accentuated than
is usually the case in Europe, and this is essentially true of the
Syrian towns. To compare Damascus, for example, with Aleppo, would be to
set side by side two different conceptions of civilization. Damascus is
the capital of the desert, Aleppo of the fertile plain. Damascus is the
city of the Arab tribes who conquered her and set their stamp upon her;
Aleppo, standing astride the trade routes of northern Mesopotamia, is a
city of merchants quick to defend the wealth that they had gathered
afar. So I read the history that is written upon her walls and impressed
deep into the character of her adventurous sons.
At Aleppo the current of the imagination is tributary to the Euphrates.
With Xenophon, with Julian, with all the armies captained by a dream of
empire that dashed and broke against the Ancient East, the thoughts go
marching down to the river which was the most famous of all frontier
lines. So we turned east, and on a warm and misty February morning we
passed under the cypresses of Abu Bekr and took the road to Hierapolis.
It was a world of mud through which we journeyed, for the rains had been
heavy, and occasionally a shower fell across our path; but rain and mud
can neither damp nor clog the spirit of those who are once more upon the
road, with faces turned towards the east. The corn was beginning to
sprout and there were signs too of another crop, that of the locusts
which had swarmed across the Euphrates the year before, and after
ravaging the fields had laid their eggs in the shallow earth that lies
upon the rocky crest of the ridges between cornland and cornland.
Whenever the road climbed up to these low eminences we found a family of
peasants engaged, in a desultory fashion, in digging out the eggs from
among the stones. Where they lay the ground was pitted like a face
scourged with smallpox, but for every square yard cleared a square mile
was left undisturbed, and the peasants worked for the immediate small
reward which the government paid for each load of eggs, and not with any
hope of averting the plague that ultimately overwhelmed their crops. It
comes and goes, for what reason no man can tell, lasting in a given
district over a term of lean years, and disappearing as unaccountably as
it came: perhaps a storm of rain kills the larvæ as they are hatching
out, perhaps the breeding season is unfavourable--God knows, said Ḥâjj
’Alî, the zaptieh who accompanied me. The country is set thick with
villages, of which Kiepert marks not the tenth part--and even those not
always rightly placed. We passed his Sheikh Najar, and at Sheikh Ziyâd I
went up to see the ziyârah, the little shrine upon the hill-top, but
found there nothing but a small chamber containing the usual clay tomb.
We left Serbes on the right--it was hidden behind a ridge--and took a
track that passed through the village of Shammar. Not infrequently there
were old rock-cut cisterns among the fields and round the mounds whereon
villages had once stood. At Tell el Ḥâl, five hours from Aleppo, a
modern village lies below the mound, and by the roadside I saw part of
the shaft of a column, with a moulded base, while several more fragments
of columns were set up as tombstones in the graveyard. An hour before we
reached Bâb we caught sight of the high minaret of the ziyârah above it.
It is a flourishing little place with a bazaar and several khâns, in one
of which I lodged. The heavy rain-clouds that had hung about us all day
were closing down as evening approached, but I had time to climb the
steep hill to the west of the village, where a cluster of houses
surrounds the ziyârah of Nebî Ḥâshil--so I heard the name, but Abu’l
Fidâ calls it the Mashhad of ’Aḳil ibn Abî Ṭâlib, brother of the Khalif
’Alî[4]--an old shrine of which the lower part of the walls is built of
rusticated stones. The tomb itself was closed, but I went to the top of
the minaret and had a fine view of the shallow fruitful valley of the
Deheb, which, taking its source near Bâb and the more northerly Tell
Batnân, runs down to the salt marshes at the foot of Jebel el Ḥaṣṣ.
Across the valley there is a notable big mound with a village at its
foot, the Buzâ’â of the Arab geographers, “smaller than a town and
larger than a village,” said Ibn Jubeir in the twelfth century. The
ancient Bathnæ where Julian rested under “a pleasant grove of cypress
trees” is represented by Buzâ’â and its “gate” Bâb. He compares its
gardens with those of Daphne, the famous sanctuary of Apollo near
Antioch, and though the gardens and cypresses have been replaced by
cornfields, it is still regarded by the inhabitants of Aleppo as an
agreeable and healthy resort during the hot months of summer. Perhaps we
may carry back its history yet earlier and look here for the palace of
Belesys, the Persian governor of Syria, at the source of the river
Dardes, which Xenophon describes as having “a large and beautiful garden
containing all that the seasons produce.”[5] Cyrus laid it waste and
burned the palace, after which he marched three days to Thapsacus on the
Euphrates; but the Arab geographers place Bâlis (which some have
conjectured to have occupied the site of the Persian palace) two days
from Aleppo, and the position of Thapsacus has not been determined with
any certainty. If it stood at Dibseh, as Moritz surmises,[6] Cyrus could
well have reached it in three marches from Bâb, and I am inclined to
think that Xenophon’s account identifies the satrap’s pleasaunce with
the garden of Bathnæ. In Kiepert’s map the relative distances between
Aleppo and Bâb and Bâb and Manbij are not correct. I rode the two stages
in almost exactly the same time (seven and a quarter hours), and the
caravan took nine hours each day, whereas the map would have the march
to Manbij a good two hours longer than the march to Bâb.[7]
A stormy wind, bringing with it splashes of rain, swept us next morning
over the wet uplands. About an hour from Bâb we were joined by a
Circassian wrapped in a thick black felt cloak, which, with the white
woollen hood over an astrachan cap, skirted coat with cartridges ranged
across the breast, and high riding-boots, is the invariable costume of
these emigrants from the north. His name was Maḥmûd Aghâ. His father had
left the Caucasus after the Russians took the country and had gone with
all his people to Roumelia, where they settled down and built houses.
And then the Russians seized that land also, and again they left all and
came to Manbij, and the Sultan gave them fields on his own estates. “But
if the Russians were to come here too,” he concluded, with the anxious
air of one who faces an ever-present danger, “God knows where we should
go.”
“Their frontier is far,” said I reassuringly.
“Please God,” said he.
I asked him about the recent elections and found that he took a lively
interest in the politics of the day. He knew the names of the deputies
who had been returned for the vilayet of Aleppo, and said that a
thousand people had given their votes in the Manbij district, though
there should have been many more if all had been on the register. But
they would not trouble to have their names placed upon it.
“Wallah, no,” observed Ḥâjj ’Alî. “Do you think that the fellaḥîn of all
these villages wish to vote? If they knew that their name was written
down by the government, they would take to their heels and flee into the
desert, leaving all that they have. So great would be their fear.”
This was a new view of the duties and privileges of citizenship, and
once more I had to shift my ground and look at representative
institutions through the eyes of the Syrian peasant.
“Then none of the Arab vote?” I asked, when I had accomplished this
revolution of the mind. The Arab are the Bedouin.
“God forbid!” replied Ḥâjj ’Alî. “Where is Aleppo and where their
dwelling-place!”
“We are all equal now before the law,” said Maḥmûd Aghâ inconsequently
(but he was thinking of townsfolk, not of the Arab), “and all will be
given an equal justice. We shall not wait for months at the door of the
serâyah before we are given a hearing--and then only with bribes.”
“I have heard that all are equal,” said I, “and that Christian and
Moslem will serve together in the army. What think you?”
“Without doubt the Christians may serve,” he answered, “but they cannot
command.”
In three and a half hours we reached the village of Arîmeh, where there
are two Roman milestones that have been copied by Mr. Hogarth. He dates
them A.D. 197, in which year the Emperor Septimius Severus, whose name
is inscribed upon them, probably completed the road. I suspect that it
followed the Seleucid trade route mentioned by Strabo. There are not
more than a dozen houses at Arîmeh, but the ancient settlement was more
important. Cut stones lie about the modern hovels, and behind them are
ruined foundations, among which we found the fragment of a bas-relief, a
pair of shod feet and another foot beside them: I did not judge it to be
earlier than the Roman period. A large stone block built into the wall
of one of the courtyards bore a much worn foundation inscription of El
Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, his name and the words “he built it” being alone
decipherable. We rode on to Hierapolis across a hollow plain, all
cultivated, the sacred domain of the Syrian goddess “whom some call
Nature herself, the cause that produces the seed of all things.”[8] When
we passed over the ground it was still a chiflik, the private property
of ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd, wrested by him bit by bit during the last thirty years
from its owners, the half-settled Arabs. With all the rest of his landed
estates it was appropriated after his deposition in April by the State,
and if it is put up for sale there will be no lack of customers in
Aleppo, for the merchants are eager to lay field to field, and I have
heard them complain of the difficulty of buying land near home, since
all was held by the Sultan. We rode between the air-holes of underground
canals, of which there were a great number bringing water to Hierapolis.
The old line of the city walls is clearly marked, though the Circassian
colony, which grows in numbers and prosperity in spite of the antagonism
of the neighbouring Arabs, is rapidly digging out the stones and using
them in the construction of houses. Just within the walls, as we
approached from the west, is a large pond, surrounded by masonry, the
remains of the stairs by which the worshippers descended into the pool
of Atargatis that they might swim to the altar in its midst. Lucian
declares that the pool wherein were kept the sacred fish was over 200
cubits deep, but his informants must have exaggerated, inasmuch as
Pocock, who visited Hierapolis in 1787, mentions that the pool was dry,
and does not speak of so remarkable a hole as Lucian’s estimate would
imply. Maundrell, who saw it in 1699, describes it as a deep pit
containing a little water, but choked by the walls and columns of great
buildings that had stood all about it. East of the pool there is a
modern mosque erected by ’Abdu’l Hamîd on the site of a foundation of El
Malik eẓ Ẓâhir. Nothing remained of the earlier building, I was told,
but a ruined minaret,[9] which has now gone. In the ṣaḥn, the court, I
saw three inscriptions of El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir which had belonged to his
mosque. Below the pavement of the ṣaḥn, said the guardian of the mosque,
a second pavement had been found which he believed to have been that of
a Christian church; there were one or two columns lying about here, and
an acanthus capital which was certainly pre-Mohammadan and probably
pre-Christian. Manbij was at one time a bishopric; the earlier
travellers mention several ruined churches which have now vanished, and
Ibn Khurdâdhbeh, one of the first of the Arab geographers, remarks that
“there is no wooden building fairer than the church at Manbij, for it
has arches of jujube wood”[10]--an observation which is repeated with
wearisome iteration by many of his successors.
The pool and the mosque stand for the two periods of former splendour,
the pagan and the Mohammadan. Bambyce--to give it the classicized form
of its ancient local name[11]--must have been a shrine of some
importance when the Seleucids rechristened it Hierapolis, but, as at
Aleppo, the older word was never forgotten, and Strabo in the first
century calls it by both names. His account is suggestive of the
conditions that prevailed in the Seleucid empire. “The road for
merchants,” says he, “going from Syria to Seleucia and Babylon, lies
through the country of the Scenitæ and through the desert belonging to
their territory. The Euphrates is crossed in the latitude of Anthemusia,
a place in Mesopotamia.[12] Above the river, at a distance of four
schœni, is Bambyce, where the Syrian goddess Atargatis is worshipped.
After crossing the river the road runs through a desert country on the
borders of Babylonia, to Scenæ. From the passage across the river to
Scenæ is a journey of five-and-twenty days. There are on the road owners
of camels who keep resting-places which are well supplied with water
from cisterns, or transported from a distance. The Scenitæ exact a
moderate tribute from merchants, but do not molest them: the merchants
therefore avoid the country on the banks of the river and risk a journey
through the desert, leaving the river on the right hand at a distance of
nearly three days’ march. For the chiefs of the tribes living on both
sides of the river are settled in the midst of their own peculiar
domains, and each exacts a tribute of no moderate amount for
himself.”[13] It is evident that the Alexandrids never succeeded in
subduing the Arab tribes, who pushed up in a wedge along the Euphrates
between their Mesopotamian and their Syrian provinces, and Strabo has
here left us a description of the pre-Parthian line of traffic. Where it
crossed the river it would be hazardous to pronounce. The two most
famous passages of the middle Euphrates were at Birejik and at
Thapsacus: at the former Seleucus Nicator built a bridge,[14] and
Crassus, in the first century before Christ, found a bridge at Birejik
and crossed with all the omens against him, even the eagle of the first
standard turning its head backwards when it was brought down to the
river. But between these two points the Euphrates can easily be crossed
in boats at many places,[15] and in the numerous Roman expeditions
against the Sasanians, when Hierapolis came to be used as a convenient
starting-point for eastern campaigns, the passage seems usually to have
been made lower down than Birejik, more nearly opposite Hierapolis, and
the Mesopotamian road ran thence by Thilaticomum and through the desert
to Bathnæ in Osrhœne.[16] Julian marching from Hierapolis presumably
took this shorter road, for he was anxious to reach Mesopotamia before
intelligence of his movements should have come to the enemy,[17] and it
has been conjectured that he threw his bridge of boats across the river
from Cæciliana, a place mentioned in the Peutinger Tables and identified
tentatively with Ḳal’at en Nejm.[18] There is, however, a ferry just
below the mouth of the Sajûr river which during the last few years has
been used regularly by caravans and carriages going to Urfah, the
ancient Edessa, in preference to the longer road by Birejik. This route
had long been abandoned on account of the insecurity of the deserts
through which it passes. Before the granting of the constitution some
advance had been made towards order, and since the overthrow of Ibrahîm
Pasha, the Kurd, in the autumn of 1908, it has become as safe as can
reasonably be expected. The landing-place on the east bank is at Tell
Aḥmar, a tiny hamlet which has inherited the site of a very ancient
city. Here perhaps Strabo’s road crossed the river;[19] here Julian may
have constructed his pontoon bridge, and it is not improbable that for
the first four or five hundred years of the Christian era it was the
customary point of passage for travellers from Hierapolis to Edessa.[20]
Thapsacus, which lies lower down than Cæciliana-Ḳal’at en Nejm, was of
earlier importance. Xenophon crossed there, and nearly a hundred years
later, Darius, fleeing headlong eastwards with his broken army after the
battle of Issus, with Alexander headlong at his heels, passed over the
river at Thapsacus.[21]
Julian saw Manbij in the last days of its pagan glory, and for him, as
for Crassus before him, the omens of Hierapolis were unfavourable, for
as he entered the gates of “that large city, a portico on the left fell
suddenly while fifty soldiers were passing under it, and many were
wounded, being crushed beneath the vast weight of the beams and
tiles.”[22] A couple of hundred years later its estate was so much
diminished that no attempt was made to defend it against Chosroes, who
held it to ransom, and then treacherously sacked it. Procopius says that
the space enclosed by the wide circuit of the walls was at that time a
desert, and since it was far too large to be defended by the scanty
remnants of the population, Julian drew in the walls to a smaller
compass.[23] After the Mohammadan conquest, Hârûn er Rashîd made Manbij
one of the fortresses of his frontier province, el ’Awâṣim, the
Strongholds; it passed from hand to hand in the wars carried on by the
Greek emperors and the Crusaders against the khalifs, and finally
remained in the possession of the latter. Under the house of Saladin it
enjoyed a second period of prosperity, and the inscriptions near the
mosque show that El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, that great builder, must have
expended some of his skill upon it. Ibn Jubeir found it rich and
populous, with large bazaars and a strong castle. But its fortifications
could not protect it against Hûlâkû, who took and sacked it in 1259, and
sixty years later Abu’l Fidâ found most of its walls and houses in
ruins. It never recovered from this disaster, but sank gradually into
the featureless decay from which the Circassian colony is engaged in
rescuing it.
The khânjî and all others interested in our arrival being happily
engaged in receiving the news of the day from Fattûḥ, I slipped away
alone and walked round the western and southern line of the ruined city
wall. The space within is covered by shapeless heaps of earth, with cut
stones and fragments of columns emerging from them. Towards the
north-east corner, where the ground rises, the hollow of the theatre is
clearly marked just inside the wall, and beyond it a large depression
probably indicates the site of the stadium. The rain-clouds scudded past
upon the wind; little and solitary, a Circassian shepherd boy came
wandering in over the high downs, driving his flock of goats across the
ruins of the wall and through the theatre, where they stopped to graze
in shelter from the furious blast. I followed them half across the
wasted city and turned aside to pay my respects to the tomb of a holy
man, a crumbling mosque, with the graves of the Faithful about it. The
Circassian who has his dwelling in the courtyard hastened to open the
shrine and to relate the story of Sheikh ’Aḳil. He lived in the days of
Tîmûr Leng, and enjoyed so great a reputation that when the conqueror
was preparing to besiege the town, he thought fit to warn the sheikh of
his intentions. Sheikh ’Aḳil begged him to hold aloof for three days,
and having obtained this respite, he counselled the inhabitants to
destroy all that might tempt to pillage. They followed his advice, and
Tîmûr, finding nothing but smoking ruins, passed the city by, while the
populace escaped with their lives. So ran the Circassian’s tale: I give
it for what it is worth. Meantime the baggage had come in and the horses
were being watered at the sacred pool, amid anxious cries from the
muleteers, who had heard rumours of its fabulous depth: “Oh father, look
to yourself! may God destroy your dwelling! no further!” Besides Ḥâjj
’Amr, who had travelled with me before, Fattûḥ had engaged two others,
both Christians, Selîm and Ḥabîb, the latter a brother of his own. These
three, with Jûsef, accompanied me during all the months of the journey,
and I never heard a word of complaint from them, neither had I cause to
complain.
I had intended to ride next day to Carchemish, sending the caravan
across the ford to Tell Aḥmar, where I meant to join it in the evening,
but the khânji and Maḥmûd Aghâ, who had dropped in to see that we were
comfortably lodged, dissuaded me, saying that if the wind rose, as it
had done that evening, the ferry boats would not come over from Tell
Aḥmar and I should be left on the river bank with my camp on the
opposite side. I was reluctant to give up my scheme, and Fattûḥ backed
me with the observation that the passage was easy and need not be taken
into account.
“Oh my brother,” Maḥmûd admonished him, “it is the Euphrates!” And we
were all silenced.
Early in the morning, I left Manbij with Jûsef and Ḥâjj ’Alî, and rode
past a bewildering number of villages unmarked by Kiepert (I noted
Mangâbeh and Wardâna on our left hand, and after them ’Ain Nakhîleh on
our right) to the
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--ALEPPO, THE GREAT MOSQUE.]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--TELL AḤMAR FERRY.]
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--TELL AḤMAR.]
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--CARCHEMISH FROM THE BIG MOUND.]
Sajûr valley, which we reached near Chat. We had left the carriage track
and now followed the windings of the Sajûr by a path narrow at best and
none the better for the recent rains. A man on a donkey jogged along
behind us, and I caught fragments of his conversation with Ḥâjj ’Alî. He
asked the meaning of the word ḥurrîyeh (liberty), a question to which he
received no very definite answer. He did not press the point, but
remarked that for his part he knew nothing of the new government, but
this he knew, that no one in these villages had done military service (I
suppose on account of the exemption that was extended to all who dwelt
upon the Sultan’s domains) and no one was written down “‘and el ḥukûmeh”
(on the official register). He prayed God that this fortunate estate
might not suffer change. In three hours from Manbij we reached
Osherîyeh, turned a bit of rising ground and came in sight of the
Euphrates, flowing beneath white cliffs. If I had been instructed in the
proper ceremonies I should have wished to offer up a sacrifice or raise
a bethel stone, but failing these I paid the only tribute that can be
accorded in an ungracious age and photographed it. Ḥâjj ’Alî drew bridle
and watched the proceeding.
“I see it for the first time,” said I apologetically.
“Eh yes,” he replied, “this is our Euphrates,” and he turned an
indulgent eye upon the rolling waters that are charged with the history
of the ancient world.
The path dropped down into the valley and ran under cliffs which are
honeycombed with chambered caves, made, or at least deepened, by the
hand of man. The water was low at this season, and where we joined the
river it was divided into two arms by a long island. Half-an-hour
further down the arms met, and lower still another little island, which
is covered after the snows begin to melt in the northern mountains, was
set in the wide stream. Here was the ferry (Fig. 15). A company of
bedraggled camels and camel-drivers waited on the sands while the
cumbrous boats were dragged up from the point to which they had been
washed by the current. The ferrymen had been weatherbound at Tell Aḥmar,
and the caravans had spent a weary two days by the river’s edge. They
had eaten misery, sighed the camel-drivers; wallah, no bread they had
had, no fire and no tobacco; but with the patient deference of the East
they stood aside when the first boat came lumbering up and observed that
the Consul Effendi had best cross while the air was still. We drove our
horses into the ferry boat, and by a most unnautical process, connected
with long poles, our craft was run ashore upon the island, over which we
ploughed our way and found a second boat ready to take us across the
smaller channel. We landed in Mesopotamia at the village of Tell Aḥmar,
which takes its name from the high mound, washed by Euphrates, under
which it lies (Fig. 16). Jûsef spread out my lunch on the top of the
tell, and we watched the caravan embark from the opposite bank and were
well pleased to have accomplished the momentous passage in good order,
with all our eagles pointing the right way.
I lingered on the mound, making acquaintance with a world which was new
to me, but immeasurably old to fame. The beautiful empty desert
stretched away east and north and south, bathed in the soft splendour of
the February sun, long gentle slopes and low bare hills, and the noble
curves of the Euphrates bordering the waste. Near the river and
scattered over the first two or three miles of country to the east of
it, there are a number of isolated mounds which represent the site of
very ancient settlements.[24] Of these Tell Aḥmar is by far the most
important. The ridge of silted earth which marks the line of the walls
encloses three sides of a parallelogram, the river itself defending the
fourth side. Strewn about the village are several stone slabs carved in
relief with Hittite figures; outside one of the gates in the east wall
are the broken remains of a Hittite stela, and before the second more
southerly gate lie two roughly carved lions with inscriptions of
Shalmaneser II.[25] By the time I had finished lunch Ḥâjj ’Alî had
selected a villager to serve me as guide to the wonders of Tell Aḥmar,
and we set off together to inspect the written stones. My new friend’s
name was Ibrahîm. As we ran down to Shalmaneser’s lions he confided to
me that for some reason, wholly concealed from him, wallah, he was not
beloved of the Ḳâimmaḳâm of Bumbuj, and added that he proposed to place
himself under my protection, please God.
“Please God,” said I, wondering to what misdeeds I might, in the name of
my vassal, stand committed.
The fragments of the Hittite stela were half buried in the ground, and I
sent Ibrahîm to the village, bidding him collect men with picks and
spades to dig them out. The monument had been a four-sided block of
stone with rounded corners, covered on three sides with an inscription
and on the fourth with a king in low relief standing upon a bull (Fig.
18). When we had disengaged the bull from the earth the villagers fell
to discussing what kind of animal it was, and Ibrahîm took upon himself
to pronounce it a pig. But Ḥâjj ’Alî, who had been tempted forth from
the tents to view the antîca, intervened decisively in the debate.
“In the ancient days,” said he, “they made pictures of men and maidens,
lions, horses, bulls and dogs; but they never made pictures of pigs.”
This statement was received deferentially by all, and Ibrahîm, with the
fervour of the newly convinced, hastened to corroborate it.
“No, wallah! They never made pictures of pigs.”
The whole village turned out to help in the work of making moulds of the
inscriptions, those who were not actively employed with brush and paste
and paper sitting round in an attentive circle. There is little doing at
Tell Aḥmar, and even the moulding of a Hittite inscription, which is not
to the European an occupation fraught with interest, affords a welcome
diversion--to say nothing of the prospect of earning a piastre if you
wait long enough. But on the third day, wind and rain called a halt, and
guided by the sheikh of the neighbouring village of Ḳubbeh I explored
the river-bank. Half-an-hour below Tell Aḥmar, among some insignificant
ruins, we found a small Hittite inscription cut on a bit of basalt, and
close to it a block of limestone carved with a much effaced relief. A
few minutes further to the east a lion’s head roughly worked in basalt
lay upon a mound. The head is carved in the round, but we dug into the
mound and uncovered a large block on which the legs were represented in
relief. We rode on to Ḳubbeh, where the inhabitants are Arabic-speaking
Kurds, and found in the graveyard the fragment of a Latin inscription in
well-cut letters--
C O M F
L O N G
H F R
V I A S
We left the hamlet of Ja’deh a little to the right, and an hour further
down passed the village of Mughârah, beyond which the eastern ridge of
high ground draws in towards the river. In a small valley, just before
we reached the slopes of the hill, I saw the remains of some
construction that looked like a bridge built of finely squared stones,
and on the further side a graveyard with a couple of broken stone
sarcophagi in it. The sheikh said that after rain he had found glass and
gold rings here. He insisted on my inspecting some caves by the water’s
edge where he was positive we should find writing, and I went
reluctantly, for a series of disillusions has ended in destroying the
romantic interest that once hung about caves. These were no better than
I had expected, and the writing was a cross incised over one of the
entrances. The rain had stopped and we rode on to the big mound of Ḳara
Kazâk (Kiepert calls it Kyrk Kazâk), at the foot of which there is a
considerable area covered with cut and moulded stones, and massive
door-jambs still standing upright with half their height buried in the
earth. I should say that it was the site of a town of the Byzantine
period. When we returned to
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--TELL AḤMAR. HITTITE STELA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--TELL AḤMAR. EARTHENWARE JAR.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--SERRÎN, NORTHERN TOWER TOMB.]
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--SERRÎN, SOUTHERN TOWER TOMB.]
camp Ibrahîm brought me two fragments of a large earthenware jar
decorated round the top with a double line raised and notched in the
clay (Fig. 19). In the band between were set alternately a head in high
relief and a semi-circle of the notched clay. The heads were finely
worked, the eyes rather prominent and the cheeks round and full--a type
which recalled that of the stone heads carved upon the walls of the
Parthian palace at Hatra. Whether it were Parthian or not, the jar was
certainly pre-Mohammadan.
The night closed in cloudless and frosty, and I resolved to risk the
caprices of the river and ride up next morning to Carchemish, for it is
impossible to lie within half-a-day’s journey of a great capital and yet
make no effort to see it. Before dawn we sent a messenger up the river
and charged him to bring us a boat to a point above the camp, that we
might land on the west bank of the Euphrates above its junction with the
Sajûr, a river which we were told was difficult to cross. In
half-an-hour Fattûḥ and I reached Tell el ’Abr (the Mound of the Ford),
where there is a small village, and on going down to the river found, to
our surprise, that the boat was there before us--but not ready; that
would have been too much to expect. I left Fattûḥ to bale out the water
with which it was filled and went off to inspect Tell el Kumluk, a
quarter of an hour away if you gallop. Here there was no village, but
only a large graveyard with broken columns used as tombstones. By the
time I returned to the river the boat had been made more or less
seaworthy, but a sharp little wind had risen, the swift current of the
Euphrates was ruffled, and the boatmen shook their heads and doubted
whether they would dare to cross. We did not leave the decision to them,
but hurried the horses into the leaking craft and pushed off. The stream
swept us down and the wind held us close to the east bank, but with much
labour and frequent invocation of God and the Prophet we sidled across
and ran aground on the opposite shore. Our troubles were not yet over,
for our landing-place turned out to be a big island, and there was still
an arm of the river before us. The stream had risen during the rain of
the previous day and was racing angrily through the second channel, but
we plunged in and, with the water swirling round the shoulders of our
horses, succeeded in making the passage. We shook ourselves dry and
turned our faces to Carchemish. The road under the bluffs by the
river-side was impassable, and we climbed up a gorge into the rocky
country that lies along the top of the cliff. At one point we saw a mass
of ruins, door-jambs and squared stones, which Kiepert--I know not on
what ground--calls Kloster Ruine. In that bare land we met a cheerful
old man driving a donkey and carrying a rifle. “Whither going in peace?”
said he. “To Carchemish,” we answered (only we called it Jerâblus), and
I fell to considering how often the same question had met with the same
answer when the stony path was full of people from the Tell Aḥmar city
going up and down to learn the news of the capital and bring back word
of the movements of Assyrian armies and the market price of corn.
Fattûḥ, elated by the conquest of the river, bubbled over with talk,
simple tales of his beloved Aleppo, of the ways of its inhabitants great
and small, and of his many journeys to Killîz and ’Ain Tâb, Urfah,
Diyârbekr, and Baghdâd.
“Your Excellency knows that I was the first man to take a carriage to
Baghdâd, for there was no road then, but afterwards they made it. And as
for my carriage, Zekîyeh has lined it inside and filled it with
cushions, so that the gentry may lie at ease while I drive them. And
have I told you how I got Zekîyeh?”
“No,” said I mendaciously; I have travelled with Fattûḥ before, and have
not been left unaware of the episodes that led to his betrothal, but
reminiscences that take the listener into the heart of Eastern life bear
repetition. The lady of Fattûḥ’s choice was fourteen when he first set
eyes on her; he went straight to her father and made a bid for her hand,
but the girl was very fair and the father asked a larger dowry than
Fattûḥ could give. “Fortunately,” continued Fattûḥ ingenuously, “he had
an illness of the eyes, and I said to him: ‘There is in Aleppo a doctor
who loves me, and will cure you for my sake.’ But he answered: ‘God give
you wisdom! none can cure me save only God.’ And I mounted him in my
carriage, and drove him to that doctor, and look you, he healed him so
that he saw like a youth. Then he said, ‘There is none like Fattûḥ, and
I will give him my daughter even without a dowry.’ So I bought her
clothes and a gold chain and all that she desired, for I said, ‘She
shall have nought but what I give her.’ And since we married I have
given her gold ornaments and dresses of silk, and when we return from
this journey I will take her on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And indeed
she loves me mightily, and I her,” said Fattûḥ, bringing his idyll to a
satisfactory conclusion. I have seen Zekîyeh in all the bravery of her
silk gowns and gold ornaments, and I do not think she has ever had cause
to regret the day when Fattûḥ mounted her father in his carriage.
We rode fast, and in a couple of hours came down to the Euphrates again,
and so over the low ground for another hour till we reached a tell by
the river with a village close to it. This village and tell, as well as
the large mound half-an-hour away to the north-west, and the farm near
it, are all called Jerâblus,[26] and probably local tradition is right
in drawing no distinction between the widely separated mounds, the whole
area between them having been, in all likelihood, occupied by the houses
and gardens of the Hittite capital. Until you come to Babylon there is
no site on the Euphrates so imposing as the northern mound of Carchemish
(Fig. 17). It was the acropolis, the strongly fortified dwelling-place
of king and god. At its north-eastern end it rises to a high ridge
enclosed on two sides in a majestic sweep of the river. From the top of
this ridge you may see the middle parts of the strategic line drawn by
the Euphrates from Samosata to Thapsacus, strung with battlefields
whereon the claims of Europe and Asia were fought out; while to the west
stretch the rich plains that gave wealth to Carchemish, to Europus, and
to Hierapolis. They are now coming back into cultivation as the
merchants of Aleppo acquire and till them, or enter into an agricultural
partnership with their Arab proprietors, and if the Baghdâd railway is
brought this way, as was confidently expected, the returns from them
will be doubled or trebled in value. The northern mound is covered with
the ruins of the Roman and Byzantine city, columns and moulded bases,
foundations of walls set round paved courtyards, and the line of a
colonnaded street running across the ruin field from the high ridge to a
breach that indicates the place of a gate in the southern face of the
enclosing wall. A couple of carved Hittite slabs, uncovered during
Henderson’s excavations and left exposed at the mercy of the weather,
bear witness to the antiquity of the site. It has long been desolate,
but there is no mistaking the greatness of the city that was protected
by that splendid mound.
Fattûḥ had ordered the boatmen to pull or punt the boat over to the west
bank during our absence; the river was rising and the arm that we had
crossed with difficulty in the morning might have been impassable by
nightfall. The boat was surrounded when we arrived by every one in the
district who happened to have business on the opposite bank, and
recognized in our passage an unusually favourable opportunity for
getting over for nothing. As soon as we had embarked, some twenty
persons and four donkeys hustled in after us and were like to swamp us,
but Fattûḥ rose up in anger and ejected half of them, pitching the lean
and slender Arab peasants over the gunwales and into the water at
haphazard until we judged the boat to be sufficiently lightened. Those
who were allowed to remain earned their passage, for when we presently
ran aground on the head of the island--as it was obvious to the most
inexperienced eye that we must--they leapt out and wading waist high in
the stream, pushed us off. So we galloped home beside the
swiftly-flowing river, aglint with the sunset, and found the camp fire
lighted and the cooking pots a-simmer, and Tell Aḥmar settling down to
its evening meal and to rest.