THE DESERT AND
THE SOWN
[Frontispiece: Bedouins of the Syrian Desert.
(JOHN SARGENT. R.A.)]
SYRIA
THE DESERT & THE SOWN
BY
GERTRUDE LOWTHIAN BELL
_WITH FRONTISPIECE BY JOHN SARGENT, R. A.
ALSO MANY ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP_
NEW YORK
E.P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1907
[Illustration: arabic]
He deems the Wild the sweetest of friends, and travels on
where travels above him the Mother of all the clustered stars
TA'ABATA SHARRAN
To A. C. L.
WHO KNOWS THE HEART
OF THE EAST
PREFACE
Those who venture to add a new volume to the vast literature of travel,
unless they be men of learning or politicians, must be prepared with an
excuse. My excuse is ready, as specious and I hope as plausible as such
things should be. I desired to write not so much a book of travel as an
account of the people whom I met or who accompanied me on my way, and to
show what the world is like in which they live and how it appears to
them. And since it was better that they should, as far as possible, tell
their own tale, I have strung their words upon the thread of the road,
relating as I heard them the stories with which shepherd and man-at-arms
beguiled the hours of the march, the talk that passed from lip to lip
round the camp fire, in the black tent of the Arab and the guest-chamber
of the Druze, as well as the more cautious utterances of Turkish and
Syrian officials. Their statecraft consists of guesses, often shrewd
enough, at the results that may spring from the clash of unknown forces,
of which the strength and the aim are but dimly apprehended; their
wisdom is that of men whose channels of information and standards for
comparison are different from ours, and who bring a different set of
preconceptions to bear upon the problems laid before them. The Oriental
is like a very old child. He is unacquainted with many branches of
knowledge which we have come to regard as of elementary necessity;
frequently, but not always, his mind is little preoccupied with the need
of acquiring them, and he concerns himself scarcely at all with what we
call practical utility. He is not practical in our acceptation of the
word, any more than a child is practical, and his utility is not ours.
On the other hand, his action is guided by traditions of conduct and
morality that go back to the beginnings of civilisation, traditions
unmodified as yet by any important change in the manner of life to which
they apply and out of which they arose. These things apart, he is as we
are; human nature does not undergo a complete change east of Suez, nor
is it impossible to be on terms of friendship and sympathy with the
dwellers in those regions. In some respects it is even easier than in
Europe. You will find in the East habits of intercourse less fettered by
artificial chains, and a wider tolerance born of greater diversity.
Society is divided by caste and sect and tribe into an infinite number
of groups, each one of which is following a law of its own, and however
fantastic, to our thinking, that law may be, to the Oriental it is an
ample and a satisfactory explanation of all peculiarities. A man may go
about in public veiled up to the eyes, or clad if he please only in a
girdle: he will excite no remark. Why should he? Like every one else he
is merely obeying his own law. So too the European may pass up and down
the wildest places, encountering little curiosity and of criticism even
less. The news he brings will be heard with interest, his opinions will
be listened to with attention, but he will not be thought odd or mad,
nor even mistaken, because his practices and the ways of his thought are
at variance with those of the people among whom he finds himself.
"'Ādat-hu:" it is his custom. And for this reason he will be the wiser
if he does not seek to ingratiate himself with Orientals by trying to
ape their habits, unless he is so skilful that he can pass as one of
themselves. Let him treat the law of others respectfully, but he himself
will meet with a far greater respect if he adheres strictly to his own.
For a woman this rule is of the first importance, since a woman can
never disguise herself effectually. That she should be known to come of
a great and honoured stock, whose customs are inviolable, is her best
claim to consideration.
None of the country through which I went is ground virgin to the
traveller, though parts of it have been visited but seldom, and
described only in works that are costly and often difficult to obtain.
Of such places I have given a brief account, and as many photographs as
seemed to be of value. I have also noted in the northern cities of Syria
those vestiges of antiquity that catch the eye of a casual observer.
There is still much exploration to be done in Syria and on the edge of
the desert, and there are many difficult problems yet to be solved. The
work has been well begun by de Vogüé, Wetzstein, Brünnow, Sachau,
Dussaud, Puchstein and his colleagues, the members of the Princeton
Expedition and others. To their books I refer those who would learn how
immeasurably rich is the land in architectural monuments and in the
epigraphic records of a far-reaching history.
My journey did not end at Alexandretta as this account ends. In Asia
Minor I was, however, concerned mainly with archæology; the results of
what work I did there have been published in a series of papers in the
"Revue Archéologique," where, through the kindness of the editor,
Monsieur Salomon Reinach, they have found a more suitable place than the
pages of such a book as this could have offered them.
I do not know either the people or the language of Asia Minor well
enough to come into anything like a close touch with the country, but I
am prepared, even on a meagre acquaintance, to lay tokens of esteem at
the feet of the Turkish peasant. He is gifted with many virtues, with
the virtue of hospitality beyond all others.
I have been at some pains to relate the actual political conditions of
unimportant persons. They do not appear so unimportant to one who is in
their midst, and for my part I have always been grateful to those who
have provided me with a clue to their relations with one another. But I
am not concerned to justify or condemn the government of the Turk. I
have lived long enough in Syria to realise that his rule is far from
being the ideal of administration, and seen enough of the turbulent
elements which he keeps more or less in order to know that his post is a
difficult one. I do not believe that any government would give universal
satisfaction; indeed, there are few which attain that desired end even
in more united countries. Being English, I am persuaded that we are the
people who could best have taken Syria in hand with the prospect of a
success greater than that which might be attained by a moderately
reasonable Sultan. We have long recognised that the task will not fall
to us. We have unfortunately done more than this. Throughout the
dominions of Turkey we have allowed a very great reputation to weaken
and decline; reluctant to accept the responsibility of official
interference, we have yet permitted the irresponsible protests,
vehemently expressed, of a sentimentality that I make bold to qualify as
ignorant, and our dealings with the Turk have thus presented an air of
vacillation which he may be pardoned for considering perfidious and for
regarding with animosity. These feelings, combined with the deep-seated
dread of a great Asiatic Empire which is also mistress of Egypt and of
the sea, have, I think, led the Porte to seize the first opportunity for
open resistance to British demands, whether out of simple miscalculation
of the spirit that would be aroused, or with the hope of foreign
backing, it is immaterial to decide, The result is equally deplorable,
and if I have gauged the matter at all correctly, the root of it lies in
the disappearance of English influence at Constantinople. The position
of authority that we occupied has been taken by another, yet it is and
must be of far deeper importance to us than to any other that we should
be able to guide when necessary the tortuous politics of Yildiz Kiosk.
The greatest of all Mohammedan powers cannot afford to let her relations
with the Khalif of Islām be regulated with so little consistency or
firmness, and if the Sultan's obstinacy in the Tābah quarrel can prove
to us how far the reins have slipped from our hands, it will have served
its turn. Seated as we are upon the Mediterranean and having at our
command, as I believe, a considerable amount of goodwill within the
Turkish empire and the memories of an ancient friendship, it should not
be impossible to recapture the place we have lost.
But these are matters outside the scope of the present book, and my
_apologia_ had best end where every Oriental writer would have begun:
"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!"
MOUNT GRACE PRIORY.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Bedouin of the Syrian Desert Frontispiece
The Mosque of 'Umar, Jerusalem
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
A Street in Jerusalem
St. Stephen's Gate, Jerusalem
A Mahommedan Procession passing the Garden of Olives
Russian Pilgrims
Pilgrims receiving Baptism in Jordan
Monastery of Kuruntul above Jericho
Crossing the Ghōr
The Bridge over Jordan
The Monastery of Mar Saba, Wilderness of Judæ
The Wall of Lamentation, Jerusalem
Jews of Bokhara
Abyssinian Priests
An Arab of the 'Adwān Guarding Crops
An Encampment near the Dead Sea
The Theatre, 'Ammān
A Gateway, 'Ammān
The Temple, Khureibet es Sūḳ
Mausoleum, Khureibet es Sūḳ
Arabs of the Belḳa
A Ruined Church, Mādeba
The Ḳal'ah at Zīza
A Christian Encampment
Flocks of the Ṣukhūr
A Roman Milestone
Mshitta
Mshitta, the Façade
Mshitta, the Inner Halls
Arabs of the Belḳa
Fellāḥ ul 'Isa ad Da'ja
A Capital at Muwaġġar
A Capital at Muwaġġar
A Capital at Muwaġġar
Milking Sheep
G̣ablān ibn Ḥamūd ad Da'ja
On the Ḥājj Road
Arabs Riding Mardūf
A Travelling Encampment of the 'Ag̣ēl
A Desert Well
A Desert Water-course
Camels of the Ḥaseneh
Umm ej Jemāl
Watering Camels
Striking Camp
Muḥammad el Aṭrash
Desert Flora and Fauna
The Castle, Ṣalkhad
Nasīb el Aṭrash
A Group of Druzes
From Ṣalkhad Castle, looking South-East
Ḳreyeh
A Druze Ploughboy
Boṣrā Eski Shām
The Village Gateway, Ḥabrān
A Druze Maḳ'ad, Ḥabrān
Lintel, el Khurbeh
The Walls of Ḳanawāt
Ḳanawāt, The Basilica
Ḳanawāt, Doorway of the Basilica
Ḳanawāt A Temple
The Temple, Mashennef
Ḳal'at el Beiḍa
Ḳal'at el Beiḍa
Ḳal'at el Beiḍa, Door of Keep
Mouldings from Ḳal'at el Beiḍa and from Palmyra
A Gateway, Shakka
The Sheikh's House, Ḥayāt
In the Palmyrene Desert 135
The Great Mosque and the Roofs of the Bazaar from the Fort
A Corn Market
The Ḳubbet el Khazneh
The Tekyah of Nakshibendi
Gate of the Tekyah
Mushḳin Kalam
Sweetmeat Sellers
Court of the Great Mosque
Threshing-floor of Karyatein
The Tekyali of Nakshibendi
Outside Damascus Gates
A Water seller
Suḳ Wādi Barada
Ba'albek
The Great Court, Ba'albek
Columns of the Temple of the Sun, Ba'albek
Temple of Jupiter, Ba'albek
Capitals in the Temple of Jupiter, Ba'albek
Fountain in the Great Court, Ba'albek
Fragment of Entablature, Ba'albek
Basilica of Constantine, Ba'albek
A Stone in the Quarry, Ba'albek
Rās ul 'Ain, Ba'albek
Cedars of Lebanon
The Ḳāmu'a Hurmul
An Eastern Holiday
A Street in Ḥomṣ
Coffee by the Road-side
Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn
Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn, Interior of the Castle
Windows of the Banquet Hall
Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn, Walls of the Inner Enceinte
Fellaḥīn Arabs
The Temple at Ḥuṣn es Suleimān
North Gate, Ḥuṣn es Suleimān
City Gate, Masyād
Capital at Masyād
Capital at Masyād
A Na'oura, Ḥamāh
The Ḳubbeh in the Mosque at Ḥamāh
The Tekyah Killāniyyeh, Ḥamāh
Capital in the Mosque, Ḥamāh
A Capital, Ḥamāh
Ḳal'at es Seijar
Ḳal'at es Seijar, The Cutting through the Ridge
A Capital, Ḥamāh
A House at el Bārah
Moulding at el Bārah and Lintel at Khirbet Hāss
Tomb, Serjilla
Sheikh Yūnis
House at Serjilla
Tomb of Bizzos
Church and Tomb, Ruweiḥā
Ḳaṣr el Ḃanāt
Tomb Dāna
A Beehive Village
The Castle, Aleppo
A Water-carrier
Ḳal'at Sim'ān
Ḳal'at Sim'ān
Ḳal'at West Door
Ḳal'at Circular Court
Ḳal'at Circular Court
Ḳal'at The Apse
Ḳal'at West Door
A Funeral Monument, Ḳāṭurā
Khirāb esh Shems
Khirāb esh Carving in a Tomb
Capital, Upper Church at Kalōteh
Barād, Canopy Tomb
Barād, Tower to the West of the Town
Mūsa and his Family
Bāsufān, a Kurdish Girl
Tomb at Dānā
The Bāb el Hawa
The Temple Gate, Bāḳirḥa
Ḳalb Lōzeh
The Apse, Ḳalb Lōzeh
Ḥārim
Salḳīn
Travellers
Antioch
Antioch
On the Bank of the Orontes, Antioch
The Corn Market, Antioch
Roman Lamp in Rifa't Agha's Collection
Head of a Sphinx, Antioch
Daphne
The Garīz
The Statue in the Mulberry-Garden
Lower Course of the Garīz
Sarcophagus in the Seraya, Antioch
[Illustration 01: THE MOSQUE OF 'UMAR, JERUSALEM]
CHAPTER I
To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of
exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild
travel. The gates of the enclosed garden are thrown open, the chain at
the entrance of the sanctuary is lowered, with a wary glance to right
and left you step forth, and, behold! the immeasurable world. The world
of adventure and of enterprise, dark with hurrying storms, glittering in
raw sunlight, an unanswered question and an unanswerable doubt hidden in
the fold of every hill. Into it you must go alone, separated from the
troops of friends that walk the rose alleys, stripped of the purple and
fine linen that impede the fighting arm, roofless, defenceless, without
possessions. The voice of the wind shall be heard instead of the
persuasive voices of counsellors, the touch of the rain and the prick of
the frost shall be spurs sharper than praise or blame, and necessity
shall speak with an authority unknown to that borrowed wisdom which men
obey or discard at will. So you leave the sheltered close, and, like the
man in the fairy story, you feel the bands break that were riveted about
your heart as you enter the path that stretches across the rounded
shoulder of the earth.
It was a stormy morning, the 5th of February. The west wind swept up
from the Mediterranean, hurried across the plain where the Canaanites
waged war with the stubborn hill dwellers of Judæa, and leapt the
barrier of mountains to which the kings of Assyria and of Egypt had laid
vain siege. It shouted the news of rain to Jerusalem and raced onwards
down the barren eastern slopes, cleared the deep bed of Jordan with a
bound, and vanished across the hills of Moab into the desert. And all
the hounds of the storm followed behind, a yelping pack, coursing
eastward and rejoicing as they went.
[Illustration 02: THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM]
No one with life in his body could stay in on such a day, but for me
there was little question of choice. In the grey winter dawn the mules
had gone forward carrying all my worldly goods--two tents, a canteen,
and a month's provision of such slender luxuries as the austerest
traveller can ill spare, two small mule trunks, filled mainly with
photographic materials, a few books and a goodly sheaf of maps. The
mules and the three muleteers I had brought with me from Beyrout, and
liked well enough to take on into the further journey. The men were all
from the Lebanon. A father and son, Christians both, came from a village
above Beyrout: the father an old and toothless individual who mumbled,
as he rode astride the mule trunks, blessings and pious ejaculations
mingled with protestations of devotion to his most clement employer, but
saw no need to make other contribution to the welfare of the
party--Ibrahīm was the name of this ancient; the son, Ḥabīb, a young
man of twenty-two or twenty-three, dark, upright and broad-shouldered,
with a profile that a Greek might have envied and a bold glance under
black brows. The third was a Druze, a big shambling man, incurably lazy,
a rogue in his modest way, though he could always disarm my just
indignation in the matter of stolen sugar or missing piastres with an
appealing, lustrous eye that looked forth unblinking like the eye of a
dog. He was greedy and rather stupid, defects that must be difficult to
avoid on a diet of dry bread, rice and rancid butter; but when I took
him into the midst of his blood enemies he slouched about his work and
tramped after his mule and his donkey with the same air of passive
detachment that he showed in the streets of Beyrout. His name was
Muḥammad. The last member of the caravan was the cook. Mikhāil, a
native of Jerusalem and a Christian whose religion did not sit heavy on
his soul. He had travelled with Mr. Mark Sykes, and received from him
the following character: "He doesn't know much about cooking, unless he
has learnt since he was with me, but he never seems to care twopence
whether he lives or whether he is killed." When I repeated these words
to Mikhāil he relapsed into fits of suppressed laughter, and I engaged
him on the spot. It was an insufficient reason, and as good as many
another. He served me well according to his lights; but he was a touchy,
fiery little man, always ready to meet a possible offence half way, with
an imagination to the limits of which I never attained during three
months' acquaintance, and unfortunately he had learned other things
besides cooking during the years that had elapsed since he and Mr. Sykes
had been shipwrecked together on Lake Van. It was typical of him that he
never troubled to tell me the story of that adventure, though once when
I alluded to it he nodded his head and remarked: "We were as near death
as a beggar to poverty, but your Excellency knows a man can die but
once," whereas he bombarded my ears with tales of tourists who had
declared they could not and would not travel in Syria unsustained by his
culinary arts. The 'arak bottle was his fatal drawback; and after trying
all prophylactic methods, from blandishment to the hunting-crop, I
parted with him abruptly on the Cilician coast, not without regrets
other than a natural longing for his tough ragôuts and cold pancakes.
[Illustration 03: A STREET IN JERUSALEM]
[Illustration 04: ST. STEPHEN'S GATE, JERUSALEM]
I had a great desire to ride alone down the desolate road to Jericho, as
I had done before when my face was turned towards the desert, but
Mikhāil was of opinion that it would be inconsistent with my dignity,
and I knew that even his chattering companionship could not rob that
road of solitude. At nine we were in the saddle, riding soberly round
the walls of Jerusalem, down into the valley of Gethsemane, past the
garden of the Agony and up on to the Mount of Olives. Here I paused to
recapture the impression, which no familiarity can blunt, of the walled
city on the hill, grey in a grey and stony landscape under the heavy
sky, but illumined by the hope and the unquenchable longing of
generations of pilgrims. Human aspiration, the blind reaching out of the
fettered spirit towards a goal where all desire shall be satisfied and
the soul find peace, these things surround the city like a halo, half
glorious, half pitiful, shining with tears and blurred by many a
disillusion. The west wind turned my horse and set him galloping over
the brow of the hill and down the road that winds through the Wilderness
of Judæa.
[Illustration 05: A MAHOMMADAN PROCESSION PASSING THE GARDEN OF OLIVES]
[Illustration 06: RUSSIAN PILGRIMS]
At the foot of the first descent there is a spring, 'Ain esh Shems, the
Arabs call it, the Fountain of the Sun, but the Christian pilgrims have
named it the Apostles' Well. In the winter you will seldom pass there
without seeing some Russian peasants resting on their laborious way up
from Jordan. Ten thousand of them pour yearly into the Holy Land, old
men and women, for the most part, who have pinched and saved all their
life long to lay together the £30 or so which will carry them to
Jerusalem. From the furthest ends of the Russian empire they come on
foot to the Black Sea, where they take ship as deck passengers on board
a dirty little Russian boat. I have travelled with 300 of them from
Smyrna to Jaffa, myself the only passenger lodged in a cabin. It was
mid-winter, stormy and cold for those who sleep on deck, even if they be
clothed in sheepskin coats and wadded top-boots. My shipmates had
brought their own provisions with them for economy's sake--a hunch of
bread, a few olives, a raw onion, of such was their daily meal. Morning
and evening they gathered in prayer before an icon hanging on the cook's
galley, and the sound of their litanies went to Heaven mingled with the
throb of the screw and the splash of the spray. The pilgrims reach
Jerusalem before Christmas and stay till after Easter that they may
light their tapers at the sacred fire that breaks out from the Sepulchre
on the morning of the Resurrection. They wander on foot through all the
holy places, lodging in big hostels built for them by the Russian
Government. Many die from exposure and fatigue and the unaccustomed
climate; but to die in Palestine is the best of favours that the Divine
hand can bestow, for their bones rest softly in the Promised Land and
their souls fly straight to Paradise. You will meet these most
unsophisticated travellers on every high road, trudging patiently under
the hot sun or through the winter rains, clothed always in the furs of
their own country, and bearing in their hands a staff cut from the reed
beds of Jordan. They add a sharp note of pathos to a landscape that
touches so many of the themes of mournful poetry. I heard in Jerusalem a
story which is a better illustration of their temper than pages of
description. It was of a man who had been a housebreaker and had been
caught in the act and sent to Siberia, where he did many years of penal
servitude. But when his time was up he came home to his old mother with
a changed heart, and they two set out together for the Holy Land that he
might make expiation for his sins. Now at the season when the pilgrims
are in Jerusalem, the riff-raff of Syria congregates there to cheat
their simplicity and pester them for alms, and one of these vagabonds
came and begged of the Russian penitent at a time when he had nothing to
give. The Syrian, enraged at his refusal, struck the other to the earth
and injured him so severely that he was in hospital for three months.
[Illustration 07: PILGRIMS RECEIVING BAPTISM IN JORDAN]
When he recovered his consul came to him and said, "We have got the man
who nearly killed you; before you leave you must give evidence against
him." But the pilgrim answered, "No, let him go. I too am a criminal."
Beyond the fountain the road was empty, and though I knew it well I was
struck again by the incredible desolation of it. No life, no flowers,
the bare stalks of last year's thistles, the bare hills and the stony
road. And yet the Wilderness of Judæa has been nurse to the fiery
spirit of man. Out of it strode grim prophets, menacing with doom a
world of which they had neither part nor understanding; the valleys are
full of the caves that held them, nay, some are peopled to this day by a
race of starved and gaunt ascetics, clinging to a tradition of piety
that common sense has found it hard to discredit. Before noon we reached
the khān half way to Jericho, the place where legend has it that the
Good Samaritan met the man fallen by the roadside, and I went in to
lunch beyond reach of the boisterous wind. Three Germans of the
commercial traveller class were writing on picture-postcards in the room
of the inn, and bargaining with the khānji for imitation Bedouin
knives. I sat and listened to their vulgar futile talk--it was the last
I was to hear of European tongues for several weeks, but I found no
cause to regret the civilisation I was leaving. The road dips east of
the khān, and crosses a dry water-course which has been the scene of
many tragedies. Under the banks the Bedouin used to lie in wait to rob
and murder the pilgrims as they passed. Fifteen years ago the Jericho
road was as lawless a track as is the country now that lies beyond
Jordan: security has travelled a few miles eastward during the past
decade. At length we came to the top of the last hill and saw the Jordan
valley and the Dead Sea, backed by the misty steeps of Moab, the
frontier of the desert. Jericho lay at our feet, an unromantic village
of ramshackle hotels and huts wherein live the only Arabs the tourist
ever comes to know, a base-born stock, half bred with negro slaves. I
left my horse with the muleteers whom we had caught up on the
slope--"Please God you prosper!" "Praise be to God! If your Excellency
is well we are content"--and ran down the hill into the village. But
Jericho was not enough for that first splendid day of the road. I
desired eagerly to leave the tourists behind, and the hotels and the
picture-postcards. Two hours more and we should reach Jordan bank, and
at the head of the wooden bridge that leads from Occident to Orient we
might camp in a sheltered place under mud hillocks and among thickets of
reed and tamarisk. A halt to buy corn for the horses and the mules and
we were off again across the narrow belt of cultivated land that lies
round Jericho, and out on to the Ghōr, the Jordan valley.
[Illustration 08: MONASTERY OF KURUNTUL ABOVE JERICHO]
The Jericho road is bare enough, but the valley of Jordan has an aspect
of inhumanity that is almost evil. If the prophets of the Old Testament
had fulminated their anathemas against it as they did against Babylon or
Tyre, no better proof of their prescience would exist; but they were
silent, and the imagination must travel back to flaming visions of
Gomorrah and of Sodom, dim legends of iniquity that haunted our own
childhood as they haunted the childhood of the Semitic races. A heavy
stifling atmosphere weighed upon this lowest level of the earth's
surface; the wind was racing across the hill tops above us in the
regions where men breathed the natural air, but the valley was stagnant
and lifeless like a deep sea bottom. We brushed through low thickets of
prickly sidr trees, the Spina Christi of which the branches are said to
have been twisted into the Crown of Thorns. They are of two kinds these
sidr bushes, the Arabs call them zaḳūm and dōm. From the zaḳūm
they extract a medicinal oil, the dōm bears a small fruit like a crab
apple that ripens to a reddish brown not uninviting in appearance. It is
a very Dead Sea Fruit, pleasant to look upon and leaving on the lips a
taste of sandy bitterness. The sidrs dwindled and vanished, and before
us lay a sheet of hard mud on which no green thing grows. It is of a
yellow colour, blotched with a venomous grey white salt: almost
unconsciously the eye appreciates its enmity to life. As we rode here a
swirl of heavy rain swooped down upon us from the upper world. The
muleteers looked grave, and even Mikhāil's face began to lengthen, for
in front of us were the Slime Pits of Genesis, and no horse or mule can
pass over them except they be dry. The rain lasted a very few minutes,
but it was enough. The hard mud of the plain had assumed the consistency
of butter, the horses' feet were shod in it up to the fetlocks, and my
dog Kurt whined as he dragged his paws out of the yellow glue. So we
came to the Slime Pits, the strangest feature of all that uncanny land.
A quarter of a mile to the west of Jordan--the belt is much narrower to
the east of the stream--the smooth plain resolves itself suddenly into a
series of steep mud banks intersected by narrow gullies. The banks are
not high, thirty or forty feet at the most, but the crests of them are
so sharp and the sides so precipitous that the traveller must find his
way across and round them with the utmost care. The shower had made
these slopes as slippery as glass, even on foot it was almost impossible
to keep upright. My horse fell as I was leading him; fortunately it was
on a little ridge between mound and mound, and by the most astonishing
gymnastics he managed to recover himself. I breathed a short
thanksgiving when I saw my caravan emerge from the Slime Pits: we might,
if the rain had lasted, have been imprisoned there for several hours,
since if a horseman falls to the bottom of one of the sticky hollows he
must wait there till it dries.
[Illustration 09: CROSSING THE GHŌR]
Along the river bank there was life. The ground was carpeted with young
grass and yellow daisies, the rusty liveries of the tamarisk bushes
showed some faint signs of Spring. I cantered on to the great bridge
with its trellised sides and roof of beams--the most inspiring piece of
architecture in the world, since it is the Gate of the Desert. There was
the open place as I remembered it, covered with short turf, sheltered by
the high mud banks, and, Heaven be praised! empty. We had had cause for
anxiety on this head. The Turkish Government was at that time sending
all the troops that could be levied to quell the insurrection in Yemen.
The regiments of southern Syria were marched down to the bridge, and so
on to 'Ammān, where they were entrained and sent along the Mecca
railway to what was then the terminus, Ma'ān near Petra. From Mā'an
they had a horrible march across a sandy waste to the head of the Gulf
of 'Aḳabah. Many hundreds of men and many thousands of camels perished
before they reached the gulf, for the wells upon that road are three
only (so said the Arabs), and one lies about two miles off the track,
undiscoverable to those who are not familiar with the country.
[Illustration 10: THE BRIDGE OVER JORDAN]
We pitched tents, picketed the horses, and lighted a huge bonfire of
tamarisk and willow. The night was grey and still; there was rain on the
hills, but none with us--a few inches represents the annual fall in the
valley of Jordan. We were not quite alone. The Turkish Government levies
a small toll on all who pass backwards and forwards across the bridge,
and keeps an agent there for that purpose. He lives in a wattle hut by
the gate of the bridge, and one or two ragged Arabs of the Ghōr share
his solitude. Among these was a grey-haired negro, who gathered wood for
our fire, and on the strength of his services spent the night with us.
He was a cheery soul, was Mabūḳ. He danced with pleasure, round the
camp fire, untroubled by the consideration that he was one of the most
preposterously misshapen of human beings. He told us tales of the
soldiery, how they came down in rags, their boots dropping from their
feet though it was but the first day's march, half starved too, poor
wretches. A Ṭābūr (900 men) had passed through that morning, another
was expected to-morrow--we had just missed them. "Māsha-'llah!" said
Mikhāil, "your Excellency is fortunate. First you escape from the mud
hills and then from the Redīfs." "Praise be to God!" murmured Mabūḳ,
and from that day my star was recognised as a lucky one. From Mabūḳ
we heard the first gossip of the desert. His talk was for ever of Ibn er
Rashīd, the young chief of the Shammār, whose powerful uncle
Muḥammad left him so uneasy a legacy of dominion in central Arabia.
For two years I had heard no news of Nejd--what of Ibn Sā'oud, the
ruler of Riāḍ and Ibn er Rashīd's rival? How went the war between
them? Mabūḳ had heard many rumours; men did say that Ibn er Rashīd
was in great straits, perhaps the Redīfs were bound for Nejd and not
for Yemen, who knew? and had we heard that a sheikh of the Ṣukhūr had
been murdered by the 'Ajārmeh, and as soon as the tribe came back from
the eastern pasturages. . . . So the tale ran on through the familiar
stages of blood feud and camel lifting, the gossip of the desert--I
could have wept for joy at listening to it again. There was a Babel of
Arabic tongues round my camp fire that evening, for Mikhāil spoke the
vulgar cockney of Jerusalem, a language bereft of dignity, and Ḥabīb
a dialect of the Lebanon at immense speed, and Muḥammad had the
Beyrouti drawl with its slow expressionless swing, while from the
negro's lips fell something approaching to the virile and splendid
speech of the Bedouin. The men themselves were struck by the variations
of accent, and once they turned to me and asked which was right. I could
only reply, "God knows! for He is omniscient," and the answer received a
laughing acceptance, though I confess I proffered it with some
misgiving.
[Illustration 11: THE MONASTERY OF MAR SABA, WILDERNESS OF JUDÆA]
The dawn broke windless and grey. An hour and a half from the moment I
was awakened till the mules were ready to start was the appointed rule,
but sometimes we were off ten minutes earlier, and sometimes, alas!
later. I spent the time in conversing with the guardian of the bridge, a
native of Jerusalem. To my sympathetic ears did he confide his sorrows,
the mean tricks that the Ottoman government was accustomed to play on
him, and the hideous burden of existence during the summer heats. And
then the remuneration! a mere nothing! His gains were larger, however,
than he thought fit to name, for I subsequently discovered that he had
charged me three piastres instead of two for each of my seven animals.
It is easy to be on excellent terms with Orientals, and if their
friendship has a price it is usually a small one. We crossed the Rubicon
at three piastres a head and took the northern road which leads to Salt.
The middle road goes to Ḥeshbān, where lives the great Sheikh of all
the Arabs of the Belḳa, Sulṭān ibn 'Ali iḍ Ḍiāb ul 'Adwān, a
proper rogue, and the southern to Mādeba in Moab. The eastern side of
the Ghōr is much more fertile than the western. Enough water flows from
the beautiful hills of Ajlūn to turn the plain into a garden, but the
supply is not stored, and the Arabs of the 'Adwān tribes content
themselves with the sowing of a little corn. The time of flowers was not
yet. At the end of March the eastern Ghōr is a carpet of varied and
lovely bloom, which lasts but a month in the fierce heat of the valley,
indeed a month sees the plants through bud and bloom and ripened seed. A
ragged Arab showed us the path. He had gone down to join the Redīfs,
having been bought as a substitute at the price of fifty napoleons by a
well-to-do inhabitant of Salt. When he reached the bridge he found he
was too late, his regiment having passed through two days before. He was
sorry, he would have liked to march forth to the war (moreover, I
imagine the fifty liras would have to be refunded), but his daughter
would be glad, for she had wept to see him go. He stopped to extricate
one of his leather slippers from the mud.
[Illustration 12: THE WALL OF LAMENTATION, JERUSALEM]
"Next year," quoth he, catching me up again, "please God I shall
go to America."
I stared in amazement at the half-naked figure, the shoes dropping from
the bare feet, the torn cloak slipping from the shoulders, the desert
head-dress of kerchief and camel's hair rope.
"Can you speak any English?" I asked.
"No," he replied calmly, "but I shall have saved the price of the
journey, and, by God! here there is no advancement."
I inquired what he would do when he reached the States.
"Buy and sell," he replied; "and when I have saved 200 liras I shall
return."
[Illustration 13: JEWS OF BOKHARA]
The same story can be heard all over Syria. Hundreds go out every year,
finding wherever they land some of their compatriots to give them a
helping hand. They hawk the streets with cheap wares, sleep under
bridges, live on fare that no freeborn citizen would look at, and when
they have saved 200 liras, more or less, they return, rich men in the
estimation of their village. East of Jordan the exodus is not so great,
yet once in the mountains of the Haurān I stopped to ask my way of a
Druze, and he answered me in the purest Yankee. I drew rein while he
told me his tale, and at the end of it I asked him if he were going
back. He looked round at the stone hovels of the village, knee deep in
mud and melting snow: "You bet!" he replied, and as I turned away he
threw a cheerful "So long!" after me.
When we had ridden two hours we entered the hills by a winding valley
which my friend called Wād el Ḥassanīyyeh, after the tribe of that
name. It was full of anemones and white broom (rattam the Arabs call
it), cyclamen, starch hyacinths, and wild almond trees. For plants
without a use, however lovely they may be, there is no name in Arabic;
they are all hashīsh, grass; whereas the smallest vegetable that can be
of service is known and distinguished in their speech. The path--it was
a mere bridle track--rose gradually. Just before we entered the mist
that covered the top of the hill we saw the Dead Sea below us to the
south, lying under the grey sky like a great sheet of clouded glass. We
reached Salt at four o'clock in real mountain weather, a wet and driving
mist. Moreover, the ground near the village was a swamp, owing to the
rain that, passing over us the night before, had fallen here. I
hesitated to camp unless I could find no drier lodging. The first thing
was to seek out the house of Ḥabīb Effendi Fāris, whom I had come to
Salt to see, though I did not know him. My claim upon him (for I relied
entirely upon his help for the prosecution of my journey) was in this
wise: he was married to the daughter of a native preacher in Haifa, a
worthy old man and a close friend of mine. Urfa on the Euphrates was the
_Stammplatz_ of the family, but Abu Namrūd had lived long at Salt and
he knew the desert. The greater part of the hours during which he was
supposed to teach me grammar were spent in listening to tales of the
Arabs and of his son, Namrūd, who worked with Ḥabīb Fāris, and
whose name was known to every Arab of the Belḳa.
"If ever you wish to enter there," said Abu Namrūd, "go to Namrūd."
And to Namrūd accordingly I had come.
A very short inquiry revealed the dwelling of Ḥabīb Fāris. I was
received warmly, Ḥabīb was out, Namrūd away (was my luck forsaking
me?), but would I not come in and rest? The house was small and the
children many: while I debated whether the soaked ground outside would
not prove a better bed, there appeared a magnificent old man in full
Arab dress, who took my horse by the bridle, declared that he and no
other should lodge me, and so led me away. I left my horse at the khān,
climbed a long and muddy stair, and entered a stone paved courtyard.
Yūsef Effendi hurried forward and threw open the door of his
guest-chamber. The floor and the divan were covered with thick carpets,
the windows glazed (though many of the panes were broken), a European
cheffonier stood against the wall: this was more than good enough. In a
moment I was established, drinking Yūsef's coffee, and eating my own
cake.
[Illustration 14: ABYSSINIAN PRIESTS]
Yūsef Effendi Sukkar (upon him be peace!) is a Christian and one of the
richest of the inhabitants of Salt. He is a laconic man, but as a host
he has not his equal. He prepared me an excellent supper, and when I had
eaten, the remains were set before Mikhāil. Having satisfied my
physical needs he could not or would not do anything to allay my mental
anxieties as to the further course. Fortunately at this moment Ḥabīb
Fāris arrived, and his sister-in-law, Paulina, an old acquaintance, and
several other worthies, all hastening to "honour themselves" at the
prospect of an evening's talk. ("God forbid! the honour is mine!") We
settled down to coffee, the bitter black coffee of the Arabs, which is
better than any nectar. The cup is handed with a "Deign to accept," you
pass it back empty, murmuring "May you live!" As you sip some one
ejaculates, "A double health," and you reply, "Upon your heart!" When
the cups had gone round once or twice and all necessary phrases of
politeness had been exchanged I entered upon the business of the
evening. How was I to reach the Druze mountains? the Government would
probably refuse me permission, at 'Ammān there was a military post on
the entrance of the desert road; at Boṣrā they knew me, I had slipped
through their fingers five years before, a trick that would be difficult
to play a second time from the same place. Ḥabīb Fāris considered,
and finally we hammered out a plan between us. He would send me
to-morrow to Ṭneib, his corn land on the edge of the desert; there I
should find Namrūd who would despatch word to one of the big tribes,
and with an escort from them I could ride up in safety to the hills.
Yūsef's two small sons sat listening open-eyed, and at the end of the
talk one of them brought me a scrap of an advertisement with the map of
America upon it. Thereat I showed them my maps, and told them how big
the world was and how fine a place, till at ten the party broke up and
Yūsef began spreading quilts for my bed. Then and not till then did I
see my hostess. She was a woman of exceptional beauty, tall and pale,
her face a full oval, her great eyes like stars. She wore Arab dress, a
narrow dark blue robe that caught round her bare ankles as she walked, a
dark blue cotton veil bound about her forehead with a red handkerchief
and falling down her back almost to the ground. Her chin and neck were
tattooed in delicate patterns with indigo, after the manner of the
Bedouin women. She brought me water, which she poured over my hands,
moved about the room silently, a dark and stately figure, and having
finished her ministrations she disappeared as silently as she had come,
and I saw her no more. "She came in and saluted me," said the poet, he
who lay in durance at Mecca, "then she rose and took her leave, and when
she departed my soul went out after her." No one sees Yūsef's wife.
Christian though he be, he keeps her more strictly cloistered than any
Moslem woman; and perhaps after all he is right.
The rain beat against the windows, and I lay down on the quilts with
Mikhāil's exclamation in my ears: "Māsha-'llah! your Excellency is
fortunate."