The village of Salt is a prosperous community of over 10,000 souls, the
half of them Christian. It lies in a rich country famous for grapes and
apricots, its gardens are mentioned with praise as far back as the
fourteenth century by the Arab geographer Abu'l Fīda. There is a ruined
castle, of what date I know not, on the hill above the clustered house
roofs. The tradition among the inhabitants is that the town is very
ancient; indeed, the Christians declare that in Salt was one of the
first of the congregations of their faith, and there is even a legend
that Christ was His own evangelist here. Although the apricot trees
showed nothing as yet but bare boughs the valley had an air of smiling
wealth as I rode through it with Ḥabīb Fāris, who had mounted his
mare to set me on my way. He had his share in the apricot orchards and
the vineyards, and smiled agreeably, honest man, as I commended them.
Who would not have smiled on such a morning? The sun shone, the earth
glittered with frost, and the air had a sparkling transparency which
comes only on a bright winter day after rain. But it was not merely a
general sense of goodwill that had inspired my words; the Christians of
Salt and of Mādeba are an intelligent and an industrious race, worthy
to be praised. During the five years since I had visited this district
they had pushed forward the limit of cultivation two hours' ride to the
east, and proved the value of the land so conclusively that when the
Ḥājj railway was opened through it the Sultan laid hands on a great
tract stretching as far south as Ma'ān, intending to convert it into a
chiflik, a royal farm. It will yield riches to him and to his tenants,
for if he be an indifferent ruler, he is a good landlord.
[Illustration 15: AN ARAB OF THE 'ADWĀN
GUARDING CROPS]
Half an hour from Salt, Ḥabīb left me, committing me to the care of
his hind, Yūsef, a stalwart man, who strode by my side with his wooden
club (G̣unwā, the Arabs call it) over his shoulder. We journeyed
through wide valleys, treeless, uninhabited, and almost uncultivated,
round the head of the Belḳa plain, and past the opening of the Wādy
Sīr, down which a man may ride through oak woods all the way to the
Ghōr. There would be trees on the hills too if the charcoal burners
would let them grow--we passed by many dwarf thickets of oak and
thorn--but I would have nothing changed in the delicious land east of
Jordan. A generation or two hence it will be deep in corn and scattered
over with villages, the waters of the Wādy Sīr will turn mill-wheels,
and perhaps there will even be roads: praise be to God! I shall not be
there to see. In my time the uplands will still continue to be that
delectable region of which Omar Khayyām sings: "The strip of herbage
strown that just divides the desert from the sown"; they will still be
empty save for a stray shepherd standing over his flock with a
long-barrelled rifle; and when I meet the rare horseman who rides over
those bills and ask him whence he comes, he will still answer: "May the
world be wide to you! from the Arabs."
[Illustration 16: AN ENCAMPMENT NEAR THE DEAD SEA]
That was where we were going, to the Arabs. In the desert there are no
Bedouin, the tent dwellers are all '_Arab_ (with a fine roll of the
initial guttural), just as there are no tents but houses--"houses of
hair" they say sometimes if a qualification be needed, but usually just
"houses" with a supreme disregard for any other significance to the word
save that of a black goat's hair roof. You may be '_Arab_ after a
fashion even if you live between walls. The men of Salt are classed
among the tribes of the Belḳa, with the Abādeh and the Da'ja and the
Hassaniyyeh and several more that form the great troup of the 'Adwān.
Two powerful rulers dispute the mastership here of the Syrian desert,
the Beni Ṣakhr and the 'Anazeh. There is a traditional friendship,
barred by regrettable incidents, between the Ṣukhūr and the Belḳa,
perhaps that was why I heard in these parts that the 'Anazeh were the
more numerous but the less distinguished for courage of the two
factions. I have a bowing acquaintance with one of the sons of Talāl ul
Fāiz, the head of all the Beni Ṣakhr. I had met him five years before
in these very plains, a month later in the season, by which time his
tribe moves Jordan-wards out of the warm eastern pasturages. I was
riding, escorted by a Circassian zaptieh, from Mādeba to Mshitta--it
was before the Germans had sliced the carved façade from that wonderful
building. The plain was covered with the flocks and the black tents of
the Ṣukhūr, and as we rode through them three horsemen paced out to
intercept us, black-browed, armed to the teeth, menacing of aspect. They
threw us the salute from afar, but when they saw the soldier they turned
and rode slowly back. The Circassian laughed. "That was Sheikh Fāiz,"
he said, "the son of Talāl. Like sheep, wāllah! like sheep are they
when they meet one of us." I do not know the 'Anazeh, for their usual
seat in winter is nearer the Euphrates, but with all deference to the
Ṣukhūr I fancy that their rivals are the true aristocracy of the
desert. Their ruling house, the Beni Sha'alān, bear the proudest name,
and their mares are the best in all Arabia, so that even the Shammār,
Ibn er Rashīd's people, seek after them to improve their own breed.
[Illustration 17: THE THEATRE, 'AMMĀN]
From the broken uplands that stand over the Ghōr, we entered ground
with a shallow roll in it and many small ruined sites dotted over it.
There was one at the head of the Wādy Sīr, and a quarter of an hour
before we reached it we had seen a considerable mass of foundations and
a big tank, which the Arabs call Birket Umm el 'Amūd (the tank of the
Mother of the Pillar). Yūsef said its name was due to a column which
used to stand in the middle of it, surrounded by the water; an Arab shot
at it and broke it, and its fragments lie at the bottom of the tank. The
mound or tell, to give it its native name, of Amēreh is covered with
ruins, and further on at Yadūdeh there are rock-hewn tombs and
sarcophagi lying at the edge of the tank. All the frontier of the desert
is strewn with similar vestiges of a populous past, villages of the
fifth and sixth centuries when Mādeba was a rich and flourishing
Christian city, though some are certainly earlier still, perhaps
pre-Roman. Yadūdeh of the tombs was inhabited by a Christian from Salt,
the greatest corn-grower in these parts, who lived in a roughly built
farm-house on the top of the tell; he too is one of the energetic
new comers who are engaged in spreading the skirts of cultivation. Here
we left the rolling country and passed out into the edges of a limitless
plain, green with scanty herbage, broken by a rounded tell or the back
of a low ridge--and then the plain once more, restful to the eye yet
never monotonous, steeped in the magic of the winter sunset, softly
curving hollows to hold the mist, softly swelling slopes to hold the
light, and over it all the dome of the sky which vaults the desert as it
vaults the sea. The first hillock was that of Ṭneib. We got in, after
a nine hours' march, at 5.30, just as the sun sank, and pitched tents on
the southern slope. The mound was thick with ruins, low walls of
rough-hewn stones laid without mortar, rock-cut cisterns, some no doubt
originally intended not for water but for corn, for which purpose they
are used at present, and an open tank filled up with earth. Namrūd had
ridden over to visit a neighbouring cultivator, but one of his men set
forth to tell him of my arrival and he returned at ten o'clock under the
frosty starlight, with many protestations of pleasure and assurances
that my wishes were easy of execution. So I went to sleep wrapped in the
cold silence of the desert, and woke next day to a glittering world of
sunshine and fair prospects.
[Illustration 18: A GATEWAY, 'AMMĀN]
The first thing to be done was to send out to the Arabs. After
consultation, the Da'ja, a tribe of the Belḳa, were decided to be the
nearest at hand and the most likely to prove of use, and a messenger was
despatched to their tents. We spent the morning examining the mound and
looking through a mass of copper coins that had turned up under
Namrūd's ploughshare--Roman all of them, one showing dimly the features
of Constantine, some earlier, but none of the later Byzantine period,
nor any of the time of the Crusaders; as far as the evidence of coinage
goes, Ṭneib has been deserted since the date of the Arab invasion.
Namrūd had discovered the necropolis, but there was nothing to be found
in the tombs, which had probably been rifled centuries before. They were
rock-cut and of a cistern-like character. A double arch of the solid
rock with space between for a narrow entrance on the surface of the
ground, a few jutting excrescences on the side walls, footholds to those
who must descend, loculi running like shelves round the chambers, one
row on top of another, such was their appearance. Towards the bottom of
the mound on the south side there were foundations of a building which
looked as though it might have been a church. But these were poor
results for a day's exploration, and in the golden afternoon we rode out
two hours to the north into a wide valley set between low banks. There
were ruins strewn at intervals round the edge of it, and to the east
some broken walls standing up in the middle of the valley--Namrūd
called the spot, Ḳuṣeir es Saḥl, the Little Castle of the Plain.
Our objective was a group of buildings at the western end, Khureibet es
Sūḳ. First we came to a small edifice (41 feet by 39 feet 8 inches,
the greatest length being from east to west) half buried in the ground.
Two sarcophagi outside pointed to its having been a mausoleum. The
western wall was pierced by an arched doorway, the arch being decorated
with a flat moulding. Above the level of the arch the walls narrowed by
the extent of a small set-back, and two courses higher a moulded cornice
ran round the building. A couple of hundred yards west of the Ḳaṣr
or castle (the Arabs christen most ruins either castle or convent) there
is a ruined temple. It had evidently been turned at some period to other
uses than those for which it was intended, for there were ruined walls
round the two rows of seven columns and inexplicable cross walls towards
the western end of the colonnades. There appeared to have been a double
court beyond, and still further west lay a complex of ruined
foundations. The gateway was to the east, the jambs of it decorated with
delicate carving, a fillet, a palmetto, another plain fillet, a torus
worked with a vine scroll, a bead and reel, an egg and dart and a second
palmetto on the cyma. The whole resembled very closely the work at
Palmyra--it could scarcely rival the stone lacework of Mshitta, and
besides it had a soberer feeling, more closely akin to classical models,
than is to be found there. To the north of the temple on top of a bit of
rising ground, there was another ruin which proved to be a second
mausoleum. It was an oblong rectangle of masonry, built of large stones
carefully laid without mortar. At the south-east corner a stair led into
a kind of ante-chamber, level with the surface of the ground at the east
side owing to the slope of the hill. There were column bases on the
outer side of this ante-chamber, the vestiges probably of a small
colonnade which had adorned the east façade. Six sarcophagi were placed
lengthways, two along each of the remaining walls, north, south and
west. Below the base of the columns on either side of the stair ran a
moulding, consisting of a bold torus between two fillets, and the same
appeared on the inner side of the sarcophagi. The face of the buttress
wall on the south side rose in two in-sets, otherwise the whole building
was quite plain, though some of the fragments scattered round upon the
grass were carved with a flowing vine pattern. This mausoleum recalls
the pyramid tomb which is common in northern Syria; I do not remember
any other example of it so far south. It may have resembled the
beautiful monument with a colonnaded front which is one of the glories
of the southern Dāna, and the fragments of vine scroll were perhaps
part of the entablature.
[Illustration 19: THE TEMPLE, KHUREIBET ES SŪḲ]
[Illustration 20: MAUSOLEUM, KHUREIBET ES SŪḲ]
When I returned to my tents a little before sunset, I learnt that the
boy we had despatched in the morning had lingered by the way and,
alarmed by the lateness of the hour, had returned without fulfilling his
mission. This was sufficiently annoying, but it was nothing compared
with the behaviour of the weather next day. I woke to find the great
plain blotted out by mist and rain. All day the south wind drove against
us, and the storm beat upon our canvas walls. In the evening Namrūd
brought news that his cave had been invaded by guests. There were a few
tents of the Ṣukhūr a mile or two away from us (the main body of the
tribe was still far to the east, where the winter climate is less
rigorous), and the day's rain had been too much for the male
inhabitants. They had mounted their mares and ridden in to Ṭneib,
leaving their women and children to shift for themselves during the
night. An hour's society presented attractions after the long wet day,
and I joined the company.
[Illustration 21: ARABS OF THE BELḲA]
Namrūd's cave runs far into the ground, so far that it must penetrate
to the very centre of the hill of Ṭneib. The first large chamber is
obviously natural, except for the low sleeping places and mangers for
cattle that have been quarried out round the walls. A narrow passage
carved in the rock leads into a smaller room, and there are yet others
behind which I took on trust, the hot stuffy air and the innumerable
swarms of flies discouraging me from further exploration. That evening
the cave presented a scene primitive and wild enough to satisfy the most
adventurous spirit. The Arabs, some ten or a dozen men clothed in red
leather boots and striped cloaks soaked with rain, were sitting in the
centre round a fire of scrub, in the ashes of which stood the three
coffee-pots essential to desert sociability. Behind them a woman cooked
rice over a brighter fire that cast a flickering light into the recesses
of the cave, and showed Namrūd's cattle munching chopped straw from the
rock-hewn mangers. A place comparatively free from mud was cleared for
me in the circle, a cup of coffee prepared, and the talk went forward
while a man might smoke an Arab pipe five times. It was chiefly of the
iniquities of the government. The arm of the law, or rather the mailed
fist of misrule, is a constant menace upon the edges of the desert. This
year it had been quickened to baleful activity by the necessities of
war. Camels and mares had been commandeered wholesale along the borders
without hope of compensation in money or in kind. The Arabs had gathered
together such live stock as was left to them and sent them away five or
six days to the east, where the soldiery dared not penetrate, and
Namrūd had followed their example, keeping only such cattle as he
needed for the plough. One after another of my fellow guests took up the
tale: the guttural strong speech rumbled round the cave. By God and
Muḥammad the Prophet of God we called down such curses upon the
Circassian cavalry as should make those powerful horsemen reel in their
saddles. From time to time a draped head, with black elf locks matted
round the cheeks under the striped kerchief, bent forward towards the
glow of the ashes to pick up a hot ember for the pipe bowl, a hand was
stretched out to the coffee cups, or the cooking fire flashed up under a
pile of thorn, the sudden light making the flies buzz and the cows move
uneasily. Namrūd was not best pleased to see his hardly gathered store
of fire-wood melt away and his coffee beans disappear by handfuls into
the mortar. ("Wāllah! they eat little when they feed themselves, but
when they are guests much, they and their horses; and the corn is low at
this late season.") But the word "guest" is sacred from Jordan to
Euphrates and Namrūd knew well that he owed a great part of his
position and of his security to a hospitality which was extended to all
comers, no matter how inopportune. I added my quota to the conviviality
of the party by distributing a box of cigarettes, and before I left a
friendly feeling had been established between me and the men of the Beni
Ṣakhr.
The following day was little more promising than that which had preceded
it. The muleteers were most unwilling to leave the shelter of the caves
and expose their animals to such rain in the open desert, and
reluctantly I agreed to postpone the journey, and sent them into
Mādeba, three hours away, to buy oats for the horses, cautioning them
not to mention from whom they came. It cleared a little in the
afternoon, and I rode across the plain southwards to Ḳasṭal, a
fortified Roman camp standing on a mound.
This type of camp was not uncommon on the eastern frontiers of the
Empire, and was imitated by the Ghassānids when they established
themselves in the Syrian desert, if indeed Mshitta was, as has been
surmised, but a more exquisite example of the same kind of building.
Ḳasṭal has a strong enclosing wall broken by a single gate to the
east and by round bastions at the angles and along the sides. Within,
there is a series of parallel vaulted chambers leaving an open court in
the centre--the plan with slight variations of Ḳal'at el Beiḍa in
the Safa and of the modern caravanserai.[1] To the north there is a
separate building, probably the Prætorium, the house of the commander
of the fortress. It consists of an immense vaulted chamber, with a
walled court in front of it, and a round tower at the south-west corner.
The tower has a winding stair inside it and a band of decoration about
the exterior, rinceaux above and fluted triglyphs below, with narrow
blank metopes between them. The masonry is unusually good, the walls of
great thickness; with such defences stretching to his furthest borders,
the citizen of Rome might sleep secure o' nights.
[Illustration 22: A RUINED CHURCH, MĀDEBA]
When I passed by Ḳasṭal, five years before, it was uninhabited and
the land round it uncultivated, but a few families of fellaḥīn had
established themselves now under the broken vaults and the young corn
was springing in the levels below the walls, circumstances which should
no doubt warm the heart of the lover of humanity, but which will send a
cold chill through the breast of the archæologist. There is no
obliterator like the ploughshare, and no destroyer like the peasant who
seeks cut stones to build his hovel. I noted another sign of encroaching
civilisation in the shape of two half starved soldiers, the guard of the
nearest halting place on the Ḥājj railroad, which is called Zīza
after the ruins a few miles to the west of it. The object of their visit
was the lean hen which one of them held in his hand. He had reft it from
its leaner companions in the fortress court--on what terms it were
better not to inquire, for hungry men know no law. I was not
particularly eager to have my presence on these frontiers notified to
the authorities in 'Ammān, and I left rather hastily and rode eastward
to Zīza.
[Illustration 23: THE ḲAL'AH AT ZĪZA]
The rains had filled the desert watercourses, they do not often flow so
deep or so swiftly as the one we had to cross that afternoon. It had
filled, too, to the brim the great Roman tank of Zīza, so that the
Ṣukhūr would find water there all through the ensuing summer. The
ruins are far more extensive than those at Ḳasṭal; there must have
been a great city here, for the foundations of houses cover a wide area.
Probably Ḳasṭal was the fortified camp guarding this city, and the
two together shared the name of Zīza, which is mentioned in the
Notitia: "Equites Dalmatici Illyriciana Zīza." There is a Saracenic
Ḳal'ah, a fort, which was repaired by Sheikh Ṣoktan of the
Ṣukhūr, and had been furnished by him, said Namrūd, with a splendour
unknown to the desert; but it has now fallen to the Sultan, since it
stands in the territory selected by him for his chiflik, and fallen also
into ruin. The mounds behind are strewn with foundations, among them
those of a mosque, the mihrab of which was still visible to the south.
Zīza was occupied by a garrison of Egyptians in Ibrahīm Pasha's time,
and it was his soldiers who completed the destruction of the ancient
buildings. Before they came many edifices, including several Christian
churches, were still standing in an almost perfect state of
preservation, so the Arabs reported. We made our way homewards along the
edge of the railway embankment, and as we went we talked of the possible
advantages that the land might reap from that same line. Namrūd was
doubtful on this subject. He looked askance at the officials and the
soldiery, indeed he had more cause to fear official raiders, whose
rapacity could not be disarmed by hospitality, than the Arabs, who were
under too many obligations to him to do him much harm. He had sent up a
few truck-loads of corn to Damascus the year before; yes, it was an
easier form of transport than his camels, and quicker, if the goods
arrived at all; but generally the corn sacks were so much lighter when
they reached the city than when Namrūd packed them into the trucks that
the profit vanished. This would improve perhaps in time--at the time
when lamps and cushions and all the fittings of the desert railway
except the bare seats were allowed to remain in the place for which they
were made and bought. We spoke, too, of superstition and of fears that
clutch the heart at night. There are certain places, said he, where the
Arabs would never venture after dark--haunted wells to which thirsty men
dared not approach, ruins where the weary would not seek shelter,
hollows that were bad camping grounds for the solitary. What did they
fear? Jinn; who could tell what men feared? He himself had startled an
Arab almost out of his wits by jumping naked at him from a lonely pool
in the half light of the dawn. The man ran back to his tents, and swore
that he had seen a jinni, and that the flocks should not go down to
water where it abode, till Namrūd came in and laughed at him and told
his own tale.
[Illustration 24: A CHRISTIAN ENCAMPMENT]
We did not go straight back to my tents. I had been invited out to dine
that evening by Sheikh Nahār of the Beni Ṣakhr, he who had spent the
previous night in Namrūd's cave; and after consultation it had been
decided that the invitation was one which a person of my exalted dignity
would not be compromised by accepting.
"But in general," added Namrūd, "you should go nowhere but to a great
sheikh's tent, or you will fall into the hands of those who invite you
only for the sake of the present you will give. Nahār--well, he is an
honest man, though he be Meskīn,"--a word that covers all forms of mild
contempt, from that which is extended to honest poverty, through
imbecility to the first stages of feeble vice.
The Meskīn received me with the dignity of a prince, and motioned me to
the place of honour on the ragged carpet between the square hole in the
ground that serves as hearth and the partition that separates the
women's quarters from the men's. We had tethered our horses to the long
tent ropes that give such wonderful solidity to the frail dwelling, and
our eyes wandered out from where we sat over the eastward sweep of the
landscape--swell and fall, fall and swell, as though the desert breathed
quietly under the gathering night. The lee side of an Arab tent is
always open to the air; if the wind shifts the women take down the tent
wall and set it up against another quarter, and in a moment your house
has changed its outlook and faces gaily to the most favourable prospect.
It is so small and so light, and yet so strongly anchored that the
storms can do little to it; the coarse meshes of the goat's hair cloth
swell and close together in the wet so that it needs continuous rain
carried on a high wind before a cold stream leaks into the
dwelling-place.
The coffee beans were roasted and crushed, the coffee-pots were
simmering in the ashes, when there came three out of the East and halted
at the open tent. They were thick-set, broad-shouldered men, with
features of marked irregularity and projecting teeth, and they were cold
and wet with rain. Room was made for them in the circle round the
hearth, and they stretched out their fingers to the blaze, while the
talk went on uninterrupted, for they were only three men of the
Sherarāt, come down to buy corn in Moab, and the Sherarāt, though they
are one of the largest and the most powerful of the tribes and the most
famous breeders of camels, are of bad blood, and no Arab of the Belḳa
would intermarry with them. They have no fixed haunts, not even in the
time of the summer drought, but roam the inner desert scarcely caring if
they go without water for days together. The conversation round Nahār's
fire was of my journey. A negro of the Ṣukhūr, a powerful man with an
intelligent face, was very anxious to come with me as guide to the Druze
mountains, but he admitted that as soon as he reached the territory of
those valiant hillmen he would have to turn and flee--there is always
feud between the Druzes and the Beni Ṣakhr. The negro slaves of the
Ṣukhūr are well used by their masters, who know their worth, and they
have a position of their own in the desert, a glory reflected from the
great tribe they serve. I was half inclined to accept the present offer
in spite of the possible drawback of having the negro dead upon my hands
at the first Druze village, when the current of my thoughts was
interrupted by the arrival of yet another guest. He was a tall young
man, with a handsome delicate face, a complexion that was almost fair,
and long curls that were almost brown. As he approached, Nahār and the
other sheikhs of the Ṣukhūr rose to meet him, and before he entered
the tent, each in turn kissed him upon both cheeks. Namrūd rose also,
and cried to him as he drew near:
[Illustration 25: FLOCKS OF THE ṢUKHŪR]
"Good? please God! Who is with you?"
The young man raised his hand and replied:
"God!"
He was alone.
Without seeming to notice the rest of the company, his eye embraced the
three sheikhs of the Sherarāt eating mutton and curds in the entrance,
and the strange woman by the fire, as with murmured salutations he
passed into the back of the tent, refusing Nahār's offer of food. He
was G̣ablān, of the ruling house of the Da'ja, cousin to the reigning
sheikh, and, as I subsequently found, he had heard that Namrūd needed
a guide for a foreigner--news travels apace in the desert--and had come
to take me to his uncle's tents. We had not sat for more than five
minutes after his arrival when Nahār whispered something to Namrūd,
who turned to me and suggested that since we had dined we might go and
take G̣ablān with us. I was surprised that the evening's gossip should
be cut so short, but I knew better than to make any objection, and as we
cantered home across Namrūd's ploughland and up the hill of Ṭneib, I
heard the reason. There was blood between the Da'ja and the Sherarāt.
At the first glance G̣ablān had recognised the lineage of his fellow
guests, and had therefore retired silently into the depths of the tent.
He would not dip his hand in the same mutton dish with them. Nahār
knew, as who did not? the difficulty of the situation, but he could not
tell how the men of the Sherarāt would take it, and, for fear of
accidents, he had hurried us away. But by next morning the atmosphere
had cleared (metaphorically, not literally), and a day of streaming rain
kept the blood enemies sitting amicably round Namrūd's coffee-pots in
the cave.
The third day's rain was as much as human patience could endure. I had
forgotten by this time what it was like not to feel damp, to have warm
feet and dry bed clothes. G̣ablān spent an hour with me in the
morning, finding out what I wished of him. I explained that if he could
take me through the desert where I should see no military post and leave
me at the foot of the hills, I should desire no more. G̣ablān
considered a moment.
"Oh lady," said he, "do you think you will be brought into conflict with
the soldiery? for if so, I will take my rifle."
I replied that I did not contemplate declaring open war with all the
Sultan's chivalry, and that with a little care I fancied that such a
contingency might be avoided; but G̣ablān was of opinion that strategy
went further when winged with a bullet, and decided that he would take
his rifle with him all the same.
In the afternoon, having nothing better to do, I watched the Sherarāt
buying corn from Namrūd. But for my incongruous presence and the lapse
of a few thousand years, they might have been the sons of Jacob come
down into Egypt to bicker over the weight of the sacks with their
brother Joseph. The corn was kept in a deep dry hole cut in the rock,
and was drawn out like so much water in golden bucketsful. It had been
stored with chaff for its better protection, and the first business was
to sift it at the well-head, a labour that could not be executed without
much and angry discussion. Not even the camels were silent, but joined
in the argument with groans and bubblings, as the Arabs loaded them with
the full sacks. The Sheikhs of the Ṣukhūr and the Sherarāt sat round
on stones in the drizzling mist, and sometimes they muttered, "God!
God!" and sometimes they exclaimed, "He is, merciful and compassionate!"
Not infrequently the sifted corn was poured back among the unsifted, and
a dialogue of this sort ensued:
[Illustration 26: A ROMAN MILESTONE]
_Namrūd_; "Upon thee! upon thee! oh boy! may thy dwelling be destroyed!
may thy days come to harm!"
_Beni Ṣakhr_: "By the face of the Prophet of God! may He be exalted!"
_Sherarāt_ (_in suppressed chorus_): "God! and Muḥammad the Prophet
of God, upon Him be peace!"
_A party in bare legs and a sheepskin_:
"Cold, cold! Wāllah! rain and cold!"
_Namrūd_: "Silence, oh brother! descend into the well and draw corn. It
is warm there."
_Beni Ṣakhr_: "Praise be to God the Almighty!"
_Chorus of Camels_: "B-b-b-b-b-dd-G-r-r-o-o-a-a."
_Camel Drivers_; "Be still, accursed ones! may you slip in the mud! may
the wrath of God fall on you!"
_Ṣukhūr_ (_in unison_): "God! God! by the light of His Face!"
At dusk I went into the servants' tent and found Namrūd whispering
tales of murder over the fire on which my dinner was a-cooking.
"In the days when I was a boy," said he (and they were not far behind
us), "you could not cross the Ghōr in peace. But I had a mare who
walked--wāllah! how she walked! Between sunrise and sunset she walked
me from Mezerīb to Salt, and never broke her pace. And besides I was
well known to all the Ghawārny (natives of the Ghōr). And one night in
summer I had to go to Jerusalem--force upon me! I must ride. The waters
of Jordan were low, and I crossed at the ford, for there was no bridge
then. And as I reached the further bank I heard shouts and the snap of
bullets. And I hid in the tamarisk bushes more than an hour till the
moon was low, and then I rode forth softly. And at the entrance of the
mud hills the mare started from the path, and I looked down and saw the
body of a man, naked and covered with knife wounds. And he was quite
dead. And as I gazed they sprang out on me from the mud hills, ten
horsemen and I was but one. And I backed against the thicket and fired
twice with my pistol, but they surrounded me and threw me from the mare
and bound me, and setting me again upon the mare they led me away. And
when they came to the halting place they fell to discussing whether they
should kill me, and one said: 'Wāllah! let us make an end.' And he came
near and looked into my face, and it was dawn. And he said: 'It is
Namrūd!' for he knew me, and I had succoured him. And they unbound me
and let me go, and I rode up to Jerusalem."
The muleteers and I listened with breathless interest as one story
succeeded another.
"There are good customs and bad among the Arabs," said Namrūd, "but the
good are many. Now when they wish to bring a blood feud to an end, the
two enemies come together in the tent of him who was offended. And the
lord of the tent bares his sword and turns to the south and draws a
circle on the floor, calling upon God. Then he takes a shred of the
cloth of the tent and a handful of ashes from the hearth and throws them
in the circle, and seven times he strikes the line with his naked sword.
And the offender leaps into the circle, and one of the relatives of his
enemy cries aloud: 'I take the murder that he did upon me!' Then there
is peace. Oh lady! the women have much power in the tribe, and the
maidens are well looked on. For if a maiden says: 'I would have such an
one for my husband,' he must marry her lest she should be put to shame.
And if he has already four wives let him divorce one, and marry in her
place the maiden who has chosen him. Such is the custom among the
Arabs."
He turned to my Druze muleteer and continued:
"Oh Muḥammad! have a care. The tents of the Ṣukhūr are near, and
there is never any peace between the Beni Ṣakhr and the Druzes. And if
they knew you, they would certainly kill you--not only would they kill
you, but they would bum you alive, and the lady could not shield you,
nor could I."
This was a grim light upon the character of my friend Nahār, who had
exchanged with me hospitality against a kerchief, and the little group
round the fire was somewhat taken back. But Mikhāil was equal to the
occasion.
"Let not your Excellency think it," said he, deftly dishing up some
stewed vegetables; "he shall be a Christian till we reach the Jebel
Druze, and his name is not Muḥammad but Ṭarīf, for that is a name
the Christians use."
So we converted and baptized the astonished Muḥammad before the
cutlets could be taken out of the frying-pan.
[Footnote 1: Admirable plans and photographs of the fort have been
published by Brünnow and Domaszewski in vol. II. of their great work,
"Die Provincia Arabia." This volume was not out at the time I visited
Ḳasṭal.]