When I had come to Damascus five years before, my chief counsellor and
friend--a friend whose death will be deplored by many a traveller in
Syria--was Lütticke, head of the banking house of that name and
honorary German consul. It was a chance remark of his that revealed to
me the place that the town had and still has in Arab history. "I am
persuaded," said he, "that in and about Damascus you may see the finest
Arab population that can be found anywhere. They are the descendants of
the original invaders who came up on the first great wave of the
conquest, and they have kept their stock almost pure."
[Illustration 69: IN THE PALMYRENE DESERT]
Above all other cities Damascus is the capital of the desert. The desert
stretches up to its walls, the breath of it is blown in by every wind,
the spirit of it comes through the eastern gates with every camel
driver. In Damascus the sheikhs of the richer tribes have their town
houses; you may meet Muḥammad of the Ḥaseneh or Bassān of the Beni
Rashīd peacocking down the bazaars on a fine Friday, in embroidered
cloaks and purple and silver kerchiefs fastened about their brows with
camels' hair ropes bound with gold. They hold their heads high, these
Lords of the Wilderness, striding through the holiday crowds, that part
to give them passage, as if Damascus were their own town. And so it is,
for it was the first capital of the Bedouin khalifs outside the
Ḥejāz, and it holds and remembers the greatest Arab traditions. It
was almost the first of world-renowned cities to fall before the
irresistible chivalry of the desert which Muḥammad had called to arms
and to which he had given purpose and a battle-cry, and it was the only
one which remained as important under the rule of Islām as it had been
under the empire of Rome. Mu'āwiyah made it his capital, and it
continued to be the chief city of Islām until the fall of the house of
Ummayah ninety years later. It was the last of Moslem capitals that
ruled in accordance with desert traditions. Persian generals placed the
Beni Abbās upon their throne in Mesopotamia, Persian and Turkish
influences were dominant in Baghdad, and with them crept in the fatal
habits of luxury which the desert had never known, nor the early khalifs
who milked their own goats and divided the spoils of their victories
among the Faithful. The very soil of Mesopotamia exhaled emanations
fatal to virility. The ancient ghosts of Babylonian and Assyrian palace
intrigue rose from their muddy graves, mighty in evil, to overthrow the
soldier khalif, to strip him of his armour and to tie him hand and foot
with silk and gold. Damascus had been innocent of them; Damascus, swept
by the clean desert winds, had ruled the empire of the Prophet with some
of the Spartan vigour of early days. She was not a parvenue like the
capitals on the Tigris; she had seen kings and emperors within her
walls, and learnt the difference between strength and weakness, and
which path leads to dominion and which to slavery.
When I arrived I was greeted with the news that my journey in the
Ḥaurān had considerably agitated the mind of his Excellency Nāzim
Pasha, Vāli of Syria; indeed it was currently reported that this much
exercised and delicately placed gentleman had been vexed beyond reason
by my sudden appearance at Ṣalkhad and that he had retired to his bed
when I had departed beyond the reach of Yūsef Effendi's eye, though
some suggested that the real reason for his Excellency's sudden
indisposition was a desire to avoid taking part in the memorial service
to the Archduke Serge. Be that as it may, he sent me on the day of my
arrival a polite message expressing his hope that he might have the
pleasure of making my acquaintance.
I confess my principal feeling was one of penitence when I was ushered
into the big new house that the Vāli has built for himself at the end
of Ṣalaḥiyyeh, the suburb of Damascus that stretches along the foot
of the bare hills to the north of the town. I had a great wish to
apologise, or at any rate to prove to him that I was not to be regarded
as a designing enemy. These sentiments were enhanced by the kindness
with which he received me, and the respect with which he inspires those
who come to know him. He is a man of a nervous temperament, always on
the alert against the difficulties with which his vilayet is not slow to
provide him, conscientious, and I should fancy honest, painfully anxious
to reconcile interests that are as easy to combine as oil with vinegar,
the corner of his eye fixed assiduously on his royal master who will
take good care that so distinguished a personality as Nāzim Pasha shall
be retained at a considerable distance from the shores of the Bosphorus.
The Vāli has been eight years in Damascus, the usual term of office
being five, and he has evidently made up his mind that in Damascus he
will remain, if no ill luck befall him, for he has built himself a large
house and planned a fine garden, the laying out of which distracts his
mind, let us hope, from preoccupations that can seldom be pleasant. One
of his safeguards is that he has been actively concerned with the
construction of the Ḥejāz railway, in which the Sultan takes the
deepest interest, and until it is completed or abandoned he is
sufficiently useful to be kept at his post.[8] The bazaar, that is
public opinion, does not think that it will be abandoned, in spite of
the opposition of the Sherlf of Mecca and all his clan, who will never
be convinced of the justice of the Sultan's claim to the khalifate of
Islām nor willing to bring him into closer touch with the religious
capitals. The bazaar backs the Sultan against the Sherīf and all other
adversaries, sacred or profane. The wheels of the Turk grind slowly and
often stop, but in the end they grind small, especially when the grist
is Arab tribes rendered peculiarly brittle by their private jealousies
and suspicions and pretensions. Turkish policy is like that of which Ibn
Kulthum sang when he said:
[Illustration 70: THE GREAT MOSQUE AND THE ROOFS OF THE BAZAAR
FROM THE FORT]
When our mill is set down among a people they are as flour before
our coming.
Our meal cloth is spread eastwards of Nejd and the grain is the whole
tribe of Ḳuda'a.
Like guests you alighted at our door and we hastened our hospitality
lest you should turn on us.
We welcomed you and hastened the welcoming: yea, before the
dawn, and our mills grind small.
[Illustrations 71: A CORN MARKET]
Nāzim Pasha, though he has been eight years in Syria, talks no Arabic.
We in Europe, who speak of Turkey as though it were a homogeneous
empire, might as well when we speak of England intend the word to
include India, the Shan States, Hongkong and Uganda. In the sense of a
land inhabited mainly by Turks there is not such a country as Turkey.
The parts of his dominions where the Turk is in a majority are few;
generally his position is that of an alien governing, with a handful of
soldiers and an empty purse, a mixed collection of subjects hostile to
him and to each other. He is not acquainted with their language, it is
absurd to expect of him much sympathy for aspirations political and
religious which are generally made known to him amid a salvo of
musketry, and if the bullets happen to be directed, as they often are,
by one unruly and unreasonable section of the vilayet at another equally
unreasonable and unruly, he is hardly likely to feel much regret at the
loss of life that may result. He himself, when he is let alone, has a
strong sense of the comfort of law and order. Observe the internal
arrangements of a Turkish village, and you shall see that the Turkish
peasant knows how to lay down rules of conduct and how to obey them. I
believe that the best of our own native local officials in Egypt are
Turks who have brought to bear under the new regime the good sense and
the natural instinct for government for which they had not much scope
under the old. It is in the upper grades that the hierarchy of the
Ottoman Empire has proved so defective, and the upper grades are filled
with Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and personages of various nationalities
generally esteemed in the East (and not without reason) untrustworthy.
The fact that such men as these should inevitably rise to the top,
points to the reason of the Turk's failure. He cannot govern on wide
lines, though he can organise a village community; above all he cannot
govern on foreign lines, and unfortunately he is brought more and more
into contact with foreign nations. Even his own subjects have caught the
infection of progress. The Greeks and Armenians have become merchants
and bankers, the Syrians merchants and landowners; they find themselves
hampered at every turn by a government which will not realise that a
wealthy nation is made up of wealthy subjects. And yet, for all his
failure, there is no one who would obviously be fitted to take his
place. For my immediate purpose I speak only of Syria, the province with
which I am the most familiar. Of what value are the pan-Arabic
associations and the inflammatory leaflets that they issue from foreign
printing presses? The answer is easy: they are worth nothing at all.
There is no nation of Arabs; the Syrian merchant is separated by a wider
gulf from the Bedouin than he is from the Osmanli, the Syrian country is
inhabited by Arabic speaking races all eager to be at each other's
throats, and only prevented from fulfilling their natural desires by the
ragged half fed soldier who draws at rare intervals the Sultan's pay.
And this soldier, whether he be Kurd or Circassian or Arab from
Damascus, is worth a good deal more than the hire he receives. Other
armies may mutiny, but the Turkish army will stand true to the khalif;
other armies may give way before suffering and privation and untended
sickness, but that of the Sultan will go forward as long as it can
stand, and fight as long as it has arms, and conquer as long as it has
leaders. There is no more wonderful and pitiful sight than a Turkish
regiment on the march: greybeards and half-fledged youths, ill-clad and
often barefoot, pinched and worn--and indomitable. Let such as watch
them salute them as they pass: in the days when war was an art rather
than a science, of that stuff the conquerors of the world were made.
[Illustration 72: THE ḲUBBET EL KHAZNEH]
But I have left the Governor of Syria waiting far too long. We talked,
then, in French, a language with which he was imperfectly acquainted,
and from time to time a Syrian gentleman helped him in Turkish over the
stiles and pitfalls of the foreign tongue. The Syrian was a rich
Maronite landowner of the Lebanon, who happened to be in good odour at
Government House though he had but recently spent a year in prison. He
had accompanied me upon my visit and was then and there appointed by the
Vāli to be my cicerone in Damascus; Selīm Beg was his name. The talk
was principally of archæology, I purposely insisting on my interest in
that subject as compared with the politics of the Mountain and the
Desert, to which we thus avoided any serious allusion. The Vāli was
affability itself. He presented me with certain photographs of the
priceless manuscripts of the Ḳubbet el Khazneh in the Great Mosque,
now closed for ever to the public eye, and promised me the rest of the
series. To that end a bowing personage took my English address and noted
it carefully in a pocket book, and I need scarcely say that was the
last any one heard of the matter. Presently the Vāli announced that
Madame Pasha and the children were waiting to see me, and I followed him
upstairs into a sunny room with windows opening on to a balcony from
which you could see all Damascus and its gardens and the hills beyond.
There is only one Madame Pasha, and she is a pretty, sharp-featured
Circassian, but there was another (gossip says the favourite) who died a
year ago. The children were engaging. They recited French poems to me,
their bright eyes quick to catch and to respond to every expression of
approbation or amusement; they played tinkling polkas, sitting very
upright on the music stool with their pig-tails hanging down their
velvet backs. The Pasha stood in the window and beamed upon them, the
Circassian wife smoked cigarettes and bowed whenever she caught my eye,
a black slave boy at the door grinned from ear to ear as his masters and
mistresses, who were also his school-mates and his play-fellows,
accomplished their tasks. I came away with a delightful impression of
pretty smiling manners and vivacious intelligence, and expressed my
pleasure to the Pasha as we went down stairs.
"Ah!" said he politely, "if I could have them taught English! But what
will you? we cannot get an Englishwoman to agree with our customs, and I
have only the Greek lady whom you saw to teach them French."
I had indeed noticed the Greek woman, an underbred little person, whose
bearing could not escape attention in the graceful company upstairs, but
I was not slow to expatiate on the excellence of the French she
spoke--may Heaven forgive me! The Pasha shook his head.
"If I could get an Englishwoman!" said he. Unfortunately I had no one to
suggest for the post, nor would he have welcomed a suggestion.
[Illustration 73: THE TEKYAH OF NAKSHIBENDI]
Before I left, two distinguished personages arrived to have audience of
the Vāli. The first was a man by complexion almost a negro, but with an
unmistakable look of race and a sharp quick glance. He was the Amīr
'Abdullah Pasha, son of 'Abd ul Ḳādir, the great Algerian, by a negro
slave. The second was Sheikh Ḥassan Nakshbendi, hereditary
chief--pope, I had almost said--of an orthodox order of Islām famous in
Damascus, where its principal Tekyah is situated. (Now a Tekyah is a
religious institution for the housing of mendicant dervishes and other
holy persons, something like a monastery, only that there is no vow of
chastity imposed upon its members, who may have as many wives as they
choose outside the Tekyah; Sheikh Ḥassan himself had the full
complement of four.) All the wily ecclesiastic's astuteness shone from
the countenance of this worthy. I do not know that his wits were
especially remarkable, but his unscrupulousness must have supplemented
any deficiencies, or his smile belied him. The meeting with these two
accomplished my introduction to Damascus society. Both of them extended
to me a warm invitation to visit them in their houses, the Tekyah or
anywhere I would, and I accepted all, but I went to the Amīr 'Abdullah
first.
[Illustration 74: GATE OF THE TEKYAH]
Or rather, I went first to the house of his elder brother, the Amīr
'Ali Pasha, because it was there that 'Abd ul Ḳādir had lived, and
there that he had sheltered, during the black days of the massacres in
1860, a thousand Christians. About his name there lingers a romantic
association of courage and patriotism, crowned by a wise and honoured
age full of authority and the power lent by wealth, for the 'Abd ul
Ḳādir family own all the quarter in which they reside. The house,
like any great Damascus house, made no show from the outside. We entered
through a small door in a narrow winding street by a dark passage,
turned a couple of comers and found ourselves in a marble court with a
fountain in the centre and orange trees planted round. All the big rooms
opened into this court, the doors were thrown wide to me, and coffee and
sweetmeats were served by the groom of the chambers, while I admired the
decoration of the walls and the water that bubbled up into marble basins
and flowed away by marble conduits. In this and in most of the Damascene
palaces every window sill has a gurgling pool in it, so that the air
that blows into the room may bring with it a damp freshness. The Amīr
'Ali was away, but his major domo, who looked like a servant _de bonne
maison_ and had the respectful familiarity of manner that the Oriental
dependant knows so well how to assume, showed us his master's treasures,
the jewelled sabre presented to the old Amīr by Napoleon III, 'Abd ul
Ḳādir's rifles, and a pair of heavy, silver-mounted swords sent as a
gift last year by 'Abd ul 'Aziz ibn er Rashīd--there is a traditional
friendship, I learnt, between the Algerian family and the Lords of
Ḥāil. He showed us, too, pictures of 'Abd ul Ḳādir; the Amīr
leading his cavalry, the Amīr at Versailles coming down the steps of
the palace with Napoleon, bearing himself as one who wins and not as one
who loses, the Amīr as an old man in Damascus, always in the white
Algerian robes that he never abandoned, and always with the same grave
and splendid dignity of countenance. And last I was led over a little
bridge, that crossed a running stream behind the main court, into a
garden full of violets, through which we passed to stables as airy, as
light and as dry as the best European stables could have been. In the
stalls stood two lovely Arab mares from the famous studs of the Ruwalla
and a well-bred mule almost as valuable as they. There was a sad-looking
man who accompanied us upon our round, though he did not seem to belong
to the establishment; his face was so gloomy that it arrested my
attention, and I asked Selīm Beg who he was. A Christian, he answered,
of a rich family, who had been persecuted to change his religion and had
sought sanctuary with the Amīr 'Ai. I heard no more of his story, but
he fitted into the picture that 'Abd ul Ḳādir's dwelling-place left
upon the mind: the house of gentlefolk, well kept by well-trained
servants, provided with the amenities of life and offering protection to
the distressed.
On the following morning I went to see the Amīr 'Abdullah, who lived
next door to his brother. I found there a nephew of 'Abdullah's, the
Amīr Ṭāhir, son of yet another brother, and my arrival was greeted
with satisfaction because there happened to be staying with them a
distinguished guest whom I should doubtless like to see. He was a
certain Sheikh Ṭāhir ul Jezāiri, a man much renowned for his
learning and for his tempestuous and revolutionary politics. Summoned
hastily into the divanned and carpeted upper room in which we were
sitting, he entered like a whirlwind, and establishing himself by my
side poured into my ear, and into all other ears in the vicinity, for he
spoke loud, his distress at not being permitted by the Vāli to
associate freely with gifted foreigners such as the American
archaeologists or even myself ("God forbid!" I murmured modestly), and a
great many other grievances besides. When this topic had run
comparatively dry, he sent the Amīr Ṭāhir to seek for some
publications of his own with which he presented me. They dealt with
Arabic and the allied languages, such as Nabatæan, Safaitic and
Phœnician, the alphabetical signs of which he had arranged very
carefully and well in comparative tables, though he had not an idea of
the signification of any one of the tongues except his own. A curious
and typical example of oriental scholarship was Sheikh Ṭāhir, but
from the samples I had of his conversation I am not sure that the
sympathies of those who respect peace and order would not be with the
Vāli. Presently another notable dropped in, Muṣṭafa Pasha el
Barāzi, a member of one of the four leading families of Ḥamāh, and
the whole company fell to talking of their own concerns, Syrian politics
and other matters, while I listened and looked out of window over the
Amīr's garden and the stream at its foot, and wondered what had made me
so fortunate as to be taking part in a Damascene morning call. At length
the Amīr 'Abdullah and his nephew took me aside and discussed long and
earnestly a great project which I had broached to them and which I will
not reveal here. And when the visit was over Selīm and Muṣṭafa and
I went out and lunched at an excellent native restaurant in the Greek
bazaar, sitting, cheek by jowl with a Bedouin from the desert and eating
the best of foods and the choicest of Damascus cream tarts for the sum
of eighteen pence between the three of us, which included the coffee and
a liberal tip.
There was another morning no less pleasant when I went with the faithful
Selīm to pay my respects on a charming old man, the most famous scribe
in all the city, Muṣṭafa el Asbā'i was his name. He lived in a
house, decorated with the exquisite taste of two hundred years ago
inlaid with coloured marbles and overlaid with gesso duro worked in
patterns like the frontispiece of an illuminated Persian manuscript and
painted in soft rich colours in which gold and golden brown
predominated. We were, taken through the reception rooms into a little
chamber on an upper floor where Muṣṭafa was wont to sit and write
those texts that are the pictures of the Moslem East. It was hung round
with examples from celebrated hands ancient and modern, among which I
recognised that of my friend Muḥammad 'Ali, son of Beha Ullaḥ the
Persian prophet, to my mind the most skilful penman of our day, though
Oriental preference goes out to another Persian of the same religious
sect, Mushḳin Kalam, and him also I count among my friends. We sat on
cushions and drank coffee, turning over the while exquisite manuscripts
of all dates and countries, some written on gold and some on silver,
some on brocade and some on supple parchment (several of these last
being pages of Kufic texts abstracted from the Ḳubbet el Khazneh
before it was closed), and when we rose to go Muṣṭafa presented me
with three examples of his own art, and I carried them off rejoicing.
[Illustration 75: MUSHḲIN KALAM]
Later in the afternoon we drove out to the valley of the Barada, Selīm
and I, and called on a third soil of 'Abd ul Ḳādir: "Amīr Omar,
princ d'Abd ul Ḳādir" ran his visiting card, printed in the Latin
character. He is the country gentleman of the family. 'Ali has been
carried into spheres of greater influence by his marriage with a sister
of 'Izzet Pasha, the mighty Shadow behind the Throne in Constantinople;
'Abdullah has always a thousand schemes on hand that keep him to the
town, but 'Umar is content to hunt and shoot and tend his garden and
lead the simple life. So simple was it that we found him in a smoking
cap and a dressing gown and carpet slippers walking the garden alleys.
He took us into his house, which, like the other houses of his family,
was full of flowers, and up to a pavilion on the roof, whither his
pointer followed us with a friendly air of companionship. There amid
pots of hyacinths and tulips we watched the sun set over the snowy hills
and talked of desert game and sport.
Nor let me, amid all this high company, forget my humbler friends: the
Afghan with black locks hanging about his cheeks, who gave me the salute
every time we met (the Amīr of Afghanistan has an agent in Damascus to
look after the welfare of his subjects on the pilgrimage); the sweetmeat
seller at the door of the Great Mosque, who helped me once or twice
through the mazes of the bazaars and called to me each time I passed
him: "Has your Excellency no need of your Dragoman to-day?"; or the
dervishes of Sheikh Ḥassan's Tekyah, who invited me to attend the
Friday prayers. Not least the red-bearded Persian who keeps a tea shop
in the Corn Market and who is a member of the Beha'i sect among which I
have many acquaintances. As I sat drinking glasses of delicious Persian
tea at his table, I greeted him in his own tongue and whispered: "I have
been much honoured by the Holy Family at Acre." He nodded his head and
smiled and answered: "Your Excellency is known to us," and when I rose
to go and asked his charge he replied: "For you there is never anything
to pay." I vow there is nothing that so warms the heart as to find
yourself admitted into the secret circle of Oriental beneficence--and
few things so rare.
Upon a sunny afternoon I escaped from the many people who were always in
waiting to take me to one place or another and made my way alone through
the bazaars, ever the most fascinating of loitering grounds, till I
reached the doors of the Great Mosque. It was the hour of the afternoon
prayer. I left my shoes with a bed-ridden negro by the entrance and
wandered into the wide cloister that runs along the whole of the west
side of the Mosque. A fire some ten years ago, and the reparations that
followed it, have robbed the Mosque of much o its beauty, but it still
remains the centre of interest to the archæologist, who puzzles over
the traces of church and temple and Heaven knows what besides that are
to be seen embedded in its walls and gates. The court was half full of
afternoon shadow and half of sun, and in the golden light troops of
little boys with green willow switches in their hands were running to
and fro in noiseless play, while the Faithful made their first
prostrations before they entered the Mosque. I followed them in and
watched them fall into long lines down nave and aisle from east to west.
All sorts and grades of men stood side by side, from the learned doctor
in a fur-lined coat and silken robes to the raggedest camel driver from
the desert, for Islām is the only republic in the world and recognises
no distinctions of wealth or rank. When they had assembled to the number
of three or four hundred, the chant of the Imām began. "God!" he cried,
and the congregation fell with a single movement upon their faces and
remained a full minute in silent adoration till the high chant began
again. "The Creator of this world and the next, of the heavens and of
the earth, He who leads the righteous in the true path and the wicked to
destruct on God!" And as the almighty name echoed through the colonnades
where it had sounded for near two thousand years, the listeners
prostrated themselves again, and for a moment all the sanctuary was
silence.
[Illustration 76: SWEETMEAT SELLERS]
That night I went to an evening party at the invitation of Shekīb el
Arslān, a Druze of a well known family of the Lebanon and a poet
foreby--have I not been presented with a copy of his latest ode? The
party was held in the Maidān, at the house of some corn merchants, who
are agents to the Ḥaurān Druzes in the matter of corn selling and
know the politics of the Mountain well. There were twelve or fourteen
persons present, Shekīb and I and the corn merchants (dressed as befits
well-to-do folk in blue silk robes and embroidered yellow turbans) and a
few others, I know not who they were. The room was blessedly empty of
all but carpets and a divan and a brazier, and this was noteworthy, for
not even the 'Abd ul Ḳādir houses are free from blue and red glass
vases and fringed mats that break out like a hideous disease in the
marble embrazures and on the shelves of the gesso duro cupboards.
Shekīb was a man of education and had experience of the world; he had
even travelled once as far as London. He talked in French until one of
our hosts stopped him with:
"Oh, Shekīb! you know Arabic, the lady also. Talk therefore that we can
understand."
His views on Turkish politics were worth hearing.
"My friends," said he, "the evils under which we suffer are due to the
foreign nations who refuse to allow the Turkish empire to move in any
direction. When she fights they take the fruits of her victory from her,
as they did after the war: with the Greeks. What good is it that we
should conquer the rebellious Albanians? the Bulgarians alone would
gain, advantage and the followers of our Prophet (_sic_, though he was a
Druze) could not live under the hand of the Bulgarians as they would not
live under the hand of the Greeks in Crete. For look you, the Moslems of
Crete are now dwelling at Ṣalaḥiyyeh as you know well, and Crete has
suffered by their departure."
There was so much truth in this that I who listened wished that the
enemies of Turkey could hear and would deeply ponder the point of view
of intelligent and well-informed subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
[Illustration 77: COURT OF THE GREAT MOSQUE]
My last day in Damascus was a Friday. Now Damascus on a fine Friday is a
sight worth travelling far to see. All the male population dressed in
their best parade the streets, the sweetmeat sellers and the auctioneers
of second-hand clothes drive a roaring trade, the eating shops steam
with dressed meats of the most tempting kind, and splendidly caparisoned
mares are galloped along the road by the river Abana. Early in the
afternoon I had distinguished visitors. The first to wait on me was
Muḥammad Pasha, Sheikh of Jerūd, an oasis half way upon the road to
Palmyra. Jerūdi is the second greatest brigand in all the land, the
greatest (no one disputes him the title) being Fayyāḍ Agha of
Karyatein, another oasis on the Palmyra road. Fayyāḍ, I fancy, is an
evil rogue, though he had been polite enough to me when I had passed his
way, but Jerūdi's knavery is of a different brand. He is a big,
powerful man with a wall eye; he was a mighty rider and raider in his
day, for he has Arab blood in his veins, and his grandfather was of the
high stock of the 'Anazeh, but he has grown old and heavy and gouty, and
his desire is for peace, a desire difficult to attain, what with his
antecedents and the outlying position of Jerūd, which makes it the
natural resort of all the turbulent spirits of the desert. He must keep
on terms both with his Arab kin and with the government, each trying to
use his influence with the other, and he the while seeking to profit
from both, with his wall eye turned towards the demands of the aw, and
his good eye fixed on his own advantage, if I understand him. Justly
irate consuls have several times demanded of the Vāli his immediate
execution; but the Vāli, though he not infrequently signifies his
disapproval of some markedly outrageous deed by a term of imprisonment,
can never be brought to take the further step, saying that the
government has before now found Jerūdi a useful man, and no doubt the
Vāli is the best judge. To his great sorrow Muḥammad Pasha has no
sons to inherit his very considerable wealth, and the grasshopper, in
the shape of a tribe of expectant nephews, has come to be a burden on
his years. Recently he married a daughter of Fayyāḍ's house, a girl
of fifteen, but she has not brought him children. A famous tale about
him is current in Damascus, a tale to which men do not, however, allude
in his presence. At the outbreak of the last Druze war Jerūdi happened
to be enjoying one of his interludes of adhesion to the powers that be,
and because he knew the Mountain well he was sent with thirty or forty
men to scout and report, the army following upon his heels. It happened
that as he passed through a hamlet near Ormān, his old acquaintance,
the sheikh of the village, saw him, and invited him in to eat. And as he
sat in the maḳ'ad awaiting his dinner he heard the Druzes discussing
outside whether they had not better profit by this opportunity to kill
him as an officer of the Turkish army; and he desired earnestly to go
away from that place, but he could not, the rules of polite society
making it incumbent upon him to stay and eat the dinner that was
a-cooking. So when it came he despatched it with some speed, for the
discussion outside had reached a stage that inspired him with the
gravest anxiety, and having eaten he mounted his horse and rode away
before the Druzes had reached a conclusion. And as he went he found
himself suddenly between two fires; the Turkish army had come up and the
first battle of the war had begun. He and his men, discouraged and
perplexed, took refuge behind some rocks, and, as best they might, they
made their way back one by one to the extreme rear of the Turkish
troops. The Druzes have composed a song about this incident; it begins:
[Illustration 78: THRESHING-FLOOR OF ḲARYATEIN]
Jerūdi's golden mares are famed,
And fair the riders in their stumbling flight!
Muḥammad Pasha, tell thy lord
Where are his soldiers, where his arms!
This piece is not often sung before him.
[Illustration 79: THE TEKYAH OF NAKSHIBENDI]
My next visitor was Sheikh Ḥassan Nakshibendi, he of the sleek and
cunning clerical face. He contrived to make good use even of the ten
minutes he spent in the inn parlour, for noticing a gaudy ring on Selīm
Beg's finger he asked to see it, and liked it so well that he put it in
his pocket saying that Selīm would certainly wish to give a present to
his khānum, the youngest of his wives, whom he had married a year or
two before. Selīm replied that in that case we must go at once to his
house in Ṣalaḥiyyeh that the present might be offered, and both
Sheikh Ḥassan and Muḥammad Pasha having their victorias at the door,
we four got into them and drove off to Ṣalaḥiyyeh through the bright
holiday streets. At the door of the house Selīm announced that I ought
first to take leave of the Vāli, who lived close at hand, and borrowed
Jerūdi's carriage that we might go in style. Then said Selīm to
Muḥammad Pasha:
"Are you not coming with us?" But the question was put in sarcasm, for
he knew well that Jerūdi was going through a period of disgrace and
that he had but recently emerged from a well-merited imprisonment.
Jerūdi shook his head and drawing near to us, seated in his victoria,
he whispered:
"Say something in my favour to the Pasha."
We laughed and promised to speak for him, though Selīm confided to me
as we drove away that when he had been in disgrace ("entirely owing to
the intrigues of my enemies"), not a man had come forward to help him,
while now that he was in favour every one begged for his intervention;
and he drew his frock coat round him and lent back against the cushions
of Jerūdi's carriage with the air of one who is proudly conscious that
he is in a position to fulfil scriptural injunctions to the letter.
Nāzim Pasha was on his doorstep taking leave of the commander-in-chief.
When he saw us he came down the steps and called us in with the utmost
friendliness. The second visit to his house (he had been to see me in
between) was much less formal than the first. We talked of the Japanese
War, a topic never far from the lips of my interlocutors, great or
small, and I made bold to ask him his opinion.
"Officially," said he, "I am neutral."
"But between friends?"
"Of course I am on the side of the Japanese," he answered. And then he
added: "It is you who have gained by their victory."
I replied: "But will you not also gain?"
He answered gloomily: "We have not gained as yet. Not at all in
Macedonia."
Then he asked how I had enjoyed my visit to Damascus. Selīm replied
hastily:
"To-day she has had a great disappointment."
The Vāli looked concerned.
"Yes," continued Selīm, "she had hoped to see a chief of brigands, and
she has found only a peaceful subject of your Excellency."
"Who is he?" said Nāzim.
"Muḥammad Pasha Jerūdi," answered Selīm. The good word had been
spoken very skilfully.
[Illustration 80: OUTSIDE DAMASCUS GATES]
When we returned to Sheikh Ḥassan's house we related this conversation
to the subject of it, and Jerūdi pulled a wry face, but expressed
himself satisfied. Sheikh Ḥassan then took me to see his wife--his
fifth wife, for he had divorced one of the legal four to marry her. He
has the discretion to keep a separate establishment for each, and I do
not question that he is repaid by the resulting peace of his hearths.
There were three women in the inner room, the wife and another who was
apparently not of the household, for she hid her face under the
bed clothes when Sheikh Ḥassan came in, and a Christian, useful in
looking after the male guests (there were others besides Jerūdi and
Selīm) and in doing commissions in the bazaars, where she can go more
freely than her sister Moslems. The harem was shockingly untidy. Except
when the women folk expect your visit and have prepared for it, nothing
is more forlornly unkempt than their appearance. The disorder of the
rooms in which they live may partly be accounted for by the fact that
there are neither cupboards nor drawers in them, and all possessions are
kept in large green and gold boxes, which must be unpacked when so much
as a pocket-handkerchief is needed, and frequently remain unpacked.
Sheikh Ḥassan's wife was a young and pretty woman, though her hair
dropped in wisps about her face and neck, and a dirty dressing gown
clothed a figure which had, alas! already fallen into ruin.
But the view from Nakshibendi's balcony is immortal. The great and
splendid city of Damascus, with its gardens and its domes and its
minarets, lies spread out below, and beyond it the desert, the desert
reaching almost to its gates. And herein is the heart of the whole
matter.
This is what I know of Damascus; as for the churches and the castles,
the gentry can see those for themselves.
[Footnote 8: Since I wrote these sentences, a turn of the political
wheel has brought him down, and he is now reduced to an unimportant post
in the island of Rhodes.]
[Illustration 81: A WATER SELLER]