The Vāli had inquired of me closely whither I was going from Damascus,
and when I told him that Ba'albek was my goal he had replied that he
must certainly send a small body of armed men to guard so distinguished
a traveller. Thereupon I had answered quickly, so as to avoid further
discussion, that I should go by train. But as I had in reality no
intention of adopting that means of progression it was necessary to make
an early start if I would journey alone. We left the city on a bright
and sunny morning; the roads were full of cheerful wayfarers, and our
horses tugged at the bits after the week's rest. We passed by the Amīr
'Umar's house in the Wādi Barada, and saw that nobleman enjoying the
morning sun upon his roof. He shouted down to me an invitation to enter,
but I replied that there was business on hand, and that he must let me
go.
"Go in peace!" he answered. "Please God some day we may ride together."
"Please God!" said I, and "God requite you!"
A mile or two further we came to a parting of the ways and I altered my
route and struck straight into the Anti-Libanus the better to avoid the
attentions of all the official personages who had been warned to do me
honour. We rode up the beautiful valley of the Barada, which is full of
apricots (but they were not yet in flower), crossed the river above
Suḳ Wādi Barada, a splendid gorge, and journeyed over a plain between
snowy mountains to Zebdāny, famous for its apples. Here we pitched a
solitary camp in a green meadow by a spring, the snowy flanks of Hermon
closing the view to the south and the village scattered over the hill
slopes to the north, and no one in Zebdāny paid any attention to the
two small tents. Next day we crossed the Anti-Libanus in a howling wind;
a very lovely and enjoyable ride it was nevertheless, but a long stage
of eight and a quarter hours. There were Latin inscriptions cut at
intervals in the rocks all down the valley that falls into the
Yaḥfūfa at Jānta--I imagine we were on the Roman road from Damascus
to Ba'albek. The last long barren miles were done in driving rain and we
arrived wet through at Ba'albek. It was almost too windy to pitch a
camp, and yet my soul revolted against the thought of a hotel;
fortunately, Mikhāil suggested a resource. He knew, said he, a decent
Christian woman who lived at the entrance of the village and who would
doubtless give us a lodging. It happened as he had predicted. The
Christian woman was delighted to see us. Her house contained a clean
empty room which I was speedily made ready for my camp furniture,
Mikhāil established himself and his cooking gear in another, the wind
and the rain beat its worst against the shutters and could do us no
harm.
The name of my hostess was Ḳurunfuleh, the Carnation Flower, and she
was wife to one Yūsef el 'Awais, who is at present seeking his fortune
in America, where she wishes to join him. I spent an hour or two with
her and her son and daughter and a few relations who had dropped in for
a little talk and a little music, bringing their lutes with them. They
told me that they were very anxious about their future. The greater part
of the population of Ba'albek and round about belongs to an unorthodox
sect of Islām, called the Metāwileh, which has a very special
reputation for fanaticism and ignorance. These people, when they heard
of the Japanese victories, would come and shake their fists at their
Christian neighbours, saying: "The Christians are suffering defeat! See
now, we too will shortly drive you out and seize your goods." Mikhāil
joined in, and declared that it was the same thing at Jerusalem. There,
said he (I know not with what truth), the Moslems had sent a deputation
to the Mufti, saying: "The time has come for us to turn the Christians
out." But the Mufti answered: "If you raise a disturbance the nations of
Europe will step in, for Jerusalem is the apple of their eye" (so the
Mufti affirmed), "and they will take the whole land and we shall be
worse off than before." I tried to comfort Ḳurunfuleh by saying that
it was improbable that the Christians of Syria should suffer
persecution, the country being so well known and so much frequented by
tourists, who would not fail to raise an outcry. The yearly stream of
tourists is, in fact, one of the best guarantees of order. Now
Ḳurunfuleh was a Lebanon woman, and I asked her why she did not return
to her own village, where she would be under the direct protection of
the Powers and exempt from danger. She said:
[Illustration 82: SUḲ WĀDI BARADA]
"Oh lady, the house here is taken in my husband's name, and I cannot
sell it unless he return, nor yet leave it empty, and moreover the life
in the Lebanon is not like the life in the plain, and I, being
accustomed to other things, could not endure it. There no one has any
business but to watch his neighbour, and if you put on a new skirt the
village will whisper together and mock at you saying, 'Hast seen the
lady?' Look you, I will show you what it is like to live in the Lebanon.
I eat meat in Ba'albek once a day, but they once a month. They take an
onion and divide it into three parts, using one part each evening to
flavour the burghul (cracked wheat), and I throw a handful of onions
into the dish every night. Life pinches in the Lebanon."
Life pinches so straitly that all of the population that can scrape
together their passage money are leaving for the United States, and it
is next to impossible to find labour to cultivate the corn, the mulberry
and the vine. There is no advancement, to use the Syrian phrase. The
Lebanon province is a _cul de sac_, without a port of its own and
without commerce. True, you need not go in fear of death, but of what
advantage is an existence that offers no more than the third of an onion
at supper time? As usual, the Sublime Porte has been too many for the
Powers. It has accorded all they asked, oh yes, and gladly, but the
concessions that seemed to lay open the path of prosperity have in
reality closed the gates for ever upon those who should have profited by
them.
Next day the rain had not abated. I received the Commissioner of Police,
who had run me to earth--he proved to be a charming man--and paid a
visit to a large family of Portuguese who were staying at the hotel hard
by my lodging. Monsieur Luiz de Sommar, with his wife and daughters and
nephews, had come up from Jerusalem to Damascus by the Jebel Druze. I
had heard of their arrival at Sweida while I was at Ṣalkhad, and had
wondered how they had gained admission. The story was curious and it
redounds to the credit of Monsieur de Sommar, while it shows how eager
the Government still is to keep the Mountain free from the prying eyes
of tourists. The Portuguese family had met Mr. Mark Sykes at 'Ammān,
and he had advised them to change their route so as to pass through
Ḳanawāt in the Jebel Druze, saying they would have no difficulty in
obtaining permission to do so. Monsieur de Sommar went guilelessly
forward, but when he reached Sweida, which is the chief post of the
Government, the Ḳāimaḳām stopped him and intimated politely but
firmly that he must return the way he had come. He replied as firmly
that he would not, and sent telegrams to his Consul in Damascus and his
Minister at Constantinople. Thereupon followed an excited exchange of
messages, the upshot of which was that he was to be allowed to proceed
to Ḳanawāt if he would take a hundred zaptiehs with him. The country,
said the Ḳāimaḳām, was extremely dangerous--that country through
which, as I know well, a woman can ride with no escort but a Druze boy,
and might ride alone, even if she had her saddle-bags full of gold. But
Monsieur de Sommar was a man of judgment. He replied that he was quite
willing to take the hundred zaptiehs, but not one piastre piece should
they receive from him. Thus countered, the Ḳāimaḳām changed his
note and diminished the escort till it numbered twenty, with which guard
the de Sommars reached Ḳanawāt in safety. I congratulated them on
their exploit, and myself on having sought my permit from Fellāḥ ul
Tsa, and not from the Vāli of Syria.
[Illustration 83: BA'ALBEK]
In spite of the rain, the day at Ba'albek was not mis-spent. Since my
last visit the Germans had excavated the Temple of the Sun and laid bare
altars, fountains, bits of decoration and foundations of churches, which
were all of the deepest interest. Moreover, the great group of temples
and enclosing walls set between the double range of mountains, Lebanon
and Anti-Libanus, produces an impression second to none save the Temple
group of the Athenian Acropolis, which is easily beyond a peer. The
details of Ba'albek are not so good as those at Athens; the matchless
dignity and restraint of that glory among the creations of architects
are not to be approached, nor is the splendid position on the hill top
overlooking the blue sea and the Gulf of Salamis to be rivalled. But in
general effect Ba'albek comes nearer to it than any other mass of
building, and it provides an endless source of speculation to such as
busy themselves with the combination of Greek and Asiatic genius that
produced it and covered its doorposts, its architraves and its capitals
with ornamental devices infinite in variety as they are lovely in
execution. For the archæologist there is neither clean nor unclean. All
the works of the human imagination fall into their appointed place in
the history of art, directing and illuminating his own understanding of
it. He is doubly blest, for when the outcome is beautiful to the eyes he
returns thanks; but, whatever the result, it is sure to furnish him with
some new and unexpected link between one art and another, and to provide
him with a further rung in the ladder of history. He is thus apt to be
well satisfied with what he sees, and above all, he does not say: "Alas,
alas! these dogs of Syrians! Phidias would have done so-and-so;" for he
is glad to mark a new attempt in the path of artistic endeavour, and a
fresh breath moving the acanthus leaves and the vine scrolls on capital
and frieze.
[Illustration 84: THE GREAT COURT, BA'ALBEK]
Our departure from Ba'albek was marked by a regrettable occurrence--my
dog Kurt was found to have disappeared in the night. Unlike most Syrian
pariah dogs, he was of a very friendly disposition, he was also (and in
this respect he did not differ from his half fed clan) insatiably
greedy; the probability was, therefore, that he had been lured away with
a bone and shut up till we were safely out of the road. Ḥabīb set off
in one direction through the village, Mikhāil in another, while the
Commissioner of Police, who had appeared on the agitated scene, tried to
pour balm upon my wounded feelings. After a few minutes Ḥabīb
reappeared with Kurt, all wag, behind him on a chain. He had found him,
he explained breathlessly, in the house of one who had thought to steal
him, fastened with this very chain:
"And when Kurt heard my voice he barked, and I went into the yard and
saw him. And the lord of the chain demanded it of me, and by God! I
refused to give it him and struck him to the earth with it instead. God
curse him for a thievish Metāwileh! And so I left him."
I have, therefore, the pleasure to record that the Metāwileh are as
dishonest a sect as rumour would have them to be, but that their
machinations can be brought to nought by vigilant Christians.
[Illustration 85: COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN, BA'ALBEK]
We rode down the wide and most dreary valley between Lebanon and
Anti-Libanus. I might have gone by train to Ḥomṣ, and eke to
Ḥamāh, but I preferred to cross from side to side of the valley as
the fancy took me, and visit such places of interest as the country had
to show, and this could only be done on horseback. North of Ba'albek all
Syria was new to me; it marked an epoch, too, that we had reached the
frontier of the Palestine Exploration Map. I now had recourse to
Kiepert's small but excellent sheet, which I had abstracted from the
volume of Oppenheim that had been left at Ṣāleh. There is no other
satisfactory map until, at a line some thirty miles south of Aleppo,
Kiepert's big Kleinasien 1-400,000 begins; when the American Survey
publishes its geographical volume the deficiency will, I hope, be
rectified. After four and a half hours we came to Lebweh, where one of
the principal sources of the Orontes bursts out of the earth in a number
of springs, very beautiful to see; and here we were overtaken by two
soldiers who had been sent after us by the Ḳāimaḳām with a polite
inquiry as to whether I would not like an escort. I sent one back and
kept the other, fearing to hurt the Ḳāimaḳām's feelings; Derwīsh
was the man's name, helpful and pleasant he proved, as indeed were all
in the long series of his successors who accompanied us until I stepped
into the train at Konia. Some of them added greatly to the pleasure of
the journey, telling me many tales of their experiences and adventures
as we rode together hour by hour. They enjoyed the break in garrison
life that was thus afforded them, and they enjoyed also the daily fee of
a mejideh (4_s._ roughly) which was so much more certain than the
Sultan's pay. I gave them besides a little tip when they reached the
term of their services, and they fed themselves and their horses on
provisions and grain that I shrewdly suspect were taken from the
peasantry by force, a form of official exaction that the traveller is
powerless to prevent.
At Lebweh are the ruins of a temple built in the massive masonry of
Ba'albek. A podium of four great courses of stones crowned by a simple
moulding, a mere splay face, is all that is left of it. The village
belongs to a man called Asad Beg, a rich Metāwileh and brother to a
certain Dr. Haida, who is a ubiquitous person well known in north Syria.
I never go to Damascus without meeting him and never meet him without
satisfaction, for he is well read in Arabic literature and exceptionally
intelligent. He has recently been engaged in some job on the Mecca
railway, and he is, so far as I know, the only example in his sect of a
man who has received a good education and risen to a certain
distinction.
We pitched camp at Rās Ba'albek, where there is an excellent spring in
a gorge of the barren eastern hills an hour and a half from Lebweh. The
frost had ceased to pinch us of a morning, praise be to God! but it was
still cold. When we rose at dawn the sleet was beating against the tents
and we rode all day in the devil's own wind. This was March 8; Spring
travels slowly into Northern Syria. I sent my camp by the direct path
and rode with Derwīsh to a monument that stands on some rising ground
in the middle of the Orontes valley and which in that desolate expanse
is seen for a day's journey on either side. It is a tall tower of
massive stonework capped by a pyramid and decorated with pilasters and
a rough frieze carved in low relief with hunting scenes and trophies of
arms. The Syrians call it Ḳāmu'a Hurmul, the Tower of Hurmul after
the village close by, and the learned are of opinion that it
commemorates some great battle of the Roman conquest, but there is no
inscription to prove them right or wrong. It lies two hours to the west
of Rās Ba'albek. Buffeted by the furious wind we rode on another hour
and a half to a line of little mounds protecting the air-holes of an
underground water channel--a Ḳanāt it would be called in Persian, and
I believe is so called in Arabic. Another two and a half hours brought
us to Ḳṣeir, the mules came up a quarter of an hour later, and we
camped hard by the cemetery outside the ugly mud-built town. The wind
dropped after sunset, and peace, moral and physical, settled down upon
the camp. Even Mikhāil's good humour had been somewhat disturbed by the
elements, but Ḥabīb had come in as smiling as ever, and I am glad to
remember that I, feeling my temper slipping from me down the gale, had
preserved the silence of the philosopher. Muḥammad the Druze was no
longer with us, for he had been left behind in Damascus. Whether through
his own fault or by reason of a conspiracy against him among the others,
difficulties and quarrels were always arising, and it was better to
sacrifice one member of the staff and preserve the equanimity of the
caravan. My contract with him ceased at Damascus; we parted on the best
of terms, and his place was taken by a succession of hirelings,
indistinguishable, as far as I was concerned, the one from the other.
[Illustration 86: TEMPLE OF JUPITER, BA'ALBEK]
The valley of the Orontes was formerly an Arab camping ground and is
still frequented in dry seasons by a few skeikhs of the Ḥaseneh and of
the 'Anazeh, particularly by the Ruwalla branch of the latter tribe, but
the bulk of the Bedouin have been driven out by cultivation. The
Ḳāmu'a Hurmul bears the record of them in the shape of ancient tribe
marks. It was more curious to reflect that we were in the southern
headquarters of the Hittites, whoever they may have been; the famous
examples of their as yet undecyphered script which were found at
Ḥamāh are now lodged in the museum at Constantinople, where they have
baffled all the efforts of the learned. The present population of
Ḳṣeir is composed partly of Christians and partly of the members of
a sect called the Noṣairiyyeh. They are not recognised by Islām as
orthodox, though, like all the smaller sects, they do their best to
smooth, away the outward differences between themselves and the dominant
creed. They keep the tenets of their faith secret as far as possible,
but Dussaud has pried into the heart of them and found them full of the
traces of Phœnician tradition. Living apart in mountain fastnesses that
have remained almost inviolate, the Noṣairiyyeh have held on to the
practices of ancient Semitic cults, and they occupy an honourable
position in the eyes of Syriologists as the direct descendants of
paganism, while remaining themselves profoundly ignorant of their
ancestry. Native report speaks ill of their religion, following the
invariable custom by which people whisper scandal of what they are not
allowed to understand, and I was told that the visible signs of it as
expressed by the conduct of the sect left everything to be desired.
Dussaud has, however, washed away the stain that lay upon their faith,
and my experience of their dealings with strangers leads me to adopt an
attitude of benevolent neutrality. I spent five days in the mountains
west of Ḥomṣ and a week near Antioch, in which districts they are
chiefly to be found, and had no reason to raise a complaint. Kurt was
not so well pleased with the company in which he found himself at
Ḳṣeir. He kept up a continual barking all night; I could almost have
wished him back in the courtyard of the Metawīleh.
Next day the weather was gloriously fine. With Mikhāil I made a long
circuit that I might visit Tell Nebi Mendu, which is the site of Kadesh
on the Orontes, the southern capital of the Hittites. Kadesh in its day
must have been a fair city. The mound on which it was built rises out of
a great corn-growing plain; to the south the wide valley of the Orontes
runs up between the twin chains of Lebanon, to the west the Jebel
Noṣairiyyeh protect it from the sea, and between the ranges of Lebanon
and the Noṣairiyyeh mountains there is a smiling lowland by which
merchants and merchandise might pass down to the coast. Northwards to
the horizon stretch the plains of Coelo Syria; the steppes of the
Palmyrene desert bound the view to the east. The foot of the tell is
washed by the young and eager Orontes (the Rebellious is the meaning of
its Arabic name), and in the immediate foreground lies the lake of
Ḥomṣ, six miles long. The mound of Kadesh is approached by grassy
swards, and among willow trees a mill wheel turns merrily in the rushing
stream. The site must have been inhabited almost continuously from
Hittite times, for history tells of a Seleucid city, Laodocia ad
Orontem, and there are traces of a Christian town. Each succeeding
generation has built upon the dust of those that went before, and the
mound has grown higher and higher, and doubtless richer and richer in
the traces of them that lived on it. But it cannot be excavated
thoroughly owing to the miserable mud hovels that have inherited the
glories of Laodocia and Kadesh, and to the little graveyard at the
northern end of the village which, according to the Moslem prejudice,
must remain undisturbed till Gabriel's trump rouses the sleepers in it.
I noticed fragments of columns and of very rough capitals lying about
among the houses, but my interest, while I stood upon the mound, was
chiefly engaged in picturing the battle fought at Kadesh by the Hittite
king against the Pharaoh of his time, which is recorded in a famous
series of hieroglyphs in Egypt. A quarter of an hour's ride to the north
of Tell Nebi Mendu there is a singular earthwork which is explained by
the Arabs as being the Sefinet Nuh (Noah's Ark) and by archæologists as
an Assyrian fortification, and the one account of its origin has as much
to support it as the other. It is a heap of earth, four-square, its
sides exactly oriented to the points of the compass, standing some forty
to fifty feet above the level of the plain and surrounded by a ditch,
the angles of which are still sharp. We rode to the top of it, and found
it to be an immense platform of solid earth, about an eighth of a mile
square, the four corners raised a little as if there had been towers
upon them, and tower and rampart and platform were alike covered with
springing corn. Whoever raised it, Patriarch or Assyrian, must have
found it mighty tiresome to construct, but until a few trenches have
been cut across it the object that directed his labours will rest
undetermined. We rode down to the lake and lunched by the lapping water
on a beach of clean shells. There are two mounds close to the shores,
another a mile or two out of Ḥomṣ, while the castle of Ḥomṣ
itself was built upon a fourth. They have all the appearance of being
artificial, and probably contain the relics of towns that were sisters
to Kadesh. The fertile plain east of the Orontes must always have been
able to support a large population, larger perhaps in Hittite days than
in our own. The day's ride had lasted from 9.30 to 2 o'clock, with
three-quarters of an hour at Tell Nebi Mendu and half an hour by the
lake.
[Illustration 87: CAPITALS IN THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER, BA'ALBEK]
We approached Ḥomṣ through the cemeteries. That it should be
preceded by a quarter of a mile of graves is not a peculiarity of
Ḥomṣ, but a constant feature of oriental towns. Every city is
guarded by battalions of the dead, and the life of the town moves in and
out through a regiment of turbaned tombstones. It happened to be a
Thursday when we came to Ḥomṣ, and Thursday is the weekly Day of All
Souls in the Mohammedan world. Groups of veiled women were laying
flowers upon the graves or sitting on the mounds engaged in animated
chat--the graveyard is the pleasure ground of Eastern women and the
playground of the children, nor do the gloomy associations of the spot
affect the cheerfulness of the visitors. My camp was pitched in the
outskirts of the city on a stretch of green grass below the ruins of
barracks built by Ibrahīm Pasha and destroyed immediately after his
death by the Syrians, who were desirous of obliterating every trace of
his hated occupation. All was ready for me, water boiling for tea and a
messenger from the Ḳāimaḳām in waiting to assure me that my every
wish should have immediate attention, in spite of which I do not like
the town of Ḥomṣ and never of free will shall I camp in it again.
This resolution is due to the behaviour of the inhabitants, which I will
now describe.
[Illustration 88: FOUNTAIN IN THE GREAT COURT, BA'ALBEK]
[Illustration 89: FRAGMENT OF ENTABLATURE, BA'ALBEK]
The conduct of the Ḳāimaḳām was unexceptionable. I visited him
after tea, and found him to be an agreeable Turk, with a little of the
Arabic tongue and an affable address. There were various other people
present, turbaned muftis and grave senators--we had a pleasant talk over
our coffee. When I rose to go the Ḳāimaḳām offered me a soldier to
escort me about the town, but I refused, saying that I had nothing to
fear, since I spoke the language. I was wrong: no knowledge of Arabic
would be sufficient to enable the stranger to express his opinion of the
people of Ḥomṣ. Before I was well within the bazaar the persecution
began. I might have been the Pied Piper of Hamelin from the way the
little boys flocked upon my heels. I bore their curiosity for some time,
then I adjured them, then I turned for help to the shopkeepers in the
bazaars. This was effective for a while, but when I was so unwary as to
enter a mosque, not only the little boys but every male inhabitant of
Ḥomṣ (or so it seemed to my fevered imagination) crowded in after
me. They were not annoyed, they had no wish to stop me, on the contrary
they desired eagerly that I should go on for a long time, that they
might have a better opportunity of watching me; but it was more than I
could bear, and I fled back to my tents, pursued by some two hundred
pairs of inquisitive eyes, and sent at once for a zaptieh. Next morning
I was wiser and took the zaptieh with me from the first. We climbed to
the top of the castle mound to gain a general idea of the town. Though
it has no particular architectural beauty, Ḥomṣ has a character of
its own. It is built of tufa, the big houses standing round courtyards
adorned with simple but excellent patterns of white limestone let into
the black walls. Sometimes the limestone is laid in straight courses,
making with the tufa alternate bars of black and white like the facade
of Siena cathedral. The mind is carried back the more to Italy by the
minarets, which are tall square towers, for all the world like the
towers of San Gimignano, except that those of Ḥomṣ are capped by a
white cupola, very pretty and effective. All that remained of the castle
was Arabic in origin, and so were the fortifications round the town,
save at one place to the east, where the Arab work seemed to rest on
older foundations. I saw no mass of building of pre-Mohammedan date but
one, a brick ruin outside the Tripoli gate which was certainly Roman,
the sole relic of the Roman city of Emesa. The castle mound is also
outside the town, and when I had completed my general survey we entered
by the western gate and went sight-seeing. This is a process which takes
time, for it is constantly interrupted by pressing invitations to come
in and drink coffee. We passed by the Turkmān Jāmi'a, where there are
a couple of Greek inscriptions built into the minaret and a sarcophagus,
carved with bulls' heads and garlands, that serves as a fountain. The
zaptieh was of opinion that I could not do better than pay my respects
to the Bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, and to his palace I went,
but found that I was still too early to see his lordship. I was
entertained, however, on jam and water and coffee, and listened to the
lamentations of the Bishop's secretary over the Japanese victories. The
Greek Orthodox Church held penitential services each time that they
received the news of a Russian defeat, and at that moment they were kept
busy entreating the Almighty to spare the enemies of Christendom. The
secretary deputed a servant to show me the little church of Mār Eliās,
which contains, an interesting marble sarcophagus with Latin crosses
carved on the body of it and Greek crosses on the lid, a later addition,
I fancy, to a classical tomb. Outside the church I met one called 'Abd
ul Wahhāb Beg, whom I had seen at the Serāya when I was calling on the
Ḳāimaḳām, and he invited me into his house, a fine example of the
domestic architecture of Ḥomṣ, the harem court being charmingly
decorated with patterns in limestone and basalt. When I came out, the
zaptieh, who had grasped what sort of sight it was I wished to see,
announced that he would take me to the house of one Ḥassan Beg Nā'i,
which was the oldest in Ḥomṣ. Thither we went, and as we passed
through the narrow but remarkably clean streets I noticed that in almost
every house there was a loom, whereon a weaver was weaving the striped
silk for which Ḥomṣ is famous, while down most of the thoroughfares
were stretched the silken yarns. The zaptieh said that the workers were
paid by the piece, and earned from seven to twelve piastres a day (one
to two shillings), a handsome wage in the East. Living was cheap, he
added; a poor man could rent his house, that is a single room, for a
hundred piastres a year, and feed his family on thirty to forty piastres
a week or even less if he had not many children.
[Illustration 90: BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE, BA'ALBEK]
Ḥassan Beg Nā'i was a red-haired and red-bearded man, with a
hard-featured face of a Scotch lowland type. He was not at all pleased
to see me, but, at the instance of the zaptieh, he slouched out of his
bachelor quarters, where he was drinking a Friday morning cup of coffee
with his friends, took me across the street to his harem, and left me
with his womenkind, who were as friendly as he was surly. They were,
indeed, delighted to have a visitor, for Ḥassan Beg is a strict
master, and neither his wife nor his mother nor any woman that is his is
allowed to put her nose out of doors, not even to take a walk through
the graveyard or to drive down to the meadow by the Orontes on a fine
summer afternoon. The harem had been a very beautiful Arab house on the
model of the houses of Damascus. There were plaster cupolas over the
rooms and over the liwān (the audience hall at the bottom of the
court), but the plaster was chipping away and the floors and staircases
crumbled beneath the feet of those that trod them. A marble column with
an acanthus capital was built into one wall, and on the floor of the
liwān stood a big marble capital, simple in style but good of its kind.
It had been converted into a water basin, and may have done duty as a
font before the Arabs took Emesa and after the earlier buildings of the
Roman town had begun to fall into decay and their materials to be put to
other uses. I passed as I went home a fine square minaret, built of
alternate bands of black and white. The mosque or the Christian church
to which the tower belonged had fallen; it is reputed, said my zaptieh,
to be the oldest tower in the town. The mosque at the entrance of the
bazaar was certainly a church of no mean architectural merit.
[Illustration 91: A STONE IN THE QUARRY, BA'ALBEK]
There was nothing more to see in Ḥomṣ, and as the afternoon was fine
I rode down to the meadow by the Orontes, the fashionable resort of all
holiday makers in spring and summer. The course of the Orontes leaves
Ḥomṣ a good mile to the south-west, and the water supply is both bad
and insufficient, being derived from a canal that begins at the northern
end of the lake. The Marj ul 'Asi, the meadow of the Orontes, is a good
type of the kind of place in which the Oriental, be he Turk or Syrian or
Persian, delights to spend his leisure. "Three things there are," says
an Arabic proverb, "that ease the heart from sorrow: water, green grass
and the beauty of women." The swift Orontes stream flowed by swards
already starred with daisies, where Christian ladies, most perfunctorily
veiled, alighted from their mules under willow trees touched with the
first breath of spring. The river turned a great Na'oura, a Persian
wheel, which filled the air with its pleasant rumbling. A coffee maker
had set up his brazier by the edge of the road, a sweetmeat seller was
spreading out his wares by the waterside, and on a broader stretch of
grass a few gaily dressed youths galloped and wheeled Arab mares. The
East made holiday in her own simple and satisfactory manner, warmed by
her own delicious sun.
[Illustration 92: RĀS UL 'AIN, BA'ALBEK]
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to society and to fruitless
attempts to escape from the curiosity of the townsfolk. It was a Friday
afternoon, and no better way of spending it occurred to them than to
assemble to the number of many hundreds round my tents and observe every
movement of every member of the camp. The men were bad enough, but the
women were worse and the children were the worst of all. Nothing could
keep them off, and the excitement reached a climax when 'Abd ul Ḥamed
Pasha Druby, the richest man in Ḥomṣ, came to call, bringing with
him the Ḳāḍi Muḥammad Sāid ul Khāni. I could not pay as much
attention to their delightful and intelligent conversation as it
deserved, owing to the seething crowd that surrounded us, but an hour
later I returned their call at the Pasha's fine new house at the gate of
the town, accompanied thither by at least three hundred people. I must
have breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed upon my escort, for
as I established myself in the cool and quiet liwan, 'Abd ul Ḥamed
said:
[Illustration 93: CEDARS OF LEBANON]
"Please God the populace does not trouble your Excellency; for if so we
will order out a regiment of soldiers."
I murmured a half-hearted refusal of his offer, though I would have been
glad to have seen those little boys shot down by volleys of musketry,
and the Pasha added reflectively:
"The Emperor of the Germans when he was in Damascus gave orders that no
one was to be forbidden to come and gaze on him."
With this august example before me I saw that I must bear the penalties
of greatness and foreignness without complaint.
The talk turned on religious beliefs. I began by asking about the
Noṣairiyyeh, but the Ḳāḍi pursed his lips and answered:
[Illustration 94: THE ḲĀMU'A HURMUL]
"They are not pleasant people. Some of them pretend to worship 'Ali and
some worship the sun. They believe that when they die their souls pass
into the bodies of other men or even animals, as it is in the faiths of
India and of China."
I said: "I have heard a story that they tell of a man who owned a
vineyard, and the man died and left it to his son. Now the young man
worked in the vineyard until the time of the harvest, and when the
grapes were ripe a wolf entered in, and every evening he ate the fruit.
And the young man tried to hunt him forth, and every evening he
returned. And one night the wolf cried aloud: 'Shall I not eat of the
grapes who planted the vines?' And the young man was astounded and he
said: 'Who art thou?' The wolf replied: 'I am thy father.' The young man
answered: 'If thou art indeed my father, where did'st hide the pruning
knife, for I have not found it since thy soul left thy body!' Then the
wolf took him to the place where the pruning knife lay concealed, and he
believed and knew it was his father."
[Illustration 95: AN EASTERN HOLIDAY]
The Ḳāḍi dismissed, the evidence.
"Without doubt they are mighty liars," said he.
I asked him next whether he had any acquaintance with the Behā'is. He
answered:
[Illustration 96: A STREET IN ḤOMṢ]
"As for the Behā'is and others like them, your Excellency knows that
the Prophet (may God give him peace!) said that there were seventy-two
false creeds and but one true, and I can tell you that of the
seventy-two there are certainly fifty in our country."
I replied that it appertained to prophets alone to distinguish the true
from the false, and that we in Europe, where there were none to help us,
found it a difficult task.
"In Europe," said the Ḳāḍi, "I have heard that the men of science
are your prophets."
"And they make answer that they know nothing," I observed. "Their eyes
have explored the stars, yet they cannot tell us the meaning of the word
infinity."
"If you speak of the infinite sky," remarked the Ḳāḍi, "we know
that it is occupied by seven heavens."
"And what beyond the seventh heaven?"
"Does not your Excellency know that the number one is the beginning of
all things?" said he. "When you have told me what comes before the
number one, I will tell you what lies beyond the seventh heaven."
The Pasha laughed, and said that if the Ḳāḍi had finished his
argument he would like to ask me what was the current opinion in Europe
in the matter of thought-reading. "For," said he, "a month ago a ring of
price was stolen in my house, and I could not find the thief. Now a
certain Effendi among my friends, hearing of my case, came to me and
said: 'I know a man in the Lebanon skilful in these things.' I said: 'Do
me the kindness to send for him.' And the man came, and he sought in
Ḥomṣ, until he found a woman gifted with second sight, and he worked
spells on her until she spoke and said: 'The thief is so-and-so, and he
has taken the ring to his house.' And we sought in the house and found
the jewel. This is my experience, for the event happened under my eyes."
I replied that thought-readers in the Lebanon made a better use of their
gifts than any I had heard of in London, and the Pasha said
meditatively:
"It may be that the woman of the bazaar had a complaint against the man
in whose house we found the ring--God alone knows, may His name be
exalted!"
And so we left it.
When I returned to my tent I found a visiting card on my table, bearing
the name and title, "Hanna Khabbāz, the preacher of the Protestant
Church at Ḥomṣ." Beneath this inscription was written the following
message: "Madam,--My wife and I are ready to do any service you need in
the name of Christ and the humanity. We should like to visit you if you
kindly accept us. I am, your obedient servant." I sent word that I would
kindly accept them if they would come at once, and they appeared before
sundown, two friendly people, very eager to offer me hospitality, of
which I had no opportunity to take advantage. I regretted it the less
because the Pasha and the Ḳāḍi had been good enough company for one
afternoon, and when I look back on the tumultuous visit to Ḥomṣ, the
hour spent with those two courteous and well-bred Mohammadans stands out
like the memory of a sheltered spot in a gale of wind.