We left next day at an early hour, but the people of Ḥomṣ got up to
see us off. Nothing save the determination to afford them no more
amusement than I could help kept me outwardly calm. In a quarter of an
hour we had passed beyond the Tripoli Gate, and the Roman brickwork, and
beyond the range of vision of the furthest sighted of the little boys;
the peaceful beauty of the morning invaded our senses, and I turned to
make the acquaintance of the companions with whom the Ḳāimaḳām had
provided me. They were four in number, and two of them were free and two
were bound. The first two were Kurdish zaptiehs; one was charged to show
me the way to Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn, and the other to guard over the
second pair of my fellow travellers, a couple of prisoners who had been
on the Ḳāimaḳām's hands for some days past, waiting until he could
find a suitable opportunity, such as that afforded by my journey, to
send them to the fortress in the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh, and so to the
great prison at Tripoli. They were clad, poor wretches, in ragged cotton
clothes and handcuffed together. As they trudged along bravely through
dust and mud, I proffered a word of sympathy, to which they replied that
they hoped God might prolong my life, but as for them it was the will of
their lord the Sultan that they should tramp in chains. One of the Kurds
interrupted with the explanation:
"They are deserters from the Sultan's army: may God reward them
according to their deeds! Moreover, they are Ismailis from Selemiyyeh,
and they worship a strange god who lives in the land of Hind. And some
say she is a woman, and for that reason they worship her. And every year
she sends an embassy to this country to collect the money that is due to
her, and even the poorest of the Ismailis provide her with a few
piastres. And yet they declare that they are Muslims: who knows what
they believe? Speak, oh Khuḍr, and tell us what you believe."
The prisoner thus addressed replied doggedly:
"We are Muslims;" but the soldier's words had given me a clue which I
was able to follow up when the luckless pair crept close to my horse's
side and whispered:
"Lady, lady! have you journeyed to the land of Hind?"
"Yes," said I.
"May God make it Yes upon you! Have you heard there of a great king
called the King Muḥammad?"
Again I was able to reply in the affirmative, and even to add that I
myself knew him and had conversed with him, for their King Muḥammad
was no other than my fellow subject the Agha Khān, and the religion of
the prisoners boasted a respectable antiquity, having been founded by
him whom we call the Old Man of the Mountain. They were the humble
representatives of the dreaded (and probably maligned) sect of the
Assassins.
Khuḍr caught my stirrup with his free hand and said eagerly:
"Is he not a great king?"
But I answered cautiously, for though the Agha Khān is something of a
great king in the modern sense, that is to say he is exceedingly
wealthy, it would have been difficult to explain to his disciples
exactly what the polished, well-bred man of the world was like whom I
had last met at a London dinner party, and who had given me the
Marlborough Club as his address. Not that these things, if they could
have understood them, would have shocked them; the Agha Khān is a law
unto himself, and if he chose to indulge in far greater excesses than
dinner parties his actions would be sanctified by the mere fact that
they were his. His father used to give letters of introduction to the
Angel Gabriel, in order to secure for his clients a good place in
Paradise; the son, with his English education and his familiarity with
European thought, has refrained from exercising this privilege, though
he has not ceased to hold, in the opinion of his followers, the keys of
heaven. They show their belief in him in a substantial manner by
subscribing, in various parts of Asia and Africa, a handsome income that
runs yearly into tens of thousands.
[Illustration 97: COFFEE BY THE ROAD-SIDE]
We rode for about an hour through gardens, meeting bands of low-caste
Arabs jogging into Ḥomṣ on their donkeys with milk and curds for the
market, and then we came to the plain beyond the Orontes, which is the
home of these Arabs. The plain had a familiar air; it was not dissimilar
from the country in the Druze hills, and like the Ḥaurān it was
covered with black volcanic stones. It is a vast quarry for the city of
Ḥomṣ. All the stones that are used for building are brought from
beyond the river packed on donkeys. They are worth a metalīk in the
town (now a metalīk is a coin too small to possess a European
counterpart), and a man with a good team can earn up to ten piastres a
day. In the Spring the only Arabs who camp in the Wa'r Ḥomṣ, the
Stony Plain of Ḥomṣ, are a despised race that caters for the needs
of the city, for, mark you, no Bedouin who respected himself would earn
a livelihood by selling curds or by any other means except battle; but
in the summer the big tribes such as the Ḥaseneh settle there for a
few months, and after the harvest certain of the 'Anazeh who feed their
camels upon the stubble. These great folk are much like salmon in a
trout stream coming in from the open sea and bullying the lesser fry.
When we passed in March there was a good deal of standing water in the
plain, and grass and flowers grew between the stones; and as we
journeyed westward, over ground that rose gradually towards the hills,
we came into country that was like an exquisite garden of flowers. Pale
blue hyacinths lifted their clustered bells above the tufa blocks,
irises and red anemones and a yellow hawksweed and a beautiful purple
hellebore dotted the grass--all the bounties of the Syrian Spring were
scattered on that day beneath our happy feet. For the first five hours
we followed the carriage road that leads to Tripoli, passing the khān
that marks the final stage before the town of Ḥomṣ, and the boundary
line between the vilayets of Damascus and of Beyrout; then we turned to
the right and entered a bridle-path that lay over a land of rolling
grass, partly cultivated and fuller of flowers than the edges of the
road had been. The anemones were of every shade of white and purple,
small blue irises clustered by the path and yellow crocuses by the banks
of the stream. In the eyes of one who had recently crossed southern
Syria the grass was even more admirable than the flowers. The highest
summits of the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh are clad with a verdure that no
fertile slope in Samaria or Judæa, can boast. The path mounted a little
ridge and dropped down to a Kurdish village, half Arab tent and half
mud-built wall. The inhabitants must have been long in Syria, for they
had forgotten their own tongue and spoke nothing but Arabic, though,
like the two zaptiehs, they spoke with the clipped accent of the Kurd.
Beyond the village a plain some three miles wide, the Bḳei'a,
stretched to the foot of the steep buttress of the Noṣairiyyeh hills,
and from the very top of the mountain frowned the great crusader
fortress towards which we were going. The sun shone on its turrets, but
a black storm was creeping up behind it; we could hear the thunder
rumbling in the hills, and jagged lightning shot through the clouds
behind the castle. The direct road across the Bḳei'a was impassable
for horsemen, owing to the flooded swamps, which were deep enough, said
the villagers, to engulf a mule and its load; we turned therefore
reluctantly to the right, and edged round the foot of the hills. Before
we had gone far we met two riders sent out to welcome us by the
Ḳāimaḳām of Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn, and as they joined us the storm
broke and enveloped us in sheets of rain. Splashing through the mud and
drenched with rain we reached the foot of the hills at five o'clock, and
here I left my caravan to follow the road, and with one of the
Ḳāimaḳām's horsemen climbed by a steep and narrow bridle-path
straight up to the hill top. And so at sunset we came to the Dark Tower
and rode through a splendid Arab gateway into a vaulted corridor, built
over a winding stair. It was almost night within; a few loopholes let in
the grey dusk from outside and provided the veriest apology for
daylight. At intervals we passed doorways leading into cavernous
blackness. The stone steps were shallow and wide but much broken; the
horses stumbled and clanked over them as we rode up and up, turned corner
after corner, and passed under gateway after gateway until the last
brought us out into the courtyard in the centre of the keep. I felt as
though I were riding with some knight of the Fairy Queen, and half
expected to see written over the arches: "Be bold!" "Be bold!" "Be not
too bold!" But there was no magician in the heart of the castle--nothing
but a crowd of villagers craning their necks to see us, and the
Ḳāimaḳām, smiling and friendly, announcing that he could not think
of letting me pitch a camp on such a wet and stormy night, and had
prepared a lodging for me in the tower.
[Illustration 98: ḲAL'AT EL ḤUṢN]
The Ḳāimaḳām of Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn is a distinguished man of
letters. His name is 'Abd ul Ḥamid Beg Rāfi'a Zādeh, and his family
comes from Egypt, where many of his cousins are still to be found. He
lives in the topmost tower of the keep, where he had made ready a guest
chamber commodiously fitted with carpets and a divan, a four-post
bedstead and a mahogany wardrobe with looking-glass doors of which the
glass had been so splintered in the journey a camel back from Tripoli
that it was impossible to see the smallest corner of one's face in it. I
was wet through, but the obligations of good society had to be
fulfilled, and they demanded that we should sit down on the divan and
exchange polite phrases while I drank glasses of weak tea. My host was
preoccupied and evidently disinclined for animated conversation--for a
good reason, as I subsequently found--but on my replying to his first
greeting he heaved a sigh of relief, and exclaimed:
"Praise be to God! your Excellency speaks Arabic. We had feared that we
should not be able to talk with you, and I had already invited a Syrian
lady who knows the English tongue to spend the evening for the purpose
of interpreting."
[Illustration 99: ḲAL'AT EL ḤUṢN, INTERIOR OF THE CASTLE]
We kept up a disjointed chat for an hour while the damp soaked more and
more completely through my coat and skirts and it was not until long
after the mules had arrived and their packs had been unloaded that the
Ḳāimaḳām rose and took his departure, saying that he would leave
me to rest. We had, in fact, made a long day's march; it had taken the
muleteers eleven hours to reach Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn. I had barely had
time to change my wet clothes before a discreet knocking at the inner
door announced the presence of the womenfolk. I opened at once and
admitted a maid servant, and the wife of the Ḳāimaḳām, and a
genteel lady who greeted me in English of the most florid kind. This
last was the Sitt Ferīdeh, the Christian wife of the Government land
surveyor, who is also a Christian. She had been educated at a missionary
school in Tripoli, and I was not long left in ignorance of the fact that
she was an authoress, and that her greatest work was the translation of
the "Last Days of Pompeii" into Arabic. The Ḳāimaḳām's wife was a
young woman with apple cheeks, who would have been pretty if she had not
been inordinately fat. She was his second wife; he had married her only
a month or two before, on the death of his first, the mother of his
children. She was so shy that it was some time before she ventured to
open her lips in my presence, but the Sitt Ferīdeh carried off the
situation with a gushing volubility, both in English and in Arabic, and
a cheerful air of emphasising by her correct demeanour the fervour of
her Christianity. She was a pleasant and intelligent woman, and I
enjoyed her company considerably more than that of my hostess. The first
word that the Khānum ventured to utter was, however, a welcome one, for
she asked when I would please to dine. I replied with enthusiasm, that
no hour could be too early for me, and we crossed a muddy courtyard and
entered a room in which a bountiful meal had been spread out. Here we
were joined by an ancient dame who was presented to me as "a friend who
has come to gaze upon your Excellency," and we all sat down to the best
of dinners eaten by one at least of the party with the best of sauces.
A thick soup and four enormous dishes of meat and vegetables, topped by
a rice pudding, composed the repast. When dinner was over we returned to
my room, a brazier full of charcoal was brought in, together with
hubble-bubbles for the ladies, and we settled ourselves to an evening's
talk. The old woman refused to sit on the divan, saying that she was
more accustomed to the floor, and disposed herself neatly as close as
possible to the brazier, holding out her wrinkled hands over the glowing
coals. She was clad in black, and her head was covered by a thick white
linen cloth, which was bound closely above her brow and enveloped her
chin, giving her the air of some aged prioress of a religious order.
Outside the turret room the wind howled; the rain beat against the
single window, and the talk turned naturally to deeds of horror and such
whispered tales of murder and death as must have startled the shadows in
that dim room for many and many a century. A terrible domestic tragedy
had fallen upon the Ḳāimaḳām ten days before: his son had been
shot by a schoolfellow at Tripoli in some childish quarrel--the women
seemed to think it not unusual that a boy's sudden anger should have
such consequences. The Ḳāimaḳām had been summoned by telegraph he
had ridden down the long mountain road with fear clutching at his heart,
only to find the boy dead, and his sorrow had been almost more than he
could bear. So said the Sitt Ferīdeh.
The ancient crone rocked herself over the brazier and muttered:
"Murder is like the drinking of milk here! God! there is no other but
Thou."
A fresh gust of wind swept round the tower, and the Christian woman took
up the tale.
"This Khānum," said she, nodding her head towards the figure by the
brazier, "knows also what it is to weep. Her son was but now murdered in
the mountains by a robber who slew him with his knife. They found his
body lying stripped by the path."
The mother bent anew over the charcoal, and the glow flushed her worn
old face.
"Murder is like the spilling of water!" she groaned. "Oh Merciful!"
It was late when the women left me. One of them offered to pass the
night in my room, but I refused politely and firmly.
[Illustration 100: WINDOWS OF THE BANQUET HALL]
Next day I was wakened by thunder and by hailstones rattling against my
shutters. There was nothing for it but to spend another twenty-four
hours under the Ḳāimaḳām's roof and be thankful that we had a roof
to spend them under. I explored the castle from end to end, with immense
satisfaction to the eternal child that lives in the soul of all of us
and takes more delight in the dungeons and battlements of a fortress
than in any other relic of antiquity. Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn is so large
that half the population of the village is lodged in the vaulted
substructures of the keep, while the garrison occupies the upper towers.
The walls of the keep rise from a moat inside the first line of
fortifications, the line through which we had passed the night before by
the vaulted gallery. The butcher of the castle lodged by the gateway of
the inner wall; every morning he killed a sheep on the threshold, and
those who went out stepped across a pool of blood as though some
barbaric sacrifice were performed daily at the gate. The keep contained
a chapel, now converted into a mosque and a banquet hall with Gothic
windows, the tracery of which was blocked with stones to guard those who
dwelt within against the cold. The tower in which I was lodged farmed
part of the highest of the defences and rose above three stories of
vaults. A narrow passage from it along the top of the wall led into a
great and splendid chamber, beyond which was a round tower containing a
circular room roofed by a fourfold vault, and lighted by pointed windows
with rosettes and mouldings round the arches. The castle is the "Kerak
of the Knights" of Crusader chronicles. It belonged to the Hospitallers,
and the Grand Master of the Order made it his residence. The Egyptian
Sultan Malek ed Dāher took it from them, restored it, and set his
exultant inscription over the main gate. It is one of the most perfect
of the many fortresses which bear witness to the strange jumble of noble
ardour, fanaticism, ambition and crime that combined to make the history
of the Crusades--a page whereon the Christian nations cannot look
without a blush nor read without the unwilling pity exacted by vain
courage. For to die in a worthless cause is the last extremity of
defeat. Kerak is closely related to the military architecture of
southern France, yet it bears traces of an Oriental influence from which
the great Orders were not immune, though the Templars succumbed to it
more completely than the Hospitallers. Like the contemporary Arab
fortresses the walls increased in thickness towards the foot to form a
sloping bastion of solid masonry which protected them against the
attacks of sappers, but the rounded towers with their great projection
from the line of the wall were wholly French in character. The Crusaders
are said to have found a castle on the hill top and taken it from the
Moslims, but I saw no traces of earlier work than theirs. Parts of the
present structure are later than their time, as, for instance, a big
building by the inner moat, on the walls of which were carved lions not
unlike the Seljuk lion.
[Illustration 101: ḲAL'AT EL ḤUṢN, WALLS OF THE
INNER ENCEINTE]
After lunch I waded down the muddy hill to the village and called on the
Sitt Ferīdeh and her husband. There were another pair of Christians
present, the man being the Sāḥib es Sandūḳ, which I take to be a
kind of treasurer. The two men talked of the condition of the Syrian
poor. No one, said the land surveyor, died of hunger, and he proceeded
to draw up the yearly budget of the average peasant. The poorest of the
fellaḥīn may earn from 1000 to 1500 piastres a year (£7 to £11),
but he has no need of any money except to pay the capitation tax and to
buy himself a substitute for military service. Meat is an unknown
luxury; a cask of semen (rancid butter) costs 8_s._ or 10_s._ at most;
it helps to make the burghul and other grains palatable, and it lasts
several months. If the grain and the semen run low the peasant has only
to go out into the mountains or into the open country, which is no man's
land, and gather edible leaves or grub up roots. He builds his house
with his own hands, there are no fittings or furniture in it, and the
ground on which it stands costs nothing. As for clothing, what does he
need? a couple of linen shirts, a woollen cloak every two or three
years, and a cotton kerchief for the head. The old and the sick are
seldom left uncared for; their families look after them if they have
families, and if they are without relations they can always make a
livelihood by begging, for no one in the East refuses to give something
when he is asked, though the poor can seldom give money. Few of the
fellaḥīn own land of their own; they work for hire on the estates of
richer men. The chief landowners round Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn are the
family of the Dānadisheh, who come from Tripoli. Until quite recently
the government did not occupy the castle; it belongs to the family of
the Zā'bieh, who have owned it for two hundred years, and still live in
some rooms on the outer wall. The Treasurer broke in here and said that
even the Moslem population hated the Ottoman government, and would
infinitely rather be ruled by a foreigner, what though he were an
infidel--preferably by the English, because the prosperity of Egypt had
made so deep an impression on Syrian minds.
That evening the Ḳāimaḳām sent me a message asking whether I would
choose to dine alone or whether I would honour him and his wife, and I
begged to be allowed to take the latter alternative. In spite of a
desire, touchingly evident, to be a good host, he was sad and silent
during the earlier stages of the dinner, until we hit upon a subject
that drew him from the memory of his sorrow. The mighty dead came out to
help us with words upon their lips that have lifted the failing hearts
of generations of mankind. The Ḳāimaḳām was well acquainted with
Arabic literature; he knew the poets of the Ignorance by heart, and when
he found that I had a scanty knowledge of them and a great love for them
he quoted couplet after couplet. But his own tastes lay with more modern
singers; the tenth-century Mutanabbi was evidently one of his favourite
authors. Some of the old fire still smoulders in Mutanabbi's verse; it
burnt again as the Ḳāimaḳām recited the famous ode in which the
poet puts from him the joys of youth:
"Oft have I longed for age to still the tumult in my brain.
And why should I repine when my prayer is fulfilled?
We have renounced desire save for the spear-points,
Neither do we dally, except with them.
The most exalted seat in the world is the saddle of a swift horse,
And the best companion for all time is a book."
"Your Excellency," concluded the Ḳāimaḳām, "must surely hold that
couplet in esteem."
When we returned to the guest-chamber he asked whether he should not
read his latest poem, composed at the request of the students of the
American College at Beyrout (the most renowned institution of its kind
in Syria) to commemorate an anniversary they were about to celebrate. He
produced first the students' letter, which was couched in flattering
terms, and then his sheets of manuscript, and declaimed his verses with
the fine emphasis of the Oriental reciter, pausing from time to time to
explain the full meaning of a metaphor or to give an illustration to
some difficult couplet. His subject was the praise of learning, but he
ended inconsequently with a fulsome panegyric on the Sultan, a passage
of which he was immensely proud. As far as I could judge it was not very
great poetry, but what of that? There is no solace in misfortune like
authorship, and for a short hour the Ḳāimaḳām forgot his grief and
entered into regions where there is neither death nor lamentation. I
offered him sympathy and praise at suitable points and could have
laughed to find myself talking the same agreeable rubbish in Arabic that
we all talk so often in English. I might have been sitting in a London
drawing-room, instead of between the bare walls of a Crusader tower, and
the world is after all made of the one stuff throughout.
[Illustration 102: FELLAḤĪN ARABS]
It was still raining on the following morning and I had dressed and
breakfasted in the lowest spirits when of a sudden some one waved a
magic wand, the clouds were cleared away, and we set off at half-past
seven in exquisite sunshine. At the bottom of the steep hill on which
the castle stands there lies in an olive grove a Greek monastery. When I
reached it I got off my horse and went in, as was meet, to salute the
Abbot, and, behold! he was an old acquaintance whom I had met at the
monastery of Ma'alūla five years earlier on my return from Palmyra.
There were great rejoicings at this fortunate coincidence, and much jam
and water and coffee were consumed in the celebration of it. The
monastery has been rebuilt, except for a crypt-like chapel, which they
say is 1200 years old. The vault is supported by two pairs of marble
columns, broken off below the capital and returned into the wall, a
scheme more curious than attractive. The capitals are in the form of
lily heads of a Byzantine type. By the altar screen, a good piece of
modern wood carving, there are some very beautiful Persian tiles. In the
western wall of the monastery I was shown a door so narrow between the
jambs that it is scarcely possible to squeeze through them, impossible,
said the monks, for any one except he be pure of heart. I did not risk
my reputation by attempting to force the passage.
We rode on through shallow wooded valleys full of flowers; the fruit
trees were coming into blossom and the honeysuckle into leaf, and by a
tiny graveyard under some budding oaks we stopped to lunch. Before us
lay the crucial point of our day's march. We could see the keep of
Ṣāfiṭa Castle on the opposite hill, but there was a swollen river
between, the bridge had been swept away, and report said that the ford
was impassable. When we reached the banks of the Abrash we saw the river
rushing down its wide channel, an unbroken body of swirling water
through which no loaded mule could pass. We rode near two hours down
stream, and were barely in time with the second bridge, the Jisr el
Wād, which was in the last stage of decrepitude, the middle arch just
holding together. The hills on the opposite bank were covered with a low
scrub, out of which the lovely iris stylosa lifted its blue petals, and
the scene was further enlivened by a continuous procession of
white-robed Noṣairis making their way down to the bridge. I had a
Kurdish zaptieh with me, 'Abd ul Mejīd, who knew the mountains well,
and all the inhabitants of them. Though he was a Mohammedan he had no
feeling against the Noṣairis, whom he had always found to be a
harmless folk, and every one greeted him with a friendly salutation as
we passed. He told me that the white-robed companies were going to the
funeral feast of a great sheikh much renowned for piety, who had died a
week ago. The feast on such occasions is held two days after the
funeral, and when the guests have eaten of the meats each man according
to his ability pays tribute to the family of the dead, the sums varying
from one lira upwards to five or six. To have a reputation for holiness
in the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh is as good as a life insurance with us.
Owing to our long circuit we did not reach Ṣāfiṭa till four. I
refused the hospitality of the Commandant, and pitched my tents on a
ridge outside the village. The keep which we had seen from afar is all
that remains of the White Castle of the Knights Templars. It stands on
the top of the hill with the village clustered at its foot, and from its
summit are visible the Mediterranean and the northern parts of the
Phœnician coast. I saw a Phoenician coin among the antiquities offered
me for sale, and the small bronze figure of a Phœnician
god--Ṣāfiṭa was probably an inland stronghold of the merchant
nation. The keep was a skilful architectural surprise. It contained, not
the vaulted hall or refectory that might have been expected, but a great
church which had thus occupied the very heart of the fortress. A service
was being held when we entered and all the people were at their prayers
in a red glow of sunset that came through the western doors. The
inhabitants of Ṣāfiṭa are most of them Christians, and many speak
English with a strong American accent picked up while they were making
their small fortunes in the States. Besides the accent, they had
acquired a familiarity of address that did not please me, and lost some
of the good manners to which they had been born. 'Abd ul Mejīd, the
smart non-commissioned officer, accompanied me through the town, saved
me from the clutches of the Americanised Christians, twirled his fierce
military moustaches at the little boys who thought to ran after us, and
followed their retreat with extracts from the finest vocabulary of
objurgation that I have been privileged to hear.
Late in the evening two visitors were announced, who turned out to be
the Ẓābit (Commandant) and another official sent by the
Ḳāimaḳām of Drekish to welcome me and bring me down to his
village. We three rode off together in the early morning with a couple
of soldiers behind us, by a winding path through the hills, and after
two hours we came to a valley full of olive groves, with the village of
Drekish on the slopes above them. At the first clump of olive-trees we
found three worthies in frock coats and tarbushes waiting to receive us;
they mounted their horses when we approached and fell into the
procession, which was further swelled as we ascended the village street
by other notables on horseback, till it reached the sum total of
thirteen. The Ḳāimaḳām met us at the door of his house,
frock-coated and ceremonious, and led me into his audience room where we
drank coffee. By this time the company consisted of some thirty persons
of importance. When the official reception was over my host took me into
his private house and introduced me to his wife, a charming Damascene
lady, and we had a short conversation, during which I made his better
acquaintance. Riẓa Beg el 'Ābid owes his present position to the fact
that he is cousin to 'Izzet Pasha, for there is not one of that great
man's family but he is at least Ḳāmaiḳam. Riẓa Beg might have
climbed the official ladder unaided; he is a man of exceptionally
pleasant manners, amply endowed with the acute intelligence of the
Syrian. The family to which he and 'Izzet belong is of Arab origin. The
members of it claim to be descended from the noble tribe of the Muwāli,
who were kin to Harūn er Rashīd, and when you meet 'Izzet Pasha it is
as well to congratulate him on his relationship with that Khalif, though
he knows, and he knows also that you know, that the Muwāli repudiate
his claims with scorn and count him among the descendants of their
slaves, as his name 'Ābid (slave), may show. Slaves or freemen, the
members of the 'Ābid house have climbed so cleverly that they have set
their feet upon the neck of Turkey, and will remain in that precarious
position until 'Izzet falls from favour. Riẓa Beg pulled a grave face
when I alluded to his high connection, and observed that power such as
that enjoyed by his family was a serious matter, and how gladly would he
retire into a less prominent position than that of Ḳāimaḳām! Who
knew but that the Pasha too would not wish to exchange the pleasures of
Constantinople for a humbler and a safer sphere--a supposition that I
can readily believe to be well grounded, since 'Izzet, if rumour speaks
the truth, has got all that a man can reasonably expect from the years
during which he has enjoyed the royal condescension. I assured the
Ḳāimaḳām that I should make a point of paying my respects to the
Pasha when I reached Constantinople, a project that I ultimately carried
out with such success that I may now reckon myself, on 'Izzet's own
authority, as one of those who will enjoy his life-long friendship.
By this time lunch was ready, and the Khānum having retired, the other
guests were admitted to the number of four, the Ẓābit, the Ḳāḍi
and two others. It was a copious, an excellent and an entertaining meal.
The conversation flowed merrily round the table, prompted and encouraged
by the Ḳāimaḳām, who handled one subject after the other with the
polished ease of a man of the world. As he talked I had reason to
observe once more how fine and subtle a tongue is modern Syrian Arabic
when used by a man of education. The Ḳāḍi's speech was hampered by
his having a reputation for learning to uphold, which obliged him to
confine himself to the dead language of the Ḳur'ān. As I took my
leave the Ḳāimaḳām explained that for that night I was still to be
his guest. He had learnt, said he, that I wished to camp at the ruined
temple of Ḥuṣn es Suleimān, and had despatched my caravan thither
under the escort of a zaptieh, and sent up servants and provisions,
together with one of his cousins ta see to my entertainment. I was to
take the Ẓābit with me, and Rā'ib Effendi el Ḥelu, another of the
luncheon party, and he hoped that I should be satisfied. I thanked him
profusely for his kindness, and declared that I should have known his
Arab birth by his generous hospitality.
Our path mounted to the top of the Noṣairiyyeh hills and followed
along the crests, a rocky and beautiful track. The hills were extremely
steep, and bare of all but grass and flowers except that here and there,
on the highest summits, there was a group of big oaks with a white-domed
Noṣairi mazār shining through their bare boughs. The Noṣairis have
neither mosque nor church, but on every mountain top they build a shrine
that marks a burial-ground. These high-throned dead, though they have
left the world of men, have not ceased from their good offices, for they
are the protectors of the trees rooted among their bones, trees which,
alone among their kind, are allowed to grow untouched.
Ḥuṣn es Suleimān lies at the head of a valley high up in the
mountains. A clear spring breaks from under its walls and flows found a
natural platform of green turf, on which we pitched our tents. The hills
rise in an amphitheatre behind the temple, the valley drops below it,
and the gods to whom it was dedicated enjoy in solitude the ruined
loveliness of their shrine. The walls round the temenos are overgrown
with ivy, and violets bloom in the crevices. Four doorways lead into the
court, in the centre of which stand the ruins of the temple, while a
little to the south of the cella are the foundations of an altar,
bearing in fine Greek letters a dedication that recounts how a centurion
called Decimus of the Flavian (?) Legion, with his two sons and his
daughter, raised an altar of brass to the god of Baitocaicē and placed
it upon a platform of masonry in the year 444. The date is of the
Seleucid era and corresponds to A.D. 132. It is regrettable that Decimus
did not see fit to mention the name of the god, which remains
undetermined in all the inscriptions. The northern gateway is a triple
door, lying opposite to a second rectangular enclosure, which contains a
small temple in antis at the south-east corner, and the apse of a
sanctuary in the northern wall. This last sheltered perhaps the statue
of the unknown god, for there are steps leading up to it and the bases
of columns on either side. As at Ba'albek, the Christians sanctified the
spot by the building of a church, which lay across the second enclosure
at right angles to the northern sanctuary. The masonry of the outer
walls of both courts is very massive, the stones being sometimes six or
eight feet long. The decoration is much more austere than that of
Ba'albek, but certain details so intimately recall the latter that I am
tempted to conjecture that the same architect may have been employed at
both places, and that it was he who cut on the under side of the
architraves of Baitocaicē the eagles and cherubs that he had used to
adorn the architrave of the Temple of Jupiter. The peasants say that
there are deep vaults below both temple and court. The site must be well
worthy of careful excavation, though no additional knowledge will
enhance the beauty of the great shrine in the hills.
[Illustration 103: THE TEMPLE AT ḤUṢN ES SULEIMĀN]
The Ḳāimaḳām had not fallen short of his word. Holocausts of sheep
and hens had been offered up for us, and after my friends and I had
feasted, the soldiers and the muleteers made merry in their turn. The
camp fires blazed brightly in the clear sharp mountain air, the sky was
alive with stars, the brook gurgled over the stones; and the rest was
silence, for Kurt was lost. Somewhere among the hills he had strayed
away, and he was gone never to return. I mourned his loss, but slept the
more peacefully for it ever after.
[Illustration 104: NORTH GATE, ḤUṢN ES SULEIMĀN]
All my friends and all the soldiers rode with us next day to the
frontier of the district of Drekish and there left us after having
hounded a reluctant Noṣairi out of his house at 'Ain esh Shems and
bidden him help the zaptieh who accompanied us to find the
extraordinarily rocky path to Masyād. After they had gone I summoned
Mikhāil and asked him what he had thought of our day's entertainment.
He gave the Arabic equivalent for a sniff and said:
"Doubtless your Excellency thinks that you were the guest of the
Ḳāimaḳām. I will tell you of whom you were the guest. You saw
those fellahin of the Noṣairiyyeh, the miserable ones, who sold you
antīcas at the ruins this morning? They were your hosts. Everything you
had was taken from them without return. They gathered the wood for the
fires, the hens were theirs, the eggs were theirs, the lambs were from
their flocks, and when you refused to take more saying, 'I have enough,'
the soldiers seized yet another lamb and carried it off with them. And
the only payment the fellahin received were the metalīks you gave them
for their old money. But if you will listen to me," added Mikhāil
inconsequently, "you shall travel through the land of Anatolia and never
take a quarter of a mejīdeh from your purse. From Ḳāimaḳām to
Ḳāimaḳām you shall go, and everywhere they shall offer you
hospitality--that sort does not look for payment, they wish your
Excellency to say a good word for them when you come to Constantinople.
You shall sleep in their houses, and eat at their tables, as it was when
I travelled with Sacks. . . ."
[Illustration 105: THE CITY GATE, MASYĀD]
But if I were to tell all that happened when Mikhāil travelled with
Mark Sykes I should never get to Masyād.
The day was rendered memorable by the exceptional difficulty of the
paths and by the beauty of the flowers. On the hill tops grew the alpine
cyclamen, crocuses, yellow, white and purple, and whole slopes of white
primroses; lower down, irises, narcissus, black and green orchids,
purple orchis and the blue many-petalled anemone in a boscage of myrtle.
When we reached the foot of the steepest slopes I sent the unfortunate
Noṣairi home with a tip, which was a great deal more than he expected
to get out of an adventure that had begun with a command from the
soldiery. At three we reached Masyād and camped at the foot of the
castle.
[Illustration 106: CAPITAL AT MASYĀD]
Now Masyād was a disappointment. There is indeed a great castle, but,
as far as I could judge, it is of Arab workmanship, and the walls round
the town are Arab also. A Roman road from Ḥamāh passes through
Masyād, and there must be traces of Roman settlement in the town, but I
saw none. I heard of a castle at Abu Kbesh on the top of the hills, but
it was said to be like Masyād, only smaller, and I did not go up to it.
The castle of Masyād has an outer wall and an inner keep reached by a
vaulted passage like that of Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn. The old keep is
almost destroyed, and has been replaced by jerry-built halls and
chambers erected by the Ismailis some hundreds of years ago when they
held the place, so I was told by an old man called the Emir Muṣṭafa
Milḥēm, who belonged to the sect and served me as guide. He also said
that his family had inhabited the castle for seven or eight hundred
years, but possibly he lied, though it is true that the Ismailis have
held it as long. Built into the outer gateways are certain capitals and
columns that must have been taken from Byzantine structures. There are
some old Arabic inscriptions inside the second gate which record the
names of the builders of that part of the fortifications, but they are
much broken. I was told afterwards that I ought to have visited a place
called Deir es Sleb, where there are two churches and a small castle. It
is not marked in the map, and I heard nothing of it until I had left it
far behind. I saw bits of the rasīf, the Roman road, as I travelled
next day to Ḥamāh. At the bridge over the river Sarut, four and a
half hours from Masyād, there is a curious mound faced to the very top
with a rough wall of huge stones. Mikhāil found a Roman coin in the
furrows of the field at the foot of it. From the river we had two and a
half hours of tedious travel that were much lightened by the presence of
a charming old Turk, a telegraph official, who joined us at the bridge
and told me his story as we rode.
"Effendim, the home of my family is near Sofia. Effendim, you know the
place? Māsha'llah, it is a pleasant land! Where I lived it was covered
with trees, fruit trees and pines in the mountains and rose gardens in
the plain. Effendim, many of us came here after the war with the
Muscovite for the reason that we would not dwell under any hand but that
of the Sultan, and many returned again after they had come. Effendim?
for what cause? They would not live in a country without trees; by God,
they could not endure it." Thus conversing we reached Ḥamāh.
[Illustration 107: CAPITAL AT MASYĀD]
[Illustration 108: A NA'OURA, ḤAMĀH]