THE LEFT-HAND LAND
The Arab geographer always faces towards the east. So the southernmost
portion of the Arabian peninsula is to him the _Yemen_ or “Right,” and
this northern district of ours is called _esh-Shâm_ or the “Left-hand
Land.” The name _Surîya_ or “Syria,” an ancient corruption of “Assyria,”
is also, however, frequently employed, especially by the Turks.
As this territory is not a modern political unit, its limits are
variously defined, both by natives and foreigners. The whole country
between Asia Minor and Egypt is often called Syria, and its inhabitants,
who have the same language and customs and are of practically the
same—very mixed—blood, are known as Syrians. But from the historical
viewpoint it is perhaps more exact to distinguish between Palestine and
Syria, and confine the latter name to the territory which lies to the
north of the Hebrew boundary-town of Dan.
Syria then, as we shall use the word, extends from the southern slopes of
Mount Hermon to the Bay of Alexandretta, a distance of about two hundred
and fifty miles. It is a long, narrow country. At the west is the
Mediterranean; at the east is the Syrian Desert; within these boundaries,
the width is never more than fifty miles.
The wealth and power of Syria have always been found in its southern
half—the country of Lebanon. Here the mountains are divided into two
parallel ranges by the long valley which the Greeks called “Hollow
Syria.” Between this valley and the Mediterranean is Lebanon; between the
valley and the desert is the twin range of Anti-Lebanon.[5] The western
mountains rise gradually toward their northern, end, where they attain an
elevation of over 11,000 feet. The eastern chain, however, reaches its
culmination in its southernmost peak, Mount Hermon, which is 9,000 feet
above the sea. On the coastal plain beside Lebanon lie the ancient cities
of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos and the modern ports of Beirut and Tripoli. On
a peninsula of fertility watered by the streams of Anti-Lebanon, Damascus
stands between the mountains and the desert. The rest of Syria is made up
of lofty summits, rocky gorges resounding with the tumult of cave-born
torrents, high wind-swept pasture lands and broad, fertile valleys
slanting up between the mountains.
The lovelorn Syrian does not sing dolefully of a sweetheart who “lies
over the ocean.” To him the typical barrier is not the sea. _Beni
ubenik ej-jebel_ runs the plaintive lament—“Between me and thee is
the mountain.” The country is more crowded with towering peaks than
Palestine or Greece, but it is more fertile than either. No other region
of equal size has such a variety of vegetable life; no other land is more
healthful; and to those of us who have lived in the shadow of Lebanon,
none is more beautiful.
Syria, as we have defined it, includes one entire _vilâyet_, or province,
of the Turkish Empire and parts of three others. Its extreme northern
portion is included in the great Vilayet of Aleppo, which stretches
far across the desert to Mesopotamia. Anti-Lebanon and most of Hollow
Syria lie within the Vilayet of _esh-Shâm_, or “Syria.” This important
province, whose capital is Damascus, takes in all the arable land east of
the Jordan as far as the southern end of the Dead Sea. The independent
_Mutesarrifîyet_, or sub-province, of Lebanon is practically co-extensive
with this range, but touches the Mediterranean only for a few miles and
has no seaport. Almost the entire coast belongs to the Vilayet of Beirut,
which reaches from Mount Akra, a hundred and fifty miles north of the
provincial capital, to within sight of the harbor of Jaffa and includes
nearly all of Palestine west of the Jordan River.
In the absence of any census, we can hardly do more than guess at the
population of Syria. It is probably above two million. The Turkish
residents are for the most part government officials, and there are
few Jews outside of Beirut and Damascus. The mass of the inhabitants
are descendants of the Syrians, or Arameans, of Biblical times; but the
native blood has been mixed with that of many other races. It is scarcely
correct to call these people “Arabs,” except in the sense that they are
an Arabic-speaking race. In countenance, as well as customs, they differ
considerably from their less civilized cousins who roam the neighboring
deserts.
The ecclesiastical bodies of Syria are numerous, jealous and extremely
fanatical. In striking contrast to the awkward reticence of the West
regarding religious matters, every Syrian not only counts himself an
adherent of the faith into which he was born, but he thrusts that fact
upon your attention and, on the slightest provocation, is ready to fight
for his belief. A man’s ancestors, descendants and home may be cursed
with all the wealth of Oriental vituperation, and he will probably accept
this as a mere emphatic conversational embellishment. But let the single
word _dinak!_ “thy religion!” be spoken with a curseful intonation to a
follower of a different faith, and the spirit of murder is let loose.
Islam is, of course, the official religion of the government; but
in the southern half of the country the majority of the inhabitants
are Christians. The most powerful church is the Greek Orthodox; next
in importance come the Maronites and Greek Catholics, who render
allegiance to the Pope of Rome. Nearly a dozen other sects, exclusive
of the Protestants, are actively working and hating and scheming in
Syria. Many of the members of these Oriental churches are sincere and
devout; but, on the whole, the organized Christianity of Syria, like that
of neighboring Palestine,[6] has been so inextricably entangled with
political ambitions, sectarian jealousy and civil warfare that its moral
and religious teachings are in danger of being completely neglected.
Syrian Mohammedanism is also divided against itself, though not to such
a hazardous degree as is Syrian Christianity. Many villages in northern
Lebanon are occupied by adherents of the schismatic Shiite sect. These
Metawileh, as they are called, bear an unenviable reputation for their
ignorance, dishonesty, brutality and, what is very unusual in Syria,
their lack of hospitality. They will refuse accommodations to a traveler
and are accustomed to break the earthenware drinking-jug which has been
defiled by the touch of a stranger. Still farther north there survive
a few settlements of the Ismailians, who during the Middle Ages were
known as the _Assassins_—literally, “hashish-smokers.” Their character
is sufficiently indicated by the fact that the only thing they gave the
Western world was the word “assassin.”
In the mountains which bear their name are a hundred thousand Nusairiyeh,
who migrated hither many centuries ago from Mesopotamia and still hold
to a strange, mystic nature-worship. Traces of the vile phallic cults of
ancient Syria are also found among the wilder regions of the north.
The sixty thousand Druses of central and southern Lebanon are frequently
confused with the Moslems by careless writers; on the other hand they are
sometimes referred to as a Christian sect. As a matter of fact, they are
neither. Although this faith originated among followers of Islam, the
early Druses suffered many persecutions at the hands of the Moslems, who
classed them as “infidels,” while their feuds with the Christian populace
of Lebanon have led to some of the most cruel and bitter struggles of
modern times.
In the eleventh century an insane ruler of Egypt named Hakim Biamrillah
declared himself to be the _Imâm_, or incarnation of the Deity, and
his preposterous claims found an enthusiastic prophet in a Persian
resident of Cairo called ed-Durazy, from whom is derived the familiar
name “Druse.” The adherents of this sect, however, call themselves
_Muwahhidîn_, or “Unitarians.” Such was the wrath of the Egyptian Moslems
at ed-Durazy’s preaching that he was forced to flee to the mountains of
Syria, where the new faith spread rapidly among the inhabitants of Hermon
and southern Lebanon. Shortly after ed-Durazy’s flight the caliph Hakim
mysteriously disappeared. Doubtless he was assassinated; but the Druses
believe that he is miraculously concealed until the appointed day of his
final revelation as the victorious _Mahdi_.
The peculiar doctrines of the Druses were systematized by a companion
of the prophet’s exile, Hamzeh ibn Ahmed, since known as the “Guide.”
The tenets of this faith are still, however, only partly understood
by Western scholars; for its most important beliefs are kept in great
secrecy, none of the women and only a very small proportion of the men
are initiated into its esoteric teachings, converts to other faiths are
practically unknown, and the Druses hold that, in conversation with a
Moslem or a Christian, it is permissible for them to pretend acquiescence
in the other’s statements.
Their extreme emphasis on the unity of God, whom they divest of
all attributes, goes even beyond that of Mohammedanism. Yet this
is accompanied by a belief in the divine self-revelation through a
succession of incarnations which began with Adam and ended with the
Caliph Hakim and included Jesus and Mohammed. They also hold the
doctrine of transmigration of souls and think that many of them will be
reincarnated in the heart of China, where, according to their strange
tradition, there are multitudes of Chinese Druses. They do not practice
the Moslem virtues of prayer, fasting, formal almsgiving and the
pilgrimage to Mecca; but the few initiates rigorously abstain from both
wine and tobacco.
Probably all that most Druses know about their religion is that they are
Druses. Yet their feeling of separation from the other inhabitants of the
country, which amounts to a sense of racial difference, has made them the
most proud and independent—not to say ungovernable—class in the Turkish
Empire. The faces of the Druse men are the handsomest and haughtiest
in Syria, and their forms are tall and stalwart. They are a brave,
intellectual, courteous, hospitable people; they treat their wives far
better than do the Moslems, and in time of war they never massacre women.
Some of the Druse emirs whom I have met are refined, correctly dressed,
well-educated gentlemen who are as much at home on the boulevards of
Paris as they are among their own mountains. Yet anything more than a
superficial acquaintance with them is prevented by the suave hypocrisy
which their religion inculcates; their otherwise admirable courage is
marred by heartless cruelty and a relentless carrying out of the ancient
law of blood for blood; and the splendid organization with which they
meet the aggressions of an alien enemy is weakened by their interminable
intertribal feuds. The history of the great Druse families of Lebanon is
stained by many an awful record of treachery, fratricide and massacre.
In the summer of 1860, twenty years of intermittent altercations between
the Druses and Maronites culminated in an outbreak of fearful religious
warfare. The Druses were perhaps no braver than their opponents; but they
showed better discipline, had more able leaders and, from the beginning,
were encouraged by the support of the Moslem government. So the war
soon developed into a mere succession of massacres of the unfortunate
Maronites. Turkish officials connived at these outrages, and Turkish
regiments, presumably sent to restore order in the troubled districts,
either disarmed the Christians and then turned them over to be dealt
with by their enemies, or else themselves added to the horrors of the
slaughter by killing even the women whom the Druses had spared. Maronite
monasteries were sacked and their monks put to death with barbarous
tortures, a hundred villages were burned, and multitudes of unarmed
peasants who had sought protection in the courtyards of government
buildings were allowed to be shot down by their relentless enemies. It
will never be known just how many Christians were slain during that awful
summer. Seven thousand are said to have perished in Damascus alone; and
some conception of the vast number of survivors who were left homeless
and destitute is gained when we learn that the Anglo-American Relief
Committee of Beirut had upon its lists the names of twenty-seven thousand
refugees.
The Christian nations were shocked into activity by the terrible tidings
from Syria. Fifty European warships soon reached the harbor of Beirut,
and an army of ten thousand French soldiers was landed. Just in time
to avoid foreign intervention, however, the sultan sent two of his own
regiments from Constantinople to quell the disturbance, and shortly
afterwards the grand vizier himself came to Syria with additional troops.
These soldiers were but a handful in comparison with the Druse army or
even the Turkish regiments which had been assisting in the slaughter;
but when the mysterious, unwritten messages go forth from Constantinople
commanding that a massacre shall be stopped—or shall be begun—they are
understood at once in the most inaccessible mountain villages of the
empire.
As soon as order was restored, the conscription, from which holy Damascus
had been exempt since the days of Mohammed, was strictly enforced as a
punitive measure; and over twenty thousand Damascene Moslems were sent
in chains to the coast, whence they were transported to regiments in
distant provinces of Turkey. Furthermore, a levy of a million dollars
was laid upon the city, and its governor and a hundred prominent Moslem
residents were hanged for their share in the massacres, as were also a
few officials in other parts of the country. Not a single Druse, however,
was executed for partaking in the awful slaughter.
The European powers now insisted that there should never be another
Moslem ruler over the Christians of Lebanon, and such pressure was
brought to bear upon the Turkish government that the district was
made a practically independent province. Its governor must be, like
the Maronites, a Latin Christian, although, in justice to the Druse
population, he may not be an inhabitant of Syria. His appointment
is subject to the approval of the six great powers and he cannot be
removed without the consent of their ambassadors at Constantinople.
The province pays no taxes to the imperial government, nor may Turkish
troops be stationed within its boundaries except under certain stringent
restrictions. Lebanon has its own army of volunteer militia; and the
free, independent bearing of these mountaineers is in striking contrast
to that of the underpaid, underfed and poorly clothed conscripts of the
regular army.
The rulers appointed under the new régime have not all been equally
capable and honest. Some have understood the language of _bakhsheesh_ as
well as their Turkish predecessors. The commercial growth of the province
has also been hampered by the lack of a seaport. Yet since 1861 the
mountaineers, Druses and Maronites alike, have enjoyed an unprecedented
quiet and an increasing material prosperity. The old feudal wars have
ceased, the tyrannical political power of the Maronite hierarchy is
greatly diminished, education is rapidly advancing and the valuation of
property in the Lebanon district has greatly advanced. In the words of
Lord Dufferin, who was a member of the international commission which
framed the new plan of government, “until the present day the Lebanon
has been the most peaceful, the most contented and the most prosperous
province of the Ottoman Dominion.”
[Illustration: A guard of Lebanon soldiers]
[Illustration: The village of Deir El-Kamr, where no Druse dare dwell]
Yet the cruel past has not entirely sunk into oblivion. The Maronite
village of Deir el-Kamr, for instance, has still one mosque; but no
Moslem dwells there, nor dare a Druse pass through this neighborhood
where the massacre of unarmed Christians lasted until more than two
thousand corpses lay within the enclosure of the government-house. On
the other hand, there are Druse hamlets where no Maronite would trust
himself. Ten years ago, when Beirut was in one of its periodic tumults,
five thousand Lebanon soldiers, stalwart, brave and well-armed, encamped
just outside the city limits, waiting for one more anti-Christian
outbreak—which fortunately did not come—as an excuse for wiping out the
Moslem population. Looking across a deep gorge of Lebanon, I once saw
a file of Turkish soldiers laboriously making their way up the steep
mountainside. They were seeking a murderer, so I was told, but a murderer
of no common mettle; for from his inaccessible retreat among the cliffs
he had sent to the government of Beirut a bold acknowledgment of his
crimes, accompanied by the threat that whenever in the future a Christian
should be assassinated in that city he would immediately descend to the
coast and take the life of a Moslem in exchange.
On a stormy winter night I sat by the charcoal fire in a Maronite hut
high up among the mountains, and heard read from a grimy, much-thumbed
manuscript a long poem which described the brave part played by that
village in the struggles of fifty years ago. The sonorous Arabic
sentences had almost an Homeric ring. Like the list of Grecian ships
sounded the rhythmic roll of the local heroes of half a century gone by.
And as the dull light of the fire shone on the circle of dark, bearded
mountaineers, the grim lines of their faces showed that the valor of the
village had not weakened with the passing years, nor had the wrongs of
the village fathers been forgot.
* * * * *
To the traveler, bewildered by strange customs and by peculiar ways of
doing familiar things, this seems indeed a “Left-hand Land.” The Syrian
holds a loose sheet of paper in his palm and writes from right to left.
Yet numbers are written, like ours, from left to right. In beckoning,
the fingers are turned downward. To nod “No” the head is jerked upward,
and added emphasis is sometimes given by a sharp cluck of the tongue.
The carpenter draws his saw toward him on the cutting stroke. The
oarsman likes to stand up and face the bow of his boat. When digging,
one man holds the handle of the shovel while two others do most of the
work by pulling it with ropes. Except in cities which have felt European
influence, it is the men who wear skirts or flowing bloomers, and the
women who wear trousers. Keys are put into the locks upside down. In
entering a house, the hat is kept on the head, but the shoes are removed.
Grown men greet one another in public with embraces and kisses. You see
them walking along hand in hand, or smelling little nosegays. Yet these
acts are not necessarily indicative of effeminacy. For all you know,
these same fellows may occupy their leisure moments with highway robbery.
The slightest difference of opinion gives rise to excited vituperation
and offensive gesticulation; but a blow is seldom given. When a Syrian
does smite, he employs no half-way measures: he smites to kill. I only
once saw a blow struck in anger: then a club four inches thick was,
without warning, brought down with full force upon the head of an
unfortunate boatman.
In this topsy-turvy land, parents take the name of their first-born son,
and use it even in signing legal papers. The gate-keeper at the American
College, for instance, was never called anything but Abu Mohammed, “the
Father of Mohammed.” When a son is despaired of, the public humiliation
is sometimes avoided by inventing one. It is quite possible that Abu
Zeki or Abu Saïd has no children at all.
The daughters of the family are often called after jewels or flowers or
constellations; yet, except in Protestant families, the birth of a girl
is not an occasion for rejoicing. One father insisted on christening an
unwelcome girl baby Balash, which might be translated “Nothing doing!”
Another parent, who already had six daughters, was so disgusted at the
advent of a seventh that he named her Bikeffeh, “Enough!” A Maronite
proverb says, “The threshold mourns forty days when a girl is born.”
Nevertheless the lot of the Christian woman, even in communities where
Christianity means hardly more than a political organization, is usually
far better than that of her Moslem sisters.
Surnames are very indefinite and shifting matters. If Musa has a son
named Jurjus, the boy will naturally be known as Jurjus Musa. But the
father will, of course, change his own name to Abu Jurjus. Many surnames
are taken from occupations. Haddad or “Smith” is here, as in every
country, one of the most common. Others are derived from localities.
Hanna Shweiri is “John from Shweir,” and Suleiman Beiruti is “Beirut
Solomon.” Real family or clan names, however, are not uncommon,
especially among the aristocracy.
As a man becomes more prosperous he will often drop his commonplace
appellation in favor of a more dignified one, which perhaps revives an
ancient but long neglected designation of his family. This easy putting
on and off of names sometimes leads to considerable confusion. I once
asked all over a mountain village for the house of a friend whom I had
known in Beirut, and met with the most positive assurances that no such
person lived there. Fortunately I happened to remember that my friend’s
father was a baker. “John Baker! Oh, yes, everybody in town knows _him_!
But that other fellow you’ve been asking about—we never heard of him.”
The mountain boys, especially, used often to take new surnames when they
came to college. Sometimes they afterward exchanged these for still
better ones. So a facetious professor greeted a returning student with
“Well, Eliya, what is your name _this_ year?” An exasperated inquirer,
who had vainly tried to pin down a certain youth to a satisfactory
statement of his chosen titles, finally exclaimed, “Now, tell me, what
_is_ your name?” Then came the maddeningly irritating answer which so
frequently tempts the Occidental to commit homicide, “As you like, sir!”
Another young man, who had narrowly escaped expulsion for his various
misdeeds, decided to turn over a new leaf; so he came back to the college
the next autumn with a different name—and made it good. The Syrian
understands better than do we the full content of the divine promise of
“a new name.”[7]
At first this seems a land of inexplicable contrasts. I could write of
its ravaging pestilences so that one would find it hard to believe that
Syria is notable for its healthfulness. I could record fearful massacres
until the reader would think me foolishly daring for never carrying a
weapon during all my travels. I could—quite truthfully—tell how a Syrian
landscape lacks so many of the old familiar aspects of our home scenes,
and give no hint of the glorious panoramas of this fertile, well-watered,
bright-colored land—where the mountains sit with their feet in the
Great Sea and their heads among the glorious clouds, while mantles of
shimmering silver fall above their richly tinted garments.
As is the land, so are its people; not easy to understand and justly
appraise. They are cruel and cunning and prefer to destroy an enemy by a
sudden rush of overwhelming odds rather than to meet him in equal combat.
Yes, this is true of many of them; yet they have a childlike delight
in sweet scents, bright colors, beautiful flowers and simple games.
Although they may live in poverty and squalor, they are very frugal and
temperate. They are ignorant; but when the opportunity comes they study
with a pathetic earnestness and an unrivaled quickness. At half-past
three of cold winter mornings I used to hear a servant going the rounds
of my dormitory to waken the young men, at their own request, so that
they might spend four hours before breakfast at their books. Some of
those same indefatigable students have since led their classes in great
American and European universities.
It is true that the Syrians nurse vengeful feuds for generation after
generation. That is partly because family ties are so wonderfully strong
among them. “I and my brother against my cousin; I and my cousin against
my neighbor,” runs the proverb. When two brothers are in the same class
at school or college, they seldom have other chums, but insist upon
sitting side by side in the classroom, and during their free hours they
wander about the campus with arms around each other’s shoulders. If an
elder brother goes away to make his fortune in some distant country, he
never forgets the loved ones at home; but year after year the remittances
will come, until all the younger children have been educated or have been
brought across the sea to share in the opportunities of the new land of
promise. A trusted American missionary had at one time in his possession
no less than five thousand dollars which had been sent from America for
the parents and younger children of a single mountain village.
The ambition of the Syrian is as boundless as his daring, and his
courageous persistence is a buttress to his splendid capacity for
both business and scholarship. The son of any laboring man may, for
all one knows, become a high Egyptian official, a wealthy merchant of
the Argentine, a French poet or the pastor of an American church. The
“Arab” dragoman of your tourist party may be the proud father of a boy
whose learned works in choicest English you hope sometime to read, or
whose surgical skill may be called upon to carry you through a critical
operation. These are not fanciful possibilities. I have particular names
in mind as I write; and the tale of the bravely endured hardships of some
of these sons of Syria who have made good in many a far-off land would
match the romantic story of the early struggles of Garfield or Lincoln.
The hospitality of the Syrians is no mere form or pretense, but a
sincere, winsome joy in ministering to the poor and the stranger. Their
courtesy is fortified by an invincible tact and a very keen knowledge of
human nature. Their speech, the strange guttural Arabic which sounds so
uncouth to the passing stranger, is one of the most beautiful, expressive
and widespread of languages, and has a wealth of fascinating literature.
Their religious fanaticism is grounded in an intense, unshakable belief
in the fact and the necessity of a divine revelation; and he who in the
heat of a ferocious bigotry will kill his neighbor is willing, if need
be, to die himself for the faith, whether it be in open warfare or by the
tortures of a slow martyrdom.
The native ideals of truthfulness and business honor are not, to be
frank, those of Anglo-Saxon nations. It is not considered very insulting
to call a Syrian a liar. But even in the Western business world all is
not truth and uprightness, and these men and women have an excuse which
we have not. For centuries their land has been ruled by a government
based upon untruth and injustice, and very often the only protection for
life or property lay in evasion and deceit. The wonder is that, in spite
of all, there are still so many Syrians who would swear to their own hurt
and change not, and who boldly urge upon their people the eradication of
what is perhaps their greatest racial shortcoming.
In brief, with all his faults, which we of the West are apt to
over-emphasize because they are not the same as our faults, the Syrian
is frugal, temperate, ambitious, adaptable, intellectually brilliant,
capable of infinite self-sacrifice for any great end, essentially
religious, generously hospitable, courteous in social intercourse and, to
his loved ones, extremely affectionate and faithful.
When to these admirable racial traits is added a sincere acceptance of
the moral teachings of religion, then, whatever his creed, the Syrian
makes a friend to be cherished very close to your heart.