AMMÂN
"Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains."
SHELLEY
It was with something like the pain of a personal parting that we bade
farewell to Mshatta. Our friends, too, were breaking up camp this 7th of
October, and as the German flags were saluted before being taken down,
we realised to the full, as sometimes happens, that here was one of
those moments in life which could never recur; that our joy in the
marvellous beauty of the spot, in the indefinable fusion of Art and
Nature, was such as we could never repeat. The swallows, who had made
their home in the ruined palace, would soon dart and skim in
consciousness of sole possession; the lizards, when the sun became hot,
would bask upon the wall as they had basked a thousand years; the
gazelles would wander fearlessly around at sunset, all would be as
before, except where man had left his _imprimatur_, the scar of death
and destruction that follows his tracks across the face of Nature. The
very dogs had gone already: the foolish puppy, with its woolly coat, the
beautiful tawny deerhound, more light limbed, more fleet than ours, in
proportion as the gazelle, his prey, exceeds our moorland deer in
swiftness and in grace. The dream was past, "so sleeping, so aroused
from sleep," we were on one of those tablelands of life from which no
change was possible but descent to the commonplace of every day. We had
seen the pale moonlight on the palace walls, the purple hills we might
never hope to cross; we had had visions of an enchanted world we might
never see; we had had glimpses of a page we might never hope to turn.
"Under the arch of Life where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe
I drew it in as simply as my breath."
We were bound for Ammân, not more than between five and six hours' ride
away, and our horses, refreshed by their rest, went gaily along the
gently undulating plain. Somewhat north we came in sight of Castal, a
Roman fortress, on a hill westward, which some of the party—the
Sportsmen, and the Doctor—had visited yesterday, and which Tristram, its
discoverer, considered different in character, as well as superior in
size, to the usual castle of lookout and defence to be found all over
districts where Roman colonies and roads may have needed protection and
supervision. Although the place is not mentioned in Eusebius, either in
the _Itineraries_ or the _Notitia_, its name is obviously Roman, and its
size, for it is capable of accommodating some twelve hundred cavalry,
speaks for its importance. It contains many fragments of fine white
marble, not indigenous. There appear to have been two castles: the main
building, on the crest of the hill, 84 yards square, of which only the
lower storey remains, and a smaller building, northward, of superior
workmanship, with a balustrade of fluted Corinthian squared pilasters.
The ancient city, which includes remains which may be Greek, stands N.W.
of the castle. During the last five years it has been occupied by Bedu,
very greatly to its injury.
We had exchanged our escort, as the officer granted by the Pasha for our
safe conduct was not responsible for us after we had reached Madaba. We
had, accordingly, bidden him farewell before leaving, and had been
touched by the fact that he had positively declined to receive a
present, alleging that to do so would detract from the honour which he
had enjoyed in being permitted to accompany so distinguished a person as
the Professor. The member of our party who best knew the country,
cynically observed that he must have seen more profit in refusal than in
acceptance! He had a good voice, and, though Arab music is certainly an
acquired taste, had given us pleasure, and contributed variety to the
_al-fresco_ concerts we occasionally enjoyed. Among other songs had been
one composed by a certain poet Nimr, whose grave we were to visit later.
Silence is impossible to an Arab, and when they are not talking they
sing. Our mukaris also sang, the words often being improvised out of
some passing circumstance, and with nonsense rhymes.
Whether the following was the actual air or only another exactly like
it, it would be impossible to say. For this we are indebted to Dr
Schumacher, who found it among the 'Anazeh tribe of Bedu, said to be
especially fond of both music and poetry, and who relates that, "walking
in the caravan of camels, his mantle or sheepskin thrown over one
shoulder and an old musket or a huge stick carried on the other, the
Bedawin is heard continually chanting the following monotonous song":—
[Music:
Ya yab a ah yeh | ya hala aleh
Ya yab a ah yeh | âh ya ha lâ leh | oooh!
]
When the Arab sings he shuts his mouth, and, very literally, "sings
through his nose," four notes, or rather tones, amply sufficing for a
melody. When we sang they seemed vastly amused, and our younger mukari
was caught more than once mimicking our gestures, beating time, and
opening his mouth; while the other was in fits of laughter.
The successor of our officer was a Circassian, and, though equally
picturesque, of quite a different type. In place of the flowing robe and
floating keffeeye of the Bedu he wore an astrachan cap, close-fitting
coat, leggings tucked inside low shoes with heels, and the military
cloak of the Turkish cavalry. His horse was very powerful, and always
well groomed, and, what is more unusual in the Turkish army as
represented in Syria, his accoutrements and harness—silver-mounted, with
enamel decoration—were bright and well kept. He had all the apparent
moroseness characteristic of his race, and never spoke except under
pressure; but the Lady reported that he was kindly in rendering small
services unasked, would always ride up to her if she became accidentally
separated from the party, especially if she were any distance in
advance, and was expert in mounting and dismounting her, although never
obtruding his assistance.
About half-an-hour from Mshatta the Sportsmen sighted a herd of gazelle,
and, still sore from previous disappointments, dismounted to stalk
them—as usual, in vain. They vanished like smoke round the base of a low
hill, which one of the party climbed, in search rather of information as
to their habits, than in hope of a kill. He came back with the report
that even a gunshot had failed to break up their ranks, and that they
went on their way in perfect order.
The road, still over a wide plain, with occasional undulations, might
have been considered barren of interest by those who could not find
delight in the wonderful gradations of colouring, dun against the
cloudless sky; the sensation of infinite space; the crocuses and minute
arums, dainty jewels set in golden sands; the darting lizards,
distinguishable only in motion from their surroundings; the tiny white
shells of the land-snails; the scent of the wormwood _artemisium_ when
crushed beneath our horses' feet; the myriads of larks, including the
exquisite crested lark—the Mary-lark of the Highlands of Scotland; while
now and then a deep purple shadow crossing our path told of a
griffon-vulture or lanner-falcon swooping over the plain, to the terror
of bird and beast.
From time to time the Professor would break out into song, not the
irritating snatches which are an insult alike to silence and to
conversation, but a consistent and complete rendering, as careful as if
in any drawing-room, of some quaint old folk-song picked up in his many
wanderings—and which, sung with an artistic verve in a mellow tenor,
others uniting in bass or alto in a harmonised refrain, filled the air
with a melody not unworthy of the surrounding silence.
Suddenly we were startled by a sound so unwonted, yet so strangely
familiar, that we could hardly believe in its reality—the shriek of the
railway whistle! We were again nearing the Haj railway, at a point where
it is actually in use, for 300 kilometres, out of the 2000 projected,
are already complete. A little farther and we came across quite a
village of the tents of the workmen, the engineers and foremen being
mainly German. The Turkish flag was floating, and Turkish soldiers were
in charge, for the protection of the undertaking, which seems to be
regarded by the Bedu rather with a sad apprehension than with active
opposition. Dr Schumacher relates that, when surveying for the English
upon the line afterwards abandoned, he discussed the matter with the
friendly shech of the 'Anazeh—a superior tribe, said to number
300,000—who is the official protector of the Haj road. Shech Muhammed
realised that the presence of the iron monster must rob him of much
grazing ground; but he resigned himself, in Moslem fashion, to the
inevitable.
"I see well that with the great iron road we cannot remain long in
Haurân; but we know that this country is not for ever to be ours, for we
have heard how the descendants of those whose bones lie under the ruins
of this land are to come back, and rebuild once more its cities, even as
they were in the times of their forefathers"; adding, after a pause:
"But we will retire to the 'Ajlûn [the district farther north], where
there is place yet enough for our tribe. _Allah yebârik!_" ("May Allah's
blessing be upon it!"). The Bedu hold the tradition that the _frenjy_
(Franks) originally possessed the country, and will one day return; that
all over the land are indications, marked upon stones, of treasure to be
recovered; and that the visits of archæologists are for the purpose of
so changing these marks as to confuse the Arabs, who are beginning to
understand them too; for have they not their museums in Constantinople
and Jerusalem, and are they not making investigations and excavations of
their own?
We crossed the railway, a point where it had reached 200 kilometres
south of Damascus, and very soon afterwards began to feel that we were
once more in the world of man, however remote may have been the date of
his occupation. Caves and grottoes in the hillside showed traces of
adaptation to his needs; hewn stones lay about in piles; what looked
like the remains of a cenotaph attracted our attention; and we
dismounted to examine a group of sarcophagi—some but lately exposed to
view, others which had long lain upon the surface. Most had a
resting-place for the head and a groove for the lid.
A sudden turning at the ford of a rapid stream revealed the town of
Ammân, lying in a narrow valley between low but precipitous hills. Most
of us were utterly unprepared, after six hours of riding across a lonely
tableland, to find an orderly town of 10,000 inhabitants, of an aspect
so superior to anything we had seen since leaving Jerusalem, or even, so
far as the actual town is concerned, to Jerusalem itself, that an
explanation seemed necessary, and the statement that the population was
Circassian was, geographically, an added perplexity. The houses, built
partly of mud brick and partly of ancient material like those of Madaba,
were well placed, most had porticos and balconies, and some were
enclosed with well-swept yards. It was not immediately that we realised
to the full the causes of a certain sense of unfamiliarity, of having
passed into another country, with other conditions. The ear was,
perhaps, the first sense conscious of change. The town was _silent_.
There was none of the shrieking, none of the high-pitched voices, none
of the singing of an Arab entourage—not only because we were among
Circassians, but also because we were in a place where not a woman, not
even a young girl, was to be seen! There were men in plenty, silently
stalking about, like shabby ghosts of the Prince Regent, in
tight-waisted coats, high vests, a display of silver buttons and braid,
full skirts, and high boots. Instead of the dangling sword proper to the
rest of their historic effect, all carried a revolver at the side, as
well as a long dagger upright in the girdle. All were armed, and a row
of cartridges across the breast was as much _de rigueur_ as the low
astrachan cap which completed the costume. There were no cafés; no
dice-boards at street corners; no lounging, screaming, idling; no
"making kafe"—the Arabic phrase for doing nothing, in company with
others similarly employed, and a row of water-pipes.
These Circassians have an interesting history. In spite of all that is
said of "the unspeakable Turk," perhaps few rulers have so many
varieties of voluntary immigrants within their domains. The Circassians
of East Jordanland seem to have first left their home in the Caucasus,
Kamnimotsk, or Kakupschi, about the year 1860, and to have wandered in
search of a home where they might be privileged to live under Moslem
rule. Their leader, the Emir Nūh Bey, a major in the Russian army,
conducted them first into Asia Minor, and finally, after many
difficulties and disappointments, about 1878, to this district, which
they call "the edge of the desert"—possibly with some personal intention
on the part of their leader, who, as his son, 'Abd el hamīd Bey,
informed Dr Schumacher, was descended from a family named Hûsh or Hûshi,
who came originally from Ramleh (by some identified with Arimathea) in
the plain of Sharon, and fought against the Crusaders. Their crest,
which they bear upon their weapons, and which, in the Caucasus, they
branded upon their cattle, was a mace. The same, with the addition of
the letters _alef_ within the head of the mace, was also branded upon
their slaves. These Hûshi travelled from Jerusalem into Anatolia, and
thence into the Caucasus, and now, as it would seem, were, after the
lapse of centuries, on the way back to the cradle of their race. They
arrived in the Jaulân, the district which, with the Belka, they have
since colonised, about 1880, and in less than a quarter of a century
have changed the face of the district which they inhabit. They are
frugal and industrious, and have some knowledge of agriculture.
Unfortunately, their industry has, in one respect, been misdirected, and
they are the acknowledged purveyors of tree trunks for roofing and other
architectural purposes, which they convey all over the district in
two-wheeled carts drawn by a team of oxen. As the wheels are guiltless
of grease, as roads, as we understand them, are practically unknown, and
the loads heavy, the approach of these vehicles is known half-a-mile in
advance. The melancholy result of their timber trade is that the
surrounding hillsides have, within the last twenty years, been almost
denuded of their oaks and pines. It is some slight mitigation, however,
that the Circassians plant as well as destroy, and promising fruit
gardens follow the banks of the stream, especially at Jerash, but also
at Ammân and elsewhere.
In many respects they are very different from the Arabs: in their
industry, their settled homes, their power of initiation, their habits.
They have superior agricultural instruments; they do not look upon the
camel and the ass as the sole possible means of transportation; but,
alone in Syria, until the recent establishment of Jewish and German
colonies, employ carts, those for lighter purposes being made of
wattles. They preserve their national dress, and neither the tarbush of
the Arab of the towns, nor the aba or mantle, common to all, have ever
been adopted. Many speak Turkish fluently, the elder ones some Russian,
most a little Arabic with a bad accent, but their ordinary tongue
continues to be Circassian. The Turkish Government has permitted them to
repopulate various ruinous towns—Nawa, Ammân, Jerash, and various
villages—for a given period, without paying any taxes, and, in spite of
certain incidents of attack and reprisal between themselves and the
Bedu, fierce enough for the time, they have succeeded in inspiring their
neighbours with respect or, perhaps, awe. They themselves, it is said,
are perfectly fearless in attack or defence, and extremely severe in
exaction of vengeance. Whereas the fellahin fear to attract attention by
successful crops of fruit or grain, lest they should be called upon to
feed the Bedu and the tax-gatherer, the Circassians fear no one, and at
present pay no taxes. Hence, as well as from superior capacity and
industry, they effect, as no fellah may venture to do, improvements of a
kind which are permanent; they make walls and roads, they devise systems
of irrigation, they plant hedges and trees.
In Ammân, as we came to know later, their industry had very unfortunate
effects upon the glorious ruins which adorn the hills on either side:
the basilica has wholly disappeared, and one apse of the thermæ; but the
Muchtar, who may, perhaps, be likened to the mayor of the town, has
forbidden further depredations, and, happily, the new population has not
chosen to establish itself among the ruins.
We had made no arrangements for our accommodation in Ammân—a visit which
had not been included in the original programme. However, we had been
assured there was a "locanda"—it is curious how many Italian words have
been accepted into Arabic—and as we had not yet lunched we made our way
thither without loss of time. It was in the hands of Christians, and,
from the point of view of domestic arrangements, Christianity is not a
success among Arabs; and, without entering into details, it suffices to
say that life can now hold no mysteries for us in the matter of inns,
nor, it may be added, of domestic entomology.
Its full horrors were not revealed until we went inside, and, in our
circumstances, to go indoors while we could remain without would have
shown a singular lack of imagination and of the spirit of psychological
inquiry. There were two courts, an inner and an outer, and those who had
investigated certain obvious details decided at once upon the outer,
and, accordingly, chairs were arranged round a deal table under a vast
apricot-tree—our eight horses, with several other horses and donkeys,
being under a neighbouring apricot-tree. We then collected our
saddle-bags, and spread our luncheon, after which we drank coffee for
the good of the house.
By-and-by a very smart young officer, speaking French and
German—educated at a military academy in Austria—came to call upon the
Professor, and again we all had coffee. He came as the representative of
the officials of the railway line. We were interested in the fact that,
unlike most other Arabs of our acquaintance, he did not smoke, and said
that he came of a family of non-smokers.
His visit finished, we went off to see the ruins, which lie on the hills
on either side of a stream, which we crossed on stepping-stones, though
it is said to be not fordable, even on horseback, in the winter.
Burckhardt, who was here in 1810, speaks of the elaborate arrangements
made for the benefit of this water-supply, a rare natural gift in the
Belka. Not only the banks, but the bed of the river was paved, in the
manner we had seen ourselves at Ba'albek and elsewhere; and the water
was full of fish, probably the chub, which still exist here, and in the
Jabbok and Arnon, though ignored by the Arabs, who do not care for fish,
and who when they do kill them, with a view of selling them to
Europeans, pursue the wasteful and unsportsmanlike method of a discharge
of gunpowder!
The most impressive of the ruins, perhaps because the least interfered
with by modern buildings, is the theatre. The stage has been destroyed,
but some forty tiers of seats still remain visible, as well as about
twenty-four boxes, each capable of holding a dozen persons—traces in all
of places for some 3000 spectators. Voices on the stage are still
distinctly heard on the farthest tier, although the acoustic properties
have probably suffered from the removal of parts of the building. A fine
colonnade, of which several Corinthian columns, 15 feet high, still
remain, stood in front of the building, leading to the river on the one
hand and to a small odeum on the other. Burckhardt was at a loss to
conjecture the nature of the latter building, of which much more existed
then than now: the roof had fallen in, and made entrance difficult, but
the wall of the semicircular area was, he says, richly decorated, The
theatre is built into the side of the hill in such a way that the third
tier of boxes is excavated in the solid rock.
On the opposite side the ruins are more numerous, but less impressive. A
mosque, said to be of the time of the Abbasides (eighth century), stands
almost side by side with a Byzantine church; and a little to the
north-east are the remains of thermæ, which received water by means of a
conduit from the river. A street of columns on the left bank of the
stream, and parallel with it, indicates the direction of the high street
of the town, nearly a thousand yards long; while north of this stood a
forum (by some thought to be a temple) of a late Roman date. The town
was evidently walled, and the street of columns was closed by gates
towards the east. We heard of many tombs, sarcophagi, and remains of
dwellings worth seeing behind the town, but we had little enough time to
look at even what was of primary interest. We were, however, thanks to
Circassian civilisation, more fortunate than Burckhardt, whose guides
forsook him, alarmed by the sight of fresh horse-dung near the ruins,
and fearful of falling into the hands of the Bedu. When reproached, they
replied that they did not see why they should expose themselves to the
danger of being stripped and robbed of their horses, because of his
foolish caprice of writing down the stones!
Burckhardt was not the first visitor. He had been preceded by Seetzen in
1805-6, who, however, left very little record of his travels in Haurân
and the Belka.
It was necessary to cut short our investigations while enough daylight
remained to allow the Professor to pay a visit to the muchtar—a visit
worth recording on account of the extreme contrast between our
experience here and everywhere else upon our journey. While we were
seeking for his house he seems to have had intimation of our approach,
for he received us in the road, and, although he once uttered a
half-hearted _tfaddalu_, an invitation to enter which we did not accept,
contrary to all Oriental custom and tradition, he showed no desire
whatever to entertain us. Elsewhere, to turn away without coffee,
repose, and cigarettes would have been a mutual insult. He was civil
enough, but of the typical Circassian moroseness, and his small
meaningless features, which, despite its reputation for beauty, were
characteristic of the race, never once lighted up with even a passing
gleam of sunshine.
It was dark under our apricot trees, when we regained the courtyard of
the inn, and while we waited for supper we watched with interest the
scene around us, again struck by the contrast with our accustomed Arab
surroundings. Where there are Arabs there are all the elements of a
comic opera: the bright colour, the laughter, the ever-changing groups,
the perpetual singing—not individual egotistic singing, but chorus,
harmony, antiphon, with hand-clappings and merry shouts. There are
sudden, and, apparently, inconsequent dances, and equally sudden and
inconsequent changes of mood, drawing of knives, quarrels, embraces, and
hand-shakings, such as exist nowhere but among Arabs, and on the lyric
stage. Here, however, it was no comic opera, but a transpontine drama of
the good old-fashioned sort—a novel by "Monk" Lewis, or Thomas Love
Peacock. Men in long, dark drapery glided in and out by the imperfect
light of the single lantern hung beneath the trees; they pulled their
caps low on their foreheads, and veiled their faces with a cloak thrown
over the left shoulder; all carried arms, and seldom spoke, and then
only in low voices; the few Arabs present were of the upper class,
officers mainly, and they seemed affected by the general depression, and
drank coffee and smoked their water-pipes in silence. A single
interruption served but to accentuate the prevailing mood. A drunken
man, a very rare spectacle in a Moslem country—a Christian, of
course—had reached the voluble and affectionate stage, and assured us
all, in a variety of languages, of his perfect readiness to oblige us in
any direction. The audience silently ignored his existence, and it was
in vain that our host led him again and again to the gate: our polyglot
friend invariably took affectionate leave, and promptly returned. We
felt persuaded that the audience considered his conduct merely another
form of the Christian eccentricity, of which our presence had already
supplied a curious example. We were all crazy Franks—some drank wine,
and others "wrote down stones." Relief came at last, in the person of
the only woman we caught sight of in Ammân, a stout Italian of
determined aspect, who withdrew her lord and master, not without a
certain amount of discussion, which must have further enlightened our
companions as to the manners and customs of the superior races. In spite
of his irregularities the wretched creature was not friendless. He was a
wandering contractor and builder, and possessed, we were told, of some
fifteen helpmates dispersed over various parts of the country! Even our
own mukaris were silent for once: Khalil slept over his water-pipe, and
the boy was at his usual evening task of patching the cloths which hung
beneath the horses to protect them from the flies, and which they
generally kicked into rags in the course of the day. The beasts
themselves seemed asleep after their meal—the only one, according to
Arab custom, in the twenty-four hours. Dogs and chickens stirred now and
then in dark corners, and cats crept about with a fitting air of silence
and mystery.
Presently our supper arrived: good bread, good soup, good rice—one may
always count on good cooking among Arabs in this country—and a fowl good
to eat, although, to the eye, too much _au naturel_, too suggestive of a
boiled corpse with wagging head, and legs so much in their normal
position as to be somewhat surprising upon the dinner-table. Our host
offered us beer, and arrived with bottles and glasses in hand, well
knowing that at the end of a long, hot day, and in our present
surroundings with, the dust and smell of a stable, a couple of bottles
cooled in running water, even at the price of a franc and a half each,
might be hard to resist; but even the Sportsmen nobly looked the other
way, in the probably futile hope of a classification apart from our
fellow-Europeans, who could be still heard carrying on a polyglot
exchange of compliments at the farther end of the village. We solaced
ourselves with tea, and retired early, in the expectation, entirely
unfulfilled, of a long night's rest.