_The People of Ansarey_
DO YOU know anything of a people in the north of this country, called
the Ansarey?’ inquired Tancred of Baroni.
‘No, my lord; and no one else. They hold the mountainous country about
Antioch, and will let no one enter it; a very warlike race; they beat
back the Egyptians; but Ibrahim Pasha loaded his artillery with piastres
the second time he attacked them, and they worked very well with the
Pasha after that.’ ‘Are they Moslemin?’
‘It is very easy to say what they are not, and that is about the extent
of any knowledge that we have of them; they are not Moslemin, they
are not Christians, they are not Druses, and they are not Jews, and
certainly they are not Guebres, for I have spoken of them to the Indians
at Djedda, who are fire-worshippers, and they do not in any degree
acknowledge them.’
‘And what is their race? Are they Arabs?’ ‘I should say not, my lord;
for the only one I ever saw was more like a Greek or an Armenian than a
son of the desert.’
‘You have seen one of them?’
‘It was at Damascus: there was a city brawl, and M. de Sidonia saved the
life of a man, who turned out to be an Ansarey, though disguised. They
have secret agents at most of the Syrian cities. They speak Arabic; but
I have heard M. de Sidonia say they have also a language of their own.’
‘I wonder he did not visit them.’
‘The plague raged at Aleppo when we were there, and the Ansarey were
doubly rigid in their exclusion of all strangers from their country.’
‘And this Ansarey at Damascus, have you ever seen anything of him
since?’
‘Yes; I have been at Damascus several times since I travelled with M. de
Sidonia, and I have sometimes smoked a nargileh with this man: his name
is Dar-kush, and he deals in drugs.’
Now this was the reason that induced Tancred to inquire of Baroni
respecting the Ansarey. The day before, which was the third day of
the great hunting party at Canobia, Fakredeen and Tancred had found
themselves alone with Hamood Abuneked, and the lord of Canobia had
thought it a good occasion to sound this powerful Sheikh of the Druses.
Hamood was rough, but frank and sincere. He was no enemy of the House
of Shehaab; but the Abunekeds had suffered during the wars and civil
conflicts which had of late years prevailed in Lebanon, and he was
evidently disinclined to mix in any movement which was not well matured
and highly promising of success. Fakredeen, of course, concealed his
ulterior purpose from the Druse, who associated with the idea of union
between the two nations merely the institution of a sole government
under one head, and that head a Shehaab, probably dwelling at Canobia.
‘I have fought by the side of the Emir Bescheer,’ said Hamood, ‘and
would he were in his palace of Bteddeen at this moment! And the
Abunekeds rode with the Emir Yousef against Djezzar. It is not the House
of Abuneked that would say there should be two weak nations when there
might be one strong one. But what I say is sealed with the signet of
truth; it is known to the old, and it is remembered by the wise; the
Emir Bescheer has said it to me as many times as there are oranges on
that tree, and the Emir Yousef has said it to my father. The northern
passes are not guarded by Maronite or by Druse.’
‘And as long as they are not guarded by us?’ said Fakredeen,
inquiringly.
‘We may have a sole prince and a single government,’ continued Hamood,
‘and the houses of the two nations may be brothers, but every now and
then the Osmanli will enter the mountain, and we shall eat sand.’
‘And who holds the northern passes, noble Sheikh?’ inquired Tancred.
‘Truly, I believe,’ replied Hamood, ‘very sons of Eblis, for the whole
of that country is in the hands of Ansarey, and there never has been
evil in the mountain that they have not been against us.’
‘They never would draw with the Shehaabs,’ said Fakredeen; ‘and I have
heard the Emir Bescheer say that, if the Ansarey had acted with him, he
would have baffled, in ‘40, both the Porte and the Pasha.’
‘It was the same in the time of the Emir Yousef,’ said Sheikh Hamood.
‘They can bring twenty-five thousand picked men into the plain.’
‘And I suppose, if it were necessary, would not be afraid to meet the
Osmanli in Anatoly?’ said Fakredeen.
‘If the Turkmans or the Kurds would join them,’ said Sheikh Hamood,
‘there is nothing to prevent their washing their horses’ feet in the
Bosphorus.’
‘It is strange,’ said Fakredeen, ‘but frequently as I have been at
Aleppo and Antioch, I have never been in their country. I have always
been warned against it, always kept from it, which indeed ought to have
prompted my earliest efforts, when I was my own master, to make them
a visit. But, I know not how it is, there are some prejudices that do
stick to one. I have a prejudice against the Ansarey, a sort of fear, a
kind of horror. ‘Tis vastly absurd. I suppose my nurse instilled it into
me, and frightened me with them when I would not sleep. Besides, I had
an idea that they particularly hated the Shehaabs. I recollect so well
the Emir Bescheer, at Bteddeen, bestowing endless imprecations on them.’
‘He made many efforts to win them, though,’ said Sheikh Hamood, ‘and so
did the Emir Yousef.’
‘And you think without them, noble Sheikh,’ said Tancred, ‘that Syria is
not secure?’
‘I think, with them and peace with the desert, that Syria might defy
Turk and Egyptian.’
‘And carry the war into the enemy’s quarters, if necessary?’ said
Fakredeen.
‘If they would let us alone, I am content to leave them,’ said Hamood.
‘Hem!’ said the Emir Fakredeen. ‘Do you see that gazelle, noble Sheikh?
How she bounds along! What if we follow her, and the pursuit should lead
us into the lands of the Ansarey?’
‘It would be a long ride,’ said Sheikh Hamood. ‘Nor should I care much
to trust my head in a country governed by a woman.’
‘A woman!’ exclaimed Tancred and Fakredeen.
‘They say as much,’ said Sheikh Hamood; ‘perhaps it is only a
coffee-house tale.’
‘I never heard it before,’ said Fakredeen. ‘In the time of my uncle,
Elderidis was Sheikh. I have heard indeed that the Ansarey worship a
woman.’
‘Then they would be Christians,’ said Sheikh Hamood, ‘and I never heard
that.’