SIGHTS AND SCENES IN DAMASCUS.
The party remained three days at Damascus, and found the time none too
great for seeing this wonderful city. Frank devoted each evening to
writing an account of what they had seen during the day, and we are at
liberty to copy the greater part of his story:
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF DAMASCUS.]
"When we reached the city we went directly to Dmitri's Hotel, which is
the only establishment of the kind in Damascus. Dmitri is a Greek, and
was formerly a dragoman. He knows the country very well, and his house
is quite as comfortable as one could expect to find in this far-off
place. The building was once the property of a wealthy resident of
Damascus, and is in the truly Oriental style. There is a large
court-yard with a fountain in the centre, and the rooms of the house
mostly open from this court. When we speak of a fountain, remember we
are talking of an Oriental one, which is a large tank of stone with
water flowing in at one side from a pipe and flowing out at the other.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A HOUSE IN DAMASCUS.]
"On the right of the fountain there is an open recess, where it is
pleasant to sit in a warm afternoon; it contains chairs and divans, and
is altogether an attractive spot. On the opposite side of the court is
the parlor, which we entered by an ordinary door. There is a marble
floor about six feet wide, and as long as the room is broad, and on each
side of this marble floor there are steps to the rest of the room, which
is about two feet higher. The marble part is entirely bare, with a small
fountain in the centre, but the rest is richly carpeted, and has plenty
of divans and large chairs. The chairs do not properly belong here, as
they are not Oriental, but are kept out of regard for the wants of
European visitors.
"How high do you suppose the ceiling is in the centre of this parlor?
"We had a curiosity to know, and so we measured it. Dmitri supplied us
with ladders and a cord, and after a good deal of trouble we ascertained
that it lacked only a few inches of thirty feet!
"We have been much interested in the house, as it is one of the best
types we have seen of the Oriental dwelling. There are finer houses than
this in Damascus, but it is not easy for a foreigner to see more of them
than the outside walls. Some of the houses have cost a great deal of
money, even in this country where labor is very cheap.
"Having looked at the house, we will go into the streets and take a
glance at the distinctive features of Damascus.
"To begin with, Damascus is supposed to have a population of one hundred
and ten to one hundred and twenty thousand. Nobody can tell exactly, as
the census is never taken as we take it in America, and quite probably
nobody cares very much to know what it is. Here is the most accurate
statement of the subject that we can find:
"Eighty-nine thousand five hundred Moslems, twelve thousand
Christians, five thousand Jews, and about five thousand Druses,
Bedouins, and other miscellaneous classifications. About half the
Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, and the rest are
Latins, Maronites, Syrians, and Armenians.
"As you are well aware, Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the
world. It is mentioned in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, and very
often in other books of the Bible, but the scriptural references do not
tell us how old it is. The traditions of the Jews, Christians, and
Moslems concerning the origin of Damascus do not agree, but by sifting
them down, and harmonizing as much as possible, we may suppose it was
founded by Uz, the son of Aram, and was a well-established city before
the birth of Abraham. The kings of Syria lived here for more than
three hundred years; one of them was conquered by King David, but the
subjection did not last long. Afterward it was conquered by the
Assyrians and added to their empire, and subsequently it was a
possession of Persia.
"It would take several pages for me to tell you the history of Damascus,
and as it might be tedious, and you can find it in any good
encyclopædia, we will take a jump of three thousand years or less and
come down to our own times. The most exciting event of modern days in
Damascus was the massacre of the Christians in 1860, when five or six
thousand people were killed for no other reason than their belief in the
religion of Bethlehem. The whole of the Christian quarter was burnt, not
a house being left uninjured. About half of it has been rebuilt, but
some of the buildings are very frail, and it will be a long time before
this portion of Damascus resumes its former appearance.
"Our guide through the streets was a Christian whose father was killed
at the time of the massacre. The family managed to escape to the
mountains, where they wandered for days, and were very near starvation.
In addition to the thousands who were killed, there were many who died
of wounds and starvation, while hundreds of women and children were sold
into slavery.
"We asked Doctor Bronson how it all happened, and he said it was an
affair of international politics growing out of the Crimean War, and the
support that England gave to the Turkish Government against Russia. The
Treaty of Paris, after the Crimean War, contained a clause which was
intended to prevent foreign intervention in the affairs of Turkey, and
allow the Sultan to control his Christian subjects. As a Moslem
generally believes that the best thing to do with an adherent of any
other religion than his own is to kill him, the result of this unhappy
provision of the treaty was to cause the Moslems to slaughter the
Christians among them.
"The massacres began in the mountains of Lebanon, and extended to
Damascus and other places. It is thought that not far from twenty
thousand Christians were butchered in Syria during the month of July,
1860. The Turkish Government permitted the inhuman work to go on, and in
several cases its officers encouraged it, particularly at Damascus and
Hasbeiyah. The news of the affair aroused the whole of Europe. France
sent an army to occupy the Lebanon district, and protect the Christians,
and since that time there have been no repetitions of the dreadful
scenes, though there is no feeling of friendliness between the
Christians and Moslems.
"So much for a bit of the history of Damascus. The massacre of 1860 was
not by any means the only one of which this city has been the scene.
There was a greater than this when the conqueror Tamerlane, in 1401,
captured the city, and, after plundering it, caused large numbers of the
inhabitants to be killed. Though many of the buildings were destroyed,
they were soon rebuilt; and it is said to be a curious feature of
Damascus that it has prospered under all rulers and all forms of
government. It has changed comparatively little in appearance, and when
any part has been destroyed, by accident or in warfare, it rises again
almost the same as before, though the reconstruction sometimes requires
many years.
"We followed the advice of our guide, who said that, as the weather was
fine, we had best take advantage of it to go outside the city and see
the walls and other curiosities. He went for donkeys, and, as soon as
they came, off we started.
"We started off in more ways than one, as every member of the party had
a tumble before he had gone a mile. The little animals are not so large
as their brethren of Cairo, nor as sure of foot. They seemed to be fond
of stumbling, and didn't care what the result was to their riders.
Fortunately their size saved us from any injury, as we had very little
distance to fall from their backs to the ground.
"We went first to Bab-Shurkey, or the Eastern Gate, which is one of the
historic entrances of Damascus.
"It is not a very handsome piece of architecture, though it may have
been so centuries ago. There was once a fine portal of Roman
construction, but it was walled up more than eight centuries ago, and
has remained closed ever since. The entrance now used was formerly one
of the side arches of the Roman gate-way. We climbed to the top for a
view of the city, and certainly the scene was a picturesque one, and
amply repaid us for the trouble.
"We looked along the 'street called Straight,' by which St. Paul entered
Damascus. It has the same name to-day as it had in Paul's time, but is
not exactly the same street. Perhaps you wonder what I mean?
"Well, during the Roman period, and down to the time the Moslems took
the city, this street was a hundred feet wide, and was divided by three
rows of columns, corresponding to the three arches at the Eastern Gate.
The two side arches have been built up, but not very regularly, and the
street from being straight is crooked. It runs in a sort of wavy line
from one side of the city to the other, and its houses are so close to
each other in some places that you might shake hands from a window with
your neighbor over the way.
"There are several places where the opposite windows are not a yard
apart, and as they project over the street it is easy to sit concealed
and see everything that goes on below you. We went into one of the
houses, and were permitted to look from a window, and very funny it
seemed to be thus suspended in mid-air.
"The most prominent objects in the view from the top of the gate were
the desolate portions of the Christian quarter which I have already
mentioned. They lay quite near where we stood, and our guide indicated
the position of the Protestant and other churches that were burnt, and
the mission schools and hospitals which met the same fate. Farther along
were the roofs and domes of the city. The great mosque was an important
feature in the view, together with the battlements of the castle just
behind it.
"From the gate we went along the base of the walls, where we saw masonry
of all ages from the Romans down to the Turks. The foundations are
unmistakably Roman, so the Doctor says, and the highest part of the
walls, which were built only a few years ago, are as unmistakably
Turkish. The guide showed us the place where St. Paul escaped from
Damascus, as described in Second Corinthians, 'and through a window in a
basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped.' The guide said there
could be no doubt about the spot, as the window was there until a few
years ago, when a Moslem owner of the property ordered it to be filled
with brick and closed!
"Not far from this place is the tomb of George the Porter, who assisted
Paul to escape, and was martyred and canonized in consequence. A little
farther on is the Christian cemetery, and beyond it is the foreign
cemetery, which contains several English and American graves. Looking
from the cemetery toward the city we noticed that there were houses on
the walls, as in the time of the Bible; it was easy to understand how
Paul was lowered from the wall, and how Rahab, who dwelt on the town
wall of Jericho, let down the spies that had been exploring the Promised
Land.
"In several places the city has grown beyond the walls, and sometimes it
is not easy to distinguish the interior from the exterior. This is
particularly the case with the Meidan, which is just outside the walls,
and is quite a mile long by half a mile in width. Compared with the rest
of Damascus the paint is hardly dry on it, as it is not two hundred
years old, and many of its buildings have actually been erected within
the present century. The principal street is about a hundred feet wide,
and nearly straight. When the annual caravan to Mecca sets out on its
journey the scene is a magnificent one along this street, as there is a
gay procession of thousands of people, preceded by the camel with the
sacred canopy, and the officials and priests in their richest dress. Our
guide says the procession diminishes every year, as the journey can be
made far more easily by steamers from Beyroot than by land. It takes at
least thirty days to go by land, and about a week or ten days by sea.
"We went to the Moslem cemetery, where we saw among other things the
tombs of two of Mohammed's wives and his daughter Fatima. The cemetery
reminded us of the burial-places of Cairo, but we missed the splendor of
the tombs of the Mamelukes, and also of the tombs of the Caliphs.
[Illustration: BEDOUIN CAMP NEAR DAMASCUS.]
"We timed our excursion so that we should be at the Salahiyeh hills,
which overlook Damascus from the east, a little before sunset. It is a
ride of about an hour through a village and up a gentle road to a point
from which Damascus can be seen spread at the spectator's feet.
"There lay the city embowered in its gardens, and tinted by the rays of
the setting sun that changed every moment. It was more like a vision of
Paradise than anything we had seen in the country, and we realized the
force of the remark attributed to Mohammed, as he gazed upon Damascus
from these hills:
"'Man can enter Paradise but once; if I pass into Damascus I shall be
excluded from the other Paradise reserved for the faithful.'
"According to the legend, he then turned away and never entered the city
he had come so far to see.
"The Arabs regard Damascus with reverence, and often speak of it as
enthusiastically as did Mohammed on the occasion I have mentioned. It
is, indeed, a beautiful and an interesting city, and ranks next to
Cairo, which it greatly resembles in many things. Something must be
allowed for Oriental exaggeration or we shall make too much of Damascus;
and Doctor Bronson says the city, from its position, is the cause of a
great deal of the admiration bestowed upon it. We asked him how it was,
and he explained it in this way:
"Bear in mind that Damascus is in a fertile plain watered by the Pharpar
and Abana, flowing from the mountains and never failing in any season of
the year. These rivers are carried through Damascus, and consequently
the city has an abundance of water at all times.
"Now, bear again in mind that, though in a fertile plain, the city is on
the edge of a desert, and the traveller who comes here from the east has
traversed a region of barrenness. For days and days he has seen no trees
or other green things, water has been scanty and poor, and he must take
great precautions to save himself from perishing by thirst. Is it any
wonder that when he comes to Damascus, in the midst of its luxuriant
gardens, and sees the fountains flowing at every street-corner and
sparkling in every dwelling, he must think he has entered Paradise, or
will doubt whether he is awake or dreaming?
"As the sun went down behind the range of Anti-Lebanon we descended the
hills and re-entered the city. There was nothing to be seen in the
evening. Damascus goes early to bed, and so went we.
"Next morning we were out in good season, and off for our round of
sight-seeing. We visited the historic places of Damascus, including the
house of Ananias the high-priest, and other buildings connected with St.
Paul's stay in the city; and we went outside of the eastern gate a short
distance to the leper hospital, which is supposed to stand on the site
of the house of Naaman the leper. Some of the patients were in front of
the building, and were sad objects to look upon. Some were blind, others
were much swollen about the face, hands, feet, or limbs, and there was
one whose face was covered with scales. The guide said that the edges of
these scales when lifted revealed raw and inflamed flesh, and many of
the patients were masses of sores. We did not wish to go inside,
although we were assured that there was no danger of contracting the
disease.
[Illustration: A SCENE IN DAMASCUS.]
"Doctor Bronson says this dreadful disease was once very common in
Europe, and nearly every city and town had its leper hospitals. From the
sixth to the thirteenth centuries it was spread from one end of Europe
to the other, particularly after the wars of the Crusades. An order of
chivalry, under the name of the Knights of St. Lazarus (named after
Lazarus the beggar), had for its special mission the care of victims of
leprosy, and after they were expelled from Jerusalem in the twelfth
century they established a hospital at Paris. If you have been in Paris
you will remember the _Gare St. Lazare_, the terminal station of the
Western Railway, which is close by the _Rue St. Lazare_, and a walk of
five or six minutes from the Grand Opera House. The leper hospital of
Paris was in this neighborhood, and the name of the order of monks that
founded it is preserved in the street and railway-station.
"Leprosy has almost entirely disappeared from Europe; it is seen
occasionally in Scandinavia and Italy, and a few cases have been
reported in Spain. It exists in the East, but is not so prevalent as it
was a thousand years ago, and once in a while you will hear of a leper
in America and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Doctor Bronson says he
was once invited by Professor Pardee, Dean of the Medical College of New
York, to see a case of leprosy from one of the mountain counties of
Virginia. The patient was a negro, and, as far as the doctors could
ascertain, he was suffering from leprosy of the same type as we find
to-day in Damascus.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ABD-EL-KADR.]
"We passed the house of Abd-el-Kader, the Arab chief who fought the
French in Algeria for a long time, but was finally conquered, and
required to choose some place not in Africa for his residence. He
selected Damascus, and has lived here ever since, with the exception of
an occasional visit to Paris, where he is always treated with a great
deal of respect. At the time of the massacre in 1860 he sheltered a
great many Christians in his house, and did everything in his power to
stop the bloodshed. When the war broke out between France and Germany he
offered his military services to the country that had conquered him, but
the government did not think it good policy to accept them.
"The bazaars of Damascus are so much like those of Cairo that it is
unnecessary to describe them, as the picture of one will be almost
identically that of the other. The mode of bargaining is the same; and
if there is any difference at all in testing a stranger's patience it
is in favor of Damascus.
"One of our party wanted to buy some of the silk handkerchiefs for which
Syria is famous, and we stopped in the silk bazaar for that purpose. The
merchant asked twenty francs, and the buyer offered six; after
chaffering for a full hour they met at twelve francs, and the
transaction was closed.
"The merchant then unrolled a piece of silk, which he assured us was of
native manufacture. While he was praising it, and declaring he was
offering it for half its value, he unrolled a little farther, when out
dropped from the end of the roll a ticket with the name of a French
manufacturer at Lyons!
"He took it in as hastily as he could, but was not quick enough to
prevent our seeing and reading it. This confirmed what we had heard
before, that a great deal of the silk sold in Constantinople, Cairo,
Beyroot, Damascus, and other Oriental places as native manufacture, is
made in Europe in imitation of the genuine article. The counterfeit is
so well executed that it cannot be distinguished from the genuine except
by an expert, and frequently the only difference is in favor of the
finish of the European goods.
"We went through one bazaar after another, and were offered all sorts of
articles we did not want, together with a few that we did. What we most
wanted were the genuine Damascus blades, and we looked for them in the
arms bazaar for quite a while.
[Illustration: SWORD-BLADES OF DAMASCUS.]
"They offered us a good many swords, but none that came up to the
stories of the ancient weapons, which could be tied in a knot or doubled
up into a loop without the least injury. They asked a hundred dollars
for one, but fell slowly to twenty, and as this seemed too cheap for an
article once worth at least a thousand dollars, we declined to buy.
"While we were looking at these weapons Doctor Bronson told us of the
original Damascus blades, about which so much has been written. He said
they were made in the early centuries of the Christian era, and the art
was lost when Tamerlane carried the artisans away after his capture of
the city. It was said they could be bent into many shapes, would cut
through wood and iron without being marred or indented, and the old
warriors frequently divided their victims in two from head to foot with
a single stroke of one of these famous weapons. A good deal must be
allowed for Oriental exaggeration, but there is no doubt that the
Damascus blade was the finest ever constructed. It all depended upon the
steel and the process of making it.
"We asked the Doctor if anybody in modern times had been able to produce
anything like the swords of Damascus.
"'A great many attempts have been made,' said he, 'but none have
completely succeeded. The nearest approach to success was by General
Anosoff, a Russian officer in charge of the steel and iron works at
Zlatoust, in Siberia. After many years of experiments he managed to
produce weapons with nearly all the qualities of the original Damascus
blades; he succeeded in making Damascus steel by four different
processes, the most practical being that of melting iron in crucibles,
with one-twelfth its weight of graphite, and some other things you can
learn about in any good book on steel manufacture. The blades of General
Anosoff were superior to any other modern ones in toughness, elasticity,
and keenness of edge, and they had those peculiar marks known as
"watering," exactly like the ancient blades.'
[Illustration: DAMASK GOODS.]
"From the arms bazaar we went to the great mosque, and then to the
Citadel, passing on the way a shop devoted to the sale of those peculiar
fabrics known as damask, which detained us a few minutes. Damascus for
centuries had the monopoly of the manufacture of this article, but it is
now all over Europe, and the city retains little more than the name. We
asked to be shown the factory where it was made, but they said the
workmen were out for a holiday, and the place was closed, but if we
called around next week they could oblige us. Of course they knew we
would be off in a day or two, as nobody remains long here, and so we
could only smile and thank them for their politeness. But we didn't buy.
"The mosque occupies an area of five hundred feet by three hundred, and
is an imposing building, on the whole, though inferior to some of the
Moslem edifices we saw at Cairo. The central dome is a hundred and
twenty feet high, and rests on four massive pillars; the shrine on the
eastern side is elaborately carved, and there is a cave beneath it in
which the head of John the Baptist is said to be preserved in a golden
casket.
[Illustration: ATTACK ON THE CITADEL OF DAMASCUS BEFORE THE INVENTION OF
GUNPOWDER.]
"Back of the mosque is the Citadel, which was once a strong fortress,
but is now little better than a ruined pile of brick and stone. Most of
the rooms are unfit for occupation, and we were not allowed to go
inside. The castle played a prominent part in the defence of Damascus
before the invention of artillery, but it is of no consequence now that
we have gunpowder and the weapons for using it."
[Illustration: PAUL LED INTO DAMASCUS.]