SYRIA
AND
THE HOLY LAND
By
The Very Rev. Sir George Adam Smith
Kt., M,A., D.D., LiTT.D., F.B.A.,
Principal of Aberdeen University
Author of "Historical Geography of the Holy Land"
"Jerusalem: the Topography, Economics and History"
■ 'The Early Poetry of Israel" etc.
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Walter Clinton Jackson Library
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Special Collections & Rare Books
World War I Pamphlet Collection
Gift of Greensboro Public Library
lND
4ITH
warn
SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH
M'lTH THE COMPLIMENTS
Professor W. AIacn^eile Dixon
(university of GLASGOW
Address:
8, buckingham gate.
london, s. w., one,
ENGLAND.
,^ SYRIA.
_ MESOPOTAMIA
^/^ AND
rUL^. ADJACENT PJ ^' LANDS
SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH
COMPI-IMENTS OF
PROFESSOR W. Macneile Dixox
(university
OF GLASGOW
ADDRESS:
8, BUCKINGHAM GATE.
LONDON, S. W., ONE, ENGLAND.
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2010 with funding from
Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation
http://www.archive.org/details/syriaholylandbysOOsmit
SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
BY
VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH
KT., M.A., D.D., LITT.D., F.B.A. PRINCIPAL OF ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY
Author of "Historical Geography of the Holy Land,"
''Jerusalem: the Topography, Economics, and History,"
"The Early Poetry of Israel," etc.
WITH MAPS
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1918, By George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PAoa
THE HISTORY 5
THE NAMES 9
BOUNDARIES — EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL .... 12
THE COAST 15
THE MARITIME PLAIN 17
THE WESTERN RANGE 20
THE ORONTES-JORDAN-ARABAH VALLEY 26
THE EASTERN RANGE 29
THE DISCREDITED TURK 35
THE DUTIES OF HIS SUCCESSOR ....... 36
THE RECOVERY OF THE LAND 37
THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHIN ..... 40
THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 44
RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS 51
ECONOMIC QUESTIONS 52
THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AREA . 53
THE FRONTIERS OF NEW SYRIA 57
EPILOGUE 60
MAPS SYRIA, MESOPOTAMIA AND ADJACENT LANDS . . Frontispiece
PALESTINE, ANCIENT AND MODERN . . .At end of book
SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
THE HISTOEY
SYRIA, chiefly because she includes Phoenicia and Palestine, has been of greater significance to man- kind, spiritually and materially, than any other single country in the world.
The home of two of the monotheisms which have spread round the earth, and close neighbour to that of the third, Syria holds sites sacred to them all, and is still the resort of their pilgrims from nearly every nation under the sun. To the farthest Christian the land is almost as familiar as his own; his Bible is her geography from Beersheba to Antioch, and her history from Abraham to Paul. Above all, she is the land of his Lord's ISTativity, Ministry, Cross and Eesurrection ; for the traditional scenes of which Christian sects have fought with each other or held a jeal- ous truce under the contemptuous patronage of the Turk. To the Jew and the Mohammedan equally with the Chris- tian, Jerusalem is "The Holy City." The Eock, from which rose the great Altar in front of the Temple of Israel, is for the heart of the Moslem the spoft on which his Prophet prayed, and inferior in sanctity only to the Kaaba of Mecca. In Hebron, the Jew,. the Christian, and the Mohammedan have, each in his turn, built and dedi- cated the Sanctuary which covers the tombs of the com- 5
6 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
mon Fathers of their Faiths. The nerves of all three re- ligions still quiver in the soil of Syria, and sometimes round the same stones. We can feel the acuteness of the problems which thus arise in her administration. They have been complicated hy the political envies and in- trigues of half Asia and all Europe.
][^owhere else has so much history run into or through so narrow a space. The storm-centre of the Ancient East, the debatable gi-ound between its rival Empires in Mesopo- tamia and on the Nile, and between their Greek successors, the Seleucids and Ptolemies, Syria was for three thou- sand years the field upon which their civilisations clashed, mingled and found a common deflection to the West by the islands of the Mediterranean. Open eastward to Arabia, Syria has drawn the substance of her populations from the hordes which that fertile mother but indigent nurse of men is ever ready to foist upon the comparative abun- dance of her neighbours. The slender Syrian fringes to- wards the desert, over which at other times those hordes have easily drifted, were built by the Romans into the eastern Limes of their Empire; and within this bulwark the land flourished to the aspect of a second Greece. Syria similarly served the Byzantines.
On the decay of the Byzantine Empire she formed the first prey of the Moslem conquerors (634-640 a.d.), pro- vided for nearly a century the seat of the Khalifate (661-750), relapsed between the African and Asiatic rivals for that office into her old debatableness for three cen- turies more, and then for the second time became, as she was predestined to be, the field of decision between the Gross and the Crescent. The Frankish kingdom of Jeru- salem lasted for only eighty-eight years (1098-1187), yet its relics are almost as numerous on the land to-day as those of the Roman Empire. Gradually all Syria fell
THE HISTORY 7
back to the Mohammedans, and in 1517 became a province of the Turkish Empire, since when she has had hardly any annals save the marks of her steady decay.
In 1799 I^apoleon, in his ambition to conquer Asia, marched from Egypt up the coast as far as Esdraelon, but was forced back the following year. From 1832 to 1840 southern Syria came under the power of Mohammed Ali, ruler of Egypt, but was recovered by the Turks with British assistance. In 1860 another French army, disembarking at Beyrout, liberated the Christians of Lebanon, secured for them under European guarantees a separate administration with a Governor of their own faith, and laid to Damascus the first good road the land had known since the Romans left.
The military history of Syria may be pictured as the procession of nearly all the world's conquerors: — Thothmes, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib and !Mebuchadrezzar ; Cambyses and Alexander; Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Titus and Hadrian ; Omar and Saladin ; Tamerlane; !N^apoleon. And now again she is one of the fronts on which two ideals of civilisation and empire oppose their arms, but with issues more momentous for humanity than were ever fought out on these same fields between Semite and Greek, Rome and the East^ or Frank and Saracen.
Xor do religion and war exhaust her importance to the world. Syria bred and endowed the people who first brought the fruits of Eastern civilisation to Europe, taught the nations the value of sea-power, and set them an example in transmarine commerce and the planting of colonies.
Phoenicia gave Europe the alphabet (whatever the sources of this may have been) and some of the finer handicrafts, contributed at intervals to the food of its
8 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
peoples, or furnished them with luxuries, or infected them with her own superstitions and vices. Her armour, bowls and webs are sung bj Homer. Hebrew and Greek writers acclaim the wealth of Phoenician industries and the size and the range of Phoenician ships. Long before the Christian era these galleys had passed the Straits of Gibraltar as far at least as the Canaries and Scillies; and had sailed down the Red Sea and along the east coast of Africa. The Phoenician markets drew ivory, scented woods, silk and other stuffs from India and China, and passed them to the west. Conversely Chinese writings of an early time rate the products of Syria, which they call Ta-tsin, above even those of Babylon. The incense of southern Arabia reached the temples of Greece and Italy through the port of Gaza.
It was the same in the earlier Mohammedan era. The Arab geographers, besides praising the fertility of Syria — her corn, flax and wool, her oil, wine and figs, all in- digenous, and her adopted rice, maize, sugar, cotton, indigo, oranges, and citrons — magnify her exports west- ward, not only of these products but of porcelain, silks, and other fabrics from the Far East. Those were the times when in the bazaars of Aleppo goods were said to be sold daily to the amount of £10,000. Prom Syrian harbours the ships of Genoa, Pisa and Venice carried cargoes not only to Italy and Spain, but after the Crusades to the coasts of the Low Countries, and so started the pros- perity of Antwerp, Bruges and other towns of north- western Europe. At most times the land has as much deserved the name of "Mediterranean" as that sea on which her harbours open, and of whose waves she was the first mistress.
All the languages of Europe bear marks of the Syrian commerce. The Greek words "arrabon," interest.
THE NAMES 9
"mna," a weight, and "kabos," a measure; "klobos," bird- cage, with the names of several animals and vegetables; (some add "Biblos," from the port that exported the papyrus) ; "chalkos kuprios," from which our copper is derived; "Tyrian purple" and "Sidonian looms"; "Syrian" as the synonym for banker in Gaul in the fifth century; "Jericho balsam"; "damson," "damask," "damascene," and the French "damasquinure" ; the mediaeval "charta Damascena," a cotton-paper; "cotton," itself; "mohair" and "moire," from "muhayyar," the "choice" stuffs of Antioch; "muslin" from Mosul, but through Aleppo; "Latakia"; "carat" (through Arabic, though previously from the Greek) ; "camlet," "saffron" and "civet"; "sherbet," "sorbet" and "syrup," and the "electuaire d'Acre"; probably "sugar," "candy," "lemon" and "orange" (if not through Spain) ; the "shalot" from Asealon, the"carob" or locust-bean ; "lute" (Arabic el-'ud) and "rebeck," "ammiral," "arsenal" and "douane" — are some reminders of what Syria has scattered out of her lap to the extremes of Europe, or handed over from the opposite confines of Asia.
These proofs at once of her fertility and of her supreme advantage of position are lavish everywhere in her history, except under Turkish rule, and are pledges of the pos- sibilities of her future when the hands of the Turk shall at last have been lifted from her suffering soil.
THE iq^AMES
IQEFOKE we examine the form of the country a few '-^ words are needed upon its nomenclature. The names, both general and local, have always been elastic, stretching and shrinking by turns or even sometimes
10 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
springing to a distance from their original sites. For this there are two reasons; the frequency of foreign rule and the migrations of the natives. In ignorance or for the convenience of administration conquerors have altered the areas of the wider names, while the popular usage preserved their original limits or but slowlj followed the official example. And in course of migration due to war, famine or pestilence the inhabitants of villages, and even of towns, have removed the names of these to their new settlements. It need hardly be added that in their eager- ness to locate Biblical scenes hosts of guessing pilgrima have further confused the nomenclature of the Holy Land.
We owe the name Syeia to the Greeks. Tradition describes it as an abbreviation of Assyria. But it is more probably derived from Suri, the Babylonian name for Mesopotamia with Asia Minor as far as the Halys and with an uncertain extension south of the Euphrates. In partial conformity to this the Greeks may at first have meant by Syria everything between the Caucasus and Egypt. But the name shrank south of the Taurus and Euphrates ; and the Koman province of Syria was bounded by that range and river on the north, the Levant on the west, the desert which is Arabia on the east, and the Wady- el'-Arish — the frontier of Egypt — on the south. To all westerners and to the native Greeks this practically is the Syria of to-day. The Arabs call it esh-Sha, "The Left" or Korth of the Arabian Peninsula, corresponding to el- Yemen, "The Eight" or the South.
From the first three adjectives were added to distin- guish the main divisions of the country. Coele — or Hol- low-— Syria, originally the Orontes valley and the great trench between the Lebanons, was thence loosely stretched over all southern Syria except Phoenicia and then (as in Koman times) restricted to Anti-Lebanon and the regions
THE NAJVIES 11
bejond Jordan. Phoenician Syria and Philistine, or Palestine, Syria, were the two coastal regions inhabited by those peoples. But first in Greek and thence in other European languages these adjectives became nouns — Ph(enicia and Palestine. By a curious diversity of fortune, while the former remained within its original limits on the coast from a little south of Carmel north- wards, Palestine was carried east and north till it covered the land to the foot of Lebanon and over Jordan to the desert. This is perhaps a unique instance of the gradual application to almost the whole of a country of the name of a tribe who never occupied more than a fraction of its surface and had already disappeared from its history.
The name Canaan — Kena'an, also Kna' — perhaps meaning "Lowland," is confined by Babylonian documents of the fourteenth century B.C. to Phoenicia, but in the form Kenahhi was used by Egyptians of the maritime plain from Gaza northwards. Thence, like "Palestine," it stretched both in Hebrew and Christian use over all the country south of Lebanon. In the Old Testament Canaan- ite means sometimes Phoenician, sometimes any of the tribes on the plains, as distinguished from those on the hills, and sometimes covers all the inhabitants whom Israel found in the land; while "the lip of Canaan" was tlie one language spoken in Palestine of which Phoenician, Hebrew and Moabite were little more than dialects.
The name of another ancient tribe, the Amorites, is applied by some Old Testament writers to the inhabitants before Israel of the Western Range and of part of the Eastern, by others to all the pre-Israelite peoples and by Babylonian documents to Western Palestine as a whole. In the English Old Testament the names "Syria" and "Syrians" render the Hebrew Akam, the designation of the fourth Semitic race which, with Phoenicians, Hebrews
12
SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
and Arabs, has seriously contested the possession of the country. Sometimes in ancient literature the name Arabia included Syria, j'ust as the Turkish 'Arabistan still does ; but Arabia is properly everything to the south and east of Syria.
BOUNDAEIES— EXTERNAL A:N^D INTERIsTAL
THE natural boundaries of Syria have been stated: N., the Euphrates and the Taurus Range; W., the Levant; E., the Arabian Desert; and S., the Desert of Egypt, on a line drawn from Rafa or el'Arish to the head of the Gulf of Akaba. These enclose some 400 miles N. and S. by 70 to 100 W. and E.
The form of the land may be generally described as on five parallel lines running N. and S. between the Sea and the Desert, as shown below.
N.
|
Sea. |
The Coast. |
The Maritime Plain (partial). |
The Western Bange. |
The Orontes- Jordan- Arabah- Valley. |
The Eastern Bange. |
Desert. |
s.
But these lines are neither regular nor uniform. Each has modifications of direction, of level and of character, which give the surface of the land a complicated variety and have always divided its populations both politically and economically. Like Switzerland, Syria has within herself natural frontiers more definite than some of those which separate her from the neighbouring countries. Two
BOUNDARIES— EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL IS
sucli cross-divisions are to be emphasised above tlie rest, not because thev are the greatest (for they are not), but because thej effect a convenient partition of Syria into three provinces.
The first is just N. of Tripoli, where the Western Range is cleft by the Nahr el-Kebir, which sharply dis- tinguishes the Nusairiyeh portion of the range from the Lebanons ; as the Eleutherus of the Greeks, this river fre- quently formed a political frontier. And the second h just N. of Tyre, the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh, which also cleaves the Western Range separating Lebanon from the hills of Galilee and then bends N. into the Beka' or valley between the Lebanons, while its main direction W. to E. is fairly continued over Jordan by tlie foot of Anti-Lebanon round to Damascus. There are thus three distinct divisions :
1. Northern- Syria:
From the Taurus to the Nahr el-Kehir.
2. The Lebanons: with Damascus.
3. Palestine :
From the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh to the W. el-' Arish.
s.
This last is further divided by the Plain of Esdraelon, interrupting the Western Range and affording a broad access from the coast to the Jordan Valley and Eastern Palestine, but seldom an effective border; and by Mount Carmel, shooting over from the Western Range to the sea and separating Esdraelon from the Maritime Plain, but never either a military or a political frontier. The rest of the Western Range passes imperceptibly from the hills and valleys of Samaria to the compact tableland of Judsea,
14 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
along which it is separated from the Maritime Plain by the lower but distinct range of the Shephelah; and descends very gradually upon what the Hebrews called the Negeb.
Nor has even that most singular feature of the earth's surface, the Orontes-Jordan Valley, continued by the Arabah to the Red Sea, proved a strong frontier, except at its deepest part where it is filled by the Dead Sea. For the fertility of the party of it called the Beka' links rather than divides the Lebanons; the upper Jordan and its lakes have not always separated Galilee from Jaulan and Hauran; generally Gilead and sometimes even Moab belonged to Samaria, and under the Turks Gilead at least has been administered from Nablus ; while, further south, the ancient Edom lay on hotli sides of the Arabah and to-day the same Arab tribes pasture their flocks in each region at different seasons.
On the Eastern Range, which rises only south of the Nahr el-Kebir, there is across Anti-Lebanon a high valley or pass (4,500 feet) that gives access from the Beka' to Damascus down tlie course of the Abana. The southern skirts of Hermon, falling steeply to the tableland of Hauran, mark a border between different forms of culture, and a demarcation convenient for minor political pur- poses, but they are not a real frontier. The volcanic Hauran again is separated from the limestone Gilead by the abrupt rift through which the Yarmuk flows, an ethnic and political border nearly always in ancient times. Gilead's hills pass imperceptibly into the plateau of Moab, as Samaria's into that of Judsea, but on the south of Moab there are two successive trenches, the Wady Mojib, the ancient Amon 2,000 feet deep, and the Wady el-Hesi less deep and abrupt, both of which have proved historical frontiers.
THE COAST 15
In any political re-distribution of Syria all these fea- tures must be taken into account.
THE COAST
1]^ general the Coast is one of the straightest in the world, with no deep estuary or gulf (save at the ex- treme north), and no protecting island of any size. But the part of it south of Mount Carmel differs substantially from that to the north. From Carmel to the Delta of the Nile is a stretch of sandhills and low rocks, with the mountains well back from the sea, and no broad river mouth or other natural harbour. The prevailing winds are from the S.W., and, with strong sea-currents from the same direction carrying the Xile mud, have always tended to silt up the outlets of the small streams, and the one or two artificial harbours, which like Herod's Caesarea have been urged upon so inhospitable a shore. Alexander wisely built his great port at the west instead of at the east or Pelusiac end of the Delta. At Carmel and north- wards, where the hills draw to the coast, short capes jut out, there are bays, sheltered some from two directions, some from only one; and a few islets form harbours suiBcient for the largest ships of antiquity.
We see why the Phoenician power gathered and flour- ished just here, for besides the protection for shipping the sands are rife with materials for glass, and the shallow waters teem with fish, sponges, and the murex, the source of the purple; metal and timber once abounded in the hills, and round or through these there is access to the grain fields of the interior, and to Damascus and Aleppo. How humble the beginnings of Phcenicia were may be perceived from the names of its towns; Akka perhaps
16 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
only "hot sands" ; Tyre, "Rock" ; Sidon, "Fishing-place" ; the later Zarephath, "Smelting place" ; and Beyrout, "Wells." South of Carmel the ships of to-day must ride at some distance off Jaffa when discharging their cargoes and as yet even off Haifa. But they can anchor more securely in the harbour of Beyrout behind its great cape and within two moles thrown out from this.
Jaffa, the port for Jerusalem, and for the grains and fruits of Philistia and Sharon, had in 1910 exports over £600,000 and imports of one million sterling; in 1912 those together are said to have risen to £2,080,000. Haifa is nearest, and has access by rail, to the wheatfields of Esdraelon and Hauran, with annual exports before the war of £200,000 and imports of £600,000. Beyrout con- centrates the silk manufactures of Lebanon, most of the local trade of Tyre and Sidon, and by rail and road a large part of the trade of Damascus ; its exports, mostly raw silk for Marseilles, were reckoned in 1910 to be over £800,000, and its imports two millions sterling.^ At Tripoli, so called because it was the seat of the Phoenician League, Tyre-Sidon-Arvad, there are even greater possi- bilities of a good port than at Beyrout; for a string of islets hangs off its cape, and Tripoli has access to Aleppo up the IsTahr el-Kebir with the promise, if not already the fact, of a railway. Its annual imports are said to be £300,000 and its exports £400,000.
ISTorthwards Marathus and Antaradus were the main- land settlements of the Phoenician island Arvad, now Euad; and Antaradus, as Tortosa (now Tartus), also flourished under the Crusaders. Latakia, the ancient Laodioea-ad-mare, has a small harbour, protected from
* About lOm. N. of Beyrout and connected by a good road and a light railway lies Juneh, a flourishing little town, whose harbour attracts sailing vessels and gives promise of greater prosperity.
THE MARITIME PLAIN 17
the north hj a cape ; it prospered in the early Christian period as the port of Antioch, and still carries on a con- siderable trade in tobacco, sponges and silk. Ruins and a choked harbour are all that remain of Seleucia, Antioch's previous port in Greek times. Lastly, Alexan- dretta, the safest and most convenient harbour on the coast but troubled with fever, commands an import and export trade of the combined value of three millions sterling; inland it traffics with Aleppo, and is to be, if it is not already, connected with the Baghdad railway.
THE MARITIME IBLAl'N
THE second of the parallel lines on which Syria is disposed, is not continuous. Virtually confined to the south of Mount Carmel with a few miles more to the north, the maritime plain dwindles to a ribbon between Lebanon and the sea, and recovers only in patches along the rest of the coast. But its breadth south of Carmel is of the highest importance to Syria from both a military and an economic point of view, especially if we take along with it the short range of the Shephelah or "low hills," which intervenes between the plain and the abrupt table- land of Judaea.
On the extreme south, eight or ten sandy marshes from Egypt, stands Gaza, "the vestibule of Syria," and the pert and market of the Arabs of the southern desert. Thence to Carmel spread some of Syria's most fertile fields, and across them runs the main highway of her war and traffic. This keeps well inland so as to avoid the sands and marshes of the coast, and passes the Philistine towns which flourished on its trade but suffered from the armies whom its clear course has attracted both north and south,
18 syhia and the holy land
aa well as from the plagues which it has frequently carried out of Egypt.
This level and famous stage of the route between the Nile and Mesopotamia might compass Carmel either by the sea or (as most armies and caravans have preferred) by one of three easy passes through the low hills between Carmel and the western range, on to Esdraelon; whence their march might continue either coastwise by the Phoenician cities or inland across Jordan (whether south or north of the Lake of Galilee) to Damascus, and so to the Euphrates. On the maritime plain this road is blessed with fairly sufficient water, and there are no great natural obstacles, but it is exposed, as most invaders by it have experienced, to attacks down the various valleys and slopes which fall from the Western Eange.
The Maritime Plain is very fertile. Philistia and Sharon with the wider valleys, that debouch upon them from the hills, bear good wheat, millet, vines, oranges, citrons, and flourishing vegetables. Date-palms do well in the south, and the olive is as fruitful as anywhere on the limestone hills of the Shephelah, on which also barley- fields are numerous. But these proofs of the capacity of the soil render only more obvious the waste, the want of public utilities and the poverty of the native peasantry. The German and Jewish colonies which have been planted since 1868 and 1870 respectively, are convincing evidence of the wealth everywhere possible to industry and a little science, were there only a government which dealt justly with the cultivator and assisted his toil by proper roads, irrigation and drainage. The Germans, from Wiirttem- burg and of the Temple sect, introduced better methods of agriculture in the belief that the Lord would come to the land, when it was made ready for Him; and the example of their practice if not of their faith has been
THE MARITIME PLAIN 19
followed more powerfully bv Jewish settlers, driven from eastern Europe by persecution, but equipped bj capitalists of their own creed. The Germans have two colonies, one by Jaffa and one at Haifa under Mount Carmel, whose slopes their industry has converted into vineyards not unlike those of the Ehine or the Xeckar.
Of the forty-five to fifty Jewish settlements in Pales- tine since 1870 — said to have contained before the war some 13,000 people — there are ten or eleven near Jaffa and southward, and others on the southern slopes of Car- mel— altogether with a membership of over 6,000. The improvements they have effected in spite of the obstruc- tions of the government and the agricultural inexperience of most of the settlers, have been wonderful, as the present writer can testify from a knowledge of their progress since 1880.
They have doubled, and in some cases, trebled the annual yield of the acres they cultivate. They have laid down new roads. They have introduced new stocks of fruit, and by researches at their experimental station are said to have developed varieties of grain and fruit fitted to withstand the sirocco and other rigours of the climate. They have reduced the fevers of some swampy districts by a lavish planting of eucalyptus, known to the Arabs as "the Jews' tree." In part they have overcome the menace of the drifting sands of the coast. Their exports of wine to Europe had already become consider- able. The influence of their example upon the native peasantry may be appreciated.
Esdraelon, which carries the same conditions of fertility almost as far inland as Jordan, is in its western half one vast wheat field: now partly the property of the Sultan and partly that of a wealthy Greek family. But I under-
W SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
stand that just before the war a Jewish oolony or two had been planted on its margin.
THE WESTEEN EANGE
THE mountain-ranges of Syria present an extraor- dinary variety of height and of surface. Erom the heated coasts and valleys at their skirts they rise in parts to over ten thousand feet, at which in that latitude the snow seldom disappears. Besides the natural terraces afforded by the limestone structure of their slopes, the ranges contain an unusually large proportion of high val- leys and table-lands of considerable fertility, buttressed or surmounted by steep bare ridges. From all this have arisen many facts of political and economic importance.
The mountains of Syria have not only been the last of her lines to fall to foreign invaders — except in the singular case of Israel. Throughout her troubled history they have also been the refuges of the more independent and there- fore intelligent and enterprising elements of her native population. And both in the Greek Period and in modern times they have attracted settlers from the west. There- fore, we find on them to-day a great variety of the smaller races and sects. There is often a less scattered population, with more people to the square mile, than on some of the richer plains below. And while in parts agriculture and industry flourish, in parts also these have been pushed up to levels where nature gives them little encouragement, and the only reason why men should live and labour on such shelves is the absence of security below. Since 1880 there has been a considerable emigration from the Syrian mountains to America and Australia. When Syria once more enjoys a just government there may follow by migra-
THE WESTERN RANGE 21
tion to the plains a still further abandonment of some of the loftier levels on which agriculture is now precariously pursued.
All this is especially true of the Western Range.
Starting (as has been said) from the Taurus, the West- ern Range runs, as the Giaour Dagh, south to the Orontea and close to the coast on a general height of from four to six thousand feet, but with loftier peaks. This was the Mons Amanus of the ancients, the boundary between Syria and Cilicia, and its chief pass (by Beilan) was known as the Syrian Gate. Its slopes are favourable to the vine and other fruits, parts are covered with ever- green, oaks, and firs; streams abound, and the range is crossed by roads from Alexandretta to Antioch and Aleppo, the Beilan pass still the easiest.
South of the Orontes, the range bears the name Jebel en-Nusairiyeh, till its next break in the valley of the IsTahr el-Kebir. Besides the bare Jebel Akra it consists of a series of limestone hills clothed with pines, oaks, and various shrubs, and of valleys with clear streams, strips of corn-land and olive orchards. There is much good grass. The inhabitants, not Semitic but of the Iranian type, and practising a variety of the Mohammedan re- ligion, mixed with Pagan and Christian elements, have an evil reputation, but are said by travellers to cultivate their lands and parts of the neighbouring plains with a care and neatness beyond other natives of Syria. They live in scat- tered hamlets.
South of the Nahr el-Kebir the range bears the name of Lebanon to the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh, just north of Tyre, a length of 105 miles. It rises from the narrow coast by steep slopes, buttresses and shoulders with many terraces, natural and artificial, that are cultivated to heights of four, five, or even six and seven thousand feet, and it is
S2 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
dotted with villa^s and monasteries. Wheat is said to grow up to 6,000 feet, and vines from 3,000 to nearly 6,000 feet, with olives still higher. There are many other fruit trees, but the principal culture is that of the mul- berry, grown for the production of silk cocoons. It is reported that in the Lebanon and the vilayet of Beyrout there were 132 steam spinning factories with 2,250 looms, and that Beyrout annually shipped to Marseilles raw silk and cocoons to the value of £800,000. Silk is also woven in the mountain for native use.
Above and behind these cultivated zones Lebanon rises to a high bleak ridge, bare or dotted with pines and shrub, which shuts out the east, and by its loftiness exercises a powerful influence on the climate, not only of the slopes below but of the whole of southern Syria. The summits of the ridge are Jebel Makmal and Dahr el-Kodib above the Cedars (both just over 10,000 feet), Jebel Muneitra and Jebel Sannin (over 9,000). From this ridge the east side of the range falls steeply, with but few villages and far less cultivation than on the west, into the Beka'. The Lebanon is crossed by several roads including that from Tripoli by the famous Cedars to Baalbek over a height of 7,000 feet, and by two lower passes, that on which the road and rail from Beyrout to Damascus cross the range at about 5,000 feet, and that by Baruk slightly lower.
South of Lebanon and the cleft of the Nahr el-Kasi- miyeh are the highlands of Galilee, of which Northern or Upper Galilee is undulating tableland surrounded by hills from 2,000 to 4,000 feet high, and Southern or Lower Galilee, parallel ranges below 1,900 feet with broad val- leys between them, and a few depressions under 500 feet. Both Galilees are very fertile. There is profusion of bush and scattered woodland, proofs of the possibilities of afforestation, some vines, olives, and stretches of arable
THE WESTERN RANGE 23
ground. In ancient times "no part lay idle" ; the olives were said to be easier to cultivate here than elsewhere in Syria, and the villages and towns were frequent. Under good government there might be great wealth in Galilee, in a climate singularly happy.
South of these highlands the Western Eang-e suffers its greatest separation (as already noted) in the Plain of Esdraelon, which rises little above sea-level between the coast and its open descent to the Jordan.
South of Esdraelon the Western Range rises again in the hills and high valleys of Samaria, or Mount Ephraim, From summits of 3,000 feet and a watershed averaging 2,000, it descends on the Maritime Plain by a gentle elope for the most part sterile with infrequent breaks of olive- groves and a few villages. The fall of the eastern flank is deeper and far more rapid, but it relaxes in several broad, fertile valleys. Within these flanks the Mount surprises the visitor by the number of its small plains, meadows and vales, from one of which, the Makhneh, east and soutk- east of Nablus, comes some of the finest wheat in Syria ; the olives and other fruits are excellent. A shallow pass cleaves these highlands, that which crosses between Ebal and Gerizim, and holds j^ablus at its centre. Nablus, the ancient Shechem, is the natural capital of Palestine in a very fertile district, with easy roads both to the coast that is only twenty-six miles off, and to the fords of Jordan that are not eighteen. In olden times Shechem or its successor and neighbour, the city of Samaria, held Gilead and even Moab in its power, and the Turkish Government for long administered from Nablus a great part of eastern Pales- tine.
The Samarian highlands slowly close and slightly rise to the compact plateau of Judaea, about 2,000 feet high, little more than thirty-five miles long from Bethel to the
U SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
south, of Hebron, and from fourteen to eigbteen broad from its edge above the Shephelah to where on the east the level drops below 1,200 feet and into desert. Judaea consists largely of stonj moorland with rough scrub and thorns, but after the winter rains there is considerable herbage. Sometimes it is less stony with a little wheat and more barley. Sometimes it breaks into shallow glens with olives, figs and terraces of vines. There is no running water. Ancient records, and the ruined terraces on the glens and in the defiles leading down to the west, testify that once even this, the least attractive part of all the Western Kange, enjoyed much greater fertility. The olive thrives nowhere better than at the level, and on the limestone, of Judaea. Both in the Jewish and the early Moslem eras oil and wine were abundant.
The Bible emphasises the pastoral character of Judaea, and many of its greatest personalities have been shep- herds; yet its cattle are small, and its people used to covet the bulls and rams of Bashan and of Gilead. Nor are there here any of the physical conditions of a great city — neither river nor trunk road nor convenient market for the surrounding peoples. Moab is shut off by the great gulf of the Dead Sea ; and the Arabs of the southern deserts resort to Gaza rather than to Hebron. But this very aloofness of Judaea guaranteed her security for longer periods than was the case with her sister Samaria, kept her people more free of alien influences, and while con- centrating the national mind gave it greater opportunity of observing the fates of other peoples and the course of history. Jerusalem, though a tolerable fortress, is not a natural but a spiritual creation.
The narrow plateau of Judah reaches its southern edge a little to the south of Hebron and thenco the range rolls gently down in broad undulations, through which the
THE WESTERN RANGE £5
Wady Khulil winds, to. Beersheba. There is still consid- erable farming as far as Dhoherijah, the ancient Debir, some eleven miles from Hebron, with a few springs, pools, and in the rainy season even streams. From Dhoheriyah to Beersheba is a slope, much less fertile, of about sixteen miles more. This forms as easy an approach to Judaea as any, and during the Jewish Exile its villages were gradually overrun by an Edomite drift from the south- east. Yet it was seldom, if ever, used by invaders with the plateau as their objective; for to the south of it across the Negeb lie east and west the steep and haggard ridges of the desert, while the plains of Philistia, even though they offer but few and narrow avenues to Jerusalem, have always been more attractive, for one reason or another, both to the desert nomads and to armies from Egypt.
The Xegeb, as the Hebrews called it, the Parched Land — the name is wrongly rendered "the South" in the author- ised version of the Old Testament — begins about Dhoheri- yah with the decrease of fertility and, falling from about 1,500 feet to (in parts) 500 above the sea, extends to some twenty miles beyond Beersheba. Save in patches this is a region of apparently sterile soil with wadies that lie dry for the greater part of the year, but under the rains suddenly brim with torrents. For centuries the Negeb has held no settled life save about the wells of Beersheba, and this only in recent years. Arab nomads sow fractions of it with barley or millet and reap the most meagre of crops, which south of the Wady Sheriyah are said to fail totally every third year. But the ruins of many villages — some of them small towns with a careful architecture — and of terraces indicative of cultivation, which mostly date from the Byzantine period, prove that even the Negeb has its possibilities under a good government. The wasted winter floods could be stored, and there are probably many
«6 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
wadies in which water might be drawn bj digging for it. But 30 long as insecurity prevails, wells are unprofitable.
THE ORONTES-JORDAll^-ARABAH VALLEY
THE fourth of the parallel lines of Syria is part of a great "fault" extending from Armenia to the Gulf of Akaba on the Red Sea, and containing the deepest trench on the earth's surface. This begins at Lake Huleh, which is just 7 feet above sea-level, falls to the Dead Sea, whose surface is 1,292 feet below the sea, and its bottom 1,300 lower still, and rises again to the sea-level some thirty-five miles further south in the Arabah.
We may start with this line in the neighbourhood of Antioch, where the Orontes (present name el-'Asi) leaves it to cut through the Western Range to the sea. Here is a broadish plain, el-Amk (the Unki of the Assyrians), none of it 600 feet above sea-level and extremely rich. The ancient prosperity of Antioch, to which vast ruins still testify, was due only in part to this fertility; the rest came from through-traffic to the Levant, most of which was long ago lost. From Antioch the valley of the Orontes ascends very slowly between the Western Range" and the edge of the high plateau of N. Syria; the ruins of ancient townships — averaging, it is said, one to the mile —are proofs of its natural resources and melancholy pro- tests against the incompetence of the Turkish Govern- ment.
At Hama (Hamath, 1,015 feet), an administrative centre with 80,000 inhabitants, good grazing lands, manu- factures of cloth and leather, and considerable trade with the Arabs of the neighbouring desert, the valley is reached by the Aleppo railway, which it carries on to the Beka^
THE ONONTES-JORDAN-ARABAH-VALLEY 27
Further on, from Horns (Emesa, 1,660 feet), also a mar- ket for the Beduin, with rich gardens and fields and a temperate climate, a railway diverges to Tripoli by the Nahr el-Kebir, and it is also possible to reach Palmyra in five days by carriage over the level desert. After Horns the valley becomes the Beka' or "Cleft" between the great Lebanons, and, varying in breadth from 6 to 7 miles, rises to over 3,770 feet at the sources of the Orontes about Baalbek. Large parts of this stretch are hard and sterile; there are fewer villages and ancient ruins, but considerable pasture.
About Baalbek is the watershed, streams start south, the Nahr el-Litani begins. The Beka' becomes very fer- tile, but even under the western enterprise of recent years it is only partially cultivated. Its ancient wealth must have been far greater. Vines and other fruits flourish, there are good trees and great possibilities for timber, room and fit soil for wheat, and during most of the year temperate airs. The breadth is from 8 to 10 miles.
From the S. end of the Beka' the Litani breaks in a passage of its own to the S.W. and W., to bound (as the Kasimiyeh) the Lebanon. But we follow the main "fault" south to where Jordan rises. The land here, about Has- beya, is singularly rich in olives and vines at a level of rather over 2,000 feet. Then the descent is rapid through good wheat lands, once well-cultivated, well-watered meadows with oaks and other large trees to the marshes and jungles of papyrus about Lake Huleh (7 feet above the sea), with a Jewish agricultural colony, and thence over rugged country to the Lake of Galilee (682 feet below sea-level). On the N.W. shore of the Lake lies the rich warm plain of Gennesaret, whose ancient wealth of fruit- trees and corn might easily be restored by drainage and irrigation. The fisheries of the Lake have always been
28 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
rich ; once the pickled fish carried its name to the markets of Rome. From the Lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea the length of the Jordan Valley is some 65 miles, with a breadth varying from 3 to 14— most of it good soil save in the wider bed which the river fills in spring and which is mainly mud and jungle with a broad margin of dead marl.
No part of Syria shows more signal proofs of the min- gled neglect and oppression of the Turk. In the upper portion about Beisan (Bethshan) flax abounded in the Roman period — the linen of Bethshan was then famous — and maize and rice were plentiful in the Mohammedan era. Lower down, towards Jericho, groves of the date- palm stretched for miles, there were gardens of balsam farmed by the Roman Government, and before and during the Crusades the sugar-cane was cultivated. Wheat grows well in many parts — up to the stirrups of the rider on the broad plains opposite Jericho. A large part of the Ghor, as this stretch of the valley is called, was appropriated by the last Sultan, and to that Imperial act are due a few recent improvements in its cultivation.
How much more might be effected by a system of irriga- tion— less from the Jordan itself, for its bed is deep, than from its many tributaries — is not hard to estimate. No- where would irrigation produce swifter or richer results, for the climate is sub-tropical. Wild plants and fruits abound in a luxuriance excelled only by some of the warmest and wettest valleys of East Africa, to the fauna and flora of which those of the Ghor are said to be akin. The few permanent inhabitants of this hothouse are (out- side Jericho) of a blackish, fuzzy-haired, almost negroid aspect. But both the peasants of Western Palestine and the Arabs of Moab annually descend to cultivate portions of the generous well-warmed soil.
THE EASTERN RANGE 29
THE EASTERN RANGE
THE Eastern range has no counterpart to the two northmost sections of the Western. It rises from the Syrian plateau south of Horns, and first opposes Leb- anon by Anti-Lebanon in almost equal length and height. Anti-Lebanon falls into two parts divided by a broad plateau and the gorge of the Barada or Abana river. To the north of this is Jebel esh-Sherki, "Eastern Mountain," with no conspicuous summit. On its western flank falling steeply to the Beka', there is hardly a village. The Wady Yahfufeh, which runs up from Reyak in the Beka', carry- ing the railway to Damascus, has a good stream and abun- dant vegetation ; over the watershed is the prosperous vil- lage of ez-Zebedani with a fertile plain on the head waters of the Abana. Between the ridges that the Jebel esh- Sherki throws out eastward to the desert there are a num- ber of other brooks and copious springs, beside which some 8 or 10 villages thrive among their vineyards, fig and pomegranate orchards, meadows, less frequent wheat fields and some poplars. But these lands are liable to be overrun in spring by the desert Arabs who exa<it blackmail when they do not plunder or settle down themselves to sow and reap the fields. For even on these heights may be seen that process which from the earliest times has been con- stant down all the border of the Eastern Range — the gradual rise of tribes or of families from the nomadic to the agricultural level.
The southern part of Anti-Lebanon, Mount Hermon or the Jebel esh-Sheikh (9,050 feet), has more villages on its western slopes and fewer on its eastern, with luxuriant vines to 4,700 feet, and above that scattered oaks and pines and sometimes a thick bush, with wild but edible fruits.
80 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
Snow falls deep in winter to the lower levels of the moun- tain and hardly disappears in summer from the summits.
But the glory of Anti-Lehanon lies at its feet ; its chief creation is Damascus. The site of this most enduring of cities is defenceless, remote from the sea, and on no natural line of commerce, well out on the desert, which lies behind as well as in front of it. But the mountain, by gathering the greatest of its waters to a narrow gorge among its barren eastern folds, and then flinging the river far out on a lofty drainable plateau (about 2,250 feet above the sea), has created some hundred and fifty square miles of exuberant fertility. From this, known as the Ghuta, rises the oldest, the largest and richest, the most fiteadf ast of all the cities of Syria.
Damascus has survived the rise and fall of several systems of religion. She has been harried and held by all the great empires of antiquity and the Middle Ages, and has seen them perish. Her only rival in Syria has been Antioch, and Antioch has decayed while Damascus still flourishes. In addition to her own fertility, she has learned to bend to herself most of the through traflBc be- tween the Nile and Mesopotamia; she is the outpost of civilisation in the Desert, and an indispensable market to the nomads of all Northern Arabia. Before the war her population was at least 200,000 with that of her suburbs ; some rate it at 300,000.
Down the southern slopes of Hermon the Eastern Range falls swiftly upon the vast plateau of Hauran, with its hilly neighbours of Jaulan and Jedur above the Lake of Galilee. The northern levels of Hauran are from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the sea, but on the south the plateau shelves off by broad degrees of about 1,600 and 1,300 feet to its limit in the deep valley of the Yarmuk. The surface is volcanic, its rocks basalt, and its soil a rich, red loam.
THE EASTERN RANGE 31
Treeless and with very few streams, except where its southern steps yield powerful waterfalls working many mills, the plateau, bears abundant wheat and good pas- ture.
Hauran wheat is in repute all round the Levant. Even in the insecurity to which the Turk for the most part leaves it, the harvests can be heavy; they reach Damascus or the coast at Haifa in long camel caravans or, since 1895, by railway. Before the war the annual yield of grain was said to be 320,000 tons. Behind the Eoman Limes Hauran was one of the granaries of the Empire. The ruins of public works — roads, aqueducts, reservoirs and fortifications — are still visible across it. A wealth of official and domestic buildings, with numerous inscriptions, testifies to the continued prosperity of Hauran through the Byzantine period; but the inscriptions almost cease from the time of the Moslem invasion, and the number of aban- doned or half-occupied towns evinces the insecurity which has cursed the country ever since. Recent Turkish admin- istration has somewhat improved matters, but this opulent province awaits a stronger government in order to become again one of the food-producing centres of Western Asia.
On the east it is bounded by the rocky fastness of the Leja, a low deposit of hard lava some 26 miles by 20, the refuge at all times of turbulent tribes, and by the Druze- Mountain with a highly potential but at present a some- what precarious cultivation. This eastern bulwark of Hauran, some 35 miles N", and S. by 20 E. and W., has an average height of between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (with a summit of 6,000), and gives birth to not a few springs and streams. It bears many ruins of Roman and Greek civilisation, and is said to support to-day some 40,000 Druzes, with a few "Mountain-Arabs," as they are called, and some groups of Christians. Beyond the mountain is
32 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
the desert — sand steppes and Harras wastes of lava, in the greatest of which lies the generous oasis of Euhbe, once a Greek and Eoman outpost. The desolate steppes on which Hauran runs out to the southeast, before the actual desert is reached, are rich in the Kali plant, of the ashes of which there is a considerable export to the soap-factories of West- ern Palestine.
With the Yarmuk Vallej, the Sheriat-el-Menadireh, the volcanic surface comes to an end and the limestone hills of Gilead begin with an average height of over 3,000 feet and some sununits of 4,000. Their ridges are covered with woods of the evergreen oak and other trees. The valleys and occasional plains, watered by numerous springs and streams, hold orchards of pomegranate, apricot and olive, and vineyards with a considerable export of raisins; also not infrequent fields of wheat and barley, especially on the upper reaches of the Jabbok towards, and in, the country of the ancient Ammonites. But the feature of Gilead's life which lives most clearly in the traveller's memory is the wealth of its herds of cattle, large and small. For Syria, the streams are exceptionally numerous.
Like those of Hauran, the fresh climate and fertility attracted Greek settlers and colonies of Roman veterans; and Gilead still shows the imposing ruins of their opulent cities. The theatres at Gadara and Abila, the long aque- duct leading thither from Hauran, the columns at Arbela and Dion, the theatre, the agora, the colonnaded streets and the naumachy at Gerasa show how Europeans once prospered and enjoyed life to the full on those last margins of civilisation towards the desert.
The southern boundary of Gilead towards Moab is as indefinite as that of Samaria towards Judaea ; but by the Wady Hesban the hills have ceased to roll, the woods have died out and we are again on a compact, treeless plateau.
THE EASTERN RANGE 33
The high limestone table-land of Moab, 2,300 to 3,300 feet above the sea, though — nnlike the volcanic Hainan — broken bj ribs and scalps of grev rock, is for the most part excellent soil for wheat, which grows richly across its spacious streamless extent without artificial aids, on the strength of the heavy rains and snows of winter. Where wheat is not possible the pasture is good, at least through the spring and early summer, and lasts still longer in the deep, well-watered caiions that cleave the plateau from the desert to the Dead Sea.
On the high, fresh moors the paths are all stamped with the footmarks of sheep and cattle, and in the height of summer you will find droves of them by the perennial streams in the bottoms of the caiions. In ancient times Moab with Gilead provided meat and cereals for the people of Western Palestine ; and in 1904 the present writer met corn-brokers from Jerusalem negotiating for the harvests before they were reaped. Doughty says, not too strongly, that at Kerak '^corn is almost as the sands of the sea." All this is in spite of the extremely low rate of the popu- lation to the square mile and of the desert raids to which the eastern border lies almost flat.
In Byzantine times Moab appears to have been thickly peopled. You can stand hardly anywhere on the plateau, but eight or ten ruined villages, with Byzantine traces on them, are in sight ; and once there were also several largish towns with public works, including huge reservoirs for the winter rains, and not a few other marks of a high level of culture. The Arab geographers praise the grapes and almonds of Moab, and the English survey of the northern part of the plateau discovered many wine-presses. But except for a very few about Kerak the vineyards have vanished and there are almost no other fruit-trees.
Bees abound, thriving on the wild blossoms, and there
34) SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
is (I was told) considerable harvest of honey. One of the canons, the Callirrhoe of the Greeks, enjoys great wealth of hot springs and streams, and all the canons af- ford a warm, and at their mouths a tropical shelter throughout the year. The plateau itself is wind-swept, healthy in summer and with a somewhat rigorous winter. The land was never famous for its industries, though the mosaic pavements discovered among some of its ruins are wonderful.
Those deeply-marked alternate boundaries of Moab to the south, the Wady Mo jib, the ancient Arnon, and the Wady-el-Hesi (or el-Ahsa) have already been noted. South of the latter are the highlands of Edom, and this land also is of great fertility with some mineral resources that have not been worked since the time of the Romans.
Such is the Eastern Range from the Anti-Lebanon to Mount Seir, fruitful, healthy and in part endowed with some hydraulic possibilities, but cursed by insecurity. Along its eastern skirts, flattened to the desert, it presents to every possible government of Syria one of the heaviest of problems, which only the Romans have been able to solve — how to defend its opulence from the hungry and marauding tribes of Arabia. Within recent years the Turk has attempted this after a fashion of his own, playing off the Druzes and the Arabs against each other, and pushing out to the verge of the fertile soil colonies of Bulgar and Circassian Moslems to quarrel with and cut down the desert tribes. This policy affects only sections of the long frontier.^ Elsewhere the peasants of the Eastern Range snatch a precarious peace by blackmail to the Arabs. In
^ The story of Turkish troubles in Hauran during the last thirty yaars is one of melancholy intrigue, slaughter and confusion — Druze revolts, serious defeats of Turkish forces, and then the achievement of the subjection of the Druzes by dividing them against ea«h other.
THE DISCREDITED TURK 35
sucli conditions long views and sustained enterprise ia agriculture are impossible.
THE DISCREDITED TURK
THAT, then, is Syria, over wliich for four centuries the Turk has held almost unbroken sway, with every opportunity to his hand that a fertile soil and a varied, industrious population can offer to their rulers. We see the results: the decay of large areas of fertility, the hud- dling of the more intelligent elements of the population upon the barer, less profitable shelves of the land, the depression and embitterment of the rest of the peasantry.
The Turk succeeded to many difficulties, certainly to more religious and racial antagonisms than rankle in any other part of the world. These his merely nominal toler- ance has poised and provoked against each other for his own ends ; but he has heaped up still greater evils by his economic neglect and fiscal oppression. Save for some sporadic efforts, he has been wanting in all for which a government exists — justice and security, the development of the natural resources, the organisation of public utilities, the encouragement of industry and trade — not to speak of education, in which his endeavours have been limited to a meagre number of primary schools, and a supply of fanatical instructors in the Moslem religion. Upon the social desert, into which he has turned nine-tenths of the country, the only oases are some hospitals, a few centres of higher education, the revival here and there of ancient water-supplies, a couple of good roads and a railway or two, with some examples of scientific and successful agri- culture. But all these are due to other influences or in- spired by other faiths than his own.
S6 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
The fact receives emphasis from the contrast between the parts of Syria under the direct rule of the Turk and the condition of the Lebanon which, since 1860, has had a Christian Governor and Council beneath a Western Protec- torate. In spite of enormous natural difficulties, agricul- ture and many industries flourish in Lebanon ; a number of excellent roads have been laid across its ridges; and the population are as many as 160 to the square mile, com- pared with an average of 34.5 to the square mile through- out the rest of Syria. The contrast is decisive, and Lebanon stands as the proof of what all Palestine may become when emancipated from Turkish misrule.
The Turk is an alien in Syria, with no native claim to the soil, and few or no family ties to the people. In Syria Turkish colonies do not exist; the men of that race are either officials or soldiers. In short, the Turk has neither inherited nor earned any rights to Syria. His removal would present neither social nor economic difficulties.
THE DUTIES OF HIS SUCCESSOK
WHATEVEE government, national or international, succeeds him, the interests that it must be right- eous, wise and strong enough to secure are clearly the fol- lowing: the protection and restoration of the once fertile but now wasted areas of the country along with the development of other areas whose hitherto untested possi- bilities are assured by recent experiments on similarly arid soils in other parts of the world ; the security and freedom of the native populations; subject to this, the claims of Israel for a home in the land ; and then the development of those industries for which so many of the people have shown a remarkable aptitude, and of those opportunities
THE EECOVERY OF THE LAND 87
for commerce that arise from the central position of the country.
It goes without saying that religious liberty must ba absolute, and that in such a land, and especially at some of its centres, the task of administering that liberty will require extraordinary strength, wisdom and tact. Finally, very important in itself, but subordinate to those other things, will be the archaeological responsibilities of the new government : the conservation of the countless monuments which so rich a history has bequeathed, and a methodical research into the many fields of the Syrian past, both above and below ground, that are still unexplored.
THE RECOYEET OF THE LAIS^D
AS for the soil itself, or rather the various soils, it may be safely said that under care they are capable of a pitch of productiveness beyond that reached even in the most prosperous period of Syrian history. I leave ISTorth- ern Syria at the summary descriptions given above and will write now only of the Lebanons and southward. Let us discount for the moment the glowing records of what Southern Syria has been to herself and the world about her. Let us reckon only her present aspect and products, with due allowance, of course, for the effects of four centuries of Turkish neglect and exaction^ and the least conclusion we can draw is one of very fair promise.
Even Juda?a, with its washed-out slopes, shattered ter- races and stony tableland, is not the bleached skeleton that some hurried travellers have sketched for us. It is still alive — gaunt, haggard and with bones protruding, because long starved and maltreated — but alive as even the most maltreated land abides in God's hands against better times.
38 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
And Judaea is the least fertile part of Palestine. The acres of Philistia and Sharon, from which a scientific farming has recently succeeded in drawing two and even three times their former yield; the constantly fruitful vales of Ephraim; the almost unbroken wheat-field of Esdraelon ; the rich plains and slopes of Galilee ; the lower terraces of Lebanon; the vast orchards of Damascus watered by the Abana; the copious harvests of Hauran and Moab, with the wealth of Gilead's cattle — though all these three provinces lie exposed to the Arabs ; the tropical soil and climate of the Jordan Valley; with the olive al- most everywhere and nowhere fatter than on the lime- stone debris of Judsea and Galilee — these are the pledges of a rich and a varied future for a secure and emancipated people.
But in addition to these there are steppes and arid bot- toms in the land, as ready to be transformed by irrigation or dry-farming as similarly unpromising districts have proved in California and other western States of America. To the present writer a journey into South California by the Mohave desert frequently recalled the aspects of various approaches into Syria through her encircling and ob- trusive sands. The same natural difficulties, the same natural possibilities exist in the one region as in the other ; given the same methods under the direction of Western experience and it is not hard to believe that the same or similar results would be obtained in the East as in the West.
It is not easy to estimate the possibilities of afforesta- tion. Caution is necessary with the glowing deductions that have been made from the data of ancient literature on the subject. The Old Testament word, rendered forest in our versions, is often only jungle and never more than woodland when applied within Palestine proper. The
THE RECOVERY OF THE LAND 39
larger and more valuable timbers appear to have been im- ported from Lebanon, and it is to Carmel, Lebanon and Gilead alone that the sacred writers look for the ideal for- est— the symbol of glory and pride. Elsewhere were only scattered woods, with sometimes thicker groves, of ever- green oak, terebinth, sycomore (only below 1,000 feet), carob, box, pine and cypress; with, of course, the heavy and valuable plantations of walnut about Damascus. The afforestation of Syria was probably never much more than we find to-day, with perhaps some exceptions such as the oak-woods of Sharon that lasted till the Crusades and the huge palm-gi-oves of the Jordan valley in the Roman period.
But all this is far from being the measure of the capacity of Palestine as a timber-bearing country. It does not appear that a full chance of proving this capacity has ever been given the land — either by the conservation of its existing woods or by planting new ones. Under the Turk the waste has been reckless, and there has been very little re-planting. On the other hand, a few foreign at- tempts, chiefly with pines, have succeeded, and there is no natural obstacle to their extension over considerable areas unfit for other crops. But it is beyond Palestine proper that the chief hope of timber must remain. One of the first tasks of a new government should be the endeavour to restore the forests of Lebanon by the plantation of the higher ridges. On the skirts, too, of that mountain and of Hermon, especially about the sources of Jordan, large trees flourish, and the pinewoods south of Beyrout show what is possible there and on other sandy stretches of the coast.
Except about the Dead Sea and other volcanic districts, the mineral resources of Palestine are meagre, and even
40 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
there still uncertain.^ In the southern Hauran, Gilead and the Jordan Valley we have seen unusual energies of water-power waiting to be applied to agriculture and the handicrafts.
It has been asserted that the decay of Syria is largely due to a change of climate, including a great diminution of the rainfall. But of this few signs exist except, at first sight, in the perplexing case of the JSTegeb.^ On the other hand, there is close correspondence between the relevant data in the Bible and Talmud and the physical facts of to-day. That the change, if any, has been so slight as to be negligible is the opinion of the great majority of mod- ern authorities, and the present writer is convinced that it is the right opinion. There is a possible explanation even of the Negeb. It is true that a considerable agriculture once prevailed here, and that no remains of aqueducts have been found to enable us to assign the cause to irrigation from the outside. But the structure of the country allows the possibility of many wells, and the disappearance from the Negeb of its ancient prosperity may be due to the loss of that political security without which the digging of wells, however industrious, is but a vain thing.
THE :N^ATIYE PEASAITTEY OR EELLAHIK
OF the human factors which demand the care of a just government none — not even the Jews — ^have a stronger claim than the native peasantry. In a land whose history has been so filled with invasion and migration, the peasants are bound to be of diverse stocks; and from district to district they vary in stature, physiognomy, men-
^ See the present writer 'a Jerusalem, Vol, I., pp. 330 ff. 'See p. 25 of this book.
THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHIN 41
tal force and culture. In the main they are Semitic, but have sprung from three distinct families of that race: the ancient Canaanites who entered Palestine about 2,500 B.C.; the Arameans who arrived about the same time as Israel — to-day both pure Arameans or (in Lebanon) Arameans probably crossed by a Greek strain ; and Arabs who have drifted and still drift in from the desert, grad- ually passing from herding to tillage and from tents to stone hovels and houses in settled villages, large and small.
In parts of Northern Syria there also appear some Israelites of a long descent in the land. In other parts an Iranian element is found. In Southern Syria the native peasants are mostly Moslems, but with a consider- able number of Christians and Druzes.
But whatever their varieties the feUahin have these things in common — that they labour, and for centuries have laboured, on the soil ; that they are therefore the basis of the people and the state; and that all through history, but most cruelly under the Turk, their generations have borne the sorest service and suffering. On them have fallen most heavily the sirocco, the drought, and the con- sequent famine; and it is their smaller communities which have been most badly broken by the plague as well as by the raids of Arabs from the desert.
The abandoned villages of Syria are innumerable; hardly ever is the traveller out of sight of their ruins ; on the maps of Palestine no designation is more frequent than "lOiirbet," which means a ruined, forsaken hamlet. An- cient or recent, these fragments of desolation are the most damning witnesses to the insecurity of the land under Oriental rule.
In recent years the economic condition of the Syrian peasant has steadily declined. Property in land (which is
42 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
not wakf, or devoted to religious purposes) is of two kinds — mulh, or "owned," that is freehold, generally near to towns or villages, and mostly consisting of gardens or orchards ; and 'amiriyeh, "Emir's," or "State land," held in common by the village, and also called "Undivided land," which is invariably arable and is annually appor- tioned by lot among the families of the commune.^ But in the last half-century this system has been rudely dis- turbed. After noting the "contrast between the poverty of the fellahin and the extent and fertility of the land owned by each village," Laurence Oliphant, who had long oppor- tunities of observing, traced this paradox to the intolerable increase of the rents or taxes, aggravated by the novel exaction of these in cash instead of in kind, with the result that the peasants are thrown into the hands of the usurer, who demands from forty to fifty per cent, of interest on the cash he advances. Consequently much of the private and communal property of the peasants had at first to be mortgaged and then surrendered to the alien capitalist. Already in 1886, says Oliphant, the peasants of Esdraelon and the maritime plain were "rapidly losing proprietorship in the soil and becoming serfs."
It is true that the new proprietors have introduced im- provements— better ploughs, hoes, barns, and so forth. But the State has done nothing for the land, though its revenues have increased. Outside certain properties of the Sultan, little attempt at irrigation has been made, no proper roads have been laid down. In 1891 in southern Hauran I saw part of a plentiful harvest sacrificed for want of means of transport. In spite of such conditions some villages man- age to thrive, and some farmers, notably Christians, appear to be tolerably wealthy. It is difficult to say how far these exceptions have been rendered possible by susceptibility to
* For references see the present writer 'a Jerusalem, Vol. I., p. 280.
THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHIN 4S
bribes on the part of officials whoso salaries are always in arrear.
Estimates of the industry and ability of the Syrian peasant vary very much. Indolence is often imputed to him, and the charge, even if it were generally true, would not be surprising in view of the conditions just sketched. What stimulus of hope is possible under such a govern- ment? But the charge is not generally true. The mass of the peasantry, men and women, have to work hard, for they work for bare life, and one has frequent occasion to admire their starved patience and unblessed industry. Vil- lages differ in character. Some are notoriously dishonest, malignant to strangers, fanatic against other faiths than their own. Others are the reverse, peaceable, courteous to travellers, not self-seeking, and controlled by sheikhs, whom I have often found gentlemen and helpful. In some communities Christians, Jews and Moslems live in amity.
The ignorance of the fellahin is generally deep, but that is not their fault. On the other hand one discovers a re- markable shrewdness among them, worthy of far better opportunities. There is generally a healthy discipline; the good example of the elders, whether men or women, is revered and their counsel obeyed. Certain districts pro- duce capable artisans. There is through the land a con- siderable body of folk-song, of no mean lyric quality. Drudges as most of the fellahin must be for the gTcater part of the year, into what good spirits, what jest and song and dance they will burst at harvest and other festivals ! Mr. Hogarth says:^ "There is no more enterprising, no keener intellect in the Nearer East than the Syrian of the Eringe . . . the inhabitants of the Lebanon and the Syrian littoral." He ascribes this excellence to the iu- ^ The Nearer East, p. 194.
44 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
creased quality of the staples of life; "where the ^Arab' (to use the ethnic widely) lives under conditions similar to the Greek he resembles him at many points, both physical and mental." But may not this excellence be partly due to the crossing of the Semite by a Greek strain ? And in the Lebanon we cannot forget what is more cer- tain, the comparative freedom and security enjoyed by its inhabitants for two generations. Their superiority is the pledge of a general rise in the moral and mental level of the Syrian peasantry as a whole, when those blessings shall have been extended to all the land by a strong and a just government.
THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS
THE claim of the modern Jew to a "national home" in Palestine is threefold: — by right of the history of his fathers, by right of his own devotion to the ideal of a national life, and by right of his recent successful exer- tions on the soil. To assist the fulfilment of his ideal is only a part of what the civilised world owes to the Jew, because of his spiritual service to mankind and because of the treatment he has suffered from other races since he was driven from his land. In the face of inconceivable difficulties the Jew (as we have seen) has given proof of his practical ability not only to develop the resources of Palestine but thereby to enable it to contribute once more to the general interests of civilisation, as from its position and fertility it is so well-fitted to do.
We must not forget to do justice to the German settlers at Haifa and on Sharon, the pioneers of revived agricul- ture in Syria. Laurence Oliphant, who for a number of years was their neighbour, bears witness to their honesty,
THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 45
their thoroughness, and the influence of their example on the natives. But according even to their friends the Turks, the effect of the work of the Germans has been merely local. In agricultural results and in influence on the peasantry they have been far outdone by the Jewish colon- ists on the Maritime Plain and in other districts.^
It is not surprising, therefore, that during the last twenty years there has been a rapid growth of the idea of "Palestine for the Jews" among both themselves and other peoples. The labours of Dr. Herzl and the influence of the Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, over which he presided, gave the movement its strongest spiritual impetus from within Jewry. But both its hopes and many of its immediate claims have received an increasing amount of recognition from the Press and from responsible states- men among the great Powers. It is not a few years ago that Lord Cromer declared that "Zionism is fast becoming a practical issue."
But if practical before the war it has become immensely more so as the war has gone on. Since the Turk, in any case an alien and a discredited alien has further shaken his hold on Syria by his alliance with the enemies of civilisation, the hopes of the Jews and the sympathies of the great Powers have naturally ripened. With the Bel- gians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Roumanians, and Ar- menians, the Jews have been recognised as one of the weak peoples for whose national freedom the Allies are battling. Their right to "a home" in Palestine with some degree of autonomy has been affirmed by democratic parties in Great Britain, in other European countries, and in America; and has been acknowledged by more than one of the Allied Governments.
Even in Germany the strength of the Jewish claims ^See above, p. 20.
46 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND .
upon Palestine is admitted — always, of course, with re- spect to Germany's bonds to her Turkish ally. With the exception of the Roman Catholic organs, the German Press has welcomed the prospect of a large return of the Jews to the Holy Land on the grounds that "Je-ws have already learned to support themselves there," that their settlement "would benefit the native Arabs" (sic), that "the Turks have always been tolerant of Jews," and that Jews have ever been disposed to be loyal citizens of the Turkish Empire and "can be of economic advantage to it." On the other hand in Italy Baron Sonnino has pronounced that "Palestine must be freed from the Turkish yoke ; once 80 freed it would be neutralised and internationalised, and declared an independent State" with due regard of course to Jewish rights.
But the most momentous factor in the Zionist move- ment is Mr. Balfour's declaration on behalf of the British Government that "it views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
So far has the movement progressed. Its strength is clear, its prospects bright — especially since the capture of Jerusalem by a British force — and the devotion to its ideals of large numbers of Jews undoubted. It has the sympathy of the Allied Powers as of their peoples behind them, and even the Master of the Turk acknowledges that a place must be found for the Jews within the political future of Syria. Yet even so, one must be impressed with the vagueness which still envelopes the hopes and purposes of Zionism. It is clear that Jews are ready, and
THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 47
must be allowed, to settle in Palestine, in very greatly in- creased numbers, for the cultivation of the soil (of their fitness for which they have given solid proof) and with a certain degree of autonomy, free to express their "na- tional" as well as their religious and economic aspirations.
Beyond this and the firm conditions happily laid down by the British Government, nothing is yet defi.nite. How- ever deserving of our sympathy, the Jewish claims have not been so thought out in face of the present facts of Pal- estine as to command our unqualified support. The un- certainty is not only due to the fact that the war is un- finished and the political future of Syria is still in sus- pense, nor only to the difficult international questions that will have to be settled, if and when the Turkish power in Syria is abolished.
The vag-ueness is also due to division of opinion among the Jews themselves, and to the fact that in enthusiasm for the undoubted justice of their aspirations Zionists appear to ignore or at best unduly to depreciate the economic and social difficulties in the way of a '^national" Jewish restoration, and in particular that the very grave questions of the area of the Jewish home and of its fron- tiers have not been as yet even fully stated, far less dis- cussed or answered. To answer these questions is not within the scope of this essay; but in the interest of the education of the public it is necessary to endeavour to state them. We do so first by inquiring more exactly what are the Jewish aspirations, and then by observing how they are encountered and affected by the existing conditions of Palestine, physical and social.
A portion of British Jewry, in number a minority, but of intellectual force and apparently supported by a body of Jewish opinion in America, looks for the establishment in Palestine of a community of Jews which, while eco-
48 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
nomicallj independent, shall exist mainly for religious pur- poses, *'a source of inspiration to the whole of Jewry" — the Jewish communities throughout the rest of the world meantime continuing to cultivate "complete social and political identification with the nations among whom they dwell."
This, of course, is far short of the "national" ideal of the Zionists. It is the old controversy whether the test of a Jew is his religion or his nationality. But it is complicated by the fact that while the limitation of Jewish hopes of Palestine to a Jewish community existing there for mainly religious purposes is advocated by the less rig- orous parties in Judaism, the Zionist demand for the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine — "for Judaism is not only a creed but a nationality" — is sup- ported by parties ardently orthodox and many of them profoundly spiritual.
iSTor are the Zionists themselves of one mind. There are the extremely political Zionists, who demand the crea- tion of an autonomous Jewish state under international guarantees, and offer Belgium as an example of what they mean. But moderate, or, as they call themselves, "prac- tical," Zionists, realising that the Jews now are, and for some time must still be, a minority in Palestine, and "pre- ferring the line of safe and sure development," disclaim the idea of an independent Jewish state, and plead only for the restoration of their people as a nationality.
As one has said of the Zionist Congress: "It was not to establish a Jewish State to-day or to-morrow that we went to Basle, but to proclaim aloud to the whole world: *^The Jewish people still lives and wants to live.' " But this restoration to Palestine, which "practical" Zionists demand, is not the restoration of a vast number of indi- vidual Jews as free citizens of whatever state may be
THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 49
established there, nor merely tie extension of the present system of Jewish colonies owning scattered districts with freedom to manage their own business and local affairs. It is the establishment of the Jews as a nation, "under Jewish law, in possession of the whole of the Jewish land," and using, of course, the Hebrew language. Their own words are "a Jewish Palestine," "the establishment of a Jewish national home" (which appears also in Mr. Bal- four's declaration), "a home for Judaism, for Jewish civ- ilisation as well for some millions of Jews, in the ancient land of Israel." Or again, "We want Palestine, the whole country, to be the home of the Jews, and we want to live under our own laws, not indeed with the outward shell of a State, but with the inner kernel of free and independ- ent institutions."
It would not be at all fair to interpret this desire as one for all the blessings, without any of the heaviest respon- sibilities, of nationality. The desire is most natural — perhaps the only one possible — to a people who, while heroically preserving their national spirit through eighteen centuries of dispersion and many persecutions, are with- out the experience or the means required for government and its international duties. Towards the fulfilment of a national restoration Zionists reckon, not without reason, on the migration of millions of Jews to Palestine. However Jewry may be divided in opinion as to the shape which that restoration should take, there is little doubt that, given freedom to return and possess land under their own laws, Jews would resort to Palestine in sufficient numbers to form a nation. Moreover, there is room for them in the country; from what we have seen its capacity to support them is not to be denied, nor, as their colonies have shown, can we doubt their ability to develop this.
It is also natural that at this stage of the war Jewish
50 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
opinions should not be agreed as to what is to be the supreme power in Palestine. Some Zionists, perhaps the wisest, refrain from making any proposals. Others con- ceive of a wide but undefined international suzerainty, others of a protectorate by a single great Power, or of a condominium by two or three; while some non- Jewish writers suggest that this should be assumed by France, Italy and Britain.
But many Jews deprecate the idea of a condominium, the risks and failures of which have been experienced else- where, and claim that the protectorate must be single. Great Britain and the United States have each been named as the Power most desirable in the circumstances, British Jews and in particular the British Palestine Society strongly pleading for the former. Their phrase is "a free nationality within the British Empire"; their reasons, that free nationalities, prosperous and contented, already exist within that Empire — the Jewish would only be one more.
To complete this account of Jewish opinion it is neces- sary to add that some Zionists also appeal to British in- terests. They seek to show that the Judasan plateau is "the needed bulwark of the Suez Canal," "the outer bas- tion of Egypt," and that "the natural buffer-state to Egypt is Palestine."
Such are the aspirations of the Zionists and the plana of some of them. How do they bear upon the existing facts of the situation ?
RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS 51
EELIGIOUS QUESTIONS
WE may take first the religious facta, though, except in one respect, that of the holy places, the religious facts are not the most difficult or acute. Were Jewish influence, social and political, to become predominant in Palestine — if only through sheer force of numbers — I do not think it would prove intolerant to other creeds. Deli- cate and even dangerous as the relations of religions have always been in Syria, and fanatic against other faiths as fractions of the Jewish population might prove to be, the general spirit of the modern race is tolerant, and with international guarantees for religious liberty, can be trusted to subdue the passion or arrogance of groups of its own people.
The particular question of the sacred places is more dangerous; it will always be difficult whatever race or faith may prevail in the land.^ How would Jewish in- fluence treat it ? I have seen general promises by Zionists on the subject. But it is when one comes to details that the danger first rises. You may make Jerusalem an in- ternational, a free or neutral, city, with rights equal to Christians, Jews and Moslems. But how does the Jew propose to decide between himself and the Moslem the question of the possession or of the use of the sacred Rock beneath the Mosque of Omar, or of the Mosque at Hebron ?
*See above, p. 5.
52 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
ECONOMIC QUESTIONS
THERE are other and even more serious difficulties connected with the restoration of the Jews to Pales- tine which must be faced before the political future of that country and of those who have claims upon it is determined. There is the case of the native fellahin. We have seen what their stake in the land is, what rights in the soil they have earned, what claims their centuries of service and suffering give them upon the sympathies of the free democracies by whom their fate will have to be decided.^
With regard to these claims, it is not enough to say, as some Zionists have done, that there is room in the land both for the "Arabs" (as Zionists erroneously call them) and for the Jews. When Jewish writers claim "the whole country for the Jews," when they write of "the re-settlement and rebirth of Palestine" as "the national centre" of "the Jewish nation," have they realised the economic and social disturbances which the execution of this claim would involve? Ji is useless to compare the claims of the Jews on Palestine with the rights of the Belgians to Belgium. When the Belgians are restored to their land it will not be at the risks of a native peasantry different from themselves, who have owned and lived by its soil for centuries. How do Zionists propose to pre- serve the legal rights and secure the social health of the fellahin, or to prevent the continuation of that process of buying and crushing them out of their communal property, by which so many have already been reduced to the posi- tion of serfs ? It is no duty of the present writer to an- swer these questions ; but while Jewish hopes are high and 'See above, p. 40 ff.
THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AREA 53
legitimately tigh, it is right to point out what difficulties lie in the way of their equitable fulfilment, and what very serious economic details have still to be thought out.
In illustration, an experience may be quoted. On visiting a recently established Jewish colony in the north-east of the land, round which a high v;all had been built by the munificent patron, I found the colo- nists sitting in its shade gambling away the morning, while groups of fellahin at a poor wage did the cultiva- tion for them. I said that this was surely not the inten- tion of their patron in helping them to settle on land of their own. A Jew replied to me in German: "Is it not written : The sons of the alien shall he your plowmen and vinedressersT'
I know that such delinquencies have become the ex- ceptions in the Jewish colonisation of Palestine, but they are s;>Taptomatic of dangers which will have to be guarded against. When we hear that Jews desire to live under their own laws in Palestine, and rightly sympathise with that desire, we must at the same time take sureties that these laws shall not include those of the Old Testament which might encourage baser Jews to the "sweating" of the natives as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AEEA
AGAIISr there is the question of the limits of the Jew- ish area with all the difficulties it raises, both ethnic and strategic. Zionists claim for the Jews "the whole country" of Palestine; and one writer adds: "there must be no partition of Palestine; the Jew in Galilee must not be cut off by an international frontier from the Jew in Jerusalem." But what is Palestine? Save under the
64 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
Romans, the name has never had exact borders ; to-day it is perhaps more vaguely applied than at any other time.
Which of the possible lines of division we have seen round and across Syria are to be the frontiers of the new Syria, when the Turk is forced to relinguish the land and some other Power or Powers assume authority ^ And when these frontiers have been settled, on ethnic and military considerations, how much of what they embrace is to belong to the Jewish people as a nationality, and to be administered under Jewish law?
Some regions may at once be ruled out of the Jewish sphere; others are doubtful; others we cannot exclude. There is Middle Syria between two definite borders, the Nahr el-Kebir on the north and the ISTahr el-Kasimiyeh, and containing the Lebanon. What rights, historical or moral, have the Jews to this? For at least fifteen cen- turies Lebanon has been Christian territory, and as we have seen has enjoyed since 1860 a separate constitu- tion with a Christian governor under the protection of the Powers of Europe. The population is about 400,000,- of whom 320,000 are Christians, 50,000 Druzes and the rest Moslems, with practically no Jews. There is Beyrout with a population of over 100,000, of whom two-thirds are Christian and the rest Moslem. There is also the Phoenician coast south of the Kasimiyeh without a single memory of Jewish occupation or of the influence of Jew- ish culture. There is Eastern Palestine separated from Galilee and Judasa by the deep trench of the Jordan and Dead Sea. What is the evidence of history as to Jewish rights over these eastern provinces?
Except when Herod had the legions of Rome behind him the Jewish nation failed to exercise authority or keep order in Hauran in parts of Gilead and in Moab. Their conquests were temporary, their settlements incon-
THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AREA 55
stant. The civilisation of those provinces was never Jew- ish but Greek, Roman or Byzantine; and the last was long ensured by tribes of Christian Arabs — wardens of the marches — who themselves developed an impressive cul- ture and have left, standing to this day on the desert- margins, monuments of their ability and character. These Arab Christians have not died out ; scattered communities of them still endure east of the Jordan, as far south as Kerak, at other points in Moab and Gilead, and even in Hauran and on the Druze-Mountain. Again, there is the IsTegeb, where the only remains of settled life are By- zantine. There is Philistia, only occasionally in Jewish hands.
There is Damascus itself, the largest city and the real metropolis of Syria, in which the Jew never had rights except the right to trade; and the moral claims to predominance are shared by the Christian and the Moslem.^
Judsea, Samaria and Galilee are left. Is the whole of each of these to be the area of the Jewish "national home" ? The religious history of Jerusalem and the devotion to her of so many living faiths point to the conclusion that the city and its territory should be abso- lutely neutral under international guarantees. But if the rest of Western Palestine be given back to the Jewish people as a people, what of the Christian communities within it, especially in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood — where they have given as good proof as many Jewish colonists of their power to farm the soil — and in Nazareth and its neighbourhood, also at other points. Napoleon when he camped on Esdraelon was impressed by the num- bers of Christians from Galilee who came to do him homage; since then they have not diminished. ^See above, p. 30.
56 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
Thus the claims of the Zionists, strong though they be, raise larger and more detailed questions than their copious literature has discussed or even stated. The Zionist rightly appeals to history; but his appeal must be decided on wider and more complicated considera- tions than he advances — not only the Jewish associations and achievements in Palestine, but Jewish limitations and failures as well, along with the rights that other races and faiths have undoubtedly earned in that doubly and trebly sacred land.
It is not true that "Palestine is the national home of the Jewish people and of no other people." It is not correct to call its non-Jewish inhabitants "Arabs," or to say that "they have left no image of their spirit and made no history — except in the great Mosque." We may rule out the Franks, their brief discipline of Syria and the many monuments of this that remain. But what of the native Christians, Syrian and Greek ? They doubt- less claim that their faith is the moral heir of all that was best in ancient Judaism.
If agTeement on that question is impossible, there re- mains the other, which we cannot evade, of the fact of the living Christian communities. Have they not been as long in possession of their portions of the land as ever the Jews were? Is not Palestine the birthplace of their faith also and its fields as sacred to Christians as to Jews ? Has Christianity "made no history" and "left no image of its spirit" on the Holy Land ?
These are legitimate questions stirred by the claims of Zionism, but the Zionists have not yet fully faced them. In short, the Jewish question in the Holy Land cannot be decided by itself, nor merely upon general assurances that "the rights of other creeds and races will be re- spected" under Jewish dominance. Obviously a very great
THE FRONTIERS OF NEW SYRIA 57
deal of difficult detail has still to be thought out by the Powers of Europe — and the democracies of Europe edu- cated in the thinking thereof — before the future of Syria can be settled on lines of justice and security for all na- tions and creeds alike.
THE FRON-TIERS OF NEW SYRIA
A MERE allusion has been made to the wider ques- tion of the frontiers of the New Syria as a whole. At this stage it is premature to attempt a full answer to the question. But our survey of the land has made some outlines more or less clear.
The southern border of Syria, from time immemorial, has been a line drawn from el-Arish on the coast to the head of the Gulf of Akaba — all the desert beyond has been regarded as belonging to Egypt. Under the condi- tions of ancient and mediaeval warfare, and indeed down to the time of Napoleon, this desert was considered as strong a barrier and bulwark as is possible between two States. In Napoleon's own words : "De tons les obstacles qui peuvent couvrir les frontieres des empires un desert pareil a celui-ci est incontestablement le plus grand . . . car, si on a tant de difficulte a transporter les vivres d'une armee que rarement on y reussit completement, cette difficulte devient vingt fois plus grande, quand il faut trainer avec soi I'eau, les fourrages et le bois, trois choses d'un grand poids, tres difficiles a transporter et qu'ordinairement les armees trouvent sur les lieux."
Modern means of transport have indeed rendered the Syro-Egyptian desert somewhat less formidable; yet even so we may doubt the Zionists' contention (by which they appeal to British interests) that Egypt and the Suez
58 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
Canal require "a. buffer state" in Palestine, and more particularly on the Judaean plateau. And, besides, if this State is created, where is its own northern frontier to run? Hardly over Esdraelon, for that, as we have seen, is neither a political nor a strategic border.^ If the next natural line were chosen, the iS'ahr-el-Kasimiyeh,^ then "the buffer State" would itself require a buffer, for its northern frontier would run defenceless against the foot of a great mountain-wall. But in any case the argument for a Judsean buffer to Egypt is not conclusive. A friendly State in southern Syria would indeed be a support, but not an indispensable support, to the security of the Canal or of Egypt.
If Lebanon, or the Lebanons, be created a Christian province which they essentially are, and already in 1860 were recognised to be by the Great Powers of Europe, the natural boundaries would be those which have frequently formed political frontiers — the Nahr-el-Kebir to the north and the ISlahr-el-Kasimiyeh on the south; and Beyrout would have to be brought in. But how is Damascus to be related to such a province ? Bound to the Lebanons by many ties of neighbourhood and trade, as well as by the blood of a large part of its population, Damascus car- ries far wider responsibilities than these both to the rest of Syria and to Arabia, and therefore in any reconstruc- tion of the nearer East stands a problem by itself.
l^orth of the Lebanons the possible frontiers are two ' — first the westward bend of the Orontes to the sea, and then the Taurus itself. But the questions they raise, with the kindred question of Aleppo, depend for their answers on the settlement of the political future of Meso-
^See above, p. 13. ^See above, p. 13. ^See above, pp. 13, 21,
THE FRONTIERS OF NEW SYRIA 59
potamia — a subject beyond the scope of our present in- quiry.
Finally, there is the Eastern frontier. This can hard- ly be the Jordan-Orontes Valley. It is impossible to conceive of the provinces over Jordan and the Orontes as excluded from the Xew Syria. But if they are in- cluded her government must be of a power sufficient to render their open borders on the desert secure against tribes of whom there can be no hope for some time that they will respect civilisation's ideals of disarmament. Even if a stable government be founded in the Hejaz, it cannot be relied on as able to control the warrior hordes of I^orthern Arabia. The tribes which rove between Palestine and the Euphrates reckon their fighting-men by many scores of thousands ; a very large number of whom are armed with Martini-Henry and other modern rifles.
For the peace and prosperity of Syria a strong Eastern frontier down the desert is essential. And is Edom to come within this frontier or to be left to the Arab, when the Turk is removed? The last European government which held Western Palestine, that of the Crusaders, found it necessary to build fortresses in the Edomite high- lands and to push its arms by that direction as far as the Gulf of Akaba — as the Romans did before it.
All this is enough to make clear that the Power or Powers to whom the political future of Syria falls will have problems before them far more serious than any that Britain has had to solve in Egypt, and quite as heavy as those which gather along the northern and north- western frontiers of the Indian Empire.
60 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND
EPILOGUE
AS I write these last paragraphs the news comes in of the liberation of Jerusalem from the Turk on the 9th December by a British force, including troops from all the British Dominions over the seas and Indian Mos- lems, as well as French and Italian detachments. It was, besides, the very day on which Jews celebrate the anni- versary of her deliverance by Judas Maccabeus.
In his solemn entry to the Holy City the British Gen- eral was accompanied by the attaches of France, Italy, and the United States of America. Guardians were appointed for all the Christian sanctuaries. The Indian Moslems were put in charge of the Mosque of Omar, and the hereditary Moslem custodians of the gates of the Holy Sepulchre were requested to continue their accustomed duties in remembrance of the magnanimous act of the Khalif Omar who protected that Church.
May this wonderful beginning — even if it is not fol- lowed by the harmless conquest of the rest of the Holy Land — be the earnest of the creation, for the first time on earth, of a government devoted wholly to Peace, with no temptation to war in itself and no provocation to other States, because founded by the agreement and sol- emn guarantees of all peoples to whom the land is dear and holy. What fitter soil could be dedicated to this ideal, which we pray to be gTadually fulfilled all the world over, than that on which the coming of the Prince of Peace was predicted, on which He was born and suffered and died, that He might draw all men to Himself and to one another!
In these pages we have been engaged with the merely material foundations, resources, and securities of the ISTew
EPILOGUE 61
Syria. Wide and rich as they are, pregnant with, the fullest promise to the land and its various peoples, they cannot avail without the devotion of these peoples, and of the Western Governments and democracies which sup- port them, to those principles and ideals of which the land's sons have been the prophets to mankind. In the words of one of them — until the Spirit he poured from on high and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the work of righteousness be peace and the effect of righteous- ness quietness and confidence for ever; and My people shall abide in a peaceable habitation and in sure dwellings and in quiet resting places. Then shall it be confidently said, Arise J shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!
TiSTf^SES^^' C
ljiL_k
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THE CRIME By a German. Author of '7 Accuse!"
An arraignment ill even more cogent form than "I Accuse!" of the rulers and governments of Germany and Austria.
Two vols. 8vo. Vol. I. Net, $2.50
THE GREAT CRIME AND ITS MORAL By J, Selden Willmore
A volume which is an invaluable library. An illuminating summary of
the immense documentary literature of the war. 8vo. Net, $2.00
BELGIUM IN WAR TIME By Commandant De Gerlache De Comery
■ Translated from the French Edition by Bernard Miall
The authoritative book essential to an understanding of the history, the position and the sufferings of the country that will not die, the title of the Norwegian and Swedish editions of this famous work set up under fire. Illustrations, maps and facsimiles. 8vo. Net, $2.00
THE isATTLE OF THE SOMME By John Buchan
"Mr. Buchan's account is a clear and brilliant presentation of the whole vast manoeuver and its tactical and strategic development through all four stages." — Springfield Republican. Illustrated. 12mo. Net, $1.50
THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW By D, Thomas Cur tin Revealing the Germany of fact in place of the Germany oi tradition; telling the truth about Germany-in-the-third-year-of-the-war.
^ 12mo. Net, $1.50
I ACCUSE ! g'ACCUSE!) By a German
An arraignment of Germany by a German of the German War Party. Facts every neutral should know. 12mo. Net, $1.50
THE GERMAN TERROR IN FRANCE By Arnold J. Toynbee
THE GERMAN TERROR IN BELGIUM By Arnold J . Toynbee "From the facts he places before his readers, it appears conclusive that the horrors were perpetrated systematically, deliberately, under orders, upon a people whose country was invaded without just cause. —Phila- delphia Public Ledger. Each 8vo. Net, $1.00
TRENCH PICTURES FROM FRANCE By Major WUUam Redmond, M.P.
Biographical Introduction by Miss E. M. Smith-Dampier
A glowing book, filled with a deep love of Ireland, by one of the most attractive British figures of the war. 12mo. JNet, $i.^a
WOUNDED AND A PRISONER OF WAR By an Exchanged Officer The high literary merit, studious moderation and charming personality of the author make this thrilling book "the most damning indictment o± Germany's inhumanity that has yet appeared." 12mo. Net, $1.^5
THE GERMAN FURY IN BELGIUM ByL,Mokveld
"Some of the most brilliant reporting of all times was done by a few quiet individuals. Among the men who did the most brilliant work, Mokveld, of the Amsterdam Tijd, stands foremost."— Dr. Willem Heii- drik Van Loon. ^^^' *^-""
MY HOME IN THE FIELD OF MERCY By Frances Wilson Huard
MY HOME IN THE FIELD OF HONOUR By Frances Wilson Huard The simple, intimate, classic narrative which has taken rank as one of the few distinguished books produced since the outbreak of the war. Illustrated. Each 12mo. Net, $1.^5
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Publishers New York
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