A Modern Piligrimage

1 00 224

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

THE TEMPLE OF BACCHUS AT BAALBEC

Pilgrimage

By,

Mary J^erenson

Qu*aujourd'hui f il me soit permis d'aller,
comme au seuil de mon veritable destin, dans le
proche Orient, et d'y tendre mon <uerre aux
If chansons de Veternite.

, MAURICE BARRES.

D. Appletan and Company

New York : London : Mcmxxxiii

COPYRIGHT, IQ33* BY

PRINTED IW THE UK I TED STATES OF AMERICA

To

THE INTELLIGENT (BUT NOT TOO INTELLIGENT)
THE LEARNED (BUT NOT TOO LEARNED)
AND THE CURIOUS (BUT NOT OVER-
CURIOUS ) TRAVELLER
THIS BOOK. IS ADDRESSED

PREFACE

IN writing this book I have set myself a somewhat less
simple task than that of telling what we did from
day to day and what we actually saw with our own eyes
in Palestine and Syria. I have, indeed, sometimes
thought that the most interesting travel book would
consist of one's expectations and the dreams one
indulges in about the places one is about to visit. In the
presence of facts people are chained to a certain uni-
formity of impression, whereas when they read, the
imagination is free to form images of its own. In the
following pages I have tried to suggest our whole expe-
rience dreams and facts which was, as it must be
with all cultivated travellers, much more complicated
than the record of a mere travel diary.

Palestine and Syria are like the Handkerchief of
Veronica, preserving still the impress of what has
passed their way. Their names, familiar to us even if
vaguely, since our childhood, echo in our ears from the
hillsides and streams ; their images rise at every hand.
Think what Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, the
Lake of Galilee mean to everyone brought up in
Christian countries. They are not mere towns and
villages and sheets of water. Endless are the inner
echoes aroused by names like Tyre and Sidon, Mount
Carmel, Mount Hermon. Such names are like stones
thrown into a pool, starting ripples that prolong them-
selves indefinitely. Without these overtones of history,
travelling is a flat affair. The ruins are, it is true,

vii

PREFACE

picturesque to see, but how much more fascinating they
are when imagination peoples them with the figures
which haunt our minds. We cannot think of Palmyra
without Zenobia ; the mediaeval castles crowning rocky
heights are dead unless the Crusaders are defending
them against Saladin ; the Euphrates is a mere muddy
river without the Garden of Eden, without vanished
Babylon, or Baghdad and Haroun-al-Raschid. One's
reading renders one's mind exquisitely sensitive to the
impressions of travel, and a journey bereft of such
influences, may make as indeed it has made in many
of the old accounts of journeys a fine tale of adven-
ture, but now, in our days of motors and decent inns, it
would probably be very tame.

It has been hard in this endlessly rich field to
decide what associations to call up, what to pass over
in silence. My general line has been, I admit, a per-
sonal one, namely, to dwell on the associations that
interest and excite me, a person produced by a certain
environment and education, although I realize that
they may have a very different measure of attraction
for others.

Another difficulty has met me in regard to archaeol-
ogy and the various ramifications of what is called
Stylkritik. Although I have the advantage of travelling
with a scholar who has taken as his province the rise
and decay, the resurrection and flowering of all forms
and periods of European art, especially Mediterranean
art, still I might distort his "doctrine" if I attempted
to do justice to it So I have contented myself with the
scraps from his table one does what one can I

Again in the matter of bibliography, I confess that
I have not been thorough. I have mentioned the books

viii

PREFACE

I most enjoyed reading on the spot and afterwards at
home, and a few of the more learned books that eluci-
dated points that interested me. Nearly all of these I
found, to my surprise, I confess, in our own library
which my husband has collected with great care for
future students who, as we hope, will benefit from the
"Institute for Humanistic Studies" which we mean to
found under the auspices of our common university,
Harvard. For the general reader (if such there be for
my effort) these books will be more than enough. The
real student can always find his own way, once he is put
on the track, and any one of a dozen or so of the books
I have mentioned and quoted will serve him as a point
of departure.

I fear that I have foundered on most of the rocks I
dreaded. I have been both pedantic and casual; I have
been inappropriately learned and disappointingly su-
perficial. I have probably made too much of my own
special interest in strange cults and peculiar fanaticisms.
Without the encouragement of three of the severe
critics who so often glare at me in my own family circle,
my husband, Bernard Berenson; my brother, Logan
Pearsall Smith, and my daughter, Ray Strachey, I
should never have dared to print what I have written.

My warmest thanks are due to Miss Mariano
("Nicky"), who patiently listened to the reading of
the manuscript and helped me with corrections, en-
couragement, and suggestions, and to my secretary,
Miss Ruth Alliston, who transcribed this book from my
dictation. I must express my gratitude also to Mr.
John Crowfoot, excavator at Jerash, who helped me
with my account of that town.

I cannot end my preface without saying that almost

PREFACE

never in my long life so full of enjoyment, have I had
such pleasure as in writing this book! It has meant
living over again a fascinating journey without fatigue
and discomfort; it has indelibly traced on the worn
palimpsest of my memory the visions and reflections of
those wonderful two months; it has satisfied the va-
grant curiosities which were aroused in the course of
our aesthetic and archaeological wanderings. Even the
geology of that little strip of land turns out to be
utterly fascinating, the flora, the fauna, the inhabitants
and their religions, industries, system of government;
everything we observed along our path is fringed, like
the prism of a crystal, with a radiant halo. I feel as if
I could go on for ever reading about and remembering
just this brief two months' trip the ripples of the pond
of my imagination and curiosity have by no means sub-
sided; I can still dip up cups full of enjoyment from its
waters,

MB.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE . i vii

CHAPTER I
Italy to Syria

The Sea Voyage Our Dragoman Hotels Beirut

The Maronites Visit to the Lebanon .... 3

CHAPTER II
From Beirut to Mount Carmel

Lady Hester Stanhope Sidon Tyre Acre The Bab

Mount Carmel Haifa 21

CHAPTER III
Jerusalem

Geography and Character of Judea History of Jeru-<
salem Entering Jerusalem The Holy Sepulchre
Harain es-Sherif The Blue Mosque Mosque of El
Aksa Legends of the Rock The Mount of Olives
Valley of Jehoshaphat The Spiritual Tension of
Jerusalem 37

CHAPTER IV
Excursions from Jerusalem

Ramleh Amwas Abu Ghosh Hebron ' Abraham's

Oak Pools of Solomon Bethlehem .... 78

CHAPTER V
Transjordania

The Ghor Amman Madaba M'shatta Jerash

Jericho to Jerusalem Cities of the Plain ... 89
xi

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER VI

Samaria and Galilee

Passover at Nablus Geography and Character of Judea
and Samaria Nablus -The Town of Samaria
Mount Tabor Nazareth The Plain of Esdraelon
Zionism The Lake of Galilee The Road to
Banyas Memories of Palestine Banyas . . , 118

CHAPTER VII
Damascus

The Road to Damascus Damascus Geography His-
tory The Grand Mosque 'Salamaniyeh Mosque
Bazaars Salehiyeh Cemetery Festival of St.
George Ez-Azim Dervishes 152

CHAPTER VIII
Excursions from Damascus

Maloula The Hauran and Soueida Kanavat The
Hauran Improvement of Conditions Druse Reli-
gion Ezra 175

CHAPTER IX
Palmyra to Aleppo

The Road to Palmyra Palmyra and Zenobia Other
Historical Associations Watering of Camels
Monuments Modern Water-Carriers Horns
The Sacred Stone of Emesa Stone Worship Hama 1 97

CHAPTER X
Aleppo

Aleppo Kalat-Siman Maarat en-Noman Scirocco
Meskeneh Antioch 231

Xll

CONTENTS

JAGE

CHAPTER XI
Latakia to Tripoli

Pays des Alaouites Latakia Sahayun Crac des Cheva-
liers Road to Tortosa Phoenician Towns Tor-
tosa Tripoli Ismaelis or Assassins Nosairis or
Ansariyehs Metawiyehs 265

CHAPTER XII

Tripoli to Beirut
Byblos Adonis (Red) River Dog River .... 297

CHAPTER XIII
Baalbec

The Be'ka Baalbec Helbun Orontes Monument of
Hermel Niha Baalbec Again Last Day at
Beirut Recollections of Beauty 304

NOTES 329

INDEX 343

Xlll

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

THE ROUTE OF THE PIUTMAf

CHAPTER I
ITALY TO SYRIA

The highest value of travel is ... the faith it in-
spires in the scope of human genius.

THE HOWADJI IN SYRIA

JUNE 4TH, 1929.

WE have returned from our trip to Palestine
and Syria with the traveller's usual illusion
that no one has ever really made exactly the same
trip before, or appreciated as we have the beauty
and interest it offered. Many people have trav-
elled through those regions and have recorded
their impressions and the results of their ob-
servations of a scientific or an archaeological
kind, they have given thrilling accounts of ad-
ventures with the native tribes, and have dwelt
on their contacts with the civilized inhabitants;
they have described all the religious ceremonies
of the Christian sects, of the Jews, and of the
Mahometans, who gather, not too peaceably,
in Jerusalem; they have traced (with doubt-
ful accuracy) the footsteps of Christ through the
Holy Land, or marked the ruins of that opulent
builder, Herod the Great, and have followed with

3

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

eager interest in the steps of the Crusaders. No
land is more minutely mapped out historically
than the Holy Land. Why have we returned feel-
ing that nobody has ever been there before?

The fact is that travelling for us outside of
European museums and collections and Renais-
sance monuments, which we have gone over, note-
book in hand, again and again during the last
forty-five years is first and foremost an aesthetic
adventure, an adventure in enjoyment, in the satis-
faction of the lust of the eyes. Complete ecstasy,
of course, is a brief experience, yet the panorama
of nature prolongs it beyond the stretch of all
other pleasures. It is true that we always had
archaeology to fall back upon in our drier and
more intellectual moments. And this, I am in-
clined to think, is a very important thing, for
after a time of ecstatic contemplation the mind
wakes up and insists upon having its share. No
doubt a geologist or botanist, naturalist or engi-
neer, or many another specialist would find an
occupation for his mind and for his intellectual
curiosity quite as satisfactory as we found in our
endeavour to trace the passing over of classic art
into that of the Middle Ages. But the latter hap-
pened to be our chief hobby on this trip and it
certainly gave a shape and content to our wander-
ings. Our avowed aim was archaeology, but our
reward was nature, and my husband often said in

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ITALY TO SYRIA

his paradoxical way, "The study of art is only
a preparation for the enjoyment of landscape."
Yet we never passed a heap of old ruins without
his forgetting all about the entrancing landscape
in which it was more than likely set, to dart like
a lizard in and out between the stones, shouting to
us to come and look at some form of debased clas-
sic sculpture, or to call for some of the books we
carried with us to help him in reconstructing the
plan of the ruins.

I have said that archaeology was our avowed
interest, but I myself cherished another curiosity,
unshared by my fellow travellers, my husband and
our beloved librarian, the congenial and helpful
companion since many years of all our aesthetic
adventures, all our studies, all our experiences,
Elisabetta Mariano, whom I shall allude to in
these pages by her familiar name of Nicky. My
husband instinctively detests all that is unreason-
able or emotionally unbalanced in human behaviour
and thought: he has to contemplate it more often
than he likes, in his general historical and cultural
researches, but he does not go out to seek it. Nor
does Nicky, whose widely tolerant outlook and
instinctive common sense lead her to regard hu-
man aberrations in a comic rather than in a tragic
light. But my youth was passed in an atmosphere
of religious speculation, and I can never quite
shake off the feeling that religion is the thing that

5

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

chiefly matters to mankind. Many experiments
were made by my parents, who passed from
Quakerism, through the Baptist, the Methodist
and the Plymouth Brethren sects, and entertained
all the fanaticisms current in America during the
latter half of the last century. Our home gener-
ally harboured an enthusiast or two who had a
scheme of his own for getting to heaven, and we
children were obliged to open the doors of the
sitting-rooms softly in the fear of disturbing a
prayer-meeting or interrupting an outpouring of
the Holy Spirit.

The whole thing has left me in a somewhat
anomalous condition of mixed interest and unbe-
lief ; and I confess that all varieties of religious
faith and practice are almost as near to my heart as
the various expressions of the art-instinct in man.
It may be that they spring from the same source,
the longing to create for ourselves a world that
shall be more ordered, more significant than the
actual world the desire to attain harmony with
the universe. Standing outside the attempted
religious explanations of God's dealing with
mankind, yet profoundly interested in all these
explanations, I sometimes seem to myself, para-
doxical as it appears, to occupy a position of van-
tage in observing them, for I have no doctrine to
uphold, no system of dogma or ritual to advocate.
Yet I am deeply interested, and the prospect of

6

ITALY TO SYRIA

spending some weeks in that narrow strip of land
that lies between Egypt and Asia Minor was
doubly fascinating to me from the fact that just
this section of the world has been, beyond all other
regions, the native home of religious cults, the
breeding-place of Gods and Devils, a narrow tract
where the crust is thin, and the forces of religion
break out in volcanoes, some of which are extinct,
and some still flaming and seething and smoking.
It is full of shrines and holy and unholy places ; it
is still the goal of religious pilgrims and the home
of religious hatreds. Dogmatic and doctrinal dif-
ferences, though obsolete in the rest of the world,
rage furiously here. Fanatics still come from the
West to develop their peculiar cults upon this pro-
pitious soil.

THE SEA VOYAGE

Our boat, coming to Brindisi from Triest, started
at nine in the morning. It turned out to be a steam-
ship that specialized in conveying Zionists to the
Holy Land. The captain is an enthusiastic Zion-
ist and looks upon himself as the patriarch of the
flock of fifty to a hundred Jew nationalists that he
carries to Jaffa every trip. He loves them and pro-
vides for their comfort in every way, letting them
wander all over the ship without much distinction
as to classes, and giving them their "kosher" food.

We spent a great deal of our time looking down

7

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

from our deck into the comfortable steerage where
most of the Jewish passengers were lodged. Some
of the people looked very strange, and a good many
talked Hebrew. They often sang Hebrew words
set to music that had much that was Slav in it. We
could not help feeling that it was a crazy idea to
bring all those incongruous people to the barren
land of Judea, already inhabited by hostile Arabs,
and to handicap the young people by making them
talk Hebrew and teaching them only in this lan-
guage. Perhaps they will end by making some
sort of a success of it, but surely everything is
against it, with only their fanatical enthusiasm and
a certain backing of foreign capital from rich Jews
(who thus salve their consciences for not going
there themselves), to balance the disadvantage of
climate and soil, unaccustomed surroundings and
hostile neighbours. Yet the power of an Idea is
not to be calculated. Faith can truly move moun-
tains.

Most of the Jewish immigrants got out at Jaffa
(the ancient Joppa), going ashore in small boats
manned by shouting Arabs. On stormy days the
landing is impossible, for there is no harbour, and
we could not help thinking, as we watched them
land, of the Crusaders and all the pilgrims through
the centuries who were beaten back by inclement
seas from their longed-for haven, or landed amidst
perils at the risk of their lives. With a steam-

8

ITALY TO SYRIA

ship the modern pilgrim can be carried on in a
few hours to Haifa where there is a sort of harbour
that makes landing easier, but what could it have
been for sailing boats? This is perhaps the first
thing that strikes one about the whole coast of
Palestine the complete absence of harbours till
you get to Haifa. The Romans, it is true, made an
artificial port between Jaffa and Haifa Caesarea
but already in the fourth century it was choked
with the fine sand sifting up from the mouth of the
Nile at the rate of three feet a year, and by now the
dunes extend three and a half miles to the east of
the old port. This invasion of sand is at last being
countered by planting a belt of firs.

While we stood on the deck watching the land-
ing of the Jewish immigrants, we looked for An-
dromeda's rock which in St. Jerome's time was
pointed out with the ring to which her chains were
attached, and we recalled the legend that it was at
Joppa that Noah and his company entered the ark,
and that this was the port from which Jonah took
ship to escape from the anger of Jehovah. Joppa,
more reliably, was the place where Hiram's fleets
discharged the Cedars of Lebanon for the building
of Solomon's Temple. Crusaders under Richard
Coeur de Lion and Paynims under Saladin mas-
sacred each other within and without the walls
until St. Louis assured its possession to the Chris-
tians, who held it till the last Crusaders left the

9

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

country. Napoleon took it from the Turks, but it
very soon fell back to them again. Now Arabs,
English and Zionists divide the place and its rule-
not always peaceably! As we gazed on the outline
of the town, with its palms and minarets showing
through the early morning mist, those clouds of
legend and history and association that make trav-
elling in Palestine such a unique experience began
to gather round us, and we began to be haunted by
the echoes of the antique world that followed us
during all our trip, by Christian and Moslem
legends, by Ghosts of Crusaders, of Paynims, of
Patriarchs and Conquerors.

OUR DRAGOMAN

On the morning of May 5, we arrived at Beirut.
Our dragoman, Iskander Haiek, dressed in Euro-
pean clothes but wearing the high tarbush, or fez,
common in Syria, came on board and we had a
little chat over the possibilities of the trip.
Everything seemed to be beautifully planned ac-
cording to the desires that had arisen in our minds
from reading books of travel and archaeology, with
one exception, and that, alas, the trip to Petra.
When Iskander saw me walking with a stick he
said firmly, "This lady cannot go to Petra," It
was a great disappointment, but when we heard
from other people who had been there about the
long and difficult scramble, on indifferent mounts,

10

ITALY TO SYRIA

over rocks and down steep declines where the
horses have literally to slide, a scramble which
reduces even youthful and hardened travellers to
a sorry state of stiffness and fatigue, we realized
that our dragoman's advice, disappointing as it
seemed, was probably sensible. Our trip was other-
wise satisfactorily planned, but it turned out in the
end that travellers like ourselves were outside our
dragoman's experience. He had just been conduct-
ing some rich travellers on a hasty, de luxe scamper
through Palestine and Syria, and he was accus-
tomed to the tourist who has enough curiosity to
see the principal sights once, and even to those who
want to push on to more out-of-the-way places,
but he could not fit into his conception of travellers
people who, when in Jerusalem, wanted to go every
day to the Mosque of Omar, and who insisted on
returning again and again to the same sights and
the same views. To us he was always extremely
obliging and courteous, but he voiced his amaze-
ment mingled with despair to my maid, while his
chauffeurs joined in many a joke over casual heaps
of stones passed by on the roadside, saying, "Mr.
Berenson ought to stay here with his spy-glasses
at least an hour!"

HOTELS

Although in some respects the Hotel d'Orient
at Beirut is a good hotel, we began there our ex-

ii

A MODERN PJLGRIMAGE

perience of noise and light that lasted in varying
degrees everywhere we lodged during the next two
months. The motors have learnt no discretion
either in hooting or changing gear, or in moderat-
ing the escape; trams screech and ring their bells,
and itinerant vendors cry their wares both early
and late, while metal-workers hammer ceaselessly.
And even where the windows are provided with
blinds, there is generally an unshuttered lunette on
the top of a window or, high up in the walls, those
unshaded round openings so characteristic of
Turkish architecture. One can deal more or less
with light by putting a black silk handkerchief
over one's eyes ; but the activity of the flies, more
than the light, renders sleeping after daylight
nearly impossible except to those thrice lucky in-
dividuals, blessed by the gods, who put their heads
on their pillows and sleep till they are called in
the morning. As I remember the hotels of Pales-
tine and Syria, the noisiest was perhaps the one at
Damascus, or possibly that at Tripoli, although the
St. John's Hotel at Jerusalem comes very close to
them, even without motors, for there the human
cries of all kinds were most insistent, and were only
intermitted for a couple of hours in the early
morning. While we were travelling we received,
as often as might be, copies of the London Times
and, as it happened, they contained at this period
much correspondence about the hymn of praise the

12

ITALY TO SYRIA

birds sing just before dawn. I often thought of
this at sunrise in the Near East, for the human ani-
mal seems to be impelled to his greatest activity of
lung, hammer and broom when the sun rises. By
seven or eight he gets moderately quiet again, but
his early morning hymn is enough to rasp the
nerves of the traveller into lasting wakefulness.

BEIRUT

At Beirut * we found a very intelligent and cul-
tivated set of new acquaintances among the French
officials. M. Maugras, Secretary of the Commis-
sariat, I called the "Young Man on the Bridge at
Baghdad" (after the one in the Arabian Nights who
sat by the river and took home each evening a new
passer-by with whom he ate and drank and talked
all night and then sent away with the benediction
of Allah, meaning never to see him again), for he
bade us dine with him and gave us, though stran-
gers, an enchanting evening in his charmingly
furnished house. It was pleasant to find so far
from France young men who knew their Proust
by heart, and who read George Eliot with appre-
ciation, and loved Gluck and Bach and Mozart.
But of course they are really Parisians accidentally
here, and they have little resemblance to the rich
Syrians whom we met. Behind them all is that
background of responsibility and achievement that
gives an unusual depth and interest to the society

13

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

of those who bear rule in foreign parts. We were
much struck by it seven years ago in Egypt where
we made friends with the English officials; and
again in Beirut, meeting M. Ponsot, the High
Commissioner, and his secretaries and assistants,
we had the same impression of seriousness and
competence beneath their sociability, M. Maurice
Guerin, who was running the Hachette Bookshop
there, was extremely kind and helpful, and gave us
the chance of meeting some of the archaeologists
who were passing through the town. Among them
were M. Dussaud, whose books on Syria and its
people we had brought with us ; M. Deschamps,
head of the Trocadero, working at Kerak; Baron
Oppenheim, the German explorer, a passionate
and able archaeologist; and several other scholars
interested in Syria's past We met also M. Viraul-
laud, the head of the archaeological service, with
whom, later on, we visited the Beirut Museum.
It was full of those "interesting" odds and ends,
which in some moods, and especially when a sci-
rocco is blowing, make one despair of art; but
there were some which I call "real" things too : a
fine Phoenician sarcophagus, a strangely Bernini-
like head of an old man, and, above all, a black
and gold vase or drinking-horn from Byblos, which
was absolutely perfect, as only small objets d'art
can be, for they suggest no perfection beyond them-
selves, as great art always does.

ITALY TO SYRIA

We were even more interested in a way, though
the milieu was less congenial, to meet some of the
Syrians. We were kindly invited to lunch at the
house of one of the leading financiers, The marble
gilt palace where we were received, only redeemed
by a wonderful view of the snowy Lebanon range
and an incredibly blue sea, was a provincial ver-
sion of what we are accustomed to call le style
Rothschild. Amazingly soft carpets, amazingly
carved chairs and tables, marble and bronze statues
jumping out at you from every corner, pictures in
heavy gilt frames thick on the walls, marble col-
umns and floors and enormous plate glass windows,
made up an ensemble with which we had become
* familiar in our pilgrimages to the private collec-
tions of Europe; but here there were no pictures
or objets d'art to which anybody other than an
auctioneer would be likely to make a pilgrimage.
We sat down to a Lucullan lunch, while the latest
thing in gramophones, capable of playing ten discs
in succession without being rewound, shrieked
from a corner of the dining-room and made con-
versation impossible. We were upheld by the feel-
ing that das sollte so sein.

Our most exotic sociability in Beirut, however,
was a very ceremonious function at the house of
our dragoman, We entered through a pleasant
little garden into a huge airy room lined with
divans and filled with Haieks of all ages and sexes

15

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

smoking hubble-bubbles. Madame Haiek made
on us a very pleasant impression, and the two
little daughters were enchanting. After shaking
hands and exchanging wordless grins all round, for
naturally we did not speak Arabic, I joined the
ladies in a hubble-bubble and found it very agree-
able. Then we had a Gargantuan sit-down tea,
from which we could never have stood up if we
had eaten half the things provided. We did our
best, and what remained was generously packed up
in boxes and sent to our hotel. Some of the
women, although tending to be very fat, were ex-
tremely good looking, and it appears that several
of them were married at thirteen or fourteen, be-
cause they were so pretty that the family thought
it best to seal their charms at once to some respon-
sible member of the clan.

THE MARONITES

Perhaps this is the best point at which to describe
another visit to our dragoman's relations, although
it took place towards the very end of our trip. It
led us into the heart of the Lebanon range, the chief
seat of the Maronite branch of the Catholic
Church. Maronites are also found in the Anti-
Lebanon, a range farther inland, which runs
parallel to the coast range, and they exist elsewhere
in Syria, but most of them are to be found in the
high villages that cling to the terraces or crown

16

ITALY TO SYRIA

the rugged ridges of the beautiful mountains upon
which, across the bay, the promontory of Beirut
looks out. I do not want to be pedantic, but an
interest in this section of the people imposes itself
almost as soon as one lands at Beirut And our
interest was fomented day by day by that enthusi-
astic patriot and celebrator of the glories of his
birthplace and of his religion, our Maronite drago-
man from the Lebanon,

The Maronite sect, then, claims to have been
founded by a Patriarch of Antioch, Yuhannan
Marun, who died in 707, but a misty legend goes
even further back to St. Marun who died in
Antioch in 400. The historical basis is, however,
so vague that the Roman Church, although it has
incorporated some of the Maronite Saints, has
never canonized either of its reputed founders.
The Maronites were converted to Catholicism by
the Crusaders in 1182 and fought with them, many
falling at Damietta in Egypt in St. Louis 7 ill-
fated expedition. But they remained in very un-
stable equilibrium of doctrine and discipline until
they formally united with Rome at the Council
of Florence in 1445, renouncing their monophysite
heresy of Christ's having but one Nature. They
did not, however, accept Roman discipline till
1736, when they gave up convents of mixed nuns
and monks, being allowed nevertheless to retain
the Syriac liturgy and the marriage of their priests.

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

The latter is said to be now going out. The clash
and fury over their final acceptance of certain
Catholic regulations still echoes in old accounts.
One can understand that the Pope insisted on being
mentioned in the Mass, and it was a matter of
politics to reduce the great number of bishoprics to
eight, but it begins to seem odd that they were ready
to kill each other over the question of whether the
altar bread should be round or square in shape and
whether it should be made of flour and water only
as was the Syrian custom or mixed with oil
and salt according to the Roman use.

The Maronites were given a certain political
autonomy in 1861, after the Druse massacres,
when, Turkey remaining suzerain, France inter-
vened to protect the Christians in Syria. From
that time on they have been called the Lebanon
Republic, and they aspire to even fuller measures
of independence than they have under the present
French mandate. It would seem that they deserve
it, for not only is the Maronite clergy better edu-
cated than their Greek and Jacobite neighbours,
but the level of civilization is higher than any-
where else in Syria. The impression that the
Maronites make is somehow an impression of al-
most Protestant downrightness and thrift and inde-
pendence. They must be, however, strongly
Catholic, for monasteries seem to crown every
peak and precipice of this part of the Lebanon.

18

ITALY TO SYRIA

We were taken to a Maronite convent in the fertile
tableland behind Tripoli, and our dragoman had
enough influence to have us admitted, in spite of
the Clausura, to the arcaded courtyard and terrace
where the bearded monks were sunning themselves
and resting from their labours in the well-kept
fields belonging to the monastery.

Now that they have been forced to stop their
age-long warfare with the Druses, who after 1861
have mostly moved to the Hauran mountains south-
east of Damascus, they are becoming extremely
prosperous and are exploiting the beautiful climate
and scenery of their mountain home for a summer
resort; and, indeed, it is becoming more and more
popular among the richer Syrians and Egyptians
to spend the summer months there enjoying the
mountain air and the incredibly lovely scenery.

VISIT TO THE LEBANON

Our road to Beitshebab, where the family of our
dragoman lived, turned off from the main road
and led through pine groves and plantations
of mulberry and olives to a neat Maronite vil-
lage, and to the airy clean mansion of the brother
of our dragoman, where we were only too well
entertained for lunch. We were very much
struck with the intelligence and good looks of the
men of the clan and the beauty of the women, but
with the latter we could do no more than exchange

19

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

a few difficult remarks in French, and it seems that
they were not expected to take much part in the
social life, not even sitting down to table with their
men.

CHAPTER II
FROM BEIRUT TO MOUNT CAR MEL

Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude
of thy handiworks: they traded for thy wares with
emeralds, purple arid broidered work, and fine linen,
and coral and rubies. EZEKIEL

AFTER our pleasant three days at Beirut, we left
JL\. early in the morning for Mount Carmel, on
the way to Jerusalem. Our road to the south
passed at first by the beautiful cliffs and rocky
islands that end the peninsula on which the town
is built. These islands look like the feet of great
elephants, a most curious formation, and they are
pierced with grottoes which people visit in boats
towards sunset to see the remarkable play of col-
ours on the waters inside. Then we suddenly
found ourselves running through the desert, here
of a reddish colour, which all over Syria seems to
be merely pushed back by the efforts of man, but
is waiting always to drift in again, borne by the
Wind from the east and south of Egypt, a tide which
knows no turn, and brings to naught all human
achievement. M. Maugras had, the night before,
very pertinently compared it to the Bedouins, al-

21

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ways ready to drift into and lay waste the cultivated
portions of Syria.

After the desert, rocks again, or fields sloping
down to the water's edge, where a strong wind was
beating the green sea into foamy sparkles and
curves fields turned green by endless streams sing-
ing their way down from the Lebanon hills, fertile
with the fertility of alluvial soil, but diversified
by rocky swelling hills and promontories. This
coast recalled in its uncontaminated beauty the
coast of Calabria, with the same trees and flowers
laurels, myrtles, roses, oleanders, flowering reeds,
passion-flowers and all sorts of evergreen shrubs,
cleared here and there to make place for orchards
of figs, olives, vines, pomegranates, lemons, or-
anges and walnuts, and for vineyards. It is an
idyllic, unspoiled Riviera, yet judging by the half-
buried remains that line the way and reach back
everywhere from the coast to the mountains, towns
must once have been here as thick as bees around a
hive. Today only the rifled tombs in the rocks
along the way and the wine-presses overgrown
with weeds and shrubs remain to tell what they
can of the fate of the old inhabitants of a region
that was as closely and continuously settled as are
now the shores of the Bosphorus above Constanti-
noplea region whose eventful history runs back
to the earliest records of our race.

22

BEIRUT TO MOUNT CARMEL

LADY HESTER STANHOPE

I can hardly tell why it should be, but there is a
longing for the East, very commonly felt by proud-
hearted people, when goaded by sorrow. EOTHEN

Our first stop was at Sidon, which is now a
miserable little village on a promontory faced by
islands. I had wanted to turn aside to, make a pil-
grimage to Dhar Juni (Djoun), the spur of the
Lebanon where Lady Hester Stanhope held her
piebald court, but this would have taken too long,
as the road was very bad, nor can we claim to be
sentimental travellers in the genuine sense. We
had just been reading, however, the two accounts,
one by Lamartine l and the other by Kinglake, 2 of
their visits to "Chatham's fiery granddaughter,"
and I was disappointed not to be able to take the
chance to see the surroundings among which the
melodrama of her life was played out to its sordid
ending. An interesting and not unsympathetic
appreciation of her character is given by the Rev-
erend W. M. Thomson who officiated at her
funeral in June, 1839. "What a death 1" he says:
"Without a European attendant without a friend,
male or female alone, on the top of this black
mountain, her lamp of life growing dimmer and
more dim, until it went quite out in a hopeless, ray-
less night. Such was the end of the once gay and
brilliant niece of Pitt, presiding in the saloons of

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the master-spirit of Europe, and familiar with the
intrigues of kings and cabinets." 8

For me she had a certain interest on account of
the peculiar mysticism she elaborated for herself
in her solitude. Lamartine thus describes her re-
ligious system, which she tried to inculcate on him
(as upon Kinglake) :

An able though confused mixture of the different re-
ligions she has condemned herself to live among; mys-
terious as are the Druses, of whom, perhaps, she alone,
in the world knows the mystic secret; resigned like the
Moslem fatalist; with the Jew, expecting the Messiah;
professing, with the Christian, an adoration for Christ
and the practice of His morals, His charity. Add to
all this, the fantastic colours and the supernatural
dreams of an imagination tinged with the East and
stimulated by solitude and meditation, perhaps by some
revelations of Arab astrologers, and you will gain a
faint idea of this sublime and bizarre melange which
it is easier to call madness than to analyse and under-
stand.

As our motor left her mountain retreat behind,
I thought of her furious, haughty, independent
spirit, her penetrating but wildly superstitious
mind, her dream of riding as a Queen into Jerusa-
lem at the side of a new Messiah to inaugurate the
millennium. I saw her in her fancied character
as a second Zenobia, dressed as a desert chieftain,
galloping into Palmyra at the head of a horde of
wild Arabs whom she subdued into admiration by

24

BEIRUT TO MOUNT CARMEL

her courage and the glance of her eagle eyes. I
felt a lively irritation with her for placing her
semi-imperial residence in a perfectly waterless
spot, and a tenderness for her English passion for
gardening that brought up unending trains of
mules from far below carrying enough water to
convert her barren hill into a maze of shady walks
and a paradise of flowers. Even to pass along the
highroad from which the path to her former do-
main branches off, somehow made the whole
strange tale paint itself upon my imagination in
hues more vivid than print can convey, and clad
the bare hills we looked upon with romance and
tragedy.

SIDON

Sidon was, in a sense, only a place of sentimental
pilgrimage, for almost nothing remains of the
famous capital, one of the most ancient as well as
the most prosperous of the Phoenician coast towns.
To live "after the manner of the Sidonians"
(Judges 18:7) was the proverbial symbol of ease
and prosperity. She was the mother of more than
one strong-walled city on her coast of Beirut,
Acre, Tyre and many another and she had
colonies in Cyprus and the Greek Islands, and as
far off as Libya and Spain. The story of her slow
decline brings onto the stage Egyptian conquerors,
Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, Greek and Roman

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

destroyers and overlords. Sidon was described by
a fourth-century geographer as still the first com-
mercial city of Syria. . To the Romans it was es-
pecially associated with the famous purple dye,
as the murex which produced this was found only
on the neighbouring strip of coast.*

All this was brought home to us as we went look-
ing in Sidon for the remains of the Crusaders'
castle and found only its miserable ruins standing
on a mound composed of murex shells. The once
thronged harbour of Sidon has not been kept up,
and our most memorable experience in the village
was buying some exceptionally delicious oranges,
although our memories held the fact that in an-
tiquity lovely glass was made there, from the
siliceous sand of the near-by river Naaman, and
that the silver cup which Achilles offered as a prize
in the footrace was the work of a silversmith of
Sidon. We recalled, too, that the "Tomb of Alex-
ander" which a few months before we had admired
in the Museum of Constantinople, was found here,
and we even remembered incongruously that Jeze-
bel was a princess of Sidon. But the Sidon of to-
day, shorn of historical and artistic associations, is
only a filthy little fishing village on a lovely coast.

TYRE

We ate our oranges from Sidon with our lunch
in an arbour belonging to a rest-house on the road

26

BEIRUT TO MOUNT CARMEL

overlooking the sea ; it was a charming place, fre-
quented by sportsmen and their dogs who brought
in strings of quail and snipe. After "making
Kief 9 (the Arab word meaning relaxation and
repose) on the beach, lulled by the softly breaking
waves, we went on to Tyre, which was not very
far away, the road leading along the sandy beach.
We crossed the river Litany, the ancient Leontes,
which rises at Baalbec and then, after a furious
struggle with the mountain range, pierces the
Lebanon and reaches the sea, descending four
thousand feet in its hundred-and-twenty-mile
course. Its Arab name at the coast is Kasimeyeh,
which means "division," and it in fact divided the
Holy Land from the territory of Sidon. It was
here that we had our first glimpse of Mount Her-
mon, hanging like a pale cloud in the sky, far away
in the northeast The "White-haired Sheik" from
here is seen to have two heads, which may account
for its being mentioned in the dual or plural in
the Old Testament.

At Tyre again the harbour has been silted up
and ruined and the Crusaders' church torn down.
Walking out on the small mole, we saw lying in
a great stretch of shallow water a vast jumble of
broken columns and fragments of carved capitals,
witnessing to the greatness of Tyre in antiquity.
It is hard to connect this wretched, melancholy
village with the proud town described by Isaiah

27

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

as "the crowning city, whose traffickers are the
honourable of the earth," the city of which Ezekiel
said, "The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy
market and thou wast replenished, and made very
glorious in the midst of the seas"; and who said of
herself: "I am a God; I sit in the seat of God"
(Ezekiel 28:2); or with the fortified town that
resisted Nebuchadnezzar and his hosts for thirteen
years, until "every head in his army was bald and
every shoulder peeled" in the exertions of the siege,
and where, in his turn, Alexander was so long held
at bay. But, as a pious writer says, "The Christian
would not have it otherwise," for did not Jehovah
Himself pledge His word through the mouth of
the prophet Ezekiel that it should be so? "Behold,
I am against thee, Tyrus, and will cause many
nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth
his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the
walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers : I will
also scrape her dust from her, and make her like
the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the
spreading of nets in the midst of the sea : for I have
spoken it, saith the Lord God." Our writer con-
cludes that now, as God's witness to the truth of
His prophecy, "she is a greater blessing to the
world than in the day of her highest prosperity." 5
Students of Church history will not fail to re-
call that Origen spent his last years in Tyre. In

28

BEIRUT TO MOUNT CARMEL

fact, his grave is still pointed out as that of a great
magician, Oriundus, where, they say, magical
works are hidden.

ACRE

St. Jean d'Acre was our next stop the ancient
Ptolemais', where St. Paul once spent a day and
here an unexpected aesthetic treat awaited us in
the mosque set on a low hill overlooking the main
street The greatest associations of the place are
with Saladin and the Crusaders Richard Coeur
de Lion, Frederick Barbarossa, the Knights of
St. John. It was at Acre also that, in 1799, Na-
poleon's plans of conquest in the Near East, like
the Crusaders' plans, finally broke down. Acre is
also the scene of a well-known legend from the
time of St. Louis of a monk who met an old woman
threading the streets of Acre, with a cruse of water
and a pan of coals. He asked her why she carried
them, and she said: "The water is to extinguish
Hell and the fire to burn up Heaven, so that man's
selfishness may have nothing to feed on, and he
may learn to love God for Himself alone." There
was also a local prophecy to the effect that when
the water of the nearby river Belus should reach
the east gate of Acre, the English would take the
town. In 1910 the river came so close to the gate
that the authorities thought fit to sacrifice a number
of sheep between the river and the gate, after which

29

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Belus moved away from the walls. In 1917 the
river forgot to warn the town!

But to unsentimental travellers like ourselves the
actual monument that met our eyes was more at-
tractive than any historical association. This
mosque, built by a Pasha who died in 1801, was
constructed out of ancient materials. With its
green domes it recalled the mosques of Constanti-
nople, where the good tradition of Turkish archi-
tecture still persists, but it is chiefly remarkable
for the fine antique columns from Caesarea that
support the porch. The quiet paved courtyard or
cloister, with its big cypresses and palms and its
beautiful fountain, had not only architectural
beauty but also an irresistible Stimmung, breath-
ing retirement, peace, and graceful, kindly decay.

THE BAB 6

Once again at Acre I had a baffled desire to
stray, this time to pay a visit to the Beha, head of
one section of the Ba'abist religion, who lives there,
for I had known not a few Ba'abists in England
and France, and had followed with some attention
the history of this sect Its beginnings among
the S'hPites of Persia, some ninety years ago were
outside my personal knowledge, but I know that it
became so powerful that it was looked upon as a
danger and persecuted. The founder, a young
visionary named Mirza' Ali Muhummed, called

30

BEIRUT TO MOU<NT CARMEL

himself the Bab (gate) and, as so many others have
done throughout the ages, he claimed to be the
latest incarnation of the Divine Wisdom. People
love to give credence to such a claim, especially if
the claimant be a fascinating human being, as this
young man seems to have been, and the six years of
persecution that he and his followers endured only
increased their fervour, which was not lessened
even when the Bab was put to death in 1850, still
asserting, like Christ, the speedy "end of all things"
and the glorious material triumph of his sect.
Apparently before his death he moderated his own
claims, taking up the position of a Precursor and
prophesying a Greater than himself who should
manifest the deity even more clearly. This su-
perior manifestation was a boy of eighteen to
whom he gave the name of S'ubr-i-ezel, the Dawn
of Eternity. Under persistent persecution the
Dawn betook himself to Baghdad, whence, after
some years, the Persian and Turkish governments
arranged to deport him to Constantinople. At this
point his step-brother, Beha-u'llal, tried to usurp
his place, declaring that he was the real Dawn of
Eternity designated by the Bab as his successor.
There was so much friction that the Turkish gov-
ernment in 1868 separated the brothers and sent
the one to dawn upon Cyprus while Beha was ban-
ished to Acre; there he lived, slightly modifying
his doctrine and purging it of its Mahometan

3*

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

traces, opposing polygamy, the veiling of women,
the beards of men, and he preached needs must!
a deferred millennium. Before his death he
designated his son, Abbas Effendi as his successor,
and I thought this leader was still living as a semi-
prisoner in Acre.* Pilgrims, I knew, visited him
from all parts of the world for his blessing; he is
said to have a following of fifty thousand in that
land of religious liberty, the United States ; and in
Paris a temple for Ba'abist worship has been set
up. His followers wear stars and amulets of stones
and circles. Two millions is now the estimated
1 number of Ba'abists.

MOUNT CAKMEL

But the setting sun warned us that it was time
to be going on to Haifa, so we started along the
pale crescent beach between the white breakers
and the wall of palm trees, passing by moonlight
through Haifa, not stopping to visit the "Persian
Garden" where the Bab and Abbas Effendi are
buried, and up Mount Carmel to the newly-built,
clean and commodious Carmelite Hostel, "Stella
Maris," on the top. There we met our two Ameri-
can friends who had come from Egypt We slept
to the sound of waves breaking far below us and
awoke to a magnificent view from our windows,

* I have since heard that he died in 1921, and that his successor, a
grandson, Shogi Effendi Rabani, is free to go wherever he likes, and
is by no means always at Acre.

32

BEIRUT TO MOUNT CARMEL

of the sea circled by mountains and coast, right
up to the lighthouse of Tyre on the north, and
across the Plain of Sharon to Caesarea on the south.
Acre looked like a magic town out of the Arabian
Nights, opal-coloured on a misty blue lake. We
walked out the next morning a little way up the
road that leads to the spot where the miracle of
Elijah took place. As it was very hot we did not
go all the way, but we imagined the priests of
Baal, calling upon their god from morning till
noon, and when he answered not, leaping wildly
but in vain upon their altar and cutting themselves
with knives and lances "after their manner," while
Elijah's servant scanned the horizon for the cloud
which God finally sent to bring water to the
parched land and to show that the God of Israel
could reward as well as punish His people. Here
descended the fire from God upon the altar of
Elijah and consumed the sacrifice. The people
were convinced; they returned to the worship of
Jehovah, and, at the command of Elijah, "Let not
one escape," they slew all the priests of Baal at
the river Kishon below the mountain alas, that
slaying has so often accompanied the manifesta-
tions of Jehovah! Jew, Christian, Moslem, and
Druse still account this site a Holy Place, one of
the few sacred "high places," of which the tradi-
tion has never been broken. Josephus wrote,

33

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

"There is between Judea and Syria a mountain and
a god both called by the name of Carmel," and
he describes Vespasian turning aside and climb-
ing to the summit to consult the oracle about a
"secret thought he had in his mind." There is a
not impossible legend that Pythagoras dwelt for
a while on Mount Carmel in company with the
hermits who from time immemorial have in-
habited its caverns and grottoes on the western
slope.

The Carmelite monks, whose unsightly modern
convent and church are visible from afar, claim
unbroken descent from a direct successor of Elijah,
and I presume this is "of faith" since seven Popes
have given their seals to a written statement of
its truth.

Carmel, the "Mount of God," is, owing to un-
usually heavy dews, one of the few spots in Pales-
tine that remain green all the year round. "The
excellency of Carmel" is used by Solomon as a
figure for human beauty, and Isaiah uses the same
phrase to designate the lavish blessings and gifts of
the Lord. The mountain is richly wooded with
oaks and pines. Wild apples and pear trees,
pomegranates, myrtles, olives, carobs, thickets of
juniper and acacia and dwarf live-oaks clothe its
slopes, while sage, rosemary, lavender and many
another herb perfume the air. Wild flowers, when

34

BEIRUT TO MOUNT CARMEL

we were there, were covering it like a carpet, the
pale roses of the cystus, scarlet and purple anemo-
nes, pink campion, cyclamen from white to pur-
plish-pink, blue campanulas, bugloss and grape
hyacinths, daisies, the pale purple scabious, blue
and scarlet pimpernel, and rose-bushes flinging
themselves along the crumbling walls. Bird-
haunted, too, was this lovely wilderness: larks
filled the air with their sliding silvery cadences;
an eagle swam above; a bird like the Egyptian
"Horus," but without its peculiar cry, flew from
tree to tree; I thought I saw a company of the
mysterious "ghost birds" of the Bosphorus rest-
lessly skimming the sea below, and we heard the
tapping of woodpeckers and a shepherd piping to
his goats. Even from our pagan point of view
Mount Carmel is one of the Sacred Spots of the
earth, being one of the most beautiful.

HAIFA

Haifa lies at the foot of the mountain and is the
one spot on the coast of Palestine remotely re-
sembling a harbour. Elsewhere are only rocks
that wreck, ledges for seabirds, or shallow beaches,
for the Nile sand, drifted up to the northeast by
the prevailing winds, had long ago silted up all
the deep places along the shore. Haifa, behind the
shoulder of Mount Carmel, has more or less
escaped this slow encroachment, and it is a grow-

35

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ing and flourishing town, with cement and other
manufactories at one end, and, at the other, near
the point of the promontory, a thrifty German
settlement.

CHAPTER III

JERUSALEM

GEOGRAPHY AND CHARACTER OF JUDEA

BEAUTIFUL as are Mount Carmel and the
road from it to Jerusalem, steeped in his-
torical and religious associations as is every parcel
of the land, these are not the only things that im-
pose themselves upon the traveller. Even those
who set out to confine their attention to beauty
and archaeology cannot but end by taking a fas-
cinated interest in geology and geography, the
basis and chief determinating factor of all these.
Fortunately two books were at hand among our
impedimenta that completely responded to this
curiosity, carrying it on in many more directions
than uninstructed interest could lead one, and
being at the same time informing and delightful
reading. The first of these books, Principal Sir
George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of
the Holy Land? is one of the most thoughtful and
suggestive books ever written, although under-
taken with the object inspiring so many scientific
and archaeological investigations in Palestine, of
proving the accuracy of the Scriptures. It is one

37

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

of those books which take hold of the mind, en-
thralling and instructing and convincing it in such
a way.that one cannot imagine not always having
had it in the back of one's thought. The other
book is Palestine and Its Transformation? by
Professor Ellsworth Huntington, a book less lofty
in tone, but clear, enlightening and exceedingly
readable. I have therefore in the following brief
account and elsewhere through my book made
grateful use of these two books which organized
the vagrant wandering and impressions that
crowded our minds on that motor-ride from
Mount Carmel to Jerusalem.

Professor Huntington describes the way in
which the earth's crust has been, within the last
two million years, warped and uplifted for a hun-
dred and fifty miles along the east coast of the
Mediterranean, the process being, he thinks, per-
haps not quite finished. The main north to south
elevation was complicated by minor uplifts, some
parallel to and some at an angle to the main up-
lift He compares it to a gridiron, a simile which
easily stays in the minds of the most uninstructed.
To put it far more briefly than I like to do, the two
main bars can be thought of as the Lebanon range
near the coast which prolongs itself into the heights
of Judea, and the Anti-Lebanon range farther in-
land, prolonging itself through the hills of Ba-
shan, the heights of Galilee, and the mountains

38

JERUSALEM

of Moab. Between these bars the earth is bent
sharply down, as one might bend a sheet of paper,
forming in the north the Valley of Coelesyria five
thousand feet or more below the two Lebanon
ranges that shut it in. This bend continues south
till, east of Judea, it becomes an actual fracture
with sharp cliffs and a central wedge dropping
five thousand feet to form the deep Valley of the
Jordan and the still deeper depression of the Dead
Sea. A fertile coast plain of varying width flanks
the first bar, while the second, east of the Jordan,
passes imperceptibly into the limitless rolling
desert, but a desert of flinty gravel upon which one
can drive all the way to the Euphrates without any
road. The major features of Palestine and Syria
also are determined by these north and south
movements of the earth.

The minor features, which Mr. Huntington de-
scribes as the cross-bars of the gridiron, depend
upon lines of flexure or faults running mainly
northwest and southeast but often swinging defi-
nitely to east and west. The first of these depres-
sions is at the south end of Palestine where the
land sinks two thousand feet forming a passage
from the Mediterranean to the Valley of the Dead
Sea. The next cross-bar separates Samaria from
Judea, and, on the east of the Jordan, Gilead from
Moab. The third cross-bar consists of the Fault of
Esdraelon. It extends from the coast to the Jor-

39

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

dan Valley; and, across on the other side of the
valley, as a slighter bending of the earth's crust,
the continuation of the Fault divides Bashan from
the wooded heights of Gilead. On the west there
is an upward movement of the rocks south of Es-
draelon giving rise to the heights of Carmel and
Gilboa. The fourth, less accentuated, cross-bar
of the gridiron separates Palestine from Syria with
the river Litany, the old Leontes, running between
them. These cross-bars with the narrow north and
south heights of Palestine, which take the form of
a long zigzag central spine, throwing out sharp ribs
to right and left, give the whole country that as-
tonishing diversity of physical form which cannot
but arouse the traveller's curiosity. The map will,
I hope, make this explanation more clear.

Of course the interest of all this is not, for trav-
ellers like ourselves, the mere geographical facts,
but the influence they had in forming the congeries
of the strangely differing peoples with their so
diverse histories.* The rocky isolation of Judea,
a country never hellenized as was all the rest of
the near Orient, the millennial conflict to get pos-
session of the favoured lands of the less strenuous
Philistines who occupied the foot-hills and plain
between Judea and the sea, the temptation which

* I cannot do my readers a greater kindness than to recommend to
them the work of Sir George Adam Smith who has made a profound
and illuminating study of the influence of the climate of Palestine upon
its inhabitants in Bible times.

40

JERUSALEM

periodically assailed the Israelites when at differ-
ent brief moments they had conquered their more
easy living neighbours, to worship the less austere
and more sensuous gods of their vanquished foe,
made possible, or perhaps even caused the stern,
unyielding character of their religion and gave rise
to the Prophets who so eloquently denounced them
when they fell away from the worship of their
own jealous God.

What a surprisingly small land it is too! As we
read that Solomon held rule over a people "like
the dust of the earth in multitude" and that his
wealth "made silver to be nothing accounted of,"
we imagine something very different from a little
princedom the size of Wales, and we find it hard
to realize that his capital, so gorgeously described,
was situated in one of the most unprofitable and
least attractive districts, without a harbour, on the
way to nowhere, out of reach of the routes of travel
and commerce, and set apart from the intercourse
of the nations, Judea, the heart of Palestine, is only
forty-five miles long and twelve miles wide ; it is
also very high, rising in hard limestone ridges that
lie horizontally. From these the Israelites looked
down, enisled as it were by the deep Jordan Valley,
the rocky desert of the Negeb and the sea, upon
the fertile lower lands along which the caravans
wound their way backwards and forwards from
Egypt to Damascus and Mesopotamia. Invaders

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

from all countries and of all periods spread fear
and destruction in the valleys, but generally left
Judea alone or came to it, like the Romans, last
of all For geographical historians this isolated
situation of the Israelites has a direct relation to
the exclusiveness of their spirit. When they "went
up" to Jerusalem they could not help feeling
separate from the rest of the world. The unob-
structed view of the heavens from the ridge of
Palestine between the great desert and the great
sea corresponded to their inspired idealism, and
the barren rocks so difficult to cultivate were a fit-
ting background for the stern and ascetic nature
of their doctrine. Judea's rock-born seclusion
from the world may well have inspired her peo-
ple, as Sir George Adam Smith suggests, "with the
patriotism that has survived two thousand years
of separation and still draws her exiles from the
fairest countries of the world to pour tears upon
her dust, though it be among the most barren the
world contains." The extraordinarily variable and
often cruel climate with its earthquakes, its ter-
rific storms of thunder and lightning, its droughts
and famines, and then the radiant smile of pros-
perity that unexpectedly dimples the stern uplands
with fair fields of corn and draws across the rocks
a coloured veil of brightest flowers, could not but
make a people still in the anthropological stage of
culture feel that they were in the hands of a liv-

42

JERUSALEM

ing God who gave or withheld His favours accord-
ing to His own good pleasure. To the cry,
"Whence cometh my help?" the answer for them
could only be, "My help cometh from the Lord
who made heaven and earth." Did He send light-
ning, did He dry up the streams, did He shake the
earth, the people were powerless; their industry
went for naught without the favour of Jehovah.

The small race, thus tempered and moulded by
their isolated and unyielding dwelling-place, pos-
sessed, by a miracle no geography can explain,
the genius of literature. Their sacred book sur-
passes in vividness, beauty, and impressiveness,
and in sublimity of tone (not always maintained)
the consecrated lore of any other race. Those who
have explored the dreary wastes of Sanskrit sacred
literature those long dry stretches between a few
enchanting oases those who have sought to fol-
low the mind of Mahomet through his often
childish outpourings in the Koran, or have got
themselves involved in the mazes of fantastic com-
ment, built up on the few authentic Confucian
sayings, cannot but turn with relief to the Old
Testament, with its wealth of poetry, its character-
drawing, the dramatic as well as tender situations,
its outpourings of fiery rhetoric, its occasional sub-
limely elevated moral tone. It is the miracle of
the supreme literature created by this small race
which has embalmed their fierce history and their

43

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

stern beliefs in words and images beyond com-
pare, and printed them ineffaceably upon our
imagination in visions larger than life.

HISTORY OF JERUSALEM

We left Mount Carmel on April 14, a little
flock of four motor cars, and made our way across
the Plain of Esdraelon, and up the bare stony
hills that once were plentifully terraced for vine-
yards and olive orchards, reaching finally the rocky
plateau on which Jerusalem stands, twenty-five
hundred feet above sea level. This town demands
from the most superficial traveller a certain
amount of historical knowledge; even the purest
aesthete can scarcely confine himself to looking
upon it merely as a picturesque group of semi-
oriental buildings pierced with tunnelled streets
lined with bazaars full of coloured stuffs of all
kinds, fruits, and sweets, and crowded with people
in every costume under the sun and speaking every
language. It cries out as no other city to be under-
stood in its religious significance and in the his-
torical adventures it has undergone.

The early history of Jerusalem is very misty,
but it was a town before the Israelites under Joshua
took possession of the land of Canaan. The Jerusa-
lem that we now see is at least the eighth city
built upon this ridge; even the Jerusalem of
Christ's time is buried deep beneath superimposed

44

JERUSALEM

layers of later habitations, and archaeologists are
only just beginning to cut down to the level of the
town that Jesus saw. David wrested Jerusalem
from the Jebuzites about 1000 B.C. and began its
embellishment, which his son, Solomon, carried
so far that its magnificence became a world fable.
Four centuries later Nebuchadnezzar destroyed
the Temple and most of the houses, and carried
the people captive to Babylon. Which of us does
not have echoing in his head the lament of the
Israelites beginning, "By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat us down, yea, we wept when we re-
membered Zion"? Jerusalem was rebuilt by Ne-
hemiah ; and Herod, the great builder, beautified
it with many imposing edifices just before the birth
of Christ It was again levelled to the ground by
Titus in 70 A.D., and for fifty years there was no
city there at all. For several centuries it even lost
its name, having been baptized as Aella Capi-
tolinus. But Jerusalem cannot be killed either as
idea, name or fact. Invaded and captured, razed
and reared again and again, dedicated to one faith
after another, to several or to none, ruined by earth-
quake, by siege, by famine and by disease, it survives
all the cataclysms of nature and the destruc-
tions of man. Constantine made it a shrine in the
fourth century; the Arabs took it in 639 (Jews,
Samaritans, and Christians, all welcoming the
Moslems as their deliverers from the oppression of

45

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the Byzantines), the Mad Khalif, El Hakim,
in 1010, destroying all the Christian churches.
The Moslems held it for nearly thirteen hundred
years, with an interruption when the Crusaders
occupied it from 1099 to 1189, rebuilding many of
the churches. They yielded finally to Saladin's
superior force. The Turks came to the top in
1517, and it was theirs till Lord Allenby walked
into it by the Jaffa gate on December n, 1917.
Yet among all these chaotic centuries of history,
Solomon and his wives, Nebuchadnezzar and
Babylon, Rome's imperial eagle, and the Saracen
crescent, one figure and one only has impressed
itself on the Jerusalem of our imagination, that
of a solitary man holding a palm-branch and rid-
ing on an ass into the Golden Gate of the City.
The glory of Egypt and Greece and Rome pales
before the glance of this Jew who was crucified
there between two thieves. It is this victim who
for us, whatever we may think about Christianity,
consecrates the city.

ENTERING JERUSALEM

Jerusalem! mieux que la plus magique description,
mieux que les plus artificieuses et vibrantes paroles, ce
nom seul emplit Tame de souvenir et d j emotion.

P. HUGHES VINCENT

We entered Jerusalem by the Tower from which
David looked down upon the beautiful Bathsheba,

46

JERUSALEM

and passed through a long stretch of sordid suburbs
hiding the old view of the town that gave the
Crusaders "much ado to manage so great a glad-
ness." The best way to approach the town would
be from the Jordan road that runs under the Mount
of Olives and from which Jerusalem rises across
the Valley of Jehoshaphat with its terraces and
domes, scarcely a single modern building break-
ing the impression. From the south or west the
approach would be a little longer; one would have
to take the road twice, turning east on approach-
ing the town, and then turn back at the north
shoulder of the Mount of Olives, but it would be
amply worth while, for a first impression is apt
to determine one's whole attitude towards a town.
The tin-can, jerry-built constructions that have
been run up in the new quarter to the west of the
town, and the pretentious cement buildings of the
more opulent inhabitants, among which we passed,
are as unfortunate a first impression as could be
devised. They are worthy of the hotel to which
we were conducted, the Palestinian substitute for
a Ritz Hotel where an insipid but elaborate table
d'hote was eaten to the sound of jazz music.

THE HOLY SEPULCHRE 8

By the next morning our dragoman had begun
to understand our tastes better than he could at
first, and he found for us fairly comfortable rooms

47

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

in the more modest hotel of St. John which we
had seen when, getting out of our motors on ar-
rival, we hurried down the labyrinth of covered
streets for our first and as it turned out our most
thrilling glimpse of the Holy Sepulchre. This
hotel was so near to the shrine that during the two
weeks we spent in Jerusalem we were able to be
constantly in and out of the church, but we never
recaptured the mysterious and romantic vision of
that first visit when the gathering darkness blotted
out all the details and gave us only vague shapes
dimly apprehended by the twinkle of lamps in the
dark interior, while the voices of unseen priests
were faintly heard from the dark chapels round
about the deep bass of the Greek, the wail of the
Copt, the organ-accompanied drone of the Roman
and the subdued cry of the Abyssinian. By day-
light the shrine within is seen to be rather tawdry
and sordid and dilapidated, but nothing can equal
the picturesqueness of the scene that-we looked on
when we sat, as we often did for hours together,
in the courtyard of the Holy Sepulchre, watching
the crowd of worshippers going in and out. Greek
priests with their hair done up in chignons and
their high caps ; women from Bethlehem with their
tall mediaeval head-dresses dating from a fashion
prevalent in Europe in the twelfth century and
brought in by the Crusaders; Abyssinians black
as ink; white-robed Carmelite monks; Franciscans

JERUSALEM

in brown; Dominicans in black and white; ecclesi-
astics from all countries in their robes and finery;
Nestorians, Georgians, Maronites; Copts with pale
faces and long black beards; Armenians in pointed
hoods; veiled women scarcely to be distinguished
from Mahometans; tattooed women from Syria
in bright gowns, carrying their children sitting on
their shoulders; sheiks from the desert wearing
their stately camelhair cloaks falling in classic
folds over silk garments ; less exalted Bedouins of
every class dressed in innumerable attires down to
mere bundles of rags (all is beautiful in colour,
however dirty and torn) ; all these stream by in
endless procession, while pigeons circle about in
the blue sky and nest in the fretted traceries of the
fagade carved by the Crusaders, and, at the ap-
pointed hours, overpowering the droning chants
that come from within the church, the Muezzin
from a minaret overlooking the court, in ringing
tones of passionate intensity, calls the faithful to
their prayers. 4

The two bas-reliefs over the doors must have
been done by some French sculptor who came with
the Crusaders. Even archaeologists of such differ-
ent schools as M. Deschamps of the Trocadero and
Mr. Kingsley Porter of Harvard agree that these
sculptures are strongly Burgundian in character.
The relief over the west portal, of which a small
section has been carried away to the Louvre, repre-

49

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

seats the story of Lazarus and Christ's entry into
Jerusalem. 5 That over the east portal is a beau-
tiful decorative design, perhaps symbolical, of
foliage, fruit, flowers, birds, and nude figures. The
church began as a basilica, but the Templars built
a round temple in the middle, imitating the big
mosque near by which they mistakenly took for
the Jewish Temple. That the present circular
temple surrounding the Shrine of the Tomb occu-
pies the same space as the original Templar church
is more than probable, but the effect of the decay-
ing plaster which masks the iron ribs of the archi-
tecture is very different from that of the gorgeous
mosaics which, we have reason to believe, once
decorated the whole interior. Of these there is
only a trace left, seldom seen by the tourist, in
the Chapel of the Agony of the Virgin which
stands at the top of a little staircase on the left
part of the f agade. In character this bit of mosaic
is very close to the mosaics in the Mosque of the
Dome.

When you recover from the first disappoint-
ment of the tawdry and crowded interior, you can
find there many beautiful scattered fragments of
the antique and of fine twelfth-century French
sculpture. There is, for example, a rectangular
part of the church which was built by the French
between 1140 and 1149, i ts pointed windows, clus-
tered pillars, and groined vaulting now incongru-

50

JERUSALEM

ously mingled with Arab details. This church
is supposed to occupy the site of the garden of
Joseph of Arimathea. There is also, in the Chapel
of St. Helena now belonging to the Armenians
a dome borne by four antique monoliths of red
granite which were supposed to shed tears.

I have dreaded coming to this part of my nar-
rative, but I may as well confess, once for all, that
I felt saddened rather than inspired in this holiest
building on earth, with its innumerable shrines
commemorating the scenes of sacred history. One
is shown, all crowded together, the altar of Mel-
chizedec, the chapels of the Archangel Michael,
St. Mary of Egypt, St. James, St. Thecla, St. Mary
Magdalen, the Forty Martyrs, the chapel where
Christ appeared to His Mother after His Resur-
rection, not to mention the Stone of Unction on
which the body of Jesus was laid to be anointed
and the other stone where the women stood to
watch the anointing, the Tomb of Christ, of Joseph
of Arimathea, of Nicodemus, the room where
Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalen, the column of
the Scourging (an alternative version is shown in
the Church of Santa Prassede at Rome) , the prison
of Christ with His footprints impressed on a stone,
Golgotha with the cleft in the rock which reaches
the centre of the earth, the chapel where Adam
was buried, the relics of Godfrey of Bouillon, and
so on and on. In this whole assemblage of apocry-

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

phal sights with the never-ending procession of
pilgrims of different sects, Latin, Greek Abys-
sinian, Coptic, Syrian, and even Anglican, the
greatest miracle of it all seemed to me to be that
anybody could believe in its divine significance.
Had we stayed for the Greek Easter (which we
carefully avoided) with its reputed "miracle" of
the fire self-generated at the reputed Tomb of
Christ, my unfortunate attitude would, I fear, have
only been accentuated. We were told that as many
as eight thousand people crowd into that not very
large space, some of them, especially the Copts,
keeping their places there, with all their families,
from Holy Thursday to Easter Monday. It is
believed that a child born in the church during
that time will be exceptionally fortunate through
all its life; hence expectant mothers near their
term congregate there, and often, in the excite-
ment, the wished-for birth takes place on the -floor
or on the steps of some altar. The noise, the filth
cannot be imagined. Our Franciscan guide said
it took fully two weeks to free the shrine from the
dirt and the reek of that enormous crowd. It is
considered a very blessed and fortunate Easter
when no one is crushed to death in the crowd, or
deliberately killed by some rival fanatic. Those
who visited Jerusalem before the English man-
date used to be struck by the sad and significant
fact that it was Moslem guardians (now assisted

52

JERUSALEM

by soldiers in khaki) who kept the peace of the
place (what peace there was) between the warring
Christian sects who thronged the church. Even-
tually it was the quarrel over the keys of the Holy
Sepulchre between the Catholics represented by
France, who claimed them as representatives of
Charlemagne, the Champion of Christianity >
and the Russians, who claimed them by virtue of
Omar's grant to Constantinople, that brought on
the war which ended at Sebastopol. 6

HAKAM ES-SHERIF

I turn with relief to one of the indisputably
greatest achievements of art in the world, namely,
the Dome of the Rock, 7 the dignified shrine of an
alien cult, held by the Mahometans second only
to Mecca in sacredness. In the face of such beauty
archaeology seems almost misplaced, and yet mere
descriptions of beauty are always inadequate and
tend to be cloying. I should like to say nothing
about it except, "Go and see it, and go again."
But I know that even we, who have exercised our-
selves as few people have in the enjoyment of the
beauty created by man, interspersed our periods
of appreciating its beauty with the devout read-
ing of Baedeker and more recondite authorities^
so I permit myself to set down some reflections
and what information seemed most interesting on
the spot.

53

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

One thinks of other great sites, the Acropolis
of Athens, the Piazzas of St. Mark's and of St
Peter's, the Church of St. James at Santiago and
its surroundings, the lovely cathedral closes in
England, the grassy space on which the Cathedral,
the Baptistery, the Campo Santo and the Leaning
Tower of Pisa stand, of the broad terrace on the
green slopes of the Guardarrama where rises the
Escorial, that great monument to the genius of the
architect Herrera and the piety of Philip II, but
this is more exotic, more unspoiled, and it is the
largest of them all, covering thirty-five acres of
artificially terraced and levelled ground. As sheer
constructive architecture the Mosques of Sinan
at Constantinople and Adrianople are perhaps
grander, but none of them has this marvellous
man-constructed site nor the colour.

Our first visit, the morning after our arrival,
was an experience never to be forgotten. We
walked down and down through the picturesque
and crowded streets and the covered bazaar, noting
many relics of earlier structures built into walls,
passing doorways and windows and balconies of
delicate Arab tracery, antique columns, broken
lines of grand Hellenistic masonry, and all the
interesting remains of a much destroyed and fre-
quently rebuilt city, and reached at last the arches
of the great west arcade that gives onto the plat-
form of the Dome. Through these openings we

54

JERUSALEM

got our first glimpse of the Blue Mosque and of
the two flights of steps leading up to it, surmounted
by graceful arches and flanked by slender colon-
nades. When we reached the top steps we looked
abroad on the great empty spaces of the platform,
dotted here and there with lovely little shrines,
framed in on the north by a series of small domed
buildings with delicately arched porches, and run-
ning down by the steps on the south to the grassy
field that leads to the Mosque of El Aksa. On
the east we saw these same green fields bounded
by the crenellated walls which shut in the whole
place from the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The stones
of the walls, of the platform and of the small Arab
domed buildings upon it (for private devotion,
ceremonial washing, tombs of saints, and so on)
which decorate the space without crowding it or
destroying the sense of peaceful amplitude, are of
a warm ivory and pearl colour which is well set
off by occasional clumps of dark cypresses and the
silver olive. I doubt if the Temple of Herod,
which the mosque replaces, or Solomon's Temple
before it, could have produced a more convincing
impression of splendour and sobriety, majesty and
aloofness than this place. Its only rival is the
Acropolis of Athens, but that in its prime must
have been sadly overcrowded with statues. The
platform of the mosque is so huge and so dis-
creetly built upon, that one feels alone there in

55

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

spite of the many groups of people who sit on the
grass or straggle up to the shrine. The grave re-
pose of the place is a great contrast to the clashing
of the sects and the demonstrations of the pious
in the Holy Sepulchre.

As to the cult there practised, I could take it
peacefully. The religion of Islam is not mine ; I
never come across anything but the picturesque
side ; no one that I know argues that the Mahom-
etan Faith is the True Faith; the people I care
about do not prostrate themselves in that absurd
and revolting attitude with their foreheads on the
floor and the less honoured part of their persons
sticking up; I am not forced to concern myself
about all that, and am far enough away from it
to be calm about the Arab conquest and about the
defects of the votaries of the Mahometan re-
ligion. So the vision of the Dome of the Rock
was not alloyed with any sense of personal re-
sponsibility; I was free to yield myself to those
mystical and soothing semi-historical, semi-cosmic
emotions of Weltschmertz and pathos to which
the faint lovely traces of ruin and decay open the
heart. There was absolutely nothing to disturb
one's mood.

THE BLUE MOSQUE

The first thing that strikes one about the mosque
is the general effect of the coloured tiles that cover

56

JERUSALEM

the exterior, which give the edifice the name of
Blue Mosque. This beautiful colour is enhanced
by its contrast with the ivory pavement around it
and by the stately and graceful shape of the build-
ing, a flat-roofed octagon surmounted by a dome
resting on a hexagonal drum.

There is a little shrine outside the east door of
the mosque which seems to belong to the same
period as the large building. It is called the
Dome of the Chain and is supposed to be the site
of David's Seat of Judgment. Moslems believe
that a chain once stretched across the entrance,
put there by Solomon (or God Himself even),
and that the truthful witness could grasp it with-
out any result, whereas a link fell off if the chain
was held by a perjurer. The columns have been
taken from an older building and are in the Byzan-
tine style, the floor is covered with beautiful pat-
terns of stone mosaic. This little building produces
an effect of space composition which recalls Ra-
phael's "Sposalizio."

I shall permit myself here to indulge in a bit
of the archaeology of the place, 8 for the Dome is
almost the only spot in Jerusalem where archae-
ology is connected with great beauty. We did not
fail to follow, all over the town, under the guid-
ance of the learned Franciscan priest, Father Baldi,
the findings of Christian archaeology, and, if elo-
quence and knowledge could make dead bones live,

57

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Father Baldi would have made us as enthusiastic
about this matter as we became about the great
Haram es-Sherif. But it was no use! We saw
Holy Places; heard on the spot the results of the
latest investigations ; we pored over the three vol-
umes of the incredibly learned and careful Fathers
Vincent and Abel, who may be taken to have said
the last word on these matters (with the slight
bias that religious belief inevitably gives to even
its most scholarly votaries) ; but archaeology with-
out beauty fades quickly from the mind at least
from my mind and the only hope of anything
being permanently held in that leaky mental vessel
which I call my memory is to have it associated
with some object of visible beauty.

The Dome of the Rock, while remaining first
of all a vision of incomparable loveliness, has his-
torical and traditional associations which no one
can avoid. I cannot call up every one, so I have
taken my own feelings as guide, mentioning the
things that for me deepened the interest and en-
hanced the romance of the spot and omitting the
episodes and facts that left me indifferent.

The mosque appears to have been built on the
site, more or less, of Solomon's Temple on Mount
Moriah.* This building has utterly vanished, with
its pillars of brass and the brazen sea, with all its
stones quarried and dressed by eighty thousand

58

JERUSALEM

workmen and its timbers of cedar, fir, and cypress
from Mount Lebanon employing a hundred thou-
sand men in their cutting and transport, the work-
men being probably captives of war or conquered
natives. I wish at least that the bronze serpent
made by Moses had been preserved, but it had
become an object of idolatry, and when Hezekiah
purified the Temple he had it broken to pieces.
Razed to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar in 586
B.C., when the Jews were carried captive to Baby-
lon, their Holy Shrine lived on in their tenacious
spirits, and when Cyrus permitted their return,
they began to rebuild, it, though less sumptuously.
"The young men shouted for joy to think there
would once again be a Temple at Jerusalem, while
the old men, who had been carried away fifty years
before, wept when they remembered the magnifi-
cence of the building that had vanished." 10 Its
subsequent history was very varied. Again and
again it was used for pagan cults, or it fell into
neglect and decay. Its desecration reached the
climax when, under Antiochus, swine were offered
on the altar as sacrifice. That day, the twenty-
fifth of the month Kislen, 168 B.C., is still remem-
bered with horror by Jews all over the world
who on its anniversary celebrate in the "Festival
of the Lights" the purification of the Temple and
its rededication to Jehovah by Judas Maccabaeus,
when, exactly three years later, he again lighted

59

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the Temple lamps. No traces of this building
remain, for Herod in 20 B.C. pulled it down to
make place for a magnificent Temple in the Hel-
lenistic style/ 1 Of this little remains except the
substructure now known as the "Wailing Wall,"
and the base of the south wall of the enclosure,
for Titus destroyed it in the year 70, Hadrian in
131 ordered a large Temple to Jupiter to be put
in its place. There is no mention of this building
save by Dion Cassius, whose text is admittedly
corrupt Hence it has been questioned whether
it was ever really built. The whole matter will
be fully discussed by Mr. K. A. C. Creswell, in
his remarkable book, Early Muslim Architecture.
The "Bordeaux Pilgrim" (AD. 333) speaks of two
statues of Hadrian there and a stone to which the
Jews came to weep. 12

There is much discussion as to the buildings that
subsequently occupied the site, but when the Khalif
Omar sought it out in 637, nothing was left but
heaps of stones and refuse thrown there by the
Christians in abhorrence, no doubt, of the attempt
Julian made to rebuild the Temple for the Jews.
The following account of Omar's visit to the site
is given by an early writer, Shams ed-Din es Suyuti,
a tale, he says, handed down in the family of an
Arab who was present on the occasion * :

* From Colonel Sir Charles Watson, K. C, M. G., C. B., The Story
of Jerusalem (E. P. Button & Co., New York, 1912; J. M. Dent & Son,
London, 1912).

60

JERUSALEM

Then Omar, as soon as he was at leisure from the
writing of the treaty of the capitulation between him
and the people of the Holy City, said to the patriarch
of Jerusalem, "Conduct us to the Mosque of David."
And the patriarch agreed thereto. Then Omar went
forth girt with his sword, and four thousand of the
companions who had come to Jerusalem with him, all
begirt likewise with their swords, and a crowd of us
Arabs, who had come up to the Holy City, followed
them, none of us bearing any weapons except our
swords. And the patriarch walked before Omar
among the Companions, and we all behind the Khalif.
Thus we entered the Holy City. And the patriarch
took us to the church which goes by the name of .the
Kumameh (i.e. the Holy Sepulchre), and said he,
"This is David's Mosque." And Omar looked around
and pondered; then he answered the patriarch, "Thou
liest, for the Apostle described to me the Mosque of
David, and, by his description, this is not it." Then
the patriarch went on with us to a church called that
of Sion, and again he said, "This is the Mosque of
David." But the Khalif replied to him, u Thou liest."
So the patriarch went on with him till he came to
the Noble Sanctuary (i.e. the Haram enclosure) of the
Holy City and reached the gate thereof, called the
Gate of Mahomed. Now the rubbish which was then
all about the Noble Sanctuary had settled on the steps
of this gate, so that it even came out into the street
when the gate opened, and it had accumulated so
greatly on the steps as almost to reach up to the ceil-
ing of the gateway. The patriarch said to Omar, "It
is impossible to proceed and enter, except crawling on
the hands and knees." Then said Omar, "Even on

61

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

hands and knees be it." So the patriarch went down
on hands and knees, preceding Omar, and we all
crawled after him, until he had brought us out into the
court of the Noble Sanctuary of the Holy City. Then
we arose off our knees and stood upright. And Omar
looked round, pondering for a long time. Then he
said, "By Him in whose hands is my soul ! this is the
place described to us by the Apostle of Allah." :

' 13

It is said that the Rock spoke a greeting to Omar
when he made his way through the rubbish to the
place where the Temple had stood, where after-
wards rose the shrine whose ghost still lingers
on in the many times rebuilt and repaired Blue
Mosque.

But it appears that the popular name, "Mosque
of Omar," given by the Crusaders, is incorrect.
Omar only put up a temporary wooden mosque
and the present one owes its origin to the Caliph
Abd el-Melek about half a century later (A.D. 691 ).
This mosque, several times restored, was used as
a church by the Crusaders when, at the end of
the eleventh century, they occupied Jerusalem.
Imagining that it was the original Temple of Solo-
mon, the Templars took it as their model and in
imitation of it erected not only the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but a number of
churches in Europe, such as the Templars' Church
in London, and those in Segovia, Laon, Metz, Aix-
la-Chapelle and elsewhere.

62

JERUSALEM

If the Crusaders thrilled me as much as the rest
of the history with which this spot is connected
I should have a great deal to say about the hundred
years during which they held it. But the heroes
of that time, their aims and ideals, are so tarnished
with incompetence, muddle, sordid ambition, ava-
rice and senseless courage that I cannot bear to
linger over them. 14 Saladin drove them from the
field, and the mosque was reclaimed for the fol-
lowers of Mahomet, who still congregate there
for prayer and worship. From that time until a
few decades ago it was strictly shut to non-Mos-
lems. Many of the earlier pilgrims never mention
it at all. Lamartine, even, could only see it from
the Mount of .Olives across the valley, and Cha-
teaubriand got a mere glimpse of it from a window
in the house of Pilate. But the tolerance which
is inculcated by the Koran and which was prac-
tised by the early Khalifs (so far in advance of
the practice of the numerous sects of Eastern
Christians) permitted the annual procession of
Christian pilgrims to visit all their own Holy Places
in the town and allowed the Greeks to retain pos-
session of their churches and convents. Hence the
stream of Western pilgrimages to Jerusalem was
never intermitted, and we have many records of
adventures of travellers who took part in them.

On one of our subsequent visits to the mosque
we had the pleasure of being shown the tiles on

63

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the outside (which have replaced the original
mosaics) by Mr. Ernest Richmond, the consultant
architect of the building. 15 He told us that the
tiles belong to six main periods, the enamelled ones
of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries;
glazed tiles of the middle of the sixteenth century;
glazed imported tiles of a kind known as Rhodian
of the seventeenth century; tiles of eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries; and imported tiles of
recent date. The present tile covering is a patch-
work of many periods. The oldest and by far the
most interesting and beautiful are chiefly in the
protected parts under the lidded cornice dividing
the drum from the dome. The colour effect in
these tiles is, as Mr. Richmond writes, "strong,
almost violent; the drawing is decided. The de-
sign is made to tell at a distance." These old tiles
have been reset and readjusted and reduced by
chiselling, but I single them out for special men-
tion because once the attention of the lover of
beauty is called to them, he will see that they are
the finest, although the later ones have merits of
their own. The colours used are dark blue, tur-
quoise, yellow, black, and green, with geometric
lines in white; the ground is a dark blue alter-
nating with black. It is amusing to pick them out
from the places where they have been scattered
about by various restorations, in the octagon, under
the arches, around the windows of the cupola and

64

JERUSALEM

below the great inscription that once ran all the
way round the drum. Once the whole building
(except the lower part which was always of
marble) was covered with glass mosaics of Byzan-
tine character and the cupola (now of lead) was
carried out in gilded copper.

Entering the mosque itself we found an interior
surpassed in gorgeousness of colour and mystery
of lighting by no other shrine, not even St. Mark's
itself. A series of circular enclosures are set one
within the other, so disposed that the columns and
piers do not conceal one another but permit you a
view of the whole from almost any part of the
building. The cupola in the middle is upheld by
a high cylindrical wall which is entirely covered
with mosaics of flower and vase patterns in which
blue and green prevail, enhanced by the gold back-
ground, by the discreet use of black and brown,
and by the mother-of-pearl inlay introduced into
the pattern. The arches and the upper section of
the piers of the colonnade of the middle enclosure
are also gleaming with mosaic. 16 The windows
are filled with coloured sixteenth-century glass set
in heavy stuccoed patterns. The walls of the outer
structure are covered with marble and the pave-
ment is tessellated with coloured stones. The col-
umns carrying the cupola, and those that stand
between the piers of the middle enclosure, are of
varied antique marbles, and a gilded cornice unites

65

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

them. This crowded complex of structural forms
gives by contrast an appearance of immense spa-
ciousness to the central area under the cupola,
where the Rock is enclosed by a beautiful gilded
iron screen from the time of the Crusaders.

Our first visit was taken up in absorbing the
general effect of solemn splendour. We sat on
different projections, the bases of columns and
marble benches, till the Moslem hour of worship
drew near and we were obliged to go out again
onto the broad platform which carries the mosque.
Here we were struck with the Carpaccio effect of
the great enclosure with its small auxiliary domed
buildings, its colonnades, its groups of brightly at-
tired Eastern pilgrims bathed in translucent light.
Except that there was more space and less crowd,
it recalled the backgrounds of piazzas and build-
ings in Carpaccio's St. Stephen series. But we
were not allowed to linger on to enjoy this rare
beauty, for by 11:30 o'clock every visitor must
leave the site. This, I must say, gave rise to so
much rage in the soul of my husband that he could
not refrain from expressing it vehemently to our
friend in the secretariat, Mr. Antonius. Nicky and
I, with feminine tact and submissiveness, would
have endured the restrictions in patience, and we
exchanged glances of anxiety when we heard the
reproaches heaped upon the English powers that
permitted such an outrage on tourists. However,

66

JERUSALEM

the storm seemed to have a salutary effect, for we
received, shortly after, an invitation to spend the
whole afternoon in the Haram es-Sherif. We thus
had the great privilege of lingering till evening
and enjoying the different and ever more beautiful
effects of light and shadow, and the great mosque,
blue against a pink and saffron sunset sky, Mr.
Antonius was with us and presented us to the
Grand Mufti, the hereditary Moslem Bishop, so
to speak, of Palestine. He was a courteous, hand-
some man, with a white turban tightly wound
round a red cap, an auburn beard, yellow, ob-
servant eyes, and an inscrutable smile faintly
playing about his well-cut lips. His appearance
suggested a portrait by Gentile Bellini or Catena.
He said that he would see if some arrangement
could be arrived at by which real students should,
at any rate sometimes, be able to come into the
Haram in the afternoon. The place at that hour
is like a sedate picnic ground, with groups of Mos-
lem women sitting round under the trees chatting
while their children play about on the grass, but
the spread of the platform is so immense that the
figures decorate but do not crowd it Human life
seems hushed and dignified in such a grand setting.
We had plenty of leisure to visit the now closed-
up Golden Gate in the middle of the west wall
of the enclosure and this was also one of the great
aesthetic experiences of our trip. You descend a

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

flight of steps and are at once caught in the mighty
grasp of Antiquity. You have great monolithic
pillars with acanthus capitals, an arched vaulting
borne by a large central pillar, and a powerful but
exquisitely sculptured frieze, and above all you
have the antique size and proportions, the Greek
reasonableness, the Roman majesty.

We were invited to take tea in the apartment of
the Grand Mufti, which is situated above a part
of the west colonnade looking out on the mosque.
Under the setting sun the Blue Dome began to
add violet and purple hues to its turquoise surface.
We sat about on the usual divans that furnish an
Arab sitting-room and were offered small cups of
that delicious though bitter Arab coffee scented
with cardamon seeds. This we profoundly appre-
ciated, but when it came to the pastry which our
polite host had had specially prepared for us, a
conflict arose between our palates and our good
manners, for the pastry was glazed with the mut-
ton fat that for us ruins all the cookery of the
Near East, fat taken from the huge tails of the
sheep which are greatly prized among people
whose religion causes them to abjure pork.

MOSQUE OF EL AKSA

We spent several mornings also in the Mosque
of El Aksa, which is on a lower terrace to the
south within the Sherif enclosure. To this spot

68

JERUSALEM

God brought the Prophet Mahomet from Mecca
in one night. As to its human origins there is less
certainty; it was probably an early basilica judg-
ing by its shape and the capitals of the columns,
and it may well have been erected by the Emperor
Justinian. It was converted into a mosque by
Omar and has since then been very much altered
and pulled about. The palatial porch has almost
the stately magnificence of that great Romanesque
Church of San Clemente at Casauria in the
Abruzzo. The impressive vaults on which it
stands are called the stables of King Solomon, and
here the pilgrims were sheltered during the years
when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Crusaders.
We were very much struck by some of the exquisite
floral sculpture on a monument of the time of the
Crusaders built into the wall to the right of the
choir. The frail acanthus leaves seemed to tremble
in the breeze. Evidently the sculptor spent some
time in Jerusalem, for we discovered his work on
a pulpit to the left of the steps coming up to the
Dome from the El Aksa Mosque, and also on a
monument, looking like an altar, in the Dome itself,
and then again in the Church of theHoly Sepulchre.
His touch is very delicate and unmistakable.

LEGENDS OF THE ROCK

But what drew us back over and over again were
the mosaics in the Dome. Nowhere is decoration

69

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

more complete and gorgeous, and nowhere per-
haps has legend gathered more persistently than
around the Holy Rock, Kubbet es-Sahra, which
lies beneath it, being for the mosque what the
Tomb of Christ is for the Holy Sepulchre. To the
uninstructed eye it is a low, crude and shapeless
dark-coloured stone ("58 ft. long and 44 wide"
according to Baedeker), but to the eye of faith it
is one of the most sacred objects on earth. Ma-
hometans believe that, suspended in the air, it
hovers over the abyss of the roaring waters of the
flood, or rests upon a palm watered by the rivers
of Paradise, or else that it is the Gate of Hell.
One prayer here was declared by Mahomet to
be better than a thousand anywhere else. He him-
self, having in one night ridden from Mecca to
Jerusalem on el-Burak, his magic steed with the
human face, was translated to Heaven from a spot
a little to the right of the Rock. The impression
of his head is still shown, and also the mark of
the angel's hand which held back the Rock from
following him. On this occasion the Rock spoke,
Jewish and Christian legend, sitting upon every
possible horn of every possible dilemma, recognize
this rock as the Altar of Melchizedec, and the
place where Abraham brought Isaac to sacrifice
him; it is the Rock which Jacob anointed; the
great Altar of Burnt Sacrifice; the Holy of Holies
where the Ark of the Covenant stood; the spot on

70

JERUSALEM

which the Angel alighted to threaten Jerusalem.
There Jesus was brought by His parents and stayed
behind to dispute with the Doctors. It is also said
that He discovered the great and unspeakable
Name of God written on the Rock which gave
him the power to perform miracles. All agree
that it is the centre of the world, although I have
heard, also, that this was otherwise determined by
Job when he built the Great Pyramid at Cairo.

But I am straying too far away from my narra-
tive, overcome by the history, real and legendary,
of this fascinating place. I must banish the some-
what vague visions of Solomon and Saladin, of the
Templars, of the Sultans Beybars, Keitbey, and
Kalaun from Egypt, and of all the earthquakes,
destructions, rebuildings, pilgrimages, and mir-
acles that have centred there. They are not per-
sonal impressions, except in so far as reading
creates a background for observation and feeling,
and for each traveller the background here must
be partly a personal matter. No one mind and
imagination could possibly exhaust the endless
associations of this immortal shrine.

THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

I will only mention one more of the many spots
which, with the Dome of the Rock and the Holy
Sepulchre, stand out among the places hallowed
by history and religion, as a special goal of aesthetic

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

travel. For it was there that I became consciously
aware of the inner meaning and purport of our
modern pilgrimage. We tried in vain to summon
up the feelings that should be evoked by a visit
to the Garden of Gethsemane, but in the end had
to leave them to our religious friends who knelt
in a fervour of piety on the floor of the large new
church built there, which, though following on
old architectural lines, offended us so deeply by
the dead, mechanical touch of the modern builders
and by the blatant and execrable (though very
costly) mosaics in the interior, that all gentle emo-
tions were drowned. We escaped into the garden,
but to no avail Some of the olives, it is true, were
old and gnarled and beautiful in their contortions
as only olive trees can be, but the Italian Fathers
had set them in a garden so tasteless and pitiful
that it would have disgraced even a suburban
Italian villa than which, up to that moment, I
had known no more sordid setting for flowers and
plants. Sadly we made our unworthy way up the
side of the Mount of Olives, and presently our
souls were uplifted and our hearts filled with joy.
For turning to look back across the Valley of
Jehoshaphat to the long golden wall supporting
the platform of the great mosque and its gleaming
blue cupola, with the flat roofs and close packed
domes of the town threaded by the dark crevasses
of the streets rising behind it, we recovered the

72

JERUSALEM

Jerusalem implanted in our earliest memories by
descriptions, by engravings, by the backgrounds
of Fra Angelico and the primitive painters of all
Christian lands a vision beautiful in itself and
hung with the radiance of the imagination of child-
hood. Here was our Jerusalem, the goal of the
new pilgrim for whom, with the failure of the
older faiths, the worship of beauty is becoming
the only possible form of religion and is acquiring
the sanctity and the power of bestowing holiness
and salvation on its votaries and pilgrims. I real-
ized then that an element of the old pilgrimage-
spirit lingers on in the modern sight-seer he, too,
feels that he acquires merit and a kind of holiness
by visiting sacred places sacred for their beauty
and the poetry of their associations.

When we climbed to the top of the ridge our
eyes encountered one of 'the most sacred scenes the
pilgrim of today can gaze upon the distant blue
mountains of Moab falling sharply to the Valley
of the Jordan, and the bare twisted hills and
mounds of this terrifying' earth-chasm in their way
mirroring the sky almost as the Dead Sea, which
they hold in their bosom, mirrors the heavens and
the mountains in its turquoise blue waters. Per-
haps I should keep silent about the miracle that
lay at our feet, for the view is marvellous when
it bursts quite unexpectedly upon one (as it did
upon us) through the silver of the olives and be-

73

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

tween the stems of the cypresses. But I may justify
my indiscretion by recommending the garden of
the hideous building put up by the German Em-
peror and now used as a hospital, or the further-
most terrace of the Russian Convent, as incom-
parable places for the opening of a tea-basket and
sitting down in the modern way to enter into com-
munion with the landscape and enjoy a view that
has no rival.

VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT

We returned to Jerusalem again through the
ghostly Valley of the Kedron, called the Valley
of Jehoshaphat, which contains thousands of
Jewish graves as well as many Moslem tombs.
According to the picturesque belief of the Jews and
Moslems, it is in the Valley of Jehoshaphat that
the Last Judgment will take place. On that solemn
day Christ will sit on the Wall of the Haram,
Mahomet on the Mount of Olives opposite, and
between them a single hair will be stretched across
the valley, upon which the multitudes assembled
will have to pass. The hills will draw back and the
valley will open down to Hell itself, but the
righteous will walk across without fear, secure in
the belief that if they falter their guardian angels
will hold them up by their forelocks. Finally
only those will be left who are afraid to venture
themselves upon so narrow a bridge. Mahomet

74

JERUSALEM

enquires why they linger and is told that they
are the wicked Moslems whose sins make them
afraid and who are anxiously waiting to know the
Prophet's will concerning them. At first stern and
reproachful, he presently begins to smile to him-
self, and quickly crosses over from his side and
appears among them clad as a shepherd in a sheep-
skin coat with the woolly side out. He waves his
hand and the repentant sinners are turned into
fleas, who hop onto him and bury themselves in
the wool of his coat, and are thus carried by him
across the bridge to join their companions in the
Moslem's heaven,

THE SPIRITUAL TENSION OF JERUSALEM

Thy silver has become dross ; thy wine mixed with
water. ISAIAH

I hope I shall do nobody wrong to speak what I
think, and deserve not blame in imparting my mind.
If it be not for thy ease, it may be for my own.

BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy

I have telescoped our two visits to Jerusalem,
which in memory seem one; for our afternoon
trips to Ramleh, Bethlehem, Hebron and so on,
and even our excursion across the Jordan, did not
break the thread of associations and feelings any
more than dreams break into the continuity of
waking existence. Without being aware of it, one's
mind and heart are kept at a very high tension in

75

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

that centre of clashing religions, of ancient and
modern life, of high ideals and low practice, of
spiritual ecstasy and moral discomfort. Jerusa-
lem has been, almost ever since history began, the
aim of varied human striving. It is the point of
highest projection of religious emotion, the spir-
itual goal of the whole white race, Jews and
Christians, and of Mahometans of all colours
and all nationalities. Today an old enthusiasm
has been revived and is no longer mere aspiration
but a practical fact The New Zionists have
erected an enormous Hebrew College on the
Mount of Olives where young Jews may go to
learn in a strange hybrid language the latest dis-
coveries of science, while still the old traditional
Jews beat their foreheads against the Wailing Wall
across the valley. Mahometans still prostrate
themselves in the shrine built round the rock from
which the founder of their religion ascended to
his paradise of houris, and great pilgrimages of
Mahometans who abhor the Jews and would
gladly exterminate them, start with the blessing
of the Grand Mufti from the Gate of St. Stephen
to make an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of
Moses, the great Jewish leader. A never-ending
stream of Christian pilgrims pours on foot through
the streets too steep for wheeled traffic, while out-
side the gates motors hoot their way through the
modern town, and the Zionists, like people in a

76

JERUSALEM

post-hypnotic slavery, put up their barrack-like
houses and imagine that they are helping to realize
the prophecies made to their forefathers.

But more than this, the contrast goes on in one's
own spirit. It shatters the soul to despise what
one adores and who should not adore humanity
worshipping its ideal? It hurts to laugh at what
wrings the heart with tenderness. It is not easy
to keep hold of the frail Ariadne clue of reason
through such a labyrinth of emotion ; resistance to
the contagion of feeling seems ungenerous and
small-minded. It racks the heart to feel superior
and inferior at the same time, to be exasperated
and touched by the same spectacle, to ridicule what
is pathetic, to deplore what one longs to worship,
and reprove what one longs to admire. It was
seldom that I caught glimpses of a quiet, dispas-
sionate attitude towards the whole thing that would
enable one to follow appreciatively the develop-
ment of Christianity from its early Jewish-Mes-
sianic origins into the beautiful and universal myth
it became the most wonderful work of art of the
human race.

CHAPTER IV
EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

THE first afternoon after our arrival at Jeru-
salem we motored along the Jaffa road, but
not all the way, so that we did not see the place
where Perseus rescued Andromeda and St. George
the Princess, nor where the senseless story of Jonah
was enacted. However, alternative sites had al-
ready b.een pointed out to us near Beirut. We
only turned aside to see and linger at the beautiful
Tower and the Crusaders' church at Ramleh,
where the Crusaders first arrived in 1099, formed
a bishopric, and thence marched on to conquer
Jerusalem. Richard Coeur de Lion made it his
headquarters, and it was here that St. George was
first declared the patron saint of England, Ram-
leh (in spite of St. George!) was twice captured
by Saladin, and finally, in 1226, the Egyptian
Sultan Beybars gained possession of it. The Tower
rises in a large square enclosed by the arches of
ruined cloisters, its golden, graceful storeys seen
against the blue mountains of Judea on the one
hand and the gleaming Mediterranean on the
other. The architecture is clearly of the crusad-

EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

ing period. Standing alone there almost intact
(for it was built so solidly that neither earthquakes
nor the violence of man have been able to ruin it
through all the centuries), with the ruins of the
church and cloisters at its feet and the forecourt
turned into a straggling orchard of olives, nothing
left of the rival religions that once worshipped
there, and only goats cropping the grass and lizards
darting in and out of the ruined masonry, this tower
is one of the most stimmungsvoll of all the ruins
we visited in Palestine. The solitude and mood
were accentuated by the unkempt graveyard that
toppled its stones just outside the precincts. One
could linger there the whole day, watching the
clouds drifting past behind the Tower, and the
evening light throwing a rosy hue over the golden
stones, but we had our Baedeker with us, and it
prophesied a twelfth-century Crusaders' church,
now turned into a mosque, in the town of Ramleh.
With the usual alluring description of that trav-
eller's vade mecum it said that the building was
fifty-five yards long and fifty-seven wide, so we
dragged ourselves away from the romantic Tower
to verify the prophecy. We found to reward us
some beautiful capitals inside the church and a
fine bit of Arabic bas-relief on what remains of
the entrance tower, bearing the impress of the
style of Beybars.

The Stimmung of the Ramleh Tower was even

79

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

surpassed by what we were plunged into when our
sympathetic dragoman turned us off the beaten
track to a newly excavated ruin at Amwas (sup-
posed to be the Biblical Emmaus). The building
is fairly well preserved up to the cornice, and it
was evidently an early Christian church built
with the great stones and splendid masonry of the
Roman period, all in pale golden brown colour,
delightful to the eye and satisfactory to the sense
of solidity and permanence. Before us the fields
sloped down between enclosing hills to the plain
of Sharon. The ground was newly ploughed and
of a deep brown colour, and here and there hus-
bandmen in turbans and long draperies were
turning up the clods with their primitive ploughs
pulled by camels and donkeys harnessed together.
The sun drawing down, the hills began to shut
in the slopes with violet shadows, and the evening
calls of the birds sounded faintly in the still air.

ABU GH6SH

Although the twilight was coming on, we
stopped at the impressive Crusaders' church at
the village of Abu Ghosh, around which, in a
garden where the little owls onomatopoetically
called "Boombo," the original owls of Athena,
were beginning to utter their strange cry. Here
the learned Benedictines have arranged all the
capitals, columns and other relics found near

80

EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

by. The courteous and intelligent Father who did
the honours held the taper up to some frescoes fad-
ing on the wall, but we could only appreciate what
they were when he showed us, under a more bril-
liant light, some very excellent copies that had
been made of them. They appear to be thirteenth-
century Byzantine frescoes.

HEBRON

The next excursion we made was to Hebron, a
run of twenty-three miles through the heart of
Judea where the desolate heaps of stones crowning
the hills and encumbering the valleys are all that
is left of the once fenced cities and towns and
villages of former times. Here and there the mud
huts and low stone walls of the Arab hamlets,
half melting into the surrounding rocks, decorate
the landscape with unconscious art. Hebron is the
reputed place of Adam's creation and of his death,
the land of Abraham's election, and the home of
Isaac and Jacob. For seven years it was David's
capital and then the headquarters of David's re-
bellious and beloved son, Absalom. It lies south
of Jerusalem at a somewhat higher level (3,000
feet) . A modern village seems to be rapidly grow-
ing on the slopes that surround the ancient city
pool, peaceful looking now, but once the scene of
David's savage revenge upon his enemies, de-
scribed in the Book of Samuel, when he "com-

'81

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

manded his young men and they slew them, and
cut off their hands and feet and hanged them up
over the pool of Hebron." We were struck by
the prosperous look of the houses and of the agri-
culture in the surrounding fields, where the big
stretches of arable soil contrast with the tiny ter-
races among the rocks near Jerusalem. Their
method o cultivating grapes for wine the
"golden wine" of Hebron is famous struck us
as peculiar, for the vines trail flat along the
ground looking like big twisting worms. This
system we found later in full force in Syria, and,
towards the end of May, when the grapes were
beginning to form, we noticed that all the vines
were being propped up, one by one, on crossed
wooden sticks about a foot from the ground.

The chief sight at Hebron is, of course, the
mosque, 1 which takes the place of the old Byzan-
tine basilica that itself had been rebuilt under the
Crusaders. Yet the great aesthetic interest is not
so much the mosque itself as the magnificent walls
which surround it, dating, probably, from the first
century B.C., put up under Herod the Great. The
beautiful golden blocks of which these walls are
built are bevelled in a way which we ended by
believing to be of Syrian origin, and which may
go back to Phoenician tradition. The edges of the
blocks are cut away and smoothed off, leaving the
middle part projecting and rather rougher. These

82

EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

walls were the first of the kind that we saw, al-
though afterwards we found them under the enclo-
sure of the Blue Mosque at Jerusalem with the
Jews wailing against them, and elsewhere in many
ruins all over Syria. A building like this, with
bevelled masonry ornamented with shallow pilas-
ters on the wall, is in strange contrast to what most
people go to Hebron for, namely, to stand over
the site of the Cave of Macphelah which was
bought by Abraham for a family burying place.
In it he and Sarah were interred, Jacob made
Joseph swear to take his body to be laid there, and
Isaac, Rebecca, and Leah are all said to be buried
in the place. But the cave, under the mosque, is
no longer visible and has not been entered for
many years. The Mahometan guide showed us
Mahomet's footprints in one of the stones. In
even greater contrast to the noble severity of the
walls is the group of Jews who wail here with
more abandon than do their brothers at Jerusalem.
From a distance it sounded like the ravings of a
madhouse, and when we began to climb the steps
to the mosque we had to pass a shrieking, agitated
mass, yelling in passionate grief, real or conven-
tional, throwing their bodies and their fur-capped,
long-curled heads about in every conceivable con-
tortion, and pushing each other in the endeavour
to approach a large stone with a hole in it which
they believe goes down to the cave and through

83

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

which they crush papers inscribed with their own
names or with prayers. The Mahometan guard-
ians of the mosque only allow them to carry on
in this way on the first seven steps of the stairway
leading to the door of the mosque. It was touch-
ing to see an old man who was so lost in his dream
and his emotion (and who was perhaps also in
his dotage) that he could not keep within the
limit, but kept climbing up to find a free space
where he could beat his forehead. Always thrust
back by the guardians, he returned again and
again, his aged face with its flowing white beard
contorted in spasms of grief, and his mild eyes
looking in a puzzled way at those who kept push-
ing him down into the boisterous crowd.

ABRAHAM'S OAK

We stopped for the inevitable tea-drinking at a
great pine grove near the huge old ilex, the "Oak
of Mamre" which, according to early Jewish and
Byzantine tradition, shaded the tent where Abra-
ham received the visit of the three angels. An-
other legend from the third century would have it
that this tree sprouted from the rod of one of the
angels and that, like the Burning Bush, it could
burst into flame without being consumed. Little
is left of the ruins of the great temple built there,
probably under Hadrian, but never quite finished,
and changed by Constantine into a Christian basil-

EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

ica in order to put a stop to the heathen worship
of the famous tree. Both buildings have fallen
into almost unrecognizable ruins. Apart from its
history the spot is a beautiful one,' looking down on
fertile fields and vineyards and gentle bird-haunted
slopes planted with olives and apricots and
almonds. From the tower of the Russian Hospice
near by we saw the gleaming Mediterranean fram-
ing in the view.

POOLS OF SOLOMON

On our way back we passed the so-called Pools
of Solomon, three basins, one below the other,
partly hewn out of the rock and partly enclosed by
masonry some of which is simple and fine. The
water from these pools and the springs round
about are again carried, as in ancient times, to
Jerusalem, but the modern buildings higher up
round the springs which supplement the supply of
water, convey no suggestion of the "sealed foun-
tains" of the Song of Solomon, or anything for ro-
mance to hang itself upon. The three quiet pools
which, when we saw them, mirrored the sunset sky,
lie there on the rocky hillside as they must have
lain when Solomon, who had built causeways
along all the roads that led to Jerusalem, used to
drive, as Josephus recounts, to this "very pleasant
place," in the morning "sitting high in his char-
iot," made of the wood of Lebanon, lined with

85

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

gold, and with a canopy of Tyrian silk upheld by
silver pillars. With him used to come a band of
young men clad in purple, eminent for their tall-
ness. Josephus describes them (Ant, 8:7) as hav-
ing long hair sparkling with the gold-dust that was
every day sprinkled on their heads. This evening
the only sign of life was a flock of ducks paddling
about on the surface of the second pool, while a
stork, "Father of Legs," as the Arabs call him,
looked on in a detached and meditative way.

The light lasted long enough for us to stop, on
our way back to Jerusalem, at Bethlehem, the
home of David, the background of the idyll of the
Book of Ruth, and the place where Christ was
born. Owing to that joyful event, the Church of
the Nativity ? there is now a spot of bitter hatred
between the Greek, the Armenian, and the Roman
sects, each of which claims to represent the true
doctrine of Christ. The members of these three
branches of Christianity cannot enter the church
by the same corridor to kneel at the birthplace of
the Prince of Peace, but have to come in and go
out by separate ways lest they should quarrel and
fight on this most holy ground. The entrance to
the church from the square is through a narrow
door only four feet high, designed to prevent the
Moslems from showing their contempt for Chris-
tianity by driving their camels, donkeys or cattle
into the shrine. I have never seen anything more

86

EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

fierce than the look a Greek priest gave to our
friends who were bowing before the Roman Cath-
olic altar. I think that if he could have killed
them he would have exulted in the deed with as
clear a conscience as an old Crusader killing a
Paynim. These warring sects have united, how-
ever, in one thing, which is to make the apse and
its chapels as trivial as they can with sentimental
pictures and tawdry ornaments. But nothing can
spoil the magnificent effect of the basilica erected
by St. Helena with its grand march of columns
under gleaming remains of mosaics. The pious
members of our party visited the so-called manger
of Christ, where a silver star set into a slab marks
the exact spot of his birth, with so much devotion
and enthusiasm that by reaction we felt unable to
have any serene and uplifted emotion whatever in
the tinsel and tawdry cave, and escaped as soon
as possible to study the mosaics and enjoy the sol-
emn effect of the stately Corinthian columns of
reddish limestone. According to St. Jerome, this
same grotto, from the reign of Hadrian to that of
Constantine, was dedicated to the cult of a heathen
god with a semi-Semitic name, Adonis, meaning
Lord. Such instances of syncretism, which might
chill the devotion of the religious pilgrims, height-
ens for the modern pilgrim the interest of the
shrine. 8

Outside there was a noisy gathering of people

87

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

eager to sell chains and brooches with the Star of
Bethlehem, picture post-cards of the most garish
kind, and other pious mementoes, and it was very
hard to shake these people off and get an undis-
turbed view of the fertile valley and the terraced
slopes planted with olives and fig-trees that sur-
round the town. A pool stands on the terrace in
the depths of which hides a star, visible, it is said,
to the eyes of virgins alone. Below is the grotto in
which St. Jerome passed the greater part of his
life. This saint in his cave, reading or beating his
breast with a stone, with his lion lying at his feet,
is one of the favourite subjects of Italian painting,
serving more often as an excuse for enchanting
glimpses of landscape than for the interpretation
of religious passion.

We returned to Jerusalem in the twilight, leav-
ing behind us the gleaming lights of the little town
which lingers in the memory wrapped in a cloud
of associations not only of the lowly Nativity but
of the imperial splendour of Constantine and Jus-
tinian, the Arab destruction and the Prankish
restoration, the devastations of the Central Asian
hordes, and the firm hand of Napoleon settling the
quarrels of the Latin and Greek priests.

CHAPTER V

TRANSJORDANIA

THE GHOR

A WEEK later we fortified our spirits for a trip
* * into Transjordania, where we had been led
to expect great hardship and discomfort but found
perfectly possible conditions. Our road zigzagged
down among the red rocks of the Judean wilder-
ness, which was diversified with tiny plots of wheat
and dotted with black goats that were somehow
managing to find pasture in that bareness. A few
flowers but not anything like enough to corre-
spond to the "veil of colour" our reading had led
us to expect in spring in Palestine grew in the
crevices. One always has a mortified feeling on
coming down from a height, but never was a
descent more humiliating and depressing than that
into the Valley of the Jordan. From two thousand
five hundred feet above sea level you descend in
about three quarters of an hour to the same depth
below, and the air presses heavily upon body and
spirit. But the beauty of the deep valley is so ex-
traordinary and so interesting at any rate seen
under the conditions of sunlight in which we saw

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

it that everything else is quickly forgotten.
Many descriptions have been written of this sunken
land squeezed down by a phenomenal wrinkling of
the earth's surface, and I confess that I expected
something horrible, weird, and foul. The Rever-
end Sir George Adam Smith 1 has given us half a
dozen pages of unforgettable sentences like the fol-
lowing about the Jordan, which' "trails and winds
like an enormous green serpent, more forbidding
in its rankness than any open water could be how-
ever foul or broken. The occasional beds of shin-
gle are not clean and sparkling as in our own rivers
but foul with ooze and slime . . . large trees lie
about overthrown" and "the Jordan sweeps to the
Dead Sea through unhealthy jungle relieved only
by poisonous soil," scouring along "muddy be-
tween banks of mud, careless of beauty, careless of
life." He tells of "mounds and ridges of grey
marie, salt and greasy, with stretches of gravel,
sand, clay, and other debris of a sea bottom that
assume the weirdest shapes and give a desolate
aspect to the Vale," He speaks of the ground "dis-
coloured or crusted with salt," and of the "un-
couthness" of this "unhealthy hollow" the higher
parts of which look like nothing but "the refuse
of a chemical manufactory." Major A. J. Bag-
nold (The Times, May 22, 1929) speaks of the
"appalling white sterility of the crumbling lime-
stone and salt-crust covering the valley" and

90

TRANSJORDANIA

dwells on the "hot fetid air" and the "pestilent
swamp" overhung by a cliff on which buzzards
were sitting "entranced by a sickening odour of
death." Dr. Huntington calls it an "infernal
trench" and tells of tropical and oppressive heat,
flies and dust, and the ghastliness of a sea over
which no birds fly and in whose waters no fish live.
Older writers repeat the tradition that every crea-
ture, man or beast, that took in the exhalations
either perished or went raving mad "as if the
very atmosphere breathed the wrath of God." Re-
ligious writers tend, of course, to magnify the hor-
ror of the place because of the Cities of the Plain
and the punishment meted out to them for their
abominations. Chateaubriand wrote, "Tout sem-
ble y respirer Vhorreur de I'inceste d'ou sortirent
Amman et Moab. Le desert parrait muet de ter-
reur, et Von disalt qu'il n'a ose rompre le silence
depuis qu'il a entendu la voix de I'fiternel" But
men grow weary of eternal voices, though they
thunder from Mount Sinai itself. Their vision
undergoes the oddest transformations, and if we
gazed with as much fascination as condemnation
on those scenes of horror, it was perhaps because
our eyes had all been dazzled and shall I say
perverted? by reading, in prose almost as beauti-
ful as that of Chateaubriand and much more mod-
ern, the copious and unhallowed chronicles which
Marcel Proust has printed of fashionable life in

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the most exclusive sets of the Cities of the Plain.
A book about the Dead Sea published by the
London Religious Tract Society begins with the
sentence, "The fascination of the horrible seems
irresistible." We were rather looking forward to
having our share of this fascination in getting
down to the Hollow, as the Greeks call it, or the
Rift (el-Ghor according to the Arabs). But we
found it beautiful beyond imagination, as beautiful
as Luxor, but more vivid and unusual. The wrin-
kled labyrinth of marl and salt deposit on both
sides of the valley, worn by the winds and washed
by torrents into strange shapes of castles, churches,
towers, terraces, and minarets, so contemptuously
alluded to as "mounds and ridges of grey marie,
salt and greasy, giving a desolate air to the Vale"
were, to our eyes, as impressive as our favourite so-
called bad lands around Siena or in the upper Val
d'Arno. Bad they are because no plant grows
upon them, but as earth mirrors, reflecting and re-
fracting in endless nuances of shade and colour the
light of heaven, nothing, it seems to us, could be
more beautiful, unless it were the mirror of the
inscrutable Dead Sea, which we saw when in its
pale turquoise depths it reflected the cliffs that em-
bosom it. A light haze like a transparent and
etherialized opal hung over the south end of the
sea. "The land that smoketh," this valley is called
in the Bible, and the fact that the Dead Sea, having

92

TRANSJORDANIA

no outlet, has to evaporate the six and a half mil-
lion tons of water that fall daily into it, so that a
mist often hangs over it like smoke, is variously
taken as a proof of the divine, inspiration of that
fascinating book, and as a sign of the harmony be-
tween Science and revealed Religion.
As we stood on the edge of the Lake where

visando su sepulture

el Jordan viene di morir,

we felt that we would have given almost anything
to embark on those heavy waters which form a lake
about the size of the Lake of Geneva, and see the
marvels of its shores and the salt-encrusted plain at
the south end with its weird formations (among
which the Bedouins point out the Pillar of Salt
which was Lot's wife, calling the Lake itself Bahr
Lut, the Lake of Lot) and to follow out one al-
ways goes on to the very end in imaginary excur-
sions the earth-crack which rises and falls, but
keeps always below sea level till it is lost in the
Gulf of Akaba. We envied the party of religious
enthusiasts and archaeologists whose voyage round
the Lake is described in a book called Explorations
at Sodom. Although written in a partly pious
and partly jocular style, it contains the result of an
interesting scientific bit of research and excavation.
Dr. Allbright of the American School of Oriental
Research in Jerusalem directed the operations, as-

93

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

sisted by the expert Pere Malon, a well-known spe-
cialist in flint and old stone. Other members of
the party belonged to the Church of God in Ohio,
the Xenia Theological Seminary, and the Brethren
of California. Their conclusion that the town of
Sodom was to the south of the Dead Sea on a spot
now covered with water has been practically ac-
cepted by all the archaeologists. The approval of
Pere Vincent, whose scholarly work on Jerusalem
I have already mentioned, guaranteed the correct-
ness of the observations and results. We longed
to take a boat and push our way through the heavy
waters and drop a hook and fish up bits of pottery
belonging to the Bronze Age from the site of the
drowned city for since no traces of the later pot-
tery are to be found there, it is clear that the city
was destroyed or abandoned before the Early Iron
Age set in that is to say, just when the Bible
places the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. I
must, however, add that since the report of this
Commission, the Pontifical Bible Institute, under
Pere Malon, has found traces of a town of the
Bronze Age about four miles north of the Dead
Sea, and there is a suggestion that this was once
Sodom.

AMMAN

We left the Ghor with reluctance, crossing the
Rubicon between Palestine and the Land of Moab

94

TRANSJORDANIA

the muddy Jordan. Much has been written
about this river, the scene of Christ's baptism, and
supposedly that of the miraculous division of the
waters by Elijah's cloak, and the river over which
St. Christopher carried the Christ Child, but few
writers have had the unglamoured directness that
enabled an American missionary of the fifties to
say, "The Jordan would scarcely be dignified with
the name of a river in America." Its appearance
as we crossed the "Allenby Bridge" was, to be sure,
insignificant: but in a sacred land like Palestine,
the actual thing seen is only a peg on which to hang
thrilling and sublime associations. We gazed on it
with deep respect, and then, leaving it behind us,
we proceeded up a fissure in the cliff on the east
side, along a stream half hidden by poplars and
great clumps of oleander in full bloom. Above
us on the other side of the stream was the town of
Es Salt, known to us chiefly by the "Sultana" (Sal-
tana) raisins that come from it Their preparation
is simple. You merely spread out the grapes in the
sun as soon as they are picked, and keep turning
them over with fingers dipped in olive oil until
they are thoroughly saturated with it.

At one point of our drive the road seemed to be
moving, and we saw that an army of young locusts
was creeping over it one of the ancient plagues
of Egypt. The only hope of staying the devasta-
tion caused by these insects used to be the arrival

95

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

of cranes coming in flocks from Egypt and devour-
ing the locusts. But it was never more than a par-
tial remedy. Barriers of fire and smoke-screens
were, to be sure, of some use, but it remained for
the Great War to yield, as a by-product of its bru-
tality, a really effective remedy, namely, poison
gas. Barrels of the materials for preparing this
were lying ready all along the road, and when we
returned two days later, our wheels rolled over the
dead bodies of the vast invasion of locusts, checked
in its march of destruction.

At the top of the ravine we found high pasture
lands that at times resembled a noble park, planted
with oaks, cedars, and dark-leaved carob trees.
The road was bordered with honeysuckle, aloes,
feathery tamarisks, laurestinus and arbutus, and
huge bushes of anchusa made pools of colour
where they grew close together. In this one day's
drive we passed from the rocks and pines of Judea,
the sparrows and starlings of Jerusalem, through
the palms and bulbuls of the Ghor, where jackals
and hyenas make their home, and even leopards
and wild boars are sometimes seen, to the high
desert nursery of camels with its larks and lizards
and its scanty herbage.

We finally reached Amman, the ancient Phila-
delphia (one of them), a town lying across a pop-
lar-fringed stream in a narrow valley between low
but very steep hills. It was in besieging this town

96

TRANSJORDANIA

that Bathsheba's inconvenient husband met his
death. We found there a decent though not beau-
tiful hotel planted directly in front of a colonnade
of Corinthian columns flanking a great amphithea-
tre of forty tiers, the upper ones built in the rock.
This is almost the only witness left of the town's
ancient beauty. For beautiful Amman must have
been when it was one (the most southern) of the
famous towns of the Decapolis a Hellenic con-
federacy designed to check the Semitic and espe-
cially the Arab powers and protect the great routes
of commerce.

In the late afternoon we climbed up to a fort
that overhangs the town of Amman and saw the
sunset from the remains of a temple (perhaps dedi-
cated to Moloch, whose cult was especially prac-
tised there) which stands on the height Impressive
as this ruin was, with its great blocks of ivory-
coloured stone beautifully fitted and chiselled, we
were more excited about a large ruined building
with grand, slightly elliptical arches and elaborate
decorations in low relief. It is of the type for-
merly called "Sassanian" and was supposed to have
been erected by Khosroes II during the subjuga-
tion of Palestine. There is a great fascination in
trying to spell out the history of a building from
the evidences contained in its structure and decora-
tion, and the sport becomes even more interesting
when scholars differ as to what the building has to

'97

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

say. In this case we found ourselves deciphering
another message than that which a no less learned
authority than M. Phene S'piers had gathered from
the structure. He discusses it in a paper entitled
"Sassanian Architecture," and describes it as a

central court, square and open to the sky, with four
recesses, one on each side ; two are covered with barrel
vaults, the other two with hemispherical vaults on false
pendentives that is to say, the monarch [Khosroes
II] wanted the feature, but the Syrian builder did not
know how to build it, and he arrived at the result in a
haphazard manner. . . . Except for the false penden-
tives, I should be inclined to think the building was
designed by and its execution carried out under a
Sassanian architect, with a few Sassanian masons ; and
that the work was handed over to Syrio-Greek artists
to decorate.

With the latter statement my husband was in
agreement, but he would date the building about a
century later than Khosroes II, whose rule was
scarcely long enough for the erection of all the
monuments ascribed to him. He read the history
told in the stones of the building in terms not of
Sassanian but of Omayyad inspiration and Syrio-
Greek execution. Syrian masons, according to
him, built the hall for their Arab overlords, and
decorated it in accordance with the practices and
forms of their not very distant Justinian prede-
cessors.

TRANSJORDANIA

MADABA

The next day, accompanied by a soldier from the
police force, kindly sent with us by Peake Pasha,
the Englishman of authority in this district, we
passed through the ancient kingdom of the Amor-
ites into the land of Moab, motoring for miles over
the rolling plateau which slopes gently eastward,
where extensive fields of grain pass imperceptibly
into the monotonous desert. Along the way we
noticed many clumps of wild black iris, and heard
myriads of silver-toned larks singing overhead.

Our first stop was to see the mosaics that have
been uncovered on the floors of various squalid
Arab-inhabited houses in Madaba. This town,
once rich and flourishing, as the mosaic floors and
the remains of a street of columns show, was de-
serted when the Roman power declined, and it was
not lived in again till 1880, when a colony of Chris-
tians, exiles from Turkey, took possession of the
thirteen-hundred-year-old ruin, gathering about
them, little by little, an addition of native Arabs.
It was in 1884 that the mosaic view of Jerusalem
was unearthed in the Greek church which they
built at the top of the town. This and one or two
other fifth-century floor mosaics have been photo-
graphed and published, 2 but we were among the
first to see a mosaic that had just been uncovered,
of rather coarse workmanship, with a zoological

99

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

surprise in the form of a decorative design of two
cows in the branches of a tree,

Another mosaic that greatly interested us was in
a rich Arab's harem, covering the floor of a large
round room which had perhaps been a church.
The ladies were hurried out at our approach, leav-
ing their slippers, veils, sweetmeats, and musical
instruments scattered among the filthy cushions on
the floor around the walls. Their master sat with
crossed legs in a shallow niche, quietly smoking a
narghileh, and scarcely took any notice of us; I
fancy he was drugging himself. Of course his
"palace" was approached through a dirty and dis-
orderly compound, rank with refuse and foul
smells. Several other floor mosaics we saw, some
with very beautiful borders and animals in the
Alexandrian style ; and we suspect that most of the
houses will turn out to have mosaic floors when
the filth that has accumulated on them is removed.
There is also a large mound, or Tell, to one side
of the town which will probably yield rich finds
when it is excavated.

M'SHATTA

The best was to come, for we motored on across
the desert to have our picnic lunch in the ruins of
the incomparable palace of M'shatta, with its
grandiose proportions and rich ornaments, a build-
ing which, as Van Berchem says, "has fascinated

100

TRANSJORDANIA

the world more than any other in Syria." 3 It has
ever been something of a mystery, standing soli-
tary in the desert in its unparalleled magnificence,
and it has variously been called Roman, Byzan-
tine, Sassanide and Persian. 4 But Pere Lammens
has traced it back to a passage in an old writer,
Severus ibn al-Moguffa, who says that the Omay-
yid Walid II began it in 743. "He built," the old
chronicler writes, "a town in the heart of the desert
to immortalize his name, and requisitioned work-
men from all his provinces." To this ambitious
and impetuous ruler it was nothing that the nearest
water was fifteen miles away he had plenty of
slaves to fetch and carry. But death overtook him
the year after he had begun to build, and his fan-
tastic but magnificent palace was never carried to
completion. This "rose of the wilderness" remained
undespoiled till 1905, but since then the Germans
have carried off to the Berlin museum the richly
carved fagade. Now that the railway to Mecca
runs close by, the natives are carrying on their age-
long occupation of taking away the stones and
bricks from the old buildings to make their own
horrible hovels, which, in this case, crowd near the
railway station. It is so much easier to quarry
in old temples and palaces and steal their cut and
prepared blocks of masonry, breaking them up if
they are too big, than to prepare fresh building
material Everywhere it has been the builders,

101

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

rather than time or even than raiders and con-
querors to whom the obliteration of the remains of
antiquity is due. The abbeys of England have
been the quarries for the manor houses ; the Coli-
seum had supplied the materials for the palaces of
Rome ; the stones of Syrian temples and f ortifica-
tions have built castles and Christian churches and
mosques. Even in antiquity the practice was so
common that the Romans tried to check it by de-
creeing that any one who took stones from ancient
buildings to use for himself should have his hands
cut off. But nothing is sacred to these modern
vandals; not only palaces and temples but struc-
tures of the highest utility such as bridges, aque-
ducts, paved roads, cisterns, and oil presses are
destroyed. We were unhappy to see the process
going on under our very eyes when we met a man
driving away from M'shatta with his cart full of
bricks from the palace, but we understood that the
government could not possibly afford to keep
enough guards at every ruin to restrain the
marauders.

Yet in spite of the reverent spoliation of the
Germans and the present-day depredations, a great
deal remains of this most romantic of all old
buildings, with its extraordinarily delicate orna-
mental carving on the outside walls. It stands
alone on the undulating desert, and this to our
delight was alive with hundreds of camels, great

102

TRANSJORDANIA

prehistoric-looking beasts loping away at our ap-
proach, leaning over against the wind, followed
by their funny, lumpy youngsters, some still so
young that their fleece was soft and curly and
white as lambs, where the older ones had their
winter tufts of hair clinging here and there to
their smooth black and greasy sides. I got almost
near enough to a young one to stroke it, but at the
last moment it took fright and ran off to its mother.
We had been told that motors were beginning to
render camels superfluous and that the raising of
sheep was taking the place of the camel industry
which since the beginning of time has occupied
the Arabs of the desert; but I must say that these
vast herds of camels dotting the plain all the way
to the ridge of mountains on the horizon did not
show that these beasts had ceased to be worth rais-
ing. As we were resting among the ruins, a very
handsome Sheik rode up on his Arab steed and
invited the party to come and sup with him under
his black goat-skin tent stretched out among his
camel herds. He was a very attractive figure with
his fine carriage, hawk nose, bright eyes, and
gleaming teeth; but we thought of the insects we
should probably meet in his tent, and the horrible
mutton fat of his kitchen, and said that we must
be getting back.

It was dark when we again reached Amman,
and we saw just outside the town the blazing elec-

103

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

trie lights of the Palace of King Abdullah, titular
ruler of the somewhat ill-defined district of Trans-
jordania, the son of King Hussein and the brother
of the better known Feisal. He enjoys a bad
notoriety among archaeologists and lovers of
beauty for having built his tasteless modern palace
out of the stones of the ancient Odeon of Amman,
and for pulling down the old mosque to build a new
one in its place.

JERASH

We spent the next day at Jerash. It took two
hours or more to motor there through scenery
which recalled the most beautiful parts of Sicily
(minus Etna) . The noble Greco-Roman ruins of
the ancient capital, Gerasa, decorate the sides of
the hill, mounting up towards a ridge, and they
are, next to Palmyra and Baalbec, the finest of the
Hellenistic cities we saw.

At this point, our first contact with imposing
classical ruins, I fear I must make a digression to
explain my use of the terms Greco-Roman and
Hellenistic in speaking of Syrian classical archi-
tecture, which is by most writers called simply
Roman.

Historically the term is accurate, for the monu-
ments belong to the time when Rome ruled the
country, as they date largely from the epoch of
the Antonines (A,D. 138-180). The growing pros-

104

TRANSJORDANIA

perity consequent upon the finally imposed peace
gave an almost unequalled impetus to building in
Syria and the adjacent lands. Whole towns, such
as Jerash, Palmyra and Baalbec sprang as it were
from the earth built in the uniform style current
at the time: temples and palaces, bridges and
baths, theatres, aqueducts, and triumphal arches,
and all the architectural requirements of a grow-
ing and prosperous civilization. As Pere Vincent
says, speaking of the Roman rule in the land:
"Among its historical results one of the most pre-
cious is the fact that its monumental remains form
a whole and belong to the same Roman period."
On the other hand, to call the style in which these
were built "Roman," as is generally done, is en-
tirely misleading; Rome's intellectual, artistic and
religious culture was only an imitation of the
Greek not a development, as was Greek culture
of the Egyptian and like all imitations, a decline.
The classic buildings of Syria are in essence Greek,
modified by local tradition and the nature of the
materials used. The original Greek style, as we
know, employing neither mortar nor any artifice
of construction, such as vaults and arches, de-
pended upon the strict observance of the laws of
stability; this clear and logical method of building
was not incompatible with the changes and evolu-
tion of dependent forms such as capitals, sculp-
tured imposts, and pediments. Carried to Rome,

105

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

this system of architecture, it is true, was some-
what modified by the Romans, who were skilled
and daring engineers and understood to some ex-
tent the use that could be made of composite
material, of arches, of vaulting and even of the
cupola. Whether they borrowed these cylindrical
and spheric forms from Asia is a much discussed
question, but they developed these forms, leaving
the Greek architects to ornament them. But in
spite of concessions to Roman ideas and while sub-
mitting to the prevailing decadence of all the arts,
the Greek builders and decorators did not com-
pletely lose the tradition of their origin. In sculp-
ture, in stucco work, and in jewellery they followed
the old models, even when they degraded them.
Although they were perhaps less free in archi-
tecture, they had not forgotten their own style,
and when the great impulse towards new building
was felt in Syria the evolution of Greek art re-
gained its normal course of development. Greek
masons, or Syrians trained in the Greek tradition,
were employed, and the numberless monuments
there belong absolutely to the Greek tradition.
The architects had lost, it is true, the delicacy of
taste and perfection of execution of the classic era,
but they preserved the logical proportions and the
balance which inspired early Grecian architecture.
They made very little use of mortar and depended
upon the solidity of their works for preservation,

1 06

TRANSJORDANIA

employing only rarely and very discreetly the Ro-
man arches and vaults, cutting off excrescences and
subordinating their orders to the dimensions, mate-
rials, and the scope of the buildings. They created,
in short, good, solid traditional buildings in which
each member frankly expressed its function, and
decorated them with a sobriety that combined
elegance with firmness. This style of building
executed in Syria by Hellenistic architects only
slightly influenced by Roman innovations and prac-
tices, must be looked on as a lineal descendant
from Greek classical architecture, and I have
called it Greco-Roman, or, more frankly, Hellen-
istic, when I have had to speak about the remains
of classical antiquity existing in Syria.

In Jerash the buildings date from the second
and third centuries and, except for the Byzantine
churches that, later on, nestled themselves among
the ruins, there has been no obliteration by occu-
pation, for the Arab village lies across the ravine
on the other side. Monuments of Domitian,
Nerva, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Corn-
modus and Julia Domna, wife of Septimius, have
been discovered there. Passing through a great
triumphal arch, which reminds one of the Arch
of Septimius in Rome, you leave to the right the
theatre and the Naumachia, or water-arena for
the staging of naval battles, and pass along a col-
onnade, seventy-five of whose five hundred and

107

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

twenty columns are still standing. The others
appear to have been overthrown by an earthquake
and the inhabitants have, as usual, broken them
up and carried them away for building. You
reach the paved street of the town which leads to
the grandly placed tetrapylon, or meetin-place
of four streets, the cross-street of which descends
the hill by a flight of steps to a five-arched bridge
over a brook leading to the baths and some other
ancient buildings now surrounded by the modern
town. Above to the left the cross-street leads by
a flight of steps to the glorious remains of the
great temple near the top of the ridge, dedicated
to Artemis, to whom, no doubt, the old worship
of Astarte was more or less amalgamated. The
portico and part of the walls of this beautiful build-
ing are fairly well preserved. The whole effect
from the platform on which the temple stands
down the steps to the tetrapylon and again down
to the river must have been one of the grandest
sights of antiquity. In few places in the world
have the advantages of a site been so well under-
stood and exploited for the purposes of a city.

Mr. John Crowfoot and his assistant, Mr. A. R.
M. Jones, who were working under the joint
auspices of the British School of Architecture at
Jerusalem and Yale University, kindly took us
about and showed us the new excavations. The
government of Transjordania, under Mr. Hors-

108

TRANSJORDANIA

field, is re-erecting fallen columns and repairing a
great fountain on the main street, clearing rubbish
from the buildings and otherwise restoring the
classic remains. But the chief interest for the mo-
ment was in a group of seven or eight Byzantine
churches on the sites of earlier buildings and built
out of their stones. They had just uncovered a
basilica which they judged, partly from the good
quality of the masonry, to date from the fourth
century. They had also excavated a small basilica
in the southwest angle of the town ; on the mosaic
floor there were some inscriptions which they have
translated ; one runs in the form of a dialogue :

Mosaic, who dedicated thee?

He who made these halls.

And who the shepherd inscribed? For whose sake

maketh he manifest his works?
His name is Anastasius of the four cities ; unto the

Saviour was his vow.

The mosaics of the nave are well preserved and
were swept clean for our benefit, to be covered with
sand again later lest the natives should come and
pick out the stones. The most interesting of these
mosaics was a series of bird's-eye views of towns,
one of them being Alexandria.

Another series of churches has also been dis-
covered and set to rights as far as may be; one,
according to the mosaic inscription, was built in
529 and dedicated to St. George. The central

109

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

church of the group was erected in 53 1 according
to an inscription which says that it was built at
the expense of one Theodore, in honour of St. John
the Baptist. Mr. Jones, in an account that re-
cently appeared in the London Times, says of this
church :

Its plan is of the greatest importance and interest,
and forms a link in the chain of round buildings be-
ginning with the Holy Sepulchre and ending with the
Dome of the Rock, standing closest to the cathedral
at Bostra. . . . The mosaics, though much damaged,
are of fine quality and high interest. The border is of
bold scroll-like foliage in which are ensconced vari-
ous beasts and birds, including a lion hunting a gazelle,
a leopard, a hound, a stork, a dove, and a duck.
Within it are river scenes in which fishes and water
birds swim among lotus plants. Within this again
are ranges of cities, of which three, and a part of a
fourth survive, besides a detached triumphal arch and
a square church with a campanile and an octagonal
lantern surmounted by a pyramidal roof. One of the
cities is again labelled Alexandria ; to the right of it is
a detached square tower, about three-and-a-half cubes
high, surmounted by a polygonal lantern ; the top and
the label have unfortunately perished, but there can
be little doubt that it is the earliest known representa-
tion of the Pharos, and an important contribution to
the much vexed problem of its structure. The style of
the river scenes suggests that the artist was an Egyp-
tian or at any rate worked on Egyptian models, and
the double occurrence of Alexandria among the towns
confirms this conclusion.

no

TRANSJORDANIA

These churches certainly "promise," he wrote, "to
form an important addition to our knowledge of
early Christian architecture, decorative art, and
rituaL"

Quite as interesting was the synagogue, to un-
cover which parts of a Christian church dating
from 530 had to be broken down. This synagogue
stood at the top of the ridge, in conformity with the
Talmud, which orders the highest available place
to be chosen for erecting the synagogue. The floor
was evidently entirely covered with mosaics
much of which Mr. Crowfoot had cleared rep-
resenting the Ark. The heads of Shem and Japhet
are preserved, and scores of small figures of differ-
ent animals in processions.

The central church "of the Fountain" was in its
day the scene of a yearly miracle which may be
compared in its popularity, and no doubt in its
trickery, to the "Greek Fire" in the Holy Sepul-
chre, for here was repeated every year for the edi-
fication of the faithful, Christ's first miracle of
turning water into wine. One cannot help won-
dering whether this did not take the place of some
Bacchic festival.

After lunch we visited the two theatres at the
opposite ends of the town, and a large temple close
to where we came in. This has four windows quite
intact which one would not be surprised to see in
some early Renaissance palace, perhaps by Brun-

iii

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ellesco, though the masonry surrounding them is of
larger blocks of stone than the Italians used.

On the way coming and going we passed a num-
ber of tidy prosperous-looking villages inhabited,
like Amman, by the industrious and energetic Cir-
cassians whom the Turks allowed to settle there in
1878, when their life in Russia became too unset-
tled and troubled. They were meant by the Turks
to act as a bulwark against the desert Bedouins.
From our point of view they were far worse than
the Bedouins, for where the Bedouins allow things
to fall slowly into decay by neglect, these Circas-
sians are competent enough to blow up with dyna-
mite the ruins of which they want to use the stones.
They have also cut down the oaks that clothed the
hills without, however, being competent enough to
make new plantations. Bedouins need neither
stones nor wood for their dwellings and so let the
ruins, and to some extent, the forests alone. We
owe it, indeed, to the ravaging hosts of Khosroes
that so many antique remains are left us. But for
his conquest, the' prosperity of Syria might have
gone on for centuries, and prosperity means build-
ing and changes. The great ruins that delight us
now would have been absorbed into the stream of
change and renewal.

TRANSJORDANIA

JERICHO TO JERUSALEM

The next day we returned to Jerusalem, crossing
again the Ghor. We ate our lunch at the clean and
comfortable hotel at what was once Jericho, not far
from the sparkling fountain whose waters were
purified by the Prophet Elisha. The miracle is de-
scribed in II Kings 19: 22.

And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I
pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my
lord seeth, but the water is naught and the ground is
barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruse and put
salt therein ; and they brought it to him. And he went
forth unto the spring of the waters and cast the salt
there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed
these waters; and there shall not be from them any
more death and barren land. So the waters were
healed unto this day, according to the saying of
Elisha, which he spake.

It is clear, by the way, that the whole valley
could be turned again into the earthly paradise
which, after Elisha's miracle, enraptured the Is-
raelites and enriched Cleopatra with balm, oils,
sugar-cane, and dates, if only the ancient form of
irrigation were restored. For wherever the water
promotes vegetation, outside the small area of mod-
ern Jericho, a jungle of thorns, wild bushes, bam-
boos, and tamarisks has grown up in the place of
the palm trees that once shaded the balsam gardens
of Herod's favourite winter resort.

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

I have said that the hotel was comfortable, but
we were not comfortable there, as this time we
found the air of the Ghor heavy enough for the
most sinister descriptions of the place. I awoke
after a brief siesta with a feeling almost of des-
peration, as if I had been buried alive. I remem-
bered with complete disagreement that Josephus
spoke of "the great happiness of the situation of
Jericho." Fascinating as it must be, judging from
the descriptions I have read, to explore the Valley
of the Jordan north of Jericho, 6 the thought of re-
maining longer in that hot-house, or taking any
exertion in that melting atmosphere, was intoler-
able, and we were glad to get into our cars again
and begin to climb up to Jerusalem, even though
we left unexplored the "Mount of Temptation"
which rises sharply to the north, honey-combed
with hermits' cells. It is supposed to be the site of
the forty days' temptation of Christ, and here the
Abyssinian Christians still come to pass the
Lenten season. This time we took the old road,
rougher and steeper than the new motor road by
which we had come down, but more beautiful as
to scenery; it led us through the strangely shaped
hills and up the valley of "the brook Kerith," over-
looking the ravine where on the steep side opposite
clings a Greek monastery, a cluster of buildings
with terraces, balconies, and domes looking as if
they stood one upon the roof of the other, making

114

TRANSJORDANIA

the effect of a sunk relief hollowed out of the rock.
Here and elsewhere in the furrowed flanks of these
water-fretted hills, monks lead their idle but, let
us hope, meditative lives.

The water that supplies the convent of St.
George is taken direct from the stream that runs
down the gully and is conducted thither in an at-
tractive deep channel water in a land where it is
scarce is the most attractive thing on earth. Flying
over our road and around the monastery we noticed
some beautiful birds with deep purple wings lined
with orange, graceful as swallows. I believe they
are what Dean Tristram calls grackle, and are a
local variety of blackbird. The old road joins the
one we came down by at the Inn of the Good Sa-
maritan, and we continued our way round the
Mount of Olives to Jerusalem,

Before turning the corner we got our last
glimpse of the Dead Sea, the most imposing and
beautiful lake on the whole earth, as de Saulcy, one
of the few appreciators of the Ghor's beauty, has
called it in his Journey round the Dead Sea and in
the Bible Lands. To most people the Ghor is
but a background for John the Baptist, and others
might see Lot and his wife and family fleeing to
the mountain caves while the Lord poured destruc-
tion on Sodom and Gomorrah, or Elijah in the
fastnesses being fed by the Ravens.

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

CITIES OF THE PLAIN

I ended, however, by thinking of the various
people of our own day whom the Bible romance
of the "Cities of the Plain" has attracted to the
spot, and their efforts to prove that it did happen,
or might have happened, exactly as it is described
in Genesis. It interested me to remember the way
they generally tell the story, alluding only in the
most sketchy fashion to the vivid dialogue in which
Abraham reads a moral lesson to the angry
Jehovah, although it really marked a tremendous
epoch in the history of humanity, for it is the
earliest record of the setting up of a standard of
justice above the passions of the wilful gods. But
I will quote the remarkable passage (Genesis
1 8) without further comment:

And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and
Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous
I will go down now, and see whether they have done
altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto
me ; and if not, I will know. . . . But Abraham stood
yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near and
said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the
wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within
the city; wilt thou also destroy and not spare the
place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That
be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the
righteous, with the wicked; and that the righteous
should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall
not the Judge of all the earth' do right? And the

116

TRANSJORDANIA

Lord said, if I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the
city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And
Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken
it upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust
and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the
fifty righteous : wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of
five ? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will
not destroy it. And he spake unto him yet again, and
said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there.
And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake. And he
said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will
speak: Peradventure there shall be thirty found there.
And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.
And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to
speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be
twenty found there. And he said, I will not do it for
twenty's sake. And he said, Oh let not the Lord be
angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradven-
ture ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not
destroy it for ten's sake. And the Lord went his
way. ..."

CHAPTER VI

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

WHEN we drove away from Jerusalem,
"Guidad de las tristezas" on April 23, we
were relieved, much though we loved the town,
to put behind us all the difficult questions that had
been perplexing us there and yield ourselves to the
enjoyment of the beautiful and smiling scenery
that gradually begins as Judea passes into Samaria.

PASSOVER AT NABLUS

We found, it is true, the tension scarcely less,
though for us it was more remote and impersonal,
when we arrived at the town of Schechem (now
Nablus), for it happened to be the great day of the
Samaritan Sacrifice of the Passover. This takes
place on the high hill of Gerizim 1 above the .town
and consists of the slaughter and con-sumption of
seven lambs in strict accordance with the Old
Testament ritual. 2 As we entered the town towards
evening the whole of the population and many
visitors were beginning to swarm up the steep and
stony path that leads to the site of the sacrifice. Of
course I wanted to go, but the sight of the small

118

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

donkeys with their filthy saddles, and the look of
the mountain path, deterred me from putting my
rheumatic bones to the test of this experience; the
more so, as our dragoman assured us that there was
little to see except a crowd of filthy beggars.

We found the hotel at Nablus clean and com-
fortable and the proprietor extremely courteous
and considerate. As most of the inhabitants of the
town were out on the mountain, we had a quiet
night, which seemed doubly agreeable after the
never ending noises of Jerusalem, with chanting
pilgrims making their way to the Holy Sepulchre,
Arabs shouting their monotonous cry of "Allah"
on their way to the mosque, and the uproar of a
busy street whose inhabitants retire for a couple
of hours only before beginning again shouting,
beating on metal, and wheeling hand-carts over
the cobbled pavement.

GEOGRAPHY AND CHARACTER OF JUDEA AND
SAMARIA

When we looked about us in daylight we
realized that we were in a very different land in-
deed from Judea. Here the rocks are formed of
sloping strata of varying hardness declining gently
to the south; the towns nestle into the nooks on the
sides of these hills in marked contrast to the Judean
villages, those stern- masses of grey stone built upon
the high ridges, whose very aspect is warlike. Here

119

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

is found an abundance of water, and many groves
of olives, fruit orchards, and rich fields of grain.
The structure of the land is such that it can easily
be traversed in almost any direction, so that foreign
influence has always played a great part in forming
the character and customs of the people. Life
there is varied and easy, even luxurious, and ap-
parently from earliest times the difference between
Jews and Samaritans has been very marked. When
Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman at the well,
which we passed on the way to Nazareth, it sur-
prised even His own disciples, who, like other
Jews, withheld themselves from all commerce with
the easy-going and hence presumably morally re-
laxed Samaritans.

I think that nobody could pass from Judea to
Samaria without an instinctive consciousness of
contrast and its implications but, of course, one's
instinct is deepened and one's intelligence enlight-
ened by such books of scholarly research and in-
sight as Sir George Adam Smith's and Professor
Huntington's which not only describe the physical
aspect of the land but relate it to the characters that
were formed there by the slow and unrecognized
yet persistent forces of nature, and go on from these
considerations to suggest explanations of the great
historic world-dramas that have been played out
in that small land. This historical background is
no less important for Samaria than it is for Judea,

120

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

and even the briefest mention of the more impor-
tant events of which Samaria was the theatre
makes one's visit more interesting.

We have no account of its conquest by Israel, as
the Israelites apparently met with no resistance till
they reached the plains of Esdraelon and Jezreel,
which lie on Samaria's southern border. Later,
the Canaanites pushed them back and took almost
complete possession of the land; in the days of
Gideon the Midianites swept over it from Esdrae-
lon, and in Elisha's time the Syrians had conquered
it as far as the town of Samaria on the western side
of the watershed. Then came the Assyrians, who
carried off into captivity the greater part of the
nation. The drama of Judith and Holofernes took
place there; Vespasian at the head of his armies
made a forced march across the district, and Titus
finally ascended to Judea by the easy slopes of
Samaria.

But the trampling and the war cries of armies,
the clatter of chariots, the sound of trumpets seem
thin and ghostly today in the quiet scenes across
which we are gliding. We can see that Samaria
has resumed her peaceful life of husbandry, and
that the returned Jews are industriously developing
her natural resources. They are secure at last from
the invader, are delivered from Turkish exaction,
are aided by the latest scientific knowledge and ap-
pliances for irrigation and agriculture, and are

121

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

upheld by the sympathy and contributioas of all
the world (except their neighbours, the Arabs!).
Some of their most flourishing colonies are in the
plain of Esdraelon, and of these I will speak later,

NABLUS

Tocome back to our journey : we spent the morn-
ing of April 24th wandering, about the picturesque
old town of Nablus (a variant of Neapolis the
New Town), which is sacred to Christians as hav-
ing been the place where Abraham pitched his tent
on first entering the land and near which he set up
the first altar to Jehovah, and the place where
Joseph was buried (they still show you his reputed
tomb on the outskirts of the town). Here Joshua
read out the Law of Moses to the assembled Israel-
ites, making of the northern mountain, Ebal, the
mountain of curses, and of Gerizim, the southern,
the mountain of blessings. It lies in a long, narrow
valley between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, copi-
ously watered by seventy springs, where shady trees
respond to the moisture. A few stately palaces and
here and there carved doorways and windows,
fallen columns and sculptured capitals lying on the
ground speak of past magnificence. We looked
into the great mosque, originally a Justinian
basilica, and the Crusaders' church now called
the "Mosque of Victory," which are both rather
ruined by earthquake. We saw too the "Mosque

122

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

of Heaven" standing on the spot where Joseph's
coat of many colours was brought to his father by
his deceitful brethren. Also we saw the Mosque
of the Lepers, a picturesque place built by the
Crusaders as a hospital for the Templars. We did
not see the famous Codex of the Pentateuch, the
only part of the Bible accepted by the Samaritans,
which is certainly no older than the Christian era
although they claim that it was written by a son,
or at most a grandson, of Aaron. The priest who
has charge of it had betaken himself, in his white
robes and red turban, to the mountain of Gerizim
to kill lambs. But even if he had been there, we
were so overfed with sects, creeds, and religious
peculiarities that I dare say we should not have
tried to see it.

THE TOWN OF SAMARIA

We stopped off on our way to Nazareth to see
the original town of Samaria, now sometimes
called Sebastieh, famous for the crusading
church of St. John and the tradition that
the Baptist was beheaded there. The glory
of that event seems to belong really (if "really"
can be used in connection with any of these
sites!) to the Moabite town called Mukaur, the
ancient Machaerus. They show you the Saint's
tomb in the crypt of the church at Samaria, and we
were induced to look into it through a hole in the

123

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

outer wall But as Lady Sybil Lubbock 8 says, "the
space being both empty and completely dark, it was
not a striking sight." The golden coloured col-
umns still standing in the open court of the empty
church with their beautiful capitals and the fine
mouldings are well worth the attention of the
beauty lover. More interesting still were the re-
cently excavated ruins higher up on the hill which
are all that remain of the palace where Herod was
haunted by the ghost of Mariamne, the wife he
murdered, yet could not be restrained by that awful
vision from strangling his sons. He named the
place Sebaste (the Greek for Augustus) , but the
old name survives. It was here that Jezebel slew
the Prophets of Jehovah, and Jehu, with even
greater brutality, the Priests of Baal.

But the idyllic pastoral view of the plain of
Sharon and the blue Mediterranean gives back no
echoes of these fierce events, and the proud remains
of Herod's great city which once stood there like a
crown on the top of the hill, are now fallen to ruin
in the midst of corn fields and olives.

MOUNT TABOR

We passed what was pointed out to us as
Naboth's vineyard on our way to Jenin (En Gan-
nin, "the Garden Spring"), situated at the entrance
to the Plain of Esdraelon. We passed, but did not
turn aside to visit, the Well of Dothan, where

124

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

Joseph was sold by his brothers to merchants traf-
ficking between Egypt and the East. Early in the
afternoon we had to leave the highroad and feel
our way along paths winding through fields planted
with wheat and millet that surged up in a green sea
to the foot of Mount Tabor, the traditional scene
of the Transfiguration, and still called by the
Arabs the Hill of Light, Djidel-en-Nur. As we
climbed up the steep and winding road we looked
over to the village of Endor, where Saul heard the
ghost's sombre voice announcing to him, "Tomor-
row shalt thou and thy sons be with me." The road
took us up through oak and ilex trees to the Greek
and Catholic churches and monasteries built over
the ruins of the ancient town. From the time of
Joshua on, this mountain was covered with towers,
walls, forts, and many other buildings ; Byzantines,
Jews, Romans, Crusaders and Saracens rebuilt it,
added to it, and then again destroyed it The one
thing certain about it is that, in spite of Origen and
St. Jerome, it cannot have been the lonely spot
where the Transfiguration took place; the rival
claims of the Greeks and Latins who each insist
that the exact spot is within their own church, must
be classed with most of the other apocryphal sites
of the Holy Legend. What no destructive criti-
cism can destroy, however, is the incredibly lovely
view from the ruined battlements. West and north
the hills of Galilee rise like waves through whose

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

hollows the pear-shaped Lake of Tiberias appears
blue and tranquil lying in the bosom of the rift,
while the snowy heights of Mount Hermon seem
to hover like a white cloud in the infinite distance.
On the other side of the lake pastures and villages
run up to the blue line of the Jaulan mountains,
and all around the foot of the mountain sweeps the
glorious plain decked in mantling wheat and pat-
terned into myriad shapes by the roads of dark soil
crossing it. To east and west across the Ghor rise
the heights of Gilead; the dreamy blue hills of
Samaria are seen on the south, and the long ridge
of Carmel stretches itself out into the sea on the
west. We could discern, rising on the edge of the
plain of Jezreel, King Fulke's fortress of Belvoir,
which resisted every attack until Saladin at last
took it in 1 188. I left my husband to archaeologize
among the ruins with our learned and enlightened
friend, Father Baldi, while I sat gazing at the
landscape which changed and softened as the sun
lengthened the shadows, and I drank in the per-
fume of honeysuckle and wild thyme and the many
scented herbs that garnish the mountain slopes,
listening to hidden finches singing little trills, and
the unseen cuckoo's soft but clear cry from terrace
to terrace. I happily forgot the churches that are
planted there, the tasteless Greek edifice and the
dead-alive Latin copy of the church of Turmanin
(a now destroyed basilica between Aleppo and

126

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

Antioch). But my carnal soul remembers the ex-
cellent tea with delicious mountain honey, kindly
offered us by the Franciscans.

We made our way in the gathering twilight back
across the rich plain, reaching Nazareth and the
shelter of the Franciscan Hospice shortly after
sunset.

NAZARETH

The next day we saw for the second time (for we
had had a brief glimpse of the town on our way to
Jerusalem) the only things that from our point of
view gave great value to our visits there, for the
town itself looks like a commonplace European
town of particularly unattractive architecture, and
the big bare Church of the Annunciation, with its
more than doubtful site of the house of the Virgin
(which Latin Catholics believe to have been mi-
raculously transported in 1291 to Loreto near An-
cona to get it out of Moslem hands), reminded us
too much of the distressing impostures at Jeru-
salem. I felt almost sorry that banal actuality in-
truded itself upon the beautiful vision the name of
the sacred town calls up.

The few antique columns standing or lying in
the courtyard in the shade of the big trees were
more to our taste than the gaunt but bedizened
church. The really great works of art in the
place are the capitals from the Crusaders' church

127

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

that once occupied this site. They are now care-
fully preserved in the museum in the courtyard of
the present church, having been saved from de-
struction by being buried. These are among the
best specimens of twelfth-century Burgundian
sculpture. It was first believed by archaeologists
that they were actually executed in France and
brought over to adorn the church, but an analysis
of the stone, made at the instance of M. Des-
champs, the learned and enthusiastic head of the
Trocadero Museum in Paris, proves that it was
taken from the quarries near Nazareth. The work
must therefore have been done by some crusading
sculptor. These capitals are very original and
have a peculiar and delicate beauty of line and
type, and a fire all their own.

We were sorry to leave Nazareth without climb-
ing the hill behind it, which is said to command a
beautiful view of the plain with Mount Carmel to
the west and Mount Tabor to the east and the hills
and high fertile plateaus which break down to-
wards the Lake of Galilee to the north. The view
from the terrace of the church, though less ex-
tended, is very lovely. Standing there I was over-
come by the tragedy of how this legend of the
heavenly visitant bringing the Godhead to earth,
slowly fashioned into beauty by the spirit of poetry
in man, was all too soon obscured by dogma and
superstition and ended in positive inhumanity as an

128

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

item in a creed to doubt which condemned one to
the stake and afterwards to the undying fires of
hell.

THE PLAIN OF ESDRAELON

I must fulfil my promise to describe the great
plain of Megiddo or Esdraelon on which we looked
down from Mount Tabor and from the terrace of
the church at Nazareth, and which we left behind
us when we drove off in the afternoon to the Lake
of Galilee. The Fault of Esdraelon gapes be-
tween the central range of the Judean-Samaritan
hills and the mountains of Galilee. It is entered
from the sea on the south side of Mount Carmel
by the easy pass of Megiddo, leading from the sea
across the Plain of Sharon, or less conveniently by
the valley of the river on the north which drains
the plain, the Kishon, where Deborah sang her
fierce song of victory. It widens into a great ir-
regular triangle like a vast inland basin with
grassy bays running up into the mountains on the
north and south, and declining into two valleys on
the east, the one leading to the Jordan (the Vale of
Jezreel), and the other the valley north of Ti-
berias on the Lake of Galilee. It lies in the arms
of Samaria, but was counted to its northern neigh-
bour, Galilee, when the geography-confounding
Samaritan schism divorced it from the hills that
embrace it. The so-called plain is far from being

129

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

a dead level, for besides dipping on the east to the
Jordan and to the Lake of Galilee, it is rolled up
here and there into long swells like gigantic waves.
Unforgettable is the description of it given by
Jacob when he divided his land among his sons,
Esdraelon falling to the portion of the sixth son,
Issachar. It has been thus translated and com-
mented on by Sir George Adam Smith:

"Issachar is a large-limbed ass,
Stretching himself between the sheepfolds:
For he saw a resting-place that it was good,
And the land that it was pleasant."

Such exactly is Esdraelon a land relaxed and sprawl-
ing up among the hills to north, south and east, as you
will see a loosened ass roll and stretch his limbs any
day in the sunshine in a Syrian village yard. To the
highlander looking down upon it, Esdraelon is room
to stretch in and lie happy. Yet the figure of the ass
goes further the room must be paid for

"So he bowed his shoulder to bear
And became a servant under task-work."

The inheritors of this plain never enjoyed the highland
independence of Manasseh or Naphtali. Open to east
and west, pleasantest stage on the highway from the
Nile to the Euphrates, Esdraelon was at distant inter-
vals the war-path or battle-field of great empires, but
more regularly the prey and pasture of the Arabs, who
with each spring came upon it over Jordan. Even when
there has been no invasion to fear, Esdraelon has still
suffered : when she has not been the camp of the f or-

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SAMARIA AND GALILEE

eigner she has served as the estate of her neighbours.
Ten years ago the peasants got rid of the Arabs of
the desert, only to be bought up by Greek capitalists
from Beyrout.

This was written some thirty years ago; since
then the Zionists, of whom more presently, have
begun to develop its agricultural resources.

The plain is remarkable for its fertility. In the
spring it resembles a vast green lake haunted by
cranes and storks; even the gazelle is sometimes
seen there. Owing to its easy access from the coast
on one side and from the Valley of the Jordan on
the other it was the caravan road between Egypt
and Mesopotamia and felt the shock of armies in
the clash of empires. Pompey, Mark Antony fol-
lowed by Cleopatra and her ladies in litters, Ves-
pasian, and Titus marched across the fields and
along the military road that had been fortified and
refortified before them by the Egyptians, the
Canaanites, and the Israelites. The Roman Peace,
linking up the coast with the Greek cities of the
Decapolis on the other side of the Jordan, banished
the black tents of the Bedouins ; and in the fourth
century it was so safe that the Christian pilgrims
to Jerusalem and Galilee built churches and clois-
ters along the way. But soon after the seventh cen-
tury the scattered hordes of the desert, united by a
new faith, swept over the whole land. The Arabs
held it for nearly five hundred years, destroying

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

all the monuments and civilization itself, till the
Crusaders came to conquer the country, rebuild the
ancient cloisters, and plant great fortress-castles on
the rocks that surround the plain. They tried to
resuscitate the obliterated sacred memories of the
past but were not always able to replant them in
their proper sites. Then Saladin defeated them on
the plateau behind Nazareth and the followers of
Mahomet ruled or misruled the land until our
own day.

Bible history and legend are, of course, not want-
ing to the plain. At the foot of Mount Tabor is
the little village of Deburieh which is probably
reminiscent of Deborah and the headquarters of
the Israelite army, which defeated Sisera and his
Canaanites. Near by, Jael, finding Sisera asleep
in his tent, "went softly unto him and smote a nail
into his temples and fastened it into the ground,"
It was at Dothan that, upon the prayer of Elijah,
the Lord smote with blindness the Syrian army that
had come up to take him and were then guided by
the prophet himself up into the midst of Samaria.

ZIONISM

Today the fertile but marshy plain, so long deso-
late under Turkish rule, has begun to repopulate
itself. No longer is the husbandman so heavily
taxed for each fruit-bearing tree that he abstains
from planting them and even finds it cheaper to

132

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

cut down the ones he has. The strangest and most
persistent patriotism in the world has brought back
thousands of Jews to develop a land that at the
best was theirs more in promise and hope than in
reality. One might think of it as a gigantic ex-
ample of the hypnotic influence of a word "Zion"
being enough to drag them from their homes to
face incredible discomforts. The successful Zion-
ist colonies are in places like the plains of Sharon
and Esdraelon, or in the highest part of Galilee
rather than in Judea and the more accessible parts
of Galilee, the actual homes of their ancestors.
They are, in fact, most successful where their an-
cestors were least so, for the Philistines owned the
low rich plain south of Carmel which the Jews
conquered but really never long held, and Es-
draelon was never securely theirs.

On general considerations, and before visiting
the country, the whole Zionist scheme, with the re-
adoption of Hebrew as a current language, seemed
to us fantastic and doomed to failure. Geography
has a tendency to resist the changes of culture and
inhabitants, and the strong probability was that the
country formed and surrounded as Palestine is,
would remain what it used to be a land of tribes.
The variations of the soil, altitude, climate, rang-
ing from the tropics of the Jordan Valley to the
upland of the plateau of Judea and Galilee, ex-
plain how it was in older times that, with many

133

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

diverse races continually pouring into the land
from parts of the world as different as Asia Minor,
Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, and the Greek
Islands, Palestine never became one nation. It
would appear to be, a priori, no more hopeful now
for a united Jewish state than it ever was. So
profound a thinker as George Adam Smith has in-
deed pronounced the idea as "contrary to both
nature and [here the clergyman speaks] to Scrip-
ture."

Nevertheless, when we saw the obviously grow-
ing and flourishing Jewish settlements in the Plain
of Esdraelon, surrounded by gardens and fruit or-
chards; when we passed through fields planted with
every kind of grain and vegetable; when we drove
over the excellent new roads and realized that the
newcomers had successfully drained the once dan-
gerous bog-lands, which now presented to our de-
lighted eyes the spectacle of herds of black cattle
standing in the tall grasses and reeds that fringe
the channelled streams; when we drove through
the new and carefully tended plantations of trees
of all sorts, we could not help realizing that the
Zionist movement was, as they say in America, a
"going concern." The hideous tin-can towns that
have sprung up, as hideous as the names they have
been given (among which is Balfouria, entirely in
the Roman tradition of Caesarea, Adrianopolis,
etc.), and the fierce "Nationalism" that lies at the

134

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

back of the movement, had combined to make
Zionism of less interest to us than almost anything
else in the land. But even to us it was a distinct
pleasure to see the plain returning to fertility.
Especially delightful were the new-planted trees.
A fund, in fact, has been started called "The Men
of the Trees Fund to Assist Afforestation in Pales-
tine," and the appeal for money cannot but rouse
the sympathy of anybody who has motored over
the country. Not near Nazareth alone, where an
embryo forest has been started, but even on the
bare slopes of Judea the work is being carried on,
and six hundred acres near Tiberias have been set
aside for voluntary planting. Should this enter-
prise develop, it may alter the aspect of the land
considerably and materially assist the Zionist ex-
periment

With all the probabilities of geography and his-
tory against them, animated by a patriotism that is
no longer securely rooted in religion, hampered by
the reimposition of a language dead for two thou-
sand years, these extraordinary people are begin-
ning to be successful colonists in the land of their
dreams; the promised milk and honey begins to
flow, Jehovah smiles upon them. Even we, scepti-
cal as we were in the beginning, came away feel-
ing that maybe, after all, the strange and difficult
experiment would be rewarded with success. They
are bound, in these days of the exacerbated "na-

135

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

tionality" of small races (another hypnotic phrase)
to have trouble with the Arabs who claim that the
land is "theirs." But the primitive culture of the
natives, their incapacity to organize, their inability
to develop the soil, must give the superior culture,
the organization, and the industry of the Jews, al-
though a minority in numbers, an ultimate pre-
dominance. It is almost as unthinkable that the
shiftless wandering Bedouin should dam back the
advancing tide of Western civilization as that the
Red Indians should have stayed the invasion of
America by Europe.*

THE LAKE OF GALILEE

Now, at last, we have started on the sixteen-mile
road to Tiberias and the Lake of Galilee. We pass
over rolling hills and after about half an hour's
motoring reach Cana, some eight hundred feet
below Nazareth. Here the children pester one to
drink some of the famous water (but not now
turned into wine), and in the Greek church which
is supposed to stand on the site of the festal house
we were shown large stone jars which were used on
the occasion of the miracle. The Latin church
near by, however, disputes the claim and shows
rival water jars. Except for the associations of
the place with Christ's first display of miraculous
powers, the village has very little interest.

The road leads slowly down across a plateau

136

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

where we have again as at Mount Carmel a com-
pletely satisfactory view of the "carpet of wild
flowers" so often mentioned in books of travel in
Palestine. Great patches of blue and purple
lupins, pink campion, yellow tansy, white flowers
we cannot name, tall white hollyhocks and rosy
flax, blue, pink, and yellow phlox, and large golden
daisies, blue borrage and anchusa, yellow butter-
cups and wild mustard, the pale yellow primrose
of Palestine, wild geraniums, lilac stock, mallows,
campanulas, poppies, and many other flowers
mingle their perfumes, while the honeysuckle,
waving sweet scent around, overpowers them all.
We long to recapture Solomon's famous botanical
discourse to the Queen of Sheba when he spoke of
trees "from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon unto
the hyssop that springeth out of the wall."

Presently we spy the Horns of Hattin, two peaks
on a lofty hill under which in 1187 Saladin de-
feated the Crusaders and extinguished their power
in Palestine. For two days these heavily armoured
Prankish marauders (in view of their doings in the
Holy Land it is hard to call them by any other
name) fought in the waterless plain, just under this
hill. More peaceful, if less historical, is the scene
said to have taken place on Mount Hattin where
Christ fed the five thousand on a few loaves and
fishes miraculously replenished. Less open to criti-
cism is the legend which no impossibility contra-

137

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

diets, that Christ uttered the Beatitudes on this
hillside, although I fear the fierce and fighting Cru-
saders had for a time forgotten that He blessed the
merciful and the peace-makers.

The road turned sharply to the right and con-
ducted us down to Tiberias, lying nearly seven hun-
dred feet below the level of the sea on the Lake of
Galilee. Grassy slopes alternating with fields of
grain surround what was once the most opulent of
all the many flourishing towns that fringed the
lake. It was rebuilt by Herod soon after the
beginning of our era. All the other towns
were destroyed by Titus and Vespasian, uncon-
sciously carrying out the curse Christ laid upon
them, but Tiberias, which had espoused the Roman
side, was spared and made the capital of the prov-
ince, and it is the one town left on the lake today,
only the Dome of the Hot Baths not far away, a
few houses at Magdala and a church at Caper-
naum giving further life to the shore. The Bible
does not mention Christ ever having been in the
town. The fortifications with their great bastions
are now crumbling to ruins, the palaces, and build-
ings of Herod have been torn down to make less
stately edifices, and only fallen columns and oc-
casional slabs of marble bear witness to the town's
former grandeur.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, it became
the centre of rabbinical learning, and the Talmud

138

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

was completed here. It still has its Jewish semi-
nary, and we met young Jews in long coats with
curled sidelocks walking, book in hand, commit-
ting to memory passages from the Talmud or from
a collection of ancient traditions called the Mishna.
But Safed, high up in the hills to the north of the
lake, now takes the first place for that special
brand of scholarship, thought, pedantry, and
dogma. It is the centre for the study of the Cabala,
and many of the Portuguese Jews, expelled from
Spain, settled there. The first printing-press in
Palestine was set up in Safed in 1563. These two
towns, along with Jerusalem and Hebron, are the
four Sacred Towns of the Jews, and the Talmud
teaches that the world will return to its original
chaos if prayers are not addressed to the God of
Israel at least twice a week in each city.

We are told that in one respect at least Tiberias
has not changed; the Arab saying that there the
king of the fleas held his court has been endorsed
by many travellers, but we, I must say, found the
primitive Franciscan hostel for pilgrims fairly
clean. We left our trunks there and drove along
the shore making our way amid unfenced tobacco
fields, patches of millet, cucumber, melons, rice
and maize. The lovely lake is set in rounded hills
with rugged mountains rising at the northern end
and rolling backwards and upwards towards the
white summit of Mount Hermon, clad in dazzling

139

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

snow, hanging ethereally in the sky. A peace that
we had not known since we reached Jerusalem
stole over us. Here, as at Assisi, the impression
of a gentle Spirit seems to pervade the landscape.

Our goal was Capernaum, which has been ex-
cavated and where as much order as may be has
been put into the four acres of its ruins by the
German Oriental Society. I heard the voice of
one of the kindly Franciscan friars explaining in
different parts of the enclosure the ancient ruins,
but I could not tear myself away from contempla-
tion of a graceful and glorious edifice of golden
limestone of which much is left standing. Al-
though entirely Greek in character, it appears to
have been the central chamber of a great syna-
gogue. It is surrounded by a colonnade, the
architrave of which has a second row of columns ;
most of the bases of the columns are still in situ
bearing monolithic shafts that are topped with
delicate Corinthian capitals. The architrave and
frieze of the main fagade are richly ornamented
with foliage and conventional designs. The fallen
parts of this synagogue were also very interest-
ing, being beautifully carved and containing some
curious decorative motifs, among them a wheeled
chariot

We had tea under some trees drooping over the
edge of the lake, and as we were sitting there we
noticed the water covered with what looked like

140

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

dark, open shells appearing and disappearing in a
strange way* It took us some time to discover that
they were fishes putting out their mouths, like
the fishes listening to the sermon of St. Anthony,
Every now and then one would leap up into the
air, causing the disappearance of all the mouths
around it. The lake is apparently enormously rich
in fish, but the ancient industry of supplying for-
eign markets with salted fish, from which Joseph
of Arimathea derived his wealth, has not yet been
revived. During the Turkish rule there was a tax
put not only on boats but also on fishing, and the
fishermen were reduced to such strange straits that
they took to throwing poisoned bread into the
water and then going in naked to gather up the
dead fish. We saw a blue and red kingfisher
watching out for his prey and two big birds lazily
flapping their wings over the water; grebes and
gulls are said to abound there, and quail, storks,
plovers, and tern were all bagged by the enthusi-
astic Dean Tristram on his visit to the lake. We
did not pay the endemoniated swine the honour of
a visit to Gadara as this town lies inland away from
the lake, with no slope for the beasts to rush down,
and the site of that peculiar miracle has now been
fixed elsewhere, the amended reading substituting
Gergesa for Gadara,

We then turned back to Tiberias, passing the
little village of Magdala a name forever associ-

141

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ated with one of the most loving and enthusiastic
of Christ's followers. The lake at this sunset hour
took on the hues of a great opal, its colours chang-
ing from blues to greens of all hues, melting into
turquoise, amethyst, and olive, while the hills
around passed from luminous transparency to deep
indigo and purple. On our right rose the steep
cliffs, in whose caves falcons and ravens have sup-
planted the formidable bands of robbers that two
thousand years ago terrorized the lake-side.

We reached Tiberias at dusk and after an ex-
tremely frugal supper went out onto the roof to
watch the moon rise over the steep cliffs of Apheca
on the opposite side of the lake and throw its silver
bars upon the rippling water. A Spanish Fran-
ciscan friar came and sat with us and discoursed
of the flocks of pilgrims who come to see where
Christ passed the first years of His ministry and
gathered His Disciples.

THE ROAD TO BANYAS

We were awakened early on the morning of
April 26 by the loud crowing of cocks (recalling
St. Peter!) as well as by the light and an unusual
number of flies aroused to activity by it. I stole
out onto the terrace and saw again that marvellous
play of colour that seems to belong to this sacred
lake. I began to feel, I confess, very exhilarated at
the thought that today I should leave the Holy

142

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

Land with all its insoluble problems, and I was
glad that the last impression was so healing and
peaceful, although it could not efface the heart-
rending and indecent scenes of hatred and intol-
erance which stain the Christianity of Jerusalem.
My imagination began to free itself for the enjoy-
ment of art and nature, undisturbed, as I hoped,
by the religious and ethical difficulties that pressed
upon me in Judea.

We started early and stopped just outside the
town at the Tomb of Maimonides, the greatest of
the Jewish mediaeval Doctors. The guardian
made us write our names on a scrap of paper to be
pushed between the railings of the tomb. Leaving
the magic to work on our behalf, we began to climb
up the hills of Galilee that frame on the west the
uppermost Valley of the Jordan, a district of which
the Israelitish spies reported : "We have seen the
land and behold, it is very good; a place where
there is no want of anything that is on earth"
(Judges 1 8 : 9-10) . Fertile and well watered as it
is, it would answer completely, save for the Arab
blight, to the description which Moses gave of it
to the desert-parched children of Israel: "The
Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a
land of brooks, of water, of fountains and depths
that spring out of the valleys and hills ... a land
of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and
pomegranates ; a land of oil, olive and honey."

143

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

This valley was the scene of many an ancient
battle, from the raid of Abraham to rescue his
nephew, Lot, and Joshua's routing of the combined
forces of the Canaanites, Ammonites, Hittites,
Jebusites and Hivites (old tribe-names that chant
themselves like a litany in the memory of every
Protestant child). Here the Danites, stealing up
by night, destroyed the luxurious dwellers in Laish,
razed their town and rebuilt it as Dan, the north-
ern limit of the Israelites (not a child but knows
the phrase "from Dan to Beersheba" ) . The last of
the local wars described in the Bible was the one of
Joab against Sheba, "the man of Belial," whose
head was thrown out to the besiegers by "a wise
woman" of the town, who preferred the assassina-
tion of one to the slaughter of many.

Our road descended and crossed this historic
valley and then climbed steeply up among the
Jaulan hills on the east side, descending again
further north to reach Banyas on the edge of the
plain.

MEMORIES OF PALESTINE

Part of this road was not overwhelmingly inter-
esting and I employed my time trying to put our
Palestine experiences into perspective. Young
memories are wasteful, storing away every impres-
sion and making no attempt at selection, but at a
certain age you realize what a precious and frail

144

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

thing memofy is, and you become careful not to
overburden it with irrelevant matter. I have a
habit when travelling of deciding on the scenes and
objects that, for my own intimate purposes as a
lover of beauty, I feel it imperative to remember;
and so, in leaving Palestine, I fixed on a few
"sacred, not-to-be-forgotten sights," allowing a
certain margin for agreeable but less essential men-
tal pictures. Faithful to art, though I am not sure
that I do not prefer nature to art, I endeavoured
to impress upon my memory, first of all, the "Blue
Mosque" of Jerusalem and the wide tranquil en-
closure in which it stands, and grouped about this
the smaller buildings in the enclosure, especially
the glorious "Golden Gate"; next to this the fa-
gade of the Holy Sepulchre and some of the details
of the interior. Then I tried to see in imagination
and fix in my memory the interior of the church
at Bethlehem; the walls of the mosque at He-
bron; the Tower of Ramleh; the ruins at Jerash;
the theatre at Amman; the Palace of M'Shatta;
the walls and gates of Jerusalem; the capitals at
Nazareth, the Greek remains of the synagogue at
Capernaum. Then I thought of certain aspects
of nature, or nature and art combined, such as the
view from the Mount of Olives; Mount Carmel
and Mount Tabor these are sacred spots not only
to believers in the Bible but to the modern pil-
grim whose god is beauty; the peaceful enclosed

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

valley that we looked down on from Amwas ; the
Vale of Hebron, the view from the monastery
above Abraham's oak; the Ghor, and the view of
it from the old road to Jerusalem; the Dead Sea;
the winding road to Jerash ; the road from Jeru-
salem to Nablus; the view from the town of Sa-
maria; the fertile Plain of Esdraelon; the slopes
of Nazareth; the Lake of Galilee; the upper
Valley of the Jordan overtopped by snowy Her-
mon; all these scenes I hope to remember while
memory is left me. And I began to feel, as I could
not in the midst of the sordidness of the cult as
practised at Jerusalem, the immense pathos of the
spectacle with all its implications.

BANYAS

The lonely mountain o'er,
And the resounding shore

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale

The parting genius is with sighing sent.
With flower inwoven tresses torn,
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled

thickets mourn.

MILTON

A newly made mountain road sweeps down
under the shadow of Mount Hermon to Banyas.
We saw to our right across a deep gorge Kal'at-
en-Namrud (Nimrod's Castle), one of the best

146

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

preserved and largest of the Crusading fastnesses
in Syria. This castle was always thought to have
been Herodian until Renan noticed that diagonal
dressing of stones characteristic of the Crusaders'
masonry. It lies picturesquely along the irregu-
lar hilltop, holding it in a vital grip, and from it,
the reliable Baedeker says, the view is one of the
finest in Syria. We had to take this on faith, for
time did not permit us to climb up there, but we
could well believe the statement, as the view we
got from the lower terrace of the same mountain
was almost unsurpassable. The spring that gushes
out of the steep limestone cliff in a hundred rivulets
of sparkling water foams down the valley creating
a wild tangle of green as it goes. It is often called
the principal source of the Jordan, though two
other streams unite with it in the valley to form
the river, one, El Leddan, being three times as
large as the B any as stream. The sight is so ad-
mirably described by Lady Sybil Lubbock that,
having gained her permission, I will quote a para-
graph from her charming book :

Of all the places that we came to in our wander-
ing I have no doubt that this was the most beautiful.
The great cliff with its decoration of delicate ferns
and dripping moss, the abundant waters, the carpet of
emerald grass, the sacred groves of olives and tall oak,
all combined to produce an effect of wild and yet tender
loveliness, which the associations of the site rendered
a hundred times more memorable. Had we wished to

H7

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

combine all- the elements of beauty and romance in a
single place we could not have found one richer or more
lovely than the spot where we now stood,

Herod the Great erected a temple over this
spring, and it was among its fallen columns, lulled
by the musical rush of the down-plunging rills, that
we lunched and rested. Josephus, we thought,
rightly called this "a place of great pleasure fa-
mous and delightful." Philip the Tetrarch, son of
Herod the Great, changed the name of the town of
Banyas, which still stands, reduced to a small vil-
lage, on the terrace above the stream and opposite
the cliff from which it gushes, to that of Caesarea
Philippi. Although we had crossed the frontier
from Palestine into Syria I found that the Chris-
tian associations that had troubled me could not be
left entirely behind, for it was in this very town
that Jesus first clearly announced His mission :

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men
say that I, the Son of Man, am?

And they said, Some say that thou art John the
Baptist; some, Elias; and others Jeremias, or one of
the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God.

Alas, it was here also (or thus Mark and Luke
report it, perhaps reading back into the event later

148

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

traditions and beliefs) that Jesus planted in the
minds of His disciples the expectation of a material
kingdom of God that should shortly be established
upon earth prototype of so many of the foolish
and fanatical delusions which have developed con-
tinuously since Christ at Banyas uttered the words :
"Verily I say unto you that there be some of them
that stand here, which shall not taste of death till
they have seen the kingdom of God."

It was with relief that we turned our thoughts
to Pan's grotto in the rock wall above the gushing
fountains. Pan, for whose worship we have no
shadow of responsibility! Plutarch, calling the
place Panias, recounts the legend that at the mo-
ment of Christ's birth the statues of Pan and the
Nymphs which graced this shrine fell and shiv-
ered, with a moan resounding over land and water,
while the cry "Great Pan is dead" swept across the
Mediterranean and was heard by mariners on the
sea. 5 We found the mouth of the sanctuary almost
closed by fallen rocks and debris, but we climbed
up and looked in, and there we saw a group of
little calves, cuddling together like lonely children,
put there evidently to be in safety while their
mothers were scrambling in search of food round
the precipitous mountain side. They could not get
out without help, but before we left the herdsmen
had lifted them all out, and they were trailing

149

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

along behind the herd on the soft grassy slopes that
led to the village.

On the face of the cliff above the cavern stands a
small chapel cut in the rock, with a rustic porch
where the draped tomb of a Moslem saint is en-
shrined. Here we sat looking over the Assisi-like
upper valley of the Jordan with its gentle contours
enclosing the softly rolling green plain. It was with
reluctance that we finally came away. Had we
been camping, which is perhaps the best way to
enjoy the landscape in this enchanting land, we
should have stayed on many days, for only three
or four other spots that we know are as lovely as
this place. My husband and I thought: "Here
will we come back and live the ideal life."

All day long we had never for a moment lost
touch with the monarch of all the mountains in
these lands, Mount Hermon, Jebel-esh-Sheik, the
"Ruler of the White Hair," from earliest times the
holiest of the "High places," covered with ancient
temples, and still earlier circles of stones for the
worship of Baal and Allathi (Astarte) and the
Damascene Syrian god of the weather, Hadad. It
is often mentioned in the Old Testament "Tabor
and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name." It took
possession of us from the moment of starting, when
it hung cloud-like above us, to our noonday halt
nestling in its arms at Banyas where the Jordan
gushes out. Shortly before we reached Damascus

150

SAMARIA AND GALILEE

the hills of the Anti-Lebanon hid it from our eyes,
yet we did not lose the feeling of its gracious and
mighty presence, for its snows, melting into
streams, are the source of the towns' very existence.
We longed to climb to the top of it; but it was only
just as we were leaving Damascus that we found
out that it was not the "very fatiguing" expedi-
tion that Baedeker discouragingly describes, but a
feasible, almost easy thing to do, if one is pre-
pared to camp over night near the summit

CHAPTER VII

DAMASCUS
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

road to Damascus 1 turned north soon
-- after we had climbed up from B any as and en-
tered the basalt plain which stretches at the back
of Mount Hermon, whose snowy slopes seemed
almost near enough to touch. The rest of the Anti-
Lebanon ran along on the left, while on the right
a blue stream, fringed with trees spreading out
into meadows on both sides, led us all the way to
the city. The refrain of "Abana and Pharphar,
rivers of Damascus" had been singing in our minds
for many days, and here at last was the famous
Pharphar, which later joins forces with the no
less famous Abana (now called Barada) that comes
through the gorge behind Damascus, to fight to-
gether a losing fight with the desert and finally to
fling themselves abroad in streams and die away
in a large marsh. Over the green of this marsh
you see from Damascus at sunset the low amethyst
hills, twenty-five miles off, that stand on the edge
of the desert; beyond them there is nothing but
rolling waste and the long ways to Palmyra and
Baghdad. It is this sense of mysterious distance

DAMASCUS

beyond the horizon that lends to the Syrian desert
its peculiar poetry and enchantment Other des-
erts look much the same to the eye. For sixty
miles or more around Saragossa the earth has the
same aspect as what one sees looking east from
Damascus. But on the fringe of the Spanish
desert the life we know begins again we are at
once in Europe whereas the Syrian desert
stretches for days of journeying across the Eu-
phrates and the Tigris and goes on to lands of ro-
mance and mystery, to Arabia and Persia, to India
and China.

DAMASCUS

Damascus is the mole on the cheek of beauty the
plumage of the peacock of Paradise the brilliant
neck of the ring-dove and the collar of beauty.
From an old Arabic poem

A turn in the road gave us our first glimpse of
Damascus, rosy, translucent and fairy-like in the
midst of its green oasis, seen at just the lucky mo-
ment when the sunset light illuminated its many
minarets.

The Franciscan hostel at Tiberias touched, we
thought, the limit of squalor, until we reached our
hotel at Damascus, where the squalor was not
simple and unpretentious but a filthy, decayed
Turkish-bath squalor. Better to have no bathroom
than one which smells and where the bath leaks ;

153

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

better to have uneatable simple food than uneat-
able elaborate food* I must in fairness except the
Turkish coffee, always good in the Near East, and
the fruit. There are twenty different kinds of apri-
cots that grow in Damascus. Tiberias was reason-
ably quiet, except for the cocks that crowed, while
in Damascus automobiles and trams did their best
in the crowded streets to drown the loud cries of
humanity.

I fear that this started us wrong, for Damascus
was something of a disillusionment. Perhaps we
expected too much, for no town has ever been
more praised in literature: even Mahomet when,
on his travels, he came near Damascus, refused to
enter its gates, saying, "Man has only one Para-
dise, and mine is above." It was, however, anything
but a paradise for us, oppressed as we were by con-
tinual scirocco, kept awake at night by street noises,
overwhelmed by the sense of the many things we
had too little time to see. On April 28 I wrote :
"We are killing ourselves seeing mosques and
tombs, and are, on the whole, disappointed. They
have fallen into such squalid ruin that sheer dis-
gust is often the first impression upon entering the
courtyard of a mosque or penetrating into the in-
terior of a palace. The town, too, is not half so
picturesque as Jerusalem for types and costumes.
Bedouins from the Desert there are here also
fieres et malpropres, as Barres described them, and

154

DAMASCUS

the black Senegalese soldiers, with their scarlet
caps and sashes add a note of beautiful exoticism
unseen in the English Mandate, but most of the
people on the street are dressed in shabby, ill-worn
European clothes." Like Aladdin, the Syrian has
changed his old lamp for a modern one, and the re-
sults are disastrous to his picturesqueness and
beauty. The Syrians themselves have an allegory
for the people who look so lordly in their native
dress but become, somehow, unpresentable in
the European clothes they more and more affect.
"The Arabs call the raven the crooked walker.
The raven once hopped gracefully like a bird. One
day it saw a gazelle and began at once to try to
walk like the gazelle. Now it walks as you see
neither like one nor the other. And that is what
these Europeanized Syrians are crooked walk-

Nevertheless, we did feel an inescapable sense
of alluring mystery in the walls and leafy gardens
that hide the dwellings of the rich.

GEOGRAPHY

But more should be said about the town in which
they are enframed. The Paradise of the East, the
oldest and for long periods the most important
town in the whole country, cannot be dismissed in
a few disillusioned words and a sentimental specu-
lation or two. Yet it has been so often described

155

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

that I dare not of myself undertake a fresh de-
scription. After all, we come to it not parched for
water, not over lonely deserts, not unaccustomed to
the green of trees, and we cannot expect to feel the
rapture at the mere sight of streams and orchards
and houses that the traveller from the desert feels.
I will allow myself to quote an early author, writ-
ing in 1736, who pays his quaint tribute in the fol-
lowing words :

The Beauty and Convenience of the City is owing to
seven little Rivers, which, as one may say, are under
its command. These rivers bestow Verdure and Fer-
tility on the Plain of Damascus, which they cross; and
on the Gardens about the Town, which they water.
They supply the public Fountains of the City, whereof
almost every Street has one. There is not a House,
however inconsiderable, but what has one of its own,
running out of a marble basin, whereby the Neatness
of the City may be judged of. 2

And I cannot refrain from adding the often
quoted description in Eothen of the town:

A city of hidden palaces, of copses and gardens and
fountains and bubbling streams. The juice of her
life is the gushing and ice-cold torrent that bubbles
from the snowy side of the Anti-Lebanon. Close along
at the river's edge through seven sweet miles of
nestling boughs and deepest shade, the city spreads
out her noble length as a man falls flat, face for-
ward, on the brook that he may drink and drink again;

156

DAMASCUS

so Damascus, thirsting for ever, lies down with her
lips to the stream and clings to its rushing waters. 3

Damascus is said to be the oldest city in the
world and is certainly the most enduring. The
centre of one of the great trade routes, she is barred
from the sea by two ranges of snowy mountains,
but lies defenceless before the desert which
stretches on to the East without limit. Con-
quered by Nineveh, Babylon, and Memphis, sup-
planted by Antioch and Baghdad, she nevertheless
endures while they are forgotten, owing her inde-
structible life to the fact that she is the "harbour
of refuge upon the earliest sea man ever learned
to manage." She is the nearest Mediterranean city
to the Far East and is thus the Western point of
departure for Mecca.

Geographically, then, and spiritually, Damascus
is indispensable to the great countries of the
Orient. And nature has endowed this first and
greatest oasis of the desert with its fairest gifts.
The land is too high to be marshy although so
plentifully watered. Its hundred and fifty-odd
square miles of verdure, as you look down on them
from the nearby heights, are like a dense forest
bearing in its bosom a few pearly domes and frail
minarets ; but when you are in the forest you see it
is carefully planted in gardens and orchards 'df
apricots, peaches, figs, pistachios, plums, pome-

157

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

granates and walnuts, while grassy meadows and
fields of grain, vineyards, gardens, parks and even
cemeteries spread themselves among the thickets.

HISTORY

To give a detailed account of the political his-
tory of Damascus is far beyond my powers and is
in fact outside the purpose of this book, but the
mere mention of some of the principal names con-
nected with the town creates a background of fas-
cination and excitement upon which, as against an
echoing rock adding volume and overtones to every
sound, each object of beauty gains an added sig-
nificance. Its early history seems remarkably con-
fused, consisting of alliances and then enmities
with the Israelites, the Egyptians, the Persians,
the Arabs. Abraham is said to have lived there
for some years on his way from Ur of the Chaldees
to Canaan, and later he defeated the armies of
Chedorlaomer near the town. In Genesis 15 : 2 he
says that his steward Eliezer is a native of Damas-
cus, and early historians relate that the name of
Abraham "is still famous in the country." After
Alexander's conquest the land was assigned to his
general, Seleucus, and the Kingdom of the Seleu-
cids lasted, with some brief interruptions by Ar-
menian and Persian conquests, till it was annexed
by Rome. Under Pompey, in 65 B.C., Syria be-
came a Roman province and under Trajan Damas-

158

DAMASCUS

cus was converted into a Roman provincial city.
St. Paul saw his momentous vision on the way
there, and one is shown the house from the window
of which he escaped his Jewish persecutors.
Herod embellished the town with some of the
buildings it was his passion to put up, and the Em-
perors Theodosius and Justinian left their seal
upon the city in Christian basilicas. But the
greatest splendour of Damascus begins with its
conquest by the Arabs in the seventh century
and its development under the Omaiyades. Al-
though succeeding dynasties made Baghdad their
capital, the city continued to flourish. From 1126
for about fifty years on, the Crusaders stormed and
re-stormed the town, being finally driven away by
Nurredin who surrounded it with new fortifica-
tions and built mosques. A last isolated attack by
the Franks was threatened in 1177 but it was
averted by the skill of the vice- regent of Saladin,
and Damascus became Saladin's headquarters dur-
ing his further expeditions against the Crusaders.
In. 1260 it was taken by Hulugu at the head of his
Mongols, and afterwards it fell to the Mameluke
rulers of Egypt; the great Beybars, Herod's imi-
tator as a passionate builder, made over and
strengthened the citadel of Damascus, but in 1300
the Tartars came and plundered and burned down
many of the buildings. Later, that Mongol
butcher, Tamerlane, sacked the town and murdered

159

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

most of the inhabitants, and carried off all the
famous armourers of Damascus, who since then
have practised their art at Samarkand and
Khorasin* In 1516 the Turkish Sultan Selim took
possession of the city, and it remained in the hands
of the Turks until the end of the Great War. The
French Mandate which followed as a result of the
War had been preceded, in 1860, by the dispatch
to Syria of a French corps of ten thousand men to
protect the Christians who had been massacred up
to the number of six thousand in Damascus alone, 4
I know this account is brief, second-hand and
amateurish, but there must be other travellers like
myself, intelligent, but not too intelligent, super-
ficially curious, vaguely learned, easily moved by
the poetry of names, who like to weave around the
present joys of travel some of the more romantic
associations of history. The cup of pleasure seems
richer to the taste when it holds the past in solu-
tion. As I now luxuriously chew over the cud of
the hastily snatched and unpalatable provender of
Baedeker, I dream as a cow in its stall may dream
of fields and streams, of the past of Damascus.
Cloudy figures float by in my imagination Abra-
ham, Israelitish Kings, Solomon, Jeroboam, Ahaz,
long-bearded Assyrian monarchs, Darius, Pompey,
Herod the Great, the Byzantine emperors and
Patriarchs, Frankish Crusaders, John of Damas-
cus, Arabs, Tartars, and Mamelukes, the great

1 60

DAMASCUS

Omaiyades, Nurredin, Saladin, Beybars from
Egypt, Armenian Tigranus, Tamerlane hiding
the sordidness of the modern town behind their
floating draperies and drowning the hooting of
motors with the clash of their arms.

THE GRAND MOSQUE

Nevertheless, I am glad to turn to topics where
I am more at home to the monuments of beauty
that still remain in Damascus, and the even love-
lier views that are to be had.

Our most overwhelming surprise was the eighth
century mosaic decoration in the entrance
to the Grand Mosque and along one side of its
courtyard, for this, being still in the process of
resurrection from its winding sheet of whitewash,
had not yet become the common property of
students.* These mosaics alone are worth a visit
to Damascus. They are even more interesting than
the mosaics in the "Blue Mosque" in Jerusalem,
for they are more varied in subject and composi-
tion. There the mosaics are purely decorative

* Since this was written, copies and photographs of these mosaics
have been exhibited in the Mus6e des Arts Decoratifs (Sept Oct.
1929), and they have been reproduced t in many of the illustrated
papers of Europe and America. An Extrait des Monuments et
Mtmoires, published by the French Academic des Inscriptions et Bel-
les Lettres (Paris, Leroux, 1930) contains a learned study of these
mosaics by M. Eustache de Lorey, and a valuable discussion by
Mademoiselle Marguerite de Berchem as to the artificers employed to
execute them, whom, from the study of many documents, she regards
as probably Syrians and not artists sent from Byzantium*

161

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

vases, conventional flowers, and ornamental designs
while here we found tall waving trees, realistic
plants, views of houses and gardens and towns, as
well as decorative motifs. M. Lucien Cavro who,
under M. de Lorey, has been recovering these
mosaics, pointed out some views of fantastic build-
ings of mixed classical and Arab character with
leaf roofs which no doubt represented the cafes
along the river Barada, for meandering streams are
figured in the foreground. All the mosaics exhibit
an amazing delicacy of shading recalling the best
frescoes at Pompeii, or even the matchless paint-
ings of a garden in the Villa Livia at Rome. They
carry on without a doubt the Hellenistic tradition
of representation. Some of the finest trees, with
their shadows in mauve and light pink, curiously
anticipate, as do those at the Villa Livia at Rome,
the paintings of Cezanne 1

When these mosaics ran round the whole en-
closure, and were continued, first on the outside of
the almost classic building in the courtyard called
the "Dome of the Treasure," * and then on the in-
side of the church, where only a few fragments
now remain, it must have been one of the most
gorgeous sights on the face of the earth. Five hun-

*A small domed structure standing on eight antique columns which
are partly buried by the rise of three and a half feet in the pavement
of the court. It was perhaps a sacred well in antiquity, like its mate
at Kama, and is now used for the Mosque archives. AH of Herat
in 1173 sa *d ^at it was pointed out to him as the Tomb of Ayishah,

l62

DAMASCUS

dred and seven metres of mosaic have already been
brought to light, but it seems improbable, unfor-
tunately, that much more can be recovered, for the
hand of man has worked more ruin than the hand
of time. The art of making the glass cubes, or
tessere, of which these early mosaics were com-
posed, fell into decay and was lost, so that when
later designers were called on to decorate with
mosaic the tomb of Beybars (which is now used
as a library) they could do no better than steal the
t ess ere from the mosque. Their work in the tomb
is much rougher in execution, but in design it fol-
lows the tradition of six centuries before.

Aside from the mosaics, a few columns and capi-
tals, and the beautiful minaret on the southwest
side of the court, a masterpiece of Arabo-Egyptian
style put up by Keitbey in 1483, the Grand Mosque
was a disappointment to us all the more so as we
had come to it expecting another building at least
equal in beauty to the Jerusalem mosque. It was
extravagantly praised in olden times, and one never
takes account of the destruction that overtakes
buildings famous in literature until one's eyes have
seen it. A Greek temple to Zeus originally stood

the favourite wife of Mahomet A few lovely remains of mosaics on
its outer walls have been recovered. It is on this building that the
famous Greek inscription was carved: "Thy Kingdom, Christ, is
an everlasting Kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all
generations/ 7 and the Mahometans have never taken the trouble to
remove or change it

163

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

there, and this was converted at the end of the
fourth century into a basilica by Theodosius and
given its name of the Church of St. John, because
it contained a casket with one of the heads of the
Baptist For several generations after the Arabian
conquest the Christians worshipped in one part
of the long building and the Moslems in another,
but at the beginning of the eighth century the
Christians were deprived of this privilege. Then
what must have been the most sumptuous of all
mosques was erected. The architects were Greek;
twelve hundred artists were summoned from Con-
stantinople to assist in the decoration; antique
columns were collected from Syrian towns; the
pavement was laid down and the lower walls cov-
ered with rare marbles; the upper walls and the
court were made resplendent with mosaics; the
prayer niches were inlaid with precious stones;
and from the gilded wooden ceiling six hundred
golden lamps hung down. I will quote one of the
ancient descriptions of this gorgeous edifice, that
of Mukkadasi in 995 :

The Mosque of Damascus is the finest of any that
the Moslems now hold, and nowhere is there collected
together more magnificence. Its outer walls are built
of square stones accurately set and of large size, and
crowning the walls are splendid battlements. The
columns supporting the roof of the Mosque consist of
black polished pillars in a triple row, and set widely

164

DAMASCUS

apart. In the centre of the building, in the space over
the Mihrab is a great dome. Round the court are
lofty colonnades (arcades), above are the arched win-
dows, and the whole area is paved with white marble.
The (inner) walls of the Mosque, for twice the height
of a man, are faced with variegated marbles, and above
this, even to the very ceiling, are mosaics of various
colours and in gold, showing figures of trees and towns
and beautiful inscriptions, all most exquisitely and
finely worked, and rare are the trees and few are the
well-known towns that will not be found figured on
these walls. The capitals are gold and the vaulting
above the arcades is everywhere ornamented in mosaic.
The columns round the court are all of white marble,
while the walls that enclose it are adorned in mosaic
with Arabesque designs. The roof is everywhere over-
laid with lead and the battlements on both sides are
faced with mosaic work. ... On the summit of the
dome of the Mosque is an orange, above it a pome-
granate, both in gold. But the most wonderful of the
sights here worthy of remark is verily the setting of
the various coloured marbles and how the veining in
each follows from that of its neighbour. It is said
that the Khalif al Walid, in order to construct the
mosaics, brought skilled workmen from Persia, India,
Western Africa and Byzantium, spending thereon the
whole revenue of Syria for two years, as well as eight-
een shiploads of gold and silver which came from
Cyprus.

Yakub, writing about a century earlier, gives an
anecdote about this great builder of the mosque
with which anyone who has ever undertaken build-

165

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ing operations will sympathize: "The accounts of
the expenditure were brought to him on the backs
of eighteen camels, but he ordered them all to be
burnt."

In 1 189 the mosque was partly destroyed by fire,
in 1400 Tamerlane wrecked and burned it, and
finally the great fire of 1893 destroyed nearly all
that was left, even the marble columns being cal-
cined. All its magnificence is thus only a memory,
or rather a legend.

Not far from the mosque is the Tomb of
Saladin, less interesting than we expected, for the
sarcophagus is comparatively modern. We were
surprised to see, in a recess in the wall, a bronze
wreath sent by William of Germany bearing the
incongruous inscription: "Verily the Lord loveth
His saints." The gift was less ingratiating than
was intended, for the small cross hanging from the
wreath nearly provoked a revolution.

The most impressive architectural feature that
now remains is the Triumphal Arch, recently
cleared of the squalid hovels that had clustered
round it. This, with the row of columns that once
led up to the temple-mosque, are said to have
been the work of the most famous of all Syrian
architects, Apollodorus, who designed the Forum
of Trajan at Rome. 5 Nothing in Damascus comes
up to these ruined fragments. The mighty hand of
Greco-Roman antiquity, wherever it is laid on

166

DAMASCUS

these lands, leaves a mark as of a great giant's fist,
smashing to insignificance all later achievements.

SALAMANIYEH MOSQUE

More perfect in its way than the Grand Mosque,
because, though dilapidated, it has not been restored,
is the grand court of the S'alamaniyeh Mosque, with
its rich Arab portals, its blue and green glazed min-
aret, the antique columns, six of them black, which
partly enclose the court, the basin of water and the
trees. No less lovely is the small Medressa, or
school, beside it, which recalls some of the most
delicate early Renaissance courtyards. A sense of
peace envelops one in these deserted and neglected
enclosures, with their harmonious spaces and sober
but exquisite decoration, and in them the romantic
traveller will love to linger if he is not, like our-
selves, hurried onward by the gadfly of archaeo-
logical curiosity.

BAZAARS

Most of the books on Damascus dwell at great
length on the bazaars, but as I abhor shopping of
every description and detest mingling with a
crowd, even a picturesque one, it takes but a swift
walk through any Souk to give me more than
enough. The Damascus bazaars are considerably
modernized as to architecture, the old covering of
tattered matting, through which burning drops of

167

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

sunshine would fall on the bright-robed forms and
the many-coloured shops below, having been
largely replaced by roofs of corrugated iron, and
the wares displayed for sale are chiefly what you
may see in any street of shops anywhere. But of
course they do remain picturesque : strange forms
jostle and crowd in passing along the dusky ar-
cades: sheiks, merchants, Holy Men in turbans,
Persians with high caps and almond eyes, veiled
figures of women, beautiful children playing in the
maze of the crowd, donkeys piled high with green
almonds and a few oranges on top to give a note
of colour, camels with their level-lidded eyes and
swaying necks padding softly along, pyramids of
orange-blossom and rose petals, scents and odours
of musk and aloe, opium and attar of roses ; and it
appears that good bargains can still be picked up
by the knowing- We were struck by the great
number of one-eyed men we met and were told that
it was not uncommon for a mother to destroy in
childhood one eye of her son to avoid his con-
scription.

What was to us most worth seeing was an old
khan or two (hostels for merchants and their
wares) which you pass into from the bazaar streets
through large Arab doorways. Inside one finds
comparative quiet and peace, and the beauty of
large courts with trees and running water, sur-
rounded with colonnades carrying deep shadowed

168

DAMASCUS

loggie where, in the dancing light, bales are loaded
onto and unloaded from camels, asses, and mules.
The As 5 ad Pascha Khan, built in the seventeenth
century in pure Moorish style, is the most beauti-
ful, but all are worth looking into.

SALEHIYEH

We found the dusty hill-suburb of Salehiyeh full
of fascinating remains ; here a half ruined mosque
with an overgrown court and fountain; there a
maristan, or lunatic asylum, turned into a slum;
here the remains of a stalactite ceiling and, behind
closed doors and through alleyways heaped with
rubbish, some of the most delicate stone lace-work
we had ever seen. These things we should
scarcely have found out for ourselves, but our
friend, M. de Lorey, of the Azim Palace himself
absent excavating in Mesopotamia sent his young
architect, M. Lucien Cavro, to guide us. He
seemed to love every ancient stone in the town and
yet to realize that we were travellers who wanted
to see only the beautiful ones. But even to see these
was not easy. The Arabs never restore anything,
so only unconsidered fragments are left, and the
courtyards through which M. Cavro guided us
were sometimes so filthy that we hesitated to set
foot in them. Backed by the government which,
alas ! lacks the money to spend on them all that is
needed, M. Cavro, under M. de Lorey's guidance,

169

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

is doing everything he can to preserve the fine bits
that remain.

We also climbed the bare brown hill ("couleur
de chameau" as Barres says) behind the town
and, fortified by the usual cup of tea, we
reached the lovely, open, domed building on the
top, where the old road from Damascus took its
first turn to the coast Through its arches we got
a magnificent view of the city amid the ambrosial
shade of endless groves and gardens in which it
stands, "a forest of sparkling minarets in the bil-
lowy beauty of endless foliage." A former travel-
ler says of this view: "Henceforth, when you are
called to tell, as all travellers are, the most beauti-
ful object you have seen in your wanderings, you
will answer, 'Damascus from the SalehijehV 3 6

The desert land stretched away to the Hauran
mountains on the south. On the other side we
looked into the rugged masses of the Anti-Lebanon,
while the deep valley of the Barada lay between
us and the s^owy range that marches towards
Mount Hermon.

CEMETERY

M. Cavro took us, after our long exploration, to
have tea on the roof of a pavilion which overlooked
the Moslem burial ground where two of Mahom-
et's wives and his daughter, Fatima, repose. The
scirocco which jaded our senses was from here a

170

DAMASCUS

delight to the eyes, spreading a faint mist which
the sunset tinted with all the colours of an opal,
over the desolate expanse of tottering headstones
and ruinous but beautiful little monuments in the
cemetery. After tea the still faintly energetic
members of the party went to see the Tomb of
Fatima, but I remained, sticking like a limpet to
the roof, passively enjoying the changing colours
of the sky and the cool green of the garden of fruit
trees behind the house, listening to the only nightin-
gale I heard in Damascus singing to the soft
laughter of unseen water; This was Damascus as
I had dreamed itl

FESTIVAL OF ST. GEORGE

On St. George's Day all the Orthodox Greeks and
the Greek Uniates thronged to this saint's church,
and very early in the morning, contrary to my
habits, I joined the throng. I threaded alleys fes-
tooned with green, and garlanded with flowers;
village by village the worshippers marched, or
rather danced and yelled their way along, while
the spectators showered flower-petals upon them
from carpet-hung balconies. The faces of the
dancers, their yells, and some of the costumes
seemed almost those of savages. At times the
crowd was roughly pushed back, and two men in
the clearing leapt at each other with scimitars and
cymbals, springing up and down, while the crowd

171

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

of men at the edge of the space circled about them
holding their scimitars in the air and pounding
with their feet

EZ-AZIM

One night we were invited to Ez- Azim, the Offi-
cial Residence, to hear some Arab music in the
garden. We sat by a big tank overhung by willows
and palms, looking across it to an enormous arched
recess in the palace walls where some magnifi-
cently clothed Arabs danced and sang and gave a
display of sword dexterity. Aromatic coffee was
served, and then sherbet was handed round.
Finally an Arab came and sat on the edge of the
pool and sang desert songs, which sounded to our
ears like complaints and expostulations mingled
with sharp cries of indignation. When we were
satiated with this music and had begun to converse
among ourselves, the singer suddenly vanished in
the shadows.

DERVISHES

Then the extremely kind Secretary, M. Doumar,
took us to see the Dervishes who spend every Mon-
day evening (for Mahomet was born on a Mon-
day) turning round and round and howling. Only
the Residency and its guests are allowed to look
on, and I wonder that they permit even that, for
it was not a ceremonial function, such as takes

172

DAMASCUS

place in mosques, but just the ordinary routine of
the day, assisted by a few local enthusiasts. The
room had a small fountain in the middle, and our
incongruous chairs and still more incongruous
persons took up the whole of one side. At right
angles to us stood a fierce crowd of Syrians with a
small boy in their midst singing a wandering
ritornelle through his little nose, in a wonderful
high, shrill voice. The other two sides of the room
were occupied by rows of terrible looking men in
trousers and shirts, seemingly diseased and half
insane, who at the command of a jolly looking
Dervish standing by the fountain, kept time to the
whines he squeezed out of his face and to the boy's
singing, stamping and bowing and jerking their
bodies to right and left, faster and faster as they
went on, growling like wild beasts, and uttering
truly awful sounds, such as among us are only
heard on the Channel in a storm. This seemed to
throw them into an ecstasy, and I daresay they
usually fall down in fits before dawn. The greater
part of the whirling Dervishes had finished their
first turn, but there remained a small boy of about
six, son of the director, who gyrated almost with-
out stopping. He was dressed in bright green with
a sort of ballet skirt and a tall cap. His eyes were
squinted inwards and he looked very solemn and
absorbed. Another lad of about seventeen came
out, dressed in white, with a tall cap on his head.

173

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

He had a long oval face with large languishing
eyes, and as he twirled he laid his head upon his
arm and seemed to go to sleep, but not so soundly
as to forget his own lascivious beauty. He con-
tributed considerably to the general ecstasy of the
stamping and howling chain of men. In the midst
of it all they served us coffee, and the seductive boy
suddenly ceased turning, lighted a cigarette and
had a cup of coffee too. Then he began again. We
did not get back to the hotel till past midnight, and
none of us slept.

CHAPTER VIII

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS
MALOULA

BEFORE finally leaving Damascus, we made
two interesting excursions. On April 28 we
started out along the Palmyra road. Every mo-
ment of the drive was enchanting. At first we
passed through the green gardens and fruit or-
chards of the long stretched-out oasis, with clear
green streams edging the road, and filling the air
with the sound of their running. Then, little by
little, the trees gave place to fields of grain and
patches of vegetables, and finally we were driving
through the stony desert. But to compensate, we
had the Anti-Lebanon range close on our left,
the reddish plain sweeping up in swift slopes to the
limestone rocks that crown the hills, defying the
sky like a giant wall with fortresses and towers. A
half ruined old khan stood at a crossroad, an hour
or so along the way, picturesque in its unprotesting
decay, the refuge of a few goat-keeping families
who gathered about the well as if composing
especially for us a Biblical picture. Our road
turned off there sharply to the west and began to
ascend the foothills. To our right a line of pop-

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

lars and willows betrayed the presence of a vivify-
ing stream, the narrow valley widening here and
there, thus giving space for cultivation fruit
trees, grain, pasture lands. After half an hour we
reached the valley head, a large green amphi-
theatre surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs,
against which was plastered an exquisitely white
village, with graceful domes and deep balconies
climbing one on top of the other on walls and for-
tifications of an early date. Such was the rock-
bound little Christian town of Maloula, which has
remained true to its faith through all the centuries
and in face of the most savage persecutions and
massacres and attempts to drive the inhabitants
from their mountain home. Even in our own days
they have been attacked, their neighbours, I fancy,
having quite as much admiration for their fertile
oasis as contempt for their religion. I suspect the
inhabitants of this little mountain oasis of being
rather obstinately conservative, for even yet they
have not given up speaking Aramaic, though it
has been replaced by Arabic and Turkish and
French almost everywhere else.

High above the town on a seemingly inaccessible
precipice the domed Greek church and Monas-
tery of Mehr Thekla patterned the sharp dip of
the sky. To climb to it was not easy. Two nar-
row rocky chasms lead up to right and left of the
town, down which cascade the streams that feed

176

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

the valley. Up one of these we hopped from stone
to stone. Only the greatest enthusiasm aided by in-
vigorating mountain air could have enabled me to
get to the top. There on the cliffs edge, on a
rocky plateau which softened slightly into high
stony pastures at the back, stood the church and
its dependent buildings. In the courtyard, already
warned by some forerunner of our approaching
visit, a handsome middle-aged woman was fanning
the flames between a couple of stones to prepare
coffee for us. Gratefully I sat down on the chair
she provided for me, while the others, inflamed by
curiosity, rushed at once up the steps and entered
the church. Although it looked like a Byzantine
structure, perhaps going back in part to Justinian's
time, it was not very interesting except to special-
ists in the history of architecture, and they soon
came out for their coffee. Meantime I had ex-
pressed, through an interpreter, my gratitude for
the refreshment and exchanged a few compliments
with the woman, who in her Arab politeness said
she regretted that we were not going to spend the
night under her roof, but would be made very-
happy indeed if I would return and spend a whole
day -with her.

From the balcony of the hospitable priest's house
we looked out across miles of rocks piled into grand
fortress-like masses, to the plain that stretched
endlessly to the vaporous mountains on the east

177

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Directly below us pigeons swarmed in and out of
the rock ledges, and hurrying swallows darted to
and fro, and we could see the gardens spreading
themselves out from the village like a fan. When
we started to return to our cars the way at first
skirted the edge of the cliff from which we had
the same view. I clumped along, following as
best I could in the track of my husband, who di-
vided his energies between trying to decipher the
Greek inscriptions (some of them dating from the
first century of our era) in the early Christian rock
tombs that bordered the way, and waving his arms
and shouting to us, "Come on! There never was
such a glorious viewl" We watched the sinking
sun lengthen the violet shadows of our cliffs over
the little oasis and then over the lower hills, till
they covered the entire plain beyond, so that it was
getting dusk when we crawled and slid down the
other chasm, between high walls of rock that left
only a few feet for the stream and ourselves to get
through.

THE HAURAN AND SOUEIDA

Another excursion was to the mysterious Hauran
and the Jebel-Druse, of whose dreamy outlines
clad in all the tender hues of distance we had been
conscious almost ever since we started for Damas-
cus. The very name somehow, perhaps because I
knew it was the ancient "Land of Bashan," sug-

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

gested strange beauty and adventure. It used to be
very difficult to travel in that region. Even as re-
cently as Gertrude Bell's trip described in The
Desert and the Sown (1907) the only method of
travelling was on horseback and the only accom-
modation tents of one's own or the hospitality of
the natives. Nor was it quite safe.

Even now, the track that coils itself over the
plain is a very uncertain one, although after Ezra,
about eight miles from Soueida, the capital of the
district, a splendid military road was laid down
when the recent insurrection of the Druses against
the French was suppressed. But before Ezra, after
leaving "the street which is called straight" which
leads to Jerusalem and Mecca, the road was not
metalled, and it wandered for fifty miles or so at
the caprice of the streams which overflowed and
destroyed it here, buried it with a swamp there or
dug a channel too deep for a motor to cross. Hence
we had a good deal of wandering and arrived at
Soueida only towards sunset, the silhouette of the
town showing black and impressive against the
flushed sky. It was a picturesque moment, when
great flocks of sheep and goats were being brought
in from the fields to be watered at the big pool
that lies at the edge of the village before they
reached their night's shelter inside the town. Be-
yond the pool to the west stretched the vast grassy

179

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

and grain-sown plain we had crossed, Syria's main
cereal region. The Anti-Lebanon range closed the
horizon, with Hermon's rose-tinted snows rising
high into the oncreeping shadows of the evening
sky. We wandered through the town in the dusk
and saw the remains of a basilica from the fifth
century which was in good preservation up to the
recent bombardment. Still fairly intact in the
ruined basilica are the floor mosaics where we
noticed what we thought to be the earliest tomb
portrait in mosaic so far discovered; since then,
however, we have seen some of even earlier date in
the early Christian cemetery at Tarragona, now
under excavation. Another pool among the low
stone houses gave us an idea of what Jerusalem
must have looked like under the kings.

We and our friend, the Italian Consul, with his
sister and cousin, were the first foreign visitors at
the newly opened hotel (Soueida is a military sta-
tion) , and we made merry over the good cooking
and the famous wine grown on the volcanic slopes
of the Jebel-Druse,

KANAVAT

The next morning a stout little Ford car took
us to the ruins of Kanavat, a five-mile wheeled
scramble over rocks. Kanavat, like Amman, was
one of the Roman confederation of the Decapolis,
the ten cities placed to protect the main routes of

180

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

commerce across the Jordan to the desert* All
these towns, except Damascus, date from the first
century and they were most flourishing under the
Antonines (AS). 134-180), who made roads and es-
tablished enough peace in the land to allow the
towns of the Decapolis to express their prosperity
in great architecture* This I have already de-
scribed in speaking of Jerash, and in Kanavat we
found similar remains colonnaded streets, forum,
theatre, temples, tombs, bridges, aqueducts and all
the noble appurtenances of Greek or Roman high
civilization. Owing to its mountain situation and
the wealth of water, it had been a summer resort
for Romans and rich Syrians, and hence was richly
laid out with regard to the luxuries considered
necessary at the time. A tourist we met com-
plained that antique ruins were too much alike,
too monotonous, to be really exciting, but I felt
that one might as well say the same of Beethoven's
symphonies.

And here at Kanavat, within the grand Greco-
Roman scheme, there were differences that we
found quite exciting enough to fill a whole morn-
ing and cause a lively regret at not having a week

* These were, with Damascus as the head, Scythopolis (now called
by its ancient name of Beshamar or Beisan) on the west of the Jordan
overlooking the Lake of Galilee, and then Pella, Gadara, Hippos com-
manding the north of the great table-land beyond the Jordan; then
farther east came Amman and Jerash and a couple of cities whose
sites have not been ascertained, and then Kanavat, the Hauran out-
post Other towns joined the Confederation later.

181

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

to spare for the ruins. The stone used was the un-
yielding and gloomy black basalt of the region, and
it aroused our utmost admiration to see how they
had carved it into shapes of beauty and grace, using
its very hardness to give mass and force to the
acanthus capitals, the friezes and the lintel decora-
tion, that softer stones cannot offer. The first
building we came on was unusual, a small oval
peripteral temple standing on a moulded stone
platform about ten feet high. Most of the deli-
cately swung columns remain, with their capitals
and a portion of the imposts. The temple stands
alone, considerably outside the town in an olive and
fruit orchard facing Mount Hermon's snowy mass,
behind which its priests could see every evening
the fiery disappearance of the sun-god to whom
their temple was dedicated the only god who
never disappointed his worshippers.

The town itself, like Amman and Jerash, was
built on two hillsides divided by a stream. The
side upon which most of the buildings stood was
well watered by a mountain spring which, escaping
from the ruined Roman aqueduct, rippled down
the stony street, forming pools here and there
where naked little children were paddling and
splashing. Much of the ancient paving remains,
but in so ruinous a state that our obliging chauf-
feur, who, seeing I was tired, had suggested taking
me up to the top in the car, had first to clear the

182

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

detached paving stones out of the way, a band of
Arabs looking on in surprise that anyone should
take the trouble to improve a road! At the top
of the town we found a big temple all in black ba-
salt, but weathered and stained with lichen, and,
built across it inside, an early Christian basilica.
The doorways were exquisitely carved with the
grape-vine and wine-cup, emblems perhaps at first
of the Syrian version of Dionysos (Dusares or
Dushara), but easily transferred to the Christian
cult, where the Living Vine symbolized Christ,
and the Cup, His Blood. In fact, we noticed the
Cross cut into a cluster of grapes on one doorway.
Following one of the streams along a street lined
with antique basalt houses, we reached the point
where it plunged into the valley, and, looking over,
saw the lovely remains of the Nymphaeum built
over a spring, and of the nine-tiered theatre with
its rock-hewn seats, both set in the greenest of little
valleys. Two great towers on the opposite height
guarded the ravine. The town has been described,
the buildings measured, the inscriptions copied,
and all is duly set down in the Reverend A. C.
Porter's Five Years in Damascus. He was far
more venturesome than we, travelling lightly with
a horse and a blanket, and he explored not only
Kanavat but many of the nearby towns that fringe
the great Hauran plain; but we, tied to our motors,
with no five years to spend in Syria, had to be con-

183

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

tent with Soueida and Kanavat as samples, or, as
we tried fondly to think, as foretastes of what the
future might give us time to explore more fully.
Travelling is like that: the beauty and interest of
what one sees is enhanced by the secret vow one
makes, half believing it will hold "I will come
back." When we go back to Damascus we shall
visit Bosra ("Little Damascus," as it was called)
Shubba, Salkhat, Ses, and all the other "Giant
Cities of Bashan." Perhaps we shall even see one
of the Bulls of Bashan ! One never knows. These
cities are not Greek but Greek and Semitic, still
cast, however, as Sir G. A. Smith says, "in the great
moulds of 'the Empire. In the Decapolis Rome
sheltered Greeks ; in those other cities she disci-
plined half-Greek Syrians and wild Arabs."

THE HAURAN

This element of the exotic gives the region its
peculiar attraction, and now that most of these
black towns are utterly deserted, although their
houses with basalt roofs and doors are still intact, 1
there is about them a feeling of magic, as if some
sorcerer a thousand years ago had caused the in-
habitants to vanish, leaving their habitations as
snails leave their shells. No one could better con-
vey the effect they make than the author I am
being continually tempted to enhance my pages by
quoting. Sir G. A. Smith says :

184

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

One remembers the weirdness of wandering as a
child through the Black Cities of the Arabian Nights.
Under the strong sun, the basalt takes on a sullen sheen
like polished ebony; the low and level architecture is
unrelieved even by threads of mortar, for the blocks
were cut so fine, and lie so heavy on each other, that
no cement was needed for the building; there is besides,
an utter absence of trees, bush, ivy and all green. This
weirdness is naturally greatest where cities, emptied of
their inhabitants more than a thousand years ago, still
stand tenantless. An awful silence fills the sable ruins ;
there is never a face, nor a flower, nor the flutter of a
robe in all the bare black streets. But the fascination
is shared even by the towns into which this generation
has crept back, and patched their ruins with bricks of
last year's mud. In these I have seen yellow sheaves
piled high against the black walls, and the dust of the
threshing-floors rising thick in the sunbeams, but the
sunshine showed so pallid and ineffectual over the sul-
len stone, that what I looked on seemed to be not the
flesh and blood and labour of today, but the phantasm
of some ancient summer afternoon flung magically back
upon its desolate and irresponsive stage.

Who would not promise himself to return to
such scenes?

But, above all, in that radiant, timeless future,
we shall explore the mysterious Lejah (the Argob
of the Bible, the Trachonitis of the Greeks) that
looks so strange and fascinating on most maps, with
a slender, spider-like web of lines indicating
cracks and fissures in a lava-bed that long ago con-

185

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

gealed into a huge wrinkled platform, three
hundred and fifty square miles in extent, the im-
memorial haunt of robbers and the refuge to which
Absalom fled after the murder of his brother. We
skirted its edge but did not feel that we really saw
it, and it waked the child in us, filling us with long-
ing to climb and explore among its maze of rocks
and caverns.

But real time is inexorable, whatever tricks one's
fancy plays with it, and we began to retrace our
steps through the waving green fields of Bashan,
the Land of Og, "The Hollow," Iturca, Nabatea,
Trachonitis, Jeden all these names have been
loosely attached to this region. The Hauran
proper is the high plain stretching south from
Mount Hermon between the Jaulanite mountains
on the east, with the Lejah and the Jebel Druse
on the west It is practically treeless (hence the
stone roofs and doors), but the wind, which has
an unimpeded sweep of fifty miles north and south
keeps it fresh and comparatively cool. Under
Trajan it was formed into the Province of Arabia,
and from being the ragged edge of a continually
menaced civilization it became one of the great
organized Roman departments. Roads, reservoirs,
temples, baths, sprang into being, villages became
cities, Greek was talked, Greek gods with some
admixture of local divinities were worshipped in
the temples. The Greek customs and religion

186

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

gave place to the civilization of Byzance and the
temples sheltered the smaller basilicas of the
Christians. "The assembly of demons," an old in-
scription runs, "has become the house of the Lord."
In this region and at this time, as De Vogue l has
pointed out, the experiment was first made of put-
ting the cupola on a square by means of spherical
pendentives an innovation that was the parent of
so much!

In 634 the Great Misfortune happened. Ma-
hometan hosts overran the Hauran and blasted
its vitality. Buildings were mutilated, destroyed,
abused, "the great towns became shells in which
little clans huddled for shelter." Finally, unable
to protect their fields and flocks against the Bedou-
ins who periodically poured in from the desert to
reap what they had not sown, the inhabitants left
their dwellings, and the plain reverted to the semi-
desert which is the highest expression of Bedouin
culture.

Yet the decay was a slow one. As late as the
thirteenth century the vineyards of Salkand and
the gardens of Burbala were still famous in Syria.
Mediaeval Arab writers such as Abulfeda in the
fourteenth century celebrate the doomed fertility
of the land. But when Dr. Porter visited it, soon
after 1850, he was moved to write:

Nowhere on the earth [is seen] such a melancholy
example of the fatal effects of tyranny, rapacity and

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

misrule,- as that here exhibited. Fields, vineyards,
pastures, villages, cities are alike deserted and the few-
inhabitants who remain behind the barrier of rocks
and mountains drag out a miserable existence op-
pressed by the robbers of the desert on the one hand
and the still more formidable robbers of the Govern-
ment on the other. . . . The sordid Pasha who
bought the property would try to wring out of the poor
peasant enough to repay with interest his outlay, and
then he cared nothing, and the soil reverted to desert.
. . . The Druses form the only exception to this, their
courage, their union, and their position concentrated
in the strongholds of the mountains, enable them to
brave, when occasion demands it, the Turks and the
Bedouins. 2

IMPROVEMENT OF CONDITIONS

This was written not long ago. By now, little by
little, relieved of Turkish oppression and misrule
and secure from invasion by the Bedouins, re-
duced in none too humane a fashion to accepting
the French rule, the same Druses have gone a long
way towards establishing the agriculture of the
region, although not yet has the prosperity of an-
cient times been attained. We were struck, when
we were at Soueida, with the proud bearing of this
handsome race, among whom blue eyes and fair
hair is by no means uncommon, The women are
partially veiled but the faces of the little girls gave
promise of later beauty. We saw several young
men with long curls escaping from the shawls over

188

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

their heads and framing their cheeks, who were
singularly good-looking, some of them in a very
feminine way. 3

DRUSE RELIGION

As we were driving home, my curiosity about
strange beliefs led me to question our Maronite
dragoman about the mysterious religion of the
Druses. From him I learnt no good of the heredi-
tary enemies of his race, nor of their beliefs and
practices. Since then I have tried to find out some-
thing about it but the information is confused and
scanty. It is a secret religion, and appears to carry
various survivals of primitive cults on the stream
of its Moslem heresy. For the Druses exalt El
Hakim, 4 the fifth Fatimide Khalif of Egypt, who
began to reign in 996, to a position even higher
than that of Mahomet himself, taking their
name from the Persian fanatic, Durzi (Darasi),
who first recognized the divinity of Hakim, and
who is supposed to have inspired much of his doc-
trine. El Hakim is believed to have been the last
incarnation of Divinity, and soon after his final
appeal to mankind, the door was closed and no
new converts are allowed, the children born to
Druse parents being reincarnations of dead Druses,
and hence already within the fold. They expect
Hakim to reappear that old cry of despair in-
variably uttered by disciples whom death has reft

189

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

of their Messiah and to retake Mecca and Jeru-
salem and conquer the world. He will appear,
they believe, mounted on a white ass, and will stand
on the top of the temple El Ka'ba carrying a drawn
sword of gold.

With a loud voice he will recount the number of his
manifestations in human form. ... By his command
thunders and tornadoes from heaven will descend and
abolish the Ka'ba and raze its very foundations. The
five Ministers will then sit in judgment on thrones of
gold, studded with the most costly gems, under cano-
pies of richest silk bespangled with rubies and pearls.
The believers will be graciously received, their sins
will be overlooked, and rich presents of raiment, weap-
ons and horses will be given them. ... At the same
time the believers under the four inferior Ministers
will travel all over the world killing infidels, destroy-
ing their governments, plundering their treasures and
riches. This is the resurrection. 5

There exists in the Druse religion a sort of Trin-
ity, with Hakim's vizier, Hanza (Hamza)
(author of most of their sacred writings) , embody-
ing the Universal Spirit, floating upon the two
wings of the Soul and the Word. They have
worked in a bit of Neo-Platonism, considering the
material world as a "mirror of the Divine Intel-
ligence." They have taken up some of the
doctrines of the Further East, believing in the
transmigration of the soul (but only into other
human beings, bad men returning as Jews, Chris-

190

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS'

tians and Turks, not animals as their neighbours,
the Ansariyeh, believe) and its final absorption into
God, and have accepted from Persia the idea of the
conflict between the two warring spirits of Good
and Evil. Like so many sects of all kinds they find
a special sacredness in the number seven. They
have seven commandments, and Hakim, they say,
let his beard grow for seven years, and for seven
years rode on asses these symbolizing the former
exponents of Mahometanism.

This is, alas 1 not the place to go very deeply into
this semi-interesting matter, but I cannot forbear
mentioning the Druse belief that their Messiah,
Hakim, was not murdered by his discontented sub-
jects, as history has it, but was translated to China,
where the souls of the Druses are supposed eventu-
ally to follow him. Chinamen are believed by the
Druses to be secretly or latently Druses themselves,
and on the day of Triumph two and a half millions
of "Chinese Unitarians" will come up from the
East and conquer the Mahometans, led by the
four Evangelists under the "True Christ," not
the one of the New Testament, for the man who
was crucified was really Judas, who took on the
semblance of Jesus, while the real one (Hanza),
who during Christ's life appeared as Lazarus, re-
maining in hiding till he reappeared to the Magda-
len and the Apostles after the death of Judas-Jesus
on the Cross. They are inclined, too, to think that

191

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the English, especially the Unitarians, are really
Druses indeed, anyone might be, for a Druse is
allowed to practise all the current forms of re-
ligion, provided he keeps hold in his secret mind
of his own peculiar doctrines. They accept as di-
vinely inspired teachers Noah, Absalom, Moses,
Jesus, Said and two Mahomets, though they be-
lieve their teachings as generally understood are
false and inspired by Anti-Christ, and only true
in the Druse secret interpretation of them. The
editor of A Journey from Aleppo to Damascus
says of them :

The religion of the Druses is a monstrous Composi-
tion of Maxims and moral Duties, which they retain
of Christianity, whereof anciently they made Profes-
sion; and of Mohammedan Customs and Ceremonies,
which they have adopted, either by means of continual
Intercourse with the Turks, or rather through Policy,
in order to procure their good Will and Protection.
They keep the Book which their Legislator left them,
very religiously. It contains three sections, in form
of Letters, which comprize all the Mysteries of their
Religion. The Women are reckoned to be better
instructed in their Religion than the Men, which makes
them to be much respected; they have the Care of
teaching their own Sex, and explaining the Books of
their two Legislators to them. They recommend the
keeping of them secret above all things; and these
Women are so true to their Trust, that all we have
been able to discover of these Books, till the present,
is that they contain Fables and extravagant Histories.

192

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

And he ends his account piously by saying: "The
violent attachment which they have for their Re-
ligion, and their obstinate refusing to be taught,
gives us just cause to fear that this Nation will
forever close their Eyes against the Light of the
Gospel, which shines over their heads."

Laurence Oliphant, always interested in esoteric
doctrines, gives a fairly full account of the Druse
beliefs, and I refrain with difficulty from quoting
more of it. The name, I confess, has always
haunted me, perhaps from their struggles against
the Turks, which arbused the sympathy of every
little Liberal child. Then, vague ideas of Panthe-
ism and Rosicrucianism adhere to them; suspicions
of phallic, gynocratic and calf worship linger
round their hilltop shrines where they still hang
rugs and other decorations on circles of black
stones. They are somehow connected with Free
Masonry, having secret signs and passwords by
which they recognize each other no matter where
they meet; they are known to be secretive, cruel
and treacherous to all but their own community;
they are abstemious even to the exclusion of to-
bacco along with wine; they are monogamists, and
although very jealous of their beautiful women,
they give them a higher place intellectually than
is usual in the East. All these associations, true
and false, that cling to the name "Druse" have al-
ways had for me, and probably for others as well

193

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

(one is never unique or original), a peculiar in-
terest, almost fascination.

I am therefore sorry to say that I end my re-
searches into their peculiar doctrines with a feel-
ing that may perhaps be best expressed in the
terms of a "Proverb" that was current among the
members of the "Idiot Club" I belonged to in Lon-
don forty years ago "A Lamp has no Real
Inside," "Eine Lampe hat kein elgentliches
Eingeweide" Every religion, it is true, shines
with light borrowed from the past, but I know no
parallel to the Druse farrago of the nonsense of all
the creeds and beliefs of mankind. 6

I take leave of them recalling that they have
produced only one eminent man in the millennium
of their existence as a separate sect. This was the
famous Emir Fakr-ed-Din, who ruled the Leba-
non in the early seventeenth century. He was al-
lied with Venice against the Turks, the natural
enemies of both. He went to the court of the
Medicis in Florence to ask for assistance and re-
mained for nine years in Italy, returning to incur
much hatred in the Lebanon by putting up some
buildings in the European style. He extended his
sway to Beirut and Sidon on the one hand, and to
the Lake of Tiberias and Mount Carmel on the
other. He was finally captured by the Turks and
strangled in Constantinople. One Druse woman,
too, became famous, a Princess of the house of

194

EXCURSIONS FROM DAMASCUS

Ruslan, who in the eighteenth century governed
part of the Lebanon. She was accustomed to hear
and judge cases sitting behind a curtain (for her
face is the last thing any Mahometan woman
may permit a man to see) , and her judgments were
found to be wise and just.

EZRA

On our way back to Damascus we stopped at
the town of Ezra, the ancient Zoroa, situated on
the edge of the Lejah, and saw the Church of St.
George, built in 515, and continuously used for the
Greek ritual to the present day. De Vogue calls
it "certainly the most interesting of all the Chris-
tian edifices of this region." The exterior is square
but the interior is octagonal, following the type
set at Antioch in the time of Constantine, and it is
interesting for the primitive way in which the
ambulatory is roofed with huge slabs of basalt
Even more interesting to us, for we are not archi-
tects, was a great dolman-like stone held in place
over the entrance by clasps, but capable of being
dropped to crush enemies who sought to invade
the church* We wandered through the half de-
serted town, noting many old houses with not only
roofs but doors of basalt, the substitute for wood
in that treeless region. We also noticed here and
there mouldings as delicate as the best Renaissance
work.

195

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

We saw to right and left of our road a number of
other towns with churches and mosques and for-
tresses that looked at least as interesting as Ezra,
but there was no time to stop and explore them.
It was quite dark when we reached Damascus.

CHAPTER IX
PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

A 3D have I really been in Palmyra? I ask my-
self, sitting comfortably surrounded by
books, endeavouring to hold fast the memories of
our wonderful journey. Was it really old me,
with my rheumatism, my luxurious habits of com-
fort, my devotion to the day's ordered routine, who
travelled across the Syrian desert in the blast of
the sun, who lingered for days among the temples
and colonnades, the fleshless ghosts of Zenobia's
stately town; who saw the thousands of camels
brought to water by their wild Bedouin herds-
men? I remember it all, so I suppose I must be
the same person who had this great adventure,
though everything around me, save this sheet of
writing paper, and everything in me, save a vital
spark of memory, contradicts it

Yet we did indeed, on May 3, 1929, leave Da-
mascus and turn our faces to the desert and
Palmyra. Not for us fortunately, for the fatigue
would have been prohibitive the slow, four or
five days' journey on horseback, parched with
thirst and heat by day, and tortured by vermin in
the khans or under the black tents of Arab sheiks

197

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

at night (but how fascinating all the same!), nor
the leisurely but infinitely picturesque ca;ravan
trip on the backs of the camels. The one day
which we passed in comfortable motors to arrive at
Palmyra was enough of an adventure for us, though
indeed we thought with envy of those earlier in-
trepid travellers who have told the far more ex-
citing tales of their journeys thither. 1

THE ROAD TO PALMYRA

We left Damascus reluctantly, with the baffled
impression of not having become familiar with it,
of not understanding its topography. Yet we were
glad to get away from the sordid hotel and the
noisy street our windows opened on, and to feel
ourselves once more on the way to the Unknown.
The road led us again through the groves and
fields we had passed on our way to Maloula, as far
as the big khan, and then it bent to the east. By
this time the trees had ceased, the streams having
meandered off around the base of the low hills we
now began to cross. We saw the streams later,
losing themselves in shallow lakes, bordered with
salt, which looked like pure marble and which we
at first took to be the effect of mirage. Our friend
Baedeker had warned us in his epigrammatic style
that there was little to see after we had passed the
few villages, each set in its green oasis, which lie
along the first part of the road "the scenery is

198

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

very dreary," he comments. But we found it end-
lessly beautiful, the rust-coloured desert spread
out under the azure sky "un del d f immortelle
jeunesse" bordered with distant mountains whose
outline changed with each moment of our ad-
vance, revealing at every step gorges and ravines
and rocky promontories. Here and there camels
stalking about, bending their curved necks and
sticking out their dirty tongues to snatch a bit of
dry brush from the barren land, or stepping slowly
along in a chain with their air of contemptuous
indifference, broke the movelessness of the desert,
which otherwise was still and silent save for the oc-
casional rustle of a partridge stirring in the low
clumps of growing shrubs and the tufts of wild
liquorice, or a large lizard, the silver downpour
of a lark's song, or a great Griffin vulture floating
overhead on dark wings.

Yet beautiful as it was, it was hot and glaring,
so that it was a pleasurable relief when at lunch-
time we reached the village and oasis of Karyatein,
and were ushered into a cool, clean, airy upper
room in the house of the Jacobite priest, 2 a friend
of our dragoman. There we ate one of the excel-
lent lunches which never failed us, and then "made
Kief for a little while on the divans ranged along
the room, fanned by cool breezes produced by the
magic of the oasis, while the desert all around was

199

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

trembling and shimmering with the radiant heat,
like ripples in a lake.

From the time when we started again on our
journey, all the five hours on to Palmyra, the
landscape and colours grew more and more beau-
tiful, passing through lilac, mauve and brilliant
violet to royal purple deepening to indigo and
black, as the hills drew in closer and threw longer
shadows upon the desert We passed on the way
an old golden-coloured castle, Kasr-el-Heir, with
much of its walls and many of its windows still
standing, though it was long ago deserted by all
human life and by the water that gave it being. At
a little distance from the tower lay the lintel of
one of the portals half buried in the debris. Its
fine sculptured decoration in the style called
"Palmyrene" was a foretaste of enjoyments to come.
Presently we discerned ahead of us hills that seemed
almost to bar our path, with only a small dip be-
tween them guarded by a couple of towers. Above
on a sharp line to the left was a fortress visible for
many miles around, an enchantment it seemed,
placed by the Djinns of the Arabian Nights on an
inaccessible ridge, following its contours as a ser-
pent might have coiled itself along the top of a
jagged rock. In the evening light it looked opal-
ine and almost transparent, as if the Djinns, ac-
cording to their agreeable habit, had built it of
precious stones.

200

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

We went up between the towers which rose out
of the rock, grey and dead, silent, deserted, worn
with the decay of time, and Palmyra was before
us lying where it fell, its antique beauty unspoiled
by any modern touch. We let the cars and luggage
go on to the little inn while we sat on the stones
and looked and looked. We felt that we had never
seen anything so romantic, so stimmungsvoll. With
her kind permission I quote again from Lady Sybil
Lubbock's book, feeling that she has described her
and our impression far more poetically than I
could do :

There it lay, all that was left of the great city of
Palmyra, and in a mass of ruined temples and arches
and colonnades, not heaped close together clumsily as
in so many ruined towns, but set out delicately over the
pale sand and flushed now in the sunset glow to every
shade of faint or glowing rose. Only the mediaeval
Turkish [really Arab] castle, far above and away on
its height, shone golden still in the starlight. Then
slowly the light faded and the shadows from the
hills flowed like dark water on the plain, swallowing
up column after column, and all that we could see were
the few lights of the modern village and then, as far
as the eye could reach, the pale and illimitable sands.

PALMYRA AND ZENOBIA

Reaching the hotel at the fall of darkness we
found to our surprise a well-ordered and well-
furnished little inn, instead of the small native

201

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

khan or the "Sheik's House" described by former
travellers. This hotel is run by a young French
couple of aristocratic birth who were full of en-
thusiasm, good will and good ideas. Unfortu-
nately, the Government has not allowed them to
buy the hotel nor even to lease it, and hence all
their plans for improvements are at a standstill, as
they do not want to begin expensive works, even
such elementary ones as bringing water into the
house, making proper drainage, putting up fly-
screens and blinds etc,, while their tenure is so
uncertain, The comfort, therefore, of the pleasant-
looking place was more apparent than real, and
indeed we suffered much from light and flies and
bad odours. But our sympathy went out to our
hosts in this gallant undertaking. If ever there
were a place where a good and comfortable hotel
would be welcome to the traveller, it is here. The
interest and beauty of the ruins would tempt almost
anyone to stay for several days, and others, like
ourselves, would gladly remain there for two or
three weeks, if conditions were possible. As it
was, we had to make the best of our four days, and
they were indeed four of the most interesting of
our lives.

The morning after arriving we began, sitting
among the gorgeous remains, to make ourselves
familiar with the main points of Palmyrene his-
tory.

202

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

But Palmyra means Zenobia and nothing else to
most people. And indeed, interesting in its way
as is the history of the commerce of this town,
enisled, as it were, in the desert between Meso-
potamia in the east and Damascus and the coast
on the west, and drawing its importance solely
from its situation as a trade-centre, the only per-
sonality that arose to lend to the place a vivid
human interest was Zenobia. The story of the five
years in which she held sway, her dreams and am-
bitions, her passionate endeavours, her tragic de-
feat "fall like a splash of blood or fire upon the
grey years of desert history." This queen was ac-
customed to boast of being descended from the
Ptolemies, reckoning Cleopatra among her fore-
bears. She combined at her capital the sumptu-
ous burial practices of the land of her origin, the
luxury of her eastern neighbours, the Persians,
and the arts and letters of the Greeks. The funeral
monuments of Palmyra, those great towers or
underground caverns, filled with rows of shelves
of embalmed bodies and with their sculptured and
painted effigies, are paralleled only in Egypt. Her
court, her gorgeous apparel, her jewels were fa-
mous for a magnificence that rivalled the court of
the King of Kings,

The architecture and disposition of the town are
Greek, with local touches, of course, and Greek
inscriptions began under Zenobia's influence to re-

203

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

place the native Aramaic ones. We know also
that the Queen selected Longinus, the philosopher
of Emesa (Horns), as her First Minister, and
cultivated a friendship with the Patriarch Paul
of Samothrace, the pupil of Origen. She showed
so much interest in the religion of the numerous
Jews settled in Palmyra that she was referred to
as a Jewess by some later writers. In addition to
the vernacular, the Greek and Aramaic of her
town, she could read Latin and knew the native
Egyptian, and she wrote a short work on Oriental
history. She had her sons well trained in Latin
(as became members of an imperial family),
though she was not sufficiently fluent in its use to
speak it herself,

Zenobia received her kingdom from the hands
of her husband Odenatus, an Arab chief whose
influence preponderated in the councils of the
merchant republic of Palmyra, Odenatus, after
holding a judicial balance of power between the
Romans and the Sassanide Persians, finally came
over to the Roman side, defeated Sapor in 267,
and pushed him back to Ctesiphon on the Eu-
phrates. He defended the interests of the Emperor
against the Goths in Asia Minor, and for this
Gallien rewarded him by making him commander-
in-chief of the Oriental forces of the Roman army,
associating him with himself as Augustus in the
Empire. His wife, who had accompanied him

204

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

on all his expeditions, supported him with enthu-
siasm when he began to carve out a kingdom for
himself in the provinces which Rome had confided
to him, but he and his son Herod were both assas-
sinated by his nephew, AD. 266-7, who was soon
afterwards himself killed by his soldiers. Thus
the ambitious Zenobia was left to carry out his
schemes. Her vivid figure still flashes across the
centuries, leading her Arab armies to conquest, ex-
horting them from horseback, bare-armed with a
helmet on her dark flowing hair, inciting them to
warlike enthusiasm by her flashing black eyes, her
eloquence, her beauty, her daring. So long dead,
she still exercises her spell. Chaucer's Monk
tells of

Cenobia, of Palimerie quene
As writen Persians of hir noblesse,
So worthy was in armes, and so kene,
That no wight passed her in hardinesse,
Ne in linage, ne in other gentilesse.

Active and able, now cruel, now clement, Zenobia
pushed her conquests until Mesopotamia, Syria
and a large part of Egypt recognized her author-
ity. Gibbon says of her, "Instead of the little
passions which so frequently perplex a female
reign, the steady administration of Zenobia was
guided by the most judicious maxims of policy. If
it was expedient to pardon, she could calm her

205

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

resentment; if it was necessary to punish, she could
impose silence on the voice of pity."

But her ambition, her fatal dream of Empire,
was her ruin. As soon as the anarchy which broke
out under the Illyrian Emperors was quelled,
Aurelian, the greatest of them all, turned his atten-
tion to regaining the East for Rome. The mere
fact of his presence in Syria caused many of
Zenobia's partisans to desert her, and when her
army met the Roman army near Antioch, it suf-
fered a crushing defeat. 3 Aurelian pursued her
to Emesa, inflicting still another defeat upon her,
and then to Palmyra itself, and took her captive
as she was getting into a boat on the Euphrates to
cross over and seek help from the Persian King.
He recognized the local god, Yaribol, as Apollo,
and attributed his victory to him.

Then comes the darkest act of this tragedy. "She
ignominiously purchased life by the sacrifice of
her fame and her friends" (Gibbon). Aurelian
killed her Minister Longinus and other advisers
upon whom she threw the responsibility of her
actions, and appropriated the treasure he found
in her coffers, but he spared the lovely town, tak-
ing Zenobia to grace his Roman Triumphal Pro-
cession. Cleopatra facing ruin with the poison of
the asp is a more noble figure than Zenobia led in
chains of gold to the Capitol as a spectacle for the
Roman crowd. After Aurelian had left, a revolt

206

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

broke out at Palmyra, which brought the Roman
legions back to pillage and destroy. They carried
away the treasures of the Temple of Baal to dec-
orate the one Aurelian built to the Sun in Rome.
The town was rebuilt later on by Justinian who
surrounded it with the walls that can still be fol-
lowed in a snaky line of broken stones.

But with the eclipse of the Queen, Palmyra
ceased to count as an important centre. Gone was
the flourishing town described by Pliny, "remark-
able for its situation and its red soil and agreeable
streams." It was then (as now) "surrounded,"
he wrote, "on all sides by a sandy desert which
wholly separated it from the rest of the world"
and it "preserved its independence between the
two great Empires of Rome and Persia, whose
principal care when they were fighting each other
was to engage Palmyra on their side." But now
it was no longer needed even as a frontier against
the Persians, for the Arab sway extended over
Mesopotamia. Eastern trade had begun to seek
the coast by the less mountainous route of Aleppo,
Horns and Tripoli, and even before the Arab con-
quest the city had vanished from history. It was
mentioned only by a few writers such as Benjamin
of Tudela who in the thirteenth century found a
colony of Jews there, and Abulfeda who in 1321
speaks of the ruins. It was not till 1678 that some
merchants from Aleppo set out to "discover" it,

207

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

and not till 1691 that they reached it, for their
first expedition had been broken up by brigands*
They left a few descriptions of what remained of
the ruined town. In 1751 Woods and Dawkins
got there and stayed several days making plans
and drawings. I have before me the 1819 French
edition of their work (Firmin Didot), and it is
still valuable for its careful historical precis and
the engravings of the monuments, some of which
have since been destroyed. If the Palmyra ruins
still remain the most complete ruins of antiquity
that exist it is partly because the inhabitants were
too few and too lazy to pull them down, preferring
to stick their wasps' nest of mud in and around
the great temple to constructing real buildings
of their own ; partly because Palmyra stood in such
an isolated position ; and partly because the climate
was dry, so that no lichen or mosses or ivy collected
in the stones, and because the earthquakes were
comparatively few. The town sank to being only
the dwelling-place of a handful of Bedouins, the
half-yearly watering-place of the desert camels and
the resort of occasional tourists. But now the
French, in their admirable endeavour to stop the
incessant fighting among the wandering Bedouin
tribes, have made it an aviation centre, whence
small flocks of machines go out at the first hint
of trouble to put the fear of the Lord into the
hearts of the nomads.

208

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

But I have wandered far from Zenobia, and I
suppose I must round off her story, though its end
is an anti-climax to its brilliant commencement,
when young, experienced, beautiful, accomplished
and learned, strong, chaste in morals, prudent and
circumspect in deliberation but firm in execution,
generous without profusion, magnificent like the
semi-oriental she was, intrepid on the field of bat-
tle, she extended her sway from Egypt to the
Bosphorus. After gracing Aurelian's triumphal
procession, she settled down quietly enough as a
bonne bourgeoise in the possession of a property
the Emperor gave her on the road to Tivoli, con-
tracted a second marriage and bore children, and
formed a circle of friends and admirers of whom
the Emperor was one.

OTHER HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS

Zenobia is the great figure of Palmyra, her brief
reign marking the climax of the town's splendours.
Before her not much was heard of it. Except an
Assyrian text of the twelfth century B.C., the two
references in the Old Testament (I Kings 10: 18
and II Chronicles 8 : 4) stating that King Solomon
"built Tadmor in the wilderness" (possibly a later
"attribution" to swell the glory of the King's al-
ready famous name), there are few mentions of
it until the era of the Seleucids when it was recog-
nized as the centre of commerce between the Eu-

209

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

phrates and the Mediterranean. We know that the
oases on the route were kept up by underground
channels and that the skilfully conducted, rather
sulphurous stream gushing from a rock to the south
of Palmyra (which the present-day Arabs allow
to run off in the sand) , added to the water brought
by an immensely long conduit from the plain be-
tween the two Lebanon ranges, made of Palmyra
a fair town of gardens and orchards whose riches
were so great that they tempted Marcus Antonius
to send a troop to attempt its pillage.

WATERING OF CAMELS

Before we had time to work out, with the help
of books and maps, the plan of the streets and
buildings, a strange adventure befell us. We went
out our first afternoon to visit the tower-tombs
that stand on the rise at the entrance to the town,
when suddenly we perceived strings of camels
lined out on the desert as far as we could see,
advancing towards us. Presently they were almost
upon us, hundreds of them with their young, strag-
ling along under the direction of their Bedouin
herdsmen who were half naked or clad in wonder-
ful rags, with long hair streaming down from the
shawls wrapped about their heads. Sometimes a
camel would stray from the group he belonged to
and stand on the edge of the cliff along which the
road ran, peering this way and that with his snake-

210

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

like neck and his head that in outline suggested
some great prehistoric lizard or tortoise.* Then a
hoarse cry from his master, to us indistinguishable
in the tumult of cries, would recall him to his
group.

It appears that Palmyra, being the only really
well-watered oasis in this great stretch of desert,
is used as one of the chief drinking-places for the
roaming herds, and that they come twice a year,
going to and returning from their winter haunts,
to drink from the Palmyrene stream. Leaving the
tombs to another time, for we were fascinated by
the spectacle, we went to see them watered, watch-
ing them from a rocky shelf above the stream. The
scene was unforgettable the cries of the wild
herdsmen, the groans of the camels, which were
like the roar of waves breaking on a stony beach,
the shrill notes of pipes played by some of the
men, made a tumult of sound that could be heard
for miles. All seemed confusion at first, but grad-
ually we made out that the camels were going in
companies to the stream, each company following
its leading camel, and that no shout or command

*The Arab legend of the origin of the camel runs as follows: The
horse complained to Allah that he was not made for the desert, and
life in it was unendurable to him. His feet sank in the sand, his
back could bear only a small burden, he could not carry a supply of
water in his body, and he could not eat thorns. So Allah changed
the horse in these several respects and the camel was the result But
when the horses saw the answer to their petition they were so terrified
that to this day they have never recovered from their terror.

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

could induce them to leave the stream till they
had drunk their fill. They bent long snaky necks
to the water and then stretched them up to swallow,
repeating the movement till their thirst was satis-
fied. They formed a line of beasts raising and
lowering their heads in unison, as it were in some
fantastic ballet-scene. We lingered till long after
sunset, when the hills (whence from a great sub-
terranean lake the stream dashes out) had turned
a rusty black against the faintly tinted violet sky.
All night the monstrous procession of camels came
and went, we could hear their roar from the ter-
race of our hotel Their number was vaguely
estimated from four to eighty thousand* I have
myself no means of computing how many camels
could come in, drink and go away again in the
course of hours, which was the length of time the
process continued.

I was so fascinated by the whole thing, that when
the flies began to buzz in my bedroom at four
o'clock the next morning, I got up and went out
on the terrace to watch the creatures coming and
going, and to listen to the sounds they made. I
perceived a band of heavily laden camels coming
over the hills pushing through the crowd of slow-
moving beasts at a swift run; and presently they
were received at the watering-place, hidden from
me by a ledge of rocks, with fierce yells from the
men and piercing shrieks from the women, that

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PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

tore across the deep diapason of the encampment's
noises like streaks of lightning in a thundery day.
Afterwards I learnt that these swiftly running
beasts had brought in thirty-six dead bodies of men,
slain about eight miles away in one of the ever-
recurrent desert tribe-wars. In a brief time the
roar of a small flock of aeroplanes overpowered all
the other noises, as the airmen from the French
military station launched themselves out to put an
end to the fray. I am inclined to think that the
Bedouins hate the French occupation chiefly be-
cause it interferes with their glorious age-long
pursuit of killing each other! They have a proverb
which runs: * 'Paradise is under the shadow of
swords."

MONUMENTS

The next day we spent wandering about among
the rows of golden columns and the remains of
the temples, trying to work out the plan of the
antique town. Unlike those plucky explorers of a
hundred years ago, Irby and Mangles, 4 our stand-
ard of beauty was not size, and we were not as dis-
turbed as they were by the fact that "none of the
columns exceeded in diameter four feet, and in
height forty," nor that "those of the boasted ave-
nue were little more than thirty feet high." They
- affronted dangers and discomforts that would cer-
tainly have turned us back, but when they suc-

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A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ceeded in passing through the hostile bands of
Arabs that threatened to block their progress and
even to kill them, their comment ran: "Great was
our disappointment when we found that there was
not a single column, pediment, architrave, portal
or frieze worthy of admiration, and we judged
Palmyra to be hardly worthy of the time, expense,
anxiety, and the fatiguing journey which we had
undergone to visit it We suspect that it was the
difficulty of getting to Tadmor, and the fact that
few travellers have been there, that has given rise
to the great renown of the ruins." Even of the
glorious Temple of the Sun, although they might
well have been impressed by the fact that it is
more than a mile to walk round it outside, they
only say: "They [columns of the Temple] are
fluted, and when decorated with their brazen Ionic
capitals [long since stolen and probably melted
" down] , were doubtless very handsome." From the
roof, when we climbed up there at tea-time, we
gazed down into the huge unroofed interiors and
I must say greatly admired the richly sculptured
frieze which they found so "badly wrought" We
looked abroad and saw the desert stretching out
towards Mesopotamia on the east, and the bare,
many-coloured hills that shut in the west We
passed through the mosque that has nested itself
in the interior of the temple, and noticed some
very fine twelfth- or thirteenth-century Arabic

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PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

stucco ornaments in the interior. In the court
leading to the staircase, under a projecting roof
there was an antique ceiling with hexagonal cu-
polas, decorated with painted busts of divinities,
whose figures had a swing and fire that curiously
recalled Melozzo da Forli's frescoes of the Angels
in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. We felt half awed
to realize that we were actually in one of the great
shrines of Baal for whose imagination has not
been thrilled by Milton's

Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim?

Such poetry starts an aesthetic, emotional vibra-
tion in the soul which lends endless overtones to
experiences when they come. And here, we not
only saw with our eyes Baal's deserted temple of
golden stone, rising from the desert, but in our
fancy we saw the smoke of the vanished incense
and heard the clash of the ancient music and the
chants of the priests saluting the solar deity the
only god who never disappoints the expectations of
his worshippers. Here in Palmyra he was called
Baalsamin, "the Lord of Heaven," or Malakbel,
the Mesopotamian name for the Sun-god. The
moon was worshipped here too under the strange
name of Aglibol or the Arab Allat, appearing to
have interchanged attributes with the Phoenician
Astarte, the Syriac Atargatis and the Greek

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A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Athena. The Heavenly Twins, the morning and
evening stars, were adored under the Arab names
of Arizun and Arsus. But the great local god
upon whom, after the sun, all the life and pros-
perity of the town depended, was Yaribol or
Yarchi-bol, "the Moon in Ba'al," the oracular
deity of their spring of water. There we stood
Uooking down into the deserted shrine of these
fabulous deities on the one side and on the other
into the squalid Arab village that has filled the
great walled enclosure and fastened itself to the
north side of the temple, with its filthy courtyards,
its narrow, dirty streets, and the flat roofs of the
houses, the haunt of fowls and pigeons, of goats
even, and rabbits. The stately and massive pillars
of the ancient temple rise right through the roofs
of these worthless mud-huts that cluster within the
court. There is a French project for destroying
this village to clear the court and wall of the
temple, settling the inhabitants in another spot.
But Baalsamin and Yaribol will never return!

We went back to the tombs before our visit
was over. The apocryphal "Tomb of Zenobia"
is below ground and contains frescoed portraits
and medallions disposed and executed in a way that
recalled eighteenth-century French decoration,
itself of course only a reinterpretation of classic
art Another tomb contained imposing, but alas!

216

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

headless figures and delicately carved pilasters, and
had a blue and white ceiling. Another, whose
roof was gone, had a reclining figure dressed in
Persian costume carried out to the minutest detail
But the most characteristic Palmyrene tombs are
the great towers, a few of which are well pre-
served. They have elaborately carved doorways.
One is surmounted by a balcony halfway up the
face of the tower, on which rests a carven tomb, re-
calling the Renaissance sepulchral monuments on
the inner walls of Italian churches. Within these
towers you see, opposite the door, sculptured
family groups and to right and left along the
walls, separated by stucco pilasters, with tier upon
tier of cells for the embalmed bodies of the family
or clan that were interred there. In one of these
towers of death it has been calculated that there
is room for nearly five hundred bodies. At times
there were traces of the blue or red colouring of
the stucco pilasters and ceiling.

In the afternoon we managed, in spite of the
heat, to struggle up to the fortress that overlooks
Palmyra from a western hill, built from stones
taken from the ruins of the ancient city. It is a
longish climb, but in times of drought the inhab-
itants of Palmyra, dressed in their best clothes,
make the ascent in order to pray for rain, after
having sacrificed a lamb on the top. The fortress
itself is endlessly picturesque, its foundations grip-

217

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ping an inner rock separated by a deep moat from
the outer edge of the mountain. There was no
way of getting across the moat, but we walked
round it to see it from every side, and then settled
ourselves with our tea-basket to watch the coming
of the sunset From that height the great colon-
nade and the scattered columns and temples looked
strangely thin and spidery, like white skeletons of
themselves, but the vast Temple of the Sun held
its own as mass, rivalling the hills. The reddish-
brown mountains stretched to right and left in
folds and crannies, in planes and bosses, changing
with each moment that gave their shadows a deeper
accent, and the desert stretched in front to the
horizon, it, too, changing as the sun sank towards
the edge of the hill behind us, and stained it with
a deep indigo shadow.

At the time we felt it was the most wonderful
thing we had ever seen, and we wondered if we
could not buy the old castle and restore it and live
there happy ever after, nourishing our souls with
beauty.

The next morning, our last, we went to the old
Serai, which has been turned into a museum. We
rode there on camels, as it was very hot. The rest
of the morning we spent sitting in the shade of
the Triumphal Arch near the great monoliths of
Egyptian purple granite, which contrast so glori-
ously with the white and orange limestone of the

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PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

rest of the colonnade. We read about the van-
ished glories of the town and wondered if the
beautiful rows of columns could really have been
as beautiful as now when they were adorned with
the statues of prominent Palmyrene worthies for
which the brackets could be seen halfway up the
columns. Kelman calls these brackets "an out-
rage on the columns." The long colonnade ex-
tends for nearly 4,000 feet, and 750 columns are
still standing, but the notabilities have long ago
fallen from the brackets.

The museum contains all sorts of odds and ends,
most of the statues being headless or otherwise
mutilated. Palmyrene sculpture, it must be con-
fessed, is not of the best quality. 6 The contrast
between it and real Greek sculpture was brought
out in the Serai, where a draped figure of pure
Greek workmanship stands in the middle of the
enclosure. Where the Greek line is alive and
functional the Palmyrene is relaxed and sprawl-
ing; where the Greek modelling is firm and subtle
the other is flabby and so schematic that the carvers
eked it out with engravers' lines. The drapery is
stringy, with meaningless bulges and bunches, as
is ever the case when sculpture begins to forget
the nude. In short, it has the defects common to
provincial art everywhere. Here the Oriental
touch of overelaboration in costume and jewels and

219

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

dressing of the hair, and a certain monotony of
pose and style, especially in the female portraits,
make it easy to say "Palmyra" in any museum
and as, until recently, every traveller carried away
with him a specimen, museums and private col-
lections all over Europe abound in them. In fact,
very little is left on the spot One fragment of
frieze there contained a row of crouching camels,
the fat roundness of their modelling recalling the
sarcophagi at Ravenna, which certainly came from
Byzantium or near it, the island of Marmora
perhaps.

We were struck by the fact that, untouched as
the ruins are, there is no trace in Palmyra of some
of the invariable attributes (we had thought) of
a classic town no remains of public baths, no
theatre, no hippodrome nor could we hit upon
any explanation of the lack.

MODERN WATER-CARRIERS

We left early in the afternoon and as we drove
away I was struck with the unexpectedly hieratic
effect of the tin cans which the women bore on
their heads returning from the fountain to the vil-
lage. Lady Sybil Lubbock speaks of "the women
with striped pots of native fashion and classical
designs upon their heads, stepping slowly like
figures in an antique frieze, across the sand." They
have, since her visit seven years ago, here as nearly

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PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

everywhere else, discarded these earthenware jars
in favour of the lighter oil-cans which chauffeurs
throw away. At a distance these stiff shapes of tin
turn the line of women water-carriers into a frieze
of ancient queens wearing high glittering crowns.
But you must not see them too close!

This was our last glimpse of modern Palmyra
as we drove off through the ruins.

HOMS

We were headed for Horns, and drove for hours
across the desert whose monotony is only relieved
by mirages of lakes and trees, and the curious
effect of small stones which the sun or shadow on
the level plain somehow enchant into the semblance
of camels or still stranger antediluvian monsters,
We passed the scene of the Bedouin fight of three
days before but nothing remained to show what
had happened. The warring tribes, when France
puts forth her hand, fold up their black goat-skin
tents and flee into the recesses of the bare hills
that fringe the desert

We got to Horns, the ancient Emesa, where
Zenobia suffered defeat, at sunset. It is pleasantly
surrounded by well-watered pastures and fields,
and we found very clean and nice night-quarters
at the primitive little railway inn. Here we had
the pleasure of meeting the new Superintendent
of Monuments in Syria, M. Seyrig, very keen on

221

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

his job and very learned. He told us that he meant
to begin at once to clear the temple wall at
Palmyra.

The next morning we visited the mosque in
Horns, with its stately minaret of patterned stones,
as usual the heir of a temple and an early Christian
church. Some of the antique columns and capitals
are still to be seen, as well as a niche containing
remains of early beautiful green and blue mosaic
decorations. The name Horns seems to be a de-
generate form of the ancient name Emesa (first
mentioned by Pliny as Hemisa) . It was the birth-
place of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus,
whose son, Caracalla (211-217) was the first Syrian
Emperor the Romans had. But the town is even
better known as the birthplace of Elagabalus (218-
222), the grandson of her sister, Julia Maesa, who
managed to have the child proclaimed Emperor at
the age of thirteen, having already made him high
priest in the famous Emesa Temple of the Sun-god,
Ba'al.

THE SACRED STONE OF EMESA

I looked vainly around in the mosque courtyard
to see if any fragments were left of the sacred black
stone marked with obscene symbols that Elagabalus
brought from Horns and set up in Rome to be wor-
shipped. Gibbon's description of its entrance into
Rome is unforgettable.

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PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

In a solemn procession through the streets of Rome,
the way was strewed with gold dust; the black stone,
set in precious gems, was placed on a chariot drawn
by six milk-white horses richly caparisoned. The pious
Emperor held the reins, and, supported by his minis-
ters, moved slowly backwards, that he might per-
petually enjoy the felicity of the divine presence. In
a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the
sacrifices of the god Elagabalus were celebrated with
every circumstance of cost and solemnity. The rich-
est wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the
rarest aromatics, were profusely consumed on his
altars. Around the altar a chorus of Syrian damsels
performed their lascivious dances to the sound of bar-
barian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state
and army, clothed in long Phoenician tunics, officiated
in the meanest functions with affected zeal and secret
indignation.

So ridiculous and indecent were the orgies that
centred round the stone, which, among other
things, was solemnly married to a stone brought
from Egypt, that upon the Emperor's death the
outraged people sent it back again to Emesa,
where, in the meantime, the finer symbolism of
Christianity was beginning to replace the early
worship of stones to which mankind has ever been
prone.

STONE WORSHIP

My mind wandered off to the sacred stones
worshipped today which I had seen to Mount

223

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Moriah's "Rock" which we had left behind us in
Jerusalem, and the Stone of Unction in the Holy
Sepulchre, polished by Christian lips pressed upon
it in the ecstasy of emotion ; to the Rock in the S'anc-
tuary of Monte Gargano which retains the impress
of St. Michael's foot and around which the tongues
of pilgrims annually trace a circle of blood; to
the Madonna del Filar at Saragossa, in its splendid
rococo church, unceasingly adored by worshippers
and pilgrims following each other in procession
around the gorgeous shrine to touch with their
finger-tips the stone hidden in the wall at the back
of it. I recalled the famous Notre Dame de Filler
in the Cathedral of Chartres, where the Canons
go in procession after office to sing anthems to
the "Black Virgin," and where, as Rouillard wrote
in 1608, "the usual crowd of pilgrims is so large
and their devotion so great that the column of
stone which supports the Holy Image is worn
nearly to the breaking point by the kisses of devout
Catholics." I recalled the candles burning before
the chapel, with the pious offerings of gold and
silver hearts, flowers and jewels, the priests who
are constantly on guard before it, the children I
saw being consecrated to it. I began to think of
more primitive ceremonies and cults : of the sacri-
fice of sheep that we were told is still made on
certain festivals before the pillar of a Christian
church in the Jebel-Druse; of the meteoric stone

224

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

built into the wall of the Ka'ba at Mecca upon
which today the faithful, in circling round the
little shrine, stop to implant a reverent kiss. I
regretted that the great Temple of Apollo (or
Venus) at Hieropolis (the Holy City near the
town of Aleppo to which our faces were set) had
been entirely destroyed so that there was no longer
a chance of evoking there the ritual by which the
prosperity of Syria in ancient times was assured;
for it was the custom that a couple of men, twice
during the year, should ascend the two enormous
phallic stones about a hundred and eighty feet high
which stood in the vestibule of this temple, to
remain there for seven days without sleeping, pray-
ing for the well-being of Syria and communing
with the gods. 6 I recalled that even the Chosen
People, finding everywhere among the Gentiles
they conquered, especially among the Canaanites,
innumerable sacred stones and pillars, like all in-
vaders took up with the superstitions of the con-
quered, which were intimately bound up with the
agricultural life of the country, so that they also
became sedulous worshippers of stones and pillars
in spite of Jehovah's fierce prohibition against
giving homage or adoration to such objects. Solo-
mon himself set up two brazen pillars before his
Temple at Jerusalem, naming them "The Stab-
lisher" and "In Him Is Strength." These have
been taken as symbols of Jehovah but they were

225

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

perhaps inspired by Solomon's reprobated perver-
sion to the old cults of the country, when he defiled
the holy town of Jerusalem with worshipping in
"the high places that were on the right hand of
the Mount of Corruption which Solomon the King
of Israel had builded for Astoreth the abomination
of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomina-
tion of the Moabites, and for Milkon the abomi-
nation of the children of Amon" (I Kings 11:5).
Even Josiah, who "brake in pieces the images and
cut down the groves and filled their places with the
bones of men," who pulled down the altar of Bethel
and stamped it to powder and burned the grove,
nevertheless stood by a pillar in the House of the
Lord to make a covenant with the people (II Kings
2 3 :I 3)- The legend recounted in Genesis of
Jacob who "rose up early in the morning and took
the stone that he had taken for a pillow, and set
it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it,"
and the subsequent custom of carrying this stone
to Jerusalem to be re-anointed and mourned over,
were no doubt a myth and a ceremony invented
to explain a heathen belief and to translate a f etish-
istic into a commemorative ritual.

Evidently stones have a strong hold on the re-
ligious imagination, and the cult of them lingered
on into Christian times, so that the Council of
Aries in 485 promulgated an edict against the
worship of stones, trees, and fountains, which was

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PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

repeated, with the penalty of excommunication
attached, by subsequent Councils down to the time
of Charlemagne, who in 789 himself published a
decree condemning the "foolish people" who still
persisted in this worship. But old cults are hard
to kill and down to the end of the fourteenth cen-
tury ecclesiastical legislation was directed against
stone-worship. Finally a compromise was made
by placing statues of the Virgin on the original
sacred pillars or stones as at Chartres and Sara-
gossa. A member of the French Ministry of Mex-
ico told me once that the peasants who came into
the City of Mexico were especially fervent in their
worship at one of the chapels in the cathedral,
where it was found on investigation that the be-
jewelled and embroidered satin dress of the statue
of the Virgin on the altar hid a crude black stone
which had been the chief fetich of the country folk.
Many of these details, I must confess, were only
a confused general impression in my mind when
we looked for the Sacred Stone of Elagabalus at
Emesa. As I have continued to read on this fas-
cinating subject, Palestine and Syria have grown
more and more mysterious ; every hill I remember
so well is crowned in imagination as some are in
reality by stones, and I feel at times as if I had
joined the pilgrims who circled and danced round
them in worship. I see the worshippers but here
my imagination fails to make me a participant!

227

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

bending to kiss the holy stone or anointing it with
oil or the blood of animals sacrificed at its base.
I stand in fancy under the sacred trees that were
always planted by the stones and feel with a shiver
the stirring of the immanent Ba'al that inhabits
both stones and trees.

KAMA

The road to Aleppo, where we had planned to
sleep, was too long to permit us the detours neces-
sary to see what people told us afterwards is one of
the most beautiful sites in all Syria, the town of
Apamea, famous for its oils and perfumes and for
its grapes which Elagabalus brought to Rome to
make wine for his horses. Nor did we get to the
lake of Horns made by the broadening of the river
Orontes, though our desert-parched eyes longed
for the sight of plenty and plenty of water. But
this we found for our consolation at Kama, a town
supposed to have been founded by Job, where giant
wheels festooned with moss and ferns grumble and
creak and sing all day and all night, as they drip-
pingly raise the water from the low-lying Orontes
to the level of the town on its banks and the fields
that stretch behind. These great water-wheels are
beloved by the townspeople, who give to each one
its name. Certainly they were among the most un-
usual and picturesque sights of our whole trip.
Alas! That same evening at Aleppo our friend

228

PALMYRA TO ALEPPO

M. de Caix, whom we met there, told us he was
travelling with the enthusiastic Irrigation Officer,
who was pushing a scheme to replace them with
mechanical pumps capable of supplying water to
many more acres than is possible to the present
lazy wheels turned only by the current

Kama or Hamath, called by Josephus Amatha,
was rebaptized as Epiphania by Antiochus IV
Epiphanes and was thus spoken of under this ap-
pellation by early Christian authors. But the old
name clung to it, as old names have a way of doing.
Kama had a brief period of prosperity under a
descendant of Saladin, the talented Abulfeda (b.
1270), who was known by an Arab name meaning
"the king favoured by God." We spent a long
time in the beautiful courtyard of the mosque,
where antique columns, set up or lying on the mar-
ble pavement, fountains, cypresses and a deep well
reflecting in its smooth surface some columns and
the protecting dome they support,* make one of
those quiet places for meditation and reverie that
Moslem shrines so frequently offer. Many Chris-
tian shrines to be sure, standing alone, neglected
and partly fallen in decay, are in their way equally
moving. But you do not have to go out to seek
these Syrian shrines, you enter them from a noisy,

*This building resembles the "Treasury" in the compound of the
Great Mosque at Damascus. Another example, the only other, is to
be seen in the Mosque courtyard at Horns. It is discussed by Van
Berchem, pp. 174-5.

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A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

perhaps utterly banal street, and the four (or
more) civilizations that have built them up, the
gigantic foundations of the pre-Roman civiliza-
tion, with its sun- and nature-worship, the Roman
cult, to be read in the scattered columns and carved
capitals, the early Christian and Byzantine traces,
noticeable probably in the shape of the edifice and
in some of the capitals, and then the Arab-Moslem,
with its delicate stone ornamentation, its richly
carved pulpits, its mihrabs of semi-precious stones,
its stalactited portals, its fountains and cypresses
all wrapped in a soft veil of decay and neglect
have roots so deeply intertwined in human history,
are so touching in their various appeals, that there
is nothing on earth to compare with them.

CHAPTER X

ALEPPO

ALEPPO

TN Aleppo once. . . ." Was It this beginning
A of Othello's last speech, or might it have been
photographs and reproductions of Aleppo's citadel
with its arch-borne causeway that lured us there
the magic of a phrase, the promise held out by a
picture? It had been in a way the goal of our
whole journey, and when we began to approach so
near that we thought every turn of the road would
reveal the outlines of the town that had haunted
our imaginations, we felt as children feel before
the curtain goes up on their first theatre. At last
there it was, the most eastern of Syria's big towns,
with its domes and minarets and its fringe of ceme-
teries and fields, the lines and circles of green fol-
lowing the water-courses and marking the pools.
And there, above all, was If the citadel we had
come so far to see, rising from the midst of the
town on battlemented heights, touched with the
red-gold light of the sunset, the huge sloping stone
causeway leading to a giant portal supported by
high brick arches of a deeper red with violet shad-
ows our dream coming true, coming more than

231

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

true, enhanced beyond imagination by the actuali-
ties of size and colour and surroundings, by sky and
sun, and by the Sense of Adventure ! We, our com-
monplace, twentieth-century selves, could now say,
"In Aleppo once. . . ."

It is a temptation to leave it there, half seen
through dreams, perhaps more real to us so than
the actual noisy, modernized town. I should take
the companions of my dream to only a few chosen
spots to our sunset haunt, the high part of the
Firdusi cemetery whence, over the uneven graves
that encroach on the rolling fields of grain, you
see a few minarets and domes, and then the in-
effable citadel and the giant causeway. We should
wander through the level acres of neglected tombs
and mausoleums and past the ancient quarries
which look like the caverns of giants, to the Fir-
dusi Mosque standing in an orchard of pistachio
trees with a grape-vine pergola and a fountain in
its ruined courtyard again one of those melan-
choly and poignant Moslem shrines. Perhaps the
dream would not be broken if we could find our-
selves crossing the causeway to the citadel without
having passed through streets clanging with trams
and noisy with the hoots and the unbridled escape-
valves of motors, and without having noticed the
rising pile of brand-new, and of course hideous,
government buildings destined to ruin every dis-
tant view of the town's one glory if we could,

232

ALEPPO

without preliminaries, find ourselves in front of
the gate-tower, stern and impressive as mass but
delicately rippled with Arab ornament We
should pass dreamily up and up through the sev-
eral inside gateways, with their reliefs of serpents
and of the Lion of Beybars, and find ourselves on
the walled plateau with its ruins. Some one would
be sure to point out to us the spot where Abraham
camped and milked his cows and left to the town
then a mere cluster of tents and hovels the
name Haleb which means milk. As we are dream-
ing, we may accept the legend and the explanation
(probably ex post facto) of the town's name*

We should quickly find ourselves on the walls
looking out over the desert that stretches to the
Euphrates to Baghdad. "The Road to Baghdad"
who has not taken an Arabian Night's journey
along it in imagination? We should see in our
dream the ghosts of caravans coming up from the
East with their silks and spices, jewels and ivory,
and asses laden with salt, and catch echoes of the
shouts of the armies that marched along the sartie
track to take the town Khosroes II, who burnt it
to the ground in 61 1 ; Byzantine armies which beat
against the citadel in vain; the Mongols under
Hulagu who poured in from the north in 1287;
Tamerlane, who again destroyed Aleppo in 1400;
the Mamelukes ; then the Egyptians under Ibrahim

233

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Pasha; now the French with their Mandate . . .
but here our dream breaks down into the sordid
realities of frontier disputes, tariff vexations, Turk-
ish bandits and the rest. No! we should rather
dream back two thousand five hundred years and
see Shalmaneser offering sacrifices at Aleppo to the
mysterious god Hadad, and then, for time is noth-
ing to dreams, picture to ourselves Alexander's
general, Seleucus, baptizing (in vain) the town
with the name of Beroea, and Julian on his expedi-
tion from Antioch against the Persians, stopping
at the citadel to sacrifice a white bull, 1 We should
see the buildings toppling down in the earthquake
a hundred years ago that completed the ruin
wrought by the Turkish janissaries. But above all
we should indulge in our favourite sunset pastime,
that of watching the shadows creep over the plain
reducing the houses to pin-points of light in the
darkness,

If a magic carpet should carry us from spot to
spot in the town, we should wander through the
sun-flecked streets of the bazaars and should get
glimpses of many a mosque, enjoying especially
the cool, domed Turkish interiors and the deserted
courts. We should see the old Hammam, with its
remains of delicate stucco decorations, and we
should look with wonder at the half naked men
who in a damp inner room are stamping out and
rolling masses of felt, chanting as they work a

234

ALEPPO

double ritornelle that sounds half like music and
half like weird cries from a madhouse. Probably
their occupation is as old as tents and carpets them-
selves.

We should need to have our wits more about us
if we were wafted into the mosque called J ami-el-
Halawiyeh, for we should have to perform that
process, which becomes gradually more and more
easy to the experienced sight-seer, of thrusting away
all that is modern and imaginatively reconstruct-
ing the ancient appearance. In this case the res-
toration consists in a thick coat of shiny mustard-
coloured paint smeared over all the stonework*
When we entered, the Imam himself was there
looking round with great satisfaction upon his de-
plorable handiwork. Nevertheless the fragment
of Queen Helena's old church remains impressive
and interesting. The apse and transepts, which
are all that are left, are decorated with pilasters
connected by a boldly sculptured frieze supported
by the wind-blown acanthus columns that we knew
already at Ravenna, and had seen recently in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the El Aksa
Mosque at Jerusalem. But here on each side of
the arch of the apse the acanthus leaves are blown
in opposite directions, a very singular and beauti-
ful effect that we saw again, unspoiled by paint,
at Kalat-Siman. Still in this fragment of a Byzan-
tine church the grand impress of classic antiquity

235

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

lingers on, placing it in a nobler and more spa-
cious region than all the other mosques in the
town.

KALAT-SIMAN

Our first excursion from Aleppo was to Kalat-
Siman, the shrine of St. Simon Stylites. We took
it in the company of Dr. R. Riefstahl of Constanti-
nople and his young architect assistant, Mr.
Charles, who had been with us in Damascus and
now joined our party for the time of our stay at
Aleppo. This church is considered by special-
ists in early Christian archaeology as being the
most interesting, as it is the largest and least de-
stroyed, of the early churches in Syria. Interest-
ing I, too, found it, but not being a specialist in
early Christian architecture, I am aware that any-
thing I may have to say about it must be hopelessly
inadequate. It has been elaborately published by
Butler of Princeton, 2 and is discussed in compari-
son with other fifth-century churches by Beyer in
Der Syrische Kirchenbau.* He gives a ground
plan of the structure so admirably clear that I wish
I could reproduce it, and he also gives the recon-
structed fagade and reproduces some of the capi-
tals. Long before, De Vogue visited it, and in the
big volume (Volume II) of his Architecture civ-
ile et religieuse du I-FII siecle he gives a clear
ground plan and a series of those engravings that

236

ALEPPO

correspond so much better than most photographs
to our visual images of architecture.

The drive from Aleppo, among bare rocks in-
terspersed with narrow fertile valleys, was very
pleasant The last part was a swinging descent
into the valley below the shrine, which towered
above it on the scarp of a great rocky mound. It
was not easy for me to climb up in the sun that
already blazed above and beat up from the rock-
side, although the day was still young, I having
made an early start in company with the tireless
Dr, RiefstahL I was glad to rest in a shady cor-
ner outside the church, looking out on the view
which led on across a green watered plain and roll-
ing hills to the dreaming Taurus range on the
northwestern horizon. The scent of pungent herbs
and of honeysuckle perfumed the breeze that
sweetly smoothed away all sense of fatigue and
heat Presently the rest of the party arrived, fresh
and eager, and we began archaeologizing and
photographing. But not to the detriment of our
enjoyment, for the building is as beautiful as it is
interesting. The plan is simple enough, the four
arms of a Greek cross radiating from an imposing
octagonal open space in the centre which is sur-
rounded by columns with acanthus capitals con-
nected by arches and a richly sculptured frieze.
The first glimpse through the portal is of an in-

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

credible but ordered wealth of beautiful architec-
tural details, like an organ fugue in stone.

I have never seen anything like this happy com-
bination of basilica, Greek cross and central octag-
onal space. It was with surprise that I read in the
Travels of Irby and Mangles that they did not
turn aside to see the church since they learnt that
it was "of the date of the lower empire" and "to-
tally uninteresting." But I daresay I should have
felt the same had I visited Aleppo a hundred years
ago, equipped with the average, or even superior,
culture of the time. De Vogue's pioneer book was
not published till nearly fifty years after these trav-
ellers had visited the region. Some people think
that taste is instinctive, that appreciation springs
up spontaneously at the sight of a beautiful object,
of no matter what epoch. Reading, observation
and experience lead me to believe that taste with-
out culture does not carry one far enough. Taste
alone is apt to limit itself to "I like" or "I don't
like." Enjoyment of beauty starts with instinctive
zest and curiosity but should not remain in the
rudimentary phase of mere personal preference or
repugnance. With the aid of culture the pleasing
object becomes a vortex, so to speak, into which
are drawn numerous currents of interest and en-
joyment to flow out again and wake to f ruitfulness
many a latent sensibility. Education and culture
bring to the aid of uninstructed enjoyment all the

238

ALEPPO

powers of the mind. The truly cultured person
must add to native love of beauty the appreciation
and understanding of every mode of art that has
ever exercised the creative faculty of man. Dis-
crimination of values will necessarily follow; that
can take care of itself. But taste itself is as sus-
ceptible to the education adapted to its special
character as are the muscles of the body to physical
training, and becomes what dancing and skating
are to hopping and sliding. Discrimination of val-
ues is merely eliminating awkward and uncouth
movements. This is, however, too big a subject to
do more than glance at when we are thinking of
St. Simon's Church as seen with the eyes of our
present enlightenment.

In the middle of the extremely beautiful octagon
stands the rough-hewn rock that served as base for
the pillar upon which St. Simon Stylites passed
his weather-beaten, moveless life. His first experi-
ment in living on a column began in 422, but after
seven years he moved up and fixed himself on a
higher column (thirty-eight feet high the exact
Baedeker says), there to die after thirty years.
Curious, worshipping crowds in thousands surged
around his feet, his pupils drinking in his words
as he harangued the multitude, and Masses were
said at the altar-stone of his pillar's base. It must
have been soon after his death in 529 that the great
shrine was erected, religious fervour sparing no

239

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

pains to make it worthy of so great a saint. The
effect must indeed have been palatial and sump-
tuous. The arm with the apse still shows traces of
red paint, and De Vogue reproduces a section of a
coloured moulding the details of which are now
obliterated. Ruin is, alas! still encroaching on the
edifice. I presume an earthquake threw down the
roofs and the many columns that lie on the ground
in confused masses, but time, though slower, is also
an enemy. Since Gertrude Bell's book of 1907*
many of the small columns that, in a double row
one above the other, decorated the outside of the
apse and which one sees in situ in her reproduction,
have fallen down and lie about in a ploughed field
that slopes down the hill to the huts in the valley.
They are sure to be carried away for building.

One detail that we noticed with special interest
was the ribbon-like ornamentation that ran around
the tops of the windows and joined them together.
This is often supposed to be a peculiarity of Seljuk
architecture, and we had noted it at Konia and on
the desert Seljuk khans in the region, but of course
it became clear that they did not invent it, for here
it was on a building more than half a millennium
earlier.

As we stood on the rocky plateau which holds
the shrine, the adjacent monastery and all the de-
pendent buildings (including a fine octagonal
domed church on the western edge which is now

240

ALEPPO

the filthy dwelling-place of several Arab families),
we saw on all the surrounding slopes the ruins of
churches and buildings, the largest group being
the almost deserted but fairly well preserved town
of Deir Siman, There they lie, their stones as
sharp and clean-cut as if the echo of the chisel
stroke still sounded on the hill, cities as perfect as
the day they were built, except where earthquake
has cast them down. For this we must thank the
Arabs before whom the inhabitants fled en masse,
but who had no use for the towns thus deserted.
Around them grain fields rippled in the wind, and
here and there a walnut or poplar cast its shade,
or little fruit orchards clustered beside a well. We
chose a roundabout way and came down to our mo-
tors along the gently sloping and well-terraced west
side of the hill, and this enabled us to see some of
the old ruined pilgrims' hostels and the terrace and
well where converts were baptized. Again the
sunset lights and shadows caused us to linger, and
we saw that our dragoman became touch per-
turbed at the delay. His remarks about the police
regulations of Aleppo requiring all vehicles to re-
turn to the town before sunset fell on deaf ears
but afterwards, although not on this excursion, we
had to acknowledge that his anxiety was well
founded. We lingered in fact so longit is hard
to leave beauty that one may never again look
upon! that by the time we saw* standing almost

241

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

alone on another rocky scarp, the outline of an early
basilica we meant to visit in returning, it was quite
too late to climb up to visit it, for dusk had fallen,

MAARAT EN-NOMAN

Kalat-Siman had so much interested and de-
lighted us that we started with enthusiasm the next
day to visit some more of these ruined early Chris-
tian shrines and towns which exist in great num-
bers in northern Syria. As the radius from Aleppo
was too wide to accomplish all we wanted in one
day, we had arranged to go to a small town about
thirty miles distant, called Maarat en-Noman, get-
ting horses from the police station there, and tak-
ing one excursion, returning to the village for the
night, and another excursion the next morning.
We started betimes, but on reaching Maarat en-
Noman we found such sorry nags awaiting us that
we could not bear to add to their misery by mount-
ing them. At the police station we discovered that
all the good horses were occupied in processions
and demonstrations in honour of Jeanne d'Arc, and
none was free for us till noon. We looked about at
the only slightly interesting buildings of the town,
which is thus described in the Journey to Aleppo
and Damascus already mentioned :

Almarah, or al Mar ah al Naaman, that is in Arabic
the Disease of Ostriches, was once a considerable and
strong city, as appears from several Vestigia. It is fre-

242

ALEPPO

quently mentioned by the Holy War writers, having
been taken by the Christians from the Mahommedans
under the Conduct of the famous Boemand and Rai-
mond, Count of St. Giles, in the year of Christ 1097,
who dismantled it. It continued in a flourishing Condi-
tion for a long time after; but at present it hath lost all
its former Splendours, being reduced to the Condition
of a good village only, where there is nothing to be seen
on every side, but Cellars and ruined Vaults.

We finally went to wait in the house of the Sheik,
where our dragoman had arranged for us to spend
the night. Our host, the town deputy and owner
of three villages, was the richest and most impor-
tant man in the place, and as we sat for an endless
time (it seemed) in his reception room, drinking
coffee and pouring out very thin conversation, drop
by drop through the dragoman filter, we watched
with interest the uninterrupted coming and going
of various dependents and clients desirous of get-
ting the great man's orders and advice, and marked
how they invariably took off their shoes before en-
tering his presence. When our interest began to
change into indifference and then into active bore-
dom, we realized that we had arisen very early and
that an intolerable scirocco was burning us to our
very bones, and we asked if we might go to the
room prepared for us and rest until the horses
came. Permission was graciously accorded, and
we went to lie down. The room, however, was

243

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

creeping with vermin wandering about in broad
daylight, so we were thankful indeed when at last
the horses appeared. By this time we had made up
our minds to return to Aleppo for the night, ruins
or no ruins. But our troubles had only begun.
No one was sure of the way and we rode for hours
under the blazing sun whose heat the scirocco
seemed only to drive deeper under our skins, our
horses scarcely able to make their way along the
stony paths we were guided to. Finally, entirely
worn out, we reached Dana (we saw another Dana
later on our way back from Antioch), where a
fairly well preserved tomb with a portico of four
Corinthian columns with wind-blown acanthus
capitals and a pyramidal vault inside was the most
interesting monument

But it began to grow late, especially in view of
the return ride and the long road to Aleppo, and
Iskander showed great uneasiness, only too well
justified by the event So, most unwillingly, we
gave up the other dead cities we had meant to
visit though it was nothing short of maddening
to see the ruins of one of the finest of them all,
Ruweiha, profiled against the sky line, and to know
that there were over a hundred more within the
space of the one hundred to one hundred and fifty
mile triangle having the Orontes north of Kama,
Apamea and Antioch as bases Reha, Mondjileia,
Dellonza, Refadi, Seyilla, Deir Seta, Deir Darin,

244

ALEPPO

Kefr-Kilt, Sermede Khatoma, Kopomoza, El Bar-
rett being among the best known, with scores of
others still to explore. The description of them
given by De Vogue only added to our disappoint-
ment:

In passing through these deserted streets, these aban-
doned courts, these porticoes where the vine entwines
itself about the broken columns, one receives an im-
pression analogous to that which one experiences at
Pompeii; less complete, because the climate of Syria
does not protect its treasures like the ashes of Vesuvius,
but more novel, because the civilization which one con-
templates is less known than that of the age of Augus-
tus. One is transported into the midst of Christian
Society; one observes its life not the hidden life of
the catacombs nor the humble, timid, suffering existence
which is commonly pictured, but a large, opulent, ar-
tistic life, in grand houses built of immense hewn
stones, perfectly arranged, with carved galleries and
balconies, beautiful gardens planted with vines, cellars
and vessels of stone for preserving it, large subter-
ranean kitchens, stables for horses, beautiful squares
lined with porticoes, elegant baths, magnificent churches
with columns, flanked with towers and surrounded with
splendid tombs.

By one of those phenomena of which the East af-
fords frequent examples, all these Christian cities were
abandoned at the same time probably at the epoch of
the Mahometan invasion and since that they have
not been touched. Except that earthquakes have
thrown to the ground many of the towers and columns,
they lack only the beams and planks of the edifices.

' 245

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

We tried to console ourselves with our favourite
phantom of "next time," planning to return with
our own tents and horses and be dependent on no
one.

Sadly we turned our horses back towards Maarat
en-Noman. It was decidedly dusk when we re-
joined our car, and presently, fifteen miles from
Aleppo, we were stopped by the police who forbade
us to go farther on account of brigands. It looked
as if we should have to sleep on the rocks all night
We brought out the few influential names we knew
and at last induced them to telephone from the
wayside guardhouse to Aleppo to ask permission
to return in the dark, we taking the risks (we did
not know what they were 1) * After an hour's wait
a reluctant permission was given, and we hurried
on. Our chauffeur was frightened to death and
scurried along at the rate of fifty miles an hour,
while we all saw ambushes behind every rock, and
menacing Turks in the sheep and camels along the
road. We got in safely, luckier than some other
motorists who just about this time, as we learnt later
from a German newspaper (such incidents being
suppressed in local journals), were held up,
dragged from their car, stripped, put in a ditch and
forbidden by a Turk with a gun to move. They
were kept there, shivering, till seven other parties
of motorists had come along, to meet with the same
treatment. Then the brigands, piling all the

246

ALEPPO

clothes, rugs, bags, and whatever else the cars con-
tained, onto their own camion, made of!, and their
prisoners raced into Aleppo, freezing and naked
as they were. Naturally Iskander Haiek, who was
responsible for us, and whose dragomanic reputa-
tion would suffer if we met with any misfortune,
was not happy over our sunset proclivities, but we
rendered him only a tardy justice.

scmocco

On this expedition we had by no means our first
but our severest experience of the Syrian scirocco
or Sherkeyeh which was our faithful compan-
ion through the whole month of May. In Italy
the scirocco when it comes generally stays for three
days ; in Syria it flickers in and out like nothing so
much as those swarms of gnats that at one moment
surround the wayfarer and the next are gone- We
had its visits every day, I think, but it seldom
stayed with us the whole day. Sometimes it was a
morning when we suddenly found ourselves
breathless and bathed in purposeless sweat; some-
times it was an afternoon when the light cotton-
woolly clouds gathered overhead and stifled us.
Or it was a mere touch and away, an hour, half
an hour ; almost before we realized that it was on
us, the wispy clouds streamed off and we drew in
comfortable refreshing draughts of air. Only
once again, after the Maarat en-Noman excursion,

247

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

did it oppress us for a whole day the day we
visited the Crac des Chevaliers* And not even
then did we experience its full fury, when it comes
on the wings of a vehement wind filling the air
with dust and finely sifted sand, nor did we ever
find it quite so oppressive as some people describe
itthat comes later in the year: "The birds hide
in the thickest shade and take shelter in caves and
under great rocks; the labourers retire from the
fields and close the windows and doors of their
houses. No one has energy to make a noise and the
very air is too weak and languid to stir the pendent
leaves of even the tallest poplars." B

MESKENEH

Our friend, M. Eustache de Lorey of the Azim
Palace in Damascus, and his fellow-excavator, M.
Georges Salles, had waved before our enchanted
eyes the possibility of spending a day with them at
the excavations overlooking the Euphrates. Of
course we could not refuse such an invitation, and
one morning we started out to cross the fifty-odd
miles of desert to get sight of the famous river and
to share the fun of digging on its banks.

The first part of the way led us through numer-
ous villages of the "bee-hive" type that had been
interesting and amusing us ever since we entered
the Aleppo district. Our only acquaintance with
them thus far had been on Assyrian bas-reliefs.

248

ALEPPO

Like mammoth growths of mushrooms these
brown and whitewashed conical houses and gran-
aries cluster together, often on the slopes of some
ancient Tell, and always of course beside a spring
or well. Man has never constructed for himself
habitations more insect-like, and one speculates in
vain about the characters and thoughts of those
who dwell in them. Village after village dotted
the desert, yet we never passed one without a thrill
of excitement and wonder at their strangeness. As
we approached the great river and got among the
fantastically-shaped limestone rocks that shut in
on the west the broad Euphrates Valley these vil-
lages ceased, and the few settlements that lay along
the part of our road overlooking the river were
of the more ordinary Arab character. 6

The excavations were taking place at Eski Mes-
keneh, a short distance to the south of the modern
village which now lies several miles from the right
bank of the Euphrates, the river having changed its
course since the days when this town, then the
greatest river-port of the whole region between the
Mediterranean and the Gulf of Persia, commanded
the caravan road that connected Asia Minor and
North Syria with Persia* First belonging to the
ancient Persians, then to the Greeks (mentioned
for the first time by Xenophon) , the Romans gained
possession of it, but lost it to the Sassanide Per-
sians. Afterwards it belonged to the Byzantine

249

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Empire and it still shows traces of Justinian's for-
tifications. It fell at last to the Arabs and re-
mained theirs till our Great War, except for a
brief interval in the early twelfth century when it
was held by the Crusader, Tancred of Antioch.
An inscription found on the spot tells that the
town was rebuilt by the brother of the famous
Saladin towards 1200, but its great days were al-
ready over, and it gradually fell into the present
heap of ruins from which only the remains of a
Byzantine brick church and a fine brick polygonal
Arab minaret of the thirteenth century stand out.
The ancient town was called Balis or Barbalis-
sus and its massive Roman walls and forum, tem-
ple and baths are gradually being uncovered. Of
the sixteen acres within the old walls, however, a
little more than a quarter has so far been exca-
vated and much may be hidden there. For the
present the chief finds are broken plates, jugs, and
dishes of pottery, dating from the eighth to the
thirteenth centuries, and probably of local manu-
facture. Many pieces were brought in fresh from
the excavated trenches while we sat chatting with
our hosts in the shady loggia between the two bed-
rooms that formed their shelter. On a terrace out-
side crouched an Arab, absorbed in the task of put-
ting together the fragments brought in by the dig-
gers pieces of beautiful jars and plates of colours
blues and greens and rusty browns that people

250

ALEPPO

have forgotten how to make or use. It seems that
he had appeared one day on his donkey and offered
his services, refusing all remuneration until his
skill had been tested. His long slender fingers
were fitting piece after piece with delicate skill,
and he scarcely looked up when we came. The
only thing that distracted him from his superior
jig-saw puzzle was a cigarette offered to him, as
to all the excavators, when M. de Lorey assembled
them in a row on the terrace for our inspection.
Even then, the cigarette had to be lighted and
placed in his mouth by another man so that he
might not have to let go of the pieces of pottery
he was manipulating.

The excavators were of all types, some of them
of the hawk-nosed, lean Arab sort, others closer to
the Negro race, others so European in looks that
if they wore our clothes we could not tell that they
were not our own kinsmen. One of the young men
was a hashish addict, and his face looked relaxed
and weak. We were told that stealing is the rule
among the native excavators. They are of course
searched when they leave the diggings to see if
they have anything concealed about their persons,
but they hide their best finds in the sand and get
them perhaps afterwards when the excavation is
closed down in the summer. However, towards
the end, if special rewards are offered for rare
finds, these rewards never go unclaimed!

251

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

We walked through the ruins and watched the
excavations with interest; we ate the best lunch we
had in Syria and had a rest, and then sat chatting
quietly watching the never-ending procession of
camels and donkeys, sheep and goats, travelling
past us on the road below. The great river lay at
some distance, and its muddy current was scarcely
distinguishable from the low banks on the other
side.

Far too early, we thought, Iskander began to
show anxiety to start back, but we had not then
heard of the acts of brigandage that were taking
place, and we could not bear to miss the beauty
that grew and grew as the sun dipped to the west.
The great river, which had at first disappointed us,
turned blue and silver, while little hillocks and
shrubs threw long violet shadows across the golden
plain.

ANTIOCH

Our visit to Antioch took place before the trip
to the Euphrates, but I have left it to the end, be-
cause, although it was the most utterly enchanting
thing we did in our whole journey, there is not
much to say about it. My pen is tired of writing
"beautiful," and I feel as if I ought to have saved
up the word for that idyllic valley of the Orontes
where once the third city of the Roman Empire
stood. I haven't the vocabulary few indeed

252

ALEPPO

would havel to convey any adequate impression
of beauty so rare, so harmonious, so soothing as
that of the site of AntiochI

Our road from Aleppo followed in a general
way the Roman Road, long stretches of which were
visible, and it led almost continually through ruins
of Greco-Roman towns, of villas, of khans. 7 The
road and inns were described by Chrysostom as be-
ing guarded by men armed with javelins, bows and
slings, under captains entirely devoted to the serv-
ice. We, also, met mounted policemen detailed
to protect the road, but rifles had driven out the
more picturesque arms of fourteen hundred years
ago. When we had finally crossed the low moun-
tain pass, we saw the Plain of Antioch, spread out
before us. Instead of following the well-made
Alexandretta road which crosses the plain and
turns off to Antioch under the northern hills, we
mistakenly took the old road which skirts the south-
ern hills that frame in the plain. It was a horrible
road, full of bumps, often deep in mud, but we
were glad we took it, for our necessarily slow
progress gave us more time to drink in the extraor-
dinary beauty of the scene.

Only ten or twelve times in our lives has it been
granted to us to find nature so completely adapted
to all that is gentle and harmonious in the soul of
man. Whether the charm lies in the rhythm of the
hills that enclose these ancient valleys I cannot say.

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

The peace of spirit they engender "passeth under-
standing." The first time we definitely received
from landscape this impression was when we stood
on the slopes that overlook the plain of Sybaris,
which is softly enarmed by low rocky hills that
lead the Crassus to the sea. Then we recognized
it again at Assisi, the harmony still lingering in that
Valley of the Upper Tiber in spite of the smoke-
stacks with which modern Italian enterprise seeks
to break the spell. At St. Remy in Provence and
at Girgente we had the same sense of reconciliation
between earth and man; also at Broussa, so like
Assisi, looking over the vale ; and again from the
porch of the Church of Liveri, near Nola, where
distant Vesuvius shows its gentlest face ; above the
enchanted valley of oranges and olives that one
sees from the upper Church at Lorca, on the road
from Granada to Murcia, where the soft slopes of
the embossing hills lead the gaze gently towards
what one senses to be the sea; from the hills behind
Nicea, glimpsing the blue lake across the orchards
of the ruined town ; from the Villa Livia looking
down the Tiber Valley to St. Peter's incomparable
cupola faint against the distant sky; by the Lake of
Galilee looking towards Mount Hermon, or down
the lake from Capernaum; and, finally, from the
rocks at Banyas looking down over the upper Val-
ley of the Jordan. But the site of Antioch is the
most completely satisfying of all these impres-

254

ALEPPO

Sj and I do not think it Is only because it is
the most recent Here the noise of "Time's winged
chariot" ceases to be heard. There is no succession
of minutes, hours, or days, the accidents of life are
merged in its Essence. "We shall stay forever,"
we feel

From the little hotel where we lodged we could
hear all night the restful creaking of the huge
river-wheels which here, as at Kama, were lifting
up the reluctant water of the Orontes to supply the
town and flood the fields, turning all the land into a
divine oasis, and incidentally causing the fountain
in our courtyard to pulsate with a slow rhythm.
Our hotel was a many-windowed, eighteenth-cen-
tury Turkish villa standing in its own garden, with
charming large rooms, ceilings with painted stucco
decorations, paved terraces, a pergola, and orange
trees, under which the view, framed in green, gains
an added loveliness.

We drove out in the afternoon to the Groves of
Daphne, where the rich Antiochenes had their
sumptuous villas and gardens. Nothing remains
of that gorgeous past but a few scattered columns
lying in the grass, and the ruins of an aqueduct
Here, as by the original Peneus, Daphne escaped
the pursuit of Apollo by turning into a laurel ; here
the Sun-god and Hecate of the night, Artemis, Isis,
Aphrodite and other deities had their temples, and,
it appears, their orgiastic rites. But it seems that

255

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the local cults were gradually smothered and soft-
ened to the Greco-Roman uniformity, the dark
mysteries of the East attenuated by the more civ-
ilized rites of the Greeks. The fierce god hidden
in the flames of the old Canaanitic altars took on
the traits of Jupiter, and the savage Anaitis became
the chaste Diana. Here Olympian games were
held regularly from the reign of Caracalla (A.D.
212) down to the sixth century. But now only the
waterfalls that leap down the face of the garlanded
rocks in a deep closed dell remain unchanged. In
a cool bower of overhanging laurels and oaks, by
one of the springs which rose in a deep swaying
crystal pool and hurried off down the cliff, we
drank our tea and tried to call up the past We
could not recite the pages in which Gibbon has de-
scribed the grove, but we remembered his descrip-
tion of the Temple of Apollo, "one of the most
elegant places of devotion in the pagan world,"
and we recalled the colossal figure of the god
adorned with gold and gems that stood in it We
thought of the discomfiture of the Emperor Julian,
who hastened thither on the day of the annual fes-
tival, expecting to find the innumerable worship-
pers, the long processions of youths and maidens,
the hecatombs of fat oxen, the flowing libations
and the clouds of incense that once celebrated the
day, and found only "a single goose, provided at
the expense of the priest, a pale and solitary in-

256

ALEPPO

habitant of the decayed temple. * . . The altar
was deserted, the oracle had been reduced to si-
lence, and the holy ground was profaned by the
introduction of Christian and funeral rites," a
magnificent church having been erected on the site,
over the remains of Babylus (a Bishop of Antioch
who died in prison during the persecution of De-
cius). In vain did Julian send back the saint's
body to his original church in Antioch. The same
night the Temple of Daphne went up in flames
the interposition of heaven, as the Christians de-
clared and the statue of Apollo was consumed.
A festival at Daphne when it was still entirely pa-
gan was one of the three things we wished we could
have experienced, the second being the marriage of
Antony and Cleopatra which was celebrated in
37 B.C. at Antioch "the Beautiful" (as it was called
in antiquity) , and the third the hearing of one of
the fiery and eloquent sermons of St. John Chrysos-
tom. But we were happy, too, sitting by the
spring, and listening to the music of the cascades,
and happy driving back in the twilight, and going
out to stand on the infinitely romantic aqueduct
above Antioch and abandoning our souls to the
gentle melancholy of the scene.

How can I break this remembered mood by
mere facts? At least there are no existing visible
facts at Antioch to arouse archaeological passions.
Not a column remains of all the elaborate and

257

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

sumptuous town that once stretched across the wide
river. Nature has hidden in her bosom all vestiges
of the busy life that used to meet for trade and for
philosophical discussions under the great arcades.
There is still a small village, mainly Turkish,
where the men sit all day smoking in the cafes and
the women are scarcely seen; but walk a few paces,
and you are in quiet groves of olives and poplars
and oaks, where goatherds and shepherds pipe to
their flocks, and where the strange insistent tom-
tom of a distant drum suggests far-away rites and
primitive emotions. The total disappearance of
Antioch is somewhat of a mystery. True, it was
sacked again and again by Persians, by Romans, by
Arabs, but human destruction is never so complete
as all that. Perhaps the earthquakes explain it,
for ever since its foundation by Seleucus Nicatis in
301 B.C. these cataclysms have been often recorded.
A terrible one shook down the buildings in 184 B.C.,
another in A.D. 37,' and a still more destructive one
in 1 15. In 457-8 the island quarter was utterly de-
stroyed, in 526 twenty-five thousand people were
buried in the ruins, and five thousand again a few
years later. Only two sarcophagi that now stand
in the garden of the serai (Government House)
bear witness to the past

But stay, I forget the Great Wall how could I?
the most wildly improbable wall in the world,
climbing up and pitching down unscalable cliffs in

258

ALEPPO

its vain endeavour to shut out the invader. In
some places the wall rises to forty feet or more,
but it has mostly fallen ruined to a less imposing
height Only on the rugged Mount Silpius does
it keep its useless guard, for what surrounded the
town on the plain has, since 1870, been used for
building the new town. The morning after our
arrival, waked at daybreak, this time not by flies
but by the chirping of the swallows and the swish
of their wings as they flew in and out of my room,
which had as usual small round openings in the
wall above the shuttered windows, I got up and
breakfasted at five o'clock, and then walked up one
of the deep ravines that divide the various peaks of
Mount Silpius, to where the famous "Iron Door"
once stood. The iron is gone, but the great Roman
barrier is there, straddling the chasm, in form
something like a gigantically tall triumphal arch.
It once had an iron sluice that could be raised to
permit the overflow of the mountain stream that
rushes down in the winter with great force. Again
I feel my powers of description inadequate to con-
vey the super-romantic quality of that mountain
walk along a stony ledge clinging to the cliff, each
turn revealing a new series of jagged rocks and tow-
ering peaks rising one behind the other, and then at
last leading to the vast man-made barrier deserted
by its makers and their foes alike. This "Iron
Door" continues the precipitous wall that climbs

259

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

up round Mount Silpius, and is built not in the
grand Roman way with vast blocks of stone, but in
the Byzantine fashion of alternate courses of brick
and stone set in thick mortar, with a core of rubble
in the lower middle arch. Along the narrow path
I met a constant stream of peasants carrying their
small produce to the market, of donkeys piled high
with wood or brushwood, of small traders or mod-
est travellers astride mules or tough mountain
ponies. From a distance they looked like a train
of ants creeping along their way, intent upon their
own human-ant affairs. I sat for an hour on a rock
watching it all Such an hour one never forgets or
regrets. Only I was slightly haunted by a feeling
almost of wickedness in having all this enjoyment.
My husband had said the night before, "If you
enjoy this trip so much, Mary, it is worth while."
Why, I kept thinking, is it worth while to pour out
money and energy and the work of three men and
a maid for a lazy old lady of sixty-five to enjoy
sights? I could formulate no answer to this ques-
tion, but somehow the appreciation of the beauty of
the world and the deeper understanding of the
achievement of man that travel gives seem irrefut-
ably of the essence of life, like Love or Goodness,
and after a time, sitting there, my conscience ceased
to trouble me.

The rest of the party came along after break-
fasting at a more reasonable time, and then we

260

ALEPPO

climbed the opposite slope and saw the colossal
bust, presumably of a deity, carrying a smaller fe-
male figure on its shoulders, carved in the living
rock by order of Antiochus Epiphanes to avert a
pestilence from the city. One hopes it was more
successful than the great wall in keeping out the
enemy!

When we left Antioch and turned our backs on
the divine valley so gently protected by the two
mountainous ranges that meet in a soft slope to the
west, a less impressionistic mood took possession of
us. We tried to recall all we knew of the town
little enough, indeed, though the name wakes long
echoes in the mind. Vaguely we remembered Gib-
bon's description, which it is not inappropriate to
quote here:

The warmth of the climate disposed the natives to
the utmost intemperate enjoyment of tranquillity and
opulence; and the lively licentiousness of the Greeks
was blended with the hereditary softness of the Syrians.
Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit,
and the splendours of dress and furniture was the only
distinction of the citizen of Antioch. The arts of lux-
ury were honoured ; the serious and manly virtues were
the subject of ridicule; and the contempt of female
modesty and reverent age, announced the universal cor-
ruption of the capital of the East. The love of spec-
tacles was a taste or rather passion of the Syrians : the
most skilful artists were procured from the adjacent
cities; a considerable share of the revenue was devoted

261

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

to the public amusements ; and the magnificence of the
games, of the theatre, and circus was considered as the
happiness and the glory of Antioch.

On this background we could see the severe fig-
ure of Julian the Apostate, who spent the winter of
362-3 in Antioch writing his satire against the
licentious and effeminate manners of the place and
composing his treatise against the Christians both
in vain, for manners were not changed, and in the
time of Constantine the town became almost wholly
Christian, being the seat of the premier Patriarch
of the Eastern Church, and the successful rival of
Christian Alexandria. The Antiochenes even
claimed St. Peter as their original Bishop, on the
slender and contentious foundation of St. Paul's
statement that here he had "withstood Peter face to
face" (we should like to have seen that!} , More
authentic is the statement that it was at Antioch
that the followers of Jesus, converts made by Paul
and Barnabas, first received the name of "Chris-
tians." But the triumph of Christianity did not
change the luxurious and worldly habits of the
inhabitants. We pictured St. Chrysostom, thun-
dering in vain against their excessive fondness for
personal ornament ; his holy wrath had no effect
upon the tyranny of fashion ; the women crowded
to hear his sermons but kept their false hair and
their rouge; the men acknowledged him as their
spiritual director, but did not give up their phil-

262

ALEPPO

osophical discussions in the shade of the Daphne
wood, nor their fondness for the circus.

Nevertheless, the town was fervently religious,
as is shown in erection of sanctuaries and convents,
hostels, hospitals, schools, asylums, which were
built in spite of the attractions of the theatre and
circus, and which were initiated in the so-called
"dead cities" like Kalat and Deir Siman, which,
offshoots from Antioch, were once very much alive.
De Vogue thus describes the towns of this period
which owed their origin to Antioch:

The society reproved and guided by the preacher-
saint relives in its entirety in these monuments, with
its refinements and its humilities, its works of art and
of charity, its solid comfort and luxury and its sincere
faith; beside the rich villa we may find the school, be-
side the public bath the church, alongside the sumptu-
ous tomb the ecclesiastical hostel, and everywhere the
Cross sculptured on the stone and painted on the walls
witness to the Christian spirit which animated the in-
habitants of these dwellings ["We do not blush," said
Chrysostom, "at this once abhorred symbol, on the
contrary, we are proud of it."] ; everywhere also the
Greek line and edge, the acanthus leaf, and still more
the surety of method points to the Greek education and
the Greek culture of the builders.

Upon all this, confounding Paganism and Chris-
tianity, came the Arabs, destroying temples and
churches alike. They held the town until the Cru-
saders under Godefry de Bouillon took possession

263

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

of it in 1098. Encouraged by divine portents, these
ardent followers of the Cross made a "general mas-
sacre" of the inhabitants. Bohemond was king
here for a brief period, but in 1170 the French
quarter was destroyed by an earthquake, a less en-
couraging portent. In 1298 Beybars took it back
for the Moslems ; and theirs it remained until the
conclusion of our Great War.

We returned by the Alexandretta road, and were
able, with a short detour, to see the funeral monu-
ment at the northern Dana, an exquisite little
open-air building on a high platform of four Ionic
columns and surmounted by heavy moulding with
a small truncated pyramid rising from the middle
of the roof. It is reproduced by De Vogue s as
standing solitary over ruined tomb-covers ; but now
a noisy and filthy little town has spread around
it, stones have been taken from its platform, and it
may fall to ruin before the French Service des
Antiquites is able to reach out to save it. Com-
plete demolition has recently overtaken the Church
of Turmanin in De Vogue's day perhaps the best
preserved of all the churches in this region of
North Syria so, although we were near the place
where it stood, we did not turn aside to mourn over
the site. The Franciscan church on Mount Tabor
is supposed to be an exact replica of it but how
dead and mechanical in line, how harsh in colour,
how machine-made, alas, it looks!

264

CHAPTER XI

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

PAYS DES ALAOUITES

OUR drive from Aleppo to Latakia, which is
on the coast, took us through a lovely and
fertile hilly country, rich in olive groves and grain
fields. Along the first part of our way we were ac-
companied, as we had been between Hama and
Aleppo, by thousands of brilliant little birds with
blue and green and yellow plumage. They sat in
vast companies upon the telegraph wires and
flashed across the road and fields as we came near.
It took me some research afterwards to find out
that these gaily coloured birds were one of the
varieties of bee eaters.

Later on, we again entered the valley of the
Orontes, crossing it at Djiar esh-Shogar by a pic-
turesque old bridge, before climbing up into the
mountains behind Latakia, where begins the "Pays
des Alaouites," or followers of Ali. It is the an-
cient Northern Phoenicia, of which the Orontes
and the Nahr Saroub form the eastern boundary,
the mountains south of the plain of Antioch the
northern, the coast the western and the river Nahr
el Kebir the southern. This semi-independent

265

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

state contains about eight thousand square miles,
being less than a hundred miles from north to south
and anything up to thirty miles from east to west.
Not larger than most French departements, it is as
rich in history as any region of the earth. Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Paul Jacquot's "Guide" to the dis-
trict is crammed with every sort of accurate and
thoughtful information about the land and its in-
habitants. 1 He prefaces it with the following brief
enumeration of what it contains: "Cities three
thousand years old Temples of ancient Syrian
cults capitals of the Ancient World the Sanc-
tuary of Apollo the citadels of the 'Old Man of
the Mountains' majestic feudal fortresses towns
filled with Moslem traditions belated practisers
of the old lunar cults the descendants of the 'As-
sassins' . . ." Even to this extraordinary list much
might be added, such as Neolithic sites, some of
the most interesting of Hellenistic remains, beau-
tiful Crusaders' churches, Phoenician and Greek
tombs, lovely mosques, old and new, scenery of un-
surpassed beauty where indeed shall I stop?

IATAKIA

We reached Latakia for lunch and drew up at a
fine-looking new hotel standing a little outside of
the town on a shore of low flat rocks, upon which
the waves rose and fell with a pleasant murmur.
We mounted the marble steps with happy expecta-

266

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

tions of clean and comfortable rooms overlooking
the blue sea. Sometimes on remembering what
happened there, I am of a mind to tell it, for it
was there that I took my first step towards saint-
hood, and sometimes I think I will pass it over in
silence, for the occasion of my merit was extremely
sordid. In the dilemma I have tossed up a penny
and heads have it, so I will speak. After all, it
may suggest a way of escape to others from some
of the unsavoury incidents of travelling in these
lands.

Well ! the first thing I saw on entering the room
allotted to me was a bug crawling over the pillow.
Such a horror seized me that I felt I could not stay
in that room, and I fear I expressed my feeling
with some vehemence to my companions. Though
the morning's drive had been a long one and the
road to the next possible stopping place at Tripoli
was as long again, though they were pining (so was
I) to explore Latakia, the ancient Laodicea ad
Mare, they were angelic enough to say without
hesitation, "Of course you can't stand it we will
go on at once." Their kindness melted away my
fury and impatience. A certain amount of repug-
nance and disgust remained, but this seemed so un-
important compared to the disappointment and
inconvenience I was proposing to inflict upon the
party I I reflected that a bug does no more harm
than bite one, he carries no infection like the ma-

267

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

larial mosquito and the typhus louse who is so
cowardly that he cannot endure a mere bite? My
spirit grew suddenly entirely at peace about the
whole thing. I took a short rest upon the very bed
(after spraying it with the invaluable Flit), and
then we went out to see the town.

Ghosts of dead and gone Phoenicians accompa-
nied our steps, of Assyrians and Persians, of
Alexander and of Laodice, the mother of his gen-
eral Seleucus, who gave the town her name, of
Mithridates, of Herod, the great Builder, of Ze-
nobia's splendid but fragile empire, of the
Byzantine Emperors, the Crusaders, of Tancred
and Saladin, of tremendous earthquakes throwing
down* all the glorious buildings. Such ghosts can-
not be shaken off when you travel in this history-
haunted land, the meeting-place of all the nations,
where the earth's crust makes a practice of tum-
bling to ruins the monuments wherewith successive
civilizations have adorned it. Almost nothing is
left of the antique town which was described as
"une mile riche: , . . partout des palais, des por-
tiques" before Saladin pillaged it and his Emirs
carried off its beautiful marbles to enrich their own
dwellings. The squalor of the present Turkish
town, which, small as it is, is crammed with dis-
cordant religions Mahometans, Orthodox Greeks,
Gregorian Armenians, Maronites, an American
missionary station and a French convent school

268

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

is only accentuated by the brand-new quar-
ter in which, on boulevards and new straight
streets, the French offices, banks, officers 7 houses
and barracks are situated. We wandered along the
water's edge, lingering on the beach and in the
olive groves. But most of our time was spent
studying and enjoying the impressive temple still
standing, which dates from an epoch differently
placed from 40 B.C. to the reign of Septimius Sev-
erus, but which to us looked rather later. The
Cupola was probably added when the tetrapylon
was transformed into a Christian church, but it
must be one of the earliest remaining examples of
its kind a vault over a cube supported on triangu-
lar pendentives. 2 Its f agade, giving on a garden, is
like a great triumphal arch, supporting a power-
fully moulded entablature, above which rises a
kind of attic storey adorned with a relief represent-
ing the implements of war. 8 Again the antique
dwarfs all else to insignificance; the temple and
the "Columns of Bacchus" near by, that perhaps
belonged once to a colonnade attached to the tem-
ple, rise above the low native dwellings, shaking
them off, as it were, like a giant disencumbering
himself of a crowd of pigmies swarming on his feet.
Afterwards we rather languidly inspected some
empty rock tombs, and then climbed a hill and had
our tea in the courtyard of the modern but charm-
ing Mograbin Mosque, before reluctantly return-

269

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ing to the ill-omened hotel. Here further
surprises in the way of bad management and filth
and neglect discouraged the whole party to such a
degree that we all decided to move on to Tripoli the
next day and do what excursions we could from
there.

I may add in honour of the penny I threw that I
passed a mentally tranquil although physically
somewhat disturbed night, collecting trophies to
exhibit to the inn-keeper the next morning with a
recommendation to have my bed thoroughly gone
over and disinfected. He vowed that he had never
heard of any such thing before, and as I was leav-
ing I saw the chambermaid making up the bed
with fresh linen, with no preliminary inspection or
cleaning I

SAHAYUN

The next morning we devoted to an excursion up
into the Ansariyeh mountains behind Latakia to
see the Crusading Castle of Sahayun, also known
as Sahyoun, Saone, and Sion. The road led along
a stream bordered with oleanders through flowery
plains and olive groves to the little mountain town
of Haffe, about thirty miles inland, populated by
Kurds, Armenians, Orthodox Greeks and Alawey-
ehs. Here we were met by a handsome and intelli-
gent young French officer who had prepared excel-
lent mounts to carry us up the steep and stony

270

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

mule-track that led to the castle. Our first view of
this, the most picturesque and largest of all the
Prankish ruins, was from a hilltop opposite to the
tongue of rock on which it stands between two deep
ravines with excessively precipitous sides. The
horses had to be abandoned here, and it took more
than half an hour of steep descent and toilsome
climb to reach the rocky platform girdled by the
walls of the old Crac.

Of course it is not simply Prankish in origin
nothing is simple in this history-scarred land I It
began as a Phoenician stronghold and was ceded
to Alexander. It was taken by the Byzantines in
975 and was still theirs at the time of the First
Crusade. Early in the twelfth century it fell to
the Crusaders, who rebuilt it and made it one of
the strongest of their fortresses. They held it until
1 1 88 when Saladin somehow I can't think how,
seeing the apparent inaccessibility of this eagle's
nest! got hold of it. It was not abandoned until
after the Ottoman conquest. Nothing but a tiny
Turkish village now gives it life.

No description can convey the aspect of this
overwhelmingly picturesque place. The two deep
valleys with streams, that join far below the west-
ern edge of the plateau on which the castle stands,
protect three sides, and on the east side, by which
it might be attained, an immense gash has been
made in the solid rock more than three hundred

271

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

feet long and a hundred in height, with a width
of fifty feet or so. In the middle of this colossal
artificial cut, a gigantic tapering obelisk of rock
was left standing to uphold the drawbridge that
once gave access to the stronghold. There is really
nothing like it on earth! Stalls for horses were
hollowed in the sides of the cut and above them
tombs and a vaulted chamber. All the appurte-
nances of such a fortress are still to be seen
donjon, guard-room, banqueting hall, stables, mag-
azines, cisterns, watch towers, chapel, oil-presses,
crenellated walls: nothing is lacking, except the
drawbridge, to complete the impression. It is
peculiarly interesting in that it offers the most
complete and best preserved example of a feudal
castle of the twelfth century. Most of the Cru-
saders' chateaux were either destroyed or trans-
formed in the thirteenth century by Moslem
princes into military forts.

I love the picturesqueness of these castles and
would go far to see them, yet I feel a certain
unexciting sameness about the actual buildings
themselves. Here I know I write myself down
as great a Philistine as the friend who found
Roman ruins "so monotonous." But there it is.
All over Europe I have seen so many mediaeval
and early Gothic ruins that I should scarcely turn
a corner to see another, unless it had beauty of
site. The taste for them does not grow on me like

272

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

the taste for antique ruins, or even for mosques,
or Baroque architecture, or what not I regret it

And now that I am confessing, I will add that
I hate the Crusaders! I hate them partly for the
contrast between the idealism of their aims and
the utter sordidness of their behaviour, though this
attitude ill becomes one who has lived through the
Great War ; and partly because, somehow, I feel
more responsible for the failure they made of it
than for the fall of any other power, whether
Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Roman or Arab.
These I can view dispassionately and note their
collapse without bitterness (all but Greece: the
death of Alexander is almost a personal tragedy!).
Of course brave and beautiful figures of knights
who took part in this great romantic Adventure
stand out against the horrid background of avarice,
cruelty, disloyalty, stupidity and deception ; and of
course their castles and fortresses are picturesque
beyond imagination. All the same, I shudder to
think of them and their two centuries of resultless
muddle, defeat and disaster.

However, I cannot deny that Sahayun was worth
all the days of aching that followed the difficult
ride and the climb. Certainly it has left even in
me a longing to see them all in their grand moun-
tain settings, all the Crusaders' strongholds in Syria
and Palestine, although I daresay I should be con-

273

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

tent with looking at them from a certain distance
and should not insist on climbing up the stony
paths to see their ruins near at hand.

CRAG DES CHEVALIERS

The "Crac des Chevaliers," for example, to
which we made an excursion a few days later from
Tripoli, was to me at its most delightful as we
were approaching it, or even more as it appeared
from the Monastery of St. George across a river
and valley at the other side. From there it looked
like Windsor Windsor as it must originally have
been but here the fortress is set high on a lonely
rock among crags. The castle is more homogene-
ous than Sahayun. Kurds had lived there, but it
was built anew by the Knights Hospitallers to
whom Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, ceded it
about the middle of the twelfth century. Earth-
quakes, however, kept shaking it down, and it was
not till after 1202 that it took its present shape.
It was called Jamah el Frange the French Flame
and it played a great military role in the opera-
tions of the Hospitallers against Horns and Hama.
Its strategic position, barring the eastern route
through these towns to the coast, was compared
by Arab chroniclers to ff un os place en tracers le
gosier des Musulmans" All the country round
was tributary to it Yet by 1267 it had begun to
decline and in 1271 it capitulated to the Sultan

274

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

Beybars. The "Old Man of the Mountains," Is-
mail Bey, got permission from the Sultan Beybars
to live in it, but he was killed in the hills near by.
This castle has been carefully studied and meas-
ured and described by more than one writer and
savant, 4 and the French Service des Antiquites has
classed it as a monument historigue and has begun
to restore it to its original state, overcoming, little
by little, the difficulties caused by the fact that
five hundred and eighty natives live within its
walls, with all their cattle, and that the inhabitants
have never hesitated to make use of the stones of
the ancient castle for their own purposes. For
me, the view from the tower, which comprised the
Lake of Horns, the Orontes, the Ansariyeh range
and the coastal plain, was more enjoyable than
creeping through half cleared vaults or noting the
details of the windows and the arrangements for
killing Moslem invaders. The Great Hall, how-
ever, was a fine bit of the best sort of Gothic,
recalling the Sainte Chapelle, and the Latin
inscription in twelfth-century characters was
amusing:

Sit tibi copia,

Sit sapientia

Formaque detur;

Inquinat omnia sola

Superbia, si comet etur*

*May you have abundance, wisdom, beauty, but beware of pride,
which tarnishes all it touches.

275

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

On leaving the Crac we drove around below it
to the Greek Monastery of St. George, which lies
at the back about six miles away. It is chiefly
interesting for the view of the fortress which I
have mentioned. It traces its foundation to Jus-
tinian and is said to have been occupied by Greek
monks ever since. Some of them, of incredible
age, crept out of their cells to blink at us as we
stood in the courtyard. We saw the Treasure
without much enthusiasm, but we had an excellent
picnic lunch and a rest on scrupulously clean al-
though very hard beds.

ROAD TO TORTOSA

We returned to Latakia, rescued our maid from
the insect-haunted hotel, and set out for Tripoli.
We were tempted, but it would have meant another
night in the filthy hotel, to go some ten miles up
the coast to see the interesting excavations that
were then being carried out by the French Archae-
ological Missions in the tombs of the now solitary
and disused port of Minet-el-Beida. The finds
have since been well reproduced in the London
Illustrated N ews (November 2, 1929), and go to
prove that the harbour and adjoining town were
there as early as 1300 B.C., and in close relation with
Cyprus and Egypt and Crete. The plan of one
of the sepulchres is very like one of the Royal
Tombs discovered by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos.

276

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

Bronze weapons, alabaster jars, Mycenaean ivo-
ries, Egyptian figures of Horus and terra-cotta
tablets covered with a cuneiform writing in a
hitherto unknown language were among the finds,
which have been distributed between the museums
at Latakia and Beirut and the Louvre.

PHOENICIAN TOWNS

But we had no time to spare, and we continued
our way more or less along the seashore and
through the sites of Phoenician towns, of which
all that remain are a few rock-hewn tombs, and
two sepulchral monuments at Amrit, 5 probably the
most ancient monuments in Syria, one a rude
obelisk between thirty and forty feet high, and
the other a monolith set on a pedestal adorned with
sculptured lions at the corners. A hollow resem-
bling a quarry was apparently the remains of a
town carved out in the rock itself. We saw the
house where Renan lived when he was carrying
out his Mission Archeologique in 1860-64. But
alas, owing to our misadventures at the Latakia
hotel, we had to give up any detailed exploration
of the sites, and, worse still, we could not make
the excursion we had set our hearts on to Hosn
Soleiman, the ancient sanctuary of the Nosairis,
who built it at a time when they were dominated
by the Phoenicians and when their religion was
entirely Semitic in character. It is the finest mon-

277

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ument in the Phoenician style existing, built of
huge cut blocks larger than any others in Syria,
except those at Baalbec. Up to now the entrance
facade is said to be standing, but the Priests' Col-
lege (?) and a small temple are gradually disap-
pearing, the stones being broken up and carried
away to be used in modern constructions. This
consideration made us so sad to miss seeing it that
when we reached Tortosa, on our way to Tripoli,
we called at the government offices and .arranged
to come back the next day and pick up a small
Ford car for the thirty-odd miles of difficult road
to Hosn S'oleiman. After all, it would only mean
retracing our steps for another thirty miles.

TORTOSA

The sun in its course forbade us to linger in
Tortosa, but never shall we forget the overwhelm-
ing impression of entering the glorious and now
deserted Crusaders' Church in that town. The
subdued golden colour of the stone, the slender
pillars with strange, lovely capitals, vaguely Corin-
thian, the vaulting and the old shrine built against
a pillar in the nave, dedicated to Our Lady but
probably embodying a much older cult, and wor-
shipped by both Christians and Mahometans
and, above all, the light filtejing through the
pointed windows and turning it all to the likeness
of some enchanted castle under the sea make of

278

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

this church one of the most memorable impressions
in Syria. It is heartbreaking to consider the taste-
less modern churches put up in Jerusalem by ar-
chitects who had a model like this before their
eyes ! The walls of the old castle within which the
present town is huddled (I do not speak of the
clean and airy new French quarters) are also very
impressive, built out of vast drafted blocks prob-
ably from an early Phoenician fortress.

TRIPOLI

But we could not stay long, with that difficult
road still to traverse, and we knew that if we could
not stand the hotel at Latakia, it would be fatal to
try the one at Tortosa, so we hastened on. We
looked longingly at the picturesque island of Ruad
which lies opposite to Tortosa less than two miles
away, with its Saracenic castle, its megalithic sea-
walls, and the remains of antique columns near the
harbour. A visit there had to be relegated to that
"next time" of our fond hopes.

Owing to the badness of the last stretch of road
from Amrit on, we arrived in Tripoli long after
dark. Our first impression of the Hotel Plaza was
disastrous, but afterwards we found that the pro-
prietor was a willing and helpful man and did his
best according to his lights. These lights were
certainly not kindled at any European flame, save
in the matter of scrupulous cleanliness, but in a

279

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

way it was interesting for once to see what a native
up-to-date Syrian hotel was like. The bedrooms
all opened off a long hall or room where the guests
practically lived. They were shaved there, they
read the journals, took iced drinks and sat and sat
and talked and talked interminably. Female
servants were continually going in and out of the
room next to mine bearing dishes and drinks, and
now and then the masculine voice of the Pasha,
who had brought his family with him, would
silence the otherwise uninterrupted feminine twit-
tering of the improvised harem. The light blazed
all night through the transoms and the voices went
on and on, till the glow of morning paled the elec-
tricity and warned the talkers that it was now or
never if they were to sleep. Others who had slept
earlier promptly came along to prevent any in-
terval of silence. And outside there was a real
inferno of noises, from building operations, mo-
tors, street-calls, lively conversation or quarrelling
in the piazza, and what not The morning after
we arrived a tremendous din was going on. It was
a Moslem holiday, and people began at daylight
to drive about in cars decorated with flowers, blow-
ing their horns to desperation, while high and
penetrating strains of Arab music and the thud
of Arab drums were heard from every side when-
ever the bands that were playing in competition at
opposite sides of the square, took a rest.

280

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

We gathered up our courage all the same and
walked through the town to the Fortress, from
whence we had a delightful view of the river, Nahr
abou Ali, rushing down from the Lebanon, and of
the Dervish monastery nestled in a romantic bend
of it, where we got a general idea of our wander-
ings. The town appeared to us to be set in one
of the most favoured spots in all Syria, for the
broad well-watered maritime plain and the nearby
mountains place every variety of climate and cul-
ture within easy reach of the inhabitants* Miles
and miles of enchanting fruit gardens, figs,
oranges, apricots, pomegranates, hedged with
boughs of clematis and watered by thousands of
silver streamlets from the river, spread around the
town* The mountains behind are picturesque be-
yond description. They rise abruptly and the
strata are strangely and grotesquely twisted and
marked, as if a boiling mass had been thrown into
water and suddenly cooled in its seething commo-
tion. We also visited the chief mosque, which has
a good stalactite portal in the Mameluke style, with
a minaret that looked older, and came back much
cheered to lunch.

In the afternoon our dragoman took us to one
of the Maronite villages on the Lebanon, where he
picked up his friend, the Mudir, who accompanied
us to the Maronite monastery already mentioned.
We stood awhile on the broad terrace looking at

281

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

such a pastoral scene as one might well see on the
lower slopes of some Swiss mountain, and we then
motored on along roads bordered with the pale
lilac blossoms of the flowering jacaranda-tree, to
a spring in the valley, where, on an island shaded
with huge planes and walnuts, little tables were set
out beside the rushing water. At a table near us a
boy was singing with a fine voice those curious twit-
tering and plaintive cadences of the Arab music.
We were served with excellent Persian tea. The
crowd was very well behaved and made upon us a
charming impression. As none of the women were
veiled, we presumed that they were Christians
from the Maronite villages in the neighbourhood.
The next day, in one of the heaviest sciroccos of
our scirocco-haunted trip, we made the expedition
to the Crac des Chevaliers which I have already
described. We got back to Tripoli in time to drive
out to the port, El Mina, which lies on a promon-
tory about a mile away from the modern town.
There was not much to see except the picturesque
islands that help to form the harbour and the ruins
of the castle built by Raymond of Toulouse, and
we came back and had tea in the quiet marble
courtyard of a mosque set in the cemetery, modern,
but with a beautiful old pavement of coloured
marbles and some antique columns. A tank in the
courtyard contains some sacred fish which used to

282

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

escape in time of war to fight for the Prophet
against the Infidels, returning to Tripoli when
peace came. The same legend attaches to a tank at
Acre, and both are doubtless remains of an ancient
Phoenician cult. Even now at certain seasons, pil-
grims come with offerings and sacrifices to worship
these sacred fish. Climbing the minaret, we had
another good view of the fruit orchards that sur-
round the town and of the streams that descend
from the Lebanon and water the plain. Around
our feet stretched the straggling graveyard where
the women of Tripoli in black draperies were hold-
ing their Friday picnic, planting fresh bushes of
myrtle, or palm branches, in the small holes left on
purpose at the head and foot of each grave, and
scattering flowers. At the edge of the cemetery a
ring of men were dancing to the monotonous thud
of a drum struck with the knuckles and to the thin
piping of rustic flutes. They formed an inter-
locked circle, and the "dancing" consisted in stamp-
ing in unison as they revolved in a slow circle.

ISMAELIS OR ASSASSINS

Passing along this coast, with its ruins of Cru-
sading churches and the mosques of the present
ruling religion, one is always conscious of some-
thing mysterious in the hills behind, the secret
practices of ancient cults, the continuation of rites
that antedate Christianity, the underground adher-

283

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ence to superstitions which no Crusader un-
derstood. Assassins, Nosairis, Metawilehs one
cannot travel in this part of Syria without hearing
their names and wondering about them. M. Dus-
saud has written an account of the Nosairis, 6 Mau-
rice Barres of the Assassins, 7 and Pere Lammens
of them both and of the Metawilehs as well, 8 and
one of the first things I did on getting home was to
read all they had to say about these particular
forms of religion. Unable to be as learned as M.
Dussaud and Pere Lammens, not gifted with the
eloquence of Barres, I must give a summary and
uninspired account, but yet it is impossible to leave
the Alaouite country without some description of
its distinctive inhabitants.

Many of us have at one time or another been
struck with the anomaly of that modern man of
fashion, H. H. The Aga Khan, whose haunts are
Deauville and Monte Carlo and the Ritz Hotel in
Paris, being the head of a vast religious sect, being,
in fact, the prophet and depository of the mystery
of the Assassins. He is "Time and Existence it-
self" (in Paris he goes by the appellation of "le
proprietaire du Temps"), he is "Being in its Es-
sence." A visit to him conveys the same blessings
as a pilgrimage to Mecca. Once a year he writes
a sort of encyclical which is "of faith" and is added
to the sacred writings that belong to the Koran.

284

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

To him come the Chiefs of the widely dispersed
communities which own his religious headship:
fierce mountaineers from Syria, white-headed
sages from India, Russians and dark-eyed Afghans,
to bring him bags of gold and silver, the tithes of
their earnings and incomes that every member of
the sect is bound to devote to his use. Along the
corridors of the Ritz Hotel their voices may be
heard raised in their ritual prayers, and through a
half -opened door they may be seen, turned towards
Mecca genuflecting on a carpet and bowing their
heads to the ground. One has often been tempted
to wonder about them, but I confess that it was not
till my eyes saw the scarred and fissured moun-
tains to the southeast of Latakia where their sect
originated, that I really felt like taking the trouble
to find out what they actually were. These moun-
tains, called the Ansariyeh range, bounding the
Alaouite plain, and more or less prolonging the
Lebanon chain, rich in water and cut with deep
hidden ravines, have offered from earliest times a
secure asylum against the invasions that swept over
the fertile plains of the coast; and still, in our
times, communities are existing there, ethnically
distinct, each from its neighbours, practising re-
ligions whose sacred rites are only thinly veiled
by a superficial adherence to the doctrine of
Mahomet. The chief sects that hide in these
mountain gorges or on their almost inaccessible

285

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

rock-peaks are the Ismaelis (Isma'iliyeh) or As-
sassins, the Nosairis (Nosayriyeh) or Ansariyehs,
and the Metawilehs.

The name Assassins (Hashishin) comes from
Hashish, the opiate derived from the hemp, and'
was applied to a branch of the Shiite sect known as
Ismaelis, who venerated Ismael, the descendant of
Ali, to whom they believe his ancestor's power
had descended in an uninterrupted line, their
present head, the Aga Khan, being the forty-
seventh Imam in a direct line from Ali. Hassan
Sabbat at the end of the eleventh century was its
first leader of note. Hassan was in Egypt in
1078-9, but he became involved in court squabbles
and went away to Aleppo and Damascus, finally
settling in Kohistan. From there he spread his
heresy and organized his followers into a secret
society whose beliefs seem to have been a dreadful
mixture of magism, Judaism, Mahometanism,
Christianity, Greek Philosophy, Gnosticism, and
God-knows-what. They had only one clear dis-
ciplinary rule blind obedience to the orders of
the chief.

In 1090 they got possession of the strong moun-
tain fortress of Alamut, south of the Caspian Sea,
and then their leader, Hassan Sabbat, initiated
his practice of secretly assassinating his enemies,
first making his emissaries drunk with hashish.
They were carried unconscious into a beautiful

286

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

secret garden to taste the joys of paradise in the
arms of houris and to be told that this was only
a foretaste of the joys that awaited them in the next
world if they were obedient to the command of
their overlord. Again drugged, they were carried
out of the garden of delights and awoke ready to
carry out any mission, however cruel or dangerous,
in the hope of gaining such a heaven. They were
sent as secret agents to all the courts, and as they
imitated the current dress and religion and habits
no one could tell, till the fatal dagger struck him
or he drank of the poisoned cup, whether he num-
bered an Assassin among his retainers or not A
little later the Assassins gained a stronghold in
Syria near Kama and spread terror around by
swift unexpected murders. Hassan Sabbat's suc-
cessor was Berzuh Omid; his godson, who suc-
ceeded him, appointed one Sinan (a Nosairian) as
the chief of the Syrian Ismaelian communities.
Sinan took up his dwelling in the Ansariyeh
mountains, and was the original "Old Man of the
Mountains," although the name was apparently
first applied to a later ruler. He gave himself out
as a new Incarnation of the Divinity of the Stars,
who had already been incarnated in Aaron, Jesus
and Ali. This Sinan was in his youth an intimate
friend of Omar Khayyam.

A second Hassan, who became their Grand
Master in 1164, made the pleasing announcement

287

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

that the doctrines of Islam were abolished and that
the people should give themselves up to feasting
and enjoyment, an innovation that became at once
popular! Soon after, he proclaimed himself to be
the promised Iman, Caliph of God on earth. This,
however, did not preserve him from falling vic-
tim to the practice he inculcated on his followers :
his brother-in-law assassinated him, and was in his
turn, along with all his family and relations, as-
sassinated by Mahomet II, Hassan's son and suc-
cessor. This Mahomet's long rule of nearly half
a century was marked by cruelty. He fought the
Sultan Noureddin, and Saladin himself, and slew
the Crusading knights, Raymond of Tripoli and
Conrad of Montf errat He was the chief who was
first actually called "the Old Man of the Moun-
tains." His use of poison, knife and cord grew
finally so scandalous that at last Beybars, the Egyp-
tian conqueror, in 1260 sent a strong force against
him and nearly extirpated the whole sect. Only a
small body still exists in the Syrian mountains, and
Bombay has become the headquarters, the Indian
Ismaelis being the main source of the vast income
which the Aga Khan so gaily spends in fashion-
able European resorts. Ismaelis are also to be
found in Russia and Afghanistan, and there is a
small body of them in South Africa.

288

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

NOSAIRIS OR ANSARIYEHS

At the same time that Beybars destroyed the As-
sassins, he tried to convert their hereditary enemies
and neighbours, the Nosairis, but they would not
enter the mosques he built. They held to their
secret cult and maintained a guerrilla fight with
the Ismaelis until in 1832 Ibrahim Pasha could
stand it no longer, and made a violent end of the
disorders, ruining the Nosairi castles and behead-
ing many of their chiefs.

However, they were by no means extirpated, and
by 1847 the Nosairis were strong enough to upset
the Ottoman government and to establish a repub-
lic of their own at Latakia, while from 1854-8 a
miniature Nosairi monarch, Ismael Bey, from
headquarters at Safita, forced the Government at
Constantinople to accept him. After his death the
Ottomans took possession of and misruled the
whole country. During the last war they, along
with the other Alaouites, refused to pay the Turk-
ish taxes or to submit to conscription. At the end
of the war they came more or less under the French
mandate, but were so discontented and gave so
much trouble that in 1925 the Alaouites were
formed into a semi-independent state, and the ar-
rangement works fairly welL They are charac-
terized by Lieutenant Jacquot as "an old race to
which the Phoenicians imparted their religion,

289

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

which Christianity and Islam lightly brushed, and
which has kept during all these centuries its own
local life and the impress of its ancient cults and
its love of independence." They do not enjoy a
very good repute among those outside their sect
The Reverend Dr. W. M. Thomson writes of
them as "the most ignorant, debased and treacher-
ous race in the country. Their religion is a pro-
found secret, but is believed to be more infamous
than even their external morals." Van Berchem
speaks more kindly of them "they recall the
Druses of the Hauran, a handsome race, strong as
well as fine, gentle as well as proud : but without
that air of nobility and the somewhat haughty
bearing which make of the Druses a finished type
of the grand seigneur! 9

It was in fact, this secret religion of the Nosairis,
not their political history, that excited my imagina-
tion as we drove along the coast and looked up into
the dark crevasses and ravines that lead to their
fastnesses, the "chaotic combination of reason, of
mysticism, of fanaticism, of secrecy, of magic," as
Mr. Lukach describes it, or as a traveller of sev-
enty-five years ago says, "mysticism heaped, on
mysticism, till they themselves are puzzled at their
own belief." A Syrian whom we met described to
us their fortnightly ceremony (on Thursdays, if I
remember rightly) at which he had several times
been present. The men (women have no souls and

290

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

die like animals) assemble in their place of wor-
ship and a female figure draped in blue takes her
place on a platform before a kind of altar. At a
given moment in the ritual of song and prayer she
throws off the drapery and stands nude to be wor-
shipped as the symbol of fecundity perhaps a last
vestige of the worship of Astarte. He said that the
privilege of this impersonation, if privilege it be,
was the prerogative of one family, and the woman
chosen for it must be young, though she may be
either married or unmarried. Gertrude Bell
speaks of another sect whose ritual seems to centre
about the boiling of a pot In fact the second
member of the Nosairi "Trinity," the Exterior
Manifestation of God, is variously conceived. Ac-
cording to M. Dussaud the Haidaris believe that
Mahomet is the Sun, the Essence of God a sur-
vival, surely, of Baal while the exposition of the
Doctrine, Salman el-Faresi (the moon), is the
Manifestation of God designed to explain the ten-
ets of the faith. The Shamalis, who seem to in-
corporate in their beliefs much that belonged to the
ancient Syrian cults, look on Ali as the sky, whose
chief dwelling is the Sun, represented by his
father-in-law, Mahomet. They hold that the
angel Gabriel made a mistake in bringing the
revelation of the true religion to Mahomet, as it
was really intended for Ali, Taboos older than
the Koran or the Bible even are perpetuated in

291

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

their prohibition against eating the flesh of camels
and of hares ; eels also are forbidden food, as well
as pork which Mahomet forbade, and the fish of
the Orontes which was forbidden by Salman. The
Ghaibis, a small distinct sect, adore the air, while
the Kalazis lean rather to the old worship of the
Moon, Ali Mahomet and Salman (the last of
the seven incarnations of the Trinity) representing
the sky, the sun, and the moon the old Syro-Phoe-
nician gods.

All the Nosairi sects tend to believe that the
stars were the original abode of the faithful Uni-
tarians and that the sojourn of the human being
upon the earth is due to their fall, an event in
which they alone among Mahometans believe.
Metempsychosis is also part of their belief, those
who have done wrong in their lives returning as
animals. They all recognize as Divine Manifesta-
tions Moses, Solomon, Jesus, Mahomet and Sal-
man el-Faresi, who appeared as the Baptist in the
time of Christ. They celebrate Mahometan and
even Christian feasts, such as Christmas, Epiph-
any, Palm and Easter Sundays, Pentecost, the
Feasts of St. Barbara, St. John Chrysostom, St.
Catherine, etc.

Like all the people of these lands, either now or
in the past, they worship on "high places," where
they set up "bethels," or conical stones, 9 such as the
Emperor Elagabalus transplanted from Emesa

292

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

to Rome, and which have been worshipped from
the dawn of history. In the time of the Phoeni-
cians these stones represented Astarte, the principle
of fecundity, and her love, Adonis, the principle of
reproduction whom she rescued from death by her-
self descending into Hades, was worshipped in the
form of a sacred pole, while priests and consecrated
prostitutes were attached to their sanctuaries and
a perpetual fire was kept alight Human sacrifices,
which it seems the Phoenicians borrowed from the
Canaanites, have, I think, gone out. Along with
these bethels, related objects such as mountains and
sacred pools and fishes are still adored, and they
pay great reverence to an intermittent spring not
far from Horus which was one of the most fre-
quented of Phoenician sanctuaries. This was
called the "Sabbatic Fountain" since Josephus
wrote that its waters flowed every seventh day.

This tendency to worship in high places and in
groves has fascinated me since I first read about
it in the Old Testament. It was a practice the Is-
raelites were continually relapsing into, and it
seemed to arouse the special anger of Jehovah. It
meant of course their forsaking the monotheism he
stood for and adopting the current gods of the
countries they conquered. All the same, to a little
Quaker child, accustomed to sit through long hours
of silent worship in a barn-like "meeting house,"
it did seem somehow very attractive to worship in

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

groves on hills, and the spice of wickedness at-
tached to it certainly did not diminish the fascina-
tion. True, it provoked the Lord to anger, but
perhaps that was only against his Chosen People,
and I did not feel sure he would punish a Quaker
as he threatened to punish the Israelites. Whenever
my father read to us from the Old Testament (I
Kings 14) how the Lord threatened to smite Israel
"as a reed is shaken in the water . . . because they
have made their groves" I felt a shiver that was
somehow delightful, "And Judah did evil in the
sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jeal-
ousy with their sins. . . . For they . , . built
them high places and images and groves, on every
high hill, and under every green tree. . , . And
they did according to all the abominations of the
nations which the Lord cast out before the Chil-
dren of Israel."

Evidently this fascination which I dimly felt is
still potent among the inhabitants of Syria. The
Reverend W. M. Thomson says :

Every conspicuous hilltop has a wily or mazar, be-
neath a spreading oak, to which people pay religious
visits, and thither they go up to worship and to dis-
charge vows. All sects in the country without excep-
tion, have a predilection for these "high places,"
strong as that of the Jews in ancient times. The most
pious and zealous kings could not remove the high
places from Israel; and most of them not only coa-

294

LATAKIA TO TRIPOLI

nived at but shared in the superstition and frequented
these shrines. They were generally surrounded by a
grove or had at least one or more shady trees planted
near them, and so they have today. The customs are
identical . . . Many of these mazars, whose history
no one knows, have probably come down from remote
antiquity, through all the mutations of dynasties and
religions, unchanged to the present hour. We can be-
lieve this the more readily, because they are now fre-
quented by the oldest communities in the country, and
those most opposed to each other. . . . We have,
therefore, in these places not only sites of the very
highest antiquity, but living examples and monuments
of men's most ancient superstitions; and if this does not
add to our veneration, it will much increase the interest
with which we examine them. If it does not soften
our condemnation, it may at least lessen our surprise.

METAWIYEHS

Before leaving these mysterious mountains, I
must mention briefly the third sect of Moslem here-
tics who live in the Lebanon. They are called
Metawiyehs, and are also S'hi'ites, or followers of
Ali, and probably entered the country during one
of the Persian invasions. They maintain a close
connection with the shrine of Kerbela, especially
sacred to the Persians, and they always carry with
them small cakes of earth from the site of the mur-
der of Husein to touch with their foreheads when
they bow in prayer. They rule their lives in ac-
cordance with Shiah civil law. Less mystical than

295

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

the other sects, they are stricter in their religious
observances, and they shun all contact with out-
siders, regarding infidels as being so "impure" that
they will not take food or drink with them, nor
even food prepared by them, breaking any cups or
plates used by them. And of course they only
marry among themselves. Although there are
about thirty thousand in the Lebanon and another
twenty-five thousand scattered through Syria, it is
hard to find out much about them, so shut up in
themselves are they. Their villages and persons
are dirty, their culture is low even for the East,
and they are the most insoluble element of all the
unamalgamated races that make of Syria such a
difficult problem for her new rulers. They live, as
the Reverend W. M. Thomson said, "separated
both in fact and feeling, from their neighbours
hating all, hated by all. . . ." De Vogue echoes
this opinion in the following words: "... Im-
penetrable* et rebelles . . . sauvages fanatiques
. . . sans etre apparentes a aucune des populations
[autour d'eux\ . . . on salt bien pen de choses de
cette famille curieuse."

CHAPTER XII
TRIPOLI TO BEIRUT

WE probably made a great mistake in not go-
ing to see the famous Cedars of Lebanon,
but our journey was drawing so near to its end, it
was so hot, and we were so tired that we felt we
must have a few days in the high air of Baalbec
(not to mention the Ruins) , and so we did not make
this excursion. As a matter of fact a good many
people had told us that the grove was no longer
very remarkable, most of the big trees having died,
and what remained having been fenced in in a very
prosaic way. So, perhaps mistakenly, we gave up
the expedition and hurried on to Beirut to get our
letters and make a start from there for Baalbec.

BYBLOS

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz
mourn. MILTON

We drove along a lovely road recalling that be-
tween Ravello and Amalfi. About eleven we
reached Byblos, 1 where excavations are being vig-
orously pursued. It is now called Jebel, a name
reminiscent of the pre-Greek Gebal, whose inhab-

297

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

itants are mentioned in the Old Testament as
"hewers of stone" (I Kings 5: 18) and as skilled
in shipbuilding (Ezekial 27 : 9) . According to its
best known citizen, Philo, it was one of the most
ancient places in the world, having been founded
by Ba'al Kronos himself. Here the cult of Adonis
had its chief seat, and Philo, who professed to have
drawn his information from an old Phoenician
writer, Sanchuniathan, narrates the following
myth: "El, the supreme god, wanders over the
earth, and leaves Byblos to his wife, Ba'altis.
Eliun (Adonis) becomes her lover and is killed
by El, or, according to another version by a wild
boar." The mourning for the slain Adonis was
one of the principal religious ceremonies of Byblos,
and far-famed orgies were connected with this
cult. Astarte-Ba'altis is the goddess of fertility,
and with her lover represents death in nature and
resurrection due to reproduction. The cult harks
back to Istar and Thammuz in Mesopotamia, and
gave rise to the Greek myth of Venus and Adonis.
If Ba'al Kronos really founded Byblos, he had a
good eye for a site, for it is one of the loveliest on
the whole coast, a promontory half shutting in a
small deep bay. Here the Greeks erected a
temple, some of whose graceful columns are still
standing. I sat (for it was terribly hot, and I was
lazy) and looked out to the sea between them, while

298

TRIPOLI TO BEIRUT

the others, in the blazing sunlight, did some fierce
archaeologizing. After a time even I got inter-
ested in the deep Egyptian-like tombs they were
uncovering and in the marble sarcophagi that were
being brought up. The tombs had all been rifled,
alas 1 in past times, but some pottery and coins and
a few statues were still being found, of which the
most interesting had already been despatched to
the Beirut Museum. Several crude Egyptian
colossi topped the trenches, looking massive and
imposing from a distance.

In the little town itself there was not very much
to see except the baptistery clinging to the wall of
a Jacobite church, the lofty arches of which are
enriched with exquisitely varied chevron mould-
ings.

We had our lunch beside the Stream of Adonis,
sitting under the shade of some large walnuts. At
the head of the valley was the ancient Apheca, the
site of the famous temple of Venus, destroyed by
Constantine on account of the orgiastic rites that
were celebrated there. Here, as indeed all over
Syria, is exemplified the invariable law that a holy
place remains sacred through all the changes and
permutations of cult. Venus took the place of
Aschera, Adonis of Thammuz, but Apheca and the
red river were no less thronged with worshippers.
Sometimes the river runs red, and this is supposed
to be the blood of Adonis. The water was a muddy

299

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

red when we saw it, and it rushed down to the
sea with great violence, staining the water a long
way out until it finally melted into the blue.
Lucian thus speaks of it in his De Dea Syria? our
most important authority on the native religions
of Syria in Roman times :

There is another marvel in the territory of Byblus ;
a river flows from Mount Lebanon to the sea : the name
given to the river is Adonis. Now the river turns to
blood every year, and after losing its ordinary colour
flows into the sea and reddens much of the waves and
gives a signal to the Byblians for their laments. Now
they tell how on these days Adonis is wounded at
Lebanon, and that his blood, passing into the water,
transforms the river and gives its name to the stream.
This is the story of the common people. But a certain
man of Byblus, who seemed to speak truthfully, told
me of another cause of the phenomenon. He said as
follows: "My friend, the river Adonis goes through
Lebanon ; now Lebanon has a very yellow soil. There-
fore violent winds springing up on those days bring
down the earth, and the earth renders it red like blood.
The cause of the appearance is not the blood which
they speak of, but the soil." This was the story that
the Byblian told me, but, even if he spoke the truth in
this, the coincidence of the wind seems to me surely
divinely appointed. [One can almost hear the voice
of a pious sectary of the "Higher Criticism."]

The little wayside inn above the Adonis was so
attractive, with its airy rooms and clean beds, where
we had our siesta, that we instantly planned to re-

300

TRIPOLI TO BEIRUT

turn and spend a month in this delightful place
ah, when?

DOG RIVER

Tea on this day was drunk on a spur of the Leb-
anon which thrusts itself forward into the sea a
few miles north of Beirut. Sitting beside the rock-
carved inscriptions that line the ancient road to the
Dog River, our eyes could follow all the grand
sweep of the mountain range to where it dipped its
last northern promontory in the sea. Along the
track of the road, where we sat on an upturned
Roman paving-stone, there passed for three thou-
sand years the great armies of antiquity on the
march to conquer Syria, and they left rock carvings
to commemorate their passage. There are half-
effaced but unmistakable Egyptian figures with
their heads and legs in profile and their bodies
presented frontally, and a cuneiform of the twelfth
century B.C. records the march of Nebuchadnezzar.
De Vogue thus writes of the place:

You climb a narrow path along a ledge cut in the
rock, with a gaping pavement of antique blocks, dis-
jointed and broken. It is the remains of the Roman
Road, which itself followed a still more ancient route,
the route of the invasion, where the Asiatic armies
came to repose themselves from their fatigue in the
sunshine of this level seashore, which exercised the
same fascination upon them that the Italian valleys ex-
ercised on the barbarian hordes of the Middle Ages.

301

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

The whole of armed antiquity has passed this way, as
is attested by the archives of this strange road pre-
served in the rocks along which its way was cut : carved
tablets one beside another in the stone wall contain
the remains of inscriptions in all languages and the em-
blems of all the conquerors who rested in the valley of
Nahr-el-Kelb between two battles. As travellers write
their names in a hotel book, so these terrible tourists
had the whim to inscribe their names on the rocks.
First one sees the most ancient masters of the world,
the Pharaohs before the time of Moses, already con-
querors of old Phoenicia : the cartouches of the Thot-
mes and the Rameses are still visible, though worn by
being rubbed by passing camels for thirty or forty cen-
turies ; then the Assyrian conquerors coming from the
Euphrates, the Tiglath-Pilesers and Nebuchadnezzars,
hieratic figures recognizable by the mitre and the long
robe of the Kings of Nineveh. After them came the
Romans with pompous inscriptions; Marcus Aurelius,
the sage, speaks from a stone in the midst of his sol-
diers. The first Arab Caliphs have signed their names
in their old Kufic writing on this memorable page ; fi-
nally, an inscription dated 1860 recalls the passage of
the French army, which, as a contrast, came in the
cause of civilization and justice.

Then, it was to protect the Christians from mas-
sacre, but the French had passed that way before
on a less pacific mission, as a marble tablet set into
the rock by Napoleon records.

The Dog River itself, bridged since the earliest
times, was known to the Greeks as the Wolf River
(Lykos), taking its name from a colossal stone dog,

302

TRIPOLI TO BEIRUT

or wolf, that used to stand on a cliff in the sea at
the river's mouth, and was supposed to bark at
the approach of an enemy, and to deliver oracles
in a loud voice that could be heard as far as Cyprus*
What would not one give to see and hear the
creature!

Down by the river was a little settlement of
simple summer hotels and restaurants, and there
were some cages in which wild animals were mis-
erably confined. A mangy eagle chained by the
leg excited our compassion. Tables were spread
along the banks of the stream, giving on a romantic
view of a fern-hung dripping aqueduct on the
other side. We crossed the bridge and walked
along it for a short distance up the narrow green
valley cutting into the Lebanon rocks, and longed
to have a whole day to explore further the hidden
beauties of the gorge. But the idea of Beirut, with
letters and friends, incited us to get there at least
in time for dinner.

CHAPTER XIII

BAALBEC

"The ruins of Baalbec!" Shall I scatter the vague,
solemn thoughts, and all the airy phantasies which
gather together when once these words are spoken,
that I may give you instead, tall columns, and measure-
ments true, and phrases built in ink? No, no; the
glorious sounds shall still float as of yore, and still hold
fast upon your brain with their own dim, and infinite
meaning, Eothen

THE BE'KA

'TT^HE next morning we motored to the home of
-* our dragoman, at Beitshebab, and had the
interesting lunch there that I have already de-
scribed. In the afternoon we crossed the pass over
the Lebanon, through endless varieties of bent and
twisted rocks, an intricate and fascinating geolog-
ical jumble, the playground of primeval giants. 1
After crossing the pass we entered a very different
civilization. The gay, red-roofed, prosperous
Maronite villages of the Western Lebanon were
replaced on the eastern side by villages of mud and
rubble, seldom more than one storey in height,
poor, broken-down, dirty. But (like all unspoiled

304

BAALBEC

human things in the real East) how they harmo-
nize with the landscape 1 The pass led to the valley
between the two ranges, Lebanon and Anti-Leb-
anon, which for long had fascinated us with the
earth wrinkle that sinks so deep between them in
Coelesyria (Baka, Be'ka) and continues deeper
still in the Jordan and Dead Sea valleys, but here
the whole thing, valley and enclosing mountains,
has been lifted up some six thousand feet, so that
Baalbec, at almost the highest point in the valley,
is nearly four thousand feet above sea level, while
the mountains that hem in the valley rise to ten
thousand feet at their highest, with snow-crowned
Hermon crouching over the southeastern and Sun-
nin keeping guard at the northwestern end of the
vale, both nine thousand feet in height A few
miles to the north of Baalbec is the watershed be-
tween the Orontes, running north to Kama and
then east to Antioch, and the Leontes, or Litany
as it is now called, which cuts through the Lebanon
range and empties into the sea near Tripoli. The
undulating valley of Coelesyria is from four to six
miles broad and over it rush endless streams and
brooks from the snowy heights on each side. In
other than shiftless Bedouin hands, it would be one
of the most fertile plains of the earth, as indeed it
was in antiquity, or as its sister plain near Murcia
now is. But these worse than gypsy nomads let the
streams wander where they will to lose themselves

305

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

fruitlessly in the open, never repairing the ancient
channels and aqueducts, sitting all day in their ver-
minous black tents, or in front of their shoddy
cafes, playing dice and smoking and drinking end-
less cups of coffee. Only the shepherds work, and
their work is chiefly to sit and play on pipes and
watch their sheep and goats and cattle feed. They
have cut down most of the trees though the few
they have left make a deeper impression of TREE
than any forest could give! and of course they
never replant. An intelligent doctor whom we met
at Baalbec told us that the crops they contrive to
sow give only about one fifth of the return they
could give if they were properly managed,

BAALBEC

As we raced along this valley, perhaps all the
more beautiful for the neglect it suffers, eager to
catch a glimpse of Baalbec before dusk, the sun
was sinking behind the Lebanon in unimaginable
splendour, now veiling his flaming countenance as
behind a screen of jewels and now looking out at
us between mountain crags like a king from his
palace window. But he bid for our worship in
vain ; we could not stop until our goal was reached,
for we had seen, from a great distance, rising high
above the plain, the columns of Baalbec, their co-
lossal proportions making them seem much nearer
than they really were. We did arrive at last and

306

BAALBEC

there was still light enough for us to have our first
glimpse of the ruins, while our luggage was being
unpacked at the quiet and pleasant hotel of Kao-
uan, situated on a pine-clad hill just outside the
town. There are two entrances to the Acropolis,
but we were let in by the modern steps presented
by the Emperor William II, and as hideous as all
the dreadful buildings he gave to the Near East,
such as the huge castle on the Mount of Olives or
the vulgar kiosk on the site of the Hippodrome at
Constantinople. These steps lead up, tant bien
que mal, to the front wall of the Acropolis which
stands on a platform composed of vast monolithic
blocks of golden coloured stone, by their size and
cut suggesting an origin pre-Greek, perhaps Phoe-
nician. A stream or moat lies at the base mirror-
ing them, and a little garden of fruit-trees, walnuts,
willows and poplars, surrounds the whole site. On
the platform stand some grand columns, forming a
porch outside the great carved doorways which
lead to the first court, an enclosure half as large
again as the quadrangle of Christ Church, Oxford.
We hurried through this, not stopping to see the
beautiful niched walls that surround it nor the
basins with their delicate bas-reliefs, for we were
wild to catch a sunset glimpse of the high-standing
stately columns of the Temple of the Sun and the
colonnaded walls of the Temple of Bacchus.
It was only a glimpse, but the next morning we

30?

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

were there with a guide and guide-books, with field
glasses, dark spectacles, umbrellas, and shawls to
sit on all the tourist's paraphernalia. In the course
of the morning we had the pleasure of meeting M.
Michel Alouf, the guardian of the Acropolis, who
kindly gave us a few explanations, and we pos-
sessed ourselves of his Guide, 2 which is a model of
what such a book should be, clear, brief but com-
plete, learned, well arranged. M. Alouf assisted
the German excavators and restorers from 1898 to
1905, and his information can be relied upon.
This book is all that is needed by the non-specialist
visitor. Afterwards, if one's interest holds, one can
gorge oneself to repletion on the four big volumes
of the German Expedition, 3 with their wealth of
photographic reproductions, ground plans, eleva-
tions and explanatory texts. These volumes contain
all that is known up to the present about Baal-
bee, the ancient Heliopolis, but I refer to the light
portable book of M, Alouf anyone who may want
to read on the spot about the ancient Phoenician
cult of Baal the Lord of thunder and originator
of iron and his translation by the Romans into
Jupiter Dolichenus ; about the worship at Baalbec
of Venus, as offerings to whom, under the name of
Atargatis, children used to be hurled down from
the propylaeon ; or about the temples of Mercury
and Bacchus and all the shrines dedicated to other
members of the Greek pantheon who had their

308

BAALBEC

niches round the great court; and also about the
Christian church built in the temple by Theodo-
sius, and the conquest of the place by the Arabs
who converted the Acropolis into a fortress; and
Hulugu and Tamerlane, who successively con-
quered it, destroying as they came; and to the same
source I recall all those who like working out an-
cient plans step by step. But for once I will allow
myself the luxury of sticking to my aesthetic im-
pression, for I am beginning to be a bit sick of this
unending trail of Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyp-
tians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines,
Arabs, Mongols, Crusaders, Turks and all the rest,
that dog one's steps on such a trip as this. To re-
interest myself or my reader, would require by now
detailed special information from original sources,
or from writers who have drawn from original
sources and are real authorities. These pale ghosts
floating in on mists of general information have
grown too thin. I want figures more solid, outlines
more definite, information more accurate and de-
tailed. And anyone who has read me thus far with
any spark of interest will feel the same. We shall
go and bury ourselves in "real" learning and never
come to the end.

On our second evening M. Alouf took us to
view the ruins by moonlight. This time we en-
tered by the long covered gallery that runs below
at the side of the platform on which the Acropolis

309

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

stands. It gives on the narrow space that lies be-
tween the Temple of the Sun and the somewhat
lower Temple of Bacchus, The moment of emerg-
ence from the gloom of the corridor into the light
of the full moon, with those six colossal columns,
no less beautiful than stupendous, rising from the
platform above us and tinted in that silver glow
with a delicate, almost transparent mauve hue, will
always remain as one of the most blissful visual
experiences of our lives. Nothing on earth can be
more impressive, more poetical. To have gained
such a treasure for one's memory would repay al-
most any fatigue or discomfort

I am tempted to end my book on this high but
I fear utterly uncommunicable note of ecstasy.

But the pettifogging technique of the writer of
travels has imposed itself upon me, and it is more
than I can do to break off before I have brought the
trip to its material end. What I can and will do
in honour of that supreme experience is to refrain
from those historical and archaeological details
which are to be found in M. Alouf's book (and
even in Baedeker) so instructively set forth, jThis
time the sheer beauty of it all, this "ecstasy of Co-
rinthian architecture" as it has been called, cer-
tainly killed the archaeologist in me, and whenever
I returned to the ruins it was only to the lust of the
eyes that I devoted my energies. My husband of
course explored every corner, looked at every

310

BAALBEC

fallen stone, and noted every sign in the figures in
the fallen blocks of the ceilings that showed the
degeneration of "late Roman" sculpture and an-
ticipated the beginning of "Romanesque," as it is
his present hobby to attempt to bridge the gap be-
tween the two, or rather, to prove that there was, in
fact, no break in continuity. He, too, worshipped
at the shrine of Beauty, but not so long or so unin-
terruptedly as I did, when I sat time and again on
one of the roofed terraces overlooking the luscious
garden of figs, apricots, pears, spreading walnuts
and trembling poplars, looking north along the
Be'ka stretching up to the watershed between the
Litany and the Orontes which washes the banks
whereon Antioch once stood. In these gardens the
walnut trees attain a height and girth and give a
shade surpassing anything we have ever seen ex-
cept the giant plane trees and acacias at Constanti-
nople and that sacred cedar that shelters flocks of
sheep in a field between Athens and Kephissia.

Over the trees to the east and west I could see
the great barriers of the Lebanon and the Anti-
Lebanon, the latter turning to the plain its richly
folded southern slopes, bare of snow, the former
displaying with snow-markings in the shaded
ravines of its precipitous northern wall of rocks
some vast undecipherable inscription that looked
as if written in gigantic Cufic characters. Human
intelligence cannot read that cosmic message, but

3

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

other human faculties become aware of a part at
least of its meaning.

HELBUN

But all this is not the business of the chronicler,
and I have it on my mind to recount our day's ex-
cursion to Helbun. It was about two hours'
motor drive from Baalbec to Helbun, the ancient
Chalybus, famed already in the time of Nebuchad-
nezzar for its vintages, which the Kings of Persia,
importing them, deemed their choicest wines. We
crossed the divide between the Litany and the
Orontes after a few miles and then followed for a
long time the course of the ancient channels and
aqueducts that once carried the water all the way
to Palmyra. The stream gushed out from a low
rock on the plain, forming at once a clear green
pool which discharged its rippling waters into a
stone channel. Henceforward it ran on in its bed,
but in places where the land sank away it was car-
ried level by leaking mossy aqueducts. Later, the
channel turned the flank of the Anti-Lebanon and
was conducted underground through the desert to
Palmyra. We had in fact traced the best part of
its ancient course in its dry bed when we motored
from Palmyra to Horns. But naturally long before
our time the careless Bedouin had let the channels
and aqueducts fall into disrepair and the stream
now wastes itself on the plain, A writer who knew

312

BAALBEC

the Arabs well has said, "Arab civilization is 'a
mere deception. It is but the last gleam of Greek
and Roman civilization, gradually dying out in the
powerless but respectful hand of Islam."

But we had lost sight of the aqueduct before we
were in the sacred valley of the Orontes, which
springs out of a rock in the east side of the Lebanon
range. This source, we were told, was one of the
most fascinating sights in Syria, the water (it
would appear) splashing down in a full stream
into a marble basin overhung with great trees. It
was indeed to see this, and not the pleasant but
uninteresting little town of Helbun, that we had
set out but, lo, we spent several dull hours in the
town until it was too late to visit the source of the
river. We are not yet clear as to how this hap-
pened. There were many brigands living in filthy
splendour hidden in the nearby mountains, and
one of their strongholds was the old monastery
just above the source, and it may be that our drago-
man was warned at Helbun that the visit was un-
safe. So we remained far too long for our pleasure
sitting on divans around the reception room of the
great Sheik of the district, whose palace was ap-
proached, as usual, by a courtyard filthy beyond
the Western imagination. Here we sat and
smoked, exchanging nearly unintelligible compli-
ments, both sides smiling with goodwill and polite-
ness. Presently it became clear to us that a sheep

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

was being killed in our honour and that we were
expected to partake of it at the feast that was pre-
paring. Somehow our dragoman got us out of
this, and we were allowed (the rain, alas, pre-
venting our picnicking beside the Orontes which
we had crossed a mile or two back) to eat our hard-
boiled eggs and sardines and fruit in a quiet airy
room, sitting on real chairs, and using knives and
forks, instead of crouching on the ground and
snatching with our fingers, to fold into plates com-
posed of big flour pancakes, bits of mutton from
the common pot, tasting of the awful mutton fat it
makes us sick even to think of, and washing our
food down with wine poured straight from the
jug into our mouths, being expected to grunt after
each swallow to express polite approval of the fare.
This ritual we were lucky to escape, and we rested
peacefully while all the others were dismembering
the festal sheep. It was when their meal was over
that we discovered it was too late to get to the
source of the Orontes, but as we heard afterwards
that all the trees around the basin had been cut
down to provide the brigands with firewood, we
were somewhat consoled for our loss.

ORONTES

We felt indeed that it could scarcely have been
more beautiful than what we had seen, the young
river a few miles from its source winding its

3H

BAALBEC

sparkling way through the low hills and creating
oases of verdure wherever the hills retreated
enough to allow small valleys to be formed. These
valleys are rare, for this alluring river in its course
through the Be'ka to the plain of Horns, some two
thousand feet below, where it widens into a lake,
bores its hidden way through rocky gorges. After
singing in the waterwheels of Kama and fertiliz-
ing that rich plain, it is turned sharply to the west
by a barrier of rock and flows into the opening
valley of Antioch, where, in the lake some miles
above the town, it is joined by two tributaries from
the northern mountains. It then plunges again
into another gorge and rushes down to the sea
through a vale as lovely as the Vale of Tempe, ac-
complishing a total course of a hundred and sev-
enty miles, during which in ancient times it com-
panioned all the armies and caravans of merchants
that passed from north to south to and from Egypt

MONUMENT OF HERMEL

We were rewarded for missing our glimpse of
the actual first beginnings by having plenty of time
to examine the curious stone monument that stands
on a lonely hill, the other side of the river. This
mysterious landmark has a base of three layers of
coarse limestone rocks, retreating like steps. It is
divided into three storeys : the first is a solid cube
of masonry twenty-nine and a half feet broad at

315

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

each side and twenty-six feet high, with pilasters at
the corners, and bas-reliefs under the cornice that
divided it from a somewhat smaller second storey
decorated with two pilasters on each face as well
as those at the corners. The third storey is a pyra-
mid of forty layers of stone reaching to about
eighty feet In shape it vaguely recalls the mys-
terious "Tomb of Absalom" in the Valley of Je-
hoshaphat at Jerusalem. The bas-reliefs represent
emblems of the chase and hunting scenes stags
standing and lying down, a wild boar attacked by
dogs, and so on. This monument was drawn by
Porter in his Five Years in Damascus and at that
time, 1885, it was intact. Now one side has fallen
down and the others show cracks. It will probably
soon be a shapeless heap of stones. Yet it is a
monument well worth preserving, at any rate until
it can be ascertained what it was and who put it up.
Local tradition calls it the tomb of a Roman Em-
peror, but the reliefs look like the tile tigers from
S'usa (in the Louvre) , and the moulding is perhaps
Greco-Phoenician all in all, it is a complete mys-
tery.

Again sunset found us on the road enjoying the
flush that lighted the bare furrowed flanks of the
Anti-Lebanon range, and the deep violet shadows
that crept over the valley from the Lebanon.

BAALBEC

NIHA

One other excursion we made to the tiny Chris-
tian village of Niha, hidden in a fissure in the Leb-
anon, about thirty miles south of Baalbec. Here
were some colossal basalt ruins of a Phoenician
temple once dedicated to a god called Hardar-
danes, in whose honour the "Virgin of Niha" ab-
stained from bread for twenty years. Returning
to Baalbec at sunset, we saw the antlike human
activities of the plain, from which cattle were
straggling up to the safety of hill-villages for the
night, and where in the slanting rays long-robed
Bedouins were driving their donkeys and camels,
laden with fodder or grain, or themselves riding
along on who knows what antlike mission, their
shawls floating in the evening breeze.

BAALBEC

Again the ruins, of which it seems one could
never tire! Their aspect changes from hour to
hour, and we were always discovering new details
to interest us, and new romantic points of view
from the walls. We had fortunately the leisure
for we stayed at Baalbec a week to see the
monument in every possible light, a privilege not
enjoyed by the majority of travellers, who see it
but once and then hurry on. Little by little plenty
of archaeology found its way into our beauty-

317

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

stricken souls but all this I have vowed to keep
to myself in this place, the Holy of Holies of the
shrine of beauty.

I will only mention our visit to the quarries,
where a monolith of Egyptian vastness lies aban-
doned * beneath a hill from whose crest a view of
all the town and the ruins can be seen Baalbec
and the Be'ka and its enclosing mountains, and the
lovely little Be'ka created by a low limestone ridge
that shoots out above the town, narrowing the big
valley to make room for the Beka's offspring that
lies at its side. There was also the spring, Ras el-
Ain, near which our hotel stood, bubbling from the
rock and spreading itself out in an antique marble
basin containing a grassy island shaded by walnuts
and poplars and willows. Here the natives of
Baalbec come on warm afternoons to sit on the
grass and drink tea and enjoy the sweet and un-
obtrusive companionship of the water and the
rustling coolness of the overhanging trees which
distil through their shadows the ardent sun in
flickering drops of brightness. I must not forget,
either, the old mosque, 4 deserted, tumbling to ruin

* Seventy feet long by fifteen in height and breadth. It would take
46,000 men to move it! The somewhat smaller monoliths of the en-
closing wall built round the three sides of the Temple of Jupiter (sixty
feet by fourteen by eleven) , which are raised to a height of twenty-
five feet, set exactly square in their place, with joints so accurate that
it is impossible to insert the blade of a knife between them, have
enough stone in them to construct a house sixty feet in frontage and
in depth and forty feet high, with walls one foot in thickness.

318

BAALBEC

where the fine antique columns stand deep in the
grain field that was once its floor, poppy-starred
and variegated with cornflowers. Nor the Temple
of Venus, 5 near the Acropolis, its curved architrave
borne by delicate Corinthian .pilasters, with con-
cave walls between the columns so strangely
rococo in effect. When the worship of Venus fell
into disrepute, this lovely little building was turned
into a Greek chapel and dedicated to St. Barbara.
Today it is, alas ! falling into ruin. Funds are in-
deed urgently needed to preserve not only this
building but even the great columns of the Temple
of the Sun themselves, for they are being seriously
eaten into by weather and time.

LAST DAY AT BEIRUT

Our week in the cool high air at Baalbec re-
freshed us, so that our last day in hot Beirut was
not oppressive, although we left the Be'ka in a
scirocco fierce as a dragon's breath, which lasted
until, crossing the pass of the Lebanon, it was op-
posed and conquered by the vital air from the sea
piling up the heavy clouds into a sullen bank at
our backs.

We visited again the American College and had
the pleasure of meeting Mr. Dodge, the President,
and his charming wife and of seeing their beautiful
children. We visited the interesting and admirably
arranged museum of the College. I found time,

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

even, to give a little talk to some of the girl stu-
dents.

Among the young women was the first woman
doctor graduate. In Syria female dentists are not
uncommon, and there are even female lawyers, so
one may suppose that things are on the move even
among the women the Christian women, of
course. But I confess that the physical aspect of
these students discouraged me about their future.
Perhaps my standards are too Anglo-Saxon, but I
could not think anything very brilliant or capable
in the way of careers lay before these girls, under-
sized, fat and lethargic, of febrile and fragile
aspect, with eyes that looked too lustrous and hands
that seemed to have no grip. I fear their "educa-
tion" should begin in babyhood, or prenatally, if
they are to amount to anything. But I may be mis-
taken. Their spirit is high, their determination
unshaken and they have splendid help and encour-
agement at the College.

RECOLLECTIONS- OF BEAUTY

Our boat on May 30, again with the genial Jew-
ish captain, took us to Alexandria, where, with
endless and vexing passport and other delays and
embroilments, we were transshipped to a swift
Brindisi steamer.

Again, lying on the deck, with long hours of
leisure, my face turned towards our Italian home,

320

BAALBEC

I began, somewhat idly, to wonder why this par-
ticular journey had moved me as no other had
done. What fascination was there in that little
strip of coast between the Taurus mountains "and
the Red Sea that worked upon me more strangely
than any other region, than even Italy, or Greece
itself? Italy is at least as beautiful as landscape,
and it is no less crammed with historical and ro-
mantic associations even religious ones are not
lacking and fascinating indeed these are. But I
felt as if they had not such deep roots in my being
as those called up by the Near East. It is true
that the very foundation of the culture of people
like ourselves is classic; we are taught Latin and
Greek, we learn of Athens and Rome, and of the
great men who made them famous: and as our
teachers construct for us, so we build for ourselves,
the habitation or palace of the mind which is the
best gift of education, still that edifice keeps always
its classical character. We learn that though we
are the heirs of Greece and the grandchildren of
Rome, we are essentially in spirit children of the
Italian Renaissance. Our imaginations are en-
riched not only by classic literature and art, but by
the images derived from Italian painting and sculp-
ture. The names of great Italians awaken in our
souls rich echoes and reverberations, and we make
heroes and heroines of Frederick of Hohenstauf en,
of Dante and Beatrice, and the rest

321

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

But beneath all the dreams and associations we
derive from our more mature culture, there persists
a core of still earlier impressions almost forgotten,
yet when called up more profound and moving.
Long before most of us I speak for Protestant
Anglo-Saxon children of my generation had
heard of Pericles and Pheidias, long before we
studied Homer and Virgil, or even had read Dante
and Petrarch, or had looked at Italian pictures, our
parents at home, or the curate or preacher in
church, reading from the Bible, had made the
story of Christ and the names of Abraham and
Isaac, Moses, David and Solomon familiar to our
youthful ears, and old pictures of Biblical scenes,
drawn from Bible woodcuts, had awakened in us
a childish sense of strangeness and beauty. The
vital characters and picturesque scenes of the Old
and New Testaments belong to an earlier youth
than does the Greek theogony however much
more desirable as beauty that may have come to be
for many of us. Parnassus and Hymettus are
magical names for us, but even their magic belongs
to later years of our development; and no Italian
mountain compares with Mount Carmel or Mount
Hermon ; we knew the Jordan before we had heard
of the Tiber.

The reawakening of these earliest memories, the
dim emergence of Prophets and Patriarchs from
the caves of our youthful wonder, and the echo in

322

BAALBEC

our ears of their awful voices, and the more awful
voice of Jehovah from the crags of Sinai or from
the mysterious Tabernacle, clothe our impressions
of the sacred land with the gravity of the secret
thoughts of childhood. And if we are Christians,
not even the pitiful farce of the Holy Sites in
Jerusalem will utterly repel us. But I was think-
ing rather of the reactions of the "Modern Pil-
grim." The voice of the Son of Man on the Mount
of Olives sounded in younger ears than the wisdom
of Socrates, the music of the Psalms came before
the roll of Homer's verse, and younger feet wan-
dered on the shores of the Lake of Galilee than
those which went to Troy, or crossed the Rubicon
with Caesar.

Furthermore in Syria and Palestine we are by
no means cut off from classical antiquity certainly
one of the most overpowering elements (but only
one) in the complicated structure of our House of
Life. Syria is full of beautiful Greek buildings,
either pure Greek or Greek passed through the
medium of Byzantium, and everywhere in both
lands the Roman organization and energy is
brought to our minds. No one can feel out of
touch with Greece and Rome who has come in con-
tact with their children on the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean.

And over and beyond, we have in Syria and
Palestine that element of the exotic, of the strange-
st

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

ness of the East, which is lacking in Italy and
Greece. The nomads with their camels and their
black tents, the date-trees, the deserts and oases,
remind us of Abraham's wanderings, of the Chil-
dren of Israel in the desert, of the enticing
Promised Land; while the bazaars and the palaces
with their courtyards and fountains reawaken
dreams of childhood the Arabian Nights,
Haroun-al-Raschid, and stories of the Crusaders,
whose heroes, like Coeur de Lion and his chivalrous
opponent, Saladin, are much greater heroes in our
imaginations than any Italian warriors.

Even records of the Middle Ages and beautiful
Gothic architecture abound, both in Syria and Pal-
estine: but these, I confess, were less present to my
memory at the moment. As those eastern shores
dropped more and more into the distance behind
our vessel, I felt that I was leaving a land which
contained in itself nearly all the elements on which
my soul had been nourished. I was indeed almost
drowned in the sea of dreams and memories and
associations called up by the scenes I was leaving,
and I turned before long to simpler themes, to re-
calling, one by one, the objects of highest beauty
(of whatever kind) our eyes had beheld. The
corner-stone, so to speak, was certainly Mount
Hermon, which holds in its bosom the lovely foun-
tain where the river of Jordan takes its rise, Her-
mon, whose melting snows form the enchanted

324

BAALBEC

oasis of Damascus, the "Great Sheik" whose white
head shows so grandly from the Lake of Galilee or
from the Jebel Druse. And then, the greater and
lesser Lebanon ranges that enclose the fertile valley
of Coelesyria, scarred along the skyline with a
giant inscription written in the snows that linger in
the crevasses, gleaming at sunset like red jewels
against the darker rocks and at noon with them
growing insubstantial and transparent. Then
there was the Palmyra desert, that changeful mir-
ror of the sky, framed in its embossed hills, over
which came the thousands of camels to water at the
town's spring. Nor can we forget the ineffable
vale of Antioch, the deep winding Orontes and
th$ sparkling streams that rush down from the Leb-
anon, the broad. Euphrates turning silver at sun-
set, the river dyed with the blood of Adonis, and
the stream guarded by the loud-baying dog of
stone.

The general impression is of matchless landscape
enshrining here and there grand ruins of Phoe-
nician, Hellenistic and mediaeval French charac-
ter, and mosques and solitary tombs of Moslem
saints. Without the landscape, they would lose
much of their fascination, although it would still
have interested us to find in ancient sculptured
friezes, ceilings, and domes obvious links between
the dying grimaces of Greek art and the renewed
vitality of early mediaeval art. But the incredible

3*5

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

landscape that surrounded our steps from Judea
to the Euphrates and from Aleppo to Antioch and
the coast, kept us in an ecstasy where every sig-
nificant ancient stone gave us an excuse for enjoy-
ing new panoramas of desert and mountains.

But there were, too, many memorable artistic
experiences, such as the mosaics of the great
mosque at Damascus, the deserted mosque and
medressa of Salamaniyeh, with their courts,
and the view of the town and oasis from the
hills of Salehiyeh and of the cemetery from the roof
of a pavilion at its edge. We had the view of
white-domed Maloula leaning against her preci-
pices, and the prospect from the Greek church at
the top (I slip back inevitably into landscape I) ;
we saw the black silhouette of Soueida on the Jebel
Druse and the grand ruins of Kanawat Then
there was Palmyra, the columns and the great
Temple of the Sun, and the Arab castle on the
heights above. We saw the dreamlike town of
Kama with its lullaby of creaking wheels and its
romantic mosque; we saw, not once but many
times, the grand citadel of Aleppo, and fed our
souls on beauty and pathos in the Firdusi cemetery
,and its deserted mosques and tombs. The
Crusaders' church at Tortosa glows still in mem-
ory, and the quiet cemetery mosque at Tripoli.
Sahayun and the Crac des Chevaliers although
the work of those dreadful Crusaders! are monu-

326

BAALBEC

ments I should not willingly forget, nor the out-
lines of still other fortresses glimpsed among the
crags of Lebanon. Among all these sights, beau-
tiful as they were, the "Dead City" of Kalat-Siman
comes back as the crown of them all, for site, for
completeness, for beauty, for interest.

But over and beyond everything are the mighty
records of the time of the Roman Empire, when,
owing to the peace that reigned in these countries,
Greek artists and architects were able to impress
their genius on the conquered land.

Nothing surpasses Palmyra, unless it be Baalbec,
and when we think of Jerash and Kanavat, and
then of all the later "Dead Cities' 1 of Syria, which
still owe their character to Greek inspiration and
craftsmanship, we realize that here, more com-
pletely than anywhere else on earth, we possess the
records of a time when the finest and most beauti-
ful of all forms of art, the Greek, was still a living
tradition. Every antique Hellenistic building in
Syria, however fragmentary, stands out as the work
of giants among mere mortals, whether it be the
porch to the Temple of Damascus or the few col-
umns standing in their grace and beauty over the
little harbour at Byblos, the Temple of Severus and
the columns of the Temple of Bacchus at Latakia,
or even the scattered columns and capitals here,
there and everywhere, built into the mosques and
standing and lying in their courts. The classic

327

A MODERN PILGRIMAGE

touch is not to be mistaken; it places them on a
different level from all other remains of buildings,
beautiful as these may be. A finer and more in-
vigorating air stimulates our senses, we realize the
greatness and nobility of human achievement.

Thus our trip ended as a material fact, but it be-
gan to live again in imagination and reminiscence
and speculation. The dirt and heat and hard beds,
the noise and glare and the insects, the often dubi-
ous food and the hot desert breath that sucked out
all our vitality, will be forgotten, but Jerusalem,
the Valley of the Jordan, Damascus, Palmyra,
Baalbec, Aleppo, Jerash and Antioch, Mount Her-
mon and the rest will be with us to enrich us till
we die. Then who knows?

NOTES

Chapter I

13 1 EMILY BEAUFORT, Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian
Shrines, 2 volumes (London, Longmans, 1862).
This chatty book while not very illuminating, be-
trays a great feeling for landscape. The author's
description of Beirut is especially vivid (Vol. I, pp.
158-161).

Chapter II

23 LAMARTINE, Voyage en Orient, 2 volumes (Paris,
Hachette, 1875).

23 2 A. W. KINGLAKE, Eothen (Oxford, Clarendon

Press, 1917 one of the later editions of this
classic) .

24 8 REV. W. M. THOMSON, D.D., The Land and the

Book (London, Nelson, New Edition, 1911).

Written in the middle of the last century; a mine

of detailed information.
26 * E. S. BOTJCHIER, Syria as a Roman Province (Oxford,

Blackwell, 1916),?. 139.
28 B THOMSON: see above, note 4.
30 e PERE HENRI LAMMENS, S. J., La Syrie: Precis His-

torique (Beirut, Imp. Catholique, 1921), notes 8,

38, 63a. Brevity and sound scholarship combined.

L 'Islam: Croyance et Institutions (Beirut,

Imp. Catholique, 1926).
329

NOTES
Chapter III

37 * PRINCIPAL, THE REVEREND SlR GEORGE ADAM

SMITH, D.D., F.R.S., Historical Geography of the
Holy Land (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1896).

38 2 G. ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON, Palestine and Its

Transformation (London, Constable, 1911).
47 8 PP. VINCENT and ABEL, Jerusalem nouvelle (Paris,
Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1914). The most com-
plete account of the Holy Sepulchre, its history and
the rites and liturgies in use there. The present
edifice is described, the Constantinian structure, the
condition of the church between 624 and 1109, the
Crusaders' church, as well as all the different rites
and liturgies used there.

49 * CHATEAUBRIAND'S account of the Holy Sepulchre,

which he was almost the last to see before the fire, is
very interesting. Itineraire de Paris et Jerusalem
(Bruxelles, Lacrosse, 1821), Part IV.

50 5 PHENE A. SPIERS, Architecture East and West (Lon-

don, Batsford, 1905)* The paper on Jerusalem
contains much that is interesting to students of the
Crusaders 1 churches.

53 6 A. W. KJNGLAKE, The Invasion of the Crimea (Lon-
don, Blackwood, New Edition, 1890). Volume I
contains a dramatic and brilliant account of this
momentous quarrel.

53 7 The reason for the place where the present Mosque
stands is the mysterious "Rock." A mass of tradi-
tion has gathered about it, and whatever was or was
not believed of this stone, it occurred to no one
before our own times to doubt that it was indeed
the very Eben Schatiyah of the Jews, as it was the
Sakhrah of the Mohammedans. Much as one's
sense of the fitting would desire this Rock to be

330

NOTES

actually the site of the Holy of Holies in the Tem-
ple, it does not appear to be borne out by facts,
M. DE VOGUE has discussed the question in detail in
his great monograph on the Haram es-Sherif (Le
Temple de Jerusalem, Paris, Noblete et Baudry,
Libraires-Editeurs, 1864), and so far as I know
his conclusion has not been upset although it con-
tradicts the hoary traditions of the rabbis of the
third and fourth centuries.

57 8 K. A. C. CRESWELL, Muslem Architecture (Oxford,

Clarendon Press, 1932). It contains not only a
summary with full reference of everything of inter-
est that has been written about the Dome of the
Rock, but many first-hand and valuable observa-
tions and suggestions, as well as ample illustrations.
For a more popular account of the Haram es-
Sherif and of the Mosque and the Rock, see H. C.
LUKACH, The Fringe of the East (New York,
Macmillan, 1913), Chap. IV.

58 9 This question is fully discussed in the monograph by

De Vogiie: see above, note 7.

59 10 Translation in WATSON: see below, note 13.

60 n The Temple of Herod is fully described by the Jewish

writer and warrior, JOSEPHUS (Ant. xv, Belljud.
1,21 : v:5). Of the character of Josephus, a learned,
documented and critical account is given by PERE
H. VINCENT in Jerusalem (Paris, Librairie Victor
Lecoffre, 1912), Vol. I, pp. 8-22.

60 12 So many descriptions have been written of the Wail-
ing at the Wall, that I forbear to add my own.
H. C. Lukach (see above, note 8, pp. 108-112)
has described it very well, and Pierre Loti makes
it extremely vivid in his rather thin and sentimental
Jerusalem; J. and J, THARAUD describe it in I! An
prochain a Jerusalem (Paris, Plon, 1924) to

331

NOTES

mention a few recent writers. Of course Kinglake,
Lamartine, De Vogue, Chateaubriand and innu-
merable writers from all periods have left descrip-
tions of it

62 18 COLONEL SIR CHARLES WATSON, The Story of

Jerusalem (New York, Dutton, and London, Dent,
1912) . I cannot do better than refer the intelligent
non-spfccialist reader and traveller to this little book,
written with scrupulous knowledge and with a con-
tagious enthusiasm.

63 14 MICHAUD, Histoire des Croisades, 7 volumes (Paris,

L. G. Michaud, 1819-22). One of the most fas-
cinating and illuminating histories ever written.

64 15 ERNES*! RICHMOND, The Dome of the Rock of Jeru-

salem (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1924). Since my
return I have read this book, than which nothing
could be clearer or more beautifully illustrated.
The author says very little about the mosaics, but
discusses the structure of the building and its past
and present condition, and the tiles that cover the
exterior. His book is completely scholarly and sat-
isfactory, with plenty of coloured and photographic
illustrations.

65 16 Mile. Marguerite de Berchem has contributed to the

book of Captain Creswell (see above, note 8) a
section on these mosaics, which she has studied and
described in more detail than any other writer.

Chapter IV

82 * PP. VINCENT and ABEL, Capt E. S. H. MACKAY,
O.P., Hebron (le Harem el-Khalib) (Paris,
Leroux, 1923). A learned and interesting account
of the building and its history.

332

NOTES

86 2 PP. VINCENT and ABEL, Bethlehem, le Santuaire de

laNativite (Paris, Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1914)*

87 8 SALOMON REINACH, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, 5

volumes (Paris, Leroux, 1905-23).

Chapter 7

go * PRINCIPAL, THE REVEREND SIR GEORGE ADAM
SMITH, D.D., F.R.S., Historical Geography of the
Holy Land (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1896).

99 2 ADOLPH JACOBY, Das Geographische Mosaik in
Madaba (Leipzig, Dieterich'scher Verlag, 1905).
He quotes all the other authorities up to his date
for the other mosaics in the town, but chiefly dis-
cusses the mosaic map in the Greek church. See
also papers in the Nuov o Bolletino di Archeologia
Cristiana for 1899, the Revue Biblique (Vol. I, pp.
625, 636, 637, 639), and the Zeitschrift, for arti-
cles by Manfredi, Sejourne, and Schuhmacher.

101 8 MAX VAN BERCHEM, Voyage en Syria: Memoire de
I'Institut Archeologique du Caire, 4 volumes (1813-
14)*

101 4 CANON TRISTRAM, The Land of Moab (London,
Murray, 1874). In this book (a much less enter-
taining volume than The Land of Israel by the same
author) M'shatta (Mashita) is fully described. A
supplementary chapter by Ferguson is supposed to
"prove" that this palace was erected by Chosroes II.
There are two articles by Schulz and Strzygow-
ski (Jahrbuch der koniglich Preussischen Kunst-
sammlungen, 1904, pp. 205-373), the first consist-
ing of measurements and reconstructions and the
second splendidly illustrated. To any who can read
Strzygowski's difficult prose and digest his still
more difficult doctrine, this learned study of the

333

NOTES

Palace of M'shatta should be of great interest, al-
though some of its conclusions have been superseded
by the discovery of Pere Lammens alluded to in the
text of this book.

114 5 For example, Mrs. Inchbold's description and the il-
lustrations in Under the Syrian Sun, 2 volumes
(London, Hutchinson, 1925), She speaks of
ruined sugar mills and Roman aqueducts hidden
in lovely gorges, of overgrown remains of Herodian
cities, enchanting streams and pools and water-
falls, all quite unknown to the ordinary tourist, al-
though within an easy afternoon's excursion from
Jericho.

Chapter VI

118 x The Samaritans believe that this mountain, Gerizim,
was the place chosen by Jehovah for His sanctuary.
But John Hyrcanus was evidently mightier than
Jaweh, for he destroyed their Temple in 127 B.C.,
and it seems never to have been rebuilt.

118 2 For further study of the Samaritans, see J. A. MONT-
GOMERY, The Samaritans (Philadelphia, Winston,
1907) ; and A. F. COWLEY, The Samaritan Liturgy
(Oxford Press, 1900).

124 8 Lady SYBIL LUBBOCK, On Ancient Ways: A Winter
Journey (London, Cape, 1928).

136 4 LEONARD STEIN, Zionism ' (London, Benn). This
is an admirable monograph, which everyone inter-
ested in the question should consult,

149 6 SALOMON REINACH, Cultes, Mythes et Religions
(Paris, Leroux, 1905-23), Vol. Ill, essay i:
"Death of Pan."

334

NOTES

'Chapter HI

152 PRINCIPAL, THE REVEREND SIR GEORGE ADAM
SMITH, D.D., F.R.S., Historical Geography of the
Holy Land (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1896).
Dr. Adam Smith has described the entrance to Da-
mascus in so evocative a way that I dare not follow
him with my clod-hopping pen. The reader cannot
do better than to turn to page 641 and read on.

156 2 Anonymous, A Journey from Aleppo to Damascus

(London, 1736).

157 8 A. W. KINGLAKE, Eothen (Oxford, Clarendon

Press, 1917).

1 60 4 For an account of the Druse-Maronite War, see
Anonymous, Rambles in the Syrian Desert (Lon-
don, Murray, 1864), pp. 228-255.

1 66 5 In the opinion of PHEN A. SPIERS, ^Architecture
East and West (London, Batsford, 1905), the large
arch found here is a feature that came in only after
the time of Apollodorus, the earliest example being
in the Palace of Spalato, built by Diocletian in AJ>.
284.

170 6 GEORGE W. CURTIS, The Howaji in Syria (New
York, Harpers, 1852).

Chapter Fill

187 * MELCHIOR DE VOGUE, Architecture civile et religieuse

(en Syrie) du I-VII siecle, 2 volumes (Paris, Bau-
dray, 1865-7).

1 88 2 Rev. J. L. PORTER, Giant Cities of Bashan (London,

Nelson, 1867).

189 8 JOHN LEWIS BURCKHARDT, Travels in Syria and the

Holy Land (London, Murray, 1822). Pages 200
to 205 contain a first-hand account of the Druses

335

NOTES

with lights that are not always too favourably upon
their mores. He says that "unnatural propensities
are very common among them."

189 *For a brief account of El Hakim, see PERE HENRI

LAMMENS, S. J., Ulslam: Croyance et Institutions
(Beirut, Imp, Catholique, 1926), pp. 149, 150.

190 5 WoRTABET, Researches into the Religions of Syria;

quoted by LAURENCE OLIPHANT in his Land of
Gilead (London and Edinburgh, Blackwood,
1880). The earlier book I have been unable to
procure.

194 6 PHILIP K. HlTTl, Ph.D., The Origins of the Druze
People and Religion (New York, Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1929). The clearest historical ac-
count of this strange sect.

Chapter IX

198 1 Accounts have been left by travellers to Palmyra in
such volumes as :

Dr. WILLIAM HALIFAX, Relation of a Voyage
to Tadmore (reprinted by the Palestine Exploration
Fund, 1890),

WOODS and DAWKINS, Journey in 1651 (Lon-
don, Volney, 1754)-

Les Ruines de Palmyre (Paris, Constan-

tin, 1819).

Dr, WILLIAM WRIGHT, Palmyra and Zenobia
(London, Nelson, 1895). This is a fairly amusing
tale of spirited adventure and hairbreadth escapes
from Bedouin raiders. Wright's first visit to Pal-
myra was in 1872.

EMILY BEAUFORT. See Note i, Chap. I. An
interesting account of an adventurous trip to
Palmyra about 1850 is given by this writer, who
336

NOTES

appreciates the humour as well as the dangers of a
caravan journey.

JOHN* KELMAN, From Damascus to Palmyra
(London, Black, 1908). Chapter VII describes his
five-day ride across the desert. His adventures are
not, as in the case of earlier travellers, with hostile
or thievish Arabs, but with the changing lights and
shadows, with sunrises and sunsets, with mirages
and starlit skies.

199 2 The official designation of the Christian sect commonly
called Jacobite is "Syrian Orthodox." Their
founder was Jacopo Baradi, who in the sixth cen-
tury built up in Syria a Monophysite church. They
are in communion with the Copts, and their liturgy,
attributed to St. James the Less, is a Syriac form
of the ancient Antiochan rite. They speak Syriac.

206 3 The battle is vividly described by ZOSIMUS, a Greek
historian of the time of Constantine, whose New
History is merely a compilation from earlier
sources, Trebellius Pollio, one of the Augustan
historians who wrote under Diocletian and Con-
stantine, has also much to say about Zenobia, and
has also Flavius Vospicus, who gives the letters
exchanged between Aurelian and Zenobia, when
she haughtily refused his summons to surrender.

213 *!RBY and MANGLES, Travels in Egypt and Nubia,
Syria and the Holy Land (London, Murray,
1844).

219 6 HARALD INGHOLT, Studier over Palmyresk Skulpture
(Copenhagen, Rood's Verlag, 1928). The author
gives fifty or so reproductions from which an ex-
cellent idea can be formed of Palmyrene art. He
mentions between thirty and forty museums and
some dozen private collections where specimens of
Palmyrene sculpture are to be found. Constant!-

337

NOTES

nople has the largest collection and next to it,
Copenhagen, and many of the best are now in the
Museum of the American College of Beirut.
225 6 LuciAN (London, Heinemann, 1913-25, Loeb Clas-
sical Library). Essay: "The Goddess of Surrye,"
translated by E. Harmon,- Yale University.

Chapter!

234 * FRANZ CUMONT, Etudes Syriennes (Paris, Picard,
1917), P- 13-

236 2 H. C. BUTLER, Publications of the Princeton Univer-
sity Archeological Expedition to Syria in 1904-5
and 1909.

236 8 HERMANN BEYER, Der Syrische Kirchenbau (Berlin,
Verlag De Gruyter, 1928), note 78.

240 4 GERTRUDE BELL, The Desert and the Sown (London,
Heinemann, 1907). )

248 6 REV. W. M. THOMSON, D.D., The Land and the

Book (London, Nelson, New Edition, 1911).

249 e HENRY MAUNDRELL, Journey from Aleppo to Jeru-

salem at Easter, 1697 (in Appendix Account of a
Journey from Aleppo to the River Euphrates)
(Oxford, 1740; London, 1810). -

253 7 DR. EDOUARD SACHAU, Reise in Nord-Asien und
Mesopotamien (Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1882).

264 8 MELCHIOR DE VOGUE, Architecture civile et reli-
ffieuse (en Syrie) du I-VII siecle (Paris, Baudray,
1865-7), Vol. II, Plate 93- Under the name of
Kalybe, or "small chapel," the home of a god whose
statue was generally within, and usually built in the
form of a cube covered by a hemispheric cupola, De
Vogue discusses the question of the pendentive sup-
porting the cupola, of which he finds instances as
early as 282 of our era (emm-es-Zeitom or the Hau-

338

NOTES

ran) . These rudimentary pendentives he considers
to be the key to the later honeycomb Arab penden-
tive. Ill, 9 and 10. As we saw the cupola Lata-
kia and some of these early Kalybes we could not
help wondering if such Greek buildings did not
reveal the origin of the cupola, rather than Strzy-
gowski's out-of-the-way Armenian churches. If you
saw an African wearing a top-hat you would not
conclude that Europeans' top-hats came from Africa,
not even if this particular hat were of actually older
fashion than any to be found in London. The
buildings point straight back to architects trained in
the Greek tradition, but stimulated by Roman
models.

Chapter XI

266 * LIEUT. COLONEL PAUL JACQUOT, L'Etat des
Alaouites: Guide tourist (Beirut, Imp. Catholique,
1929).

269 2 MAX VAN BERCHEM, Voyage en Syrie: Memoir e de
I'Institut Archeologique du Caire, 4 volumes
(1813-14), discusses fully the construction of this
building (pp. 289, 290). He says it was a tetra-
pylon, very early turned into a Christian church.

269 s Reproduced, but somewhat shorn of its impressive-
ness, as Plate 29 in DE ,VoGi)E, Architecture civile
et religieuse (en Syrie) du I-VH siecle.

275 4 It is not necessary to consult the earlier writers on the
Crac des Chevaliers, for now we have the account
of M. Paul Deschamps, who superintended the re-
cent measurements and restorations there. His long
and learned article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts
(1929, T. i, pp. {-34) is amply illustrated. He
says it is "the best preserved chateau of the Middle
Ages, as well as the most complete, the most inter-

339

NOTES

esting and the most imposing which has come down
to us, not only among those in Syria and Palestine
but also among those in our own country, France."

277 e These Sepulchral Monuments are reproduced in en-
gravings by Henry Maundrell. See Note 6, Chap.
X.

284 6 RENE DUSSAUD, Histolre et Religion des Nosairis
(Paris, Hautes Etudes, 129, 1900).

284 7 MAURICE BARRES, line Enquete en Pays du Levant
(Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1923), Vol. I, Chap. XI:
"Le Vieux de la Montagne"; Chap. XIII: "Le
Voyage aux Chateaux des Assassins"

284 8 PERE HENRI LAMMENS, S.J., L f Islam: Croyance et
Institutions (Beirut, Imp. Catholique, 1926). The
comprehensive bibliography, occupying twenty pages
at the end of the book, can be consulted by those in-
terested in the subject.

292 9 See the learned and interesting account of these
"High Places" written by CLAUDE CONDER, Survey
of Western Palestine Exploration Fund (1881),
pp. 258-273. He describes them as representing
a cult which, there as elsewhere, is an amalgam of
all the religions that have been practised in the land
predominantly the Jewish.

Chapter XII

297 1 MAX VAN BERCHEM, Voyage en Syrie: Memoire de
flnstitut Archeologique du Caire, 4 volumes
(1813-14), pp. 105-112, gives a complete archaeo-
logical account of the town, with plans and repro-
duction of details.

300 2 LUCIAN. See Chap. IX, Note 6.

340

NOTES

Chapter XIII

304. 1 REV. W. M. TRISTRAM, The Land of Israel (Lon-
don, S. P. C. K., First Edition, 1862).

308 2 MlCHEjL M. ALOUF, Histoire de Baalbec (Beirut,
Imp. Al-Igithad, Fifth Edition, 1928).

308 8 Baalbek. Herausgegeben von Theodore Weigand.
Text: Schulz, Winnefeld, Keurchener, Kahl, Schu-
macher, Sarre, Soberheim, von Lubke. Berlin und
Leipzig, 1921-5.

Another German writer in 1892 gives an intel-
ligent account of Baalbec and some very fine repro-
ductions of the ruins : HEINRICH FRAUBERGER, Die
Akropolis von Baalbec (Frankfurt 3/M, Keller,
1892). Earlier still is the account of WOODS and
DAWKINS, Journey in 1651 (London, Volney,

1754).

318 4 MAX VAN BERCHEM, Voyage en Syne: Memoir e de

rinstitut Archeologique du Gaire, 4 volumes (1813-
14). See Note i, Chap. XII; pp. 336-341-

319 5 JOHN LEWIS BURCKHARDT, Travels in Syria and the

Holy Land (London, Murray, 1822).

INDEX

Aaron, 287

Abana and Pharphar, 152

Abbas Effendi, 32

Abd-el-Melek, 62

Abdullah, King, 104

Abel and Vincent, Peres, 58, 330,

332, 333
Abraham, 70, 81, 83, 84, 116,

122, 144, 158, 160, 233, 32*1

324

Oak, 84, 146
reproves Jehovah, 116
Absalom, 81, 186, 192
Abu Ghosh, 80
Abulfeda, 187, 207, 229
Achilles, 26
Acre, 25, 29-33, 283
Acropolis, 54, 55
Adam, 51, 81

Adonis, 293, 298, 299, 300, 325
Adonis River, 299, 300, 325
Adrianople, 54
Afghanistan, 288
Afghans, 285
Africa, South, 288
Aglibol, 215
Ahaz, 160
Aix-Ia-Chapelle, 62
Alamut, 286

Alaouites, 265, 284, 289
Aleppo, 126, 192, 207, 225, 228,

231-236, 237, 238, 241, 242,

244, 246, 247, 248, 253, 265,

286, 326, 328
citadel, 231-234, 326
Firdusi cemetery and Mosque,

232, 326

Halawiyeh Mosque, 235
Hammam, 234

Alexander, 26, 28, 158, 234, 268,

271, 273

Alexandretta, 253, 264
Alexandria, 109, no, 262, 320
Ali, 265, 286, 287, 291, 292, 295
AH of Herat, 162 n.
Allat, 215
Allbright, Dr., 93
Allenby, Bridge, 95
Allenby, Lord, 46
Alouf, M. Michel, 308, 309, 310,

34i

Amalfi, 297
Amatha. See Kama.
American College, Beirut, 319, 338
Amman, 91, 94, 96, 97, 103, 104,

112, 145, 180, 181, 182
amphitheatre, 97, 145
fort, 97
hotel, 97
temple, 97
Amorites, 99
Amrit, 277, 279
Amwas, 80, 146
Anaitis, 256
Ancona, 127
Angelico, Fra, 73
Ansariyeh. See Nosairis.
Ansariyeh Mountains, 275, 285,

287

Anti-Lebanon, 16, 38, 151, 152,
156, 170, 175, 180, 216, 305,
311, 312, 315

Antioch, 17, 127, 157, 195, 206,
234, 244, 252-264, 265, 305,
3> 3i5, 325, 326, 328
Grove of Daphne, 255, 263
hotel, 255
Iron Door, 259

343

INDEX

Antioch Contd.

Plain of, 253, 265

road to, 253

serai, 258

wall, 258
Antiochus, 59

Antiochus Epiphanes, 229, 261
Antonines, the, 104, 181
Antoninus Pius, 107
Antonius, Mr., 66, 67
Antony, Mark, 131, 210, 257
Apamea, 228, 244
Apheca, 142, 299
Aphrodite, 255
Apollo, 206, 255, 256, 257
Apollodorus, 166, 335
Arabia, 134
Argob. See Lejah.
Arizun and Arsus, 216
Aries, 226
Artemis, 108, 255
Aschera, 299
Asia Minor, 7, 134, 249
Assassins, 283-288
Assyrians, 121
Astarte, 108, 150, 215, 291, 293,

298

Astoreth, 226
Assisi, 140
Atargates, 215, 308
Athena, 216

Athens, 54, 55, 3" 321
Aurelian, 206, 207, 209, 337
Ayisha, 162 n.

Baal, 33, 124, 150, 157, 207, 215,

228, 291, 308

Baalbec, 27, 104, 105, 278, 297,
304-312, 3i7-3i9> 327, 3^8,
34i

Kaowan Hotel, 307
quarries, 318
Ras-el-Ain, 318
temples, 307-310, 317-319
Baal Kronos, 298

Baalsamin, 215, 216

Ba'altis, 298

Bab (Ba'abism), 30-32

Babylon, 45, 46, 59, 157

Babylus, 257

Bacchus, 269, 307, 308, 310

Bach, 13

Baghdad, 31,^152, 157, '59, 2 33

Bagnold, Major A. J., 90

Baka. See Coelesyria.

Baldi, Father, 57, 126

Balfouria, 134

Banyas, I42'-I5O, 152, 254

Barada (Abana), 152, 162, 170

Baradi, Jacopo, 337

Barbalissus, Bais. See Meskeneh.

Barbarossa, Frederick, 29

Barnabas, 262

Barres, Maurice, 154, 170, 284,

3-P

Bashan, 38, 40, 184, 186
Bathsheba, 46, 97
Bazaars of Damascus, 167, 168
Beatrice, 321
Beaufort, Emily, 329
Bedouins, 21, 49, 112, 131, 136,

154, 187, 197, 208, 210, 213
Beersheba, 144
Beha, The, 30
Behi-u'llal, 31
Beirut (Beyrout), u, 13, 14, 17,

21, 25, 78, 131, 194, 277, 297,

299, 3oi, 303, 3i9, 329, 338
American College, 319, 338
Hotel d'Orient, u

Beitshebab, 19, 304

Beka. See Coelesyria.

Bell, Gertrude, 179, 240, 291, 338

Bellini, Gentile, 67

Belus (river), 29

Belvoir, 126

Berchem, Marguerite de, 161 n.,
332

Berlin Museum, xoi

Bernini, 14

Beroea, 234

Berzuh Omid, 287

344

INDEX

Bethlehem, 48, 75, 86, 87, 145
Church of Nativity, 86-88, 145
St Jerome's Cave, 87

Beybars, 71, 78, 159, 161, 163,
233, 264, 274, 275, 288, 289

Beyer, Hermann, 236, 338

Blue Mosque. See Jerusalem.

Bohemond, 264

Bombay, 288

"Bordeaux Pilgrim, The," 60

Bosphorus, 22, 35, 209

Bostra, cathedral, no

Bouchier, E. S., 329

Brindisi, 7, 320

Broussa, 254

Brunellesco, no

Burbala, 187

Burckhardt, John Lewis, 335,

34i
Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy,

75

Butler, H. C., 236, 338
Byblos, 14, 297-301, 327
inn, 300
temple, 298

Byzantium (Constantinople), 160,
161, 220, 323

Caesar, 323

Caesarea, 9, 30, 33, *34

Caesarea Philippi. See Banyas.

Cairo, 71

Caix, Comte de, 229

Calabria, 22

Cana, 136

Canaan and Canaanites, 44, 121,

132, 144, 225, 293
Capernaum, 140* l tt> 2 54

synagogue, 140
Caracalla, 222, 256
Carmel. See Mount CarmeL
Carmelite Hotel, the (Stella

Maris), 32
Carmelite monks, 34
Carpaccio, 66

Casauria (Abruzzo), Church of
San Clemente, 69

Caspian Sea, 286

Catena, 67

Cavro, M. Lucien, 162, 169, 170

Cezanne, 162

Chalybus. See Helbun.

Charlemagne, 53, 227

Charles, Mr., 236

Chartres, 224, 227

Chateaubriand, 63, 91, 330, 332

Chatham, Earl, 23

Chaucer, 205

Chedorlaomer, 158

Chemosh, 226

Christ, 3, 17, 24, 30, 31, 44* 45,
50, 5*t 52, 7 71, 74, M, 87,
95, in, 114, 120, 136, 137,
138, 142, 148, 149, 162, 183,
191, 292

Chrysostom, St John, 253, 257,
262, 263, 292

Circassian settlers, 112

Cities of the Plain, 91, 92, 116

Cleopatra, 113, 131, 203, 206, 257

Codex of the Pentateuch, 123

Coelesyria, 39, 305, 311, 315, 318,

319, 3*5

Conder, Claude, 340
Confucius, 43

Conrad of Montferrat, 288
Constantine, 45, 84, 87, 88, 195,

262, 299, 337
Constantinople, 22, 26, 30, 31, 54,

194, 206, 289, 307, 3> 3*7
Cowley, A. R, 334
Crac des Chevaliers, 248, 271,

274-276, 282, 326, 339
Crassus, 254
Creswell, Capt K. A. C., 60, 331,

332

Crete, 276
Crimean War, 53
Crowfoot, John, 108, in
Crusaders, 4, 8, 9, 26, 29, 46, 47,

48, 49, 62, 63, 66, 69, 78, 79,

SO, 83, 122, 123, 125, 127, 132,

345

INDEX

Crusaders Contd,

137, 138, *59 243, ^
271, 272, 273, 278, 324, 3*

Ctesiphon, 204

Cumont, Franz, 338

Cyprus, 25, 31, 165, 276, 303

Cyrus, 59

Damascus, 12, 19, 41, 150, 151,
152, 153-174, 175, 181, 184, 192,
196, 197, 198, 203, 229, 236,
242, 248, 286, 324, 326, 327,
3*8, 335
bazaars, 167
cemetery, 170

Church of St. George, 171
dervishes, 172-174
Dome of die Treasure, 162,

229 n.

excursions from, 175-196
Ez-Azim, 172, 248
Grand Mosque, 161-167, 326
history, 158-161
khans, 168
mosaics, 161
Salahiyeh, 169
Salamaniyeh Mosque and Me-

dressa, 167, 326
tomb of Saladin, 166
Damietta, 17
Dan, 144
Dana, 244

Dana (northern), 264
Dante, 321, 322
Daphne, 255-257
Darius, 160

David, 45, 46, 57, *i, 81, *&> 3*2
Dawkins, Woods aid, 208, 336
Dead Sea, 39, 73, 90* 9* 92, 93,

94, 115, 146, 305
Deborah, 129, 132
Deburieh, 132
Decapolis, The, 97, 131, 180, 181,

184
Deschamps, Paul, 14, 49, 128, 339

Deir Darin, 244
Deir Seta, 244
Deir Siman, 241, 263
Dellonza, 244

De Vogue, Melchior, 187, 195,
236, 238, 240, 245, 263, 264,

296, 301, 33i, 335> 338, 339

Dhar Juni (Djoun), 23

Diana, 256

Diocletian, 335, 337

Dion Cassius, 60

Dionysos, 183

Djiar esh-Shogar, 265

Dodge, Mr., President of Ameri-
can College, Beirut, 319

Dog River, 301-303, 325

Dome of the Rock. See Jeru-
salem.

Domitian, 107

Dothan, 132

Doumar, M., 172

Dragoman (Iskander Haiek), 10,
u, 15, 19, 47, 189, 241, 244,
247, 252

Druses, 18, 19, 24, 33, 179, 186,

189-194, 290, 335
religion, 189-195

Durzi (Darasi), 180

Dussaud, Rene, 14, 284, 291, 340

Egypt, 7, 14, 17, 21, 32, 41, 46,
71, 95, 96, 125, 131, 134, 159,
161, 189, 203, 223, 276, 286,

315

El, 298

El Aksa, Mosque, 55, 68, 69
Elagabalus, 222, 223, 227, 228,

292

El Barrett, 245

El Hakim, 46, 189, 190, 191, 336
Eliezer, 158

Elijah, 33, 34, 37, 95, "5, 132
Eliot, George, i^
Elisha, 113, 121
Eliun, 298

346

INDEX

El Ka'ba, 190

El Leddan, 147

Emesa, 204, 206, 221-223, 227,

292. See also Horns.
Emmaus, 80
Endor, 125
England, cathedral doses, 54

abbeys, 102

Epiphanla. See Horns.
Escorial, the, 54
Esdraelon, 39, 40, 44, 121, 122,

124, 129-133, 133, 134, 146
Es Salt, 95
Euphrates, 39, 130, 153, 204, 206,

209, 233, 248, 249, 302, 325,

326

Evans, Sir Arthur, 276
Ezekiel, 21, 28
Ezra, 179, 195

Fakr-ed-Din, 194

Fatima, 170

Feisal, King, 104.

Firdusi cemetery and Mosque.

See Aleppo*
Flavius Vospicus, 337
Florence, 17, 194
Fra Angelico, 73
Frauberger, Heinrich, 341
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, 321
Fulke, King, 126

Gadara, 141, 181
Galilee, 38, 125, 128, 131, 133, 143
Lake of, 126, 129, 130, 136-142,

146, 181 n., 194, 254, 323, 325.

See also Tiberias.
Gallien, 204
Gebral. See Byblos.
Geneva, Lake of, 93
Gergesa, 141

Gerizim. See Mount Gerizim.
German Oriental Society, 140

Gethsemane, 72

Ghabis, the, 292

Ghor. See Jordan Valley.

Gibbon, Edward, 205, 206, 222,

256, 261
Gideon, 121
Gilboa, 40
Gilead, 39, 40, 126
Girgenti, 254
Gluck, 13

Godfrey of Bouillon, 51, 263
Granada, 254

Grand Mufti, the, 67, 68, 76
Greco-Roman, 104
Greece, 25, 46, 321, 324
Guardarrama, 54
Guerin, Maurice, 14
Gulf of Akaba, 93
Gulf of Persia, 153

Hadad, 150, 234
Hadrian, 60, 84, 87
Haffe, 270
Haidaris, 291
Haiek. See Dragoman.
Haifa, 9, 32, 35
Hakim. See El Hakim.
Haleb. See Aleppo.
Halifax, Dr. William, 336
Kama (Hamath), 162, 228-230,
244, 255, 265, 274, 287, 305,

3i5> 3*6
Hammam, 234
Hanza (Hamza), 190, 191
Hardardanes, 317
Haroun al Rashid, 324
Hassan Sabbat, 286, 287
Hassan the Second, 187, 288
Hauran, the, 19, 170* 178-188,

290
Hebron, 75, 81-84, 139* *tf

Cave of Macphelah, 83

grapes, 82

Mosque, 82, 145

Wailing Wall, 83

347

INDEX

Helbun, 312-314.

Heliopolis. See Baal bee,

Hellenistic, 104

Hellenistic building, 54, 79, 97,
104-108, 140, 325, 327

Hermel, Monument of, 315

Herraon. See Mt. Hermon.

Herod the Great, 3, 45, 55, 60,
113, 124, 138, 148, 159, 160,
205, 268, 331

Herrera, 54

Hezekiah, 59

Hieropolis, 225

Hippos, 181

Hiram, 9

Hitti, Philip K., 336

Hittites, 144

Hivites, 144

Holy Sepulchre, the. See Jeru-
salem.

Homer, 322, 323

Horns, 204, 207, 221-223, 229, 274,

312, 315. See also Emesa.
Lake of, 228, 275
Mosque, 222, 229
sacred stone of, 222

Horns of Hattin, 137

Horsfeld, Mr., 108

Horus, 277, 293

Hosn Soleiman, 277, 278

Hulugu, 159, 233, 309

Huntington, Ellsworth, 38, 91,
120, 330

Hussein, King, 104

Hymettus, 322

Hyrcanus, John, 334

Ibraham Pasha, 233, 289

India, 153, 165, 285

Ingholt, Harald, 337

Irby and Mangles, 213, 238, 337

Isaac, 70, 8 1, 83, 322

Isaiah, 34, 75

Isis, 255

Ismael Bey, 275, 286, 289

Ismaelis. See Assassins.
Israelites, 41-46, 121, 122, 131,

293, 394
Issachar, 130
Istar, 298
Italy, 321, 324
Iturea. See Bashan.

Jacob, 70, 81, 83, 130, 226

Jacoby, Adolph, 333

Jacquot, Lieut Col., 266, 289, 339

Jael, 132

Jaffa, 8, 9, 10, 46, 78

Jamah el Frangi, 274

Jaulan Mountains, 126, 144, 186

Jebel-Druse, 178, 180, 186, 224,

3*5, 3*6

Jebusites, 45, 144
Jeden. See Bashan.
Jehoshaphat, Valley of, 47, 55,

72, 74, 3i6
Jehu, 124
Jenin, 124
Jerash (Gerasa), 104-112, 145,

146, 181, 182, 327, 328
Byzantine churches, 108-112
Church of Fountain, in
mosaics, in
synagogue, zn
temple, 108
theatres, 107, 108
Triumphal Arch, 107
Jeremias, 148
Jericho, 113
Jeroboam, 160

Jerusalem, 3, , , 21, 24, 37-77,
78, 81, 83, 85, 86, 88, 93, 99,
113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 127,
131, 138, I39 I4^, f 145) H6,
154, 179, 180, 185, 225, 323,
328
Blue Mosque, n, 50, 55, 56-68,

72, 83, 161, 163, 331
British School of Archaeology,
108

348

INDEX

Jerusalem Contd.
Dome of the Chain, 57
Dome of the Rock (Harames-

Sherif), 53-71, 74, 101, 331,

332
El Aksa Mosque, 55, 68-69,

235

Gate of St. Stephen, 76
Golden Gate, 46, 47
Golgotha, 51
Greek Easter, 52
Hebrew College, 76
Holy Sepulchre, 47-53, 56, 69,

71, no, 119, 145, 324, 235,

330

Hotel of St. John, 12, 48
modern churches, 279
Mount of Corruption, 226
Mount of Olives, 47, 63, 71-74,

76, 115, 145, 307, 3^3
Mount Moriah, 58, 224
Rock, the, 66, 70, 69-71, 224,

33i
Temple, the, 9, 45, 50, 55, 58,

59, 60, 62, 225
Tower of David, 46
Wailing Wall, 60, 331
walls and gates, 145
Jezebel, 26, 124
Jezreel, 121, 126, 129
Joab, 144

John of Damascus, 160
Jonah, 9, 7*

Jones, A. R. M., 108, no
Joppa. See Jaffa.
Jordan, Allenby Bridge, 95
River, 39, 90, 95, 129* W> *47i

181, 322, 3*4
sources, 129

Valley of, 39 4* 73, 94, 9*>

113, 114,^15* 6, *3* X 33>

143, 146, 150, 254, 287, 292,

305, 3*8

Upper Valley o i43i *50>

254

Joseph, 83, 122, 123, 125
Joseph of Arimathea, 51, 141

Josephus, 33, 85, 86, 114, 148,

2 29> 293> 33i
Joshua, 44, 122, 144
Josiah, 226
Judas, 191

Judas Maccabaeus, 59
Judea, 8, 38-44, 78, 81, 96, 118,

119, 120, 121, 133, 135, 143,

326

Judith and Holofernes, 121
Julia Domna, 107, 222
Julia Maesa, 222
Julian the Apostate, 60, 234, 256,

262

Jupiter, 256, 308
Justinian, 69, 88, 122, 159, 177,

207, 250, 276

Kahl, 341

Kalat-Siman, 235, 236-242, 263,

327

Kalaun, 71
Kalazis, the, 292
Kanavat, 180-184, 326, 327
Karyatein, 199
Kasimeyeh, 27
Kasr-el-Heir, 200
Kedron, Valley of, 74
Kefr-Kilt, 245
Keitbey, 71, 163
Kelman, John, 219, 337
Kephissia, 311
Kerbela, 295
Kerith, the Brook, 114
Keurchener, 341
Khan, H. H. the Aga, 284, 286,

288

Khorasin, 160

Khosroes II, 97> 9** " 2 33
Kinglake, A. W. (Eothen), 23,

24, 156, 304i 3^9> 330, 33 2

335

Kishon (river), 33, 129
Knights Hospitallers, 274
Knights of St John, 29

349

INDEX

Knossos, 276
Kohistan, 286
Konia, 240
Kopomoza, 245

Lamartine, 24, 63, 329, 332
Lammens, Pere Henri, 101, 284,

339, 336, 340
Laodice, 268
Laon, 62
Latakia (Laodice ad Mare), 265-

270, 276, 277, 279, 285, 289,

337, 339

hotel, 266-268, 270

Mograbin Mosque, 269

temple, 269, 327
Leah, 83
Lebanon, the, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22,

W, 27, 38, 39, 59, 85, 137,
194, 195, 210, 281, 283, 285,
295, 396, 297, 300, 303, 34-
306, 311, 313, 316, 319, 325,

3^7

Lebanon Republic, the, 18
Lejah, the, 185, 186, 195
Leontes. See Litany.
Libya, 25
Litany River, 27, 46, 305, 311,

312

Liveri, Church of, 254
London, Templars' Church, 62
Longinus, 204, 206
Lorca, 254
Loreto, 127
Lorey, Eustache de, 161 n., 162,

169, 248, 251
Lot, 93, 115, 144
Loti, Pierre, 331
Louvre, the, 49, 277, 316
Lubbock, Lady Sybil, 124, 147,

201, 220, 334
Lucian, 300, 338, 340
Lukach, H. C., 290, 331
Luxor, 92
Lykos. See Dog River.

Maarat en-Noman, 242-247
Maccabaeus, Judas, 59
Machaerus. See Mukaur.
Mackay, Capt E. S. H., 332
Madaba, 99-100, 333
Magdala, 138, 141
Magdalen, St. Mary, 51, 191
Mahomet, 43, 63, 69, 70, 74, 76,
83, 132, 154, 162 n., 170, 172,

189, 192, 285, 291, 292
Mahomet II (Assassin), 288
Maimonides, Tomb of, 143
Malakbel, 215

Malon, Pere, 94

Maloula, 175-178, 198, 326

Mamre (Oak of Abraham), 84

Manasseh, 130

Marcus Antonius. See Antony,

Mark.

Marcus Aurelius, 107, 302
Mariamne, 124
Mark Antony. See Antony.
Marmora, Island of, 220
Maronites, 16-20, 281
Martyrs, the Forty, 51
Marun, St., 17
Maugras, M., 13, 21
Maundrell, Henry, 338, 340
Mecca, 53, 69, 70, 101, 157, 179

190, 225, 284, 285
Mediterranean Sea, 38, 39, 78,

124, 149, 210, 249, 323

Megiddo, pass of, 129

Mehr Thekla, church and monas-
tery, 176-178

Melchizedec, 51, 70

Melozzo da Forli, 215

Memphis, 157

Mercury, 308

Meskeueh, 248-252

Mesopotamia, 41, 131, 203, 207,
214, 298

Metawiyehs, the, 384, 295-296

Metz, 62

Mexico City, 227

Michael, St., 51, 224.

Michaud, 33^

350

INDEX

Midianites, 121

Milkon, 226

Milton, 146, 215, 297

Minet-el-Beida, 276

Mirza' Ali Muhumraed, 30, 31

Mithridates, 268

Moab and Moabites, 39, 73, 91,

99, 226
Moloch, 97
Mondjileia, 244
Monte Gargano, 224
Montgomery, J. A., 334
Moses, 59, 7*, 2, 192, 292, 302,

322
Mosque of Omar. See Jerusalem,

Blue Mosque.
Mount Carmel, 21, 32-37, 38, 40,

44, 126, 128, 129, 133, 137,

145, 194, 322
Mount Ebal, 122

Mount Gerizim, 118, 122, 123, 334
Mount Hermon, 27, 126, 139, 146,

150, 152, 170, 180, 182, 186,

254, 305, 322, 324, 328
Mount of Olives. See Jerusalem.
Mount Silpius, 259, 260
Mount Sinai, 91, 323
Mount Sunmn, 305
Mount Tabor, 124-127, 128, 132,

145, 150, 264
Franciscan church, 264
Mount of Temptation, 114
Mozart, 13
M'Shatta, Palace of, 100-104, 1451

333

Mufti. See Grand Mufti.
Mukaur, 123
Mukkadasi, 164-165
Murcia, 254, 305

Naaman River, 26
Nabatea. See Bashan.
Nablus, 1x8-119, 122-123, 146

Codex of the Pentateuch, 123

hotel, 119

Mosque of Heaven, 123
Mosque of the Lepers, 123
Mosque of Victory, 122

Naboth, 124

Nahr abou Ali River, 281

Nahr el Kebir River, 265

Nahr-el-Kelb, 302

Nahr Saroub, 265

Naphtali, 130

Napoleon, xo, 29, 88, 302

Nazareth, 123, 127-128, 135, 145,
146

Neapolis. See Nablus.

Nebuchadnezzar, 28, 45, 46, 59,
301, 302, 312

Negeb, desert of the, 41

Nehemiah, 45

Nerva, 107

Nicea, 254

Nicodemus, 57

Niha, 317

Nile, the, 9, 130

Nirarod's Castle, 146

Nineveh, 157

Noah, 9, 192

Nola, 254

Nosairis, 277, 284, 286, 289-292

Noureddin, 159, 161, 288

Odenatus, 204

Og. See Bashan.

Old Man of the Mountains, 266,

274, 287, 288

Oliphant, Laurence, 193, 336
Omaiyades, the, 159, x6x
Omar, Caliph, n, 60-62, 69
Omar Khayyim, 287
Oppenheim, Baron, 14

Origen (Oriundus), 28, 29, 125,

204
Orontes, 228, 244, 252, 255, 265,

275, 292, 305, 3",
314, 3i5, 335

Othello, 231
Oxford, 307

351

INDEX

Palmyra, 104, 105, 152, 175, W
222, 312, 325, 3^, 3*7> 328,
33^, 337

Arab castle, 201, 217, 218, 326
desert, 197, 210-213, 312, 325
French aviation centre, 208,

213

inn, 201

museum, 218-220
road to, 198-201
Temple of Baal, 205-216, 218,

222, 326

Triumphal Arch, 218
tombs, 203, 216, 217
water supply, 210, 211
watering of camels, 210-213

Panias. See Banyas.

Pan's Grotto, 149

Paris, Louvre, 49, 277, 316
Musee des Arts Decoratifs,

i6in.

Sainte Chapelle, 275
temple for Ba'abists, 32
Trocadero Museum, 128

Parnassus, 322

Paul, Patriarch of Samothrace, 204

Paul, St, 29, 159, 262

Peake Pasha, 99

Pella, i8in.

Peneus River, 255

Pericles, 322

Perseus and Andromeda, 78

Persia, 30, 153, 165, 249

Petra, to

Petrarch, 322

Pharaohs, 302

Pheidias, 322

Philip II of Spain, 54

Philip the Tetrarch, 148

Philistines, 40, 133

Philo of Byblos, 298

Pilate, 63

Pisa, 54

Pitt, William, 23

Pliny, 207, 222

Plutarch, 149

Pompeii, 162, 245

Pompey, 131, 158, 160

Ponsot, M., High Commissioner

for Syria, 14
Popes, 18, 34

Porter, Rev. A. C., 183, 316
Porter, A. Kingsley, 49
Porter, Rev. J. L, 335
Princeton University Expedition,

338

Proust, Marcel, 91
Ptolemies, 203
Pythagoras, 34

Queen of Sheba, 137

Raimond, Count of St. Giles, 243
Ramleh, 75, 76-80, 145

Crusaders' church, 78, 79

tower, 78, 79, 145
Rameses, 302
Raphael, 57
Ravello, 297
Ravenna, 220, 235
Raymond II, Count of Tripoli,

274, 288

Raymond of Toulouse, 282
Rebecca, 83

Red River. See Adonis Riven
Red Sea, 321
Refadi, 244
Reha, 244

Reinach, Salomon, 333, 334
Renan, 147, 277
Richard Coeur de Lion, 9, 29, 78,

3H

Richmond, Ernest, 64, 332
Riefstahl, Rudolf, 236, 237
Rift, the. See Jordan Valley.
Riviera, 22
Roman Empire, 327
Rome and Romans, 46, 105, 131,

158, 166, 206, 207, 215, 254,

*93, 321, 3^7

INDEX

Rome and Romans Contd.
Arch of Septimus, 107
Coliseum, the, 102
Forum of Trajan, 166
Santa Prassede, 51
St. Peter's, 54, 214, 254

Rouillard, 224

Ruad, 279

Rubicon, the, 323

Ruslan, Druse House of, 195

Russia and Russians, 285, 288

Ruth, 186

Ruweiha, 244

Saare, 341

Sachau, Dr. Edouard, 338

Safed, 139

Safita, 289

Sahayun, 270-273, 274, 326

Said, 192

St. Anthony of Padua, 14.1

St. Barbara, 292, 319

St. Catherine, 292

St. Christopher, 95

St. George, 78
Church of, at Ezra, 195
Church of, at Jerash, 109, no
monasteries of, 1x5, 274, 276

St. Helena, 51, 87, 235

St James, 51

St James the Less, 337

St. Jerome, 9, 87, 88, 125

St John, Knights of, 29

St John the Baptist, no, 115, 123,
148, 292

St Louis, 9, 17, 29

St Mark's, Venice, 54, 65

St Mary of Egypt, 51

St Michael, 51, 224

St Paul, 29, 159, 262

St Peter, 142, 148, 262

St R6my, 254

St Simon Stylites, 236, 239

St Thecla, 51

Saladin, 9, 29, 46, 63, 71, 78, 126,

J 32, i37 159, ifc, 166, 229,
250, 268, 271, 283, 288, 324

Salehiyeh, 169, 326

Salkand, 187

Salkhat, 184

Salles, Georges, 248

Salman el-Faresi, 291, 292

Samarkand, z6o

Samaria, 39, 118-144, H*

Sanchuniathan, 298

Santiago, 54

Saone, 270. See also Sahayun.

Sapor, 204, 267

Saragossa, 153, 224, 227

Sarah, 83

Saul, 125

Saulcy, de, 115

Schechem. See Nablus.

Schulz, 333, 341

Schumacher, 341

Scirocco, 247-248

Scythopolis (Beisan), 181

Sebastieh. See Samaria.

Segovia, 62

Seleucids, the, 158, 209

Seleucus, 158, 234, 268

Seleucus Nicatis, 258

Selim, Sultan, 160

Septimius Severus, 107, 222, 269

Sermede Khatoma, 245

Ses, 184

Severus ibn al-Moguffa, 101

Seyrig, M., Supt of Monuments
in Syria, 221

Shalmaneser, 234

Shamalis, 291

Shams ed-Din es Suyuti, 60

Sharon, Plain of, 33, 80, 124, 129,

133

Sheba, 144
Shi'ites, the, 30
Shogi Effendi Rabani, 32 n.
Shubba, 184
Sidon, 25-26, 27, 194
Siena, 92
Sinan, Mosque of, Constantinople,

54

353

INDEX

Sinan, 287

Sion, 270. See also Sahayun.

Sisera, 132

Smith, Principal, Rev. Sir George
Adam, 37, 40 n., 42, 90, 120,
130-131, 184-5, 330, 333, 335

Soberheim, 341

Socrates, 323

Sodom and Gomorrah, 94, 115,

Solomon, 9, 34, 41, 45, 46, 55,
57, 58, 62, 69, 71, 137, 1 60,
209, 225, 226, 292, 322
Pools of, 85

Soueida, 88, 179, 184, 326
Spain, 25, 139

Spiers, Phene A., 98, 330, 335
Stanhope, Lady Hester, 23-25
Stein, Leonard, 334
Stone worship, 223-228
Strzygowski, 333, 339
Subr-i-ezel, 31
Susa, 316
Sybaris, 254

Tadmor, 209, 214. See also Pal-
myra.

Tamerlane, 159, 161, 166, 233, 309
Tancred, 250, 268
Tarragona, 180
Tartars, the, 159
Taurus Mountains, 237, 321
Tempe, Vale of, 315
Templars, 50, 62, 71, 123
Thammuz, 297, 298, 299
Tharaud, J. and J., 331
Theodosius, 159, 164, 309
Thomson, Rev. W. M., 23, 290,

294, 329, 338
Thotmes, 302
Tiber, 254, 322
Tiberias, 129, 135, 136, 138, 139,

141, X42, 154

Franciscan hotel for pilgrims,
139

Lake of, 126, 194. See also

Galilee, Lake of.
Tiglath-Pileser, 302
Tigranus, 161
Tigris, 153

Titus, 45, 60, 121, 131, 138
Tivoli, 209
Tortosa, Crusaders' Church, 278-

279, 326

Trachonitis. See Lejah.
Trajan, 158, 166, 186
Transfiguration, scene of, 125
Transjordania, 89-115
Trebellius Pollio, 337
Triest, 7

Tripoli, 12, 19, 207, 267, 270, 274,
278, 279-283, 288, 305, 326

1 Mina, 282

Hotel Plaza, 279, 280
Tristram, Rev. W. M., 115, 141,

333, 341
Troy, 323

Tudela, Benjamin of, 207
Turks, 10, 46, 121, 141, 160, 188,

193, 234, 246
Turmanin, 126, 264
Tyre, 25, 26-28, 33, 37

United States, Ba'abists in, 32
Ur of the Chaldees, 158

Val d'Arno, 92

Van Berchem, Max, 100, 229 n.,

290, 339, 341
Venice, 194
Venus, 298, 299, 308
Vespasian, 34, 121, 131, 138
Vesuvius, 245, 254
Villa Livia, 162, 254
Vincent, Pere Hughes, 46, 94, 105,

331
Vincent and Abel, 58, 330, 332,

333

354

INDEX

Viraullaud, M., 14
Virgil, 322
Virgin of Niha, 317
Von Lubke, 341

Wales, 41

Walid II, Ommayid, 101

Watson, Col. Sir C. M., 60, 331,

33*

Well of Dothan, 124
William II, 74, *66, 37
Wolf River. See Dog River.
Woods and Dawkins, 208, 336,

341
Wright, Dr. Wra, 336

Xenia Theological Seminary, 94
Xenophon, 249

Yakub, 165
Yale University, 108
Yaribol (Yarchi-bol), 206, 216
Yuhannan Marun, 17

Zenobia, 24, 197, 201-209, 221, 337
Zionists, 7, 8, 10, 76, 121, 132-136
Zoroa. See Ezra.
Zosimus, 337