From Damascus to Palmyra

Front matter

JOHN

KELMAN

ILLUSTRATED BY- MARGARET THOMAS i

Preface

“ Prat^ sir^ what and where is Palmyra “ 'Tis a hill in Ireland^ with palms growing on the top and a hog at the bottom^ and so they call it Palm-Miraf The ingenuous youth took the answer seriously^ and Dr. Johnson repenting of his rudeness., told him the history., chronology., and geography of Tadmor in the Wilderness zvith every incident., I think., that literature could furnish or eloquence express., from the building of Solomon s palace down to the voyage of Dawkins and Wood."' An enviable youth., truly I not only because he drew the lexicographer., but because he was born so soon. In those days the historian of Palmyra moved with great assurance amid a more brilliant world of romance than is open to any man to-day.

He who would write about Palmyra is tempted by two alternatives. He may, but not without long and patient study, gather what authentic information is to be had from a multitude of ancient and modern sources, and so reconstruct for the use of posterity one of the least familiar and yet most interesting periods of history. He may^ on the other hand^ set his imagination free from the dull restraint of facts., and add another to the wonderful tales of Arabia. Each alternative is waiting for its author, for, in spite of all that has been written, the real history and the perfect novel are yet to come.

Needless to say, I have attempted no such task as these. The present volume arose out of a journey memorable for its delightfulness, both of incidents and of companions. The small margin of leisure which a busy life allows, has for two years been devoted to the recording of impressions then gained and noted, and to the interpreting of these by such study of history as I was able to give to the subject. I have expressed, as best I could, the colour and spirit of the region, and told the story of its ancient life. The defects of such casual work are obvious, and yet it has also some advantages. The passing stranger s eye and ear may catch impressions of quaint things and interesting people which one more accustomed would neither see nor hear. As to the history, I have been able only to look over the edge of a land which I would gladly have explored. Nothing could be more tantalising than thus to hear the call of the ancient East, and yet go no farther than the borderland.

When these chapters were written, the ancient regime was still dominant in Turkey, nor did the world dream that the immediate future was to witness the most momentous event that has happened since the Turkish Empire was

VI

Preface founded. When the new constitution was granted it was too late to rewrite this hook., which has thus gained the curious distinction of being the last of the countless records of the impression which Oriental rule of the older days made upon the mind of the modern traveller from the West.

The objective of the book is Palmyra., but it reaches its destination by way of Beyrouth Baalbek., and Damascus. Only a passing glimpse at these cities is allowed us., but 1 have tried to give character to these glimpses by taking each of them as a type or symbol of one aspect of Oriental life. Beyrout may stand for the modern contact of East and West., Baalbek for the same contact in Graeco-Roman times., and Damascus sits dreaming her timeless dream. Palmyra appropriates the last six of the thirteen chapters. Lebanon., Coelesyria^ Antilibanus ., Oasis Villages^ and the Desert are each of them component parts of the region., without some knowledge of which the story of Palmyra would be incomplete.

As to the literature of the subject^ the best known popular English works are Wrighf s “ Palmyra and Zenobia ” and Ware s ’‘^Letters to Rome A The latter., now long out

of prinf is one of those charming books which never grow old. Its mixture of Roman sentiment with early Victorian Christianity suggests an Imperial Senator conducting a Bible Class., but the author s sympathy and vital force give to

the letters a singular power of appealing to each new

vii generation. The imperial biographers^ Zosimus^ Vopiscus^ and Trehellius Pollio, are sources of much picturesque tradition. Of late years they ho.ve been to a large extent discarded in favour of the records found on coins and inscriptions; and the contrast between Gibbon s and Mommsen s histories marks the change. I have made little use of the earlier authorities or of Gibbon.^ but from Mommsen s great work I have drawn very freely in some of my later chapters. I have also consulted Arnold's “ Studies in Roman Imperialism^ Stuart Jones' s Roman Empire f

and other recent works. For inscriptions., I have used the collections of he Bas-JVaddington^ Vogue., G, A. Cooke^ Sterrett., and Clermont-Ganneau. As to architecture., the folio of Dawkins and JVood., who visited Palmyra in 1751, immediately before a great earthquake which destroyed much of the building that remained.^ forms a stepping-stone between the twentieth and the third century .,and its magnificent wood-engravings almost reconstruct the city before our eyes. In my estimate of the religious thought which lay behind the huge and costly temples of the third century., I have relied mainly upon Professor Dill's two volumes on Roman Society f and I acknowledge with much gratitude the debt which my concluding chapter owes to him.

Many friends have been with me in this venture. Dr. Frank Mackinnon of Damascus will perceive., as he re ads ^ how much I owe him ; I wish he could in the least degree

realise how profound an impression his influence upon the

viii

Preface

East made upon my mind as we travelled together among the Arab villages. Dr. H. G. G. Mackenzie will remember many things that have enriched our long friendships and will recognise many of his own gifts to the book we have so often discussed. Dr. James Craw^ who also journeyed with us for some days^ has already laid down his strenuous and devoted life^ and affectionate memories of his companionship haunt the valleys of Lebanon and the Temples of Baalbek. Professor George Ad a7n Smithy ever generous in guidance and great in encourageinents has done much for me in this as in all other work of mine ; and the Rev. E. J. Hagan has shared^ with characteristic kmdness and enthusiasm., much of my research among books and inscriptions.

To these friends, and to Ellin and Barbara Kehian, whose unfailing interest and willing help have endeared the task to 7ne from first to last, I offer very gratefully this volume.

JOHN KELMAN.

IX b

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

1. East and West ...... i

XI

Chapter I

“Look how wide the East is also from the West.” The familiar words assume a new and almost startling significance when we apply them to those differences of national genius and spirit which have, all along the line of history, created situations at once the most dangerous and the most fascinating. As to the causes of that separation, no doubt the scale and the character of Nature as it is seen at play on man must be taken into account. The Nearer East, at least, is dominated by the Desert just as Britain is by the Sea. Behind all the thoughts of the Eastern there hovers some desert image or idea, and his characteristic moods of thought and feeling perplex the Western with the suggestion of a stony and artificial kind of desert beauty. Yet, just as all shadows in the desert turn to purple in the evening light, so that external sense of unhomeliness may at any time pass suddenly to another mood, revealing undreamed-of inward stores of passion.

Nature counts for something, though it is probable that Mr. Buckle would find few thinkers now to follow him in his estimate of the overwhelming power of such influences over man and society. Yetj be the causes what they may, the divergence is profound. It is a difference, not so much of view, as of point of view ; not so much of convictions, as of the faculties employed for arriving at convictions. In his well-known book, Asia and Europe^ Mr. Townsend has, from many sides and in countless graphic ways, analysed and described the contrast. In general it is often the contrast between the ideals of peace on the one hand and restless energy on the other. The Eastern lingers among thoughts and images for the mere sake of thinking them, while the Western deals with them rather that he may turn them to some practical account. It has been regarded as the contrast between the active and the passive mental states ; and, in spite of much that is needed to qualify this view, it is probably that which runs deepest toward the heart of the matter. Even in magic lore, where one might expect greater uniformity, this difference is apparent. The East has its magic carpets, or rings, or lamps ; the West its magic horn, or spear, or sword. Of religion the same thing is true. It is not justifiable to assert that the East is essentially religious and the West essentially secular, for there is a religion of will and reason as well as one of feeling and of dream. But the religion of the Oriental is and must always be a different thing from that of the Western. For the former, the truth or falsehood of a belief is not the chief matter, but its poignancy and vividness.

He deals with his religious conceptions, not to find a rational solution of definite problems, but as he handles jewels — for the sudden flashing of hidden lights, for the passionate colour of the ruby or the subtle play of the mysterious opal. Consequently, the expression of religion is ritual for the Eastern, and not a rationalised system of thought. He will not be forced to define, but will be satisfied with performing rites which he feels to be suggestive, and charged with emotional possibilities.

This is only one phase of a wider and more radical diversity, viz. the attitude of East and West to the unknown in general. Love of mystery goes along with the lack of sustained energy. When the question arises as to what is behind the veil, or over the edge of the mountain, the adventurous spirit of the West at once urges the man to go out and see and face it. The Eastern cannot understand that spirit. He feels no tempting attraction to the solution of the mystery by natural causes. He greatly prefers the supernatural, and lies still, admitting all manner of superstitions, and even of fears, in preference to discovered explanations. The supernatural agencies may be dangerous, but there is a zest in the uncertainty, and at least the plan saves trouble.

That way lies fatalism, of course — the most distinctive feature of the East. While the West takes matters, or tries to take them, into its own hands, the East lies back in the grand repose that leaves all things to the Powers that are ultimately responsible for them.

So far does this go, that as Townsend has pointed out, it actually includes the choices of men also. Man’s will, once exerted, closes on his purpose with a fatalistic grip, and the man is steel-bound. Obviously the world in which this is the natural order is another world from that Western one which owes all its history to an undying curiosity, a restless strenuousness, and an altogether astonishing readiness to accept responsibilities.

Having seen this wide and radical diversity, we now turn with greater interest to the consideration of what has resulted when these two diverse races have been brought into contact. It so happens that the tract which this volume will traverse is one of the most important meeting-places of East and West, both for ancient and for modern history ; and any facts which we may see as we travel must derive a special interest from their bearing on this problem.

As a starting-point, we may quote the dictum of Martin Conway,^ that “ as every individual is the child of two parents, so is every advance in civilisation the offspring of mixed influences. The progressive races have always been mixed. An isolated tribe remains stationary. It is when tribes of different tendency and varied capacity come in contact that new ideals arise and new civilisations are created. . . . The great civilisations have always arisen at the meeting -places of ideas.” Every one who reads these words must be struck by their resemblance to some of Mr. Darwin’s

1 Danxn of Art, pp. 59-76.

GREAT MOSQUE, DAMASCUS teaching, and will remember historical instances which confirm them, such as the blend, first of the Celtic and Teutonic races, and then that of the Norman Conquest, in our own island.

Mr. Conway^ goes on to show that his principle applies especially to the meeting of East and West : “The contact between East and West has always been the prolific source of the advancement of humanity. That contact is now maintained by elaborate media of communication and commerce. At the dawn of history, it was only when men were actually adjacent that they could so influence one another. The first great civilisations, therefore, arose at places on the margin of contact between the most advanced peoples of the great continents.”

By far the most significant of all instances of such contact was that in which the Graeco-Roman civilisation forced itself upon the East in Syria and Asia Minor. Even in the first hour of conquest, amid the bitterness of invasion, much could be seen which gave rich promise of a future.^ But the Christian era came at last, and it found the world prepared for it more by the fact of this contact than by any other of the facts of the time. Judea until then had been an oasis, a garden enclosed, within which the seeds of a religion, planted in remote antiquity, had grown into a great tree of life. Then suddenly the oasis became a focus, whence the new

^ Danjon of Art^ p. 59.

2 Cf. G. A, Smith, Jerusalem^ bk. iii. ch. xv.

faith and the wonderful vital forces which it generated and set free, were already spreading out to the ends of the earth. Christianity has often been pronounced too Western for Orientals ; yet so Eastern is it that we of the West have to orientalise our conceptions before we can understand it. The days of the early Christian Church were the most vital days that the world has ever seen. And that wonderful quickening of the human spirit came precisely at the time of this great blending. The inscription on the Cross of Jesus was written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin.

For centuries afterwards the contact still remained, vitalising the world in various ways. The Alexandrian philosophy was its direct result. And in the regions of Syria and Asia Minor, where Orontes flowed into Tiber,” it was not merely in sensuality that the record of the blend was written. The East lay open to receive the benefits which Rome had to give — benefits of stable government and of national and civic institutions. The West, uncomprehending, received those mystic and colossal ideas whose expression and monument alike are found in the architecture of the ancient cities of our region — voluptuous excess of ornament and extravagance of size being added to the splendid workmanship and perfectly proportioned design which the West had brought.

Dipping into history at a period later by several centuries, we find Bagdad, under its most famous khalifs, first sending its ambassadors to the West for literature from Egypt and from Greece, and then becoming a centre of learning while Europe was as yet in darkness. The darkness at length was scattered by the Renaissance, which the Crusades brought back to lands still farther west ; so that when Europe awoke from her slumber, it was to a life and thought quickened by this same contact.

It must be confessed that when we turn from the older to the modern time, the change is startling and depressing in those regions. The crowds among which you journey along the Syrian coast in the steamer are probably as fascinating spectacles of the varieties of human type as could anywhere be found. Friars and ecclesiastics of many orders, religious cranks of every shade of absurdity ; commercial men scheming for the sale of European goods in Asiatic markets, officers and diplomatists watching military developments on the spot ; ladies, whose dress would be conspicuous in a Paris salon^ and boatmen lying asleep along their boats amid the yelling of their brethren ; American tourists with money to spend, and clusters of Syrians with French boots and primitive manners nestling among fragrant bales of oranges — what a phantasmagoria it all is 1

Most travellers obtain their first ideas of the actual blend in Egypt. At Port Said, standing at the end of the breakwater, as if it had marched into the waters of the sea to meet the advancing world, is the great bronze statue of M. de Lesseps, with its inscription, “ Aperire terram gentihusT Inside the town, which it has taken these many years of British rule to bring even to its present very moderate conditions of decency, newspapers were being printed and sold in 1906 inviting the Egyptians to rise against their rulers in a pan-Mohammedan war. Alexandria, with its alternate palm-trees and plaster, has a railway station now on the site of its ancient library, and everywhere the ground is strewn with the mingled litter of ancient palaces and modern artillery. Near Cairo the fargazing Sphinx smiles that beautiful and mysterious smile of hers over the heads of modern tourists, of whose insulting kodaks and magnesium wire she knows nothing. Egypt presented an extraordinary problem, and the degree in which the genius of Lord Cromer has solved it is wonderful indeed. Yet, while giving all honour to that splendid work, the problems still remain, and force one to ask to what extent there has been any real and vitalising fusion of East and West in Egypt. Both East and West, so far as outward advantage goes, have gained enormously, but only the future will show how far there has been the upspringing of a purified and enriched human spirit from the contact as in ancient days.

But it is in the Levantine cities that one may best study the blend, for these are the crucibles wherein East and West are being fused to-day into the new amalgam. Everywhere, indeed, in Syria, the intrusion of the West is to be seen. Damascus is full of it, the green jade handles of ancient Arab weapons lying for sale side by side with Manchester handkerchiefs of violent colours. Follow the staggering line of

BEYROUTj SHOWING MOUNT SANNIN AND THE LAZARETTO, EARLY MORNING LIGHT telegraph posts across the waste, and at the end of the sagging wire you may meet at Nebk with a Turkish soldier, a Greek priest, and a youth newly returned from America. Cross the desert to Palmyra, and you shall find an Arab who has lived in France, and whose picture adorns a post-card ; and a man in white robes and turban, his long beard flowing in crisp wavelets that suggest a figure emerged from some Assyrian sculpture — a man who has travelled over Persia, India, and Europe. Recross the desert, among the villages where Moslems build flat roofs and Christians conical ones over houses lit by gaudy European paraffin lamps, till at Homs on the Orontes your dream of the East will be broken by the giddy strains of gramophones shouting out music-hall ditties in the cafes.

But it is in Beyrout above all other places that the blend is obvious and characteristic. It has been described as “a quarter Syrian, a quarter Turkish, a quarter cosmopolitan, and a quarter nondescript — altogether too cosmopolitan to be otherwise interesting.” Its physical appearance, indeed, is surpassingly beautiful. Where Phoenician galleys once lay at anchor, the great steamers of half-a-dozen lines — French, Austrian, Russian, or Egyptian — are moored to-day. The huge and beautiful masses of Lebanon, white with snow for half the year, but diversified with black patches of pine or broken with the quaint outlines of villages that nestle far up towards their summits, form a splendid background for the city. The city builds itself up from the water’s edge, its red roofs thrown up against much green of brilliant foliage, and its skyline broken by the dainty minarets of mosques. From the balcony of your hotel, through hanging garlands of acacias, willows, and roses, you see beyond the old grey gate-posts and the decayed buildings of a cafe that jut out picturesquely into the sea, the white sail of a boat far across the blue, and fleecy clouds sailing high above the snow-clad peaks. Near the water’s edge some naked boys are paddling a canoe. Two trees stand out against the blue water, their stems white in sunlight, dark brown in shadow, and clustered round by a slight fretwork of green, while great heavy masses of pink and white blossom hang from them, and *swing in the wind.

Beyrout represents the ancient Berytus,^ though that town stood at the mouth of the Beyrout River, where there is now but a straggling suburb of the modern town lying along the shore of the bay. To the south stretch long avenues of pine-trees, dark green, rising from a rich ruddy sand, while inland from the shore the city stretches its long environs right to the foot of Lebanon. It was one of the chain of cities built by the Phoenicians along the coast, at equal distances of a day’s march apart — Aradus, Byblus, Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre. Tradition attributes its building to the god El, who built Byblus on the same day.^ “ It was,” says M. Reclus, quoting an ancient authority, “ the first

1 The name is understood to be a Latinised form of the Hebrew Beeroth = Wells.

2 Lenormant, Exploration, June 15, 1885.

i.k)Mjit ttfol' M'^^T '^rotr^ h^^-«*-'v

A i-vt

;:< tut

J^T BEYROUT city whose appearance Time, created along with it, had witnessed on the earth ; it is the root of life, the nurse of cities, the primitive queen of the world.” ^ In Justinian’s time it was famous for its schools of law, and the story of St. George, the hero and martyr, has given it a peculiar association with early Christian days. There is little in the modern city to suggest its ancient greatness. It is large, and evidently represents much wealth. But there is here even more than the usual jostling of costly and sordid building which characterises all such cities, and the streets sprawl at awkward angles across the heights and hollows, from one open space to the next. Very different is the impression which waits the traveller who will visit the Dog River, some seven or eight miles distant. There, where the valley opens to the sea, there are Assyrian and Egyptian tablets sculptured in the face of the rock, some of which record invasions of more than three thousand years ago. Intruding upon these is a record of a French expedition under Napoleon III., inscribed upon the panel of an ancient Egyptian monument.

Thus, even in the testimony of the rocks, does the ancient East suffer the intrusion of the modern West. Of more recent events there are not wanting some which heighten the impression. Somewhere beneath these waves dancing now in the sunlight, lies the wreck

1 Nowvelle Giographte Uninjerselle^ ix. 777. The Roman colony of Berytus was founded by Agrippa in 14. B.C., probably in fulfilment of a ^plan formed by Julius Caesar, to belhe bridle of the Lebanon, as Heliopolis (Baalbek) was the bridle of Antilibanus.

of the Victoria^ which sank within sight of this shore but a few years ago. Here, as elsewhere in the Lebanon, men are met who date all recent events from i860, the year of the great massacre, when the Mohammedans of those parts rose to exterminate the Christians. Near the railway station there is still a multitude of disused diligences that were once the most modern and up-todate properties of the city, carrying passengers by road to Damascus, and among them are innumerable ice -waggons, formerly used for bringing to the hot inhabitants loads of snow from Hermon. These too are of the past, superseded by the Beyrout ice-factory. In Damascus, at the other end of the road, the old world is still so supreme as to be hardly aware of the encroaching new : in Beyrout the two jostle each other at every corner, and, although the centuries appear to be mixed up in a kind of solemn confusion, yet there is no question that the new world holds the crown of the causeway.

Beyrout has often been quoted as the seat of a quite phenomenal amount and variety of missionary enterprise. From the sweet and childlike simplicity of the Annie Taylor Orphanage to the extraordinarily modern enterprise and equipment of the American College ; from the Quaker village-schools to the high-walled Jesuit convent, all are here. It is no part of our present purpose to estimate the effect of these establishments upon that composite life in which the blend of East and West is now resulting. They are being worked with self-sacrificing devotion, in full consciousness of the

I peculiar difficulties of the situation, and every one who studies their work intelligently must honour it. Yet most of its results are necessarily out of sight. Probably of all the missions it is true that their most valuable and effective work is that of leavening the masses of Oriental life with that strong leaven of Christian faith and principle which will one day appear in its ultimate result when the time is ripe.

The streets of Beyrout on a Sunday afternoon present the most amazing phantasmagoria of the meeting of the ends of the earth. Much of the old life is there still, and between the bright-coloured groups of men and women on the house-tops there is many an alley up which you may see veiled women in black and white smoking narghilis, and refreshing themselves with those pink and yellow sherbets which are still so popular. Here is a fat, elderly man in rusty European clothes, mounted for a giddy moment on a flying donkey, which will presently precipitate him into a rubbish heap, and then stand still to watch his discomfiture. There, the street is blocked beyond all possibility of passing by a mass of laden camels. Walk down the long street of the Meidan to the site of the ancient town at the bridge, and you find yourself in a procession of open carriages, filled with young men in bowler hats, firing crackers and pistols as they drive along. As they pass you may hear them shouting at a party of three grave men in long black robes and with purplewhite turbans, or exchanging curses with Arab shepherds clad in loose abbas of brown and dark magenta, driving their sheep that way with dogs. Here is an aged priest taking his half-dozen scholars out for a walk, clad in straw hats, white trousers, and black jackets, along streets where these fashions are but of yesterday, and where there still gleam the rich silks of men’s robes, lemon and saffron-coloured. At least we can all boast that we dress our parts here. There is no chance of mistaking any one for any one else. As well might you mistake a missionary for a dervish as an Arab shepherd for a westernised Levantine of Beyrout.

From the docks, highly scented with the aroma of various woods cut and piled in the sun, you may wind your way into the heart of the thickest native centre of the city. The clean smell of the wood is soon exchanged for other odours. Strong -smelling cooked dishes full of oil and onions greet your nostrils, and a heavy scent of arrak seems to hang always in the air, for it is only here and there that even the Mohammedans of the Levant have remained abstainers from alcohol. All sorts of lethal sweetmeats and much unclean snow from the hills are exposed for sale ; and one poor wretch, too low down even to make his wares presentable by removing the dirt from them, is trying to sell untempting nuts on a tray, and calling aloud that he is very poor.

Here a marriage party is conducting the bridegroom, seated on a horse and looking very foolish, but determinedly keeping up the solemnity of the occasion. Women are singing and lads are firing pistols, while one guest, with spasmodic leapings, is it

A DRUZE BRIDE beating a tambourine. Behind them follows a double line of women, presumably relations of the bridegroom, who wail and squeal aloud in a sustained epithalamium, until your horse grows restive and threatens to turn their dancing into mourning. Cabmen are quarrelling over their fares, and vendors of Stamboulis — those cakes of strange design — are shouting out their goods, while even in the finest streets the smells from the kennel are appalling.

Indoors, the favourite type of furnishing is in magenta-coloured silk or satin, and the pictures on the walls are of the type of art familiar on the biscuit tins of the West. In your hotel you are visited in your bedroom by an olive-complexioned barber with his box of instruments and cooling scented essences. At the table you sit between a Moslem who rejects dish after dish, and dines on vegetables, and a party of Americans discussing Mr. Bryan’s latest speech. For here, when the streets are resounding with firearms and gay with flags in honour of the Prophet’s birthday, the American statesman is addressing an audience representing all the Orient in the American College. X-rays are here, for the cure of lupus, kodaks and all their accessories, freemasonry making the whole world kin, and these are all mingled with constant reminders of a society ancient as the world.