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Syria: the Desert and the Sown

<h4>CHAPTER IX</h4> We left next day at an early hour, but the people of Ḥomṣ got up to see us off. Nothing save the determination to afford them no more amusement than I could help kept me outwardly calm. In a quarter of an hour we had passed beyond the Tripoli Gate, and the Roman brickwork, and beyond the range of vision of the furthest sighted of the little boys; the peaceful beauty of the morning invaded our senses, and I turned to make the acquaintance of the companions with whom the Ḳāimaḳām had provided me. They were four in number, and two of them were free and two were bound. The first two were Kurdish zaptiehs; one was charged to show me the way to Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn, and the other to guard over the second pair of my fellow travellers, a couple of prisoners who had been on the Ḳāimaḳām's hands for some days past, waiting until he could find a suitable opportunity, such as that afforded by my journey, to send them to the fortress in the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh, and so to the great prison at Tripoli. They were clad, poor wretches, in ragged cotton clothes and handcuffed together. As they trudged along bravely through dust and mud, I proffered a word of sympathy, to which they replied that they hoped God might prolong my life, but as for them it was the will of their lord the Sultan that they should tramp in chains. One of the Kurds interrupted with the explanation: "They are deserters from the Sultan's army: may God reward them according to their deeds! Moreover, they are Ismailis from Selemiyyeh, and they worship a strange god who lives in the land of Hind. And some say she is a woman, and for that reason they worship her. And every year she sends an embassy to this country to collect the money that is due to [Pg 195] her, and even the poorest of the Ismailis provide her with a few piastres. And yet they declare that they are Muslims: who knows what they believe? Speak, oh Khuḍr, and tell us what you believe." The prisoner thus addressed replied doggedly: "We are Muslims;" but the soldier's words had given me a clue which I was able to follow up when the luckless pair crept close to my horse's side and whispered: "Lady, lady! have you journeyed to the land of Hind?" "Yes," said I. "May God make it Yes upon you! Have you heard there of a great king called the King Muḥammad?" Again I was able to reply in the affirmative, and even to add that I myself knew him and had conversed with him, for their King Muḥammad was no other than my fellow subject the Agha Khān, and the religion of the prisoners boasted a respectable antiquity, having been founded by him whom we call the Old Man of the Mountain. They were the humble representatives of the dreaded (and probably maligned) sect of the Assassins. Khuḍr caught my stirrup with his free hand and said eagerly: "Is he not a great king?" But I answered cautiously, for though the Agha Khān is something of a great king in the modern sense, that is to say he is exceedingly wealthy, it would have been difficult to explain to his disciples exactly what the polished, well-bred man of the world was like whom I had last met at a London dinner party, and who had given me the Marlborough Club as his address. Not that these things, if they could have understood them, would have shocked them; the Agha Khān is a law unto himself, and if he chose to indulge in far greater excesses than dinner parties his actions would be sanctified by the mere fact that they were his. His father used to give letters of introduction to the Angel Gabriel, in order to secure for his clients a good place in Paradise; the son, with his English education and his familiarity with European thought, has refrained from exercising this privilege, though he has not ceased to hold, in the opinion of his followers, the keys of [Pg 196] heaven. They show their belief in him in a substantial manner by subscribing, in various parts of Asia and Africa, a handsome income that runs yearly into tens of thousands. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure97.jpg" width-obs="400" alt="" /> COFFEE BY THE ROAD-SIDE </div> We rode for about an hour through gardens, meeting bands of low-caste Arabs jogging into Ḥomṣ on their donkeys with milk and curds for the market, and then we came to the plain beyond the Orontes, which is the home of these Arabs. The plain had a familiar air; it was not dissimilar from the country in the Druze hills, and like the Ḥaurān it was covered with black volcanic stones. It is a vast quarry for the city of Ḥomṣ. All the stones that are used for building are brought from beyond the river packed on donkeys. They are worth a metalīk in the town (now a metalīk is a coin too small to possess a European counterpart), and a man with a good team can earn up to ten piastres a day. In the Spring the only Arabs who camp in the Wa'r Ḥomṣ, the Stony Plain of Ḥomṣ, are a despised race that caters for the needs of the city, for, mark you, no Bedouin who respected himself would earn a livelihood by selling curds or by any other means except battle; but in the summer the big tribes such as the Ḥaseneh settle there for a few months, and after the harvest certain of the 'Anazeh who feed their [Pg 197] camels upon the stubble. These great folk are much like salmon in a trout stream coming in from the open sea and bullying the lesser fry. When we passed in March there was a good deal of standing water in the plain, and grass and flowers grew between the stones; and as we journeyed westward, over ground that rose gradually towards the hills, we came into country that was like an exquisite garden of flowers. Pale blue hyacinths lifted their clustered bells above the tufa blocks, irises and red anemones and a yellow hawksweed and a beautiful purple hellebore dotted the grass—all the bounties of the Syrian Spring were scattered on that day beneath our happy feet. For the first five hours we followed the carriage road that leads to Tripoli, passing the khān that marks the final stage before the town of Ḥomṣ, and the boundary line between the vilayets of Damascus and of Beyrout; then we turned to the right and entered a bridle-path that lay over a land of rolling grass, partly cultivated and fuller of flowers than the edges of the road had been. The anemones were of every shade of white and purple, small blue irises clustered by the path and yellow crocuses by the banks of the stream. In the eyes of one who had recently crossed southern Syria the grass was even more admirable than the flowers. The highest summits of the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh are clad with a verdure that no fertile slope in Samaria or Judæa, can boast. The path mounted a little ridge and dropped down to a Kurdish village, half Arab tent and half mud-built wall. The inhabitants must have been long in Syria, for they had forgotten their own tongue and spoke nothing but Arabic, though, like the two zaptiehs, they spoke with the clipped accent of the Kurd. Beyond the village a plain some three miles wide, the Bḳei'a, stretched to the foot of the steep buttress of the Noṣairiyyeh hills, and from the very top of the mountain frowned the great crusader fortress towards which we were going. The sun shone on its turrets, but a black storm was creeping up behind it; we could hear the thunder rumbling in the hills, and jagged lightning shot through the clouds behind the castle. The direct road across the Bḳei'a was impassable for horsemen, owing to the flooded swamps, which were deep enough, said the villagers, to engulf a mule and its load; we turned therefore reluctantly to the right, and edged round the foot of the hills. Before [Pg 198] we had gone far we met two riders sent out to welcome us by the Ḳāimaḳām of Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn, and as they joined us the storm broke and enveloped us in sheets of rain. Splashing through the mud and drenched with rain we reached the foot of the hills at five o'clock, and here I left my caravan to follow the road, and with one of the Ḳāimaḳām's horsemen climbed by a steep and narrow bridle-path straight up to the hill top. And so at sunset we came to the Dark Tower and rode through a splendid Arab gateway into a vaulted corridor, built over a winding stair. It was almost night within; a few loopholes let in the grey dusk from outside and provided the veriest apology for daylight. At intervals we passed doorways leading into cavernous blackness. The stone steps were shallow and wide but much broken; the horses stumbled and clanked over them as we rode up and up, turned corner after corner, and passed under gateway after gateway until the last brought us out into the courtyard in the centre of the keep. I felt as though I were riding with some knight of the Fairy Queen, and half expected to see written over the arches: "Be bold!" "Be bold!" "Be not too bold!" But there was no magician in the heart of the castle—nothing but a crowd of villagers craning their necks to see us, and the Ḳāimaḳām, smiling and friendly, announcing that he could not think of letting me pitch a camp on such a wet and stormy night, and had prepared a lodging for me in the tower. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure98.jpg" width-obs="500" alt="" /> ḲAL'AT EL ḤUṢN </div> The Ḳāimaḳām of Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn is a distinguished man of letters. His name is 'Abd ul Ḥamid Beg Rāfi'a Zādeh, and his family comes from Egypt, where many of his cousins are still to be found. He lives in the topmost tower of the keep, where he had made ready a guest chamber commodiously fitted with carpets and a divan, a four-post bedstead and a mahogany wardrobe with looking-glass doors of which the glass had been so splintered in the journey a camel back from Tripoli that it was impossible to see the smallest corner of one's face in it. I was wet through, but the obligations of good society had to be fulfilled, and they demanded that we should sit down on the divan and [Pg 201] exchange polite phrases while I drank glasses of weak tea. My host was preoccupied and evidently disinclined for animated conversation—for a good reason, as I subsequently found—but on my replying to his first greeting he heaved a sigh of relief, and exclaimed: "Praise be to God! your Excellency speaks Arabic. We had feared that we should not be able to talk with you, and I had already invited a Syrian lady who knows the English tongue to spend the evening for the purpose of interpreting." <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure99.jpg" width-obs="400" alt="" /> ḲAL'AT EL ḤUṢN, INTERIOR OF THE CASTLE </div> We kept up a disjointed chat for an hour while the damp soaked more and more completely through my coat and skirts and it was not until long after the mules had arrived and their packs had been unloaded that the Ḳāimaḳām rose and took his departure, saying that he would leave me to rest. We had, in fact, made a long day's march; it had taken the muleteers eleven hours to reach Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn. I had barely had time to change my wet clothes before a discreet knocking at the inner door announced the presence of the womenfolk. I opened at once and admitted a maid servant, and the wife of the Ḳāimaḳām, and a genteel lady who greeted me in English of the most florid kind. This last was the Sitt Ferīdeh, the Christian wife of the Government land surveyor, who is also a Christian. She had been educated at a missionary school in Tripoli, and I was not long left in ignorance of the fact that she was an authoress, and that her greatest work was the translation of the "Last Days of Pompeii" into Arabic. The Ḳāimaḳām's wife was a young woman with apple cheeks, who would have been pretty if she had not been inordinately fat. She was his second wife; he had married her only a month or two before, on the death of his first, the mother of his children. She was so shy that it was some time before she ventured to open her lips in my presence, but the Sitt Ferīdeh carried off the situation with a gushing volubility, both in English and in Arabic, and a cheerful air of emphasising by her correct demeanour the fervour of her Christianity. She was a pleasant and intelligent woman, and I enjoyed her company considerably more than that of my hostess. The first word that the Khānum ventured to utter was, however, a welcome one, for she asked when I would please to dine. I replied with enthusiasm, that no hour could be too early for me, and we crossed a muddy courtyard and [Pg 202] entered a room in which a bountiful meal had been spread out. Here we were joined by an ancient dame who was presented to me as "a friend who has come to gaze upon your Excellency," and we all sat down to the best of dinners eaten by one at least of the party with the best of sauces. A thick soup and four enormous dishes of meat and vegetables, topped by a rice pudding, composed the repast. When dinner was over we returned to my room, a brazier full of charcoal was brought in, together with hubble-bubbles for the ladies, and we settled ourselves to an evening's talk. The old woman refused to sit on the divan, saying that she was more accustomed to the floor, and disposed herself neatly as close as possible to the brazier, holding out her wrinkled hands over the glowing coals. She was clad in black, and her head was covered by a thick white linen cloth, which was bound closely above her brow and enveloped her chin, giving her the air of some aged prioress of a religious order. Outside the turret room the wind howled; the rain beat against the single window, and the talk turned naturally to deeds of horror and such [Pg 203] whispered tales of murder and death as must have startled the shadows in that dim room for many and many a century. A terrible domestic tragedy had fallen upon the Ḳāimaḳām ten days before: his son had been shot by a schoolfellow at Tripoli in some childish quarrel—the women seemed to think it not unusual that a boy's sudden anger should have such consequences. The Ḳāimaḳām had been summoned by telegraph he had ridden down the long mountain road with fear clutching at his heart, only to find the boy dead, and his sorrow had been almost more than he could bear. So said the Sitt Ferīdeh. The ancient crone rocked herself over the brazier and muttered: "Murder is like the drinking of milk here! God! there is no other but Thou." A fresh gust of wind swept round the tower, and the Christian woman took up the tale. "This Khānum," said she, nodding her head towards the figure by the brazier, "knows also what it is to weep. Her son was but now murdered in the mountains by a robber who slew him with his knife. They found his body lying stripped by the path." The mother bent anew over the charcoal, and the glow flushed her worn old face. "Murder is like the spilling of water!" she groaned. "Oh Merciful!" It was late when the women left me. One of them offered to pass the night in my room, but I refused politely and firmly. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure100.jpg" width-obs="400" alt="" /> WINDOWS OF THE BANQUET HALL </div> Next day I was wakened by thunder and by hailstones rattling against my shutters. There was nothing for it but to spend another twenty-four hours under the Ḳāimaḳām's roof and be thankful that we had a roof to spend them under. I explored the castle from end to end, with immense satisfaction to the eternal child that lives in the soul of all of us and takes more delight in the dungeons and battlements of a fortress than in any other relic of antiquity. Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn is so large that half the population of the village is lodged in the vaulted substructures of the keep, while the garrison occupies the upper towers. The walls of the keep rise from a moat inside the first line of fortifications, the line through which we had passed the night before by [Pg 204] the vaulted gallery. The butcher of the castle lodged by the gateway of the inner wall; every morning he killed a sheep on the threshold, and those who went out stepped across a pool of blood as though some barbaric sacrifice were performed daily at the gate. The keep contained a chapel, now converted into a mosque and a banquet hall with Gothic windows, the tracery of which was blocked with stones to guard those who dwelt within against the cold. The tower in which I was lodged farmed part of the highest of the defences and rose above three stories of vaults. A narrow passage from it along the top of the wall led into a great and splendid chamber, beyond which was a round tower containing a circular room roofed by a fourfold vault, and lighted by pointed windows with rosettes and mouldings round the arches. The castle is the "Kerak of the Knights" of Crusader chronicles. It belonged to the Hospitallers, and the Grand Master of the Order made it his residence. The Egyptian Sultan Malek ed Dāher took it from them, restored it, and set his exultant inscription over the main gate. It is one of the most perfect of the many fortresses which bear witness to the strange jumble of noble ardour, fanaticism, ambition and crime that combined to make the history of the Crusades—a page whereon the Christian nations cannot look without a blush nor read without the unwilling pity exacted by vain courage. For to die in a worthless cause is the last extremity of defeat. Kerak is closely related to the military architecture of southern France, yet it bears traces of an Oriental influence from which the great Orders were not immune, though the Templars succumbed to it [Pg 205] more completely than the Hospitallers. Like the contemporary Arab fortresses the walls increased in thickness towards the foot to form a sloping bastion of solid masonry which protected them against the attacks of sappers, but the rounded towers with their great projection from the line of the wall were wholly French in character. The Crusaders are said to have found a castle on the hill top and taken it from the Moslims, but I saw no traces of earlier work than theirs. Parts of the present structure are later than their time, as, for instance, a big building by the inner moat, on the walls of which were carved lions not unlike the Seljuk lion. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure101.jpg" width-obs="200" alt="" /> ḲAL'AT EL ḤUṢN, WALLS OF THE INNER ENCEINTE </div> After lunch I waded down the muddy hill to the village and called on the Sitt Ferīdeh and her husband. There were another pair of Christians present, the man being the Sāḥib es Sandūḳ, which I take to be a kind of treasurer. The two men talked of the condition of the Syrian poor. No one, said the land surveyor, died of hunger, and he proceeded to draw up the yearly budget of the average peasant. The poorest of the fellaḥīn may earn from 1000 to 1500 piastres a year (£7 to £11), but he has no need of any money except to pay the capitation tax and to buy himself a substitute for military service. Meat is an unknown luxury; a cask of semen (rancid butter) costs 8s. or 10s. at most; it helps to make the burghul and other grains palatable, and it lasts several months. If the grain and the semen run low the peasant has only [Pg 206] to go out into the mountains or into the open country, which is no man's land, and gather edible leaves or grub up roots. He builds his house with his own hands, there are no fittings or furniture in it, and the ground on which it stands costs nothing. As for clothing, what does he need? a couple of linen shirts, a woollen cloak every two or three years, and a cotton kerchief for the head. The old and the sick are seldom left uncared for; their families look after them if they have families, and if they are without relations they can always make a livelihood by begging, for no one in the East refuses to give something when he is asked, though the poor can seldom give money. Few of the fellaḥīn own land of their own; they work for hire on the estates of richer men. The chief landowners round Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn are the family of the Dānadisheh, who come from Tripoli. Until quite recently the government did not occupy the castle; it belongs to the family of the Zā'bieh, who have owned it for two hundred years, and still live in some rooms on the outer wall. The Treasurer broke in here and said that even the Moslem population hated the Ottoman government, and would infinitely rather be ruled by a foreigner, what though he were an infidel—preferably by the English, because the prosperity of Egypt had made so deep an impression on Syrian minds. That evening the Ḳāimaḳām sent me a message asking whether I would choose to dine alone or whether I would honour him and his wife, and I begged to be allowed to take the latter alternative. In spite of a desire, touchingly evident, to be a good host, he was sad and silent [Pg 207] during the earlier stages of the dinner, until we hit upon a subject that drew him from the memory of his sorrow. The mighty dead came out to help us with words upon their lips that have lifted the failing hearts of generations of mankind. The Ḳāimaḳām was well acquainted with Arabic literature; he knew the poets of the Ignorance by heart, and when he found that I had a scanty knowledge of them and a great love for them he quoted couplet after couplet. But his own tastes lay with more modern singers; the tenth-century Mutanabbi was evidently one of his favourite authors. Some of the old fire still smoulders in Mutanabbi's verse; it burnt again as the Ḳāimaḳām recited the famous ode in which the poet puts from him the joys of youth: "Oft have I longed for age to still the tumult in my brain. And why should I repine when my prayer is fulfilled? We have renounced desire save for the spear-points, Neither do we dally, except with them. The most exalted seat in the world is the saddle of a swift horse, And the best companion for all time is a book." "Your Excellency," concluded the Ḳāimaḳām, "must surely hold that couplet in esteem." When we returned to the guest-chamber he asked whether he should not read his latest poem, composed at the request of the students of the American College at Beyrout (the most renowned institution of its kind in Syria) to commemorate an anniversary they were about to celebrate. He produced first the students' letter, which was couched in flattering terms, and then his sheets of manuscript, and declaimed his verses with the fine emphasis of the Oriental reciter, pausing from time to time to explain the full meaning of a metaphor or to give an illustration to some difficult couplet. His subject was the praise of learning, but he ended inconsequently with a fulsome panegyric on the Sultan, a passage of which he was immensely proud. As far as I could judge it was not very great poetry, but what of that? There is no solace in misfortune like authorship, and for a short hour the Ḳāimaḳām forgot his grief and entered into regions where there is neither death nor lamentation. I offered him sympathy and praise at suitable points and could have laughed to find myself talking the same agreeable rubbish in Arabic that [Pg 208] we all talk so often in English. I might have been sitting in a London drawing-room, instead of between the bare walls of a Crusader tower, and the world is after all made of the one stuff throughout. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure102.jpg" width-obs="400" alt="" /> FELLAḤĪN ARABS </div> It was still raining on the following morning and I had dressed and breakfasted in the lowest spirits when of a sudden some one waved a magic wand, the clouds were cleared away, and we set off at half-past seven in exquisite sunshine. At the bottom of the steep hill on which the castle stands there lies in an olive grove a Greek monastery. When I reached it I got off my horse and went in, as was meet, to salute the Abbot, and, behold! he was an old acquaintance whom I had met at the monastery of Ma'alūla five years earlier on my return from Palmyra. There were great rejoicings at this fortunate coincidence, and much jam and water and coffee were consumed in the celebration of it. The [Pg 209] monastery has been rebuilt, except for a crypt-like chapel, which they say is 1200 years old. The vault is supported by two pairs of marble columns, broken off below the capital and returned into the wall, a scheme more curious than attractive. The capitals are in the form of lily heads of a Byzantine type. By the altar screen, a good piece of modern wood carving, there are some very beautiful Persian tiles. In the western wall of the monastery I was shown a door so narrow between the jambs that it is scarcely possible to squeeze through them, impossible, said the monks, for any one except he be pure of heart. I did not risk my reputation by attempting to force the passage. We rode on through shallow wooded valleys full of flowers; the fruit trees were coming into blossom and the honeysuckle into leaf, and by a tiny graveyard under some budding oaks we stopped to lunch. Before us lay the crucial point of our day's march. We could see the keep of Ṣāfiṭa Castle on the opposite hill, but there was a swollen river between, the bridge had been swept away, and report said that the ford was impassable. When we reached the banks of the Abrash we saw the river rushing down its wide channel, an unbroken body of swirling water through which no loaded mule could pass. We rode near two hours down stream, and were barely in time with the second bridge, the Jisr el Wād, which was in the last stage of decrepitude, the middle arch just holding together. The hills on the opposite bank were covered with a low scrub, out of which the lovely iris stylosa lifted its blue petals, and the scene was further enlivened by a continuous procession of white-robed Noṣairis making their way down to the bridge. I had a Kurdish zaptieh with me, 'Abd ul Mejīd, who knew the mountains well, and all the inhabitants of them. Though he was a Mohammedan he had no feeling against the Noṣairis, whom he had always found to be a harmless folk, and every one greeted him with a friendly salutation as we passed. He told me that the white-robed companies were going to the funeral feast of a great sheikh much renowned for piety, who had died a week ago. The feast on such occasions is held two days after the funeral, and when the guests have eaten of the meats each man according [Pg 210] to his ability pays tribute to the family of the dead, the sums varying from one lira upwards to five or six. To have a reputation for holiness in the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh is as good as a life insurance with us. Owing to our long circuit we did not reach Ṣāfiṭa till four. I refused the hospitality of the Commandant, and pitched my tents on a ridge outside the village. The keep which we had seen from afar is all that remains of the White Castle of the Knights Templars. It stands on the top of the hill with the village clustered at its foot, and from its summit are visible the Mediterranean and the northern parts of the Phœnician coast. I saw a Phoenician coin among the antiquities offered me for sale, and the small bronze figure of a Phœnician god—Ṣāfiṭa was probably an inland stronghold of the merchant nation. The keep was a skilful architectural surprise. It contained, not the vaulted hall or refectory that might have been expected, but a great church which had thus occupied the very heart of the fortress. A service was being held when we entered and all the people were at their prayers in a red glow of sunset that came through the western doors. The inhabitants of Ṣāfiṭa are most of them Christians, and many speak English with a strong American accent picked up while they were making their small fortunes in the States. Besides the accent, they had acquired a familiarity of address that did not please me, and lost some of the good manners to which they had been born. 'Abd ul Mejīd, the smart non-commissioned officer, accompanied me through the town, saved me from the clutches of the Americanised Christians, twirled his fierce military moustaches at the little boys who thought to ran after us, and followed their retreat with extracts from the finest vocabulary of objurgation that I have been privileged to hear. Late in the evening two visitors were announced, who turned out to be the Ẓābit (Commandant) and another official sent by the Ḳāimaḳām of Drekish to welcome me and bring me down to his village. We three rode off together in the early morning with a couple of soldiers behind us, by a winding path through the hills, and after two hours we came to a valley full of olive groves, with the village of [Pg 211] Drekish on the slopes above them. At the first clump of olive-trees we found three worthies in frock coats and tarbushes waiting to receive us; they mounted their horses when we approached and fell into the procession, which was further swelled as we ascended the village street by other notables on horseback, till it reached the sum total of thirteen. The Ḳāimaḳām met us at the door of his house, frock-coated and ceremonious, and led me into his audience room where we drank coffee. By this time the company consisted of some thirty persons of importance. When the official reception was over my host took me into his private house and introduced me to his wife, a charming Damascene lady, and we had a short conversation, during which I made his better acquaintance. Riẓa Beg el 'Ābid owes his present position to the fact that he is cousin to 'Izzet Pasha, for there is not one of that great man's family but he is at least Ḳāmaiḳam. Riẓa Beg might have climbed the official ladder unaided; he is a man of exceptionally pleasant manners, amply endowed with the acute intelligence of the Syrian. The family to which he and 'Izzet belong is of Arab origin. The members of it claim to be descended from the noble tribe of the Muwāli, who were kin to Harūn er Rashīd, and when you meet 'Izzet Pasha it is as well to congratulate him on his relationship with that Khalif, though he knows, and he knows also that you know, that the Muwāli repudiate his claims with scorn and count him among the descendants of their slaves, as his name 'Ābid (slave), may show. Slaves or freemen, the members of the 'Ābid house have climbed so cleverly that they have set their feet upon the neck of Turkey, and will remain in that precarious position until 'Izzet falls from favour. Riẓa Beg pulled a grave face when I alluded to his high connection, and observed that power such as that enjoyed by his family was a serious matter, and how gladly would he retire into a less prominent position than that of Ḳāimaḳām! Who knew but that the Pasha too would not wish to exchange the pleasures of Constantinople for a humbler and a safer sphere—a supposition that I can readily believe to be well grounded, since 'Izzet, if rumour speaks the truth, has got all that a man can reasonably expect from the years [Pg 212] during which he has enjoyed the royal condescension. I assured the Ḳāimaḳām that I should make a point of paying my respects to the Pasha when I reached Constantinople, a project that I ultimately carried out with such success that I may now reckon myself, on 'Izzet's own authority, as one of those who will enjoy his life-long friendship. By this time lunch was ready, and the Khānum having retired, the other guests were admitted to the number of four, the Ẓābit, the Ḳāḍi and two others. It was a copious, an excellent and an entertaining meal. The conversation flowed merrily round the table, prompted and encouraged by the Ḳāimaḳām, who handled one subject after the other with the polished ease of a man of the world. As he talked I had reason to observe once more how fine and subtle a tongue is modern Syrian Arabic when used by a man of education. The Ḳāḍi's speech was hampered by his having a reputation for learning to uphold, which obliged him to confine himself to the dead language of the Ḳur'ān. As I took my leave the Ḳāimaḳām explained that for that night I was still to be his guest. He had learnt, said he, that I wished to camp at the ruined temple of Ḥuṣn es Suleimān, and had despatched my caravan thither under the escort of a zaptieh, and sent up servants and provisions, together with one of his cousins ta see to my entertainment. I was to take the Ẓābit with me, and Rā'ib Effendi el Ḥelu, another of the luncheon party, and he hoped that I should be satisfied. I thanked him profusely for his kindness, and declared that I should have known his Arab birth by his generous hospitality. Our path mounted to the top of the Noṣairiyyeh hills and followed along the crests, a rocky and beautiful track. The hills were extremely steep, and bare of all but grass and flowers except that here and there, on the highest summits, there was a group of big oaks with a white-domed Noṣairi mazār shining through their bare boughs. The Noṣairis have neither mosque nor church, but on every mountain top they build a shrine that marks a burial-ground. These high-throned dead, though they have left the world of men, have not ceased from their good offices, for they are the protectors of the trees rooted among their bones, trees which, alone among their kind, are allowed to grow untouched. [Pg 213] Ḥuṣn es Suleimān lies at the head of a valley high up in the mountains. A clear spring breaks from under its walls and flows found a natural platform of green turf, on which we pitched our tents. The hills rise in an amphitheatre behind the temple, the valley drops below it, and the gods to whom it was dedicated enjoy in solitude the ruined loveliness of their shrine. The walls round the temenos are overgrown with ivy, and violets bloom in the crevices. Four doorways lead into the court, in the centre of which stand the ruins of the temple, while a little to the south of the cella are the foundations of an altar, bearing in fine Greek letters a dedication that recounts how a centurion called Decimus of the Flavian (?) Legion, with his two sons and his daughter, raised an altar of brass to the god of Baitocaicē and placed it upon a platform of masonry in the year 444. The date is of the Seleucid era and corresponds to A.D. 132. It is regrettable that Decimus did not see fit to mention the name of the god, which remains undetermined in all the inscriptions. The northern gateway is a triple door, lying opposite to a second rectangular enclosure, which contains a small temple in antis at the south-east corner, and the apse of a sanctuary in the northern wall. This last sheltered perhaps the statue of the unknown god, for there are steps leading up to it and the bases of columns on either side. As at Ba'albek, the Christians sanctified the spot by the building of a church, which lay across the second enclosure at right angles to the northern sanctuary. The masonry of the outer walls of both courts is very massive, the stones being sometimes six or eight feet long. The decoration is much more austere than that of Ba'albek, but certain details so intimately recall the latter that I am tempted to conjecture that the same architect may have been employed at both places, and that it was he who cut on the under side of the architraves of Baitocaicē the eagles and cherubs that he had used to adorn the architrave of the Temple of Jupiter. The peasants say that there are deep vaults below both temple and court. The site must be well worthy of careful excavation, though no additional knowledge will enhance the beauty of the great shrine in the hills. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure103.jpg" width-obs="500" alt="" /> THE TEMPLE AT ḤUṢN ES SULEIMĀN </div> The Ḳāimaḳām had not fallen short of his word. Holocausts of sheep [Pg 214] and hens had been offered up for us, and after my friends and I had feasted, the soldiers and the muleteers made merry in their turn. The camp fires blazed brightly in the clear sharp mountain air, the sky was alive with stars, the brook gurgled over the stones; and the rest was silence, for Kurt was lost. Somewhere among the hills he had strayed away, and he was gone never to return. I mourned his loss, but slept the more peacefully for it ever after. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure104.jpg" width-obs="200" alt="" /> NORTH GATE, ḤUṢN ES SULEIMĀN </div> All my friends and all the soldiers rode with us next day to the frontier of the district of Drekish and there left us after having hounded a reluctant Noṣairi out of his house at 'Ain esh Shems and bidden him help the zaptieh who accompanied us to find the extraordinarily rocky path to Masyād. After they had gone I summoned Mikhāil and asked him what he had thought of our day's entertainment. He gave the Arabic equivalent for a sniff and said: "Doubtless your Excellency thinks that you were the guest of the Ḳāimaḳām. I will tell you of whom you were the guest. You saw those fellahin of the Noṣairiyyeh, the miserable ones, who sold you antīcas at the ruins this morning? They were your hosts. Everything you had was taken from them without return. They gathered the wood for the fires, the hens were theirs, the eggs were theirs, the lambs were from their flocks, and when you refused to take more saying, 'I have enough,' the soldiers seized yet another lamb and carried it off with them. And [Pg 217] the only payment the fellahin received were the metalīks you gave them for their old money. But if you will listen to me," added Mikhāil inconsequently, "you shall travel through the land of Anatolia and never take a quarter of a mejīdeh from your purse. From Ḳāimaḳām to Ḳāimaḳām you shall go, and everywhere they shall offer you hospitality—that sort does not look for payment, they wish your Excellency to say a good word for them when you come to Constantinople. You shall sleep in their houses, and eat at their tables, as it was when I travelled with Sacks. . . ." <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure105.jpg" width-obs="200" alt="" /> THE CITY GATE, MASYĀD </div> But if I were to tell all that happened when Mikhāil travelled with Mark Sykes I should never get to Masyād. The day was rendered memorable by the exceptional difficulty of the paths and by the beauty of the flowers. On the hill tops grew the alpine cyclamen, crocuses, yellow, white and purple, and whole slopes of white primroses; lower down, irises, narcissus, black and green orchids, purple orchis and the blue many-petalled anemone in a boscage of myrtle. When we reached the foot of the steepest slopes I sent the unfortunate Noṣairi home with a tip, which was a great deal more than he expected to get out of an adventure that had begun with a command from the soldiery. At three we reached Masyād and camped at the foot of the castle. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure106.jpg" width-obs="200" alt="" /> CAPITAL AT MASYĀD </div> Now Masyād was a disappointment. There is indeed a great castle, but, as far as I could judge, it is of Arab workmanship, and the walls round the town are Arab also. A Roman road from Ḥamāh passes through Masyād, and there must be traces of Roman settlement in the town, but I saw none. I heard of a castle at Abu Kbesh on the top of the hills, but it was said to be like Masyād, only smaller, and I did not go up to it. The castle of Masyād has an outer wall and an inner keep reached by a vaulted passage like that of Ḳal'at el Ḥuṣn. The old keep is [Pg 218] almost destroyed, and has been replaced by jerry-built halls and chambers erected by the Ismailis some hundreds of years ago when they held the place, so I was told by an old man called the Emir Muṣṭafa Milḥēm, who belonged to the sect and served me as guide. He also said that his family had inhabited the castle for seven or eight hundred years, but possibly he lied, though it is true that the Ismailis have held it as long. Built into the outer gateways are certain capitals and columns that must have been taken from Byzantine structures. There are some old Arabic inscriptions inside the second gate which record the names of the builders of that part of the fortifications, but they are much broken. I was told afterwards that I ought to have visited a place called Deir es Sleb, where there are two churches and a small castle. It is not marked in the map, and I heard nothing of it until I had left it far behind. I saw bits of the rasīf, the Roman road, as I travelled next day to Ḥamāh. At the bridge over the river Sarut, four and a half hours from Masyād, there is a curious mound faced to the very top with a rough wall of huge stones. Mikhāil found a Roman coin in the furrows of the field at the foot of it. From the river we had two and a half hours of tedious travel that were much lightened by the presence of a charming old Turk, a telegraph official, who joined us at the bridge and told me his story as we rode. [Pg 219] "Effendim, the home of my family is near Sofia. Effendim, you know the place? Māsha'llah, it is a pleasant land! Where I lived it was covered with trees, fruit trees and pines in the mountains and rose gardens in the plain. Effendim, many of us came here after the war with the Muscovite for the reason that we would not dwell under any hand but that of the Sultan, and many returned again after they had come. Effendim? for what cause? They would not live in a country without trees; by God, they could not endure it." Thus conversing we reached Ḥamāh. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure107.jpg" width-obs="200" alt="" /> CAPITAL AT MASYĀD </div> [Pg 220] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/figure108.jpg" width-obs="400" alt="" /> A NA'OURA, ḤAMĀH </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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