In a Syrian Saddle

by A. Goodrich-Freer

We were able to appreciate the observation of Professor G. A. Smith (op. cit. Chap. xvi.), that Samaria is the scene of all the long drives of Old Testament history—a fact due to the openness of the country, and the possibility of practicable roads passing among, rather than over, the mountains. It was here that Ahab raced the rain-storm coming up from the Mediterranean—well do we know the tearing, raging "latter rains" of Palestine; here that Jehu drove furiously; here that Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot to visit Elisha; here that Jehu gave a lift to Jehonadab, the son of Rechab; here that Ahab, who had at least the virtue of courage, was propped up to lead the battle while his life-blood streamed into the midst of his chariot, to be licked by the dogs when it was washed in the pool at Sebaste, whither we were hastening in the morning sunshine.

We passed through two or three villages, each with its gardens and springs, and noted the beauty of the women—a rare sight here, where a woman is a grandmother before thirty and a withered hag at thirty-five. They are more graceful, more shapely of limb, with better-set heads than in Judæa, where a woman's comeliness is measured by weight, especially among the so-called beauties of Bethlehem. We turned out of a well-wooded valley into a wide basin, where a rounded hill, some 300 feet high, rose suddenly in front of us, like an island in a lake, which, in days when it was crowned with a stately city of Greek architecture, and surrounded at the base by a noble colonnade nearly 2000 yards in length, must have been, indeed, an imposing spectacle.

Few spots in the whole of Palestine are possessed of associations more varied and interesting than those of Sebaste, though its history may be less familiar than that of other cities. Always strategically important, protected by mountains on three sides, looking clear out to the Mediterranean on the fourth, one cannot wonder that Omri should have recognised its value as a stronghold; nor that it should have withstood several prolonged sieges, one lasting until one mother said to another: "Give thy son that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow," and till an ass's head was sold for fourscore shekels. It must have been down below, in the plain across which we are riding, that a curiously dramatic scene was enacted when the lepers, obliged, even in times of siege, to sit in the gate, argued among themselves that they might as well die by the hand of the enemy, with a chance of food, as sit where they were, with the certainty of starvation—and so ventured into the camp of the Syrians, to find that an aural hallucination of the sound of horses and chariots had caused their flight, so that the poor pariahs "went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it." Even the Assyrians blockaded Samaria for three years before they could possess it. Alexander the Great, Ptolemy Lagos, John Hyrcanus—each in turn invested this little hill rising before us, so green and smiling in the midday sunshine, always an enviable possession. Picture after picture rose before our minds as we rode across the fertile plain, but none more vivid than that of the days of its Greek grace, its Roman luxury, as interpreted by Herod, who named it Sebaste—Greek for Augusta—in honour of his patron, Augustus, who had bestowed upon him the site of the city demolished by Hyrcanus over a century before, though to some degree restored by Gabinius, the successor of Pompey.

Herod it was, who raised the colonnades and gateways which we were approaching; who built a city, according to Josephus, two miles and a half in circumference; who beautified it with palace and theatre and hippodrome; who made it a recruiting centre whence his veterans could collect mercenary troops; who substituted the worship of Cæsar for the worship of Baal, in a temple, whereof the ruins lie a few score yards beyond those of the great Gothic cathedral of the Crusaders, now turned into a mosque—the site having been originally chosen as that of a basilica, in honour of the tradition that the body of St John the Baptist was here buried, a tradition dating, at least, from St Jerome. The tombs of Obadiah and Elisha are also shown in the same rock-hewn chamber.

Well might Isaiah call such a spot "The pride of Ephraim, the flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley!" and when, in addition to all the gifts of Nature, we add all that wealth and art could command, we cannot help reflecting, as on a score of occasions during our journey, here and in Moab, upon the persistent fashion in which history and fact are falsified by conventionality. The literature and art of a thousand years, the teaching of one's childhood, the wilful misapprehension of modern travellers, the conventional treatment of works of devotion, have combined to impress a great number of sincere and devout persons with the general idea that the surroundings of our Lord somewhat resembled those of a Highland fishing village; whereas—in Jerusalem, in Jericho, along the shores of Gennesaret, in Tyre and Sidon, in Cæsarea Philippi, in the cities of the Decapolis, and here in Sebaste—His eyes must have rested upon architecture and sculpture which, even in decay and ruin, are still a revelation of beauty to such as ourselves, accustomed to the ineffectiveness of the Thames Embankment and the trivialities of Trafalgar Square. Here in this little country of Palestine, two thousand years ago, were palaces and fortresses, theatres and hippodromes, temples, baths, colonnades, porticos, triumphal arches, forums, to which Europe, in this twentieth century, with all her boasted science, her educated "masses," her "art for the million," is at least wise enough to attempt no rivalry. In a Bedawin tent we may recreate the life of the patriarchs, and realise that Abraham was but a wealthy shech; in many a fellah village we may find such kings as the thirty-two who reinforced Benhadad; we may find everywhere types of half the characters, of most of the manners and customs, of the New or Old Testaments. The everlasting hills remain; the stars, as the sand of the sea, still shine out in millions, which in the West the ordinary observer can never look upon; the flowers spring up for us as for Solomon; the patient beasts are but intermittently remembered now as in Holy Writ; the dog is still the victim and not the friend of man; the sheep follow their shepherd—at his voice they separate from the goats; the poor are always with us—but only a strong effort of imagination, only familiarity with traditions of classic art and luxury, can revive for us the glory of the cities, "over whose acres walked those blessed feet."

On this subject at least may we here enlarge our notions, and "divest our mind of cant!" May we realise something of the glory of the Temptation-vision of our Lord, something of the æsthetic beauty over which He, beholding, wept; may imagine somewhat of the stones and the buildings which were there; may conceive the contrast between the cave-stable of Bethlehem and Herodium, the castle of the Herods, which frowned down upon the Jewish village; between the little group which surrounded the Master when He paused to heal the blind beggars of Jericho, and the sensuous beauty of the city, with its subtropical vegetation, and its luxurious winter homes.

Even Jerash, more perfect in its remains, impressed us less than Sebaste, so unique as to beauty and dignity of position. The mosque, although rich in fragments of what must have been a grand cathedral in the days when Sebaste was a bishopric—the title is still owned by the Greek Church—has been too recently restored, after destruction by fire, to be very interesting. Our attention was, in fact, somewhat diverted by some handsome Arab boys playing unmitigated hockey within the precincts. On the north sides are the outlines of a square fortress, with corner towers, probably a home of the knights of St John. Mutilated remains of the Maltese cross are still to be traced on many of the stones scattered about Sebaste. M. de Vogüe, who seems to have been the first to show, in plan, a restoration of the buildings, considers that, next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, this was the most important reconstruction of crusading times. The length is almost 165 feet, the breadth 75. The decoration of the capitals is of the beautiful palm pattern, the arches of the apse are pointed.

"Baedeker," to whom all this was already familiar, proceeded with the horses to the top of the hill to superintend the servants' preparation for luncheon, as time was precious. We found him, half-an-hour later, sitting in the midst of a group of shechs—young men, women, and children hovering in the background. With their usual absorbent interest in politics—the greater for the rarity of its gratification—they had assembled to hear the latest news, and had worked backwards from the new railway and the troubles in Macedonia—which had called into service Arab soldiery from all parts of Palestine, and had been the excuse for special taxation—to the Boer War, the Armenian question, and the visit to Palestine of the German Emperor,—the great epoch of the modern history of Syria—the occasion of new buildings, new roads, new uniforms, new trade, and a general cleaning-up along the line of route, with which only the orders issued during the cholera scare of 1903 could in any degree be compared.

With the usual courtesy of the Moslem Oriental, so different from the unabashed curiosity of Europeans and the Europeanised, they withdrew when we made preparations for food, the two or three actually engaged in conversation too important to interrupt, emphasising the occasion for discretion, by throwing stones at others who approached too closely. Some children, many of singular beauty, retired behind a neighbouring wall, and for some time lacked courage to pick up the dainties we threw to them. When we made our final move numbers came up to offer coins, fragments of carving and specimens of carnelian, lapis-lazuli, and crystal. One especial treasure was an abominable bracelet, of the type of art sold at exhibitions, and lost—to her advantage—by some tourist—not, fortunately, that many tourists visit Sebaste, as was shown by the superior manners of the people and the absence of demand for backsheesh. The village is entirely Moslem, and all behaved with self-respecting dignity, if we except, perhaps, one boy who pulled gently at the Doctor's blond locks, to see if they grew upon his head; and some men who, greatly interested in our spirit-lamps, put a match to the weeds upon which we emptied one before packing, with a childish pleasure in, as he said, "setting fire to water." One of the many cheap conveniences of this country is the fact that one gets an imperial pint of spirits of wine—no miserable "methylated" substitute—for about eightpence; but we have never found it in a Moslem village, where the use of alcohol is, of course, forbidden by religion. With much hesitation and politeness some of the men asked leave to examine a small revolver belonging to one of the party, which excited great admiration, the firearms of the country places being often of a very primitive description, sometimes of such a size that one wonders how they are carried. It is very rare, however, to meet an Arab, beyond the towns, who is not fully armed, even if his weapon be a flintlock six feet in length. It was a curious conjunction of the new and the old, when Khalil stopped a shepherd one day to ask for a light for his cigarette, a dainty Egyptian, which we had given him. The peasant produced a piece of a table-knife, picked up a flint off the roadside, tore a scrap of blue cotton from his ragged garment, and in an instant Khalil was made happy as only tobacco in any form could make him.

A self-constituted guide dispersed the crowd, and conducted us round the hill, that we might more closely observe the colonnade, some 20 yards wide, and originally over 1800 yards long. All the columns have lost their capitals and architraves, but are still 16 feet high, some being monoliths. Besides, perhaps, over a hundred still standing, columns and fragments of columns are scattered in all directions—a lesson in the history of Tells and the exaltation of the valleys of Palestine. Many were still on the surface of the ground, still more were half buried, of others only the projecting stones of the base remained visible; while here and there the observant, or rather, perhaps, the experienced, eye, could perceive by the contour of the ground that hidden treasure of sculpture lay concealed. The soil is deep, and, for the most part, cultivated; for the hill of Sebaste is no rocky scarp, and in ten years much of all this will have disappeared. A separate mound, a little away to the west, is said by some to be the site of Ahab's ivory palace, and might repay exploration. Happily, the Germans seem able to obtain firmans at will, having probably inspired confidence, even in a suspicious Government, by the liberality and thoroughness of their excavations.