Palestine

by C. R. Conder

Islam does (as far as I have been able to observe) absolutely nothing for the education and raising up of the ignorant and of the poor. The religion of the so-called Moslem peasant is the paganism of the days before Islam was preached. He swears by Muhammad, but his real gods are the buried saints, whose power to punish him by misfortune he dreads. He lives in fear of the Jân, of the Ghouls, of the Kerâd or “goblins;” he prays to the holy tree; he believes in magic and in witches. No attempt is made to educate him. He cannot read or write; he has no doctor save the charitable European who may chance to pass by. So long as he proclaims his belief in God and the Prophet, no one troubles himself as to his fate. The dark places are full of cruelty, and the morality of the peasant is generally not better than that of the African savage.[45] The visitor, charmed by the natural dignity and courtesy of Oriental manners, does not see more than the surface, and it is not till one incident after another reveals the truth, that it can be recognised that Islam has done nothing to raise the poor. In the cities usually visited the traveller finds mosques filled with decent congregations. In the villages there are no mosques at all. Many peasants cannot repeat the simple Moslem prayer. They can do nothing more than light a lamp to the Nebi when child or husband are sick. They dwell in an imaginary atmosphere of marvels, like that in which the Zulu or the Hindu peasant passes a lifetime of superstitious fear. We have nothing like it, save perhaps as a survival in the wilder mountain districts of Britain, where witches are still feared. The pious doctors and fanatic Imams of Islam have done nothing to compare to the home-missions of England. This is not only the case in Syria; it applies equally to the whole Moslem world.

Among the upper class, too, there are many differences of belief and of life. The mosque students and doctors represent, as a rule, orthodoxy of the most conservative type. Yet even among these some survival of the philosophy of the early Baghdad schools may exist, some tinge of the influence of Plato and of Aristotle, which led captive for a while the intellect of Islam. Among these, again, the passionate mysticism of the Sufis represents an emotional condition not unknown in the West. The Sufi gives up the riddle of existence to seek the final union with God, which is the aim of his life. But side by side with these are men professing Islam, yet breaking its laws, soldiers and diplomatists who have seen the world unknown to the dweller in mosques or to the literary professor; men also who drink wine and who neglect prayer; other men who take bribes and grind the faces of the poor; pitiful ambitions gained by crooked means; white turbans covering hypocrisy, and successful humbugs decked with stars.

There is, however, one phase of Moslem life which has no exact counterpart in the West—a power which is often unsuspected but very great, namely, that of the Dervish orders. The visitor who sees the miserable mendicant in the street, who hears the frantic howls of those performing the zikr, or watches the stately dance of the Mawlawîyeh, little suspects the power which underlies these outward appearances, and little understands the reason for that reverence which is shown, even by Turkish officials, for the Dervish beggar. Miserable and ignorant as is the fanatic who thrusts a sword through his arm, or devours scorpions, charms snakes, treads on the sick babe laid before him, or bathes in charcoal embers, he yet belongs to a wide-spread secret organisation, and has sworn away his private judgment and liberty of action, devoting himself to fulfil the will of one man, the distant head of his order. A letter from such a chief will secure the active help of innumerable associates scattered far and wide, in Turkey, in Egypt, and yet farther afield. The power which Gnostics, Assassins, Templars, and other secret orders used to wield is still wielded in a certain measure by the Dervish leaders: we have only a faint reflex of such a system among Masons. Yet it cannot be said that the Dervish orders have done much for Islam: rather have they served to secure the aims and ambitions of chiefs who, regarded by their ignorant followers as possessed of marvellous powers, are yet perhaps in reality as sceptical as the Druze initiates. By pretensions to spiritual knowledge and power they attract the poor candidate who stands naked at the door begging for admission to the order. By jugglery and sensational acts they captivate the imagination of the mob. But they are careful only to admit to their real counsels those of whose intelligence and trustworthiness they have had long experience. The Dervishes may lead the populace in religious war, but chiefly when certain very practical aims are seen by their leaders to be thereby attainable.

Such considerations, though they have led us far away from Galilee, will perhaps be allowed as the results of practical acquaintance with Islam, gained by six years of life in Moslem lands, and may be useful in face of the somewhat superficial estimates of Moslem religious life which so often appear before the public as the results of a trip to the more frequented towns of the Levant and the talk of dragomans and renegade Turks. I know only one point in which Islam has real advantage over Christianity, namely, in its direct condemnation of drink. Even Islam is unable entirely to stamp out this curse; but when we contrast the sobriety of Palestine with the drink traffic forced on natives of South Africa by an English-speaking race, whose Government draws a revenue from the excise, we find that there is one great lesson to be learned in the East, and one great evil which the voice of Muhammad has always proclaimed as such. In all other respects—the position of women, the condition of education among the poor, the sympathy of the upper class with the ignorant, the love of truth, and of freedom, and of justice—the lands where Islam is established can never be compared with those where Christianity is purest.

These reflections have been raised by the remembrance of days spent in crossing over Hermon, from Banias to Hasbeya, on the road to Damascus, or in the investigation of the ruined towns and temples on the mountain, or in toiling to the summit, 9200 feet above the sea, where the Survey party once spent the night, and took observations of the stars for latitude. It is one of the wildest and most picturesque parts of Syria. The lower slopes are of the sandstone which underlies the Lebanon and appears on the Moab hills. Above is the hard fossiliferous limestone, which is a base-bed in Western Palestine. Near the Druze villages great cascades of bright green foliage deck the mountain slopes, where the vineyards, already famous in Hebrew times, run terrace above terrace. Clumps of pines, low thickets of oak and mastic, and hedges of wild rose rise towards the snowy dome, where the Syrian bears are hiding, and whence sometimes they venture down to eat the grapes. The costumes of the Druzes, the white veils, through which one eye only of the Druze damsels is seen, and the brightly-coloured dress of the men, are equally picturesque; as are, too, the solitary khalwehs or meeting-places perched on cliffs remote from other habitations.

The scenery round Banias is also of remarkable beauty. It is well known to tourists, who generally visit it at its best. Here by the Mound of Dan is the fine clump of oaks, a familiar resting-place, near which is the tomb of Sheikh Merzûk, who is said to have been a dog. To the west the path crosses four rushing brooks, which join the cascades of Banias to form the Jordan, breaking over stony channels in a plain strewn everywhere with blocks of black basalt, covered at times with orange-coloured lichens.

It was here that I discovered a group of dolmens in 1882, which had previously been overlooked amid the many natural boulders, and which are no doubt connected with the old worship of the region. Farther east the town itself still preserves its great Norman wall in parts, and the rush of the Jordan, shooting down in a foaming torrent between thickets of low shrubs, with forest trees in groups here and there, and a few poplars, is that of an Alpine river rather than of a Syrian stream. High up on the east the ruins of the great castle, which was the bulwark of Christendom against Damascus, cover a long spur on the side of Hermon. The great cave of Pan, whence Banias takes its name, has now fallen in, so that the full effect, which probably was to be remarked when Josephus wrote, is lost; for the sudden bursting of the river out of the cavern must have been very striking. A little Moslem chapel is built on the debris, and dedicated naturally to El Khudr, the mysterious “green one,” who drank the water of life, and who represents the vivifying power of moisture in Moslem folk-lore. On the rocks, still half legible, are the Greek inscriptions of the days of Agrippa, one dedicating an altar to the nymphs, another recording the name of Agrippa as archon of the year, a third speaking of the priest of the god Pan. The name of Pan at this place is perhaps older than the Greek age, and of Canaanite origin, since the word as a Turanian term, meaning a “spirit,” is found in many languages of the group to which the Hittite tongue belonged. Looking southwards over the flat Jordan plain, you see the marshy Huleh lake shining amid its papyrus swamps. On the east are the fantastic cones of the Jaulan volcanoes, on the west the bushy range of Naphtali, on the north the rugged ridges of Hermon. The black camps of the Arabs are dotted over the plain, their brown cattle wander beside the streams, and the women in dark flowing robes are churning butter in goatskin bags beside the “houses of hair.”

Hermon appears in all ages to have been a sacred mountain and a religious centre. The name is thought by some to mean a “sanctuary,” but by Gesenius to mean a “mountain spur.” The old Amorite name was Shenir, of uncertain meaning, and the Sidonians called it Sirion, which is probably a Turanian word meaning “white” or “snowy.” Long after the calves of Dan had been overthrown, and before the calf became an emblem in the Druze khalwehs on the same mountain, the Romans covered its slopes with little temples. These have been, for the most part, visited and described. Sir Charles Warren made careful plans of the best-preserved examples, and nearly all of them I have explored on different occasions. At Rukhleh, on the north-west slope, there are remains of such a temple, which has been pulled to pieces apparently to make a church. The Roman eagle, which one traveller in his enthusiasm has called Hittite, is here carved in bold relief, as also at Baalbek, and in the curious temples of the Anseireh mountains; and a great head of the sun-god is sculptured on another stone. Here, too, occur Greek inscriptions; one recording the adorning of the temple gates with silver, another mentioning the Epiarch of Abila. Farther north, at Abila itself, the ground is strewn with Greek funerary texts, and the rocks burrowed with tombs, one of which has rude busts in low relief over the entrance, such as we also found over Roman tombs in Gilead.

On the top of the mountain itself there are some very curious remains. A sort of peak has here been surrounded by an oval of cut stones carefully laid, within which we found a quantity of ashes, apparently belonging to some beacon or sacrificial fire once lighted on the spot. Close to this circle is a cave hewn in the rock, measuring fifteen feet by twenty-four, with a roof supported by a rocky pillar. Three steps lead down into the cave, and the rock above has been levelled, perhaps as the floor of a building. There is no historic account of the object with which this curious cave was cut high up on the snowy summit, remote from all inhabited spots. The Druze hermits are said to retire to Hermon, but their place of retreat was shown to me farther down the side of the mountain. The names of Antar and Nimrod are connected with various buildings on Hermon, and the remains on the top are called “Castle of the Youths” by the shepherds. It is said that a Greek inscription lies near the circle round the highest peak. This I was unable to discover. The rock of the peak has been cut so as to form a sunken trench with a round shaft—perhaps for water—beside it. The object of these cuttings is, however, obscure.

By passing the night on the summit, I was able to witness two of the most interesting scenes imaginable—the sunrise over the plains of Damascus and the sunset in the sea. These I have fully described in another work, but, as there is no other point from which such a general view of Palestine can be gained, I may be allowed to repeat in part what I saw. We ascended the mountain on the 9th of September, at which time it was quite free from snow. Indeed, we could not even find snow to melt for cooking, and had thus great difficulty in getting water.