Reference has already been made in the introductory chapter to the map made in this region by Herr G. Schumacher, a younger member of the German colony of Haifa, which has been published by the Palestine Exploration Fund. This map extends eastward of the Sea of Galilee for about twenty miles, and reaches on the north to Banias, and on the south to the region near Abila of Decapolis. An account of the country has also been published from Herr Schumacher’s notes. The curious volcanic region of the Jaulan is included in this area, and the most interesting discoveries, already noted, were the sites of Susieh (or Hippos) and of Kokaba, one of the towns mentioned in connection with the ancient Ebionite sectarians of the second century, A.D.
The unfinished work by De Vogüé remains, however, perhaps the most important contribution to our knowledge of this region. He was the first scientific explorer who exploded the popular fallacy of the “giant cities of Bashan,” by proving that not only were the stone towns of the Hauran of very ordinary dimensions, but that the Greek inscriptions on their walls showed them to have been built by Christians of the third and later centuries, A.D. The oldest remains in Bashan are apparently the dolmen groups discovered by Herr Schumacher, which are of the same character with those described further south. In the early Christian period the Ebionites flourished in Bashan, where they converted the invading Arabs who advanced from the south; and it is even said that the Arab king, Amr, erected monasteries as early as 180 A.D. The Græco-Roman buildings found in the Hauran belong chiefly to this period when the Arab capital was at Bosrah.
The Hauran is a great plateau stretching east to the isolated Jebel Kuleib, which lies on the borders of the Syrian desert. This plateau presents the chief cornfield of Palestine, and the wheat is thence brought down for export to Acre. The population is in great measure Druze, mixed with Arab and Circassian elements. The water supply is chiefly from wells and cisterns, and for this reason Bashan has always presented great difficulties to military expeditions, and the Crusaders never effected its conquest.
The Greek texts, pagan and Christian, here collected by Waddington, De Vogüé, and others, are very numerous, but less interesting as a rule than are the early Arab inscriptions copied by the same explorers. The Nabathean or North Arab texts of the Hauran range from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., and are of great epigraphic importance, showing a population of the same stock then also existing in Petra. Yet further east Mr. Cyril Graham discovered inscriptions and rude sketches executed by another Arab stock which advanced from Yemen about the same period. Some seven hundred of these South Arab texts are now known, and in 1877 their relation to the alphabet of South Arabia was demonstrated by Halévy. It was this rising tide of northward migration which a few centuries later broke down the Roman power in Syria at the famous battle of the Yermuk (south-east of the Sea of Galilee), when Islam triumphed over the degenerate Byzantines.
CHAPTER VI.
NORTHERN SYRIA.
PALESTINE proper—from Dan to Beersheba—extends only over the southern half of the Syrian coast which runs northwards to the Bay of Alexandretta, distant 370 miles from Gaza. Yet there is no true geographical division which separates Palestine from Syria, and it is only because the Land of Israel attracts our interest chiefly, that the northern region of Lebanon and the Land of the Hittites is less generally visited. The scenery is perhaps finer than that of Palestine, the antiquities are more important, and the ancient history of the region is equally interesting, though mainly traced through the fragmentary notices of monumental records. Mention has already been made of the ride in Northern Syria which led to our discovery of Kadesh on Orontes, and which extended over half the length of the region. In the following year I twice followed the coast by sea to Alexandretta, but found no opportunity of visiting Antioch and Aleppo. The travels of Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake in this region are published in Captain Burton’s “Unexplored Syria,” and among other modern explorers De Vogüé and Rey have perhaps done most to recover all that is of greatest interest, while valuable discoveries have been made by members of the American Missionary Society. On the coast also the excavations of Renan at Byblos produced important Phœnician discoveries, and the magnificent collection of the late M. Peretié, which he kindly showed to me at Beirut, was mainly gathered in Northern Syria. It is probable, however, that much still awaits the explorer in this region, hidden in the great mounds of the Buka’a, and in the truly Oriental towns on both sides of the Lebanon.
Northern Syria is divided into two regions by the River Eleutherus, which rises in a hollow plain on the watershed—a saddle dividing the Lebanon on the south from the Anseiriyeh Mountains (the old Mons Bargylus), which runs northwards to the valley of Antioch. East of these chains is the plateau of the Buka’a, watered towards the south by the Litâni River, but for the greater part of its length on the north by the Orontes, which finally turns sharply to the west, entering the valley of Antioch, and falling into the Mediterranean at Seleucia, the old port of Antioch, south of the Bay of Alexandretta. Farther east, the Anti-Lebanon runs out to the great bastion of Hermon, dividing the plains of Damascus from the Buka’a; and on the north this chain sinks into isolated white peaks, where the Buka’a broadens out, east of Homs, into the desert of Palmyra.
The east and west slopes of the Lebanon present a considerable contrast, due in part to the geological formation, and in part to climatic causes. On the west, the deep gorges in the ruddy sandstone are fringed with umbrella pines and tangled copses, and the green of the vineyards extends high up the slopes towards the iron-grey limestone of the upper ridges. On the east, the barren limestone and the gleaming chalk below are only sparsely covered with stunted trees, though olive groves occur round the villages. This contrast is, however, not peculiar to the Lebanon—it is notable in all parts of Palestine. The western slopes of Gilead are clothed with oak woods, while the eastern slopes of the Palestine hills are barren deserts. The hills of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea west of the watershed are for the most part well covered with copses, and in the Anti-Lebanon also the same contrast is (though to a less degree) observable.
The reason of this contrast is very evident. The cool and humid western breezes blow from the Mediterranean, and all the vapour so carried inland is caught by the western slopes. Those which face the east are, on the other hand, exposed to the hot blast which blows from the Syrian deserts, while they are at the same time shut out from the sea-breeze. In the Anti-Lebanon the western slopes also are partly excluded from the same life-giving breeze by the superior height of the Lebanon range, while the more fertile sandstone is covered in the Anti-Lebanon by white chalk, grey limestone, and nummulitic beds, which, as a rule, have very little surface soil. The vine is, however, much grown on this range, and its broken ridges present a finer sky-line than is to be found, as a rule, in Lebanon itself. The broad valley which divides these ranges contains some of the best corn-land in Syria, and the Orontes is one of the brightest rivers that water this part of Asia.
The true source of the Orontes is found west of Baalbek, but the main supply of water is from the spring nearly thirty miles farther north, now called ’Ain el ’Asy. The river is here invisible from the plain, being hidden in a ravine some 300 feet deep. The pool, fringed with willows and full of cresses, is surrounded with tawny cliffs, and the full-grown river rushes rapidly northwards in a broad, shallow stream, breaking over a rocky bed between barren slopes dotted with wild olives. Above these slopes rises the grey and stony ridge of the Lebanon on the west, while the brown Buka’a stretches on the east. After about fifteen miles’ run the river emerges again on to the plain near Riblah, and flows by Kadesh to the long artificial lake of Homs, already noticed. Then breaking over the Roman dam in cascades, it again sinks into a trench in the plain, and flows by the gardens of Homs or Emesa, and so on to the hot and unhealthy gorge near Hamath, and to the marshy plain of El Omk, where it joins the Kara Su (“black water”), and suddenly bends to the west.