El Mukaddasi says that this mosque was formerly a church, and its nave and aisles I found still clearly traceable in the later Moslem building.
The third century saw the rise and fall of Palmyra, the great Syrian trading city which formed the emporium of Northern Syria, connecting the coast towns with the Euphrates by a route across the desert from its oasis. As the bulwark of the Roman Empire against Persia, the Palmyrene colony was allowed privileges amounting almost to independence, and under Odenathus and his widow Zenobia it flourished until rebellion brought down on that famous queen the heavy Roman hand. Its celebrated buildings show how strong was the influence of Græco-Roman art on the Aramaic inhabitants; but its numerous inscriptions are for the most part in the native script—a late form of the old Phœnician alphabet—and its gods are the old Phœnician deities, though Christian heretics found shelter at Zenobia’s capital. Whether any remains of earlier ages are to be found in the desert city is still perhaps open to inquiry, since a very curious Aramean tablet was recovered from the vicinity by M. Peretié. The ruins as yet known are of Zenobia’s time, but tradition points to Palmyra as the Tadmor or Tamar in the wilderness founded by Solomon—Tamar, which is perhaps the better-authenticated reading, being the Hebrew name (“palm tree”) equivalent to the classic title Palmyra.
In the later days of Paganism Northern Syria was very famous for its temples—the shrine of Daphne, in its oleander thickets near Antioch; the yet more picturesque site at the source of the Adonis River, where stood, under a theatre of barren crags, high up on Lebanon, the shrine of the mourning Venus; and the curious temple of the Dea Syria at Heliopolis (the ancient Carchemish) on the Euphrates. Three statues existed at the latter shrine, one representing the mother goddess seated on the lion—whose image, standing on the same, has been found carved by the Hittites—the second the father god on a bull, and the third a deity of unknown name. Two lofty obelisks stood in the porch, and to their summits the priests went up, and remained for seven days in converse with the gods and never sleeping. It was perhaps the memory of this strange rite (not, however, peculiar to Syria, but known also in India) which led Simeon the Stylite to ascend his column four centuries later at a site not very far west of the old temple of the Dea Syria, for the ruins of the great monastery erected over the base of his pillar are still to be seen at Kal’at Sima’an, between Aleppo and Turmanin.
The temples of Daphne and Afka were famous for their licentious rites, the temple-women who served Aphrodite in Cyprus and in Babylon here remaining recognised until suppressed by Constantine. At Afka the statue of Venus was represented with its hands covered by its robes, and the lamentations which were part of the midsummer ritual were but the survival of the old Akkadian and Phœnician “mourning for Tammuz,” which was observed even in the Temple at Jerusalem. A star was believed to fall annually into the great pool or lake at the temple, where the sacred river, which falls in cascades in a deep and wooded gorge, to flow into the sea at Byblus, had its spring. The river itself was said to run red with the blood of Adonis in spring-time, and I have crossed it on Easter Day when it was turbid and ruddy with the rich red sandstone soil from Lebanon. It was at this season that the Phœnician women at Byblus used to set little papyrus cradles floating on its stream, holding an image of the infant sun-god.
The disciples of Simon Stylites were spread all over Syria, and even as late as the twelfth century they sat on solitary pillars. This may account for the single columns which are to be found standing alone in the plains of Syria in more than one case. West of Baalbek one of these pillars is to be seen, called “the pillar of the maidens,” and there is another not far from Acre. In the eleventh century the monastery already mentioned, called Kal’at Sim’an, still held no less than sixty Georgian monks, and Phocas mentions another of their establishments at St. Gerasimus, on the banks of Jordan, in the Jericho valley, where was “a hermit’s pillar.” At present the hermits are content to inhabit inaccessible caves on the Quarantania Mountain, where the pious go to fill the baskets which they lower down the cliff.
In Justinian’s time a perhaps more useful invention was brought to Syria by monks from China, who introduced the silkworm. The Roman silk was imported from the far East, but in the sixth century it began to be manufactured in Syria and in Cyprus, and continues to be made on the slopes of Lebanon, and even as far south as Tyre. The mulberry gardens round Beirut are cultivated to feed the worms. Under the Crusading rule the silks of Tripoli and Antioch were also famous. In the tenth century El Mukaddasi speaks of the silkworms of Ascalon as renowned.
Considering how eagerly the Christian pilgrims sought out every site of Bible interest, it is curious that the early notices of the cedars of Lebanon are so few. The destruction of the cedar forests, however, began early. Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs, not less than Solomon, appear to have sought out the Lebanon cedar-wood to adorn their palaces and temples. Justinian could hardly get cedar enough to roof the great Church of the Virgin which he built at Jerusalem, and in the Middle Ages the private houses of Sidon were ceiled with cedar. The trees usually visited at Ehden are not, however, the only survivors, for within the last fifty years at least other groves existed, and perhaps still exist, in the Northern Lebanon east of Tripoli. Seetzen, in 1805, found thousands of cedars at Etnub, and the less known forests have probably the better chance of surviving.
Northern Syria was overrun by the Moslems before Jerusalem fell. Abu Obeideh advanced from Damascus to Homs, Hamah, Latakia, Jibeil, Aleppo, and Tarsus, before the Byzantine army took the field; and though he was forced to beat a rapid retreat to the Yermuk, south-east of the Sea of Galilee, his great victory on that river confirmed his conquests. This Arab raid of the seventh century A.D. repeats in a curious manner the old incursion of the Arabs in the seventh century B.C., to which allusion has already been made. The Crusaders, in like manner, after the fall of Antioch, followed the same route which the various Assyrian conquerors had taken, and after passing Hamath and Homs, went down by the Eleutherus to Tripoli, and thence south along the sea-shore by the historic tablets of Rameses and Tiglath Pileser.
In the twelfth century Northern Syria was divided into two great fiefs—Beirut and Tripoli—belonging to the kingdom of Jerusalem, and embracing all the Lebanon; while the Anseiriyeh Mountains were part of the principality of Antioch. The Buka’a appears generally to have been under the rule of the Turkish Sultans of Aleppo and Damascus, and the border castles were on the eastern slopes of the Anseiriyeh chain. In this region, also, the famous Assassins established an independent colony, which was only subject to tribute in the times when Christian rule was strongest. The Normans were forced in this region to enter into treaty with the Saracen rulers, whose dread of the Tartars rendered them long indifferent to the cause of Islam.
Mention has already been made of the many mystic sects which dwelt in Palestine, and more especially in Northern Syria, in the Middle Ages. Even in the tenth century El Mukaddasi speaks of a considerable population of Shi’ah—or Persian Moslems—in Syria, whose descendants still survive as Metâwileh, Anseiriyeh, and Ismailiyeh, the latter representing the mediæval Assassins or “hemp-smokers.” This sect was founded in the eleventh century, but whether the curious Paradise story, according to which the young devotee was initiated for a few days into the joys of the Moslem Eden, has any foundation in fact may be doubted. It is, however, not doubtful that the influence of the Sheikh el Jebel, or “old man of the mountain,” over his disciples caused the murder of many well-known Crusaders and Norman princes, including Conrad of Montferrat and Raymond of Tripoli, as well as of an Egyptian Khalif and of several Turkoman and Arab princes. In 1174 the Assassins attempted the life of Saladin himself, and in 1172 of Prince Edward of England at Acre. Hence came the suppression of the order by Saladin, and by the Mongols in Persia, the original seat of the society. The Assassins owned ten castles, according to William of Tyre, extending their sway as far west as Tortosa.