There were two famous places of pilgrimage in North Syria in Crusading times. One of these was Tortosa, on the sea-coast, which the good Joynville visited, and where was one of the pictures of the Virgin painted by St. Luke. At that time it appears that the Mother of God was absent in Egypt helping St. Louis (who sadly needed help), a fact which the pious knight states to have been immediately reported to the Legate.
The other shrine was that of Notre Dame de la Roche at Sardenay—the present Jacobite convent of Saidnaiya (“Our Lady”), north of Damascus. This was venerated by Christians and Moslems alike. The Jacobites were friendly to the Normans, and were then more numerous than they now are. They preserved the old rite of circumcision, which they received from the early Ebionite Christians, who dwelt in the Hauran in the second century A.D. They preserved also the old Syriac language—almost the same spoken in Palestine in the time of Christ—and their old alphabet, a late form of the Palmyrene. In our own time the Maronite churches of Lebanon still contain curious pictures dating back to the Middle Ages, with Syriac inscriptions; but the Syriac language is said only to survive in three villages not far from Saidnaiya.
The miraculous image at this place had a long legendary history. It was said to be partly of wood, partly of flesh, and from its breasts distilled a sacred oil which was used to light the lamps in the church, and carried away to France, where it was treasured in many abbeys. In the present age the image is not shown to the faithful, as it is said that any who look upon it would be struck dead; but the saint is still believed to be able to grant offspring to her adorers, and it is reported that her chapel is filled with indecent pictures. She is, in short, a Lucina, who no doubt traces her descent from the old Ashtoreth of Syria, adored by Hittites and Phœnicians alike.
It might be thought that miraculous pictures and images had ceased to work wonders in the nineteenth century, but the Roman sect has no monopoly of such marvels, nor is human credulity limited to any period of time. Colonel Churchill, in 1853, was still able to report the existence of a miraculous sweating picture of St. George in the Maronite church at Heitât, producing a liquid eagerly purchased by Christians; and many a survival of early Paganism may yet be traced among the priest-ridden peasantry of the Lebanon.
The Normans held on to their North Syrian possessions almost to the end of the thirteenth century, and till the fall of Acre they still kept possession of the shore towns. The success of Saladin and Bibars seems to have led the Franks to look to a Tartar alliance as the best means of retaining their power. It was generally believed that the Tartars—to whom the Armenians were tributary—were Christians, and the legend of Prester John, the Christian king of Central Asia, was eagerly accepted. For this reason St. Louis sent Rubruquis even as far as Siberia offering his alliance, and the plan was still in favour apparently in 1282, when Sir Joseph de Cancy wrote his letter home to Edward I., for he says, in describing the battle between the Egyptians and the Tartars near Homs, that “the King of Cyprus not being yet come up, could not join the Tartars.” It appears that the Mongol princes, who were then following the steps of their Mongol predecessors, the Hittites, were willing, in a very politic manner, to nurse such illusions for their own purposes, and indeed the tolerance shown to Christians, Moslems, and Buddhists by Genghiz Khan and his descendants contrasted in a marked manner with the zeal of the Arab and Turkish Moslems.
There is no part of Syria where the past is more vividly recalled than in the little-visited regions of the Northern Lebanon. Standing on the ramparts of Kal’at el Hosn, where the great towers retain their battlements, and the great oak door still swings in the gateway, the traveller, as he looks down on the village which nestles at the foot of the fortress, climbing the steep sides of the hill, might almost expect to see the mailed knights ride forth, or the Turkoman princes advancing under their emblazoned banners[62] from the east. At Homs the picturesque bazaars are still girt by the black basalt walls with their round gate-towers, which no doubt existed when, in 1281, the power of the Mongols was broken in the plain before them, and which may have been built before Zenghi attacked the town in 1130, by Normans or by Turkoman princes. The influence of Europe had not visibly reached this city in 1881, when I explored its narrow lanes, and it stands amid its green gardens by the Orontes much as it was some seven centuries ago.
Yet, on the other hand, the Lebanon district presents us with the one bright spot in the Turkish Empire, the freest and best governed of the Sultan’s provinces. Under the guardianship of European states, with a Christian governor, a constitution, a taxation amounting to only a shilling a head, a smart mounted police, and a coach-road over the mountain, the Lebanon province has become prosperous and happy, filled with a cheerful population, and covered with vineyards and gardens, thus presenting a most remarkable contrast to the ill-ruled province of Tripoli on the north and the ruined regions of Palestine on the south.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RESULTS OF EXPLORATION.
I PROPOSE to conclude this volume by a slight sketch of the results which have been gathered by exploration in Palestine. In journals or memoirs the importance of these results is hardly to be appreciated in their scattered form, and I find that they have certainly not yet been grasped even by learned writers who have penned accounts of the country quite recently in England. These results are geological, geographical, physical, antiquarian, ethnical, and biblical, or, more widely speaking, historical, and under these six headings they may successively be considered.
Geological research was not one of our principal objects, but a knowledge of the geology of a country is indispensable, if the explorer would rightly estimate, not only its geographical character, but the possibilities of ancient cultivation and natural history. I was taught the elements of geology by more than one specialist well known by name in England, and though the studies of Lartet and others left no great discoveries to be made, I always felt the necessity of studying the structure and the mineralogy of every district which we visited.