The rude stone monuments have been already noticed, and are probably the earliest remains in the country. Hebrew remains are chiefly represented by rock-cut tombs, rock scarps, tunnels, and pools (as at Siloam), the great Tells or mounds beside springs and streams, and a very few inscriptions. The wall on Ophel, found by Sir C. Warren, is probably as old as Nehemiah, and in the extreme north we have Phœnician sculptures, tombs, and sarcophagi of equal antiquity. The Greek age presents several examples of native art under Greek influence, such as the palace of Hyrcanus, and some of the Jerusalem tombs. To the earliest Roman period belong the walls of the Jerusalem and Hebron harams, with the temple at Siah, the colonnade at Samaria, the earliest remains at Masada and Cæsarea. Advancing to the second century of our era, we find Syria to have been suddenly covered with Roman cities, Roman roads, Roman temples and inscriptions, funerary and official; and this period, to which the synagogues also belong, is one of the greatest building ages in Palestine. The Roman work gradually gives place to the Christian architecture of the Byzantines. Chrysostom’s description of Syrian civilisation fully agrees with the discovery of countless Greek chapels and churches of this age, with cities, castles, and other buildings. At Bethlehem we have one of the oldest churches in the world, the fourth-century pillars still standing in place. The church was five hundred years old when England became a kingdom.
The early Arabs have left us very few buildings beyond the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, the great Damascus mosque, and perhaps the buildings beyond Jordan mentioned in the fifth chapter. They employed Persian and Greek architects, and brought no original style of their own from the deserts of Arabia. The Crusaders, who followed, were great builders, civil and ecclesiastical; the country is full of their castles and of their churches. The Italian-Gothic style was slowly modified during the two centuries of Norman supremacy; the latest buildings being those along the western coast, which was latest held. The nearest approach to their architecture that I have seen is found in Palermo and in Messina; and it was to Norman success against Islam in Sicily that the establishment of the Latin kingdom in Syria was due. The Normans were succeeded by the Egyptians, to whom Syria owes many of its finest architectural monuments, dating from the fifteenth century. The Turks have added very little of any interest to the architectural remains of the country.
These various epochs and styles are distinguishable by the student who has studied dated monuments of each age. The forms of the arches, the dressing of the masonry, the mortar even and the plaster, tell their tale to the practised eye. Crusading work is distinguished by its mason’s marks, of which we made a large collection, and which are often the same used about the same time in England and in Scotland. They are neither marks of individuals, nor do they show the position intended for the stone, but clearly they were put only on the best finished stones, and often they are luck-marks, which, from a remote antiquity, have been widely used in Asia and in Europe. Neither the earlier Arabs nor the later Saracens seem to have used such marks, and they form the most distinctive peculiarity of Crusading work in the East.
Next in order we must consider one of the most interesting subjects studied by the explorers, namely, that of ethnology. Very little was really known as to the peculiarities of the natives of Syria. I find that it is still thought in England that they are Turks, though the number of Turks in the country south of Damascus might perhaps be counted only by tens. For six years I carefully studied every class of the population, and collected facts concerning race, religion, and language, which form the most important considerations in such study, and on which manners and customs must chiefly depend.
The population of Palestine, though very sparse, is also very mixed. In addition to the Moslem peasantry, who are mainly of an Aramaic stock, and the Arabs, who are more or less of pure southern extraction, we have to deal with native Greek Christians; with the Lebanon Maronites; with the Druzes, Metâwileh, Ismailiyeh, Anseiriyeh; with Greeks, Jews, Samaritans, and with yet later colonies of Germans; with Italian monks and French priests; with the annual hordes of pilgrims, Russian, Armenian, or Georgian, and the annual inroad of European tourists. Some European stocks, such as the Italian and German, have left their mark on the racial types of the country. We cannot study the question of ethnology practically on the assumption that the population is of pure stock, and represents without mixture that existing three thousand years ago. Not only has there been some admixture of late years, but there have been from the dawn of history various races in Syria. The Crusaders who married Maronite and Armenian wives originated the Poulains, who remained in the land. The soldiers of Rome or of Alexander, whose colonies were found even as far east as Gerasa, no doubt intermarried with natives; as the Palmyrene archer of York wedded a wife of the Catuvellauni. In the time of Christ Greek was spoken in Palestine, and the inhabitants of Decapolis were probably in many cases of Greek descent. The Arabs from the south were then pushing northwards to meet the descending Aramaic stream from Palmyra. When we go back to Nehemiah’s time, we find the Jews as strangers, surrounded by a peasantry of mixed race. Yet earlier, the Assyrians brought colonists from the east and planted them in Samaria. When we go back to the time of Rameses II., we already find, side by side with the Semitic inhabitants, a race which was akin to the Medes and other ancient Mongolic peoples of Western Asia. The “Canaanite was then in the land” when Abraham began his migrations from the north.
These two great stocks, Semitic and Turanian, have contended ever since in Syria, with varying fortunes; and from the third century B.C. downwards the Aryans also have been always present. We have seen already how far south the Turkoman hordes pushed in Palestine, still surviving in the plain of Sharon; and, as in all other countries, there are gypsies in Syria, representing another element of Aryan origin from India; while among the Druzes I believe a Persian stock is also present.
If, therefore, ethnology is to be studied in Palestine, it must be with these facts kept steadily before us. If peasants are to be asked to have their heads measured, we must know something of their genealogies also. If skulls are to be collected, we must find out what skulls they are. I have known the skulls of peasants recently murdered to be sent home as types of the ancient population of the country. I have read of blue eyes attributed to the Amorites, when probably a much more recent admixture of Aryan blood might account for this most abnormal occurrence.[63]
Even the studies of religion or of language present less difficulty than that of race. We are constantly reminded that race and language are not synonymous. It is no doubt true, since a conquered people often learns the language, and sometimes adopts the creed, of the conquerers. In Palestine, gypsies and Turkomans talk Arabic, for it is a necessity that the minority should speak the tongue of the majority; yet, as regards the more important stocks in Syria, there has been no great change. The peasantry speak almost as they spoke in Jerome’s days, almost as the Galileans spoke in the time of our Lord. The Arab tongue as spoken by the wild Bedu of Moab was admired for its classic expressions by my educated scribe, and was hardly understood by my Maronite servants. The speech of townsmen differs from that of the peasantry in its sounds as well as in its words, and the Lebanon muleteer’s jargon would certainly not be understood by an university professor of Arabic.
As regards the Moslem religion in Syria something has already been said. To study only one phase of Islam, as represented by educated Turks or Circassians in a city like Cairo, which has so long been open to European influence, will give only a partial and misleading picture of the creed, even when the good faith of such latitudinarians is undoubted. In Damascus, in Homs, in Hamah, in the remote villages, in the sanctuaries of Hebron and Jerusalem, another and a very different tone prevails. Let the student of Islam run the gauntlet of the fanatical guards of these sanctuaries, let him be stoned for a dog and denied a drink of water as a Kâfir, and then acknowledge that the stern prejudices of the Middle Ages are not extinct. Guarded by an English garrison, in a country where subservience to England is a necessity, how can he judge the real temper of Moslems? Rather should he reflect on the ruins of Alexandria, on the dervishes who surrounded Arabi at Tell-el-Kebir, on the curses which will meet him in Hebron or in Acre. It is not by their words, but by their actions that Orientals, like Westerns, must be judged; and it is not by the opinions of the most advanced and civilised that the strength of prejudice among the many is to be gauged.
The ethnological study to which I devoted most of my time was that of the Moslem peasantry and of the nomadic Arabs. “We recorded their customs, their beliefs, their superstitious practices. We described their dress and food, and studied the peculiarities of their dialect. We found among them good, bad, and indifferent, honest and upright men, and scoundrels or hypocrites. Some were intelligent and able, others were stupid. We cannot generalise concerning them, any more than we can generalise at home. The average standard is very low as regards morality, truth, and intellect. Education they have none, and their courage, though generally remarkable, is not always to be relied on. The Arab is superior in many respects to the Fellah, but he is quite as untruthful and as greedy.