Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

Here, then, we may picture to ourselves the two hosts, covering the low rocky hills opposite to each other, and half hidden among the lentisk bushes; between them was the rich expanse of ripening barley and the red banks of the torrent with its white shingly bed; behind all were the distant blue hill-walls of Judah, whence Saul had just come down. The mail-clad champion advanced from the west, through the low corn, with his mighty lance perhaps tufted with feathers, his brazen helmet shining in the sun; from the east, a ruddy boy, in his white shirt and sandals, armed with a goat’s-hair sling, came down to the brook, and, according to the poetic fancy of the Rabbis, the pebbles were given voices, and cried: “By us shall thou overcome the giant.”

The champion fell from an unseen cause, and the wild Philistines fled to the mouth of the valley, where Gath stood towering on its white chalk cliff, a frontier fortress, the key to the high-road leading to the corn-lands of Judah, and to the vineyards of Hebron.

The Survey work round Beit Jibrîn was unusually heavy, for, on an average, three or four ruined sites were found to every two square miles, and the number of names was very large. The storms also interrupted us, and thus it was only on the 1st of April, or three weeks from the date of our arrival in the district, that we could move on.

The spring flowers, including the delicate cyclamens, were now in full bloom, the hoopoes and storks had arrived, and Palestine was at its best. The work had extended over 180 square miles in the three weeks, and 424 names, only 50 of which were previously known, had been collected, including more than 200 ruins.

There was always some difficulty in ascertaining names; suspicion, ignorance and fanatical feeling were against us, but we here found a new difficulty, for the peasantry were convinced that the Franks knew the old names better than they did themselves. One guide, pointing out the ruin of Horân, said that the real name was Korân. I asked why, and he answered that a European had told him. Thus, also, at Kefr Saba we were told that the Frank name was Antifatrûs; and at Adullam one man refused to tell me the name of the place, saying that the Franks knew it best.

I protest against the immorality of corrupting the native traditions, by relating to the peasantry the theories of modern writers as authentic facts, for it destroys the last undoubted source of information as to ancient topography. The confusion caused by Crusading and early Christian traditions which have been engrafted in a precisely similar manner, forms already a most serious difficulty; and if in addition we are to have modern foreign theories disseminated among the peasantry, identification will be impossible. Throughout the course of the Survey, we never allowed the peasantry to suppose that we attached more value to one name which they gave, than to another, and we never asked leading questions or gave them any information as to ancient sites.

Our next camp was at the village of Mejdel, near the shore, just north of Ascalon, separated from Beit Jibrîn by nineteen miles of corn-land and sandy downs. The plain was dotted with brown mud villages, and was coloured with patches of purple lupines. We passed on our march through Keratîya, in which we probably recognise the name of the Philistine Cherethites, and where is a Crusading tower now known as Kŭl’at el Fenish, “Castle of the Philistines,” thence crossing over the sand-ridge we looked down on green hedgeless fields, brown ploughland, and beautiful olive-groves, and on the village of Mejdel, with its conspicuous minaret and tall palm-grove.

This place is the principal town between Gaza and Jaffa: it boasts of a bazaar and has a weekly market. The inhabitants are rich and well-disposed. There are sandy lanes, hedged with the prickly pear, round the town, and on the west a large cemetery near the sand-dunes. To the north, under a row of aged olive trees, we found a most pleasant camping ground.

From this camp we made the large-scale survey of Ascalon, and cleared up the curious question as to the two Episcopal towns of that name which existed in the fifth century, the one being apparently Ascalon by the sea, the second a ruined site called ’Askelôn in the hills near Beit Jibrîn.

Ascalon, “the bride of Syria,” is now entirely ruinous, and only the fragments of its great walls, built by the English, under Richard Lion-Heart, in 1191 A.D., remain half buried by the great dunes of rolling sand, which are ever being blown up by the sea breeze from the south-west. The whole interior of the site is covered with rich soil, to a depth of about ten feet, and the natives find fragments of fine masonry, shafts, capitals, and other remains of the old city, by digging in this.