Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

The Khûri, was a native, and his robes could not well have been dirtier or shabbier. He was accompanied by two acolytes who held our horses; his pride and satisfaction in showing his church were immense.

Whilst at Jenîn we had the unusual honour of a visit from a lady, who came to ask for medical advice. Peasants suffering from ophthalmia, or from indigestion, which they explained by saying “the head of my heart hurts me,” we had to doctor every day, and one poor old gentleman, at Mujeidil, we afterwards treated with carbolic acid and nearly cured of a skin disease; but he had many other ailments which we could not treat, and he consequently became a decided nuisance. The lady came attended by her slave, a little girl in white with large dark eyes, one of which, for some unknown reason, she kept steadily shut. The mistress was dressed in yellow and white striped cotton, with the izâr or white veil above; her face-veil she was obliged to remove to show her tongue, and her eyes had a deep fringe of blue kohel all round, the eyebrows painted to meet, whilst on her chin, forehead, and upper lip, were small dots tattooed in blue in a sort of trefoil pattern; her hands had bands of blue paint and dots on the knuckles. She wore heavy rings and a blue glass bracelet; the sleeves were tight to the wrist, and under her frock she wore the gay-coloured trousers as we call them, which are in reality a petticoat sewn up, and the prettiest article of Syrian costume. Her nails and the palms of her hands were dyed orange colour with henna, and on her feet she wore the red curly-toed slippers used in walking out of doors. She described her symptoms with the usual high querulous tone and rapid chatter peculiar to the native women, and was made happy by a couple of pills.

The places visited from this camp lay principally east of the plain. We ascended the high conical peak of Jebel Dŭhy, so-called after Neby Dŭhy (“the leader or general”), a prophet whose sacred place is on the summit. Who this prophet was I am unable to say, nor can we with any certainty apply a Biblical name to the mountain. The Crusaders called it sometimes Mount Endor, and generally Little Hermon, a title still known to the Nazareth Christians. The latter name was given in consequence of the expression, “Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name,” whence they seemed to have argued that Hermon was to be sought close to Tabor. They can never have looked northwards from the neighbourhood of Endor, or they would have seen the rounded, isolated mound, like a huge mole-hill, which is Tabor, and behind it far away the magnificent, snowy dome of the second sacred mountain of the text—the true Hermon.

The top of the mountain is composed of blocks of basalt, covered with grey lichen. The view is magnificent, extending from the Safed ranges on the north to Mount Ebal on the south, and from the peaks east of the great Hauran plateau to Carmel and the sea. Fifteen hundred feet below us is Nain, and north of this the plain in which the mediæval tradition supposed Abraham to have met Melchisedek, with the unique outline of Tabor, the Nazareth block, and distant Hermon. On the south side the broad valley of Jezreel is just below, and the villages of Kûmieh and Shŭtta, seen almost in bird’s-eye view on their little knolls surrounded by long patches of arable land, whilst on the south side of the valley the limestone of the Gilboa ridge is twisted into wavy lines by the eruptive basalt beneath, and the range is seen, end on as it were, rising shelf above shelf, while conspicuous on its knoll of rugged rock, Jezreel stands at the north-west horn of the crescent-shaped range, 500 feet above the bright pool of “Goliath’s Spring,” where the early Christians, by some curious misconception, imagined David to have fought the giant. On a clear autumn day the little Survey cairn was plainly visible on Mount Ebal at a distance of twenty-six miles. The prospect is indeed one of the finest in Palestine, with a variety of outline and extent of view rarely to be found.

The village of Nain lies below on a sort of spur to the north of Neby Dŭhy, and the road from Nazareth ascends in a hollow to the west of it. On the right of the road, yet farther west, are the rock-cut tombs, and thus the procession bearing the young man’s body would have come down the slope towards the little spring westwards, meeting our Lord on the main road. The mud-hovels on the grey tongue of limestone have no great marks of antiquity, but the surrounding ruins show the village to have been once larger, and a little mosque called “the Place of our Lord Jesus” marks, no doubt, the site of an early chapel. There are, as far as we could see, no traces of a wall, and I think we should understand by “gate of the city,” the place where the road enters among the houses, just as the word is used often in Greek, and in modern Arabic in such expressions as “gate of the pass,” “gate of the valley,” and even “gate of the city,” where no wall or gate exists.

East of Nain is a second similar village of mud-huts, with hedges of prickly pear. This is Endor, famous in connection with the tragic history of the death of Saul. The adventurous character of Saul’s night journey is very striking, when we consider that the Philistines pitched in Shunem on the southern slopes of the mountain, and that Saul’s army was at Jezreel; thus, to arrive at Endor, he had to pass the hostile camp, and would probably creep round the eastern shoulder of the hill, hidden by the undulations of the plain, as an Arab will now often advance unseen close by you in a fold of the ground. We are accustomed, probably from the various pictures of the scene, to think of the witch as living in a cave; and caves exist at Endor, but they are small, and seem to be probably modern, having been dug out in seeking for the marl used in making mortar. The hillside is bare and stony, with a low ledge of rock in which the rude entrances are cut; round one cave there is a curious circle of rocks, which form a sort of protection, and resemble somewhat a druidical circle, though the formation is probably natural. This cave would, however, offer an appropriate scene for the meeting of the sorceress with the unhappy king, whom God answered “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Sam. xxviii. 6).

On the southern slope stands a third and similar village called Sûlem, the ancient Shunem. There is nothing specially to mark it as an ancient site, for it is only a mud-hamlet, with cactus hedges and a spring, yet it is undoubtedly the place known in the fourth century as Shunem. West of the houses there is a beautiful garden, cool and shady, of lemon-trees, watered by a little rivulet, and in the village is a fountain and trough. Westward the view includes Fûleh—the Crusading Castle of the Bean, with its fosse and marshy pool outside, and extends as far as Carmel, fifteen miles away. Thus the whole extent of the ride of the Shunamite woman (2 Kings iv. 24) under the burning noontide sun of harvest-time is visible. Were the houses of that time no larger than the mud-cabins of the modern village, it was not a great architectural undertaking to build “a little chamber” for the prophet, and the enumeration of the simple furniture of that chamber—the bed, perhaps only a straw mat, the table, the stool, and the lamp, seems to indicate that it was only such a little hut that was intended. Another point may be noted: how came it that Elisha so constantly passed by Shunem? The answer seems simple; he lived habitually on Carmel, but he was a native of Abel Meholah, “the Meadow of Circles,” a place now called ’Ain Helweh, in the Jordan valley, to which the direct road led past Shunem down the Valley of Jezreel.

Crossing the valley, we see before us the site of Jezreel on a knoll 500 feet high. The position is very peculiar, for whilst on the north and north-east the slopes are steep and rugged, on the south the ascent is very gradual, and the traveller coming northwards is astonished to look down suddenly on the valley, with its two springs, one (’Ain Jâlûd) welling out from a conglomerate cliff, and forming a pool about 100 yards long, with muddy borders; the other (’Ain Tub’aûn), the Crusaders’ Fountain of Tubania, where the Christian armies were fed “miraculously” for three days on the fish which still swarm in most of the great springs near.

The main road ascends from near these springs and passes by the “Dead Spring,” which was re-opened by the Governor of Jenîn, and now forms a shallow pool between rocks of black basalt, covered with red and orange-coloured lichen, and also full of little fish; thence it passes on the east side beneath the knoll of Zer’în (Jezreel) to the plain on the south. Climbing up to the village, we are again struck by the absence of any traces of antiquity; the buildings, including the central tower, are all modern, and only the great mound beneath, and perhaps some of the innumerable cisterns, seem ancient; yet the site is undoubted, and has never been really lost. Here from a tower, perhaps standing where the modern one is erected, the watchman could see down the broad Valley of Jezreel as far as Bethshan, and watch the dust and the gleam of the armour advancing. The course of the two horsemen and of Jehu’s chariot was distinctly seen beneath the hill, and the distances are sufficiently extensive to give time for the succession of events.

On the east and south-east there are rock-cut wine presses on the rugged hills, where no doubt the “portion of the field of Naboth” and his vineyard are to be placed,—a good instance of the decay of vine cultivation in Palestine.