Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

From natives of Haifa we learnt that a kind of deer called Yahmûr was to be found on Carmel, and, offering a reward, we procured for some of the Arab charcoal-burners a specimen which resembled the English roebuck. The flesh we ate and found excellent, the skin and bones Mr. Drake sent to the museum at Cambridge; and in 1876 I was informed by competent authority that the specimen was indistinguishable from the English roebuck. Now the interest of this discovery lies in the name. The Yahmûr gives a title to a large valley in a wooded district south of Carmel, and in translating the nomenclature I found that it was a Hebrew word used in the Bible (Deut. xiv. 5) to designate a kind of deer. The authorised version renders it “fallow-deer,” but this latter animal is properly called Ayal in Hebrew and Rîm in Arabic. Thus until we were able to ascertain the existence of the roebuck, previously heard of but not seen by Dr. Tristram, and to obtain the name Yahmûr, there was no clue to the true identification of the deer which furnished Solomon’s table daily with choice venison (1 Kings iv. 23).

The history of the Carmelite settlement is interesting and not generally known. The information which I was able to collect in 1875 from their records and by word of mouth from the monks may be briefly summarised.

Carmel has been a sacred mountain from the time of its earliest appearance in history. Elijah himself “repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down” (1 Kings xviii. 30), from which we infer that a sacred place or Makom had existed on the summit of the mountain at an earlier period, though, according to the Talmud, such high places became for ever unlawful after the building of the Temple at Jerusalem. From Tacitus we learn that Vespasian visited a place on Carmel, sacred to the deity of the mountain, but without either statue or altar, and even now, as above noted, the Druses hold the site at El Mahrakah in reverence as a sacred place.

In the early Christian period the memory of Elijah consecrated Carmel, and it became a favourite resort of hermits, to whom in 412 A.D. John, the forty-second Bishop of Jerusalem, gave a rule of life. In 1185, after Jerusalem had been taken by the Crusaders, a church rose over the sacred Grotto of Elijah, and in 1209 another monastery of St. Margaret or St. Brocardus was built in a steep gorge south of the promontory. We visited from Haifa its ruins, with a cave containing sedilia for the monks and an upper open story, a spring with sedilia beside it, and below, at the opening of the valley, a second spring, and a garden of fruit trees, pomegranates, apricots, and figs. The lower spring was called after Elijah, and the title still remains in the corrupted form El Haiyeh (“the snake”), applied to the stream from it. A tradition exists that Elijah turned the fruits of the garden to stone, and the huge geodes in the white chalk of the valley are shown as the petrified fruit. This monastery was sacked by the Saracens in 1238, the monks were massacred and thrown into a rock-cut tank by the lower spring, and hence the place is still called “the Valley of Martyrs.”

In 1245 St. Simon Stock, a Kentish man, became General of the Carmelites. He is said to have received from the Virgin the scapular or distinctive tabard worn by the monks of this order; for sixteen years he lived in a cave on Carmel, and was visited by St. Louis during his stay in Palestine.

A monastery of St. Bertoldo rose round his cave, and its ruins are still shown on the slope north-west of the present building, under the lighthouse, near the chapel containing the cave of Simon Stock. In 1291, however, the Saracens fell upon the monks whilst chanting the “Salve Regina,” and massacred them all.

The history of the two subsequent monasteries gives a good example of that energy and persistence which once formed the main characteristics of the Church of Rome. In 1620 the order of Carmelites was extinct in Palestine when a certain Father Prospero, of the monastery of Biscaglia near Genoa, was ordered by his General to proceed with his monks to Persia—probably he was found to be a dangerous man at home, for his history bears witness to his ambitious and energetic character. He got no farther than Carmel, where he left his companions and returned to Rome to obtain leave from the Propaganda to establish a missionary hospice on the mountain. In a second journey he obtained from the Pope the title of Prior for himself and his successors, and, in 1631, he bought the land round the Grotto of Elijah, where the present monastery stands, and round the cave called “School of the Prophets” (now El Khudr) at the foot of the promontory. He erected chapels in both places, but a Moslem derwish succeeded in establishing himself at the latter place, and in 1635 the Moslems took it by force and made it a mosque. Quarrels and persecutions followed; in 1653 robbers stripped Father Prospero and tied him to a tree. Soon after he died, and was buried in the upper chapel.

In 1761 the famous Dhahr el ’Amr, of whom there is much to be said later, had already made himself lord of Acre and king of Galilee; he despoiled the monastery, and in 1767 ordered its destruction on the plea that it was in a dangerous position on the slope of the hill. In 1775 he was beheaded at Acre, and his son ’Aly in revenge massacred all the monks.

In 1799 the sick of Napoleon’s army were sheltered in the monastery, but, on his retreat, they were all killed by the Moslems. A pyramid in the front garden of the monastery marks the grave where their bones were afterwards laid by the monks. In 1821, by order of the Pacha of Acre, the monastery was destroyed, and the new monks arriving from Europe saw it in flames on the hill-top.

Warned by the natives not to land, they returned to Europe, but three of them came back in 1825—Fra Gianbattista of Frascati, Fra Matteo of Philippopolis, and Fra Giusto of Naples. They built the present monastery from a design by the first named, and so strong has it been made, with high walls and an apse which affords flank protection on the east (where also, as being more exposed, there is a ditch), that the monks need scarcely fear further massacres. In 1830 other monks arrived. In 1872 Fra Matteo died in extreme old age, the last survivor of the three founders. This information I obtained in 1875 from Fra Cirillo, the lame lay brother, a courteous old man who delighted in stories of the monastery.