In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

Into one of these gardens, a public one, and one of the most celebrated in the rhapsodies of travellers and by the inventive poets, we finally turned. When you are walking for pleasure in your native land, and indulging a rural feeling, would you voluntarily go into a damp swale, and sit on a moist sod under a willow? This garden is low, considerably lower than the city, which has gradually elevated itself on its own decay, and is cut by little canals or sluiceways fed by the Abana, which run with a good current. The ground is well covered with coarse grass, of the vivid green that one finds usually in low ground, and is liberally sprinkled with a growth of willows and poplars. In this garden of the Hesperides, in which there are few if any flowers, and no promise of fruit, there is a rough wooden shed, rickety and decaying, having, if I remember rightly, a balcony,—it must have a balcony,—and there pipes, poor lemonade, and poorer ice cream are served to customers. An Arab band of four persons, one of them of course blind of an eye, seated cross-legged on a sort of bedstead, was picking and thumping a monotonous, never-ending tune out of the usual instruments. You could not deny that the vivid greenery, and the gayly apparelled groups, sitting about under the trees and on the water's edge, made a lively scene. In another garden, farther on around the wall, the shanty of entertainment is a many-galleried shaky construction, or a series of platforms and terraces of wood, overhanging the swift Abana. In the daytime it is but a shabby sight; but at night, when a thousand colored globes light it without revealing its poverty, and the lights dance in the water, and hundreds of turbaned, gowned narghileh-smokers and coffee-drinkers lounge in the galleries, or gracefully take their ease by the sparkling current, and the faint thump of the darabouka is heard, and some gesticulating story-teller, mounted upon a bench, is reeling off to an attentive audience an interminable Arabian tale, you might fancy that the romance of the Orient is not all invented.

Of other and private gardens and enclosures we had glimpses, on our walk, through open gates, and occasionally over the walls; we could imagine what a fragrance and color would greet the senses when the apricots are in bloom, and the oranges and lemons in flower, and how beautiful the view might be if the ugly walls did not conceal it. We returned by the saddlers' bazaar, and by a famous plane-tree, which may be as old as the Moslem religion; its gnarled limbs are like the stems of ordinary trees, and its trunk is forty feet around.

The remark that Damascus is without monuments of its past needs qualification; it was made with reference to its existence before the Christian era, and in comparison with other capitals of antiquity. Remains may, indeed, be met in its exterior walls, and in a broken column here and there built into a modern house, of Roman workmanship, and its Great Mosque is an historical monument of great interest, if not of the highest antiquity. In its structure it represents three religions and three periods of art; like the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, it was for centuries a Christian cathedral; like the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, it is built upon a spot consecrated by the most ancient religious rites. Situated in the midst of the most densely peopled part of the city, and pressed on all sides by its most crowded bazaars, occupying a quadrangle nearly five hundred feet one way by over three hundred the other, the wanderer among the shops is constantly coming to one side or another of it, and getting glimpses through the spacious portals of the colonnaded court within. Hemmed in as it is, it is only by diving into many alleys and pushing one's way into the rear of dirty shops and climbing upon the roofs of houses, that one can get any idea of the exterior of the mosque. It is, indeed, only from an eminence that you can see its three beautiful minarets.

It does not appear that Chosroes, the Persian who encamped his army in the delicious gardens of Damascus, in the year 614, when he was on his way to the destruction of Jerusalem and the massacre of its Christian inhabitants, disturbed the church of John the Baptist in this city. But twenty years later it fell into the hands of the Saracens, who for a few years were content to share it with the Christian worshippers. It is said that when Khâled, the most redoubtable of the Friends of the Prophet, whose deeds entitled him to the sobriquet of The Sword of God, entered this old church, he asked to be conducted into the sacred vault (which is now beneath the kubbeh of the mosque), and that he was there shown the head of John the Baptist in a gold casket, which had in Greek this inscription: “This casket contains the head of John the Baptist, son of Zachariah.”

The building had been then for over three centuries a Christian church. And already, when Constantine dedicated it to Christian use, it had for over three hundred years witnessed the worship of pagan deities. The present edifice is much shorn of its original splendor and proportions, but sufficient remains to show that it was a worthy rival of the temples of Ba'albek, Palmyra, and Jerusalem. No part of the building is older than the Roman occupation, but the antiquarians are agreed to think that this was the site of the old Syrian temple, in which Ahaz saw the beautiful altar which he reproduced in the temple at Jerusalem.

Pieces of superb carving, recalling the temple of the Sun at Ba'albek, may still be found in some of the gateways, and the noble Corinthian columns of the interior are to be referred to Roman or Greek workmen. Christian art is represented in the building in some part of the walls and in the round-topped windows; and the Moslems have superimposed upon all minarets, a dome, and the gay decorations of colored marbles and flaring inscriptions.

The Moslems have either been too ignorant or too careless to efface all the evidences of Christian occupation. The doors of the eastern gate are embossed with brass, and among the emblems is the Christian sacramental cup. Over an arch, which can only be seen from the roof of the silversmiths' bazaar, is this inscription in Greek: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”

It required a special permit to admit us to the mosque, but when we were within the sacred precincts and shod with slippers, lest our infidel shoes should touch the pavement, we were followed by a crowd of attendants who for the moment overcame their repugnance to our faith in expectation of our backsheesh. The interior view is impressive by reason of the elegant minarets and the fine colonnaded open court. Upon one of the minarets Jesus will descend when he comes to judge the world. The spacious mosque, occupying one side of the court, and open on that side to its roof, is divided in its length by two rows of Corinthian columns, and has a certain cheerfulness and hospitality. The tesselated marble pavement of the interior is much worn, and is nearly all covered with carpets of Persia and of Smyrna. The only tomb in the mosque is that of St. John the Baptist, which is draped in a richly embroidered cloth.

We were anew impressed by the home-like, democratic character of the great mosques. This, opening by its four gates into the busiest bazaars, as we said, is much frequented at all hours. At the seasons of prayer you may see great numbers prostrating themselves in devotion, and at all other times this cool retreat is a refuge for the poor and the weary. The fountains of running water in the court attract people,—those who desire only to sit there and rest, as well as those who wash and pray. About the fountains and in the mosque were seated groups of women, eating their noonday bread, or resting in that dumb attitude under which Eastern women disguise their discontent or their intrigues. This is, at any rate, a haven of rest for all, and it is a goodly sight to see all classes, rich and poor, flocking in here, leaving their shoes at the door or carrying them in their hands.

The view from the minaret which we ascended is peculiar. On the horizon we saw the tops of hills and mountains, snowy Hermon among them. Far over the plain we could not look, for the city is beset by a thicket of slender trees, which were just then in fresh leafage. Withdrawing our gaze from the environs, we looked down upon the wide-spread oval-shaped city. Most conspicuous were the minarets, then a few domes, and then thousands of dome-shaped roofs. You see the top of a covered city, but not the city. In fact, it scarcely looks like a city; you see no streets, and few roofs proper, for we have to look twice to convince ourselves that the flat spaces covered with earth and often green with vegetation (gardens in the air) are actually roofs of houses. The streets are either roofed over or are so narrow that we cannot see them from this height. Damascus is a sort of rabbit-burrow.