BUCKLE’S GRAVE.
Close beside the space allotted for the camels which make the long caravans for Damascus, I came across the little English cemetery. It is a quiet spot, surrounded by a high wall. The gate was locked, and there was no way of getting within it. I could not tell where the key was to be found; wherever it was, it was a long distance off, in the heart of the city. So, by the aid of our dragoman, I succeeded in climbing to the top of the wall, and seeing the one grave in which I was most interested—that of Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of the “History of Civilization.” Buckle had wearied himself out with literary work. His methods were not the most wise nor expeditious. He was an indefatigable gleaner of facts, and a patient gatherer of notes from all quarters, and he piled up his note-books in great heterogeneous masses. He seems to have had but little help, and not to have husbanded his strength. So, like many men who begin to rest when it is all too late, he went off on distant travel. He reached Damascus. His mind must have kindled afresh as he saw this city of weavers and strange oriental combinations, and the thought of the long and hoary history of the place. But he was too weary to think longer. He lay down to die, and here he rests, under the shadow of the thick and high walls of a little graveyard, where only seldom an Anglo-Saxon comes to visit the sacred place. The accumulation of years is beginning to tell upon the inscription. But it is still very legible, and gives the record of his brief and toiling life.
There is something singularly touching in this little graveyard. There are only a few graves, yet among them, besides Buckle’s, are several English noblemen and titled ladies. The inscriptions repeat the story of love and tears, as everywhere else. None who come here expect to die. But the difficulties of removal are great. There are great and long settled superstitions against the transportation of the dead in all these eastern countries. The best way is to let our friends lie where they fall, and to care for the perpetual beauty of their resting place. The little graveyards of the Anglo-Saxons in all the eastern cemeteries make a strange appeal to the sympathies. I have seen many of them, and always they teach a new lesson of the suddenness of death, of the pilgrimage which we call life, and of the burning love of those who remain behind, and who write their words of tenderest affection upon stone in far-off lands.
THE GREAT MOSQUE.
There are few mosques which have a more interesting history than the great one of Damascus. Of all those in existence, save only that of Mecca, the greatest interest probably clusters about this one. It is not as splendid as that of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, and yet it has some elements of touching story that not even that one possesses. It stands upon the foundation of a Greek temple. In the early Christian ages it required only an imperial order to convert a temple into a church. So, when the Emperor Arcadius, toward the close of the fourth century, wished to convert this temple into a church, all he needed to do was to declare his will, and hurl out the pagan priesthood, and make a few minor changes, and the deed was done. It became a splendid church, whose fame went out into all lands. Thus it remained until the rise of the Mohammedan faith. When Damascus was conquered, so arduous was the strife that the leader of the Christians met the leader of the Moslems near the spot where the church stood, and, by agreement, part of the church was given up to the Mohammedans, and part still reserved by the Christians. But Christian and Moslem had the same doorway. This state of things could not last a great while. The Caliph Omar I. asked the Christians to sell their right to a part of the church. They refused, and then he took it from them. But he was fair enough to given them perpetual right to other churches in the city and its environs. He then set to work to beautify and make still more splendid this ancient building. He is said to have brought from Constantinople 1,200 skilled artists, and to have searched over all Syria for the most splendid pillars and architectural adornments, with which to beautify and enlarge the building. Precious stones were used for mosaic, vines of solid gold were made to run over the archways, the wooden ceiling was overlaid with a plating of gold, and from its glittering height there hung six hundred gold lamps.
The wars and time have told strangely upon this rich, historical building. The lamps are gone, no doubt to serve the purposes of warfare. The plating on the ceiling has disappeared, probably for the same reason. Much of the splendor has departed. But there are still the magnificent columns, with mutilated capitals and defaced bases, which once belonged to the Greek pagans of Syria, and in their long life, have witnessed the worship of Baal, Jupiter, Mohammed, and the one true Savior.
The present reminders of the time when this vast building of four hundred and twenty-nine feet in length and one hundred and twenty-five feet wide, was new, are numerous and very prominent. Everywhere, at every step you take, you see the old peering out boldly through the new and the late. Here is a patch of rich and deep-stoned mosaic, which has escaped a thousand destructive forces, and still stands as a witness to the time of remote Christianity, when Mohammed was not yet born. The stained windows, with glass so somber and subdued that one can hardly see even this blazing Syrian sun’s rays through it, are few in number, but they must have been made by Christian hands, in the far gone and fading Byzantine times. Even the Roman peers through the Christian, and one sees strong evidences of the times when the star had not yet stood over the manger at Bethlehem, and when the Greek paganism ruled from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. Here is an archway with only one stone missing, which is as perfect a bit of Greek architecture as Athens can furnish to-day.
One of the most singular features of this building is this—the respect which the Mohammedan shows here for Christianity. I have seen nothing equal to it elsewhere. There is here, belonging to the Greek mosque, the Madinet ’Isa, or “Minaret of Jesus,” and the Mohammedans have a belief that when the Christ comes he will appear on this minaret. Bloody as has been the history of Damascus, and violent as has often been the treatment of the Christians by the natives, the Mohammedans have been compelled to respect the Christians, and to remember the relation of this wonderful city to early Christianity.