Let me give another illustration of how the old still looks through the new. To the dragoman I said, when he seemed to have shown us everything:
“Where is that Christian inscription?”
“Oh,” he replied, “nobody goes there much now. It is dangerous to get to it. You have to leap across a bazar, from one house-top to another. It is very dangerous.”
There were two ladies in our little party, and they were not at all frightened by the outlook. It was simply a dragoman’s excuse to save himself a little trouble. We all agreed that Franz must show us the inscription. We went out of the mosque, down the street, then into the silver bazar, then up a rickety stairway, and finally out over the flat roofs of various buildings back to the outer wall of the mosque. We were at the limit, and either had to leap over a deep span, the width of a narrow street, or put a wide board across it. A couple of piasters soon provided the board from a man who was just waiting to serve us, and in one minute more we were reading, along the architrave of one side of the old mosque, these words from David, in early Greek:
“Thy kingdom [O, Christ] is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”
This inscription has stood here through all the years since they were put there first by the Christians of the fourth century, after they had changed the temple into the church. The letters are as clear as the sun in the heavens.
It is, perhaps, the only illustration where Mohammedanism has permitted a Christian inscription to stand. It is not likely to be removed in the future, but will come into use when all the mosques are again made into Christian temples.
It is not an easy climb to the top of one of these lofty minarets. But we resolved to do it. The picture never fades from the mind. Toward the west we could see, as though within arm’s length, Ubel Sheikh, or Mount Hermon, with its great folds of snow, that make his perpetual turban of spotless white. Out from the sides of the Anti-Libanus burst the Abana and Pharpar, which go singing down to the desert, and produce the damascenes of all the countries. Yonder is the Christian quarter, there the Jewish, and in another direction the Mohammedan. Far off to the northeast lies Palmyra. But we can not see it. It is a four days’ camel journey distant. The illimitable desert stretches east and south and north, and these two “better rivers” of Damascus lose themselves in those two little lakes, whose silver surface just glistens a little in this perfect sun. Fruit trees are everywhere in bloom. The almond, the plum—the damson takes its name from Damascus—and the apricot, are everywhere in full blaze, and make the city one vast nosegay. The murmur of fountains rises from a thousand courts, while the streets are alive with the streams which have been vexed and teased away by many a device from these living rivers. You get weary with the view.
We now descend. How shall we see the way down the dingy steps? By the same lamp which had guided us up. Yes, it is a veritable coal-oil lantern. Think of it—the mixing up of the centuries! My Anglo-Saxon feet have been guided to the topmost point of one of the world’s oldest buildings here in grand and hoary Damascus, by the aid of a kerosene lantern, every drop of whose petroleum has come from Oil City or its neighborhood.
Damascus, March 8, 1885.