We see the Wali, or Governor, Hallett Pasha, sitting alone on a chair by the river side enjoying otium sine dignitate; his guards at a distance standing by their horses ready to look after him, if necessary. He politely returns our passing salute in true Parisian style. Like all other Turkish Pashas he will have to make hay while the sun shines and be sharp about it. His predecessor, Midhat Pasha (of mournful memory) did not enjoy the sunshine long, and Hallett’s may be a similarly short summer. It costs money to be a Damascus Pasha, some £4000 has to be first found for the Palace Cabal at Stamboul. The official pay of the appointment is under £3000 a year, so the moment a Pasha gets to his government he has to set to squeezing; he squeezes backsheesh out of the higher officials, and they squeeze the lower and the public, who are fair game for all. Justice, not at all blind here, is continually looking out for the dollars. But to return to Damascus. The plain in which it is situated is surrounded on three sides by mountains, Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; on the east it is bounded by the Syrian desert, in the midst of which is the city of palm trees, Palmyra, the ancient Tadmor, the city of Zenobia, the Boadicea of the Syrians. Well might the Moslem, arrived in this ever-verdant plain, after six days dreary riding across the desert, when he came across this city embosomed in beautiful gardens and orchards, when he saw the rills of living water flowing in all directions and rising in fountains in the very court-yards of the houses, well might he imagine that he had lighted at last upon the Garden of Eden. We find comfortable quarters at Demetri’s, the only Frank hotel, and are glad again to see some signs of western civilisation.
My flying visit here without tents, traversing the country by little known paths, creates some curiosity, even among the Europeans, who wish to know if I am travelling under diplomatic orders; a negative answer to such a question is not, of course, worth much. The Turkish police give vent to their curiosity by visiting me in my bedroom and cross-examining my dragoman as to my intents and purposes, position in life, &c., &c. Things are rather strained here. The attitude of the allied Powers to Turkey makes this fanatical people never well disposed to Christians, now still less so, and to make matters worse, Arab placards have been posted here and at Beyrût in the Bazaars, summoning the natives to revolt against the Turks, asking reasonably what common interest the Arabs have with their now imbecile and insolent conquerors, the Osmanli usurpers of the Khalifate, who monopolise all place and power, using them only to oppress the people, whose language they do not even understand, and whose lives, liberties, and properties they either cannot or do not care to protect. This is a sign of the times—a writing on the wall to warn the feeble despots of Stamboul of their doom. This movement has since developed into an organised Arab League, following the example of the Albanians. An Armenian League probably is not far behind. The collapse of the rule of the Osmanlis is merely a matter of time. They may retain Asia Minor for the present (if England does not seize it to save it from Russia), but they will have to clear out of Europe, and Syria, Lebanon and Palestine must ere long be like Egypt, semi-independent vice-royalties under European protection, or they will become Russian and French appanages. The Turkish Government have authorised their postmasters in Syria to detain telegrams and open letters at their pleasure. A remedy for that is to give the letters to the Consul who forwards them in his bag. The Consul here lives in a hired house liable to a notice to quit at any moment. What a pity that our Government does not buy itself a consular residence in such an important post as this? It is so undignified for an English Consul to have to turn out at the bidding of a Moslem landlord, and troublesome in the extreme to have to move all the archives every few years; and in case of an intrigue, which is not uncommon in these parts, we might find it difficult to find a suitable place for the Consul at all. In one of the squares we see a crowd and several soldiers looking at the dead body of an Arab. This poor fellow was, with others, in charge of a caravan of camels, some Druses swooped upon them within only a few hours of Damascus, all ran except the murdered man, who stuck to his post; they of course soon killed him and cleared off with the camels. This is the security for life and property which Turkey provides for its subjects in the neighbourhood of a great city. We will now take a stroll through this thoroughly Eastern city, where the far East and the far West meet more than in any other city in the world, more so even than in Tanjiers and Tunis. Here we see English tourists in tweed suits, black-coated Americans in tall hats, Bedouins in dirty bornous, Druses with white turbans and blood-stained hands, Turks in officials fezzes, orthodox Moslems in flowing robes and showy green turbans, Circassians with breast full of cartridges (murderous looking rascals), Kurds in rough sheep skin cloaks, Persians, Afghans, Pariahs and Parsees, slipshod veiled Eastern women, gorgeous Jewesses and smartly dressed Parisian dames, all these meet together in this metropolis of the East, jostling each other in the narrow unpaved bazaars. Camels also, and mules, horses and donkeys, with perhaps a drove of long-tailed sheep, from the far steppes of Turkestan, press on amidst this motley crew, “Oua garda”—take care, take care, get out of the way quickly! A pack mule is no respecter of persons, he cares not for your Consul, and over you go if you do not get out of his way, unless by a vigorous shove you send him over, just as in self-defence we were obliged to do once. A pack mule on his back, legs up in the air, is a helpless, pitiable spectacle.
Metropolis did I call Damascus? Indeed it is rightly so called, for is it not the mother of all cities, the oldest living city in the world? (not even excepting Hebron), for here Abraham’s steward Eliezer lived; these streets the patriarch himself must often have traversed as a trader in flocks and herds, and through these lanes, once at all events, he drove the Hivite Kings of Hermon before his avenging spear, for near here he rescued Lot and the King of Sodom from their Syrian captors. It was conquered by David after a protracted struggle, but recovered its independence in the reign of Solomon. It was subsequently subdued by the Assyrians. Rome may call itself, Damascus is the Eternal City, founded probably soon after the flood by a Semitic grandson of Noah. Damascus has never ceased to exist as a great city, and from its unique position, probably never will. The prey of every ambitious conqueror, it has seen the rise and survived the fall of every great empire. Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Crusader and Saracen, each in turn have dominated the garden city—and died—but Damascus still lives and has out-lived all its rivals of every age. Sidon, Tyre, Antioch and Tarsus survive only as uninteresting towns, Babylon, Palmyra and Nineveh are no more, but Damascus is still the “Head of Syria” as it was in the days of Abraham—Damascus a green island in the midst of a golden sea of sand, bounded by the desert, surrounded by its rivers, has always been and must for ever remain the mother city of the world.
To brace ourselves up for our rambles, we now take a bath in the waters of the Abana, which are, as its Syrian name Barada indicates, remarkably cool and pleasant. Having tried Jordan too, we must endorse Naaman’s opinion, that the bathing in the former is decidedly the best. In the midst of the city, we are shown a sycamore tree, 42 feet in girth; certainly a curiosity in any city, but especially so in a Mahommedan one, where the process of destruction is carried on by man and that of re-construction or re-placement left to “Allah.” We also see another tree in the horse market close by, used as a gallows, but public executions are very rare in Turkey. A good Moslem is peculiarly sensitive—he does not object to strangle a wife or two quietly at home if they are annoying, but he objects to a fellow male Moslem being publicly executed even for a murder. We look into the great mosque; in its courtyard are the remains of a small ancient temple to the sun—it was once a Roman temple, then a Greek basilica, and was in more ancient times probably the site of the very temple in which Naaman bowed the knee to Rimmon, when his master worshipped there. We found it easier to enter St. Sophia at Stamboul, the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, and the grand mosque at Cairo, than this, the people being so fanatical. St. Sophia, in fact, we got into by only paying a few francs to the door-keeper, but here it costs a lot to get in. We are next shown the tomb of the great Saladin, who died 1193, but as it is very sacred, cannot view the interior. We now come to the street called “Straight,” above a mile long, running through the city east to west, and on our way we call at the traditional house of Ananias, now a small Latin Church; then just outside the east gate we pass the reputed house of Naaman, now appropriately a leper hospital, and come upon that part of the wall from which it is said St. Paul was let down in a basket at the time when Aretas, the Petræan ruler of Arabia, was King. Aretas was the name of the dynasty, like, Ptolemy and Pharaoh of Egypt, Candace of Ethiopia, &c. The conversion of St. Paul is said to have taken place just outside the city—the spot is shown: bright indeed must have been the light before which an eastern sun at mid-day paled. A walled up gate is also shewn as that by which St. Paul entered the city.
Damascus.
The Bazaars are very interesting, here is to be found merchandise collected by caravans from all corners of the earth; Merchants from Manchester, Paris, Vienna, Constantinople, Aleppo, Bagdad, Persia, Afghanistan, India, Egypt, Nubia, and Arabia as far as Mecca, crowd its exchanges. The native manufactures are chiefly silk, leather and metal work; the population is principally Moslem. We of course pay a visit to old Abu Antika (father of antiquities), and possess ourselves of a Damascus blade. A friend of ours, an artist, was about to give 100 francs for one at Cairo, we asked to look at it, and saw engraved on it “warranted best steel.” We asked the old Arab swindler what language it was; he unblushingly answered “Arabic”! my answer induced him to hastily put away the Damascus blade and my friend put his 100 francs back into his pocket. Tricks are sometimes played upon travellers. We see in old Abu Antika’s booth an English Countess wasting a lot of money on spurious antiquities, we did not know her then so could not interfere, but she introduced herself to us later on and was a very pleasant and intelligent fellow traveller. The houses of the rich Damascenes are very handsomely fitted up; on visiting one, we enter by an archway into a great open courtyard, with a fountain in the centre and trees and plants all around. A divan, roofed in, but open to the courtyard at one end, is fitted with a luxurious lounge; this serves as a public reception room. On each side of the court is a large room, one used as a Summer and the other as a Winter sitting room, according to the seasons. All are magnificently decorated with marble and mirrors. The sleeping rooms are on the first floor and are entered from a verandah above. Running water from the Abana flows through all the best houses. The public buildings and barracks built during the Egyptian occupation are very good for a Turkish city, and the citadel, an old mediæval castle, is interesting, but access is not allowed to it. Abdel-Kader, who so long kept the French at bay in North Africa, lived in Damascus, and had a quarter allotted to him and his Algerian fellow exiles. Damascus is not the dirty city it once was. Midhat Pasha greatly improved it in that respect, and also in other ways, for we see a large quarter of Damascus in ruins and are told that it was set fire to by Midhat Pasha (after the fashion of Nero) to make room for a new wide street. This is a much shorter and more economical way (to the government) of making street improvements than that we have in England, but as no notice of the contemplated improvement is given, it must be rather inconvenient to the inhabitants. Damascus is called by the Arabs El Sham, and in the eyes of the Moslem world is second in sanctity only to Mecca.
Damascus.