VINEYARDS AND STONE WATCH TOWERS
PEASANT PLOWING
The Christian village of eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, three hours northeast of Râm Allâh, is perhaps a little less than half the size of Râm Allâh but exhibits similar marks of advantage over its Moslem neighbors. The village is on the back (east) of the central ridge of Palestine and its lands slope, in consequence, towards the warm regions of the Ghôr. This situation also tends to place it on the frontier between the hill villages and the Bedawîn tribes. The people are a jaunty, fine-looking set. The men wear the Bedawîn head-dress and, in general, the population seems to combine some characteristics and manners of both the nomads and villagers. Robinson visited eṭ-Ṭayyibeh in 1838. The population was then between three and four hundred souls belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. It has probably increased fourfold since his day and the allegiance of part of the people is now given to the Roman Catholic faith. The English Church Mission holds Sunday services and maintains a day-school for boys. The Râm Allâh Friends’ Mission sustains a day-school for girls.
After Dr. Robinson’s visit to the village he met some of the inhabitants with their wives and children and their priest down in the Ghôr near Jericho, where they were gathering in the wheat-harvest on shares with the inhabitants of the low country. The Ṭayyibeh people had sown the crop as partners of the Jericho folk. The custom then mentioned continues to this day. Every year large numbers of the villagers of eṭ-Ṭayyibeh go down into the Ghôr and work the fertile lands on shares with the lowlanders. Some of them even penetrate the east-Jordan country and make similar arrangements with the nearer Bedawîn. I have in mind one family from eṭ-Ṭayyibeh that goes on this business as far as ‛Ammân, Jerash and es-Salṭ.
The views from eṭ-Ṭayyibeh are extensive. The east-Jordan hills confront one there. On the south is the little Moslem hamlet Rammûn (Rimmon) and, far away, Frank Mountain. A sweep of olive-trees to the southeast leads the eye on down to the Dead Sea, which shines, when the air is clear, like silver. Often a haze disguises it. Hard desert hills, hot and bare, fall away to the east towards the Jordan.
The tendency to perch villages on hills had full effect in the placing of eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, for it has one of the most picturesque of the many hill sites. It is easily seen from the roads north of Jerusalem. In times of country feuds an enemy would have to fight the entire village at once, so compactly are the houses coned over the hilltop and so narrow are the streets. The finest possible watch-tower is provided by the old castle on the summit. The village has its cisterns within itself, where the rain-water from the roofs is caught. Of course, whenever feasible, spring-water is brought from a distance for drinking. The winds are sometimes very strong in this region and in summer there is very little defense against the beating rays of the sun.
Jifnâ (Gophna), about an hour and a half north of Râm Allâh, is a Christian village of about six hundred people. The place is full of evidences of ancient structures, old dressed stones, columns, rosettes and carving. The locality is fertile and orchards and vineyards are cultivated. The vinedressers here stake up the grape-vines, contrary to the general fashion in Palestine. There are day-school privileges provided by the Friends for girls, and by the English Church Mission for boys.
The path from Râm Allâh to Jifnâ, goes near the wily Shaykh Yûsuf and past the little Moslem village of Ṣurdeh (Zereda), where there is a large sacred tree. In the hill south of Shaykh Yûsuf, within a few feet of the path through the olive-trees, is a large ancient tomb, the vestibule being thirteen and a half feet wide by nine and three-quarters deep and six feet high. The door leading from the back of the vestibule into the tomb-chamber measures five feet six inches in width and, so far as visible, measures five feet high. It is choked with earth. The view of the valley filled with olive-trees as it falls toward the Mediterranean is very pleasant.
The tiny Moslem village of ‛Ayn Sînyâ, is about a mile due north from Jifnâ. It will be well served by the new carriage road, which sweeps around here in one of the prettiest stretches on the route. Indeed, the section from the hills above Jifnâ to ‛Ayn Sînyâ is one of the pleasantest which the new Jerusalem-Nâblus road provides. The village of ‛Ayn Sînyâ is practically the property of an influential native official in Jerusalem. It is said that his influence prevailed to have the carriage road constructed this way, north from el-Bîreh, instead of by the more usual tourist route via Bethel and ‛Ayn Yebrûd. There is consolation in the thought that the ancient Bethel country is left to be reached by the ancient paths and its modernizing may be delayed a century more, so far as roads are concerned. ‛Ayn Sînyâ is a natural garden spot. Mulberry and walnut-trees are plentiful about it. Its natural advantages, reenforced by the government road, may now be more fully developed than in the past.