In the country near Jifnâ and Bîr ez-Zayt are quite a number of old tombs. One leaves Jifnâ on the right in going to Bîr ez-Zayt. The two places are near, and in plain sight of each other. There is a small community of Moslems in Bîr ez-Zayt, but most of its people are Christians. The English Church Mission is represented by a good work, a boarding-school for girls and a church whose congregation has a native Protestant pastor. The ruins on top of a high hill to the west of the modern village are supposed to be those of old Bîr ez-Zayt. The olive-trees of the village are very fine and, what is more rare, pear trees of considerable size, in the season so loaded with blossoms as to look like huge bouquets, are to be seen north of the place.
Two hours and a half northwest of Bîr ez-Zayt is the little village of ‛Âbûd, with four hundred Christians and three hundred Moslems. The English Church Mission sustains work there. The road thither passes the tiny hamlet of Umm Ṣuffah, the houses of which seem to be made with a core of tiny stones and cement, faced with larger stones. The ruin Khurbet Jîbya is near by. The road then passes near Neby Ṣâliḥ, where it enters the little Wâdy Rayyâ, following which one comes to the tombs of Tibneh within forty minutes of ‛Âbûd.
Northwest of ‛Âbûd is a place called Muḳâṭ‛a, evidently an old quarry, the working of which had disturbed a still older cemetery of rock-cut tombs, some of them painted. The carving in some of these is elaborate. One tomb, with a vestibule twenty-one and three-quarters feet wide and ten feet deep is ornamented at the top with a grape cluster suspended between two wreaths. Another vestibule twenty-six feet two inches wide shows gate sockets on each side. This vestibule served two tomb-chambers, one directly in front as one enters and the other in the right wall. The entrance to the former has been crushed open, leaving a large irregular hole. Within are nine full-sized kokim with smaller, shallow cuttings in the tier above them which looked like embryo kokim. The right-hand tomb-chamber has three kokim on the left side and three opposite the entrance, one of the latter having been broken or cut through to the daylight, probably in the process of quarrying from the other side. This smaller tomb shows a fresco in black and red and perhaps yellow paint. The design is in large, diamond-shaped figures, with a rope border over it. There are many scratchings on the walls.
CHAPTER XI
THE VILLAGE AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD
As one becomes acquainted with Palestine life to-day one is impressed with the submissive attitude of the villagers towards the city dwellers, especially towards the Moslem official class, the effendîyeh. But we are assured by those within whose lifetime the period falls, that half a century or more ago things were not so well ordered as now. For some years before that time, according to veracious writers, there was a state of internal turbulence in which the fellaḥîn were often in the ascendency and the city people glad to treat with them. In those days the walls of Jerusalem were of practical use in resisting the power of the country folk. Two great parties divided the allegiance of the villages. They were called Yemen and Ḳays. Headed by shaykhs and aided by Bedawîn, these partisan villages waged feuds and rendered commerce and travel precarious or impossible. Abu Ghôsh and his sons from their vantage of Ḳuryet el-‛Anab held much of the country in terror of his raids.[[204]] He levied toll on travelers and was too powerful to be curbed by the government, such as it was, at Jerusalem. ‛Abd er-Raḥman and other shaykhs held certain districts. The troops were few and the Turkish hold on the country weak. The province came near to a condition of anarchy. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.[[205]] To this day any intelligent peasant will tell the inquirer which of the villages are of the Yemeny and which of the Ḳaysy party. The lines of division are still plain though the feuds are dormant. The Turkish government has strengthened its position in the interior affairs of Palestine steadily for forty or fifty years back. To-day there is not a murmur that avails nor the disposition to antagonize the centralizing authority of the ruler. Even the east-Jordan country appears to be growing tame. Within a few years a firmer hold on the village situation has been taken by the establishment of extra mudîr-ships, so that instead of governing the village districts from Jerusalem and other large centers by a squad of soldiers sent out occasionally to do police duty or to bring in taxes, now a local official called a mudîr is placed in the most important village of a small district. He is a subordinate of the governor, muteṣarrif, of Jerusalem. By the appointment of such as he a closer observation and administration are secured. At Râm Allâh in 1903 a mudîr was appointed to have charge in that and a score of other villages in a district thereabouts. Jerusalem is still the head of those villages, but a compacter administration is effected.
To the country peasant the chief functions of the government seem to be those of restriction and oppression. The fear of imprisonment, fines and confiscations keeps the peasants down. The imprisonment of a peasant leaves no taint of dishonor, having as purely unfortunate an aspect as confinement in a hospital. There is no such thing as successful complaint unless it can assume such influence as would procure the removal of the official involved. The peasants look suspiciously on every movement of every officer, refusing to believe that any government representative can have good intentions or do worthy actions. Government provisions or improvements are looked upon as gloves for the hand that is stretched out for more of the means of the villager. The taxes are farmed out to tax-collectors whose approach is dreaded extremely.[[206]] Every dozen years or so a new schedule of valuation is made by the assessors, who travel about the country revaluing businesses and properties. Their progress from village to village is the signal for feasting, treating and bribing. The cost of the many attempts to persuade these assessors to reduce valuations or readjust them in favor of the briber must be considerable. There is a possibility that all such attempts may be defeated by the revision of the entire list at headquarters. The visits of the soldiers to a village are always occasions of dread, and much relief is felt when they leave. On the frontiers and in out-of-the-way places, where the task of the government is less easy, a more conciliatory spirit is shown. In the Ghôr, for instance, the tax may be paid in kind, and this always makes it easier than the practise into which the collectors have fallen with the villages. They drop in upon the villagers at odd times through the year, long after the crop is out of the way, and demand money payment in cash. This helps to make the fortunes of the local money lenders, but it causes a double damage to the peasants, who are forced to sacrifice their stores for low prices in ready money, or to mortgage their crop expectations for the coming season.[[207]] At Bîr es-Seba‛ and all such places where the government is seeking to strengthen its hold upon a district, the early steps are taken courteously and softly and the later with a nailed heel. At points east of the Jordan, where the problem of every government that ever sought to control the country has been to withstand, and finally to render impossible, the raids of the desert tribes of nomads, the present government is slowly reclaiming the country to authority. In some places colonies of Circassians have been introduced as buffers on the frontiers.
The tendency among the villagers is to settle their disputes so far as possible without resort to the government. If quarreling arises and the government gets information of it, soldiers are sent out to investigate and compel order, and incidentally to secure as much money as possible. To avoid these dreaded quarterings of soldiers on themselves, and to escape the money-making ingenuity of city officials, who seem to welcome quarrels and litigation for the profit ensuing, the disagreements and even bitterer issues may be submitted to councils of neighbors. Sometimes eight or ten men from a village will be asked to act as arbitrators in the quarrel of another village. We know of one such case where a quarrel of some years’ standing was settled by the assistance of men from another village. The case had been complicated by the heavy claim for damages put in by a man whose finger had been shot off by his enemy. Very often, even after the government has apparently settled a case, the parties concerned will come to an additional settlement, through their representatives and friends, to wipe out all old scores and the sense of personal resentment. Sheep, rice, semen, garments and such country articles are used as presents back and forth until good-will and satisfaction seem established by mutual consent.
The attitude of the local government to the people may be gathered from the following incident. A Râm Allâh man, going back to his village from Jerusalem, was entrusted by a friend in the city with the sum of four napoleons, partly in gold and partly in change, to be taken to Râm Allâh. The man put the money in a handkerchief, knotted it up and tucked it into the bosom of his dress. It slipped out and fell to the ground without his knowledge. A woman from Silwân picked it up, but was noticed by a Jew, who demanded it, asserting that it was his. Then a third, who was passing, put in a claim for the money. An officer coming upon the party, seized the handkerchief with the money, saying that he would have the public crier announce the find. The man who had lost the money did not notice his loss until the afternoon. He went to the Serâi to claim it. He described the handkerchief, the gold pieces and the small change, but the officer denied the accuracy of the description. The man begged to be allowed to see the find, declaring that if everything did not agree with the description already offered the money was not his. The officer, thus pressed, said, “Look here, no money goes out of the Serâi when it once gets in,” and turned the peasant away. The loser made an outcry and sought the help of one of his village’s shaykhs who happened to be in the city. The poor have very scanty legal resources, but they have an almost preternatural persistence and a genius for making themselves disagreeable. Witnesses of the finding were brought and other measures taken, despite repeated rebuffs. Finally the officer of the Serâi acknowledged having the man’s money and gave him a receipt for four napoleons which could be presented in lieu of payment of future taxes to that amount. Further satisfaction it was impossible to obtain.
Those who ought to know claim that the body of Turkish law is excellent and that impartial administration of it would be all that could be asked. But administration is lamed by the refusal of the courts to recognize in any practical way the testimony of those who are not Moslems and, among the Moslems, of those who are not rich. The court performs merely a formal function, the cases being determined in most illegal ways. No case is taken to court when there is any possible way of keeping it out and settling it. If a case must come up in court one seeks out among the influential official class of the city the most powerful help he can afford to pay for and forestalls his opponent, if possible, the court being a mere incident in the problem. Does a squabble take place in a village and is some one injured with an ever-ready stone? The families of the participants would fain patch up the matter themselves, but they know very well that the news will soon reach the city and that soldiers will be sent out to investigate. The result will be arrests and heavy fines all around. To anticipate this, representatives of either side may be seen hastening along the road to Jerusalem. The first one in tells his story and buys up friends among the officials. The most money counts, but the officials take care that each side of the matter is made profitable to themselves. The case may drag on for months, scores of dollars being reaped by the officials, who may then consent to an amicable agreement among the principals. And yet, the fear of such pecuniary consequences acts as a restraining influence in many villages in which there is not a single official representative of the government. Such villages are controlled through an abundance of talebearing. On the other hand, who can blame an underpaid class of influentials for welcoming lucrative disturbances? Those who hold office have to pay largely for the privilege, and the salary being merely nominal, they have to reimburse themselves and live in the only way that Turkish practise encourages.
The officials in charge of the important posts are usually sent from Constantinople and are not generally citizens of Palestine.