The cities and villages of Palestine, so far as appearance is concerned, vary in size merely. The houses of a small village are oftentimes just as closely packed as the buildings in a city, so that a village will look like a fragment knocked off a city. With us Westerners a village may have as much land area as some cities, only the dwellings will be far apart, the difference being in comparative density as well as in size. In Palestine the density is about the same and the difference is in the area. This compactness of the village became a fashion in times of insecurity, when feuds between villages led to raids and reprisals. The village was built as solidly as possible on rising ground. In the middle of the core of original houses was the chief’s house, with a lofty roof from which watch could be kept of all the surrounding country and approaches.[[50]] If you wish to trace the growth of a village, inquire for the burj, and probably you will be directed to the highest spot in the village, at least to the highest house, around which the early village clustered. If this be on top of a hill, as is frequently the case, the growing village creeps down the slopes, the roof of one house being the dooryard of the house above it, until the effect of a pyramidal structure of children’s building-blocks results. In troublesome times a watcher on the burj of the village could warn his fellows working in the outlying fields of the approach of an enemy by the firing of a musket or by a shrill cry. All fled to the nest on the height, and a successful attack was difficult against the heavy stone houses and narrow lanes of the village.
Just as among the cities there are those mostly or altogether Moslem and others mostly or altogether Christian, so with the villages. While the Moslem population greatly outnumbers the Christian, yet there is a very considerable Christian population. Râm Allâh, Bayt Jâlâ, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh and Jifnâ are Christian villages. In Bîr ez-Zayt, ‛Ayn ‛Arîk and ‛Âbûd the Christians exceed the Moslems. In el-Bîreh and Ludd the Christians are comparatively few. A Christian village is known from afar by its more prosperous look, and the Christian quarters of a mixed village are also distinguishable by the same favorable marks.
PEASANTS ON WAY TO MARKET WITH PRODUCE
BEDAWÎN HORSEMAN
Christian villages have powerful ecclesiastical establishments behind them which work energetically to secure rights for their constituents. Church life in the country is political life, and church dignitaries are adepts in politics. The wealth and cleverness of the church are employed to hold fast all traditions and all concessions which favor the Communion and to hinder excessive injustice from overtaking the members. There results a firm bond of union between the native membership and the ecclesiastical establishment. The Communion is a religious nation, as it were.
The Christian native is not subject to army service, as only Moslems are thus eligible. This disability works to the industrial advantage of the Christians, who pay an extra tax or tribute in lieu of service. Centuries of this condition of things have developed the industrial abilities of the Christian population in spite of discriminations against them in the courts and in administration. A kind of religious status is now recognized in the relations between the Moslem and the Christian peasants. The Moslem stands hard by his faith and the Christian of the Greek Orthodox Church will scorn the thought that Christ and the Bible may be for Moslems.
Religious sects in the East remind one of volcanic islands; they are either ablaze with the fierce fires of an eruption or else they are overlaid with the ashes of an extinct fire. Between crazy fanaticism and cold inanition there are no warm impulses of unselfish evangelism.
The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been. Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of God, the God of Islâm. All the time he has kept a certain core of Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or degeneration.