It is said that women are still bought and sold in the Turkish possessions. Not long ago there was a regular trade in the black girls who were brought across the Sahara from Central Africa and shipped through Tripoli into Syria and other parts of Turkey. Before the English took hold of Egypt this traffic was carried on through the Nile Valley and was winked at by the officials.
According to the law of the Koran marriages with slaves are legal. The wives of the Sultans have usually been slaves brought in from Georgia and Circassia, plump girls with fair complexions and red hair bringing the highest prices, perhaps as much as the cost of half a dozen fine white horses. I hear that Circassian girls often welcomed being sold, as they thus escaped the hardships of their own country. Such as could play on the zither and other musical instruments always brought more than the ignorant. In the past, five thousand dollars was not a high price for a Circassian girl, while any good-looking Georgian maiden of twelve would bring two hundred dollars and upward. The children of such slave wives are legitimate.
CHAPTER XXVIII
BAALBEK THE WONDERFUL
I am in the Valley of Lebanon, the high, narrow plain which lies between the two ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The word Lebanon means “white,” perhaps because of the walls of chalk or limestone which are a feature of the whole range. Just now the highest peaks are white with snow. These ranges extend north and south parallel with the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Beginning a little below the border of Asia Minor, they lose themselves in the Holy Land. In reading of them I have always thought they were only hills. They are higher than any mountains of our country east of the Mississippi, and the average height of the range nearest the coast is a thousand feet greater than that of Mount Washington. Mount Hermon is more than nine thousand feet high and Jebel Makmel measures ten thousand two hundred feet. The elevation of the Valley of Lebanon itself is twice that of the topmost peaks of the Blue Ridge of Virginia, and it slopes from here to the north as far as Aleppo and to the south beyond Dan, where rises the Jordan.
In this little valley, which is less than one hundred miles long and from five to eight miles wide, walled by these mighty mountains, lie the ruins of Baalbek, once the most wonderful temples known to the ages. I have spent hours in wandering through them, and their immensity and beauty steadily grow upon me. I despair of being able to describe them and can only hope to give you bits of the details.
I have seen most of the world’s mighty ruins. In the past year I have wandered through the tombs of the Mings outside Mukden, Manchuria; I have stood upon the Temple of Heaven in Peking, and have climbed the great Chinese wall. I have gone through the Temples of Karnak at the hundred-gated city of Thebes far up the Nile; I have taken photographs of the Colossi of Memnon, and have measured the stones of the Pyramids with a two-foot rule. Not long ago I visited the Temple of Boro Boedor in the heart of Java to describe its three miles of unique carvings, and last year I spent some time in the forts of the Moguls at Delhi and wrote of the Taj Mahal and its marvellous beauties. I have also seen Timgad, the excavated city on the edge of the Sahara, and have lately gone through the Colosseum at Rome and inspected the equally imposing amphitheatre at El Djem in the heart of the Tunisian desert. All these are wonderful, but Baalbek is their superior.
These ruins have never been so impressive as they are now. For centuries most of them have been as much buried as is Herculaneum, and it was only when the Emperor of Germany made his tour through this part of the world that they began to be brought to the light of day.
I have marched in the Kaiser’s footsteps through Palestine and have seen there the churches and other monuments which he had erected. Before he came to Syria he stopped at Constantinople with the Sultan Abdul Hamid, who gave him a permit to do about as he pleased. As the Kaiser travelled he flattered the Mohammedans, the Christians, and the Jews. He was alive to every possibility, and he stamped “Made in Germany” upon every city he visited. In Damascus he laid a golden wreath on the tomb of Saladin, the famous soldier who fought the Crusaders; and about Jerusalem he built hospitals, schools, and a great sanatorium. Here at Baalbek the Sultan gave him permission to do anything he liked. In the Temple of the Sun is a tablet bearing an inscription in German and Arabic testifying his regard for the Sultan and his pleasure at visiting the ruins. Shortly after leaving he sent German scientists, who organized an army of natives and put them to work excavating the temples. The Germans laid down a railroad track for the dirt cars to carry away mountains of earth and débris. As a result of their work and modern machinery for lifting huge stones into place we have at last a view of these most wonderful temples more as they were in their glory.
But first let me tell you something about the origin of these structures and the gods to whom they were dedicated. The Arabs claim that this, rather than Damascus, is the oldest city in the world. They say that Adam lived here, and that it was between here and the Mediterranean that Cain killed Abel. One of Adam’s favourite residences was Damascus, and Seth lived at Nebi Schitt in the Lebanon Mountains. They will show you where Noah was buried and the town in which Ham lived. They also think that Nimrod reigned in this valley, and they have a tradition that when an angel called upon him he threw the holy one into a blazing furnace from which he came out unharmed. They locate the Tower of Babel at Baalbek and believe that Nimrod built it. According to another legend, Abraham reigned at Damascus and came here frequently. It is also well known that Solomon had a city named Baalath, in which other gods than Jehovah were worshipped. Indeed, it is said that Solomon, in order to please his concubines, built a temple here and that he had a castle which he gave as a present to Balkis, the Queen of Sheba.