SITT ABLA.
More than twenty years ago in the little Druze village of Aitath, in Lebanon, about seven miles from Beirût, lived a family of Druze Sheikhs of the tribe of Telhûk. This tribe was divided into the great Sheikhs and the little Sheikhs, and among the latter was the Sheikh Khottar. The proximity of this village to Beirût, its elevated position, cool air, and fine fountain of water, made it a favorite summer retreat for the missionaries from the withering heats of the plain. Sheikh Khottar and his wife the Sitt, having both died, their orphan son Selim and daughter Abla, called the Sitt (or lady) Abla, were placed under the care of other members of the family of Telhûk. The missionaries opened a school for boys and Selim attended it. Dr. and Mrs. Van Dyck were living in Aitath at the time, and the young Druze maiden Abla, who was betrothed to a Druze Sheikh, became greatly attached to Mrs. Van Dyck, and came almost constantly to visit her. The light of a better faith and the truth of a pure gospel gradually dawned upon her mind, until her love for Mrs. Van Dyck grew into love for the Saviour of sinners. The Sheikh to whom she was betrothed was greatly enraged at her course in visiting a Christian lady, and meeting her one day when returning to her home, attacked her in the most brutal manner, and gave her a severe beating. She fled and took refuge in the house of Mrs. Van Dyck, who had taught her to read and given her a Bible. A short time after, several of her cousins seized her and scourged her most cruelly, and a violent persecution was excited against her and her brother Selim. She was in daily and hourly expectation of being killed by her male relatives, as it had never been heard of in the Druze nation that a young girl should dare to become a Christian, and Mr. Whiting, missionary in Abeih, sent over a courageous Protestant youth named Saleh, who took the Sitt Abla by night over the rough mountain road to Abeih in safety. But even here she was not safe. The Druzes of Lebanon at that time were at the height of their feudal power. Girls and women were killed among them without the least notice on the part of the mountain government. Abla was like a prisoner in the missionary's house, not venturing to go outside the door, and in order to be at peace, she went down with her brother to Beirût, where she has since resided. Selim united with the Church, but was afterwards suspended from communion for improper conduct, and joined himself to the Jesuits, so that Abla has had to endure a two-fold persecution from her Druze relatives and her Jesuit brother. On her removal to Beirût she was disinherited and deprived of her little portion of her father's estate, and her life has been a constant struggle with persecution, poverty and want. Yet amid all, she has stood firm as a rock, never swerving from the truth, or showing any disposition to go back to her old friends. At times she has suffered from extreme privation, and the missionaries and native Protestants would only hear of it through others who happened to meet her. Since uniting with the Church in 1849 she has lived a Christian life. In a recent conversation she said, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things ... and I still continue, by the grace of Him Exalted, and by the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, awaiting a happy death, and everlasting rest."
KHOZMA.
Her Christian experience is like that of Khozma Ata. She is the only female member of the Protestant church in Syria from among the Druzes, except Sitt Abla. She was born, in Beirût of the Druze family of Witwat, and when quite a child was taken by Dr. Beadle, then by Miss Tilden, living at one time in Aleppo, then in Jerusalem, and finally settled in the family of Dr. De Forest, where she continued until his departure for America in 1854. For several years she has been an invalid, and is not often able to leave her house, even to go to church. Two of her little girls are in the Female Seminary. In 1861 she taught a day school for girls in Beirût, and assisted Dr. De Forest in his work in the Beirût Seminary. I called upon her a few days since, and she handed me a roll of Arabic manuscript, which she said she had been translating from the English. It is a series of stories for children which she has prepared to be printed in our monthly journal for Syrian children. The name of the journal is "koukab es Subah," or "Morning Star." She has been confined to her bed a part of the summer, and when she gave me the manuscript, she apologized for the handwriting, on the ground that she had written the most of it sitting or lying on her bed. She has not forgotten the example and instructions of Dr. and Mrs. De Forest, and speaks of them with enthusiastic interest. Her husband failed in business some years ago, and she is in a constant struggle with want, but her old friends and loving sisters, Raheel and Lulu, who are among her nearest neighbors, are unremitting in their kind attentions to her.
What a difference between the faithful Christian nurture her little children are receiving at home, and the worse than no training received by the children of her Druze relatives at Ras Beirût, who are still under the shadow of their old superstitions. She never curses her children nor invokes the wrath of God upon them. She is never beaten and spit upon and tortured and threatened with death by her husband. It is worth much to have rescued a Khozma and an Abla from the degradation of Druze superstition! These two good women, with Abdullah in Beirût, and Hassan, Hassein, Asaad and Ali, in Lebanon, are among the living witnesses to the preciousness of the love of Christ, who have come forth from the Druze community. They have been persecuted, and may be again, but they stand firm in Christ. Not a few Druze girls are gathered in our schools in Beirût, Lebanon, and the vicinity of Hermon, as well as in other schools in Damascus, Hasbeiya and elsewhere, and some of their young men are receiving a Christian education.
CHAPTER IV.
NUSAIRIYEH.
To the North of Mount Lebanon, and along the low range of mountains extending from Antioch to Tripoli, and from the Mediterranean on the West to Hums on the East, live a strange, wild, blood-thirsty race called the Nusairîyeh numbering about 200,000 souls, and now for the first time in their history coming within the range of Missionary effort.