The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

We will stop here a moment and make a pencil sketch of this Arab camp, but we must be very careful not to let them see us writing. They have a great fear of the art of writing, a superstitious idea that a person who writes or sketches in their camp, is writing some charm or incantation to bring mischief upon them. I once heard of a missionary who went to an Arab village to spend the night. The people were all Maronites, and grossly ignorant. He pitched his tent and sat down to rest. Presently a crowd of rough young men came in and began to insult him. They demanded bakhshish, and handled his bedding and cooking utensils in a very brutal manner, and asked him if he had any weapons. He bethought himself of one weapon and began to use it. He took out a pencil and paper, and began to make a sketch of the ringleader. He looked him steadily in the eye, and then wrote rapidly with his pencil. The man began to tremble and slowly retreated and finally shouted to his companions, and off they all went. Shortly after, they sent a man to beg Mr. L. not to cut off their heads! Their priests teach them that the Protestants have the power of working magic, and that they draw a man's portrait and take it with them, and if the man does anything to displease them, they cut off the head of the picture and the man's head drops off! Mr. L. sent them word that they had better be very careful how they behaved. They did not molest him again.

Here we are near Tripoli, at the Convent of the Sacred Fish. What a beautiful spot! This large high building with its snow-white dome, and the great sycamore tree standing by this circular pool of crystal water, make a beautiful scene. What a crowd of Moslem boys! They have come all the way from Tripoli, about two miles, to feed the Sacred Fish. They are a gay looking company, with their red, green, blue, yellow, white and purple clothes, and their bright red caps and shoes, and some of them with white turbans. They come out on feast days and holidays to play on this green lawn and feed the fish. The old sheikh who keeps this holy place, has great faith in these fish. He says they are all good Moslems, and are inhabited by the souls of Moslem saints, and there is one black fish, the Sheikh of the saints, who does not often show himself to spectators. There are hundreds if not thousands of fish, resembling the dace or chubs of America. He says that during the Crimean war, many of the older ones went off under the sea to Sevastopol and fought the Russian infidels, and some of them came back wounded. The people think that if any one eats these fish he will die immediately. That I know to be false, for I have tried it. When the American Consul was here in 1856, his Moslem Kawasses caught several of the fish, and brought them to Mr. Lyons' house. We had them cooked and ate them, but found them coarse and unpalatable. That was sixteen years ago and we have not felt the evil effects yet.

This poor woman has a sick child, and has come to get the Sheikh to read the Koran over it and cure it. The most of the Syrian doctors are ignorant quacks, and the people have so many superstitions that they prefer going to saints' tombs rather than call a good physician. There is a Medical College in Beirût now, and before long Syria will have some skilful doctors. I knew an old Egyptian doctor in Duma named Haj Ibrahim, who was a conceited fellow. He used to bleed for every kind of disease. An old man eighty years of age was dying of consumption, and the Haj opened a vein and let him bleed to death. When the man died, he said if he had only taken a little more blood, the old man would have recovered. I was surprised by his coming to me one day and asking for some American newspapers. I supposed he wished them to wrap medicines in and gave him several New York Tribunes. A few days after he invited us to eat figs and grapes in his vineyard and we stopped at his house. He said he was very thankful for the papers. They had been very useful. I wondered what he meant, and asked him. He showed me a jar in the corner in which he had dissolved the papers into a pulp in oil and water, and had given the pulp as medicine to the people! He said it was a powerful medicine. He supposed that the English printed letters would have some magic influence on diseases.

One of the Moslem lads carries a short iron spear as a sign that he is going to be a derwish. Dr. De Forest once found himself surrounded in a Moslem village by a troop of little Moslems, each of them with an iron-headed spear in his hand. A Moorish Sheikh, or Chief, had been for some two years teaching the Moslems of the place the customs of their holy devotees, and in consequence all the boys had become derwishes, or Moslem monks. He was a shrewd old Sheikh. He knew that the true way to perpetuate his religion was to teach the children. He had taught them the Moslem prayers and prostrations, and to keep certain moral precepts. How glad we should be if these boys would come and sit down by us while we talk to them of Jesus! There they come. See how their eyes sparkle, as I speak to them. They have never heard about the gospel before. But I must speak in a low tone, as the old Sheikh is coming and he looks down upon us as infidel dogs! Perhaps some of them will think of these words some day, and put their trust in our Divine Saviour.

Many of the people seem to think that the missionary's house is like the Cave of Adullam, where David lived, (1 Sam. xxii:2) when "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him." It makes it very hard to deal with the people, to have so many of them come to us with improper motives. They come and say they love the gospel and want instruction, and have endured persecution, when suddenly you find that they want money, or to be protected from punishment, or to get office, or to get married to some improper person, or something else that is wrong.

Once a sheikh from Dunnîyeh in Lebanon came to Tripoli, and declared himself a Protestant. He was very zealous, and wanted us to feel that he was too good a man to be turned away, as he was wealthy and of a high family. He was armed with a small arsenal of weapons. He had a servant to carry his gun and pipe, and came day after day to read books, and talk on religion. He said that all he needed was the protection of the American Consul, and then he would make his whole village Protestants. We told him we could have nothing to do with politics. If he wanted to become a Christian, he must take up his cross and follow Christ. He said that was just what he wanted to do, only he wished to benefit the cause by bringing others to follow Him. He seemed very earnest, but there was something dark and mysterious in his ways, and we were afraid of him. Now the Arabs have a proverb, "No tree is cut down but by one of its own limbs," i. e. the axe handle, and we thought a native only could understand a native, so we took the famous convert around to see Yanni. He went into Yanni's office, and Mr. L. and myself sat out in the garden under the orange trees. After a few minutes Yanni called out, "Come in, be preferred, your excellencies! I have found it all out. I understand the case." We went in and climbed up upon the platform, next the desk in the office. The Maronite candidate for the church sat smiling, as if he thought he would now be received at once. Yanni went on, "I understand the case exactly. This man is a son of a Sheikh in Dunnîyeh. He is in a deadly quarrel with his father and brothers about the property, and says that if we will give him the protection of the American Consulate, he will go home, kill his father and brothers, seize all the property, and then come down and join the church, and live in Tripoli!" We were astounded, but the brutal fellow turned to us and said, "yes, and I will then make all the village Protestants, and if I fail, then cut my head off!" We told him that if he did anything of that kind, we would try to get him hung, and the American Consulate would have nothing to do with him. "Very well," said he, "I have made you a fair offer, and if you don't accept it, I have nothing more to say." We rebuked him sharply, and gave him a sermon which he did not relish, for he said he was in haste, and bade us a most polite good morning. He was what I should call an Adullamite.

A Greek priest in the village of Barbara once took me aside, to a retired place behind his house, and told me that he had a profound secret to tell me. He wished to become a Protestant and make the whole village Protestant, but on one condition, that I would get him a hat, a coat, and pantaloons, put a flag-staff on his house, and have him appointed American Consul. I told him the matter of the hat, coat and pantaloons he could attend to at but slight expense, but I had no right to make Consuls and erect flagstaffs. Then he said he could not become Protestant.

In 1866, a man named Yusef Keram rebelled against the Government of Lebanon and was captured and exiled. The day he was brought into Beirût, a tall rough looking mountaineer called at my house. He was armed with a musket and sword, besides pistols and dirks. After taking a seat, he said, "I wish to become Angliz and American." "What for," said I. "Only that I would be honored with the honorable religion." "Do you know anything about it?" "Of course not. How should I know?" "Don't you know better than to follow a religion you know nothing about?" "But I can learn." "How do you know but what we worship the devil?" "No matter. Whatever you worship, I will worship." I then asked him what he came for. He said he was in the rebel army, was captured, escaped and fought again, and now feared he should be shot, so he wanted to become Angliz and American. I told him he need have no fear, as the Pasha had granted pardon to all. "Is that so?" "Yes, it is." On hearing this he said he had business to look after, and bade me good evening.

But you will be tired of hearing about the Adullamites. If those who came to David were like the discontented and debtors who come to us, he must have been tired too. So many suspicious characters come to us, that we frequently ask men, when they come professing great zeal for the gospel, whether they have killed anybody, or stolen, or quarrelled with any one? And it is not always easy to find out the truth. If fifty men turn Protestants in a village, perhaps five or ten will stand firm, and the rest go back, and frequently all go back.

But the rain is coming down and we will hasten to the Meena to Uncle S.'s house, where we can rest after this wearisome and hasty journey from Safita. For your sake I am glad that we took comfortable bedding and bedsteads with us. It costs a few piastres more to hire a baggage animal, but it is cheaper in the end. At one time I was going on a hard journey, and I thought I would be economical, so I took only my horse and a few articles in my khurj or saddle bags, with a little boy to show me the road and take care of my horse. When I reached the village, I stopped at the house of a man said to be a Protestant. He lived in the most abject style, and I soon found by his bad language towards his family and his neighbors that he needed all the preaching I could give him that evening. There was only one room in the house, and that was small. By nine o'clock the mother and the children had lain down on a mat to sleep, and the neighbors who came in were beginning to doze. I was very weary with a long ride on a hot August day, and asked mine host where I should lie down to sleep. He led me to a little elevated platform on the back side of the room, where a bed was spread for me. The dim oil lamp showed me that the bed and covering were neither of them clean, but I was too weary to spend much time in examining them, and after spreading my linen handkerchief over the pillow, I tried to sleep. But this could not be done. Creeping things, great and small, were crawling over me from head to foot. There was a hole in the wall near my head, and the bright moonlight showed what was going on. Fleas, bugs, ants, (attracted by the bread in my khurj,) and more horrible still, swarms of lice covered the bed, and my clothing. I could stand it no longer. Gathering up my things, and walking carefully across the floor to keep from stepping on the sleeping family, I reached the door. But it was fastened with an Arab lock and a huge wooden key, and could only be opened by a violent shaking and rattling. This, with the creaking of the hinges, woke up my host, who sprung up to see what was the matter. I told him I had decided to journey on by moonlight. It was then one o'clock in the morning, and on I rode, so weary, that when I reached Jebaa at ten o'clock, I was obliged to go to bed. I did not recover from the onset of the vermin for weeks.