THE GODS IN EXILE.
THE year 1492 was a dark one for the sons of Shem. The fall of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain are events more generally commemorated than the equally dramatic episode which wound up with the tragic death of Bajazid, the dashing caliph of Damascus, surnamed Yildirim—“the thunderbolt.” At no time of the year is the Moslem world so deeply stirred as during the month Shawall, the fifteenth day of which marks the official opening of the great yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. The Haj is the name of the leading caravan which carries the Sultan’s gift for Mohammed’s shrine, that holds the black stone given by an angel to Abraham. No animal in creation has so many devout eyes concentrated on its unbeautiful outlines as the dromedary which conveys, under a canopy of green silk, the gorgeously embroidered covering for the walls of the Kabah. This Kiswa, as it is called, is made of black brocade, and its magnificent golden border spells divine utterance culled from the gems of the Koran. Exceeding it in costliness is a smaller curtain sent along for the Kabah’s doors which swing in a frame of silver and gold.
Even in our days that train starts from Damascus with great ceremony, is accompanied by the municipal dignitaries led by the Pasha, and escorted by a regiment in military pomp. No Moslem eye will miss the opportunity of witnessing the muhmil, or silken canopy, as it swings on the camel’s back, shielding the sacred vesture of the most sacred of Islam’s fanes, so that along the line of the procession the immense concourse of the faithful throng every available spot, from the terraced roof down to the gutters of the ill-paved, sinuous lanes.
Such is the religious signal for hundreds of thousands to start for the centre of Moslem devotion from every quarter and corner as far as the crescent is revered, to fulfil the duty of adoring the object of the Prophet’s worship. For he who has kissed that heavenly stone is not alone cleansed of all his sins, but is thereafter distinguished by the surname of Hajj.
The departure of the Haj in the year of the discovery of the New World was one of unprecedented commotion. It was known that a great army was being concentrated and hurriedly drilled, and that Bajazid was on the point of taking the field himself, having gained signal triumphs in his repeated wars with Christian powers. That he appeared in his great mosque on the day of the Haj, and, surrounded by his bodyguard, followed the muhmil out of the city’s confines, was interpreted as an ominous sign of impending danger. The Caliph’s countenance was scrutinized with great anxiety by those who caught sight of it, and somber deductions passed from lip to lip. As if to confirm the popular apprehensions, as Bajazid re-entered the city, a yelling saint, looking more like a satyr than a human being, emerged nobody knew whence, and, planting himself in the way of the white steed which carried the Commander of the faithful, cried: “Bajazid, Bajazid, the stars are against thee. Woe! Woe! Damascus! I see thee and thy sister cities swim in blood, thy treasures plundered, thy beauty rifled, thy daughters outraged, with none to avenge thee! Woe! Woe! Woe!” A terrible frown darkened the brows of the hitherto invincible Caliph, but nobody dared lay a hand on the prophet of evil, who was allowed to lose himself in the next grove unmolested. The saint is only an instrument in the hand of Allah, and before the people had sufficiently recovered from their consternation to exchange a word about the fateful prophecy, a courier came tearing along the straight way of the city; another one was close behind, and another, their horses panting for breath. These events were followed by a sleepless night and feverish activity in the palace. Couriers were speeding to and fro; regiments were moving; batteries were mounted, and the graying dawn saw the Sultan at the head of a division marching out of his citadel never to return.
From the hand of fate Bajazid was to drink the dregs of the bitter cup. Like stubble before the fire, everything withered before the all-engulfing devastation of Timur’s unconquerable host. Having swept nations and races before him, that celebrated Tartar conqueror made short work of Bajazid’s mighty army. In the province of Angora host encountered host, the Caliph sustained a crushing defeat, his army was shattered, and the dreaded “thunderbolt” was himself among the prisoners in the hands of a merciless foe. With other cities, beautiful Damascus experienced the wrath of the Tartar’s beastly nature. An indiscriminate slaughter of the population was followed by pillage, and whatever could not be plundered and taken off was delivered to the flames. The Caliph’s fate was sad in the extreme. Dragged along by the conqueror as a trophy in an iron palanquin, which looked more like a cage than aught else, death, more gracious than the savage Tartar, finally delivered Bajazid from a life of humiliation and torture.
The wizard who had foretold the downfall of the Caliph and the ruin of populous cities was never hereafter seen within the broad circuit of Damascus, a region exceeding in the exuberance of its semi-tropic verdure and panoramic landscape the beauty of Granada’s famous valley in its palmy days of Moorish rule. The fatalistic principle of Islam precludes spying into the inscrutable decrees of Allah, whose will is fate from which there is neither appeal nor escape. Why then waste a moment in identifying an oracle whose prophecies pass through him as water passes through a pipe? It is impious to search into the unsearchable.
There were two young men on the scene, however, whose antecedents account for that mad impetuosity with which they stormed onward in pursuit of the oracular saint as soon as it was possible for them to elude the eyes of the crowd. One was Damon Mianolis, a young Greek, who had inherited from his father an avidity for the occult science of astrology; the other was Selim Ebn Asa, a youthful Moslem, who had enabled Damon to witness in disguise the departure of the Haj. Damon’s father was a physician, but had a secret laboratory, and had spent a fortune in attempts at fathoming the mysteries of alchemy and astrology. Damon had been early initiated into those mystic arcana, had learned to cast the horologue, but was wofully disappointed in the matter of extracting gold from other substances, and gave up the hope of ever discovering the elixir of life. The physician’s death had put his son in possession of an extensive practice among his fellow-Christians, and Selim’s friendship was due to the Moslem’s ambition to acquire a knowledge of French, which Damon spoke fluently.
The intimate relation of the two young men led to free discussions of the merits of their respective creeds, with the result that each one believed a little more in his friend’s and a little less in his own scheme of salvation. The heavenly city built of gold and precious stones, with twelve gates and glittering streets, through which flows the river of life, bordered on its banks by the tree of life, which bears twelve sorts of fruits and leaves of healing virtue, was pointed to by Damon as the pattern of Mohammed’s paradise of which Selim made much in his effort to convert his friend. Selim meant to astonish Damon by referring to those pavilions of pearls in which the houris dwell retired, each pearl sixty miles in dimension; but was met by the even more astonishing promise of St. John that “the days shall come when there shall be vines which shall have each ten thousand branches, and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand lesser branches, and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand twigs, and every one of the twigs shall have ten thousand clusters of grapes, and every one of these clusters shall bear ten thousand grapes, and every one of these grapes being pressed shall yield two hundred and seventy-five gallons of wine, and when a man shall take hold of one of those sacred branches, another one shall cry out ‘I am the better branch; take me and bless the Lord.’”[6]