From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

Everywhere one comes upon places that are famous in history, both sacred and profane. Everywhere one passes through lands that during thousands of years, witnessed the devastations of Assyrians and Hittites, Persians and Greeks, Romans and Parthians, Mongols and Saracens and Turks. And everywhere are ruins of Christian temples and monasteries which recall the glories of the early Church, the triumphs of her martyrs, and which serve as silent reminders of the days when Roman governors persecuted the followers of the Crucified because they were regarded as dangerous to the Empire and when Sassanian satraps demanded their blood on the ground that they were the foes of the religion of Zoroaster. Of many of these houses of worship but little now remains except a few crumbling arches or disintegrating pillars and doorways. Of others all that is left is buried under a brush-covered tell where a half-famished goat is seeking a little sustenance or whence a Turkoman shepherd is watching his nearby flock.

Notwithstanding, however, the fact that most of the churches and monasteries have long ceased to be more than heaps of dusty rubbish, there are still a few edifices of the long ago in a comparatively good state of preservation. Among these one of the most notable is that of Kal’at Sim’an to the northwest of Aleppo and but a short distance from the railway. Kal’at Sim’an—which is the Arabic for the Castle of Simon—is a monastery church which dates from the fifth century and is unquestionably the most admirable group of ruins in northern Syria. According to tradition this magnificent mandra, or monastery, was erected about the pillar on which the noted St. Simeon Stylites spent thirty-six years of his life and where, by his extraordinary austerities and superior holiness of life, he was the edification of countless thousands from far and near. Among these were the Emperor Theodosius II and his consort, the Empress Eudocia, as well as other distinguished personages of the Byzantine capital.

It may here be remarked that the Simeon Stylites here referred to was not—as is often thought—unique in his strange mode of life. He was but the first of the long line of stylitæ, or pillar saints, whose peculiar asceticism and undoubted sanctity made so deep an impression on their pleasure-loving contemporaries not only in Asia but in Europe as well.

But more extraordinary than the ruins of churches and monasteries which greet the traveler in every part of the Levant, are the imposing monuments which are due to the Crusaders and which are found in surprising numbers from southern Palestine to northern Mesopotamia. Crowning precipice-encircled heights and protecting strategic passes, they are marvels of architectural beauty and massive grandeur. Those, particularly, which belonged to the great Military Orders vie in vastness and solidity with the great strongholds which are the glory of the Rhine and the Danube. They were not only highly fortified strongholds with bastions, barbicans, and donjons which served as places of refuge to the surrounding population in times of stress and danger, but were also lordly palaces with spacious halls and noble chapels and chapter houses worthy of the great castles of France and England.

No less remarkable than the massiveness and grandeur of these venerable ruins are the charming locations which they occupy. And then the picturesque names which were given them by their Frankish builders! Among them were such appellations as Blanchegarde, Chateau Pelerin, La Pierre du Desert, and Castle Belvoir, to the last of which the Arabs gave even a more poetical name when they called it Kokab el-Hawa—Star of the Air. Built on the commanding flanks of snow-capped Hermon and cedar-famed Lebanon these lordly strongholds of the Crusaders and of the Knightly Orders of the mediæval times have about them all the glamour and chivalry and romance which envelope the most noted castles of the Tyrolean Alps or the Tuscan Apennines. As I contemplated these fascinating ruins and the superb sites which they so adorn and recalled the stirring scenes which they witnessed and that too, in one of the most romantic epochs of the world, I often wondered that they had not more frequently supplied themes for the poet and the novelist. Tasso in his Jerusalem Delivered gives us some idea of the marvelous richness of material here awaiting the writer of fiction no less than the literary artist in the domain of sober history and archæology. Where, indeed, could a true romanticist find better locations for the plots of his stories than in the wonderful old castles of Kal’at el-Hosn, Kal’at-es-Subebeh, or Burj Safita—grandiose yet fairylike in their lofty aeries—which have been the houses of the bravest Knights who have ever couched a lance and which, despite their present dilapidated condition, for centuries have been the admiration of travelers from all parts of the world. And what land more readily lends itself to tales of romance than that in which are found such famous places as Antioch and Carmel, Tyre and Ascalon and Jerusalem—places which witnessed the most brilliant exploits of the Crusaders and whose names have so long been identified with the most glorious names of Christian chivalry?

It is a long step from the superb monuments of the Crusades to the highly revered tekkehs or mezars which abound in all Moslem countries. In the Near East they are seen everywhere—along the public highway, in the most crowded quarters of large cities and in almost deserted sections of the country. These tekkehs, which frequently serve the purpose of both tombs and shrines, are interesting for two reasons, both of which show how certain religious practices of modern Islam are totally at variance with the teachings of the Koran and with the traditional doctrines of the Prophet.

According to strict Moslem law, the erection of tombs and monuments over the graves of the followers of Islam is strictly forbidden. The orders of the Prophet, as given in the “Traditions,” are “to destroy all pictures and images and not to leave a single lofty tomb without lowering it to within a span from the ground.”[264] And yet, notwithstanding this ordinance which the reforming Wahabis have strenuously endeavored to enforce, the Mohammedans are noted for the magnificent monuments which they have erected to the memory of their distinguished dead. Many of their mosque tombs are the most gorgeous mortuary monuments in existence.

But building tombs over the graves of the dead, contrary as it is to the spirit of Islam, is far less reprehensible than making them shrines or places of pilgrimage. “May Allah’s wrath,” said Mohammed, “fall heavy upon the people who make the tombs of their prophets places of prayer.” This malediction seems, however, to have fallen upon deaf ears for, as Hurgronje declares:

Almost every Moslem village has its patron saint; every country has its national saints; every province of human life has its own human rulers who are intermediate between the Creator and common mortals. In no other particular has Islam more fully accommodated itself to the religions it supplanted. The popular practice was, to a great extent, favored by the theory of the intercession of the pious dead, of whose friendly assistance people might assure themselves by doing good deeds in their names and to their eternal advantage.[265]