But the Capuchins were not the only agents of a new spiritual and intellectual life in Urfa. For in all their works of mercy and reform they were most ably seconded by the zealous Sisters of St. Francis from Lons—le Saunier, France. Forbidden by the iniquitous “Association Laws” from devoting their lives to the poor and the suffering and the illiterate of their own country they, with rare self-denial, generously offered to labor in the vineyard of the Lord in far-off Mesopotamia. As I noted their cheerfulness and enthusiasm in their labors among the poor and afflicted in Urfa, I could but compare them with some of their sisters in religion whom I had seen in the leper hospitals of Hawaii—who, although always in contact with the most repulsive form of disease, were, I thought, the most buoyant and lighthearted beings I had ever met—all enjoying an abounding happiness that could come only from a heroic sacrifice in the service of God and humanity.
On our return to the railway we were greatly impressed by the fertility of the soil in the vicinity of Urfa. Its orchards and gardens, gay with flowers and fruit trees of all kinds—oranges and lemons, apricots and mulberries, figs and pomegranates—were a delight to the eye and formed a garland around the city, which gave it “the smiling appearance of a grandiose villa.”
About an hour after boarding the train we found ourselves crossing the dried-up bed of the Nahr Belikh, one of the most noted streams in Mesopotamia. It was on its banks—and only a short distance to the north of our course—that was located the once famous city of Haran. It has long been in ruins and only a few Arab families now make their home there.
Haran figures in the earliest chronicles of both the Assyrians and the Hebrews. For a long time it was the focus of all the roadways of northern Mesopotamia and a center of great wealth and prosperity. But a single well-attested fact shows the great change that has come over the face of the land round about Haran since its first mention in history. For what is now a sandy desert was then a well-watered region of remarkable fertility, with a rich flora and a notable fauna. This is evidenced by undoubted records according to which this part of Mesopotamia was a favorite hunting ground for the kings of Egypt and Assyria, for here big game was once as varied and as abundant as it is anywhere at present in equatorial Africa. Thus the Assyrian King, Tiglath-Pileser I, 1120 B.C., declares, “Ten powerful bull-elephants in the land of Haran and on the banks of the Habour I killed; four elephants alive I took. Their skins, their tusks, with the living elephants, I brought to my city of Asshur.”[306] To-day no elephants are to be found in the wild state nearer than far-off India. Their disappearance from Western Asia, where they formerly roamed as far westward as the Lebanon range, has long been as complete as is that of the American bison from the region east of the Mississippi.
According to a tradition based on the book of Genesis, this once celebrated city was named after Haran, son of Thare, who was the father of the Patriarch Abraham.
“And Thare took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son and brought them out of Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan: and they came as far as Haran and dwelt there.”[307]
It was here that Abram received from the Lord the command: “Go forth out of the country and from thy kindred and out of thy father’s house.” It was thence he went into the Promised Land which was to be the home of his children and children’s children until the advent of the world’s Redeemer.
It was to his kindred in or about Haran that Abraham sent his servant from Canaan to get a wife for his son Isaac and it was in Haran that he found the fair Rebecca as she was going to a spring with a pitcher on her shoulder. It was this same region that witnessed that idyllic episode in the early life of Jacob so beautifully described in the book of Genesis. It was here that he spent twenty years in the service of his uncle, Laban—six years for the flocks that his uncle gave him, and fourteen years for his two daughters—“the tender-eyed Leah” and “the beautiful and well-favored Rachel.”[308]
What a delight it was in this distant Mesopotamian plain, where countless lambs still skip about their solicitous mothers, as they did when Leah and Rachel tended their father’s flocks in the long ago, to recall the noble fiction of Dante who, in his Terrestrial Paradise, makes these charming women of humanity’s youth the symbols of the active and the contemplative life as are Martha and Mary in the New Testament! And what a pleasure it was to read on this romantic ground in my well-thumbed Divina Commedia the oft-conned verses:
About the hour,