[281] Regarding the Armenian’s capacity for business, Mr. Curzon has wittily remarked, that, while “it takes four Turks to cheat one Frank, two Franks to cheat one Greek and two Greeks to cheat one Jew, it takes six Jews to cheat one Armenian.” Researches in the Highlands of Turkey, Vol. I, p. 8 (by H. F. Tozer, London, 1869).
According to Dr. Schliemann, however, the palm for business ability must be awarded to the Greeks from the island of Lesbos. “The Lesbian Greeks,” he tells us, “have the reputation of being the shrewdest merchants in the world; as a proof it is alleged that in cities the commerce of which is in the hands of Lesbians not a Jew is to be found.” Troja, p. 324.
[282] The learned Benedictine, Father Parisot, has recently collected the vocabulary of this interesting dialect which is threatened with early extinction.
[283] This peculiarity is explained by the fact that when the Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century tens of thousands of Jews migrated to Salonica and Constantinople where Spanish is still spoken by large numbers of their descendants.
[284] A like superstition attaches to nearly all similar remains of antiquity not only in Syria but in Egypt as well. Some are reputed to have special virtues for those suffering from tic-douloureux or from rheumatism for which affections they are said by Orientals to possess even greater curative properties than their famous panacea—the bezoar stone.
[285] Ibn Butlan, a noted Arabian physician, and a Christian, of Bagdad, who visited Aleppo in the middle of the eleventh century thus refers to this curious tradition: “In the lower part of the castle is a cave where he”—Abraham—“concealed his flocks. When he milked these, the people used to come for their milk crying ‘Halaba ya la’?—Milked yet or not?—asking thus one of the other, and hence the city came to be called Halab—Milked.” Cf. G. le Strange’s Palestine Under the Moslems, p. 363 (London, 1890).
[286] The Hittites, p. 12 (London, 1903).
[287] Genesis xxiii.
[288] Ezekiel xvi: 3.
[289] Kings ii: 12.