The Ibn Simhhan people (being the great rivals of Abu Gosh) had often invited me to visit them at this castle,—describing with ardour the abundance and excellence of its springs of water, and the salubrity of its atmosphere.
On arriving at the “Ras,” after a tedious and very wearisome journey,—difficult as the place is of
access,—I found it to fall far below those promises. There are no springs near it. The only water is brought up by the women from the one which we had passed far below. Only within the castle (which was begun while building forty-four years before) some old wells, with good masonry stones, were discovered. These are now put into good order, and kept full, probably in readiness at any time against a siege by the faction of Abu Gosh. Many battles and sieges take place in these remote places that the Pasha of Jerusalem never hears of.
Although of modern origin, much of the earliest part of the castle is already falling to decay—such as gates, steps, etc. It was a melancholy spectacle to walk about the place, reminding one of some small middle-aged castles that I have seen in Scotland, burnt or destroyed during old times of civil warfare; or resembling my recollection, after many long years, of Scott’s description of the Baron Bradwardine’s castle in its later period. And the same melancholy associations recurred yesterday at Mejdal Yaba.
The people assured us that the tortuous and rocky road that we had taken from Ras el ’Ain was the best and nearest that we could have taken.
We were received by a couple of relatives of Ibn Simhhan, who is now Governor of Lydd; but they conducted us to the next village, Jâniah, to
be entertained there by the rest of the family. On our descent to the village, we met our hosts coming to meet us.
Jâniah is a poor place; and we had glimpses of curious groups and scenes within the best one of the wretched houses. We were received in a large room, to which the access was by a steep and broken set of steps outside of the house. In the street below was a circle of the elders of the village; and at the time of sunset, one of them mounted on the corner of a garden wall to proclaim the Adân, or Moslem call to prayers. I did not observe that he was at all attended to.
A good number of the leading people came to visit us; and one old man quoted and recited heaps of Arabic poetry for our entertainment while awaiting the supper.
Then ’Abdu’l Lateef Ibn Simhhan, joined by another, (a humbler adherent of the family,) gave us a vivid relation of the famous battle of Nezib in 1838, and of his desertion from the Egyptian army to the Turkish with a hundred of his mountaineers, well armed, during the night; of how the Turkish Pasha refused to receive him or notice him till he had washed himself in a golden basin, and anointed his beard from vessels of gold; how the Turkish army was disgracefully routed; how he (’Abdu’l Lateef) was appointed to guard the Pasha’s harem during the flight, etc., etc. This narrative was occasionally attested as true by a