He was the son of an eminent Jew, who filled the post of katib or yazgy to several pashas of Damascus, to which post Haym and his brothers, Rafael, Yusef, and Manasseh, succeeded him. Katib in Arabic, and yazgy in Turkish, mean no more than writer, or scribe;[52] but the office confers more power than the name conveys. The katib is often at once government secretary and treasurer; and, as he is generally stationary in the pashalik for life, whilst the pashas, by removal or death, are often changed, it necessarily happens that he is a perfect master of the business of the pashalik, and of its revenues and resources; whilst the pashas, coming from distant provinces, enter upon a government of which the key is in the katibs’ hands, and are necessitated to keep them in their service, and to be guided by them.
But the pashalik of Damascus has this singularity, that its pasha and chief persons are absent annually on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and consequently are more especially bound to confide their affairs to the hands of their servants. Moreover, the order of march, the ordinances and regulations for the pilgrims, the quantity of provisions required, the pasha’s disbursements, and various other things essential to be known on this important occasion, have somehow become secrets in the hands of these Jews, who it was told to us keep them registered in their own tongue. They thus become hieroglyphics to the Turks and Christians, who seek in vain to wrest the knowledge from the hands of the Jews, and so to stand in no farther need of them.
Haym was destined by his father to the priesthood, and we may suppose its holy functions do not incapacitate any one from filling secular offices, since he was both priest and minister. In the early part of his life the machinations of his enemies prevailed so far against him that he was summoned to Constantinople, to answer to certain accusations made against him; and, being condemned to a fine which he was unable to pay, he was thrown into prison. Haym had a sister, a woman of somewhat masculine appearance, but reputed to possess great qualities. Determined to release her brother, she undertook the journey from Syria to Constantinople; and, waiting for a convenient moment for her purpose, when the Grand Signor should be on his way to the mosque, where he goes publicly every Friday, she burst into the middle of the cavalcade, and threw herself at his feet, to petition for her brother’s release. Those who have witnessed the sultan’s procession to the mosque, the free use that is made of whips and cudgels to keep the populace in order, and the awe in which all stand of a monarch in whom a moment’s caprice or anger may beget a sentence of death, will admire the courage of her who could brave it all. She succeeded, as she merited, and brought her brother back triumphantly to his home. And it is a proof of Haym’s prudence, that although he owed his freedom to his sister, and loved her exceedingly, he would not the more suffer her to meddle in the affairs of the pashalik.
When Ahmed Pasha, el Gezzàr, governed St. Jean d’Acre, Haym became his principal katib. The cruelties which that singular tyrant exercised on those in his service extended to Haym. He was accustomed to write down on a bit of paper, which he kept under his cushion, the names of those whom he intended to put to death or to mutilate by the loss of some member of the body; and this scrap he would produce, when the number became considerable enough to satisfy his bloodthirsty disposition. In this way he one day summoned Haym, among others, into his presence, and ordered his head to be cut off; but, immediately recalling the order, he desired that he should be deprived of his nose, one eye, and one ear. This was accordingly done. Haym was afterwards confined to the palace of the pasha, where he attended to the duties of his office by day, and by night was remanded to his apartment, and locked up. It was said that one of Haym’s great merits in the eyes of El Gezzàr was that, in writing despatches to the Porte, he mixed up respect and defiance in such a way that they breathed submission and yet showed the sword. Haym’s sufferings were not confined to these only. At one time he was condemned to be baked in an oven; or, as others say, he was actually put into a heated oven, and there made to suffer unutterable torments.
El Gezzàr died, and was succeeded by Suliman, the reigning pasha, whose mild administration has not been charged with any of the horrors of which his predecessor was guilty. Haym now enjoyed power and affluence, and universally bore the character of a sage minister.
We were regaled with sweetmeats and confectionary, which Haym’s wife had prepared with her own hands, as she herself informed us. I had observed, nailed to the post of one or two doors, as we entered, what seemed to be from its perforations a small tin nutmeg-grater, and I was curious to know the purpose of it. I was informed that each one contained a copy of the ten commandments, which are nailed to the doorways as charms. The visit was prolonged to a late hour of the night. On taking leave, ten pounds were left to be divided as vails among the servants. On the following morning the visit was returned, and Mâlem Haym gave in his turn the same sum to Lady Hester’s domestics. He likewise presented her ladyship with a cashmere shawl worth fifty pounds.
Arrangements had been made to give Lady Hester every facility for seeing the city. Escorted by several persons, sent for that purpose, she visited the ramparts and the mosque, the two principal objects of curiosity in it. After the ineffectual siege of the French, Ahmed el Gezzàr had sense enough to see that, but for the assistance afforded him by Sir W. Sydney Smith, Acre must inevitably have fallen into Buonaparte’s hands, and he resolved on fortifying the city in a way that would leave him less to apprehend in future.
Acre has two sides towards the sea, and two towards the land; so that its site is not a peninsula, as is said by some travellers, but rather a tongue of land, breaking the line of the crescent of the bay. The whole circumference of the walls does not exceed a mile and a half, but few persons have an opportunity of obtaining a correct measure. From whatever road you approach there is but one gate whereby to enter. To the left of it is the port, a small and shallow harbour, formed by a mole, which projects so as to make, with the curve which the strand takes, the form of an oblong with rounded corners. But this part is not more than a cable’s length across, and no vessel of more than 150 tons could lie in safety in it. The mouth lies direct west, and the gales of wind from that quarter set in with such violence, that, in March 1815, I saw a polacca wrecked in this harbour. That vessel, moored by two cables and a hawser, which passed through certain openings in the wall above the mole, broke and dragged them all, and swamped close to the city gate, where she would have gone to pieces, had not the wind abated in the afternoon, and given time to take out her cargo. The only landing-place to the port is a flight of stairs, which has no outlet excepting by a passage that leads to the custom-house.
The Custom House is a single room, where the collector sits in a window seat, and, never putting pen to paper himself (perhaps not knowing how to write), transacts all the business of the chief part of the pashalik by means of one clerk. The then collector, Ayûb Selámy, was once a Christian; and, to save himself from the effects of a Turk’s anger, with whom he was in deadly dispute, he changed his religion. His wife and daughter still occupied his original dwelling at Jôon, a village about one league and a half from Sayda; and he secretly afforded them assistance, whilst he had espoused another woman, a Mahometan, by whom he had two or three children. As far as his worldly interest went, this man had no reason to regret his apostacy. From a farmer, he found himself exalted to one of the principal offices of the pashalik. But his air had always something that argued a man self-convicted of crime; and his demeanour had not, and perhaps could not have, that haughty look which characterizes the Mahometan-born, and which, from the authority they are accustomed to assume over Christians from their very infancy, becomes natural, and sits well upon them.
Adjoining the Custom House is the corn khan, or corn market, a quadrangular building about as large again as the corn market of London; with this difference, however, in the uses they are put to, that in the one the corn to be sold is exposed in bulk, in the other in sample. The ground fronts of each side of the quadrangle are in arcades, from which open doors to vaulted magazines. The magazines are hired for a small sum per month, and the merchant is in perfect security from fire or robbery. A single staircase leads up to the first, which is likewise the upper, story (as the Levant buildings generally rise but to one, and in a few instances to two stories.) A corridor in arcades goes round it, and doors open from the corridor into the chambers, which are let by the week or month to travellers, or merchants, or whoever chooses to hire them. At the khan gate is a lodge answering to our porters’ lodges. Here sits and sleeps the khanatty, or master of the khan; and the form observed by those who desire to take an apartment is to call the khanatty, ask him to show what apartments are vacant; then, paying for a week or a month in advance, to take the key of that which pleases them. These apartments are double, having a room fronting the corridor and another towards the outer wall, both vaulted. In the outer one is a fireplace. They have nothing but bare walls, are generally full of fleas, and disgust a European, accustomed to the comforts of a well regulated inn. But reflection and habit will at last reconcile him to them, and even make him prefer them to better places; for, provided he complies with the custom of the country to carry about with him his carpet, bed, and quilt, his servant buys a broom and a rush mat for sixpence or a shilling, and in half an hour converts his room into a furnished apartment, without fear of interruption from any one. The site of this khan is on the harbour, for el Gezzàr wisely covered with useful edifices that part of it which was shallow enough to be fordable, thus shutting up the passage of an enemy along the skirts of the city towards the south-west. The corn is brought in the morning in sacks on camels’ backs, two sacks making a load. The buyers attend, and purchase and remove it before evening; so that there may often be seen in the court eight or ten heaps, which disappear in the course of the day.