Nazareth is on Gebel Khalýl, which our translations call Galilee (Khalyly), and is about six leagues from Acre. The Franciscan friars are bound, by the rules of their order, not to admit women into their monasteries; but they have a salvo for their consciences in an imaginary wall of separation between their own cells and a part of the building which generally lies nearest to the entrance; and as Mr. C.’s house was too small to accommodate Lady Hester, this part of the monastery was fitted up for her reception, whilst a lodging was assigned for Mr. B. and myself adjoining the cells of the monks. All this had been previously arranged, and we found ourselves, on our arrival, quartered in a few moments. The community consisted of thirteen monks, nine of whom were Spaniards. But there was the same querulous abuse of the Turks, the same spiteful feeling towards the schismatic Christians, the same prying curiosity into our concerns, and, with the exception of two, the same cunning and the same ignorance, that I have observed in every religious community in the East, with which it has been my lot to associate. The monastery is a strong and spacious stone building, accessible only by the great entrance, and having few windows or openings externally: for jealousy and fear have tended to convert every place of this kind into a fortress.
Nazareth is a large village, half Christian half Mahometan. Ali Bey gives it 2,000 inhabitants. It is subject to two bailiffs, each superintending his respective sect. The inhabitants, as mountaineers, have the character peculiar to that race of people. They are brave, hospitable, and ceremonious, but vindictive, cunning, and interested. The only trees to be seen about Nazareth are fig and olive, and verdure is as scanty as foliage. The soil is either rocky or stoney, and so stoney that, in the neighbourhood of the village, there was not a single spot to be found where I could gallop my horse for daily exercise.
It was here that Mr. C. dwelt, like an ancient patriarch, in a house opposite to the monastery. He had round him his own family, which was numerous; also his brother and his wife’s sisters, one of whom was married and had children, making, with the servants, not fewer than thirty or thirty-five persons. He farmed under the pasha as many as five villages, the rents, taxes, and miri of which became his for a certain consideration, paid either annually or during some term agreed upon. He might take cognizance of petty delinquencies, and deliver the culprit over to the tribunal of the pasha; but in civil affairs his decision was to a certain extent law, provided it was connected with agricultural economy. Two of his villages, called Fûly, lay in the centre of the plain of Esdräelon, and the greatest part of the plain was farmed out by him. This spot, beautiful from its extent, its fertility, and its position, is of a fine rich black soil, and produces abundant crops; but its exposed situation, subjecting it to the inroads of the Bedouin Arabs, had rendered the land there of low price. Mr. C. had contrived, by yielding sometimes, by sometimes threatening, and especially by presents, liberally and judiciously dealt out among the shaykhs or chiefs of these Bedouins, to ensure the safety of the peasantry; and to him it was owing that villages before destitute of inhabitants were then the dwellings of industrious labourers.
There are in Nazareth many places which the traveller is taken to as objects of veneration or curiosity. The chapel built on the site of the Virgin Mary’s house, the room even that she inhabited, is shown, though the belief in these traditions calls forth a wonderful exertion of faith. Indeed, the holy fathers yet bear in mind the scandal brought on their body in the eyes of the Mahometans and the Greek Christians, when Napoleon Buonaparte was led into the chapel of the monastery, and, on being shown the suspended pillar with other miraculous appearances, beheld them with indifference, and kept his hat on even to the very foot of the altar!
The apartment assigned to me was the library, where about fifty shelves of books, dusty from neglect, and worm-eaten for want of use, bore doubtful evidence to the studious propensities of the fathers. As a couple of days were sufficient to see what Nazareth contained, and as circumstances led me to imagine we might remain here for a time, I turned over the volumes to see whether I could find some book to assist me in learning Arabic. I was fortunate enough to light on Erpenius’s grammar and a dictionary, and I here commenced that study.
Thus the time passed pleasantly away. In the neighbourhood of Nazareth we visited Mount Tabor, and Cana, and rode to other places in the environs. Mr. B., accompanied by his Mameluke, Joseph, departed for the sea of Galilee. On his return, after an absence of two or three days, he informed us of a singular meeting with a person who called himself Shaykh Ibrahim. At Tabariah[56] he had been lodged at the house of a priest to which Europeans were generally conducted. The weather was sultry, and Mr. B., confined within doors, heard some one in altercation with his Mameluke at the entry of the house. Joseph was endeavouring to turn out a meanly dressed man with a long beard, who insisted, in his turn, on speaking with the Englishman within. Upon advancing to the door, Mr. B. was surprised to hear himself addressed in good English. Shaykh Ibrahim made himself known, and they spent the day together. The succeeding day Mr. B. returned to Nazareth, having invited Shaykh Ibrahim to visit us. It is unnecessary to say he was the celebrated Burckhardt.
On the morrow he arrived, and his appearance was calculated to interest those who beheld him, from the singularity of his dress, so different from that of a European. As there will be occasion to speak of him again more than once, it is necessary to introduce him particularly to the notice of the reader. He was a robust and rather an athletic man, of about five feet nine, with blue eyes, a broad German face, and a pleasing look. His teeth were very unevenly set. I did not, at that time, know that he was travelling for the African Society, as he affected to pass for an Arab, and did not care to betray his secret to those from whom he could reap no advantage by the disclosure, and might derive some inconvenience. There was something in his speech that did not amount to a foreign accent, and yet it was at times enough to make a listener suppose he might be Irish, so well had he learned to speak a language not vernacular. He remained, if I recollect rightly, two whole days at Nazareth. Lady Hester’s opinion of him was not a favourable one, and she never altered it. He took occasion, in conversation, to point out to Lady Hester the practicability of procuring certain objects of antiquity, which he supposed to come within the reach of her purse and influence, although not of his own. He was dressed as a peasant of Palestine, with a turban of about the length and fineness of a round towel. His shirt was coarse, long, and with pointed sleeves reaching considerably beyond his fingers’ ends. His legs were bare, and his feet were thrust into an old pair of shoes, somewhat resembling inn slippers. He had loose drawers, and a tunic or frock of white coarse cotton, reaching down to his feet, open in front, over which was a woollen cloak or abah, the favourite mantle of every person throughout Syria when travelling.
One day Mr. Catafago engaged Mr. B. and myself to accompany him to Fûly. Shaykh Ibrahim was of the party. We left Nazareth early. Lady Hester did not choose to go, not conceiving there could be anything interesting in a village. After riding over the flat space which lies to the west of Nazareth, we descended into the ravine that opens at its termination into the plain of Esdraelon, called by the natives Merge Ebn Omar. Mr. Catafago was on a bay Arabian mare, the costly gift of a chieftain of one of the districts of Nablûs. She was small but beautiful, and swift as the antelope. His son Lewis was mounted on another, her very counterpart. Nothing certainly could exist in creation more showy, to an uninformed eye, than these two mares; but we were told afterwards that they were by no means of the purest breed; and, although then incredulous, we afterwards saw mares and horses as greatly superior to these as they were to the small breed of Malta, from which many a horse has been selected to impose on people in England as of untainted blood of Arabia.
We had never seen any soil so rich as the plain of Esdraelon then appeared; its extent fully sufficed to impress the mind with ideas of the immense produce to be obtained; and its fertility was evident from the rich mould under our feet. Its boundaries are of a kind to awaken feelings at once sublime and sacred. At one end is Mount Tabor, a truncated cone, wooded and verdant to the summit; and at the other extremity, as it appeared from the distance where we stood, is a narrow defile leading to the desert or to some unexplored district; on one side we were hemmed in by hills and low mountains, through which, towards the north, we had entered the plain; and towards the east lay the great and terrible wilderness, with Mount Gilboa between.
We had scarcely reached the skirts of the plain, when we started off in a gallop. Shaykh Ibrahim was mounted on a roan mare, that had cost him two hundred piasters (ten pounds), and which had all the requisites of leanness and poor equipment to escape the avidity of the Bedouin Arabs. The evenness of the plain was delightful after the rugged paths we had just quitted. Some idea may be given of the complete level that prevails in this and other plains about Nazareth and Acre, from the fact that in a distance of some miles neither stone nor hillock is to be found. Fûly is a poor hamlet, consisting of houses of one story, with flat roofs, built with stones cemented with mud only, and apparently gathered (without any regard to symmetry) from several heaps of decayed stone-work, covering a considerable space near the hamlet; whence it is to be inferred that an ancient place of some size must formerly have occupied the same spot.