In four hours’ time we arrived at Ebna, a village not less miserable than those to the north of Jaffa. Three hours’ farther was a hamlet, El Lubben or Lubden. Leaving this, with the village of Haremy on our right, we arrived, in one hour and a half, at Mejdel, a populous burgh,[49] whose shaykh bore the name of Shubashy, which is a Turkish word, indicating a degree higher than simple shaykh. Ascalon was no more than a league off, and we proceeded thither on the morrow. Arrived at our destination, our tents were fixed in the midst of the ruins, whilst a cottage was fitted up for Lady Hester at the village of El Jura, just without the walls of Ascalon. Orders were immediately sent to the surrounding villages to furnish workmen, in gangs, at the rate of 150 per day, for the excavations. But, before I narrate the proceedings which took place, it will be necessary to say a few words on the history of this once celebrated city, and on the revolutions to which it has been subject; now, last of all, to be the scene of operations of a singular and surprising nature, if it be considered that Mahometan governors were to act under the commands of a helpless Christian woman, in a barbarous and fanatic country.
CHAPTER VII.
History of Ascalon—Ruins—Encampments—Forced labour of peasants—Excavations—Fragments of Columns—Discovery of a mutilated statue—Apprehensions of Signor Damiani—Lady Hester orders the statue to be destroyed—Excavations abandoned—Lady Hester’s narrative of the motives and results of the researches—Auditing accounts—Mohammed Aga a fatalist—Return to Jaffa—Derwish Mustafa Aga and Lady Hester’s black female slave—Patients—Mohammed Bey; his story—Return of Lady Hester’s servant Ibrahim from England—Khurby, or the Ruins—Remains near that spot—Return to Acre—Altercation with muleteers—Excavations at Sayda—Reflexions on researches for hidden treasures.
The antiquity of the city of Ascalon is clear from the sacred writings; for we read of it in the book of Joshua,[50] the book of Kings,[51] and elsewhere; so that as early as nineteen hundred years before Christ it was known as one of the chief places of Palestine. It became afterwards a part of the Assyrian, then of the Persian, monarchy; and was subdued, together with all Syria, by Alexander the Great. After his death, it fell to the lot of Ptolemy Lagus, king of Egypt; and by Antiochus the Great it was incorporated with the empire of Syria. In Strabo[52] it is said that “Ascalon is a city not spacious, and built in such a sunk situation as to seem to be in a hole.” William of Tyre informs us that “it resisted our arms for fifty years and more, after Jerusalem had fallen; until, in the year of our Lord 1194, on the 12th of August, after a bloody siege, it was surrendered to king Baldwin by its Saracen inhabitants.”
Herod, king of the Jews, respected Ascalon as the native place of his family; and, from this circumstance, and from the splendid baths and peristyles which he built there, he obtained the appellation of Herod the Ascalonite. William of Tyre informs us that “this city, from the inaptitude of the sea-coast, neither has nor ever had a harbour or safe anchorage for shipping.”[53] Abulfeda, quoting from El Azýz, and speaking from his own knowledge, says: “Ascalon is a city on the sea-shore, in which there are vestiges of antiquity:” and again,—“It adjoins the sea on a bank; it is one of the most illustrious places of the plain on the sea-shore, and has no port.” What was the fate of the city from this time I have no documents to show, excepting that it is probable it fell gradually to decay, until the time when it was visited by d’Arvieux, a Frenchman, who gives us the following account of these ruins in 1659. “We departed from Gaza, about eight in the morning. We kept the shore as far as the ancient city of Ascalon. It is situated on the sea, in a country level and very fertile. The prodigious thickness of the walls and towers, which are all fallen, and which have filled the ditches, show it to have been formerly one of the strongest places in Palestine. It is at present as ruinous as Cæsarea or St. Jean d’Acre. There are only a few spaces of wall still existing towards the sea, in which are embedded (endossés) several columns of granite, or, as the vulgar fancy, cast stone. This city has no port, nor any houses sufficiently entire to be habitable, so that it is wholly abandoned.... We found nothing remarkable in it but an old well half filled up, and constructed in the style of Joseph’s well in the castle at Cairo: and, towards the middle of the city, seven or eight pillars of marble still standing upon their pedestals, which appeared to be the remains of a temple. We quitted the sea-shore, in leaving this desolated city, and took the road to Rama, over a most beautiful and highly cultivated country.” I may add that, so late as thirty years ago, there was enough of the great mosque standing to afford a dwelling to a shaykh of Barbary.
The city of Ascalon, as we found it, differed little from the account of d’Arvieux, excepting that no marble columns, or portions of an edifice, were now standing; and those which formerly strewed the ground had, for the most part, been carried away.
Palmyra is an instance how long structures will remain when left to the slow effects of time and natural decay. It is to the hand of man that they generally owe their greatest dismemberment: and, thus Ascalon was stripped of all that was useful in it to rebuild Jaffa and Acre. Its neighbourhood to the sea-shore afforded great facilities of conveyance: and blocks ready cut, columns ready shaped, and slabs of marble that required but to be laid, would not be spared when so near at hand. Hence rose the seraglio of Gezzàr, the mosque, and the public baths; where granite, prophyry, and marble, are huddled together in rich but bungling confusion. When that which lay on the surface had been carried off, they proceeded to dig, and their labour was rewarded by the discovery of materials equally useful, although less easy to come at.
According to a rough calculation, from the time required to make the circuit of the walls of Ascalon on horseback, its circumference is two miles. The shape is somewhat triangular, and the side towards the sea is a little longer than the others. The assertion of Strabo, that the city is built as if in a hole, and Abulfeda’s account that it stands on a bank, may be reconciled on an actual view of the spot. For, when approaching it from the east, hillocks of drifted sand, accumulated round the walls, have obtained an elevation almost equal to them, so that the ground within the walls is lower than that without. But, towards the sea, the plain closes abruptly in a precipice of some height; so that, viewed from that quarter, Ascalon may even be said to stand high. The coast runs nearly north-east and south-west. The wall on the sea-side rises almost from the water’s edge, and is intended to prop the crumbling precipice. It was probably raised on an emergency; for it is composed of rude masonry, where shafts of granite columns are stuck in, so as to represent at a distance the cannon of a ship or the artillery of a fortress. At certain distances on the walls were towers, which, by the parts that still remain, appear to have been of good masonry. The walls themselves are five or six feet thick.[54]
Ascalon is mentioned by Strabo as famous for its onions, and it enjoys at this day a reputation for the same root, which is considered by the neighbouring peasants as a delicious article of food.
Within the ruins, all was desolation. Fragments of pillars lay scattered about, and elevations here and there showed how many more might lie concealed beneath the surface of the soil.