The Wuld Ali.
Our escort of free-lances one day, as we were riding to some of our usual environs, soon perceived that we were making for the desert, towards the direction where the dreaded Mohammed Dúkhi was known to camp, and they began the well-known dodges of making their horses curvet and prance and wheel in circles as if they had become unmanageable, and every round became so much larger that they gradually dropped out of sight. Presently some cast a shoe, or another had broken a girth, and stopped to rectify it. The fact is, Richard had been determined to make friends with the Wuld Ali tribe, of which Mohammed Dúkhi is the Chief, and rules five thousand lances. At last we found ourselves alone, so we rode on all that day, slept by our horses at night in a ruined khan, and got in sight of the Wuld Ali encampment late next day. Richard said to me, "Now mind, when they see us two horsemen, they will come galloping across the sand in a body with their lances couched; if we were to turn and run, they would spear us; but if we sit our horses, facing them like statues on parade, just as the Life Guards sit in their sentry-boxes at the Horse Guards at home, they will take us in with great applause, and our horses will stand it, because they are used to desert manners."
I said "All right," as I always did when he gave me an order, and I was glad he put me up to it, for, sure enough, when they saw our two dusky figures galloping from a distance across the sand towards them, the whole tribe charged with their lances couched, and we reined in and stood stock still, facing the charge; but as soon as they got within a few yards, they seemed by instinct to recognize the man they were charging. They lowered their lances, opened their ranks to enclose us, and with one cry of "Ak-hu Sebbah!" (Brother of the Lion), jumped off their horses, kissed our hands, galloped in with us jeriding, and held our stirrups to alight. I need not say that we were treated with all the true hospitality of real Bedawi life, and we remained several days with them. My husband's object was to make peace between the Wuld Ali and the Mezrabs. We visited the lakes which are near them, and they were all dried up except a bit of water in the sand about the size of a small duck-pond. "What, then," said Richard, "becomes of the Bárada and the Awaj, the so-called ancient Abana and Pharphar?" They have been partly drawn off, and partly evaporated before reaching their basements at 'Utaybah and Hijánah, where we then were.
The Arabic of Damascus, especially the Christian Arabic, Richard found so grating to the ears after the pure speech of the Bedawi—and that of the Nejd and El Hejaz.
Richard writes an account of a trip—
Explorations of Unknown Tracts.
"A little later on Charley Drake and I again started to revisit the Tulúl el Safá,[6] and our first eight days was over the old ground. This trip added considerably to our scanty geographical knowledge of these regions off the tracks. In one week we collected some hundred and twenty inscriptions, and three lengthy copies of Greek hexameters and pentameters from the Burj, a mortuary tower at Shakkah, a ruin long since identified as the Saccæa of Ptolemy. We went to the top of Tell Shayhán, whose height is 3750 feet, which showed us that the Lejá, the Argob of the Hebrews and the western Trachon of the Greeks and Romans, is the gift of Tell Shayhán.[7] It is a lava bed, a stone torrent poured out by the lateral crater over the ruddy yellow clay and the limestone floor of the Haurán valley, high raised by the ruins of repeated eruptions, broken up by the action of blow-holes, and cracked and crevassed by contraction when cooling, by earthquakes, and the weathering of ages. 'The features are remarkable. It is composed of black basalt, which must have issued from the pores of the earth in a liquid state, and flowed out until the plain was almost covered. Before cooling its surface was agitated by some powerful agency, and it was afterwards shattered and rent by internal convulsions and vibrations' (Porter). Two whole days were spent at Kanawát, the ancient Canatha, a city of Og.
"There are now hundreds of Druzes, and we may remark for the first time 'the beauty of Bashan,' the well-wooded and watered country. We then went along the Jebel Kulayb and visited the noble remains of Sí'a, where we met with three Palmyrene inscriptions, showing that the Palmyra of Ptolemy extended to the south-west far beyond the limits assigned to it. We then got to Sahwat el Balát, where lives my influential friend, Shaykh Ali el Hináwí, a Druze Akkál of the highest rank; and here they gathered to meet me and palaver. We crossed the immense rough and rugged lava beds which gloom the land. Jebel el Kulayb was bright with vetch, red poppy, yellow poppy, mistletoe with ruddy berries, hawthorn boughs, and the vivid green of the maple and the sumach, the dark foliage of the ilex oak scrub, and the wild white honeysuckle. There was cultivation; the busy Druze peasantry at work, the women in white and blue. The aneroid showed 5785 feet, the hygrometer stood at 0°, the air was colder than on the heights of Hermon in June, and the western horizon was obscured by the thickest of wool packs. Here we made two important observations. The apparently confused scatter of volcanic cratered hill and hillock fell into an organized trend of 356° to 176°, or nearly north-south. The same will be noticed in the Safá, and in its out-layers the Tulúl el Safá, which lie hard upon a meridian; thus the third or easternmost great range, separating the Mediterranean from the Euphrates desert, does not run parallel with its neighbours, the Anti-Libanus and Libanus, which are disposed, roughly speaking, north-east 38°, and south-west 218°.
"The second point of importance is that El Kulayb is not the apex of the Jebel Durúz Haurán, though it appears to be so. To the east appeared a broken range, whose several heights, beginning from the north, were named to us. Tell Ijaynah, bearing 38°, back by the Umm Haurán hill, bearing 94°; the Tell of Akriba (Wetz Stein), bearing 112° 30'; Tell Ruban, bearing 119°; and Tell Jafnah, bearing 127° 30'. We believed that Tell Ijaynah was 6080 English feet high, and we thought that Jebel Durúz must be greatly changed since it was described by travellers and tourists.
"Here the land, until the last hundred and fifty years, was wholly in the hands of the Bedawi, especially of the Wuld Ali, and the nine hill tribes already named. At last the Druzes, whom poverty and oppression drove away from their original home, the Wady Taym and the slopes of Libanus and Hermon, settled here. In Rashíd Pasha's reign seventeen mountain villages have been repeopled, and in 1886 some eight hundred families fled to this safe retreat; nor can we wonder at the exodus, because of half the settlements of the Jaydur district, the ancient Ituræa, eleven out of twenty-four have been within twelve months ruined by the usurer and the tax-gatherer, and at one time a hundred and twenty Druze families went in one flight from their native mountains to the Haurán.
"They found here a cool, healthy, but harsh climate, a sufficiency of water, ready-made houses, ruins of cut stone, land awaiting cultivation, pasture for their flocks and herds, and, above all things, a rude independence under the patriarchal rule of their own chiefs. In short, the only peaceful, prosperous districts of Syria are those where home rule exists, and there is scarcely any interference by the authorities. It is a short-sighted and miserable management which drives an industrious peasantry from its hearths and homes to distant settlements where defence is more easy than offence.
"This system keeps the population of the whole province to a million and a half, which in the days of Strabo and Josephus supported its ten millions and more. The European politician is not sorry to see the brave and sturdy Druze thrown out as a line of forts to keep the Arab wolf from the doors of the Damascene, but the antiquary sighs for the statues and architectural ornaments broken up, the inscribed stones used for building rude domiciles, the most valuable remnants of antiquity white-washed as lintels, or plastered over in the unclean interiors. The next generation of travellers will see no more 'mansions of Bashan.'
"At Shakkah (Saccæa) there are still extensive ruins and fine specimens of Hauránic architecture, especially the house of Shaykh Hasan Brahím with its coped windows and its sunken court Here we were received by the Druze Chief, Kabalán el Kala'áni, who behaved very badly to us, and when we tried to go, refused to let us unless we paid him forty napoleons for ten horsemen. We laughed in his face, told him to stop us if he dared, and sent for our horses. However, as we were going into a fighting country, I sent back all the people who would have been in the way.
"The Druzes had been quarrelling amongst themselves; fifteen men had been killed, and many wounded. We had to doctor three; one had a shoulder-blade pierced clean through. We were joined nolens volens by ten free-lances, and escorted as far as Bir Kasam, their particular boundary. Finally, it appears that our visit to the 'Aláh district, lying east of Hamáh, has brought to light the existence of an architecture which, though identical with that of the Haurán, cannot in any way be connected with that of Og. Although only separated by seventy miles from the southern basaltic region, the northern has also its true Bashan architecture, its cyclopean walls, its private houses, low, massive, and simple in style, with stone roofs and doors, and huge gates, conspicuous for simplicity, massiveness, and rude strength. Moab has the same, only limestone is used instead of basalt.
"Dumá Ruzaymah is occupied by three great houses, and the Junaynah hamlet is the last inhabited village of this side towards the desert. We now got to the Wady Jahjah, thence to El Harrah, 'the Hot or Burnt Land,' and to the Krá'a, which we crossed in fifty-five minutes, and got into or entered the Naká, and were surprised to see a messenger mounted on a dromedary, going at a great pace, and evidently shunning us. We had descended 3780 feet; the passage occupied two hours.
"We then ascended into the Hazir, and from the top we had our first fair view of the Safá,[8] a volcanic block, with its seven main summits. They stood conspicuously out of the Harrah, or 'Hot Country.' In the far distance glittered the sunlit horizon of the Euphrates Desert, a mysterious tract, never yet crossed by European foot. We eventually arrived at the stony, black Wa'ar, a distorted and devilish land, and we then got to a waterless part, where our horses were already thirsty, and into the Ghadir, where we had been promised water, and it was bone dry. After long riding, we came to a ruined village, El Hubbayríyyah, where we found yellow water forming a green slime. It was again the kattas which led me to the water, as in Somali-land. Here we spent an enjoyable fifty minutes at the water, refreshing ourselves and beasts; it lies 3290 feet above sea-level. We presently fell into the Saut on return; it was good travelling, and we saw old footmarks of sheep, goats, and shod horses.
"The only sign, as we turned out of the Saut and swept down from the Lohf, that human foot had ever trod this inhospitable wild, was here and there a goat-fold, with a place for the shepherd on a commanding spot, or more probably a Bedawin sentinel or scout (you often see a solitary tribesman perched on a hilltop). The road was simply a goat-track, over the domes of cast-iron ovens, in endless succession. It was a truly maniac ride. At the Rajm el Shalshal we again saw traces of our friend on the dromedary. That day at 4.20 p.m. we were surprised by our advanced party springing suddenly from the mares, and hearing the welcome words, 'Umm Nirán!' (the mother of fire). Late as it was, we rejoiced, because a night march over such a country would have been awful. The cave is as dry as the land of Scinde, and in the summer sunshine the hand could not rest upon the heated surface, but after rain there is a drainage from the fronting basin into the cave. We crawled into it and entered a second tunnel, and after two hundred feet we came to the water, a ditch-like channel, four feet wide. The line then bent to the right from north-north-east to the north-east. Here, by plunging our heads below water and raising them further on, we found an oval-shaped chamber, still traversed by the water. We could not, however, reach the end, as shortly the rock ceiling and the water met. The supply was sweet, the atmosphere close and damp, the roof an arid fiery waste of blackest lava. The basalt ceiling of the cave sweated and dripped, which could not have been caused only by simple evaporation. The water began by a few inches till it reached mid-thigh. The length was a total of three hundred and forty feet; the altitude was 2745 feet.
"A water scorpion was the only living thing in the cave. This curious tunnel reservoir is evidently natural. There are legends about a clansman going in with black hair, and coming out after the third day with white hair, and one of our lads declared he had taken an hour to reach the water; but we, on all fours, took three minutes. We set out again next day for the great red cinder-heap, known as Umm el Ma'azah, where we halted for observation, and then fell into the trodden way which leads from the Ghutah section of the Damascus plain to the Rubbah valley.
"We had long and weary desert rides, seeing everything to the Bir Kasam. Bedawi never commit the imprudence of lingering near the well after they have watered their beasts, because that is the way to draw a ghazú, or raid, down upon you.
I prevent Rashíd Pasha's Intentions taking effect.
"Now I have every reason to be thankful that I did not bring my wife on this journey, as she was not very well. In this country fever and dysentery seize upon you with short notice, and pass away again, and she, though in no danger, was not in a state for hard riding at the time. At Bir Kásam, a Druze greybeard, on a rahwán, rode up to the well, and took the opportunity of making me a sign: pretending to question him, as to the name of a mountain on the horizon, I led him away, and he cautiously pulled out of his pocket a medicine bottle, which he handed to me, from my wife. I then knew there was something up, and I thanked him, giving him some money, and asked him if he had anything to say. He said, 'If I may advise you, get rid of all your party. They want to go to Damascus or Dhumayr; announce that you are going to neither, and they will probably forsake you, as this is not a safe spot. I shall ride on, till out of sight, and then turn round and ride back to Damascus, by slow degrees, sleeping and eating on the road. You and your friend ride into Jebel Dákwah; but first read the directions about the medicine.'
"I uncorked the bottle, saw my wife's warning in writing, and carefully put them in my pocket not to leave a 'spoor.' I then paid him still more handsomely, and told him to go back to my wife, and tell her it was 'all right,' and not to fear. As evening fell, they asked us what our intentions were. We said we were not going either to Damascus or Dhumayr, and, as our messenger had prophesied, they all disappeared in the night, to our great relief. As soon as the last man had disappeared, we went into the Dákwah Mountain (hid our horses in a cave), from the cone of which you command a view of the whole country, and after a few hours we saw a hundred horsemen and two hundred dromedary riders beating the country, looking for some one in the plains. At last they turned in another direction, towards some distant villages, and when we were consoled by not seeing a living thing, we descended from our perch, galloped twenty miles to Dhumayr, where we were well received by faithful Druzes, whose Chief was Rashíd el Bóstají. We were just in time. The Governor-General had mustered his bravos; they missed us at Umm Nirán, at the Bir Kasam, and again upon the direct road to Dhumayr, having been put out by our détour to Dákwah. They were just a few hours too late everywhere; so, to revenge themselves, they plundered, in the sight of six hundred Turkish soldiers, the village of Suwáydah, belonging to my dragoman Azar, whose life they threatened, and also Abbadáh and Haraán el Awáníd. So we rode into Damascus, escaping by peculiar good fortune a hundred horsemen and two hundred dromedary riders, sent on purpose to murder me. I was never more flattered in my life, than to think that it would take three hundred men to kill me. The felon act, however, failed."
Rashíd Pasha's Intrigue with the Druzes—My Account from Damascus.
"I wish each man's forehead were a magic lantern of his inner self."