Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine

by Laurence Oliphant

The old Roman wall can be traced for a mile and a half, enclosing an area strewn with the remains of a theatre, hippodrome, temple, aqueducts, and mole; while a second line of fortification, still in admirable preservation, and over half a mile in extent, marks the enceinte of the old Crusading fortress, with its castle and donjon keep, its cathedral, its Northern church, and harbour. This tendency on the part of travellers is the more to be regretted as the opportunity of examining these extensive ruins is now about to pass away, never again to return.

The Slav colonists, whose immigration I described in my last letter, are laying out broad streets right across the most interesting ruins, using the old foundations, appropriating the beautiful masonry, the white stones which formed the temple built by Herod, and the brown limestone blocks of the cathedral of the crusaders, quarrying into ancient buildings beneath the surface of the ground, levelling down the ruins at one place, levelling them up in another, and so utterly transforming the whole picturesque area that it will soon be no longer recognizable. Within five months over twenty good stone houses have been built, some of three stories high, others with vaults for merchandise and storing grain; in some cases the old Crusading vaults, evidently used for the same purpose, have been made available. The dwellings are being built on the plan which renders the towns of the Moslem Slavs of European Turkey so dull and uninteresting; they are all enclosed with courtyards, the high stone walls of which jealously guard the harems of the proprietors. In this respect these western Mohammedans are far more particular than the Arabs, who allow their women comparative freedom; but during the period of my stay in Cæsarea I did not see one of the female colonists.

Their male belongings, however, were most hospitable, especially when they found that I knew their country and was familiar with Mostar and Cognitza, in the neighbourhood of which towns had been their former homes. They were the landed aristocracy of their own country, and have, therefore, brought a considerable amount of wealth with them. A large tract of the most fertile land of the plain of Sharon has been donated to them by the Turkish government, and there can be no doubt that the country will gain by their settlement in it. In manners and costume they form a marked contrast to the natives, who are evidently much impressed by their wealth and dignity.

The lower or peasant class of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not obliged, when the country was conquered by the Moslems, to change their religion, and they have continued Christians; while the descendants of their masters, who remained the proprietors of the soil, became bigoted Mussulmans. The consequence has been that now that the country has been handed over to the Austrians, the Christian peasantry have naturally found protection from the authorities against the oppression of their former masters, who, unable to endure the humiliation of seeing the tables turned, and their old servants enabled to defy them with impunity, have sold all their possessions and migrated to the dominions of the sultan, rather than endure the indignities to which they declare they were exposed from their new Christian rulers and their old Christian serfs—very much on the same principle that the Southern States became intolerable to some of the landed proprietors after the emancipation of their slaves. Whether they will agree with their Circassian neighbours remains yet to be seen. They form the avant garde of a much larger migration which is to follow as soon as arrangements can be made to receive them. One of the leading men, who has opened a store, assigned me an unfinished house as a lodging, and said that he intended to enlarge it into a hotel for travellers.

It is worthy of the notice of intending travellers in Palestine next season that they can now drive the whole way, if they wish, in wagons belonging to the German colonists, from Jerusalem to Nazareth, in four easy days, instead of having to ride, and camp in tents as heretofore. There are excellent hotels at Jaffa. The next stopping-place would, now that accommodation is promised there, be Cæsarea, the next day to Haifa, where the hotel is being enlarged and put on a thoroughly comfortable and European basis, and the next day to Nazareth, where good quarters can be obtained at the convent, but where, if this route comes to be adopted, a hotel will doubtless shortly be built. As soon as travellers give up their present expensive habit of travelling through Palestine with tents, the hotel accommodation will be increased, and the existing carriage roads, as well as the vehicles which traverse them, be improved. The government has recently determined to construct a carriage road along the coast from Acre to Beyrout and Tripoli, which, if it is carried out, will alter all the existing conditions of travel.

The most striking features of the ruins of Cæsarea are the Crusading castle and the old Roman mole. The former is built upon a long, narrow reef or breakwater, partly artificial, which runs out into the sea for one hundred and sixty yards, forming the southern side of the harbour, while the northern side is formed by a sort of mole or jetty more than two hundred feet long, which is composed of some sixty or seventy prostrate columns lying side by side in the water like rows of stranded logs. They are from five to twenty feet in length, and average about eighteen inches in diameter. I never in my life before saw such an array of granite pillars so closely piled together or used for such a purpose. Indeed, to judge by those which remain, Cæsarea must have been a city of columns. The crusaders used them to thorough-bind their walls, from which the butts project like rows of cannon from the side of a man-of-war. They must have built many hundreds of old Roman columns thus into their fortification.

The Crusading wall enclosing the town rises from a moat which is about forty feet wide, but, being much filled in with rubbish, is not more than five or six feet deep. The wall itself is about nine feet thick, with buttresses at intervals which are from thirty to fifty feet long and project from twenty to twenty-six feet; but it is especially in the castle and donjon, which is built out into the sea on the projecting reef, that the columns are used as thorough-bonds. Some of these are of red granite, others of gray. The Bosnian colonists are perching a café on the ruins of the old donjon, immediately above two magnificent prostrate columns of red granite, nine feet long and four in diameter. I observed here also a finely polished block of red granite over six feet square and three feet six inches thick. There is also a curious double tessellated pavement, evidently of two periods, as the upper tesseræ are at least six inches above the lower ones. I am afraid, as the masons are working immediately above them, they will soon disappear, as will also a beautiful carved capital in white marble. I scrambled up to the top of this picturesque ruin, where the rib of the groined roof of the upper chamber still remains supported on a corbel in the form of a human head, and looked out of the pointed, arched window sheer down seventy feet on the sea, beating against the base of the sea wall. The mouth of the small artificial harbour is about two hundred yards across, but the latter is too much exposed and too small ever to be of much value.

Among the Roman remains, the hippodrome, the theatre, and the aqueduct are the most interesting. The first is a sunken level space about three hundred yards long by one hundred wide, surrounded by a mound, and in the middle are three truncated blocks of red granite, which, when standing on each other, must have formed a conical pillar about nine feet high and seven feet diameter at the base. There is also another fine block of red granite nearly forty feet long and four feet in diameter, which has been broken. The theatre is a semicircular building of masonry in an immense artificial mound, surrounded by a trench near the sea. It is mentioned by Josephus as capable of containing a large number of persons. Indeed, the account by this historian of the building of this city by Herod the Great, which I have just been reading, is most interesting. It occupied twelve years, and was finished thirteen years before Christ. He says that the stones of which the sea wall was built were fifty feet in length, eighteen in breadth, and nine in depth.

For nearly six hundred years it was a Christian city and the seat of an archbishop, then for five hundred years it fell under Moslem rule, and an Arab traveller in A.D. 1035 describes it as “an agreeable city, irrigated with running water and planted with date palms and oranges, surrounded by a strong wall pierced by an iron gate, and containing a fine mosque.” Then for one hundred and fifty years it remained a Crusading stronghold, while its final and complete destruction by the Sultan Bibars took place in 1265 A.D., since which time it has remained a howling wilderness. I have dwelt somewhat fully on the present aspect of the ruins, as the transformation they are undergoing will soon be complete.

From Cæsarea I followed the coast northward with the high-level aqueduct, which in places is still in tolerably good preservation, on my right. This aqueduct was the chief source of the water supply for the inhabitants. It was eight miles long, and at one point tunnels the rock for a quarter of a mile, thirty feet below its surface. There was also a low-level aqueduct, three miles long, which drew its water supply from the Crocodile River. At some seasons this is a dangerous stream to ford, though I experienced no difficulty. That it is not misnamed I possess indisputable proof, for a few weeks ago an Arab acquaintance presented me with a piece of crocodile skin about a foot square, cut from the hide of a crocodile which he himself helped to kill in this river. Passing Tantura, which also contains some Crusading ruins and rock-cut tombs, I reached the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, which I had not visited for eighteen months, and where I was pleased to find the colony in a thriving condition, the colonists hopeful, industrious, and contented, the crops promising fairly, and their progress only checked by the refusal of the government to allow them to build permanent dwellings, a difficulty which it is hoped may be overcome by a judicious display of firmness and patience.