The traveler who journeys to Beirut from the west is naturally impressed by its scenes of Oriental life; but to one who has come hither from Lebanon or Damascus or even from Jerusalem, it seems almost a European city. Here is a French gas company, an English waterworks, a German hospital and an American college; here are post and telegraph offices, a harbor filled with shipping, and the terminus of a busy railway system. Four lines of electric tram-cars furnish quick transportation through the main streets to the attractive suburbs, and many of the wealthier residents possess automobiles. A score of printing-presses are at work and daily newspapers are sold by shouting newsboys. There are a dozen good hotels; and well-equipped stores, run on European lines, are rapidly crowding out the tiny shops of the typical Oriental merchant. Gaudy billboards extol the virtues of French cosmetics, English insurance companies and American sewing machines, phonographs and shoes, or announce the subjects of the moving-picture dramas for the coming week. Carriages throng the principal thoroughfares, the better class of citizens wear European costumes, and no passenger-steamship drops anchor in the harbor without being met by the red-shirted boatmen and suave interpreters of the enterprising tourist-agencies.
To the casual visitor, Beirut seems therefore a very peaceable, matter-of-fact place. He does not experience the feeling of half-confessed uneasiness which marked his strolls through the native quarters of other Oriental cities. Yet the busy every-day life of the seaport moves upon the thin crust of a seething volcano of hate, which all too often breaks out into murderous rage.
The Moslem inhabitants are, of course, backed by all the power of the government, legal and illegal; but they are much inferior in numbers and in wealth to the Christian population. Religious jealousy is therefore never far from the boiling-point. Any insult or violence offered by an adherent of the one faith to a believer in the other is the signal for a long series of reprisals and counter-reprisals, and there is always the possibility that these may culminate in general rioting and massacre.
The morning I first landed in Beirut, the Christian watchman of the American Press was found almost literally cut in pieces. The assassin was absolutely identified by the print of his bare foot in a mass of soft mortar; but, being a Moslem, the authorities quickly released him and, without any evidence whatever, arrested a near relative of the dead man. The poor fellow had a perfect alibi, yet he was kept in prison until the family signified their willingness to have the police department refrain from any further investigation of the murder. This is a favorite method of procedure when a Moslem is guilty of a crime against a Christian.
It used to be a rare week that we heard of no assassinations, and a rarer year that knew no general rioting. One winter there was a murder each night for six weeks, Christians and Moslems being killed alternately. So regular was the succession of reprisals that a friend whom I had invited to make an evening visit with me postponed the trip on the ground that “this is the night for a Christian to be killed.” Frequent rumors would reach us of impending invasions of the Christian Quarter by Moslem mobs, and more than once the portentous war-cry of Din! Din Mohammed!—“The Faith! The Faith of Mohammed!”—rang in the ears of the terrified Christians. The morning I ended my residence in Beirut it was a prominent Moslem who was assassinated at the door of his own home. A few days afterwards, murderous mobs swept through the city chanting, “Oh, how sweet; oh, how joyful to cut the Christians’ throats!” The empty cartridges picked up after the slaughter were of the make imported exclusively for the use of the Turkish soldiers at the government barracks.
The undying religious hatred and frequent violence do not, however, endanger the lives of European or American residents, and probably never will do so unless some insane mob should get quite beyond the control of its leaders. Islam has learned the power of foreign warships. It should also be added that the native Protestants are hardly ever molested, save by accident, during these internecine conflicts; for the Moslems realize that this portion of the population never takes any part in religious strife. Even in the terrible summer of 1860, when all Syria was drenched with blood, only nine Protestants were killed.
During the past few months there has developed a new and unexpected phase of Beirut strife. Since the revolution of the Young Turks, a vigorous demand for political righteousness and even-handed justice has, in spite of all set-backs, been growing steadily among every race and faith of the empire. In Syria the new ideals and hopes found expression in the organization of a “Committee of Reform,” which demanded such elemental rights as the appointment of an Arabic-speaking governor of Beirut and the use of the vernacular in the courts of justice. Up to the present time, the governor has always been a Turk, and Turkish judges have understood the language of bribery better than the Arabic pleas of poor men who appeared before them.
Last spring the differences between the people of Beirut and the government became so acute that the city was put under martial law by the pasha, who also issued a proclamation dissolving the local branch of the Reform Committee and forbidding further gatherings of the citizens or discussion in the public press. Every newspaper of the city protested against these despotic acts by printing an issue which was absolutely blank, save that in the center of the first page there appeared the odious proclamation. Since then the governor has been recalled and, on the surface, the city is more quiet. But the startling, unhoped-for feature of this latest contest is that—for the first time in the sanguinary history of Beirut—Moslems and Christians and Jews have for the moment put aside their ancient feuds, that they might present a united front to the aggressions of the tyrannical local government. This spirit of union, even more than the desire for political reform which gave it birth, promises a new era of peace and prosperity for the most progressive city of beautiful, blood-stained Syria.
As has been said, however, the ordinary traveler sees no evidences of strife in the streets of Beirut. The largest and most conspicuous class of people whom he meets are not assassins or revolutionists, but students. This is no new thing, for the city has long been famous as a seat of learning. From the third to the sixth centuries A. D., its law school was the greatest in the Roman Empire, excelling even that of the capital and numbering its students by the thousand. One of the three commissioners who prepared the Institutes of Justinian was Professor Dorotheus of Beirut. In the early Saracen centuries, also, the city attained much scholarly fame and sent forth many of the foremost authorities on Moslem law and doctrine.
At the present day it is the greatest educational center in the Near East. Besides the schools maintained by each of the native churches and the mosque-schools and government academies, and institutions supported—presumably for political reasons by Italy and Russia, there are schools or colleges of the French Sisters of Charity, Sisters of the Holy Family, Ladies of Nazareth, Lazarists, Franciscans, Capuchins and Jesuits, the German Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, the British Syrian Mission, the Church of Scotland Mission to the Jews, and the American Presbyterian Mission, not to mention a number of others which have been organized by private individuals of missionary and philanthropic spirit. The total number of students who are being educated along modern lines is over twenty thousand.