A very ancient and plausible Christian tradition, which since the rise of Islam has also been accepted implicitly by the Moslems, identifies the Hauran with the “Land of Uz” where dwelt the patriarch Job. Three towns on the western slopes of the Druse Mountain perpetuate his story. Bishop William of Tyre, writing in the twelfth century, mentions the popular belief that Job’s friend Bildad the Shuhite dwelt at Suweida, and the inhabitants of this village boast that the patriarch himself was their first sheikh. At Kanawat a group of very old ruins is commonly known as the “Convent of Job,” and at Bosra, the ancient capital of the Hauran, there is a Latin inscription in his praise. Probably this belonged to a sixth century leper asylum; for the suffering patriarch early came to be considered the special patron of those who, like himself, were afflicted with the most mysterious and loathsome of diseases.
But it is in the plain that memories of this Biblical drama cluster most closely. Nawa, twenty miles northwest of Derʿa, has for two thousand years been honored as Job’s birthplace. An hour’s ride to the south of this village there stood fifteen hundred years ago a splendid church dedicated to the Man of Uz, and part of the ruined “Monastery of Job” is still in good enough condition to be used as Turkish barracks. Near by is shown the rock on which he leaned while arguing with his three friends—it is a small basalt monument erected by Rameses II.—also the stone trough in which he washed after his afflictions were ended, and the tomb of the patriarch and his wife.
In spite of the naïve and often impossible localization of particular incidents of the story of Job, it is quite possible that the very old tradition is correct, and the mysterious Land of Uz across which roamed the herds and flocks of “the greatest of all the Children of the East” was this same free, fertile tableland along which we are now traveling. Before the Hauran was so largely given over to agriculture, it must have been an ideal grazing country; it has always been subject to forays by robber tribes from the desert;[19] and the “great wind from the wilderness” which smote the dwelling of Job’s eldest son[20] would perhaps nowhere else blow with such fury as on this high, open plateau.
There was just such a great wind from the wilderness the last time I went to Damascus. The Hauran bears a deserved reputation for coolness and healthfulness; but that day, as happens two or three times each summer, there was a sirocco. The wind was indeed blowing—blowing a furious gale of perhaps thirty-five miles an hour; but it came straight from the eastern desert and scorched as if it had been a blast from an opened furnace door. I did not have a thermometer with me; but, from sirocco experiences elsewhere, I should judge that the temperature in the train was not under a hundred and five degrees. The drinking-water that we had brought for the journey became warm and nauseating; but we put it to good use in soaking the back of our necks, where it evaporated so quickly in the dry, burning wind that it stung like ice for a few seconds, and then was gone. Strange as it may seem, the only other way to mitigate the heat was to shut the car windows and keep the breeze out.
There were fortunately some interesting incidents to enliven the long, hot ride over the monotonous plain. We did not see any of the renowned “strong bulls of Bashan,”[21] or any other cattle grazing on the plain, but we watched slow caravans bearing wheat to the coast, as they have been doing for millenniums past. They could never carry all the grain that this productive district might harvest, and the railways should prove a rich boon to the Hauran. We pondered curiously as to why the stations were never by any chance just at the towns and why the track should swing far to the right and left in great curves, as if it were ascending a difficult grade, when the only engineering problem involved in its construction could have been solved by laying a ruler on the map and drawing a straight line down the center of the level plain. A fellow-traveler explained to us that the course of the railway had not been determined by the usual considerations, such as economy of construction and the desirability of passing through the most densely populated districts, but by the amount of bakhsheesh which wealthy landowners would pay the government in order to have the line pass through their estates.
We stopped an unconscionable length of time at every station, for no evident reason; and when we did get ready to start there were so many vociferous warnings that very naturally none of them was heeded by the passengers who had got off for refreshments. So finally the rapidly moving train would be chased by a crowd of excited peasants, most of whom carried big bundles and wore long, hampering garments. Several were left behind at lonely stations. There would be another train—to-morrow! Of course, all the dogs ran after us. Provided they are well-fed, dogs and children are exactly the same the world over; and these were not the starved, sullen curs which lie in Oriental gutters, but were wide-awake, fun-loving fellows who ran merrily alongside the train for a half-mile from the town, and had no difficulty in understanding our English shouts of encouragement. As we were pulling out of one of the stations, a very reverend, gray-bearded old farmer stole a ride on the running-board; but he misjudged the quickly increasing speed of the train, and, when he at last decided to jump off, rolled head-over-heels down the steep embankment. The last we saw of him, he was gazing after us with a ludicrously dejected countenance whose every lineament expressed stern disapproval of the nervous haste of these degenerate modern days.
As a rule the other travelers were too hot and tired to afford us much entertainment; but one new arrival, not finding a seat elsewhere, tried to force his way into the harem-compartment which Turkish railways always provide for the seclusion of Moslem ladies. The lord and master of the particular harem occupying this compartment resented the intrusion with such a frenzy of threatening gesticulation and insulting malediction that the members of our party who were unaccustomed to the ways of the East expected to see murder committed forthwith. The conductor, who interposed as peace-maker, was—as is usual on this holy railway—a Turk who knew no Arabic, and he consequently had great difficulty in determining what the quarrel was about; but the Syrians have a healthy fear of any one wearing a uniform, so the trouble was finally adjusted without bloodshed.
Long, slow caravans have always been crossing the Hauran
