Syria, the land of Lebanon

by Lewis Gaston Leary

We saw the bright reflection from the smooth sides of the mound long before we could distinguish the town lying beneath it, and for a while we were puzzled as to what it was—this huge, symmetrical object rising so abruptly from the great, flat plain, and seeming doubly immense because of the clear air and the absence of any neighboring elevation with which to compare its height. The acropolis is, indeed, no insignificant structure. The people of Homs believe it to be entirely artificial, and its appearance is in favor of such an hypothesis. The circular hill is almost a thousand feet in diameter and its platform stands a hundred feet above the plain. The sides rise so steeply that it would be impossible to scale them without a ladder; and, to make the summit absolutely inaccessible to an enemy, all the outer slope of the mound formerly bore a slippery coating of small, square basalt blocks. At present the platform is reached by a long, winding path; but even this is so steep as to be almost dangerous in places. During the Crusades the fortress of Homs was held alternately by the Christians and the Saracens; and it has suffered from so many assaults that nothing of the old castle now remains save a few fragments of tumbling wall and a ruined gateway.

As we came down into the plain and had a nearer view of the acropolis, we seemed to distinguish a multitude of houses beneath it; but the difficulty of getting a true perspective had deceived us. The city lay beyond and lower; what we now saw were not houses but graves. It was a great metropolis of the dead; thousands and tens of thousands of mounds were crowded close together at the foot of the fortress-hill. Some few were surmounted by stone canopies; but most of them were simple Moslem graves, ranged in long ranks looking toward the sacred city of Mecca, with one stone at the head and another at the foot, for the two angels to rest upon as they weigh the good and evil deeds of the dead. As one approaches nearly every great Syrian city, this is the order of interest and impressiveness; first the ruins of former power and grandeur, then the graves of those who trusted in that power and gloried in that grandeur, last the modern town with its poverty and squalor and ignorance.

In Greek times “Emesa,” as it was then called, was a place of no little size and importance, and during the Roman era one of its sons wore the imperial purple[58] and one of its daughters became empress.[59] The modern city contains some sixty thousand inhabitants, the large majority of whom are Moslems. The Christians are nearly all Orthodox “Greeks,” but there is also a tiny Protestant community. We were guests of the native pastor, and later it lent a new impressiveness to our memories of Homs when we learned that our host was stabbed the very week after our visit. Fortunately, however, the wound was not a mortal one. The city is the market-place of Ard Homs, “the Land of Homs,” and its bazaars are crowded with fellahîn from all the country round about. The chief industry is the weaving of silks. The citizens claim that there are five thousand looms, and it is easy to believe this statement; as we walked along the streets, which were well-paved and cleaner than those of most Syrian towns, there were whole blocks where every house resounded with the whirring of wheels and the clicking of shuttles.

The home of our host, like almost every other residence in Homs, opened on a court which was separated from the street by a ten-foot wall. We rose at three o’clock the next morning to catch the diligence for Hama, said good-by all around in the lengthy Arabic fashion—and discovered that the key to the one gate was lost. Thereupon arose great bustle and confusion; the women rushed around looking everywhere for the missing key, while the worthy pastor brought a clumsy ladder to help us over the wall. But just as we were preparing to carry our heavy luggage up the ladder, the key was found, and a hard run brought us to the diligence with half a minute to spare.

This second coach had only two mules and one horse, and was a much smaller affair than that which had brought us from Tripoli. Although the driver was a Moslem to whom alcoholic beverages are strictly forbidden, he was considerably more than half-drunk. He had neglected to fasten the harness properly and, while we were rattling down a steep hill, the tangle of straps and strings dropped off one beast and dangled under his heels. Then, as soon as the harness was repaired, our driver let his reins fall among the flying hoofs. He took these mishaps very philosophically; much more so, to tell the truth, than we did. Doubtless he pitied us Western infidels for our evident nervousness and lack of faith. Suppose that the coach should indeed upset—it would be the will of Allah, and who were we to object!

We had but one fellow-traveler, a fat old Moslem wearing the turban of a haj who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He was a most companionable fellow who insisted upon explaining to us all the points of interest along the road; and the fact that his explanations were usually wrong did not in the least detract from our enjoyment of his company. Every time the diligence stopped—and, with our drunken driver and worn-out harness, this was quite often—the Haj would laboriously descend, spread out his handkerchief upon some clean, level spot alongside the road, and turn toward Mecca to recite his prayers. He must have been a very holy man.

The road from Homs to Hama runs almost due north, a straight white line cutting across the green fields. It is one of the oldest highways in the world. For at least five thousand years caravans have been passing along it just as we saw them—long strings of slow-moving camels laden with brightly colored bags of wheat. One could almost imagine that Pharaoh was again calling down the corn of Hamath to fill his granaries against the impending seven years of famine. But even here the old things are passing. Just beyond the line of camels, a longer line of peasant women, with dirty blue dresses kilted above their knees, were carrying upon their heads baskets of earth and stone for the road-bed of the new French railway. The carriage road is French, too; and a very good road it is. We noticed some men repairing it with a most ingenious roller. A huge rounded stone, drawn by two oxen, had its axle prolonged by a twenty-foot pole, at the end of which a bare-legged Syrian was fastened to balance the contrivance. If the stone had chanced to topple over, the spectacle of the captive road-maker dangling at the top of the slender flag-staff would have been well worth watching.

All along the journey we were reminded of the fact that this was not only the East, but the old, old East. The soil is fertile, but the very wheat-fields are different from ours. Only a few yards in width, they are often of prodigious length; the thin green strips sometimes stretch away until in the far distance they are lost over the curve of the treeless plain. At one place the road is cut through a hill honeycombed with rock-tombs, which the Haj said were of Jewish origin. Every now and then we passed a tell, or great hemispherical mound built up of the rubbish of dozens of ruined towns which, one after the other, were built upon the same site. Even as late as Roman times, this was a densely populated and prosperous district. There is now no timber available for building purposes, and so in a number of villages the houses are constructed with conical roofs of stone. Where the rock happens to be of a reddish tinge, the windowless structures remind one of nothing so much as a collection of Indian wigwams; where the stone is white, as at Tell Biseh, it glitters and sparkles like a city cut out of loaf sugar.

“Hamath the Great,” as the prophet Amos called it, is still the most important city between Damascus and Aleppo. It is larger than Homs and seems more prosperous, but the difference between the two is not marked enough to prevent considerable mutual jealousy. Hama is especially busy in the early morning, when the market squares are crowded with kneeling camels and the bazaars are bright with newly opened rolls of rich silks, which may be bought at ridiculously low prices—if the purchaser knows how to bargain.

You see the same types in other Syrian cities—rough camel-drivers, veiled ladies, ragged peasants, underfed soldiers, Moslem wise men and reverend Arab sheikhs. Along tourist-beaten routes, however, the picture lacks somewhat of perfection because of the Hotel d’Orient or Hotel Victoria in the background, and, just as you have warmed to an enthusiastic interest in the bright scenes of Oriental life, a pert young fellow in French clothes is apt to ask you into his shop or offer to guide you through the bazaars at ten francs a day. But while we were in Hama there was, so far as I know, no other Frank in the city, only one other pair of European trousers, and but two natives who spoke any English. There is not even a resident missionary, and on the rare occasions when American ladies visit the city, they adopt the local costume, veil and all, in order to avoid annoying curiosity.