At Aleppo man is a dandy and vain,
At Shan [Damascus] he is niggard and mean,
And the Nizri [Egyptian] is simply a rascal.
Whilst “the lying of Damascus” is an illustration in the mouth of every Beyrutine. We have a rhyme of the kind touching one—
Sir Vicary Gibbs,
The inventor of fibs.
But Damascus says of herself, when describing a man who has became civilised: “He hath been Damascus’d.” These sharp sayings, indeed, are not confined to the capital and the port. As of old upon the Sorrentine Plains, to speak of no other place, every town had a nickname, a rhyme, or a tale attached to it, which “kinder ryled up” the inhabitants, so it is the case throughout modern Syria. Thus of Jerusalem men say, as of Meccah:
Her soil is sacred, her sons are soiled.
Of Tiberias, a town built of basalt:
Her stones are black, and her people are Jews.