Improvements by Jezzar — Trade — Taxes — White promontory, and river Leontes — Tyre — Seide — Earthquake — Kesrawan — Syrian wines — Beirût — Anchorage — Provisions — River Adonis — Antûra — Harrîsé — Tripoli — Ladakia — Journey to Aleppo or Haleb.
Galilee is here divided from Samaria by a ridge of hills. Six hours were employed in passing from Nazareth to Acré, by the Arabs more properly termed Acca. At a village on the route observed a sarcophage, now used for watering cattle, and some scattered fragments of columns. But few villages appear between Nazareth and Acré, though the land be fertile.
Acré is fortified with a wall of very moderate strength, having only one gate. It is a pretty large town, but many of the houses are empty: yet the population may be estimated between fifteen and twenty thousand. There remains part of a double fosse, which extended round the town, but is daily dilapidated for modern erections. There is no castle nor other relique of antiquity.
The whole face of the city has been changed, being enlarged and adorned with the improvements of the celebrated Achmet Pasha, who has built an elegant mosque and baths, two markets, a palace, and reservoirs for water. There are three Khans, or places for receiving goods, answering the purpose at once of a warehouse and inn. There are also five or six mosques, a small establishment of the Franciscans, and a Greek and Armenian church. In one of the Khans the Europeans lodge.
A mean tomb has been erected by the Pasha, to the memory of the celebrated Shech Daher, close to the sea, and at a little distance from the northern extremity of the wall.
Acré stands on a promontory, near a small gulph, and has no haven. Vessels anchor in favourable weather near the shore, but the European ships anchor opposite Haifa, a small place at the foot of Mount Carmel, where the water is generally smooth. The trade of Acré is pretty considerable; the Europeans bring broad cloth, lead, tin, and a variety of other articles, and export cotton in return. From Egypt there are large imports of rice. The soil of Egypt is not very proper for cotton, which is a staple commodity of Syria.
The long reign of Achmet Pasha el Jezzâr[56], accompanied with immense influence and great wealth, might naturally lead to conceive, that, blending his interests with those of his subjects, he would have exerted his authority in promoting their happiness. On the contrary, the large plain near Acré is left almost a marsh, and marks of idle magnificence have been substituted for the useful cares of agriculture. A striking contrast arises between his conduct and that of the Shech Daher, his predecessor, who raised Acré from a village to a large town, and doubled the population of the district.
Jezzâr was the first governor in the empire who laid a tax on articles of consumption, as wine, grain, and the like. Even meat and fish are materials of impost. He has erected granaries, a laudable design, but deficient in the execution; for the grain being ill preserved, and the oldest served out first, it is not only disagreeable as food, but unprolific when distributed for seed to the peasants. These imposts form the peculiar revenue of the Pasha; the other resources arising as usual from the tax on land, which amounts to about a twentieth of the rent, the capitation tax on Christians, and the customs; which last in this government are arbitrary, and neither regulated by the rules of the Porte, nor the capitulations entered into by Europeans. Nevertheless, the chief source of the riches of Jezzâr is the Pashalik of Damascus, which, by means of the usual largesses at the Porte, he contrived to add to his former government, a precedent very unusual in the Othman empire. His military force was once computed at twelve thousand; but, at the time of my visiting Acré, did not exceed four or five thousand.
Till the year 1791 the French had factories at Acré, Seidé, and Beirût. At that period they were all expelled from the territory of Jezzâr by a sudden mandate, which allowed them only three days to abandon their respective habitations, under pain of death.
Passing over the common, but just rule of supposing, that in a quarrel of this magnitude neither party was perfectly free from error, it may be fit to inquire what motives induced this ignominious expulsion, when a simple dismission, to be signified by various other means, would have answered the same purpose.