C. R. Conder

“ The silence is broken suddenly by the musical cry of the Muedhdhin on the minaret of a mosque—a long, rolling, and tremulous note, echoing all over Jerusalem, as he “testifies there is no God but God,” and calls to the faithful that “prayer is better than sleep.” The simple dignity of Islâm contrasts with the superstition, the hurried services, the tawdry magnificence of degraded Eastern churches, and we understand how it was that the reformed faith of Muḥammad conquered Asia. The second scene is that of the summer noon, which presents to us an epitome of the long history of the Holy City. ”

“ There is something peculiarly soothing in the Syrian starlight; the planets are brighter than in the north, the milky way looks like a long white cloud, the moon, as she rises, is often accompanied by a silvery vapour floating over the mountain-tops. The silence is broken by the sigh of the night wind among the olives which form a black lattice-work overhead. In the village at intervals one hears the barking of the troops of savage dogs, and in the open plain the shrill gamut of the jackals, rising note by note, and ending in a sort of shake or quavering sound. ”

“ Shechem is a fine well-watered city. Damascus is bedded in gardens, and bristles with minarets, but there is nothing in the site or architecture of Jerusalem, as a whole, which can save it from the imputation of ugliness.
Going down David Street and through the fruit bazaar, with its background of arches, wooden balconies, marble portals brown with age, and fragments of Crusading architecture, you come at length through a bye-lane to the Jews’ wailing-place—a narrow street with the high Temple rampart rising on the east. All along the narrow court the Jews are crowded on Friday. ”

“ The rough cobbles of the slippery market-place are crowded with chattering peasants. A few pious Moslems, unconscious of the world, are praying with their faces towards Mekkah on the steps of the Protestant bishop’s palace, where the town dogs also lie in summer, but go down to the covered bazaar when the winter rains and snow begin. The Armenian patriarch is being escorted, from St. James on Sion to the Holy Sepulchre, by a modest procession. A Moslem bier passes by, and men crowd round it to lend their shoulders for a few steps as a pious act. ”

“ The silence of the desert surrounds it, and only the shrill note of the golden grackle, or the howl of a jackal, breaks this solemn stillness. Not a tree or shrub is in sight, walls of white chalk and sharp ridges shut out the western breeze, and the sigh of the wind in the trees is a sound never heard in the solitude. The place seems dead. The convent and its valley have a fossilised appearance. Scarcely less dead and fossil are its wretched inmates, monks exiled for crimes or heresy, and placed in charge of a few poor lunatics. ”

“ Descending from our mountain camp, we rode north-west, over the well-watered plain, with its long rows of poplars, narrow strips of green turf beside the streams, and long vineyards, with vines trained into little bushes, as in Burgundy. Thence we ascended a rugged path over the grey rocky slopes of Anti-Lebanon, and our view extended over the broad brown Bukei’a, and as far as the long gleaming ridge of Lebanon, “the milk-white mountain,” the outline of which is broken by cones and rounded tops, whilst below a dusky fringe of brushwood creeps up the slopes. ”

“ It can never be anything else. Whatever be the outcome of the regeneration of the Turkish empire, Jerusalem can never be a very great centre of trade. It will remain what it has been for so many centuries—the Holy City. To the Jew it is the city of David and Solomon, to the Christian the city where our Lord was crucified, to the Moslem also a city sanctified by many traditions, and by the memory of the proud days when it was won for Islâm by Omar and by Saladin. ”

“ First we cross the flat sea plain, in part sandy and barren, scattered with the black tents or reed cabins of the small encampments of Bedawin, a pastoral race gradually losing ground before the peasantry; in part a cultivated and very rich corn land, with wretched villages of mud perched on eminences whence the breeze is better felt. To the new comer these hamlets, most of which represent sites older than the time of Joshua, have a deserted appearance. The eye misses the contrast between roof and wall, and the glazed windows and wooden doors seen in Europe. ”

“ The horrors of the siege, famine, rapine, and dissension within, crucifixion and torture for those who deserted, are detailed by Josephus. “A deep silence also and a kind of deadly night had seized on the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves”; yet there was no thought of submission among those desperate men who fought on for all that was dear to them—for faith and freedom as of old. They had been goaded to rebellion after years of oppression, and Nero was as guilty of the burning of Jerusalem as he was of the burning of Rome. ”

“ Their bugles blow a monotonous tune, to which the drums keep time, and the men tread, not in step, but in good cadence to the music. If it be Easter, the native crowd is mingled with the hosts of Armenian and Russian pilgrims, the first ruddy and stalwart, their women handsome and black-eyed, the men fierce and dark; the Russians, yet stronger in build and more barbarian in air, distinguished from every other nationality by their unkempt beards, their long locks, their great fur caps, and boots. ”

“ Not less affecting was the aspect of the congregation, many with sad pale faces telling of no common histories. One man especially used to draw my attention; light haired, pale, gaunt, and shabby, kneeling with his little taper in one hand, the other held out in an attitude of entreaty; his wild eyes were fixed on the marble Tomb, as though he could hardly believe that, after many miles of journey, he at last really beheld the Holy Sepulchre. In him one might fancy a penitent of the old Crusading times, sent on pilgrimage to expiate some great crime ”

“ THE ROMAN CITY When the last smouldering fires had burned out among the ruins, the silence of death came over the desolate heaps which had once been Jerusalem, nor does it appear certain that any buildings were erected, or any native population allowed to dwell on the site, for sixty-five years after the fall of the city. The camp of the 10th legion was built on the plateau of the upper city, and was defended by the three great towers, which would form a citadel still in case of need. ”

“ But however sincere the beliefs of the past may have been, we cannot but confess, when studying in detail the traditional topography of Jerusalem, that it has grown and changed just as the city itself has done, because of the succession of various ruling races, and because to Jew, Christian, and Moslem alike there has always been a Holy City here which they coveted, and for which they shed their blood. ”

“ Situate at the end of the ridge, five hundred feet above the sea, reached by a steep ascent of steps, and guarded by a carefully-constructed entrance to the courtyard and by savage dogs, the old monastery stands facing the fresh breeze, and surrounded by vineyards and gardens, among which small chapels are dedicated to the Virgin, to St. John Baptist, and to St. Theresa, patroness of the bare-footed or reformed Carmelites. The huge pile, square and lofty, with a dome to its chapel and a broad flat roof, looks more like a castle than a house of devotion. ”

“ The Romans despised a civilisation and a religion which were far more ancient and more lofty than their own. The Jews, when governed honestly, were content to remain under the empire; they only asked for freedom to follow their own law, as they had asked the Greeks in earlier days. But Roman prejudices against them can best be understood by reading Tacitus, who hated them, or the poets, who knew only the more degraded class of Jewish hucksters crowded in the ghetto in Rome. ”

“ Immutability is the most striking law of Eastern life. The Bible becomes a living record to those who have heard in men{198}’s mouths the very phrases of the Bible characters. The name of every village almost is Hebrew, each stands on the great dust-heap into which the ancient buildings beneath its present cabins have crumbled, and the old necropolis is cut in rock, near the modern site. For thousands of years the people have gone on living in the same way and in the same place, venerating (perhaps in ignorance) the same shrines, building their fortresses on the same vantage-ground. ”

“ A Christian basilica once stood close to the Sun Temple; but its dimensions are dwarfed by the huge columns, which seem to bear witness to the grandeur of the genius of their Roman founder, dwarfing the puny attempts of Byzantine art and intellect. The church is all gone, except the foundations. The great pillars of the Sun Temple have fallen one by one; but six weather-beaten survivors still resist the fury of the winter and the constant eating away of the frost, though their bases have all been sapped by the natives, in seeking for the metal cores run into the joints. ”

“ Dark-eyed beauties, who are not ashamed to show their tattooed faces and nose-rings, meet you at every corner; and, if you know the city well, you may penetrate into the recesses of the wicked bath-houses, or visit the slave-market. Damascus is still the scene of intrigue and passion, as of old; the yearly poisonings are incredibly numerous, and the place is one of the chief strongholds of that obstinate fanaticism which refuses to see anything good in the manners and civilisation of the “heathen.” ”

“ Our camp was west of the place, and looked out on the white mosque of ’Azz ed Dîn with its minaret, the great threshing-floor with its heaps of yellow grain, the beautiful gardens of palms, oranges, and tamarisks set in cactus hedges, while behind, on the east, was the stony range of Gilboa, on the north the brown plain, the blue Nazareth hills, the volcanic cone of Jebel Dŭhy, and the shoulder of Carmel towards the west. ”

“ Long trains of camels came in, and the swarthy Bedawîn wrangled with the soldiers at the gate. The market-girls from Bethlehem appeared under David’s Tower, and, as the crowd thickened, black priests in saucepan-like hats jostled sickly Jews, with fur caps, long lovelocks, and dirty gabardines. The heavily-shod, unkempt Russian pilgrims mingled with sleek Rabbis, with Europeans, and German residents; Armenians with apple-cheeks and broad red sashes, and fierce Kurds with long moustachios and swords, were also numerous. ”

“ The white road wound down the valley, which became constantly more luxuriant, whilst the hills grew higher and glared more desolate. On every side tributary streams gushed down, and we began to pass by white villas, with primitive frescoes on the walls, by groups of veiled ladies on white donkeys, and by rich merchants on fine mares. At last the valley opened, and our cavalcade, of seven horsemen, came cantering down an avenue of poplars, until, turning a sharp corner, we came suddenly in sight of the entrance to Damascus. ”

“ I have attended many religious services, Christian, Jewish, and Moslem, but none more remarkable for barbaric grandeur and pomp. The songs of Latin monks, the shrill nasal clamour of the Armenians, the Jewish gesticulation, are all far less dignified than the solemn chants of the Russian cathedral. The fanaticism of the pilgrims, drawn from the lowest and most ignorant peasant class, surpasses anything in Christendom, and is only equalled by that of the Moslems. ”

“ The miserable fields are fenced in with stone walls, the hovels are rudely built of stone, the hill to the east is of hard rock, with only a few scattered fig-gardens, the ancient sepulchres are cut in a low cliff, and a great reservoir south of the village is excavated in rock. The place seems as it were turned to stone, and we can well imagine that the lonely patriarch found nothing softer than a stone for the pillow under his head, when on the bare hill side he slept, and dreamed of angels. ”

“ Jerusalem is a very ugly city. It is badly built of mean stone houses perched on the slope of the watershed, and seems in constant danger of sliding into the Kedron Valley. Beautiful bits of architecture are to be admired in its interior—the Gothic façade of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand walls of the Temple, the glowing interior of the mosque; the view towards the east is also very fine, a long wall of far-off mountains, with a foreground of embattled parapets and slender minarets standing out against the distance. ”

“ The water is led to the left of the high altar, past a well-mouth, by which it is drawn up for pilgrims, and so by a channel to the masonry fountain, where it comes out through metal spouts under an arched recess broad enough for fifteen women to stand side by side. A pool is formed below at the trough, and here the constant succession of the Nazareth women may be seen all day filling their great earthenware jars, standing ankle-deep in water, their pink or green-striped baggy trousers tucked between their knees ”