Philip Khuri Hitti

“ The desert, which in many of its aspects resembles the sea, has in its movement through history behaved like a mighty one, endlessly repeating the pattern of ebb and flow. The struggle has its counterpart in the equally ancient conflict between the bedouins, the 'have-not' nomads of the desert, and the settled agriculturists, the 'haves' of the fertile plains. Centuries before and centuries after the Israelites, covetous eyes from the desert turned towards the neighbouring lands 'flowing with milk and honey'. ”

“ A wave of jubilation spread over the Arab world. In Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo, Jerusalem and other towns the new measures were hailed with fireworks, bonfires and eloquent orations. It was the dawn of a new day. Ottoman Utopia lurked round the corner. Syria sent delegates to the parliament. Its nationalists founded in Constantinople the Arab-Ottoman fraternity to promote the new cause. ”

“ Two years later Ali was assassinated by a personal enemy and hastily interred outside Kufah at Najaf, where his shrine has become the greatest centre of pilgrimage in Shiite Islam. Deficient in the traits that make a politician, he was rich in those that, from the Arab point of view, constitute a perfect man. Eloquent in speech, sage in counsel, valiant in battle, true to his friends, magnanimous to his foes, he was raised by tradition to the position of paragon of Moslem chivalry. ”

“ The historical importance of Syria does not arise solely from its original contributions to the higher life of man. It results partly from its strategic position in relation to the three historic continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, and its functioning as a bridge for transmitting cultural influences from its neighbouring civilizations, together with commercial wares. As the core of the Near East, which itself lay at the centre of the ancient world, Syria early became the principal transmitter of culture. ”

“ Amidst the confused crowd an aristocrat might be seen on horseback cloaked in a silk robe and armed with a sword. The screaming voices of sherbet sellers and sweet- meat vendors competed with the incessant tramp of passers- by and of donkeys and camels laden with the varied products of the desert and the town. The entire city atmosphere was charged with all kinds of smell. The demand on eye, ear and nose must have been overwhelming. ”

“ Not only did the early Syrians furnish the ancient world with its finest and highest thought but they implemented it with the provision of those simple-looking magic-working signs, called alphabet, through which most of the major literatures of the world are preserved. No invention compares in importance with that of the alphabet, developed and disseminated by the merchants and scribes of ancient Lebanon. ”

“ For almost two and three-quarter centuries the slave sultans dominated by the sword one of the most turbulent areas of the world. Generally uncultured and brutal, they nevertheless endowed Cairo with some architectural monuments of which it still rightly boasts. Two other services to the cause of Islam were rendered by them: they cleared Syria of the remnant of the Crusaders and they definitely checked the redoubtable advance of the Mongol hordes of Hulagu and of Timur (Tamerlane) . ”

“ As late as May 1945, when Syria objected to the admission of new French troops and broke off relations with France, the army of occupation repeated its performance of eighteen years earlier and bombarded Damascus with aircraft and field guns. The day was May 29; delegates from all over the world were holding at San Francisco the charter meeting of the United Nations. No worse day could have been chosen. The shock was universal. The British intervened and restored order. By the end of the year France and Britain had agreed to consult about evacuating their troops from both Syria and Lebanon. ”

“ The soul of the Christian, the Moslem and the Jew—wherever he may be—turns to some sacred spot in Syria for religious inspiration. Every thoughtful Western man can trace some of his most fundamental values and beliefs to that ancient land.
Closely associated with its religious contribution was the ethical message southern Syria—Palestine—conveyed. Its people were the first to insist that man is created in the image of God and that each is the brother of every other man under God's fatherhood. ”

“ On two following occasions, when Syria accused Turkey of intending aggression, Russia warned of her readiness to support the Syrian side. Thus did the Soviet Union seek and find common ground for identifying her interests with those of Syria and the rest of the Arab world: hostility to the three great Western powers, arms against Israel and sympathy with the Pan-Arab movement. It was its policy that won friends, not its ideology. Officially the Communist party remained banned in Syria, as it was in other Arab states, though one seat in the parliament was held by its leader. ”

“ In Syria, Arab nationalists had to concentrate their efforts first against Ottoman rule and then against the French mandate and to that extent part company with the general movement of Pan-Arabism. An anaemic Syrian nationalism developed. In Syria, as in Egypt, the young generation was thus torn between a grandiose Pan-Arab loyalty and a provincial one called forth by the realities of existing conditions. In all cases a powerful weapon adopted from the Western arsenal was therewith directed against the West. The experience of Egypt and Syria was repeated in Lebanon and Iraq as well. ”

“ Timur spread havoc and ruin throughout south-western Asia until Syria lay prostrate beneath his feet. For three days in October 1400 Aleppo was given over to plunder. Its citadel was perhaps for the first time taken by storm, the invader having sacrificed of his men enough to fill the moat with their corpses. Some twenty thousand of the city's inhabitants were slaughtered and their severed heads piled high. The city's priceless schools and mosques built by Nurids and Ayyubids were for ever destroyed. The routing of the advance forces of Faraj opened the way to Damascus. ”

“ More than any other one people the Syriac-speaking Christians contributed to that general awakening and intel- lectual renaissance centred in Abbasid Baghdad which is considered the chief glory of classical Islam. Between 750 and 850 the Arab world was the scene of one of the most spectacular and momentous movements in the history of thought. The movement was marked by translations into Arabic from Persian, Greek and Syriac. The Arabian Moslem brought with him no art, science or philosophy and hardly any literature ”

“ Another innovation, which tended toward a sedentary mode of life and exercised an even more abiding influence on man, was the practice of agriculture, which began in the late Mesolithic or perhaps the early Neolithic period. Wheat and barley grew wild in North Syria and Palestine, and their nutritive value must have been discovered very early. Flint sickles and other implements left by Natufian cave-dwellers in considerable numbers prove that they and their North Syrian contemporaries were among the first in the Near East—and in the world—to till the ground. ”

“ Competition with sea traders was keen but the Portuguese insistence on high, almost monopolistic, prices gave the traders in Syria their chance. No enduring benefits evidently accrued to Syria from this new development in its trade, which was largely in European hands. The population of the land continued on its downward course in numbers as in prosperity.
On the heels of European businessmen came missionaries, teachers, travellers and explorers. The door was thus opened to modern influences, one of the most pregnant facts in the history of Ottoman Syria. ”

“ Goats and sheep, particularly goats, have furthered the process of erosion by eating up grass and young sprouts on the hillsides, leaving the soil loose and more exposed to the action of running water. Because of the relief of the Lebanon mountains and the over-drainage of the Palestinian highlands, Syria has always had scant natural grazing for cattle and horses, but sheep and goats can find enough forage.
Originally an American wild animal, the horse found its way into eastern Asia in remote prehistoric times and, while still in wild form, made its way as far as Palestine. ”

“ By the time Augustus became emperor, the Romans and their subject peoples had virtually harmonized the Greek and Latin civilizations. Greek remained the cultural language of the eastern provinces and Aramaean the ver- nacular, but Latin became the official language of adminis- tration. The Greeks were weak on the political and organizational side, which was exactly where the Romans were strong. The Romans were rather poor in the artistic and philosophic field, where the Greeks were rich. Thus did Hellenism, strengthened and enriched under the Roman aegis, continue its sway over Syria. ”

“ In recent years the people of this country, after an eclipse of centuries under Mamluks and Turks, have provided the Arab East with its intellectual leadership. In the nineteenth century the Syrians, those of Lebanon in particular, were the first to establish vital contacts with the West through education, emigration and travel and thus served as the medium through which European and American influences seeped into the Near East. ”

“ Their industry is rich in worked and carved bones and notched arrow-heads.
The discovery of an almost complete skull of a large dog in a cave on Mount Carmel provides the first Syrian evidence of the domestication of animals—another major step in human progress. The dog was domesticated when man was still a food gatherer and hunter whose movements were dictated by those of the wild animals he sought for food. But Syria was the home of several animals adaptable for taming, which led to a life of herding with a more reliable supply of food than hunting. ”

“ This is, in general, true of the whole Mediterranean region and is due to its location between two zones sharply contrasted in the amount of precipitation they receive: the dry trade-wind tract of Africa—largely desert—to the south, and Europe with its westerly winds on the north. It is these moisture-bearing westerlies which all the year round bring rain from the Atlantic to middle and northern Europe. They are in winter the prevailing winds in Syria; in summer the heat belt moves northward from the equator, and the country for months approaches the arid conditions of the Sahara. ”

“ The follower of Muhammad, no matter what his original nationality might have been, would now adopt the Arabic tongue and pass for an Arab. The Arabians themselves brought no science, no art, no tradition of learning, no heritage of culture from the desert. ”

“ In the Chalcolithic as in the Neolithic period, northern Syria remains the main cultural focus of the entire Near East. From Syria the knowledge of copper was disseminated in all directions—to predynastic Egypt, to northern Mesopotamia and to Anatolia. The relics of man in this region indicate that he used first copper, later its harder alloy bronze, for the manufacture of weapons of war before he used it for tools of peaceful pursuit. Tribes or communities employing weapons of such malleable, ductile and tenacious metal obviously enjoyed a preponderant advantage over those employing stone. ”

“ Dramatically Muawiyah exhibited in the Damascus mosque the blood-stained shirt of Uthman and the fingers chopped from the hands of his wife as she tried to defend him. Care- fully keeping his own interests under cover, Muawiyah publicly confronted Ali with this dilemma: punish the assassins or accept the position of an accomplice. Punishing the culprits was something Ali neither would nor could do. But the basic conflict transcended personalities. The funda- mental question at issue was whether Iraq or Syria, Kufah or Damascus, should head the Islamic world. ”

“ Ottoman political theory considered the conquered peoples, especially the non-Moslems, human flocks to be shepherded for the benefit of the conquerors, the descendants of Central Asian nomads. As such they were to be milked, fleeced and allowed to live their own lives so long as they gave no trouble. Mostly peasants, artisans and merchants, they could not aspire to military or civil careers. But the herd needs watchdogs. These were recruited mainly from war prisoners, purchased slaves and Christian children levied as a tribute and then trained and brought up as Moslems. ”

“ Largely because its rainfall is lower and its vegetation sparser, Anti-Lebanon has a more scattered and less progressive population than that of Mount Lebanon.
Rising in a rich upland valley, the Barada flows east, reclaims for Syria a large portion of what otherwise would have been a desert, and creates Damascus, an oasis outpost of civilization. ”

“ No sooner had the awe inspired by Islam worn off than male and female professional singers and musicians began to make their appearance. In the Umayyad era Mecca and, more particularly, Medina became a nursery of song and a conservatory of music. They attracted gifted artists from outside and supplied the Damascus court with an ever- increasing stream of talent. The second Umayyad caliph, Yazid I, himself a composer, introduced singing and musical instruments into the court. ”

“ All the nobles dwelt in very strong castles and palaces along the outer edge of the city. In the midst of the city dwelt the mechanic citizens and merchants, each in his own special street according to his trade.'
With remarkable dexterity the feudal chiefs of Lebanon maintained their power by co-operating with successive overlords and by offering military service to each in turn — Fatimids, Franks, Ayyubids and Mamluks. ”

“ More than a million Jews are estimated to have perished then, many of them in the amphitheatre battling one another or wild beasts. Judaea as a political state ceased to exist, and the Jews became a stateless, homeless people. Judaism decayed with its adherents, as its narrow national basis and certain features of its ritual rendered it unacceptable to other peoples. One last spark of life appeared in 132, when the Jewish banner of revolt was unfurled by a mysterious leader, Simon Bar Kokba. But Hadrian crushed the rebel- lion and turned Jerusalem into a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina. ”

“ As Greece had conquered the minds of the Romans, Syria now conquered their souls. By this time the most influential men in the empire had become followers of Christ, though the majority of the population, including Constantine's foes, were still pagan. Discipline, organization, wealth and enthusiasm were on the side of the minority, to which the emperor now added the power of the state. In 325 he convened an ecumenical council of all the bishops of the empire at Nicaea, the first congress of its kind. ”