Homs

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Did he forsake me in peril because I was a Moslem? No! We had this faith in common,—God is the God of nations. Let every man cleave to his own form that he has received from his fathers; but do good to all, like God's rain; and never abandon a son of Adam in distress, because he worships his God in a different manner from himself. And shall the Arab be shamed by the Hebrew? Shall Hamed Ibn Ishem remain in quiet enjoyment of all that the Hebrew's hand has restored, whilst his child lies in peril, and not arise to save her? ”

“ The conquest of the descendants of Ham by the Greeks and Romans, and their slavery, attest the truth of Scripture.
The settlements of the descendants of Shem. The descendants of Shem occupied another belt or zone. It extended from the southeastern part of Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf and the peninsula of Arabia. The people lived in tents, were not ambitious of conquest, were religious and contemplative. The great theogonies of the East came from this people. They studied the stars. They meditated on God and theological questions. They were a chosen race with whom sacred history dwells. ”

“ From Syria’s palmy groves to Andalusia’s shore. XXXV.
Those years have past in radiance—they have past,
As sinks the daystar in the tropic main;
His parting beams no soft reflection cast,
They burn—are quench’d—and deepest shadows reign.
And Fame and Science have not left a trace
In the vast regions of the Moslem’s power,—
Regions, to intellect a desert space,
A wild without a fountain or a flower,
Where towers Oppression midst the deepening glooms,
As dark and lone ascends the cypress midst the tombs. XXXVI.
Alas for thee, fair Greece! ”

“ The inhabitants of Jerusalem consist largely of Arabs, who appear to be rather more domesticated than we had hitherto seen them. They are, as well as the Turks (of whom the chief men are the governing class) , all strict Mahomedans. The Arabs are, like the Jews, descendants of Abraham, and are probably—next to them—the most remarkable people on the globe. They are, as it were, the Anglo-Saxons of the East, occupying only the fertile and tropical, as the latter do the more temperate and arctic portions of the world, and both possessing in a high degree the faculty of displacing other races. ”

“ Arabia’s wond’rous lore, that dwells
On warrior deeds and wizard spells;
Enchanted domes, mid scenes like these,
Rising to vanish with the breeze;
Gardens, whose fruits are gems, that shed
Their light where mortal may not tread;
And spirits, o’er whose pearly halls
Th’ eternal billow heaves and falls.
—With charms like these, of mystic power,
Watchers! beguile the midnight hour.
Slowly that hour hath roll’d away,
And star by star withdraws its ray.
Dark children of the sun! again
Your own rich orient hails his reign.
He comes, but veil’d—with sanguine glare
Tinging the mists that load the air ”

“ If there are these differences of opinion as regards the characteristics of the Arabs, who have never been uprooted and driven into exile, can anybody have the assurance to dogmatise about the characteristics of a people like our own, which has been scattered among different peoples these two thousand years? Can anybody be so all-knowing as to distinguish with precision between those characteristics which are innate and original in us, and those which have been produced in us by our own environment in exile ”

“ These three clearly outlined families of the whites are the Hamites, of whom the Egyptians are the best-known type; the Semites, as represented by ancient Babylonians and modern Jews and Arabs; and the great Aryan or Indo-European family, once called the Japhites, and including Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Latins, the modern Celtic and Germanic races, and even the Slavs or Russians.
The Egyptians, when we first see them, are already well advanced toward civilization. [2] To say that they were the first people to emerge from barbarism is going much further than we dare. ”

“ We have all forgotten when we first learned how the Jews came to migrate to Egypt during the years of the famine, when Joseph had become the minister of Pharaoh through his acuteness in reading dreams. Also how, after their settlement in the land of Goshen,—which is the Egyptian province lying at the end of the ancient caravan road, which Abraham travelled, leading from Palestine to the banks of the Nile, and which had been the trade route, or path of least resistance, between Asia and Africa, probably for ages before the earliest of human traditions,—they prospered exceedingly. ”

“ I say nothing of the countries beyond the Euphrates, for all of them except a very small portion, and Babylon, and all the satrapies around, which have any advantages whatever of soil or climate, have Jews settled in them. (283) So that if my native land is, as it reasonably may be, looked upon as entitled to a share in your favour, it is not one city only that would then be benefited by you, but ten thousand of them in every region of the habitable world, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, on the continent, in the islands, on the coasts, and in the inland parts. ”

“ They come from every part of Asia and Africa—from the snow-swept steppes of Siberia, from the coral-fringed islands of the Indian Archipelago, and from the tangled jungles of Senegambia and Abyssinia. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Tartars, Chinese, Malays, Egyptians, Berbers, Nubians—men of all colors and of countless tribes and tongues—they all foregather in the Sacred City of Arabia to get inspiration and strength to win proselytes to the creed of Mohammed. ”

“ Among the German tribes it was the Goths who had first come under the civilizing influence of the Christian religion.
As some winged seed is wafted from a fair garden into a dark, distant forest, and there takes root and blossoms, so was the seed-germ of Christianity caught by the wind of destiny, and carried from Palestine to the heart of pagan Germany, where, strange to say, it found congenial soil. ”

“ Hitherto we have seen Israel under the power of Semitic Assyrians and Babylonians, and of Egyptians. The first Aryan race with which the Hebrews came in contact was that of the Persians, but Persian civilisation also was founded on that of Babylon, and for long ages the Greeks in the West had been the pupils of Hittites and Semitic Lydians, in Asia Minor, before they developed an art and culture of their own superior to that of Asia. ”

“ Nor less striking in their contrast is the response to either mandate;—the Arab, with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other, spreading his creed amid the glare of burning cities, and the shrieks of violated homes, and the Apostles of Christ working in the moral darkness of the Roman world with the gentle but irresistible power of light, laying anew the foundations of society, and cleansing at their source the polluted springs of domestic and national life. ”

“ Dr. Wallis Budge states that Ham or Kham is the same as Khem and is the name Kamt, i. e. black, by which the Egyptians generally called their land. I venture to point out that in the following passages the name Ham seems to be more applicable to a deity such as Amen-Ra or to his human representative a king, than to Egypt itself: “And smote all the firstborn in Egypt and the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham” and again “Wondrous works in the land of Ham.”...
It is well known that Mizraim, the second name given above, was employed by the Hebrews as a designation for Egypt. ”

“ Its spread was conditioned by the extent and character of the Roman Empire, by the municipal genius of that empire, its great highways by land and sea; conditioned by the commercial routes and the track of armies outside the bounds of civilization; conditioned by the spread of languages— Aramaic, Greek, and Latin,—and, most important of all, conditioned by the whereabouts of the seven million Jews massed in Syria, Babylonia, and Egypt, and scattered everywhere throughout the Empire and far beyond its boundaries. ”

“ Thus shall ye say to the king of Judah, that sent you unto me to enquire of me; Behold, Pharaoh's army, which is come forth to help you, shall return to Egypt into their own land.
8 And the Chaldeans shall come again, and fight against this city, and take it, and burn it with fire.
9 Thus saith the LORD; Deceive not yourselves, saying, The Chaldeans shall surely depart from us: for they shall not depart. ”

“ Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, and Antichristian Frenchmen,—warriors out of every nation under heaven,—have pitched their tents upon the Plain of Esdraëlon, and have beheld their various banners wet with the dews of Tabor and of Hermon. ”

“ Tracing again the influence of the geographical features of the old world at the imaginary line of separation between Europe and Asia, we discern the physical causes of known historical facts. We see the inevitable course of the old patriarchal tribes, from the table-land of Iran, and the great Asiatic peninsulas beyond, directly to Asia Minor and the narrow Straits of the Dardanelles, while the table-land of Syria and Arabia is shut in to the western shores of Palestine, the seat of Tyre and of Judea. ”

“ The Jews took up this great truth where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the heads and over the ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phœnicia, Greece, Rome, and India this handful of poor shepherds—ignorant, debased, and despised—have carried down to our own times a conception which could only have originated in the highest possible state of human society. ”

“ In the Roman councils, the utter subjugation of Judea was resolved on; the last spark of national independence was to be extinguished, tho in the blood of the last native; a Roman colony established in our lands; the Roman worship introduced; and Jerusalem profaned by a statue of Nero, and sacrifices to him as a god, on the altar of the sanctuary. To crush the resistance of the people, the legions, to the number of sixty thousand men, were under orders from proconsular Asia, Egypt, and Europe. ”

“ The record of Genesis claims that the Phoenicians were descended from Ham, while the Hebrews were descended from Shem; yet we find the Hebrews and Phoenicians united by the ties of a common language, common traditions, and common race characteristics. The Jews are the great merchants of the world eighteen centuries after Christ, just as the Phoenicians were the great merchants of the world fifteen centuries before Christ.
Moreover, the Arabians, who are popularly classed as Semites, or sons of Shem, admit in their traditions that they are descended from "Ad, the son of Ham;" ”

“ Jews in Egypt and Syria.—Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, and Antioch, the capital of Syria, at this period took rank with Rome in all the arts of civilisation; and in science, and in philosophy, and in commerce, the Jews were in no wise behind their neighbours. Egypt had at this time a great number of Jewish inhabitants, perhaps a million altogether. They were artisans and merchants for the most part, but there was a goodly sprinkling too of soldiers and of scholars. ”

“ Before resuming the story of Judea under the procurators, let us take another survey of Jews and Judaism in lands outside of Palestine. The voluntary dispersion still went on. The Jews were now scattered over all the Roman Empire, which included Asiatic and European lands from Syria to Spain. We also find our ancestors, at the beginning of the Christian era, in Arabia and in Parthia, an Asiatic kingdom south of the Caspian Sea. But, however widely scattered, religion was the bond of union and Jerusalem the spiritual centre. ”

“ This sentiment lies at the foundation of society and successively creates all forms of worship.—This thought dwelled always deepest in the minds of men in the devout and contemplative East; not alone in Palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India, in China. Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true. ”

“ The sons of Ham are the perceivers of Evil or Nakedness; and are slaves therefore for ever—‘servants of servants’: when in power, therefore, either helpless or tyrannous.
It is best to remember among the nations descending from the three great sires, the Persians, as the sons of Shem; Greeks, as the sons of Japheth; Assyrians, as the sons of Ham. The Jewish captivity to the Assyrian then takes its perfect meaning.
This month, therefore, take the first descendant of Ham—Cush; and learn the following verses of Gen. x. ”

“ It established the earliest military and monarchical institutions, and presents at the dawn of history—in Assyria, in Egypt, and India—settled and arbitrary forms in politics and religion, of a character so much resembling that of an old and corrupt civilization that we can scarcely avoid supposing that Ham and his family had preserved more than any of the other Noachian races the arts and institutions of the old world before the flood. It certainly presents itself in early postdiluvian times as the first representative and teacher of art and material civilization. ”