John Damascene

“ A city surviving an age-long struggle with the encroaching desert—a struggle that must go on through ages to come; but, as long as the Abana and Pharpar continue to flow, the sands that would bury her forever in oblivion will be changed into a soil of life-giving and life-sustaining fertility sufficient to support her thousands of inhabitants. Damascus! A city of the long ago, practically unchanged, where the Occidental may look to-day with unfeigned interest upon architecture, costumes, and customs similar to those that prevailed in the East while Greece and Rome were yet young. ”

“ John of Damascus, Greek theologian and distinguished hymnist, as well as the greatest scholar and poet of his time, was born in Damascus of a prominent family, about A.D. 700. He was educated by an Italian monk named Cosmas, and retired to the monastery of St. Sabas in the Holy Land. He died between 754 and 787. He wrote a number of canons. A canon in Greek hymnology was a series of odes, usually eight or nine, threaded on an acrostic. This hymn is from his canon for the Sunday after Easter.
For comments on the translator, John M. Neale, see Hymn 67. ”

“ Any where else we would have been assailed by a clamorous army of donkey-drivers, guides, peddlers and beggars—but in Damascus they so hate the very sight of a foreign Christian that they want no intercourse whatever with him; only a year or two ago, his person was not always safe in Damascus streets. It is the most fanatical Mohammedan purgatory out of Arabia. Where you see one green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the honored sign that my lord has made the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you will see a dozen in Damascus. The Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest looking villains we have seen. ”

“ She saw Greece rise, and flourish two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundreds of years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly worth remembering. Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal City. ”

“ It was conquered by David after a protracted struggle, but recovered its independence in the reign of Solomon. It was subsequently subdued by the Assyrians. Rome may call itself, Damascus is the Eternal City, founded probably soon after the flood by a Semitic grandson of Noah. Damascus has never ceased to exist as a great city, and from its unique position, probably never will. The prey of every ambitious conqueror, it has seen the rise and survived the fall of every great empire. ”

“ To appreciate truly the significance of Damascus, one should approach it from the east, across the thirsty wilderness which stretches between the Euphrates and the Syrian mountains. The long, wearisome journey would be worth while if only for the first glimpse of the city as it appears to the wondering eyes of the desert-dweller. But the twentieth century visitor may be excused if he prefers to save time and strength by utilizing the railway. To-day there is even a choice of routes. He can travel to Damascus from the west comfortably, or from the south speedily. ”

“ But it is never quiet in Damascus. Most Orientals go to bed very early Jerusalem is like a city of the dead by half-past eight in the evening. The Damascenes, however, seem to need no sleep, and the noises of the streets never cease. The only noticeable change in their volume is that, when the shops close, just before sunset, the tumult suddenly increases. ”

“ Environs of Damascus.
The Environs of Damascus.
The small rides and excursions round Damascus are innumerable and beautiful; they lead through garden and orchard with bubbling water, under the shady fig and vine, pomegranate and walnut. You emerge on the soft yellow sand, and you throw off your superfluous strength, by galloping as hard as you will. There is no one to check your spirits; the breath of the desert is liberty. There is Mizzeh, a village placed exactly on the borders of the green and yellow; one side looks into trees and verdure, and the other side in the bare sand. ”

“ Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, And it shall be a ruinous heap. 2The cities of Aroer are forsaken; They shall be for flocks, Which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. 3The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, And the kingdom from Damascus; And the remnant of Aram shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, Saith the Lord of hosts.
4And it shall come to pass in that day, That the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, And the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. ”

“ More than three thousand years it has flourished; more than thirty centuries it has stood there a city—the beautiful city of the plain. Nations have appeared and vanished. Kingdoms and empires and republics have risen and fallen, but Damascus has stood unchanged. Thrones have crumbled, dynasties have come and gone. Statesmen and poets and scholars have lived their brief period of existence, brief and insignificant. In the centuries that have rolled over Damascus Saracen, Roman, Moslem, and Christian have besieged the city ”

“ Farther below is Damascus itself—a maze of flat buildings, squat mosques, and minaret spires, all in gray-white, as if sprinkled with the powder of time, and now smudged with faint rose by the sinking sunlight. Eastward and southeastward stretches the great desert that leads to the sites of Babylon and Nineveh, to Bagdad, to Persia, to the beginnings of human history.
In Damascus, as I knew from intelligence officers of the Palestine army, were many friends of the British. Nearly all the population, in fact, were secretly anti-Turk and anti-German. ”

“ The street life of Damascus is that panorama of the mean and the picturesque, the sordid and the rich, of silk and rags, of many costumes and all colors, which so astonishes the Oriental traveller at first, but to which he speedily becomes so accustomed that it passes almost unnoticed. The majority of the women are veiled, but not so scrupulously as those of Cairo. Yet the more we see of the women of the East the more convinced we are that they are exceedingly good-hearted; it is out of consideration for the feelings of the persons they meet in the street that they go veiled. ”

“ I know this, for when I stop anywhere and look over our party, here amid the turbans and fezzes and long flowing garments of the Orient, I can see for myself that it is really our party that looks queer and fantastic and out of place—not these people at all.
It is natural that one should realize this in Damascus, for Damascus is the great reality—the unchanged and changeless. Algiers was a framed picture; Constantinople was a world's Midway—a sort of masquerade, prepared for our benefit. Here it is different. No longer the country and the people constitute the show, but ourselves. ”

“ A ride of seventy-two miles across Phœnicia, Lebanon, Cœlo-Syria, and Anti-Lebanon, brings us, by French diligence, to Damascus. Abana and Pharpar break through a sublime gorge, about 100 yards wide, down the middle of which the French road winds its serpentine course, the rivers on either side being fringed with silver poplar and scented walnut. As we look eastward from the brow of the hill, the great plain of Damascus, encircled by a framework of desert, lies before us. ”

“ John of Damascus, the champion of image worship, in his many eloquent discourses in support of it, sneered at Leo’s arbitrary decrees against what was noticed to be a rising influence among the nations of the West. “You have only to go,” said John, “into the schools where the children are learning to read and write, and tell them you are the persecutor of images, [Pg 133] and they would instantly throw their tablets at your head. Even the ignorant would teach you what you would not learn from the wise.” ”

“ O Paul and John and all you others of the band of Apostles and Evangelists, who are they that arm their venomous tongues against your words? who are they that raise their frog-like croakings against your heavenly thunder? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Crusader and Saracen, each in turn have dominated the garden city—and died—but Damascus still lives and has out-lived all its rivals of every age. Sidon, Tyre, Antioch and Tarsus survive only as uninteresting towns, Babylon, Palmyra and Nineveh are no more, but Damascus is still the 32“Head of Syria” as it was in the days of Abraham—Damascus a green island in the midst of a golden sea of sand, bounded by the desert, surrounded by its rivers, has always been and must for ever remain the mother city of the world. ”

“ Poor human nature! how low it can and will come down, where grace does not prevent.
There are, just outside the walls of Damascus, some mills, that looked better than any of the buildings of the sort I have seen in the East. They stand on the main channel of the river, and avail themselves of its waters to work their machinery. The bread of Damascus is, for the East, good. ”

“ Damascus, under the rule of the Ommeyades, presented a picture of licentiousness and luxury unequalled, before or since, by that or any other community of the Moslem world. The importance of its commerce, the opulence of its citizens, the beauty of its suburbs, the sanctity of its traditions, and the prestige of its name gained for the most venerable city of antiquity the admiration and the reverence of every traveller. Its temples were embellished with all the magnificent creations of Oriental art. Its palaces were encrusted with porphyry, verde-antique, lapis lazuli, and alabaster. ”

“ There are good reasons for thinking that the Christian story did not originate with John of Damascus, and a strong case has been made out by Zotenberg that it reflects the religious struggles and disputes of the early 7th century in Syria, and that the Greek text was edited by a monk of Saint Saba named John, his version being the source of all later texts and translations. How much older than this the Christian story is, we cannot tell, but it is interesting to remember that it embodies in the form of a speech the “Apology” of the 2nd-century philosopher Aristides. ”

“ And yet Damascus is one of the wonders of the world, unrivalled in what is peculiarly its own, admitting no comparison with any existing city, revelling in a beauty and a splendor belonging to Islamism more than Christianity, characterizing the age of the Caliphs rather than of the Crystal Palace. ”

“ Damascus is situated at the foot of the Anti-Libanus, forty-five leagues from Jerusalem; hills covered with trees and verdure arise in the neighbourhood of the city, and in its territory were several towns which have maintained a name in history. A river which falls impetuously from the mountains, rolls over a golden-coloured sand, and separating into several branches, waters the city, and bears freshness and fertility to the valley of Abennefsage, or the valley of violets, planted with all sorts of fruit-trees. ”

“ The peculiar excellence of the spot where Damascus is situated is owing to the Barraday, a rapid stream, which here breaks out from the mountain ravines; and by numerous artificial as well as natural channels, is made to spread over the plain; it waters the whole extent of the gardens, and when this is done, the little of it that is left proceeds on southwardly through the plain, but amid the arid sands it soon dwindles away and disappears. The stretch of gardens is about nine miles in diameter, and, except the space occupied by the city, is one unbroken extent of the deepest verdure. ”

“ Now he was of those of whom it is said, “They love the fair,” [8] and indeed there is said what is said concerning him. [9] When he saw Noureddin Ali, he stared at him in amazement and exclaimed, “Say, I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak!” [10] Then he accosted the young Damascene and saluting him, said to him, “Why do I see my lord alone and forlorn? Meseemeth thou art a stranger and knowest not this country; so, with my lord’s permission, I will put myself at his service and acquaint him with the streets, for that I know this city.” ”

“ To the Damascus country must also be reckoned those many charming valleys of Hermon and Antilibanus which open out into it, sending their waters to increase its beauty and luxuriance, the most remarkable of which are the long ravine of the Barada, and the romantic Wady Halbon, whose vines produced the famous beverage which Damascus anciently supplied at once to the Tyrian merchant-princes and to the voluptuous Persian kings. ”

“ Whereat Abou Nuwas rejoiced and fared on with him, showing him the markets and thoroughfares, till they came to the house of a slave-dealer, where he stopped and said to the youth, “From what city art thou?” “From Damascus,” answered Noureddin; and Abou Nuwas said, “By Allah, thou art from a blessed city, even as saith of it the poet in the following verses:
Damascus is all gardens decked for the pleasance of the eyes; For the seeker there are black-eyed girls and boys of Paradise.”
Noureddin thanked him and they entered the slave-merchant’s house. ”