Syrian Desert

“ On the coastal plain beside Lebanon lie the ancient cities of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos and the modern ports of Beirut and Tripoli. On a peninsula of fertility watered by the streams of Anti-Lebanon, Damascus stands between the mountains and the desert. The rest of Syria is made up of lofty summits, rocky gorges resounding with the tumult of cave-born torrents, high wind-swept pasture lands and broad, fertile valleys slanting up between the mountains.
The lovelorn Syrian does not sing dolefully of a sweetheart who "lies over the ocean." To him the typical barrier is not the sea. ”

“ The great caravans coming to Europe, laden with the rich merchandise of India, would naturally come along the Persian gulf, through the south of Persia, to the Euphrates, the direct line; their object then would be to strike across the great Syrian desert as early as possible, to reach the large markets and ports of Syria. With more than 600 miles of desert without water, between the mouth of the Euphrates and Syria, they would naturally be obliged to keep along the banks of that river, until the extent of desert country became diminished. ”

“ We have seen how to the dwellers west of Jordan it was at once an abiding enemy and an ancient home. Shut out from it by the huge trench of the Jordan valley and the barricade of the eastern mountains, the Syrian still feels enough of the desert’s fiery touch to fear it as an enemy. Its wind blasts his crops and its heat drives him from his valleys to the hill country for the breath of life. Every traveller speaks of the “positive weight” of heat that makes men bend low in their saddles. ”

“ The plains are really an apex to the Syrian desert, themselves watered sparsely by winter streams flowing to the Euphrates, with some independent rivers which, failing to find an exit, resolve themselves into small salt lakes and swamps. There are no trees or other protection against the withering sun, and the surface is broken only here and there by low ridges and the mounds which mark the sites of ancient settlements. ”

“ A Syrian or an Arabian pasture is very different from the narrow meadows and fenced hill-sides with which we are familiar. It is vast, and often virtually boundless. By far the greater part of it is desert—that is, land not absolutely barren, but refreshed by rain for only a few months, and through the rest of the year abandoned to the pitiless sun that sucks all life from the soil. ”

“ Where was that note learned if not in black tents pitched in the boundless waste, where man’s littleness, in contrast with the great powers of Nature, oppressed him into prone fatalism, or revealed to him the infinite refuge and comfort of the Everlasting Arms? He whose fathers have sung such songs will not satisfy his soul with the bustle of towns. He will need the desert for retreat, that his confused mind may calm itself down to order and find new revelations of truth. And when the Syrian retreats to the desert he seems rather to be going home than abroad. ”

“ The fine blades of Damascus reflected the Bedouin's need of the best weapon. Each city has its sphere of desert influence. The province of Nejd in Central Arabia is commercially subservient to Bagdad, Busrah, Koweit and Bahrein.1155 The bazaars of Samarkand and Tashkent exist largely for the scattered nomads of Turkestan. Ancient Gaza1156 and Askelon fattened on the Egyptian trade across the Desert of Shur, as Petra, Bostra and Damascus on the thin but steady streams of nomad products flowing in from the Syrian Desert. ”

“ Our journey to the northern slopes of Lebanon, and the 'Aláh or the highland of Syria, is an absolute gain to geography, as the road lay through a region marked on our maps 'Great Syrian Desert,' and the basaltic remains in the extensive and once populous plain lying north-east and south-east of Hamah have been visited, sketched, and portrayed for the first time. ”

“ Justice, not at all blind here, is continually looking out for the dollars. But to return to Damascus. The plain in which it is situated is surrounded on three sides by mountains, Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; on the east it is bounded by the Syrian desert, in the midst of which is the city of palm trees, Palmyra, the ancient Tadmor, the city of Zenobia, the Boadicea of the Syrians. ”

“ The rest of the northern borderland is covered by the Syrian desert, extending from the borders of Palestine to the edge of the Euphrates valley. This tract, known as the Hamad, is a gravelly plain unbroken by any considerable range of hills or any continuous watercourse except the Wadi Hauran, Syrian desert.which in rainy seasons forms a succession of pools from J. Hauran to the Euphrates. Its general slope is to the north-east from the volcanic plateau of the Harra south of J. Hauran to the edge of the Euphrates valley. The Wadi Sirhan, a broad depression some 500 ft. ”

“ Arab independence had begun in the Desert; as was to be expected, for the Desert is the starting-off point of all great Arab movements. But as soon as it reached the settled countries of Syria and Mesopotamia it had to be stabilized there; the Desert has always made sudden magnificent efforts that in the end tail off into nothing. He wanted Damascus as the settled home of this new Arab independence and he wanted Feisal as the first ruler of the new Syrian state with Damascus as his capital. ”

“ One seems to find the key to this in that tradition of the Arabs that certain ruins near the Dead Sea are the remains of ancient vineyards. The Syrian land can never be seen but as a miracle of life and beauty rescued from the desert, and that appreciation becomes the incentive for a larger hope. ”

“ True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics. From the hill, whose ridges heave behind you until in the south they rise to the snowy head of Mount Hermon, the great Syrian plain stretches away to the Euphrates, broken at distances of ten and fifteen miles, by two detached mountain chains. ”

“ Syria is protected from the encroachments of the desert by a continuous barrier of pools and beds of reeds: towards the east the space reclaimed resembles a verdant promontory thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand. The extent of the cultivated area is limited on the west by the narrow strip of rock and clay which forms the littoral. From the mouth of the Litâny to that of the Orontes, the coast presents a rugged, precipitous, and inhospitable appearance. There are no ports, and merely a few ill-protected harbours, or narrow beaches lying under formidable headlands. ”

“ The winters are colder and the summers warmer. This valley, however, is fertile and well cultivated. Wheat and other cereals are its principal crops.
Unlike the forested Lebanons, the Anti-Lebanon range is bleak and barren, without much rainfall. It is a fitting approach to the desert, which stretches eastward from its foothills. Though this desert occupies by far the greater portion of Syria, it is only sparsely inhabited in comparison with the rest of the country, because of its unfriendly and unfertile character. ”

“ The winds that blow from east or south have crossed the sand before they reach the mountains. When they are cool, they are pure and fresh, unbreathed before, “virgin air.” The evening breeze of Syria is “the respiration of the desert” after its breathless heat of day. When the wind is hot, it is terrible as only wind can be that comes off burning sand. The shirky, or sirocco, interprets the desert in a fashion which the traveller is not likely to forget. ”

“ Syria is defended on the Egyptian side by a desert—here there is neither water nor grass; but so soon as an army has crossed this desert and taken Gaza, it can ascend the coast to Carmel, and if it is mistress of the sea, can ascend at pleasure by the transversal valley of Esdrelon upon the plain of Damascus, or by the transversal valley of Balbek upon the plain of Emesa which commands the entire valley of the Orontes. ”

“ From the head of the Persian Gulf to the Dead Sea there stretches right across the peninsula a stony wilderness, trackless and waterless. As you advance north, nature relaxes its severity; the plain, still a desert, is at certain seasons clothed with verdure, bright with flowers and instinct with the song of birds and hum of insect life. Such is the pasture-land which for several hundred miles extends from Damascus to the Tigris. Still further north, the desert features gradually disappear, and, about the latitude of Mosul, are blended with the hills and fields of Asia Minor. ”

“ The creed of the desert nomad is simple and austere—for nature about him is monotonous, silent, and illiberal. But Syria is a land of lavish gifts and oracles—where woods are full of mysterious speech, and rivers burst suddenly from the ground, where the freedom of nature excites, and seems to sanction, the passions of the human body, where food is rich, and men drink wine. ”

“ So the great flat fields of plowed earth or ripening grain which fill the valley seem the pattern of a long Oriental carpet in rich reds and browns and greens and yellows, unrolled between the mountains.
As we pass from the shadow of a last obstructing embankment, there bursts upon our vision the glorious patriarch of Syrian peaks. Twenty-five miles to the south the splendid crest of Hermon towers into the cloudless sky a full mile above the surrounding heights. ”

“ Adieu also to the comfortable hotel of Demetri, an oasis in the desert of barbarism we pass through. We follow back the diligence road a few miles as far as Dummar, and then start upon the upper road to Baalbec, viâ Zebedâni, one of the prettiest rides in Syria; but first to get a zest for better things we pass across the arid desert of Sahrâ. We see on the way several rock-cut tombs, and soon enter the upper part of the Abana watershed, which might well be called the “Happy Valley,” in this part of the world where there is so much desert and wilderness. ”

“ During the ascent, to the summit, which is some 5,000 feet above Rashêya, we have a fine sight of the coast from Carmel to Tyre, but on the summit, the greater part of Palestine and Syria are opened out as a map—to the west, the Mediterranean coast; to the north, the ranges of the Lebanon stand boldly out; the plain of Damascus, bounded by the six day’s desert, flanked by Abana and Pharpar, is in the extreme north-west ”

“ Syria lies between two continents—Asia and Africa; between two primeval homes of men—the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile; between two great centers of empire—Western Asia and Egypt; between all these, representing the Eastern and ancient world, and the Mediterranean, which is the gateway to the Western and modern world. Syria has been likened to a bridge between Asia and Africa—a bridge with the desert on one side and the sea upon the other ”

“ Syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and soil. That to the north, flanked by the Amanos, is a gloomy mountainous region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over with bare and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which open out to the Euphrates, the Orontes, or the desert. ”

“ In a strategic way, the desert is perhaps the most important part of Syria to the United Nations, because across it run the great pipelines from the oil fields of Iraq to the Mediterranean, and also because of its position as the gateway to Persia and India beyond. ”

“ Beyond Damascus is the desert, without water or verdure; all around, east, west, north, and south, the country is rugged, and more or less barren.
The traveller from Bagdad, from Mecca, from Aleppo, and from other points, has wandered over treeless wastes, where rock and sand are the only objects to greet his eye, and the only water to quench his thirst is the hot and brackish liquid carried in goat skins at his saddle bow. After long and weary days he arrives at Damascus, embowered in gardens, and at every step through her streets he sees a fountain. ”

“ At our right, the southern margin of the plain was distinctly marked by the abrupt ending of Anti-Lebanon and of the nearer Bikaʿ. The place where the central valley of Syria opens suddenly to the broad expanse of wheat country was known of old as the “Entering In of Hamath,” and was the northernmost point to which the Kingdom of Israel ever extended. [57] At the left, low hills rise slowly up to the horizon; in front, the plain rolls out to the unseen desert and the ruined palaces of Palmyra. ”

“ The drivers are brown, and not over clean; water has been a scarce article among them, and the rivers of Damascus are to their eyes a most welcome sight. One would think that the privations of the desert would inspire no great love for the arid waste, and yet these wild Arabs are so attached to it that they make their stay in the city as brief as possible, and the moment their business is ended they hasten back to their wanderings in the wilderness. ”

“ JUST half-way along the ancient caravan route which runs northeast from Damascus to the Euphrates River are the ruins of one of the most remarkable cities of history; for here, in the midst of the desert, Palmyra attained a wonderful degree of wealth and culture, and a military power which for a time rivaled that of Rome itself.
The road thither is nearly always in the desert. This is not, however, a level waste of sand; on the contrary, it is often quite a hilly country, where for hours at a time the traveler passes along narrow valleys between steep, rugged heights. ”