Saurian

“ He concentrated on the crystal, shifting the view to scan toward the nearest village.
Suddenly, he sat forward in his chair. A herd of saurians was slowly [p 17] drifting toward one of the arms the null had thrust out. Shortly, they would have ambled into a stream and beyond, out of all possible control. Perhaps they might wander for years in the wastelands. Perhaps they and their increase might furnish meat for the pseudomen who lurked inside the swirling blankness. ”

“ SARACEN OR MOHAMMEDAN WARS—632-1492.
Cause: Saracens are ambitious to found a world wide Mohammedan empire.
Leaders: (1) Omar, Amru, Hassan, Mousa, Tarik, Abderrahman, Mohammed II., Abdallah; (2) Yezdegerd (Persia) , Leo the Isaurian, Charles Martel, Constantine, Palæologus, Ferdinand of Aragon.
Chief Actions: (1) Yarmouk (Syria) , Damascus Jerusalem Cadesia (Persia) , Alexandria, Carthage (697) , Xeres (Spain) , Granada, Toledo; (2) Constantinople (716) , Tours, Jerusalem, Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) . ”

“ According to the Illustrated Memoir of the Western Regions, and the historical books of the Han and Wei dynasties, the kingdom of Syria reaches south to the Coral Sea; on the north it joins the Gem Mountains; on the west it extends toward the borders of the immortals and the flowery forests; on the east it lies open to the violent winds and tideless waters. The country produces fire-proof cloth, life-restoring incense, bright moon-pearls, and night-lustre gems. Brigands and robbers are unknown, but the people enjoy happiness and peace. None but Illustrious laws prevail ”

“ SYRIA: THE PART PLAYED BY IT IN THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD— BABYLON AND THE FIRST CHALDÆAN EMPIRE—THE DOMINION OF THE HYKSÔS: ÂHMOSIS.
Syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to neighbouring powers-Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon, the valley of the Orontes and of the Litâny, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the country about Damascus, the Mediterranean coast, the Jordan and the Dead Sea-Civilization and primitive inhabitants, Semites and Asiatics: the almost entire absence of Egyptian influence, the predominance of that of Chaldæa. ”

“ The sauterelle, says the Arab, is the wonder among nature’s living things. It has the face of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the breast of a lion,{25} the stomach of a scorpion, the legs of an ostrich, the tail of a snake, and is more to be feared than any of the before enumerated menagerie. It all but devastated the chief wheat-growing lands of the plateaux of the provinces of Alger and Constantine a generation or more ago, and brought great misery in its wake. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Both his arms, above the elbows, were covered with rings of hippopotamus hide, to which were attached square leathern cases, containing sentences of the Koran, as charms to keep away sickness and evil spirits. The other man, Saïd, was a Shygheean, willing and good-natured enough, but slow and regardless of truth, as all Arabs are. Indeed, the best definition of an Arab which I can give, is—a philosophizing sinner. His fatalism gives him a calm and equable temperament under all circumstances, and “God wills it!” or “God is merciful!” [397] is the solace for every misfortune. ”

“ Bright ’neath the Syrian sun, dim ’neath the Syrian star,
Thus lieth Galilee’s sea, sapphirine lake Gennesar;
Girdled by mountains that range purple and proud to their crests,
Bearing the burden of dreams,—glamour of eld,—on their breasts.
Just one white glint of a sail dotting the brooding expanse;
Beaches that sparkle and gleam, ripples that darkle and dance;
Grandeur and beauty and peace welded year-long into one,
Under the Syrian star, under the Syrian sun! ”

“ 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 ”

“ They belong to the stiff-necked generation, who resist the processes, whereunto the Oriental yields himself body and soul. He who is bathed in Damascus, must be as clay in the hands of a potter. The Syrians marvel how the Franks can walk, so difficult is it to bend their joints. Moreover, they know the difference between him who comes to the Bath out of a mere idle curiosity, and him who has tasted its delight and holds it in due honor. ”

“ I could—quite truthfully—tell how a Syrian landscape lacks so many of the old familiar aspects of our home scenes, and give no hint of the glorious panoramas of this fertile, well-watered, bright-colored land—where the mountains sit with their feet in the Great Sea and their heads among the glorious clouds, while mantles of shimmering silver fall above their richly tinted garments. ”

“ The lotus of Egypt and the palm of Arabia are interwoven in the foliage of every fretted hall; the letters of the Cufic alphabet—singularly adapted to ornament—proclaim the doctrines of Islam from cornice and capital; while the profusion of water and verdure proves that the Saracen, though surrounded by the luxuriant vegetation of the Vega, beheld a grove or a fountain with the same emotions as did the weary camel-driver when, uttering a prayer of thanksgiving to Allah, he hailed with delight the refreshing oasis shining amid the dull gray sands of the desert. ”

“ One great advantage that we Syrians possess, is the very fact of coming from the Holy Land. Say to an Englishman, of whatever grade, ‘I am a Syrian,’ and he will immediately know how to appreciate your worth, and the excellence of your country; he will talk to you of Hebron and many other towns with unabating pleasure; and the reason is, that, from his infancy upwards, with him Syria has been a familiar household word; as a lisping infant, he has read at his mother’s knee of King Solomon and the cedars of Lebanon. At school, his prize-essays have been about Jerusalem ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where are we going? I also am an Arab and a Moslem, and I swear by my Koran and my religion, that we will give you forty dollars, and spend two days in Ghail Babwazir, during which you will have your eleven dollars a day; and we will engage you on to Sheher, and give you good bakshish, and a good character to the sultan and two nice turbans.'
We gasped in amazement at this.
'Oh!' said Saleh, 'I only read them something from the preface of the Koran! We are not bound at all. If I had to swear falsely on the Koran, I should have to be given a great many guineas! ”

“ Whilst the extremities preserve the fineness of Arab blood, the body is weak and effeminate; and the degenerate aspect is accompanied by the no less degraded mind, morals, and manners of the coast-people. The nervous or nervoso-bilious temperament of the Sons of the Desert here runs into two extremes: many Arabs are bilious-lymphatic, like Banyans; a few, lapsing into the extreme of leanness, are fair specimens of the ‘Living Skeleton.’ This has been remarked even of Omanis born and bred upon the Island. ”

“ From all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from the misunderstandings of the Egyptian chroniclers, Syria stands before us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions. ”

“ Tradition has invested many of the tribes then inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes. They are represented as being giants—Rephalm; men of prodigious strength—Zuzîm; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of speech—Zamzummîm; as formidable monsters**—Emîm or Anakîm, before whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horîm who were encamped on the confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites who ranged over the mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. ”

“ No other region of equal size has such a variety of vegetable life; no other land is more healthful; and to those of us who have lived in the shadow of Lebanon, none is more beautiful.
Syria, as we have defined it, includes one entire vilâyet, or province, of the Turkish Empire and parts of three others. Its extreme northern portion is included in the great Vilayet of Aleppo, which stretches far across the desert to Mesopotamia. Anti-Lebanon and most of Hollow Syria lie within the Vilayet of esh-Shâm, or "Syria." ”

“ In brief, with all his faults, which we of the West are apt to over-emphasize because they are not the same as our faults, the Syrian is frugal, temperate, ambitious, adaptable, intellectually brilliant, capable of infinite self-sacrifice for any great end, essentially religious, generously hospitable, courteous in social intercourse and, to his loved ones, extremely affectionate and faithful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ecclesiastical bodies of Syria are numerous, jealous and extremely fanatical. In striking contrast to the awkward reticence of the West regarding religious matters, every Syrian not only counts himself an adherent of the faith into which he was born, but he thrusts that fact upon your attention and, on the slightest provocation, is ready to fight for his belief. A man’s ancestors, descendants and home may be cursed with all the wealth of Oriental vituperation, and he will probably accept this as a mere emphatic conversational embellishment. ”

“ The Saracen Empire was overthrown, not from Europe or the Indies, but from the Heartland in the north—a significant fact. Arabia is sea-girt or desert-girt in every other direction but towards the Heartland. The western sea-power of the Arabs was no doubt countered from Venice and Genoa, and their eastern sea-power was subdued by the Portuguese after they had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, but the downfall of the Saracens in Arabia itself was due to Turkish land-power. ”

“ Although Syria possesses a rare natural beauty and boasts a wealth of historic and religious interest, its fame has been so overshadowed by that of the neighboring Land of Israel that most travelers are content to take the easy railway journey to Baalbek and Damascus, and know nothing of the wild mountain valleys and snow-capped summits of Lebanon or the many ancient shrines of a country whose history reaches far back of the classic days of Greece. ”

“ As rulers in Syria, the Arabs were in contact with a fully developed culture which was brought to bear upon them in various ways, in the structure of society and in social order generally, in the arts and crafts, and in intellectual life. The Greek influence was nearest at hand, but there was also a very strong Persian element in close contact with them. The provincial officials of Syria, all trained in the methods of the Byzantine Empire, continued in their employ, and, as Syria was the seat of the 'Umayyad government, the state came under Greek influence. ”

“ The Souallies form by far the major part of the population, and are almost all slaves to the Arabs—800 or 900 of them sometimes belonging to one individual. They are in general purchasedpurchased in their native country on the opposite shores, when young, and are brought here by the slave merchants, who dispose of them either to the Arabs or to the merchants, &c., for exportation. Those are fortunate who fall into the hands of Arabs, who are justly famed for their mild treatment of their slaves. ”

“ The talisman-monger, as I discerned from his features, stern and passive, and from the determination of mind underlying them, was half-Turk, half-Syrian. The Syrians are of a resolute character, and seldom take a step that does not bring them nearer to the end they keep ever in view. In this regard they are the antithesis of the Egyptians, who seem utterly aimless if left to their own devices. In their attitude towards work the Syrians are more persevering than the Persians, and less conceited in character. They are at their best as men of action. ”

“ MOHAMMED AND THE SARACENS.
AN ARAB RIDER. Introductory Statement.—The Arabs, or Saracens, who are now about to play their surprising part in history, are, after the Hebrews, the most important people of the Semitic race. Secure in their inaccessible deserts, the Arabs have never as a people bowed their necks to a foreign conqueror, although portions of the Arabian peninsula have been repeatedly subjugated by different races. ”