Sirenian

“ The son of the East has been richly rewarded. He is the religious teacher of all mankind. Through him all scriptures have come into being. All the great, living religions of the world originated in Asia; and the three greatest of them—Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism—have come into the world through the Semitic race in that little country called Syria. The perpetual yearning of the Oriental for spiritual dreams and visions has had its rewards. He sowed bountifully, he reaped bountifully.
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Note the Syrian's daily language: it is essentially Biblical. He has no secular language. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The province of Siré, properly so called, reaches from Axum to the Tacazzé. The town of Sirè is situated on the brink of a very steep, narrow valley, and through this the road lies which is almost impassable. In the midst of this valley runs a brook bordered with palm-trees, some of which are grown to a considerable size, but bear no fruit; they were the first we had seen in Abyssinia.
The town of Sirè is larger than that of Axum; it is in form of a half-moon fronting the plain, but its greatest breadth is at the west end; all the houses are of clay, and thatched ”

“ The whole country between Asia Minor and Egypt is often called Syria, and its inhabitants, who have the same language and customs and are of practically the same—very mixed—blood, are known as Syrians. But from the historical viewpoint it is perhaps more exact to distinguish between Palestine and Syria, and confine the latter name to the territory which lies to the north of the Hebrew boundary-town of Dan.
Syria then, as we shall use the word, extends from the southern slopes of Mount Hermon to the Bay of Alexandretta, a distance of about two hundred and [7] fifty miles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
5 And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there.
6 For the LORD had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. ”

“ The country is more crowded with towering peaks than Palestine or Greece, but it is more fertile than either. 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Septuagint and Vulgate have Syria, and this is a common meaning of the term in Scripture. If the king of Syria be meant, it must be Ben-hadad; and the contemporary king of Israel was Jehoram.
A great man - He was held in the highest esteem.
And honorable - Had the peculiar favor and confidence of his master; and was promoted to the highest trusts.
Had given deliverance unto Syria - That is, as the rabbins state, by his slaying Ahab, king of Israel; in consequence of which the Syrians got the victory.
A mighty man in valor - He was a giant, and very strong, according to the Arabic. ”

“ Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
The Syrian and Egyptian monuments furnish us everywhere, under different ethnical names, with representations of a broad-shouldered people of high stature, slender-figured in youth, but with a fatal tendency to obesity in old age. Their heads are large, somewhat narrow, and artificially flattened or deformed, like those of several modern tribes in the Lebanon. Their high cheek-bones stand out from their hollow cheeks, and their blue or black eyes are buried under their enormous eyebrows. ”

“ Thus the oft-quoted legends of the Sinaitic Arabs are mere monkish traditions, adopted by Ishmaelitic ignorance. The great Lawgiver probably led his horde of fugitive slaves over the plains of El–Negeb and El–Tih, north of the so-called Sinaitic mountain-blocks, marching in small divisions like those of a modern Bedawi tribe; and we know from the latest surveys that the land, now alternately a fiery or frozen wilderness, was once well supplied with wood and water. The “true Mount Sinai” is probably some unimportant elevation in the Desert named by moderns after the Wanderings. ”

“ There no one will find us and no one will follow us. We must go to Bahr-Yoosuf and then to the Nile to draw water, but we shall do that by night. And besides, do you suppose that there are no secret friends of the Mahdi by the river? Let me tell you that the further south we go, the surer we are of finding whole tribes and their sheiks only waiting for an occasion to grasp their swords in defense of the true faith. These tribes will give the camels food and water and set the pursuers on the wrong track. ”

“ It became in time a common task in the schools of Thebes to describe the typical Syrian tour of some soldier or functionary, and we still possess one of these imaginative stories in which the scribe takes his hero from Qodshû across the Lebanon to Byblos, Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon, “the fish” of which latter place “are more numerous than the grains of sand;” he then makes him cross Galilee and the forest of oaks to Jaffa, climb the mountains of the Dead Sea, and following the maritime route by Raphia, reach Pelusium. ”

“ The long and [272] narrow corridor of Syria became the highway which in antiquity bound the flourishing empires of the Nile basin to the powerful kingdoms of the Hittite highlands and the Mesopotamian lowlands. Its motley population, containing representatives of every race, is a relic of former to-and-fro human displacements along its trough-like extension. In the adjoining desert Bedouin tribes find their favorite tramping ground. The twin valley of Mesopotamia is the home of peoples in whom fusion of Semitic and Indo-European elements is observable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, the conquering race inhabited the ancient Syrian cities in common with the Christian population, which had surrendered, for the most part, on favourable terms. Society was thus throughout all classes of the community orderly and loyal, whereas on the banks of the Euphrates the settlements of Bussorah and Kûfa were filled with wild and headstrong Arab tribes who regarded the vanquished lands as their patrimony. Law prevailed in Syria; in Irâc and Egypt, the pride and petulance of arms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But for this English youth, words had been uttered and things done, more than thirty centuries ago, in this stony wilderness, which influenced his opinions and regulated his conduct every day of his life, in that distant and seagirt home, which, at the time of their occurrence, was not as advanced in civilisation as the Polynesian groups or the islands of New Zealand. The life and property of England are protected by the laws of Sinai. The hard-working people of England are secured in every seven days a day of rest by the laws of Sinai. ”

“ We have already noted the rôle of Syria as a connecting-link between the civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile, [64] and it plays an equally important part in linking both of them with the centre of early Hittite culture in Asia Minor. It was by the coastal regions of Syria that the first Semitic immigrants from the south reached the Euphrates, and it was to Syria that the stream of Semitic influence, now impregnated with Sumerian culture, returned. ”

“ During the reign of Hishâm-ibn-ʾAbd-el-Málik, I set set off for Syria, taking with me a slave-girl musician, to whom I had taught everything required by her art, and whose value to me I estimated at a hundred thousand dirhems. And when we drew near Syria, the caravan halted at a pool of water, by the side of which I dismounted, spread the food I had with me, and brought out a flask of wine. And whilst I was thus occupied, behold! a young man of fair countenance and form, mounted upon a chesnut horse, came by, and two attendants with him. ”

“ AFTER the close of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians ceased for centuries to come to Sinai. The reason was that foreigners, for over a hundred years, ruled in the Nile valley whom the Alexandrian writers called Arabians or Phœnicians. The Egyptians themselves called them Hyksos. To this period probably belong the inscriptions in Semitic script that were set up in some mines in the Wadi Dhabah near Serabit, and the offerings of a squat figure and of a sphinx inscribed in the same Semitic script which were presented before the shrine of the goddess. ”

“ If religion were to cure the world, suppose they tried this ancient and once popular faith, so very popular in Syria. The Queen of the Ansarey could command five-and-twenty thousand approved warriors, and the Emir of the Lebanon could summon a host, if not as disciplined, far more numerous. Fakredeen, in a frenzy of reverie, became each moment more practical. Asian supremacy, cosmopolitan regeneration, and theocratic equality, all gradually disappeared. An independent Syrian kingdom, framed and guarded by a hundred thousand sabres, rose up before him ”