Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
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Title: Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Author: C. R. Conder
Illustrator: Josiah Wood Whymper
Release date: August 20, 2014 [eBook #46641]
Language: English
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[Illustration: TABOR.]
TENT WORK IN PALESTINE.
A Record of Discovery and Adventure.
BY
CLAUDE REIGNIER CONDER, R.E.,
OFFICER IN COMMAND OF THE SURVEY EXPEDITION.
Published for the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. W. WHYMPER.
New Edition.
[Illustration]
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1887.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE PRINCE OF WALES
This Work is Dedicated,
WITH HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS’ GRACIOUS PERMISSION,
BY THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
The Survey of Western Palestine was commenced under Captain Stewart,
R.E., in January, 1872. Ill-health obliged that officer to return almost
immediately. Lieutenant Conder, R.E., was appointed to the command, and
arrived in Palestine in the summer of the same year. The work meantime
had been conducted under the charge of the late Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt
Drake.
Lieutenant Conder returned to England in October, 1875, having surveyed
4700 square miles.
The remaining 1300 square miles of the Survey were finished by
Lieutenant Kitchener in 1877.
The present volume contains Lieutenant Conder’s personal history of his
work, without specially entering on the scientific results. These will
be published with the great map in the form of memoirs, twenty-six in
number, one to every sheet.
Lieutenant Conder’s conclusions and proposed identifications are, it
will be understood, his own. The Committee do not, collectively, adopt
the conclusions of any of their officers.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION xi
I. THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM 1
II. SHECHEM AND THE SAMARITANS 15
III. THE SURVEY OF SAMARIA 41
IV. THE GREAT PLAIN OF ESDRAELON 58
V. THE NAZARETH HILLS 71
VI. CARMEL AND ACRE 88
VII. SHARON 103
VIII. DAMASCUS, BAALBEK AND HERMON 121
IX. SAMSON’S COUNTRY 139
X. BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 145
XI. JERUSALEM 160
XII. THE TEMPLE AND CALVARY 182
XIII. JERICHO 199
XIV. THE JORDAN VALLEY 214
XV. HEBRON AND BEERSHEBA 236
XVI. THE LAND OF BENJAMIN 251
XVII. THE DESERT OF JUDAH 260
XVIII. THE SHEPHELAH AND PHILISTIA 273
XIX. GALILEE 289
XX. THE ORIGIN OF THE FELLAHÎN 298
XXI. LIFE AND HABITS OF THE FELLAHÎN 315
XXII. THE BEDAWÎN 336
XXIII. JEWS, RUSSIANS, AND GERMANS 350
XXIV. THE FERTILITY OF PALESTINE 364
XXV. THE FUTURE OF PALESTINE 375
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
TABOR--_Frontispiece_.
From the summit of Jebel Dŭhy. From a water-colour sketch by the
Author.
TITLE-PAGE.
From a sketch by the Author. A theodolite-party at work.
JACOB’S WELL 15
From a sketch made by the Author in the vault over the well; looking
south.
TOMB OF PHINEHAS 41
From a sketch by the Author; looking south-west.
HEROD’S COLONNADE AT SAMARIA 43
From a photograph; looking east.
GUEST HOUSE 52
From a sketch by the Author made in the village of Kuriet-Jit.
VIEW FROM JENIN 58
From a water-colour sketch by the Author; looking north.
CHURCH OF ST. ANNE, AT SEFFURIEH 71
From a photograph by Lieut. Kitchener, R.E.; looking east.
CARMEL 88
From a water-colour sketch by the Author; looking west from near the
village of Mujeidil.
CONSTANTINE’S BASILICA AT BETHLEHEM 145
From a photograph by Lieut. Kitchener, R.E.; looking east.
MAR SABA 157
From a photograph; looking north-east.
THE DOME OF THE ROCK 160
From a photograph; looking north.
THE TEMPLE WALL 182
From a sketch made by the Author in a chamber outside the west wall,
near the north corner.
GILGAL 199
From a sketch made by the Author on the spot; the view is north-west,
over the Plain of Jericho.
DEBIR 236
From a sketch by the Author; looking south-west.
THE VALLEY OF MICHMASH _to face_ 256
From a photograph by Lieut. Kitchener, R.E.; looking east.
ENGEDI 260
From a sketch by the Author; looking south.
GATH 273
From a sketch by the Author; looking south-east.
COLUMBARIA, NEAR BEIT JIBRÎN 275
From a photograph by Lieut. Kitchener, R.E.
THE SEA OF GALILEE 289
From a water-colour sketch by the Author; looking north from Kaukab el
Hawa.
A DERWÎSH 298
From a sketch by the Author.
COSTUMES OF MOSLEM PEASANTRY NEAR SHECHEM 315
From a sketch by the Author.
MALE DANCERS 325
From a sketch by the Author.
A BEDAWI WOMAN 336
From a coloured sketch by the Author.
HAIFA 364
From a water-colour drawing by the Author. View from the shore west of
the German Colony; looking east.
INTRODUCTION.
The Survey of Palestine was actually commenced at the end of the year
1871. Preliminary _reconnaissances_ of parts of Palestine had been
previously made by Captain Anderson, R.E., and Captain Warren, R.E., and
the Ordnance Survey of the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, with the line of
levels from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, and from Jerusalem to
Solomon’s Pools, had been executed by Major Wilson, R.E.
It was by the advice of these experienced explorers that the Committee
of the Palestine Exploration Fund undertook the Survey of Western
Palestine, to the scale of one inch to the mile, the object being the
complete examination of the whole country, with an amount of accuracy
approaching that of Ordnance work.
The officer to whom this great work was entrusted was Captain Stewart,
R.E., and his staff consisted of Sergeant Black and Corporal Armstrong,
R.E.; Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake was also appointed as linguist and
archæologist to the expedition.
The work met with a most serious check at its commencement. Captain
Stewart, arriving in the most unhealthy time of the year, and engaged in
a most unhealthy part of the country, while measuring the base line, was
struck down with fever and invalided home. The Committee then honoured
me with the offer of the command, as his successor, and I was instructed
to proceed as soon as possible to Palestine.
In the meantime the little party, under the care of Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake,
pursued its labours, and carried the Survey up the country to Jerusalem,
and thence to Nâblus, accomplishing in the first half of 1872 about 500
square miles. This work has since, under my direction, been re-examined,
and the excellent character of this part of the map reflects the highest
credit on the zeal and care of the two surveyors, who, though ignorant
of the language and unaccustomed to the style of work required, yet
succeeded in recovering everything of value in the district; nor does it
less reflect credit on the tact and judgment of my lamented friend Mr.
Tyrwhitt Drake, on whom devolved the arduous task of organising and
managing the infant expedition.
I reached Palestine on the 8th of July, 1872, and from that date, until
the 1st October, 1875, the work was pushed on with scarcely any
interruption, except during my absence for four months in 1874, when I
returned to England to recruit my health, which was seriously impaired
by the hardships encountered in the Jordan Valley.
After the attack on the party at Safed in 1875, the work was suspended
for a year. When I left Palestine four-fifths of the Survey was
completed, and the remaining fifth was happily carried out during the
year 1877 under the command of Lieutenant Kitchener, and the great map
now extends over 6000 square miles, from Dan to Beersheba, and from
Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.
Palestine is thus brought home to England, and the student may travel,
in his study, over its weary roads and rugged hills without an ache, and
may ford its dangerous streams, and pass through its malarious plains
without discomfort.
This work was thus carried out by a party never stronger than five in
number as regards Europeans, and was completed in little over five years
in the field. The account given of the country will, I hope, be more
complete than anything of the kind yet attempted for any Eastern land.
The results of the Survey are published as follows: First, a map in
twenty-six sheets to the scale of one inch to the statute mile.
Secondly, a reduced map engraved on copper to the scale of 660 yards to
the inch.
The one-inch sheets are each accompanied by a memoir containing all the
information collected by the Survey Party. Section A gives a
geographical and topographical account of the country included in the
sheet. Section B is an archæological description of the ruined sites.
Section C includes the ethnographical notes and the local traditions of
the district. The text of this memoir, with exception of Sections A and
B, for sheets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, has been my work, under the editorship
of Mr. G. Grove and Colonel C. W. Wilson, R.E. The nomenclature of the
Survey, including about 9000 Arabic names, has been arranged in indexes
for each sheet, and edited by Professor E. H. Palmer. The memoir will
contain information which I have at various times carefully abstracted
from more than fifty standard works, including Egyptian, Samaritan, and
Talmudic writings, the early Christian Itineraries, and the mediæval
chronicles, besides the Bible narrative, and the works of Josephus and
other classical authorities.
It is evident that so great a work requires some general _résumé_, to
bring it within the reach of the general public, who might not read the
memoir, or would fail to obtain from it any very vivid idea of
Palestine, or of the discoveries made there during the execution of the
Survey.
The present volume is intended to supply this want, and to form a
popular introduction to the work of the Survey Party.
The main object of the Survey of Palestine may be said to have been to
collect materials in illustration of the Bible. Few stronger
confirmations of the historic and authentic character of the Sacred
Volume can be imagined than that furnished by a comparison of the Land
and the Book, which shows clearly that they tally in every respect.
Mistaken ideas and preconceived notions may be corrected; but the truth
of the Bible is certainly established, on a firm basis, by the
criticisms of those who, familiar with the people and the country, are
able to read it, not as a dead record of a former world or of an extinct
race, but as a living picture of manners and of a land, which can still
be studied by any who will devote themselves to the task.
The study is threefold. It includes the minute investigation of the
detailed topography of the Bible. Former explorers have done much in
this respect; but it may be claimed for the Survey that the new
discoveries are almost as numerous as all those of former travellers put
together.
The second branch is that of archæology. The Survey includes a complete
examination of the ancient condition of the country. The old cultivation
is traced by the wine-presses, olive-presses, ruined terraces, and rude
garden watch-towers. The ancient sites are recognised by their tombs,
cisterns, and rocky scarps. Thus we are entitled to draw conclusions as
to the ancient cultivation, climate, and water-supply of Palestine, in
Bible times.
The third branch is the study of the people. To this I offer a
contribution in the chapters devoted to the peasantry and to other
inhabitants of Palestine. I trust they may serve to show how rich a
field of inquiry is opened to the student among the ancient indigenous
population of the Holy Land.
In concluding these remarks, I would say a few words on the subject of
identification. What is an identification? It is the recovery of an
ancient historic site, still known to the natives under its original
name, or a modification of that name, though unknown to Europeans. It is
evident that the requisites for a satisfactory identification
are--first, the suitability of the position to all the known accounts of
the place; second, the preservation of all the radical parts of the
name; third, in the case of the loss of the name, we require definite
indications--such as measured distances, or some connection with
existing buildings, or relative position to known sites. The site must
show traces of antiquity, and the name must be placed beyond the
suspicion of being of recent or spurious origin; the correspondence of
the modern and ancient titles must, also, not be merely apparent, but
must be radically exact. Failing these requirements, no identification
will stand the criticism which is now brought to bear on newly-proposed
discoveries.
A second question is intimately connected with this subject--namely, the
authority of Christian tradition. We should not underrate this valuable
means of tracing ancient and sacred sites, which has, we may hope,
handed down to us the positions of such holy places as the Grotto of
Bethlehem, and Jacob’s well at Shechem; nor lay aside tradition because
it _is_ tradition, disregarding one of the few ways of settling the
locality of places which were quite as sacred in the fourth century as
they are now.
On the other hand, a careful and minute inspection of the fourth-century
writings cannot but lead to one conclusion: that Christian tradition can
be taken only as an indication, not as an authority. Unsupported by
other evidence, the tradition is not, in itself, sufficient to fix any
site as authentic; yet most valuable hints may often be obtained by a
study of these early descriptions of the land.
We may take as an example the famous Onomasticon of Eusebius and Jerome.
We are now able to point out, on the map, almost every place, the
position of which is clearly defined in the Onomasticon by measurement,
or by reference to neighbouring places; for in almost every case the
name still exists, and these places number about 200 in all.
There is thus no question that the land was thoroughly well known to
Jerome and Eusebius; but when we turn from their facts to their
theories, we find that the confusion is hopeless; the places proposed as
identical with those noticed in the Bible are quite as often impossibly
guessed as correctly fixed. In fact, the early fathers too often jumped
at conclusions, and, in the fourth century, there were no critics to
contradict them. This view may be supported by any number of instances.
In the cases of Shiloh and Bethhoron, the sites mentioned are those now
accepted. In those of Nob and Ajalon, Jerome’s identifications are not
in any way capable of being reconciled with the Scripture narrative.
Thus it is only as regards personal acquaintance with ancient Palestine
fifteen centuries ago, that the Onomasticon has any real value.
The observations which apply to this work--the earliest and ablest of
the Christian descriptions of Palestine--apply with equal force to all
succeeding accounts; and few writers would attempt to justify the wild
theories of the mediæval chroniclers, whose identifications, in many
cases, contradict alike the Biblical accounts, and the views of the
earlier Byzantine pilgrims.
With a single exception, Christian tradition regarding sacred places
cannot be traced back earlier than the fourth century--the exception is
the Grotto of Bethlehem. But Christian sites appear often to be fixed by
Jewish tradition: and when such is the case, their reliability is
evidently increased, their history being carried back to an earlier
source. This latter really reliable class of traditions is distinguished
by the fact that the Jewish or Samaritan, and generally the Moslem
traditions point, in such cases, to the same spots venerated by the
Christians. The sites of the Temple, and of Jacob’s well, with Joseph’s
tomb, the sepulchres of the Patriarchs, and of Joshua, Phinehas, and
Eleazar, are pointed out at the same spots by Jew, Christian, and
Moslem; and there is every reason to suppose these to be authentic
traditions.
It is, therefore, by _consent of evidence_ that the true and indigenous
origin of a tradition may be tested. Where this consent does not exist,
it is to the Jewish and indigenous, rather than to the later Christian
tradition, that we should turn, as the latter must evidently be in such
cases of foreign origin.
This distinction will be carefully observed in the following pages; and,
by pointing out the cases in which there is a general consent of the
Jewish, Moslem, and Christian traditions, it is hoped that everything of
real value preserved by tradition will be finally selected.
C. R. C.
_Christmas, 1877._
TENT WORK IN PALESTINE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM.
The morning of Monday the 8th of July, 1872, brought us in sight of the
coast of Palestine, near Jaffa. The town rose from the shore on a brown
hillock; the dark, flat-roofed houses climbing the hill one above
another, but no prominent building breaking the sky outline. The yellow
gleaming beach, with its low cliffs and sand-dunes, stretched away north
and south, and in the distance the dim blue Judean hills were visible in
shadow.
Jaffa is called the Port of Jerusalem, but has no proper harbour at
present. In ancient times the “Moon Pool,” south of the town, now silted
up, was perhaps the landing-place for Hiram’s rafts of cedar-wood; but
the traveller passes through a narrow opening in a dangerous reef
running parallel with the shore, or, if the weather is bad, he is
obliged to make a long detour round the northern end of the same reef.
By ten in the morning the land breeze rises, and a considerable swell is
therefore always to be expected. The entrance through the reef is only
sufficient for one boat, and thus every year boats are wrecked on the
rocks and lives lost. It is said also that each year at least one person
is killed by the sharks close to land.
The little Russian steamer was anchored about two miles from shore, and
rolled considerably. The decks were crowded with a motley assemblage,
specimens of every Levantine nationality. Each deck passenger had his
bedding with him, and the general effect was that of a great rag-heap,
with human faces--black, brown and white--legs, arms, and umbrellas,
sticking out of the rags in unexpected places. Apart from the rest sat a
group of swarthy Bedawin, with their huge head-shawls, not unlike a
coal-scuttle in effect, bound with a white cord round the brow. They
wore their best dresses, the black hair cloak, with red slippers. The
rugged dark faces with white beards and sun-scorched eyes wore a curious
mixed expression of assumed dignity and badly concealed curiosity
concerning the wonders of civilisation surrounding them.
The colouring of these various groups would have been a treat to an
artist. The dull rich tints were lit up here and there by patches of red
leather and yellow silk. Like all oriental colour, it was saved from any
gaudiness of effect by the large masses of dull brown or indigo which
predominated.
The steamer was soon besieged by a fleet of long flat boats with sturdy
rowers, and into these the passengers were precipitated, and their
luggage dropped in after them. The swell was so great that we were in
constant danger of being capsized under the accommodation-ladder. As we
rowed off, and sank in the trough of the waves, the shore and town
disappeared, and only the nearest boats were visible high up on the
crest of the rollers.
The exciting moment of reaching the reef came next; the women closed
their eyes, the rowers got into a regular swing, chanting a rude rhyme;
and waiting for the wave we were suddenly carried past the ugly black
rocks into smooth water close to the wharf.
The landing at Jaffa has been from time immemorial an exciting scene. We
have the terrible and graphic account of the old pilgrim (Sæwulf) who,
“from his sins or from the badness of the ship,” was almost wrecked, and
who witnessed from the shore the death of his companions, helpless in a
great storm in the offing. We have the account of Richard Lion-Heart
springing, fully-armed, into the surf and fighting his way on shore. The
little port, made by the reef, has been long the only place south of
Acre where landing was possible; but the storms which have covered the
beach with modern wrecks were equally fatal to the Genoese galleys and
Crusading war-ships.
The town of Jaffa contains little of interest, though it is sufficiently
striking to a new comer. The broad effects of light and shadow are
perhaps enhanced here by the numerous arched streets and the flights of
steps which climb from the sea-level to the higher part of the town. The
glory of Jaffa consists in its beautiful gardens, which stretch inland
about a mile and a half, and extend north and south over a length of two
miles. Oranges, lemons, palms, bananas, pomegranates, and other fruits
grow in thick groves surrounded by old cactus hedges having narrow lanes
between them deep in sand. Sweet water is found in abundance at a
moderate depth. The scent of the oranges is said to be at times
perceptible some miles from land, to approaching ships. Still more
curious is the fact that the beautiful little sun-bird, peculiar to the
Jordan valley, is also to be found in these gardens. How this African
wanderer can have made its way across districts entirely unfitted for
its abode, to spots separated by the great mountain chain, it is not
easy to explain.
Outside the town on the north-east is the little German colony, the neat
white houses of which were built originally by an American society which
was almost exterminated by fever, and finally broken up by internal
differences, caused, I understand, by some resemblance in the views of
the chief to those of Brigham Young. The land and buildings were bought
by the thrifty German settlers, members of the Temple Society, with the
views and history of which sect I became further acquainted during the
following winter.
The soil of the Jaffa plain is naturally of great fertility. Even the
negligent tillage of the peasantry produces fine harvests. The Germans
ploughed deeper, and were rewarded by a crop of thistles, which to a
good farmer would have been a subject of satisfaction as proving the
existence of virgin soil, only requiring to be scoured by other crops
for a year or two in order to yield fine harvests of corn. At this time
of year, the barley had been gathered in, and only the dry stubble was
left.
Our first ride was not a long one, as we only intended to reach Ramleh
that night, and we arrived before sundown in sight of the town, which is
first visible from a rise of ground on the road. The long olive-groves
here formed a dark oasis in the treeless plain, and above them rose the
beautiful tower of the “Forty,” belonging to the fine old ruined
building called the “White Mosque,” built in the fourteenth century by
the son of Kalawûn. The Forty were, according to the Moslems,
companions of the Prophet; according to the later Christian tradition,
forty martyrs of Cappadocia. A second mosque, now in use, exists in the
middle of the town. This I was afterwards able to visit, and found it to
be probably the most perfect specimen of a fine twelfth century church
in Palestine, unchanged except that the beautiful western doorway is
closed, a prayer recess scooped in the southern wall, and the delicate
tracery of the columns defaced by whitewash and plaster--a vandalism not
peculiar to Moslem restorers.
This fine church, which we were the first to examine and plan, is
probably that visited by the old English pilgrim Sir John Maundeville,
dedicated according to him to the Virgin, “where Our Lord appeared to
Our Lady in the likeness which betokeneth the Trinity.”
Ramleh, like many another town in this ruined land, is full of contrasts
of past prosperity and of present squalor and decay. The walls of fine
stone houses are enclosed in wretched hovels of mud. Here and there an
ornate Cufic or Arabic inscription is left, telling of Moslem conquerors
and munificent Caliphs; but the bazaars are deserted, and starved dogs
and helpless lepers meet the eye on every side.
Many attempts have been made to identify Ramleh with some ancient site.
Thus the learned Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela regarded it as the birthplace
of Samuel, while Christians have supposed it to be Arimathæa or Ramoth
Lehi. But, against all such views, the testimony of historians, both
Moslem and Christian, is decisive. They agree in representing Ramleh as
founded by the son of the Caliph ’Abd el Melik early in the eighth
century, after the destruction of Lydda. In Crusading history the town,
which was then walled, plays a conspicuous part, and under the early
successors of Saladin it rose to considerable importance; but the site,
which is, as its name indicates, “sandy,” is not a natural one for a
great city, and the water-supply is entirely artificial, from wells and
huge tanks having Cufic inscriptions on their sides. Picturesque as is
the scene, especially from among the palms on the east, Ramleh is
nevertheless a modern place, when compared with the high antiquity of
sites near to it.
In crossing Palestine at any point three districts are passed through,
each of which receives a distinctive name in the Bible and in Jewish
writings. First we cross the flat sea plain, in part sandy and barren,
scattered with the black tents or reed cabins of the small encampments
of Bedawin, a pastoral race gradually losing ground before the
peasantry; in part a cultivated and very rich corn land, with wretched
villages of mud perched on eminences whence the breeze is better felt.
To the new comer these hamlets, most of which represent sites older than
the time of Joshua, have a deserted appearance. The eye misses the
contrast between roof and wall, and the glazed windows and wooden doors
seen in Europe. The peasant hut in the lowlands of Palestine consists
merely of four walls of mud, with a roof of boughs covered also with
mud; hence the village, which consists of perhaps fifty or sixty such
cabins huddled together without plan or order, and gradually climbing
the slope so that the floor of one is level with the roof of another,
has an uniform grey colour only broken by the whitewashed dome of the
little chapel dedicated to the patron “Prophet” or Sheikh. In the plain
there are scarcely any springs, and the village is supplied as a rule by
cisterns and by a pond of stagnant rain-water banked round freshly every
year. The most conspicuous object outside is the huge rubbish-heap where
refuse of every kind is thrown. Savage mangy half-starved dogs keep
watch above, and annoy the stranger until boldly attacked in turn. They
belong to no one, are cared for by no one, and their only food appears
to be an occasional carcass of a donkey or bullock. It is said that they
eat mice and beetles when nothing else is to be found. All night they
vie with the jackal in their howls, and they are often really dangerous
when rearing their puppies.
Upon the refuse-heap, in the shade of the wall, the village elders may
be seen seated smoking in rows, whilst the blue-gowned women toil up the
hill with the goat-skin water-bags bound to their heads or the red
pottery jars balanced upon them, holding in their tattooed lips the
corner of the white head-veil which prevents their mouths being visible.
The plain once passed, the traveller enters the district called
Shephelah, or “lowlands” in the Bible, consisting of low hills, about
500 feet above the sea, of white soft limestone, with great bands of
beautiful brown quartz running between the strata. The broad valleys
among these hills forming the entrances to the third district produce
fine crops of corn, and on the hills the long olive-groves flourish
better than in either of the other districts. This part of the country
is also the most thickly populated, and ancient wells, and occasionally
fine springs, occur throughout. The villages are partly of stone, partly
of mud; the ruins are so thickly spread over hill and valley that in
some parts there are as many as three ancient sites to two square miles.
All along the base of these hills, commanding the passes to the
mountains, important places are to be found, such as Gath and Gezer,
Emmaus and Beth Horon, and no part of the country is more rich in Bible
sites or more famous in Bible history.
With dawn on the 9th July we entered the “lowland” district, and before
us were some of the ancient places above noticed. South of the great
road, Gezer, on the road, Latrûn, north of it Emmaus.
The recovery of the site of Gezer we owe to M. Clermont Ganneau. The
position is one well suited for an important place, and Gezer was a
royal city of the Canaanites. The modern name, Tell Jezer, “Mound of
Gezer,” represents the Hebrew exactly, the meaning being “cut off” or
“isolated.”
The origin of the title is at once clear, for the site is an outlier--to
use a geological term--of the main line of hills, and the position
commands one of the important passes to Jerusalem. As is the case with
many equally important places, there is not much to be seen at Gezer.
The hill-side is terraced, and the eastern end occupied by a raised
foundation, probably the ancient citadel. Tombs and wine-presses, cut in
rock, abound, and there are traces of Christian buildings in a small
chapel, and a tomb apparently of Christian origin.
Beneath the hill on the east there is a fine spring, which wells up in a
circular ring of masonry; it is called ’Ain Yerdeh, or the “Spring of
the Gatherings,” and its existence is a strong argument in favour of the
antiquity of the neighbouring site.
The little Mukâm, or Moslem shrine, on the hill, commands a fine view of
the plain of Sharon. On the south-west are the bare sandy dunes of
“barren” Ekron, beyond which is Makkedah, and Jamnia famous for its
school of learned doctors of the law, where the Sanhedrin sat after
Bether had fallen. Due south the white cliff of Gath projects into the
plain; on the north-west Ramleh stands among its olive-gardens, palms,
and cactus hedges, and the great tower of the “Forty” rises like a
belfry above them: farther north another white minaret is seen above the
Church of St. George at Lydda, and olive groves again hide the houses in
their midst. Many of the towns of Dan, now mere mud hamlets, are
scattered over the plain, and the view is bounded by the range of yellow
sand-dunes and the shining waters of the great sea; on the east rise the
Judean mountains, the third district, which we were about to enter.
A most interesting and curious discovery was made in 1874 at Gezer. M.
Ganneau was shown by the peasantry a rude inscription deeply cut in the
flat surface of the natural rock. It appears to be in Hebrew, and to
read “Boundary of Gezer,” with other letters, which are supposed to form
the Greek word Alkiou. M. Ganneau has brought forward an ingenious
theory that Alkios was Governor of Gezer at the time this boundary was
set, and he supports it by another inscription from a tomb on which the
same name occurs. This theory might seem very risky, were it not
strengthened by the discovery of a second identical inscription close to
the last, containing the same letters, except that the name Alkiou is
written upside down. In both it is true the letters are hard to read,
being rudely formed, but they are deeply cut, and of evident antiquity,
whilst it can scarcely be doubted that the inscription is the same in
both cases. M. Ganneau attributes them to Maccabean times; it is curious
that they should thus occur in the open country, at no definite distance
from the town, and unmarked by any column or monument. Altogether they
are among the many archæological puzzles of Palestine, and their origin
and meaning will probably always remain questionable.
On the road itself stands the old Crusading fortress, called Castellum
Emmaus, and apparently also Toron of the Knights, according to Benjamin
of Tudela. From the latter name (an old French word, meaning a hill) the
present name, Latrûn, seems derived; by a process common enough in the
Fellâh dialect, el Atrûn has taken the place of el Turûn, as Ajfât is
the common pronunciation of Jefât, or Ajdûr of Jedûr. In the sixteenth
century, however, a curious explanation of the name is given. It is
called the Castle “Boni Latronis” of the good or repentant thief Dismas,
but this is quite a late explanation. In the earlier chronicles of the
twelfth century Latrûn is called the town of the Maccabees, and in the
fourteenth their sepulchral monuments were shown there; but this nation
cannot be traced back in earlier chronicles, and there is nothing at
Latrûn which seems older than Crusading times.
The third site north of the road is one of even greater interest. The
rude village of ’Amwâs preserves the name of Emmaus, famous in Maccabean
history. The early Christians recognised this place as being also the
Emmaus of the New Testament to which the two disciples walked upon the
Resurrection Day. This view continued to be held till the fifteenth
century, when it was observed that the distance given in most texts of
the Gospel is “sixty furlongs,” whereas the present site is just 160
from Jerusalem. This is generally held to be fatal to the tradition,
although the Sinaitic Manuscript actually reads 160 stadia instead of
sixty.
The neighbourhood of Emmaus was the scene of the second great Maccabean
struggle. Judas had already overthrown the army advancing on Jerusalem
by the northern pass, the famous Beth Horon battle-field. A second, yet
more formidable army was encamped at the mouth of the western approach
to the Holy City, and so certain were its leaders of victory, that
merchants accompanied the camp with money to give for Jewish slaves, and
fetters to put on their limbs when sold. The battle of Emmaus was the
Maccabean Austerlitz. The little band of devotees came down by night
from the ancient praying-place at Mizpeh, and whilst the main part of
the Greek host was enticed into the hills, the Jews advanced northwards
on the camp, and took it, cutting off the retreat of the heathen. Never
again in the history of this struggle did any Greek general attempt to
attack Jerusalem from the western pass.
There are still ruins of the little chapel in Emmaus, which the early
Christians built on the supposed spot where the Lord was recognised in
breaking bread. Near to it also was a spring, thought to have healing
virtues. This tradition is of Rabbinical origin, but the Christians
added to it the assumption that its power was due to the touch of
Christ. The name Emmaus itself means a “healing bath,” as Josephus
informs us, speaking of the Galilean place of the same name. At the
present day a well is shown at ’Amwâs by the peasantry, called the
“Well of the Plague,” and it is said that a great plague originated from
the spot.
Leaving Latrûn, we entered the third district--the mountain
country--through the well-known pass called Bâb el Wâd, or the “Gate of
the Valley.”
In the conformation of the Judean hills the secret of the immense
vitality of the Jewish nationality is probably to be found. Had the
capital of Judea been placed at Cæsarea, on the high-road from Greece to
Egypt--had it even been permanently fixed at Shechem, accessible through
the open valley of Samaria, it cannot be doubted that Greek or Egyptian
influence would have affected far more the manners and religion of the
Jews. Remote and inaccessible in its rugged mountains, Jerusalem was
removed from the highway by which the hosts of the Pharaohs advanced on
Assyria. It could only be reached by one of three difficult passes,
unless the whole country of Samaria were in the hands of the enemy.
Hence in the mountains of Judea the national faith had a secure home.
The Philistines overran the plains and even came up into the Shephelah;
Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs conquered Samaria and Galilee, but a
small band of undisciplined peasants was able, under the Maccabees, to
hold at bay the armies of the Seleucidæ, and it required the fullest
efforts of Roman energy and discipline to compass the destruction of
Jerusalem under Titus or under Hadrian. The history again repeats itself
in Crusading times. The Judean hills resisted long after all other parts
of the country had been lost, and Saladin held Jerusalem undisturbed
while Richard overran the plains.
The same natural conformation renders the construction of a railway to
Jerusalem an engineering project of no little difficulty. Within the
distance of a few miles the hills rise suddenly from the level of the
Shephelah towards the narrow plateau, 2500 feet above the sea, on which
the city stands; the ascent is rough and steep, and the valleys very
deep, with rugged stony sides, and ledges of hard grey rock, thickly
covered with shrubs, principally lentisks and arbutus, while here and
there terraces have been artificially built up with dry stone walls for
the cultivation of the olive.
Near the Gate of the Valley there is a little ruined Mukâm or “station”
sacred to the famous Imâm ’Aly, to whom the deeds of Samson and Joshua
are commonly accredited by the peasantry. It is conspicuous from the
fine group of aged terebinths which shade the little mihrab or prayer
niche. Ascending thence past the ancient village of Sarîs, we reached at
length the hill above the modern Kuriet el ’Anab, a place which calls
for more special description.
Kuriet el ’Anab, or the “town of grapes,” is generally called Kurieh
only by the peasantry, and this suggests its identity with Kirjath of
Benjamin, in the territory of which tribe the village appears to lie. It
was supposed in the early Christian times to be the site of Kirjath
Jearim, the “town of forests,” but this appears to be an unsatisfactory
identification for several reasons. The place seems scarcely on the line
of the boundary of Judah, as Kirjath Jearim was; it is not a hill with a
“high” place, as we should gather Kirjath Jearim to have been from the
account of the hill where the ark was kept; and lastly, the important
part of the name bears no reference to the ancient title, derived from
some mountain covered with thick wild growth which does not exist near
the village.
The Crusaders fixed upon Kuriet el ’Anab as being the ancient Anathoth,
their reasons being as usual very difficult to understand. They erected
a magnificent church over a spring in the valley north of the village,
dedicated to Saint Jeremiah of Anathoth, and this structure remains
almost intact. On its walls the dim shadows of former frescoed paintings
can be traced, and over these the names of pilgrims rudely scrawled like
those of the modern tourists. The church is peculiar from the careless
manner in which it has been constructed, the walls not being at right
angles; thus the east wall is two and a half feet longer than the west,
as we found in making the plan.
The village itself consists of stone houses of better appearance than
those in the plain, surrounded by beautiful vineyards, the vines
trailing over the stone walls like a green cataract flowing to the
valley. The place, which derives its name from these vineyards, was once
the seat of the famous native family of Abu Ghôsh. The most notorious of
its chiefs, a robber, who held all pilgrims to the capital in terror,
was killed by the Egyptian Government, pursuing its usual policy of
exterminating the great native families; since death he has been
canonised, and a Mukâm erected to him near the village. At Easter, the
children of the place (which is often called Abu Ghôsh after the
family) are to be seen seated along the road offering water in spouted
bottles to the pilgrims. This charitable custom is rare in Palestine,
though occasionally in use on some of the other pilgrim routes.
The next ascent brought us in sight of a very remarkable village on the
right, now called Sôba. It is separated from the ridge on which the road
runs by the deep and impassable valley which, for the greater part of
its length, forms the northern boundary of Judah. The place struck me
much at the time--a high conical hill crowned by a village surrounded by
steep rocky ledges with thick growth of wild shrubs mingled with olives.
I had afterwards occasion to visit it, and found it to be undoubtedly an
ancient site. Not only are there traces of a Crusading fortress, which
was called Belmont, but also many ancient Jewish sepulchres cut in rock.
The peasantry say it was the palace of the Sultan of the Fenish, and
that his daughter lived at a certain ruined convent near the road, which
we saw surrounded with ancient trees--the wilderness formed from its
original garden.
Since the telegraph line has been laid to Jerusalem, this tradition has
been supplemented with the detail that the Fenish had a telegraphic wire
from the hill palace to that in the valley. Another favourite abode of
the daughter was not far from Latrûn. Again at Beit Jibrîn and at
Keratîya we found a cavern, a garden, and a castle of the Fenish; and
the fact that this tradition is confined to the district south of the
Jerusalem road and on the edge of the hills, leads one to suspect that
the Fenish were no other than the Felish or Philistines, for the
peasantry almost invariably change their L’s into N’s in this manner.
But to return to Sôba. This fine site, standing out black against the
sky, with its grand ravine and wild copses, is evidently an important
spot; yet the name Sôba does not recall any Scriptural place, though not
far different from the Hebrew Zuph where Saul met Samuel. In modern
Arabic it means “a heap,” such as the grain-heaps of the
threshing-floors, a title which applies well to the shape of the hill,
but probably this is a corruption of some older word.
Sôba also was at one time honoured, like Latrûn, as the ancient Modin,
the true site of which was however known to Saint Jerome, east of Lydda,
where El Medieh is now found. The distance of El Medieh from Jerusalem
is close on that given in the Talmud for Modin, although the tomb
supposed by M. Guérin to have been that of the Hasmoneans proves to be
of Christian origin.
And now at length we arrived at the top of the ascent, and spurring
along under the stony knoll on which the little village of
Kŭstŭl--an ancient “castellum” of the Roman conquerors--stands, we
fully expected to see Jerusalem. Instead of this we saw before us a huge
valley over 1000 feet deep, and beyond it a straight line of hills more
lofty and barren than those before passed. We could well picture the
disappointment, so graphically described by the old chronicler, of the
weary hosts of women and children who toiled footsore and thirsty in
rear of the Crusading army, faintly asking, as each height was passed
and a new view opened, “Is that Jerusalem?” If to us, well mounted and
well fed, the journey was wearisome, what was it to the pilgrims
harassed by Saracen skirmishers, and afraid to stop and bury those who
fell, lest, as one writer says, a man might be found to be but digging
his own grave.
A stony winding road led down to the bottom, a stony winding ascent led
up on the other side. Around us were mountains of strikingly wild and
barren character, with the dark iron-grey rocks tinged in parts with
black and russet and capped by a softer white chalk. The long blue
shadows, the large rounded outlines, the hardness and ruggedness of the
slopes, combined to produce a scene of wild grandeur more striking than
anything yet met except the dark thickets of the Sôba ridge.
The valley beneath is full of grey olive-groves; the white torrent bed
is sinuous and winds gradually round west. In the hollow, south of its
course, the village of ’Ain Kârim stands on an eminence, and close to it
the white convent wall, with its dark cypresses, marks the traditional
birthplace of John the Baptist.
The valley is a place famous in Jewish history. It commences north of
Jerusalem, and leads down past Lifta (Eleph) to a little village called
Kolônia which was on the road beneath us. Thence by ’Ain Kârim
southwards to join the Bether valley, and by Kesla it runs down to
Zoreah and Eshtaol and widens out into the great corn valley of Sorek,
and so past Ekron and Jamnia to the sea. Thus it was one of those passes
by which the Philistines were able to penetrate into the heart of the
Jewish mountains. It was down this valley that Samuel drove the
defeated host from Mizpeh, north of Jerusalem, to Ebenezer, a place
probably at the entrance of the hills. In their flight they passed under
Bethcar, which is not impossibly the present ’Ain Kârim. Along the stony
bed of this great valley at our feet, we may picture to ourselves the
nomadic hosts with their mail-clad champions flying before the followers
of the prophet, while far away on the white hills the tabernacle would
be seen high on the ridge of Mizpeh.
The valley was also once the scene of more peaceful events at the yearly
festival of “tabernacles.” Kolônia has near it a ruin called Beit
Mizzeh, the ancient Motza or “Spring-head,” a town of Benjamin. The
Talmudic doctors tell us that Motza was a _colonia_ or place free from
taxes, whence the origin of the modern name, and beside the banks of the
stream from the spring-head grew, and still grow, the willows used at
the feast. By the restaurant and the ruins of a small monastery, the
stream flows under a little bridge; and round its course shady
orange-gardens and olive-yards, beneath the village perched on the
hillside, often tempt the inhabitants of Jerusalem to come out for an
afternoon siesta. It would seem also that on the Day of Atonement this
place used to be the scene of a festival so peculiar and so unlike any
other part of Jewish custom that we are tempted to believe that it was
an innovation of the later Hellenising faction. The daughters of
Jerusalem were encouraged to come out to meet the youths who were
celebrating the newly-acquired purification from sin, with palms in
their hands and songs and dances. Twice a year this festival of maidens
took place, and the contrast to the stern precepts of the Talmudic
doctors, who discountenanced any gaiety in which women took part,
forbade a student to speak to or look at any woman but his wife, and
even counselled that the less he talked to her the better, is certainly
suggestive of foreign origin for the feast of Motza.
Passing by this little oasis in the hills, which has thus from time
immemorial been the site of festal excursions from the capital, we began
the long ascent which led, not, as we hoped, to Jerusalem, but to the
edge of the plateau on the opposite side of which the city stands. The
road, afterwards so familiar to me, seemed longer when the distance was
unknown than when every way-mark was recognised as showing nearer
approach to the end of the journey; and we did not halt to admire, as I
often did afterwards, the fine view from the brow of the hill.
From that brow the great valley is seen winding southwards, and the high
rounded ascent to Kŭstŭl bars out the view of the plain.
Northwards the conical point of Neby Samwîl, crowned with its minaret,
is a conspicuous object, and in the evening when the long shadows steal
up the rugged hillsides, and the western slopes are ruddy in the setting
sun, the breadth and grandeur of the colouring of the wild shapeless
mountains is extremely striking, and grows upon one every time the scene
opens before one’s eyes.
The first approach to Jerusalem from the west is decidedly
disappointing. From the east, north, and south, the aged walls, the
mosque, and Holy Sepulchre, come into view at some distance, and the
scene is striking; but from the west the city is approached within less
than a quarter of a mile before it is seen. The first object is the huge
Russian cathedral outside the town, built in 1864. The white walls and
heavy leaden roofs in the Neobyzantine style block out ancient
Jerusalem. Standing on the approximate site of the old tower of
Psephinus, the Russian Hospice commands the whole town, and is thought
by many to be in a position designedly of military strength.
When, however, these ugly modern buildings are passed, together with the
many white stone villas, country residences of Europeans or rich Jews,
which form “New Jerusalem,” the traveller at length comes in view of a
long grey battlemented wall, a tower, the dark trees of the Armenian
convent garden, and behind all the pale blue line of the Moab hills. He
enters between groups of tawny, groaning camels, and black donkeys
loaded with firewood, under a dark archway, and forcing a path through a
noisy bright-coloured crowd of peasantry, under the shadow of the great
Tower of David he alights at a German hotel within the walls of
Jerusalem.
[Illustration: JACOB’S WELL.]
CHAPTER II.
SHECHEM AND THE SAMARITANS.
The Survey Camp at the time of my arrival in Palestine was fixed at
Shechem, where I proceeded after a few days’ rest at Jerusalem,
accompanied by Sergeant Black, R.E.
About sunset we began to descend into the narrow, stony gorge of the
Robber’s Fountain. The road is not improved by the habit of clearing the
stones off the surrounding gardens into the public path. It descends
through olive-groves to a narrow pass with a precipice on the left,
beneath which is the little spring. A ruined castle commands the pass on
the Jerusalem side, and is still called “Baldwin’s Tower” by the
peasantry, having no doubt been built by one of the kings of that name.
The gorge once passed, we emerged into an open valley, and on our left
was Sinjil, named from Raymond of Saint Gilles, who there fixed his camp
when advancing on Jerusalem. The short twilight gave place to almost
total darkness, as we began to climb the watershed which separates the
plain of Moreh from the valley coming down from Shiloh, and the moon had
risen when the great shoulder of Gerizim became dimly visible some ten
miles away, with a silvery wreath of cloud on its summit. Creeping
beneath its shadow we gained the narrow valley of Shechem, and followed
a stony lane between walnut trees under a steep hillside. The barking of
dogs was now heard, and the lights in camp at length came into view.
Shechem is the first Syrian town mentioned in the history of Abraham,
and the ground round Jacob’s well was the first possession of Jacob in
the Holy Land. Shechem is recognised in the Pentateuch as the capital of
central Palestine, ranking with Hebron in the south, and Kadesh in the
north, as a city of refuge. Later on we find Rehoboam crowned here, and
indeed it is not too much to say that Shechem may be considered the
natural capital of Palestine. Its central situation, its accessibility,
its wonderfully fine water-supply, are advantages not enjoyed by any
other city in the land. The one disadvantage which perhaps as early as
the time of Rehoboam prevented its being selected as a capital, consists
in its being commanded by a hill on either side so close to the town,
that the old geographer, Marino Sanuto, in the fourteenth century,
considers the place to be untenable by any military force, because
stones might be rolled down upon the houses from either Ebal or Gerizim.
It was at Shechem that the solemnities which were to be performed on the
conquest of the country--the reading of the law and erection of the
altar--were commanded by Moses to be performed, yet, soon after, we find
the religious capital at Shiloh, and, in a few years after the great
schism, the political capital of Israel was removed to Tirzah, and
afterwards to Samaria.
But while the town is interesting from its antiquity and from the
vicissitudes of its history, the Samaritan people are yet more so.
Who are the Samaritans? What is their origin, and relation to the other
natives of the country? The answer is usually a short one. They are
Cuthim, strangers from beyond Jordan--settlers who replaced the
Israelites led away by Sargon. It seems to me, however, that these
conclusions must be received with great reserve.
Soon after my arrival we received a visit from Amram, the Samaritan
high-priest, accompanied by Jacob Shellaby. The high-priest was a
wonderfully handsome old man, with fine aquiline features, and he wore
the crimson turban distinctive of his race. He could speak no languages
except Arabic and Samaritan, and his ideas were perhaps rather limited,
as he pronounced Gerizim to be the highest mountain in the world. We
represented to him that Ebal, close by, was nearly 230 feet higher. He
allowed that it appeared to be so, but could not in reality be, because
Gerizim was the highest mountain in the world. This fine old dignitary
died in 1874. It was thought that his successor was to be a mere doll in
the hands of Jacob Shellaby; a gentleman who is an accomplished savant.
In England he appeared for some time in the character of a Samaritan
prince. He supplied travellers with many ancient Samaritan hymn books,
purloined, it is said, while the congregation were reverently
prostrating themselves. He described to us with immense gusto the mode
of preparing ancient manuscripts, by steeping a skin in coffee-grounds,
and placing it for a month or two under the pillows of the diwan. Many
an unwary traveller has been taken in by his false antiquities, stones,
and manuscripts. It was thought that Shellaby would succeed, on the
death of Amram, in obtaining the ancient roll of the law itself; but
this is the Samaritan Fetish, and the young high-priest would not
connive at such a deed--which would indeed have been the killing of the
golden goose, as the manuscript brings in a yearly income--and
excommunicated Jacob, who, after holding an heretical passover of his
own on Gerizim, finally left the congregation and repaired to Jerusalem,
where I saw him in 1875.
Jacob Shellaby’s ideas were perhaps not far in advance of the
high-priest’s. He related very naïvely his delight at the supposed
discovery of a gigantic emerald, which he showed us, and which was
merely a large fragment of green slag from some old glass-works. He also
fully believed in the story of a cave guarded by genii, and full of
gold, which might be carried away, but invariably flew back by night to
its place, from wherever it might be taken.
Two things struck me very much in my intercourse with the Samaritans
during this first visit, and during another stay of a few days in 1875
in Nablus.
First of all it is indisputable that both in features and in figure they
bear a strikingly close family likeness to the Jews. It may be urged
that the Cuthim are supposed to have been Semitic, but so are the
Syrians and Bedawin, yet they are not at all like the Jews. The
Samaritans are a very pure stock, the beauty of their priestly family is
remarkable; the aquiline nose, the lustrous brown eyes, the thick under
lip, the crisp hair, the peach-like down of the complexion, are features
pre-eminently Jewish. The lean and weedy figure is again peculiar also
to the Palestinian Jews, and contrasts forcibly with the obesity of the
Turks and the sturdiness of the peasantry. For hundreds of years the
Jews have kept their race pure, and so have the Samaritans. Since the
time of Christ at least, Jews and Samaritans have probably never
inter-married, yet we find them now closely alike in their
characteristic physiognomy.
In the second place, the Samaritans preserve an ancient copy of the
Pentateuch, which, though differing in some marked peculiarities, is yet
substantially the same as the Jewish text. It is written in the
Samaritan character, which closely approaches the most ancient forms of
Jewish writing. It cannot be supposed that these Samaritans would have
adopted the religion and sacred books of a nation that they despised and
hated, and the evidence of the character employed is in favour of the
original copies having been made before the time of Ezra, when,
according to the Rabbis, the square alphabet was adopted, before indeed
the schism between Jew and Samaritan became so intense as it afterwards
grew to be.
These facts naturally incline one _primâ facie_ to consider the
Samaritans as originally of the same stock with the Jews, and an
investigation of the question seems to me to show that they are the last
remnants of the scattered Israel, the lost Ten Tribes, whose history has
always excited curiosity in the minds of so many.
It will be allowed that but little reliance can be placed on the
partisan descriptions of Josephus and of the Rabbinical writers.
Unfortunately we gather but little from the Bible which can throw light
on the subject, and the Samaritan accounts are all very late, their
oldest chronicles dating back only to the twelfth century, though
apparently founded on more ancient material. It may, however, be
interesting to sketch what is known of their history from various
sources.
Sargon, who on his monuments is described as “Destroyer of the city of
Samaria and of all Beth Omri,” took away with him in 721 B.C. all the
more important and a great host of minor captives, to Assyria. Still a
certain proportion of the Israelites would seem to have been left
behind, as we find Hezekiah, in 717 B.C., sending messengers through the
country of Ephraim and Manasseh, inviting Israelites to the Passover,
which might not be eaten by strangers, and some actually attended it (2
Chron. xxx. 18). Worshippers from Shechem and Samaria are also noticed
as coming to Jerusalem after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer.
xli. 5); thus, though foreign colonists from Cutha, Ava, Hamath, and
Sepharvaim were sent into Samaria, there is reason to suppose that many
of the original Israelite population were left.
The Talmudic doctors invariably call the Samaritans Cuthim. Cutha is a
district as yet unknown, but it may be noticed that the Biblical account
represents the men of Cutha as serving Nergal, who is known from
Cuneiform inscriptions to have been a “lion-god,” worshipped by
inhabitants of Cutha, and therefore an appropriate deity to appease when
a plague of lions was devastating the land. It is not impossible that
the Jews seized upon the close similarity of the name Cuthim with the
title Kûsânîya, or “true people,” by which one Samaritan sect
distinguished themselves from a second, the Lifânîyeh. The first sect
believed in the future life, in future reward and punishment; the latter
confined the promises of the law to temporal matters; the latter were
named from a word meaning “to make light,” because, like the pupils of
the Jewish Hillel, they made the law less stringent, whereas the
stronger sect, the Kûsânîya, made its burden heavier, following the
example of the school of Shammai.
The foreign colonists, from Cutha, found themselves, as they simply
supposed, unable to appease the deity of their new country without
special instructions in the peculiarities of his rite. They petitioned
therefore for a priest, and an Israelite priest returned and dwelt at
Bethel. It is perhaps only natural to suppose that the place here
intended in the Bible is Gerizim, which was held by the Samaritans to be
the site of Jacob’s vision. It follows from this account that at least
one priestly family returned to Samaria, and the Samaritans claimed a
descent for their priesthood from Phinehas the grandson of Aaron.
Another curious allegation, brought forward by Josephus and also to be
found in the Targums, is that the Samaritans claimed to be Sidonians;
this is however plainly contradictory to the view that they were Cuthim,
and only serves to show the small reliance that can be placed on the
later Jewish accounts.
Having then indications that the Israelites were not all carried to
Assyria, and that one at least of their priests returned, and having the
invariable assertion of the Samaritans that they are descendants of this
small remnant, and in confirmation of this their physiognomical
characteristics, their religion, their possession of an ancient text of
the books of Moses, their observation of the Jewish Passover, according
to the most ancient form of the rite, we may fairly place the Samaritan
literature in the balance against the accounts of the Pharisees--Josephus
and the Talmudic doctors--which, as above shown, are in themselves
contradictory.
It seems probable that the cause of the division of the Hebrew monarchy
is to be sought in an original jealousy between the great tribes of
Judah and Joseph who first seized on the land; but, as we have seen
above, the religious schism was not complete before the time of the
revival under Ezra. Worshippers from Shechem had been received at
Jerusalem, and on the return of the Jews the Samaritans were anxious to
take part in the restoration of the Temple in the Jewish capital. With
regard to the history of the quarrel, Jewish and Samaritan accounts are,
as might be expected, diametrically opposed. Josephus, in a passage
which has no parallel in the Book of Ezra (Ant. xi 4. 9.), represents
ambassadors, including Zerubbabel, as going to Darius and obtaining a
decree against the Samaritans, forbidding them to interfere with the
building of the Temple. From the Book of Ezra it appears, however, that
the enemies of Judah succeeded in stopping the work of restoration (Ezra
iv. 24). The Samaritan account is in agreement with this; according to
their chronicle the whole of Israel, with the exception of the Jews,
wished to build the Temple on Gerizim. An appeal was made to the King,
and copies of the law made by Sanballat and Zerubbabel were cast into a
great fire; the former leapt out thrice unhurt, the latter were
immediately consumed. These traditions cannot of course be put in the
same category with the sober history of the Book of Ezra; but in the
main the accounts are not discordant, as both acknowledge an appeal to
Darius and the hindrance of the Jews by Samaritan opposition.
In tracing the history of the schism, it is important to remember the
great similarity of doctrine which certainly existed between the
Samaritans and the Sadducees. The Jews never placed their enemies in
quite the same category with the heathen. In the remarkable tract on the
Cuthim, a Jew is allowed to hold intercourse with a Samaritan in all
cases where it might be to his own advantage, but not when it is against
his interests. The two tenets which caused the exclusion of Cuthim from
the congregation are stated to have been--first, their belief in Gerizim
as the true religious centre; second, their denial of the resurrection,
which opinion they shared with the Sadducees.
Many details of the Samaritan faith were identical with Karaite and
Sadducean tenets, and the view taken of their error appears to have
been, with one Jewish party, that, while originally orthodox, they had
become mixed with the priests of the high places and corrupted the
purity of the faith.
It cannot be doubted that it was the Pharisees who were the deadly
enemies of the Samaritans. This sect, originating in the “separation”
under Ezra, at once excluded the Samaritans from participation in the
building of the Temple. Sanballat was connected by marriage with the
Sadducean high-priest--a fact which favours the view that he was an
Israelite, not a foreigner--but against this affinity Ezra set his face,
and the schism was thus rendered more complete. Gradually the Pharisees
gained in power as the Sadducees declined; under the Hasmoneans they
obtained at length the high-priesthood, and Hyrcanus succeeded in
destroying the Samaritan Temple in 129 B.C. With the exception of a
short interval the Pharisees were in power until 35 B.C., and the
constant reprisals which for four hundred years had been indulged in on
both sides, had left such indelible hatred between the two nations that
nothing but entire submission and the abandonment of Gerizim would have
induced even the Sadducees to receive into the congregation a people
whose religion in other respects was almost indistinguishable from their
own.
The Samaritans are, indeed, in the peculiarities of their doctrine
almost identical with the original Jewish party--the Karaite and
Sadducean sects. They are even called Sadducees in Jewish writings, and
their denial of the resurrection was, like that of the Sadducees, based
on the declaration that nothing was to be found in the law of Moses on
the subject. Again, their version of the law is closely similar to that
of the Septuagint, which was a translation authorised by a Sadducean
high-priest from a text differing from that finally established by the
Pharisees. The animosity of Josephus--who was a Pharisee--the fierce
denunciations of the Talmud, written by Pharisees, the destruction of
the Gerizim Temple by Hyrcanus--also a Pharisee--all combine to indicate
that the Jewish hatred had nothing to do with any foreign origin of the
race, but rather was roused by the religious differences of a people
whom they knew to be their kith and kin.
It is often supposed that the Samaritans borrowed their religion from
the Sadducees. It is surely a simpler explanation that they were a sect
originally identical because originally Israelite.
The Samaritan chronicles give a plain account of the origin of their
people. At the time of the return from captivity a certain number of the
congregation carried into Assyria came back to Palestine under
Sanballat. Some thirty thousand, however, remained behind awaiting the
Prophet whom they expected as a leader.
Sanballat is called in the Bible “the Horonite.” From this title it has
been supposed that he was a foreigner, though the Samaritans call him
Lawîni the “Levite.” The place where Israel assembled before crossing
into Palestine, and where the first quarrel as to where the Temple was
to be built occurred, was Horân, and this may perhaps account for the
term Horonite. The Jews, under Zerubbabel, repaired to Jerusalem, the
test of the congregation, three hundred thousand in all, beside youths,
women, children, and _strangers_ (probably the colonists from Cutha,
Hamath, and Ava), were led to Gerizim, where they established the Temple
on the 9th of Tizri. Such is the Samaritan account, which gains
credibility when we compare it with the Book of Ezra, and from the fact
that Sanballat was connected by marriage with a Sadducean high-priest in
Jerusalem. The name Lawîni or “Levite” is still preserved as the name of
a prophet whose tomb is shown to the west of Shechem.
The quarrels and recriminations of Jews and Samaritans it is useless to
follow in detail. The beautiful lessons of Christ were lost on both
alike, and the large charity of the parable of the good Samaritan, with
the truth that neither at Jerusalem nor on Gerizim was God exclusively
to be sought, seem to have been far beyond the comprehension of the
disputants. Even in their own accounts the falseness and cruelty of the
Samaritans are repulsively prominent; nor does the Jewish character
stand high by contrast either for ingenuousness or for charity to their
enemies.
By the time of our Lord the hatred of the two people had become greater
than their aversion to the heathen. Wine for the Temple passing through
Samaria became unfit for use, a Jew was forbidden to help a wounded
Samaritan or a Samaritan woman in trouble. On the other hand, murder and
treachery are charged against the Cuthim; they lighted false beacons in
order to confuse the Jewish calendar depending on the appearance of the
new moon; they betrayed the Jews to the Romans; they polluted the Temple
with bones. Such crimes could never be forgiven, and the Jews in
contempt cast them out as heathen and foreigners.
The later history of the Samaritans has been often told; under Pilate
they raised a tumult, headed by a leader who (probably assuming the
character of Messiah) promised to show them the golden vessels said to
have been buried by Moses on Gerizim. The cruelty with which this revolt
was repressed led to Pilate’s final disgrace.
In the time of Vespasian they again rebelled, and were again repressed.
Under Hadrian they assisted the Romans against the Pharisees led by Bar
Cocheba, but under Severus they took part in rebellion with the Jews.
The greatest revolt appears to have been, however, in the time of
Justinian, when the whole race rose, in May 529 A.D., attacked the
Christians, put the Bishop of Neapolis to death, and crowned a certain
Julian. Their punishment was cruel, and henceforward they disappear from
history, having probably been almost exterminated.
The Emperor Zeno had in 474 A.D. erected a church on Gerizim. This
church Justinian converted into a sort of fortress by building a second
wall round it. He also caused five churches (possibly all now
represented by mosques) to be rebuilt in Neapolis.
In the fifth century the Samaritans had begun to spread over Egypt and
southern Palestine, in 493 A.D. they had a synagogue in Rome. In the
seventh century, according to their own records, they occupied the whole
of Palestine except the Judean hills. Up to some fifty years ago they
had a synagogue in Gaza, the last of their communities, which in the
seventeenth century also existed in Cairo and Damascus. At the present
day they are found only in the town of Nablus, and appear to have become
extinct in other towns about the year 1820 A.D.
In the middle ages they seem to have been undistinguished from the Jews,
and thus it is only in the writings of a Jew (R. Benjamin of Tudela)
that they are described. He speaks of about one hundred Cutheans “who
observe the law of Moses only,” that is to say, do not recognise the
later books. Though writing with the usual Pharisaic prejudice, the
Rabbi admits the priestly family to be descendants of Aaron.
The existence of an ancient roll of the law, in possession of the
Samaritans, was known to Scaliger; a copy was obtained by Pietro Della
Valle in 1616 A.D., and this brought the Samaritans again into notice.
They became a sort of pet people among learned men, and long
correspondences were held with them. Thus, although the ancient copy at
Shechem has never been collated, the value of the Samaritan version of
the Pentateuch is well known to students.
The most striking peculiarity of the Samaritan text is its close
resemblance to the Septuagint version. This caused a most exaggerated
estimate of its value to be at one time formed. It was supposed that the
Masoretic text, from which our English version has been taken, was
corrupt, and the Samaritan and Greek the more ancient. The labours of
the great scholar Gesenius have, however, almost placed these questions
at rest. He points out that though the Samaritan and Greek agree against
the Masoretic text in about one thousand passages, there are numerous
instances where Greek and Hebrew agree against the Samaritan. He further
holds that the archaic forms of the Hebrew have been modernised in the
Samaritan, and numerous corruptions introduced from purely theological
reasons. The variations of the text he divided into three classes:
first, Samaritan forms of words; secondly, blunders and emendations in
the text; thirdly, alterations for the glorification of Gerizim and of
the Samaritans. It cannot be doubted that in some cases, however, the
Samaritan and Greek preserve the sense which has been lost in the Jewish
version. Gesenius’s conclusion will commend itself to all by its
moderation and impartiality. He holds that Samaritan and Greek are both
derived from ancient codices, differing among themselves and also from
the text which became received later by the Jews. Kennicott goes yet
further in saying that the authority of both the versions should be
recognised. The antiquity of the text from which our English version is
derived, is however established by the comparison, and unless the oldest
Samaritan roll differs very materially from all other copies as yet
collated, we cannot expect to get much of any permanent value or
interest from its examination.
The Rolls of the Law, or Five Books of Moses (considered by the
Samaritans to form a single work), now found in the Synagogue at Nablus
are three in number. I have twice been enabled to see them; at Jerusalem
also I was shown another manuscript, not a roll but in the form of a
book, which is called “The Fire-Tried,” as it claims to be one of
Sanballat’s copies before noticed. These venerable documents may now be
briefly described.
The Samaritan synagogue stands in the Samaritan quarter, the
south-western part of the town of Nablus. It is a mean room, with
white-washed walls, and a dome with a skylight. A dirty counterpane is
hung before a recess, called the Musbah, in which is a cupboard. From
behind this veil the manuscripts are produced. At my first visit the
high-priest Amram brought out the latest scroll. It is written in black
ink on parchment, and rolled on two rollers, enclosed in two cylinders
of brass, covered with a florid arabesque of thin silver plates fastened
on to the brass. The scroll is kept on a shelf of the cupboard, the
other two are locked up. The case is enveloped in a green silk wrapper,
embroidered with arabesques. Mr. Drake, who accompanied me, now asked to
see the next. The high-priest answered, after affecting great surprise,
that his nephew Jacob had the key; he, however, was soon persuaded to
send his son to fetch it, and brought out from the locker the second,
which is of older appearance, also in a brass case, with huge knobs to
the rollers. By means of these rollers the parchment is slipped round,
so that each column of the roll is visible in turn. The workmanship in
this case is better than that of the first. The cherubim, pot of manna,
Aaron’s rod, and other sacred objects, are shown in the arabesque. There
is a legend with the date 820 A.H., or 1456 A.D., which gives the name
of the maker as Jacob ben Phoki, a Damascene. The writing in this
manuscript appears to have been touched up later.
The high-priest and his nephew Jacob now declared that there was no
older scroll, but Mr. Drake said he had seen it, and at length they were
reduced to saying that being ceremonially unclean they could not touch
it. We accordingly stepped behind the veil, the locker was opened, and
we saw the famous roll of Abishuah in a solid silver cover of modern
workmanship. The greatest reluctance was manifested in showing us this
sacred relic; the priests exclaimed, “Permission!” and “In the name of
God.” The roll is said to have been written on the skins of about twenty
rams, which were slain as thank-offerings, the writing being on the hair
side; the handwriting is small and rather irregular, the lines far
apart; the ink is faded and of a purplish hue, the parchment much torn,
very yellow, and patched in places, and bound at the edges with green
silk.
Down the centre of the scroll runs the famous title called Tarîkh or
“Inscription,” a sort of acrostic. By thickening one or two letters in
each line in a vertical column, the following has been obtained:
“I Abishuah, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest,
the favour of Jehovah be upon them, for His glory I have written this
Holy Torah (copy of the law) in the entrance of the tabernacle of the
congregation on Mount Gerizim, even Bethel, in the thirteenth year of
the possession by the children of Israel of the land of Canaan and all
its boundaries. I thank the Lord.”
My second visit was paid after the death of Amram, in company with
Lieutenant Kitchener and Mr. Elkarey the missionary. Jacob, the old
man’s nephew, was now high-priest; on the 10th of June, 1875, we
repaired again to the synagogue. The high-priest, an eminently handsome
man about thirty-five years of age, received us, dressed in robes of
dark purple, with the crimson turban; his brown beard long and square,
not marred at the corners; his dark eyes with drooping lids, the
beautiful olive complexion and delicate aquiline nose, perhaps a little
too square at the end, made him a model of beauty of a certain type--the
Jewish beauty, for which the priestly family of the Hasmoneans was so
famous, and which captivated Herod the Great in Mariamne, the last of
her race.
Hastily admitting us, he locked the door, and brought us to the veil now
covered over with a gorgeous yellow satin cloth. A younger priest
brought out the second manuscript, but was hastily told “not that one;”
and the silver case once more appeared, and was placed on a sort of
trestle. Whilst we examined it, some urchins got up on the roof and
looked through the skylight. The priest was alarmed, he drove them away,
replaced the old scroll, unlocked the door, and showed us the other two.
There is a marked difference in the treatment Abishuah’s roll receives
at the hands of the priests. It is indeed a Samaritan Fetish, and is
only seen by the congregation once a year, when elevated above the
priest’s head on the Day of Atonement.
The so-called “Fire-tried Manuscript” belongs to a poor widow in
Jerusalem, named Mrs. Ducat. She lent it to a German savant named Dr.
Jacob Frederic Kraus, and his essay on the manuscript is kept with it.
The whole consists of 217 leaves, containing the Torah or law, from the
twenty-ninth verse of the first chapter of Genesis to the blessing of
Moses in Deuteronomy. Six leaves are added in a smaller hand on
parchment at the beginning, the first being almost illegible. The real
manuscript only begins at Gen. xi. 11; three leaves are added at the end
for protection, after Deut. xxix. 30. The whole is much worn, and
measures eleven inches by nine inches, and three inches in thickness.
The text is divided into paragraphs, with verses, sentences, and words
separated by a single dot; words are not allowed to be broken by the
line, but in order to fill up the line the last letters are further
apart, unless they form the word Jehovah which is read Elwem. The
letters are not so small as those of Abishuah’s roll, nor as large as
those of the later roll; the hand is steady and uniform. The Decalogue
is not numbered by marginal letters, in this respect it resembles
Abishuah’s roll, and so also the paragraphs are neither numbered nor
stated in either text. These points seem to show the Fire-tried
Manuscript to be ancient.
Some hundreds of the Samaritan copies of the law have the acrostic like
Abishuah’s roll, each giving the name, place, and date of the text; but
the Fire-tried Manuscript has a note instead at the end of Genesis, to
this effect:
“This holy Torah has been made by a wise, valiant, and great son, a
good, a beloved, and an understanding leader, a master of all knowledge,
by Shelomo, son of Saba, a valiant man, leader of the congregation, by
his knowledge and his understanding, and he was a righteous man, an
interpreter of the Torah, a father of blessings, of the sons of Nun (may
the Lord be merciful to them!); and it was appointed to be dedicated
holy to the Lord, that they might read therein with fear and prayer in
the House of the High-Priesthood in the seventh month, the tenth day;
and this was done before me, and I am Ithamar, son of Aaron, son of
Ithamar the High-Priest; may the Lord renew his strength! Amen.”
A note at the end of the Book of Numbers connects this manuscript with
the story given above from the Samaritan Book of Joshua.
“It came out from the fire by the power of the Lord to the hand of the
King of Babel, in the presence of Zerubbabel the Jew, and was not burnt.
Thanks be to the Lord for the Law of Moses.”
This curious manuscript, which has been photographed for the Palestine
Exploration Fund, came into Mr. Ducat’s hands from a Samaritan in
payment of a bad debt. It has been in England, and was then offered for
sale for £1000. In 1872, £200 was asked for it. There were faint traces
of gilding on the proper names still visible when shown to me in August
of the same year.
Turning again to the Samaritans themselves. In 1872 the little community
numbered 135 souls, of whom no less than eighty were males. The Moslems
say that the number is never exceeded, and that one of the eighty dies
as soon as a child is born. By the defection of Jacob Shellaby with his
family, they have been reduced to a total of 130 souls.
Year by year the Samaritans are dying out. Clinging to Shechem and the
Holy Mountain, they are the last left of the nation which in the fifth
and seventh centuries spread far over Palestine and Egypt.
The religion of the Samaritans approaches probably closer to original
Judaism than anything among the Jews themselves. Even their view that
Gerizim was intended to be the Temple mountain is not without
foundation, for while the blessings and curses are placed on the two
Samaritan mountains, Jerusalem is not noticed in the books of Moses.
The first Samaritan doctrine is the Unity of God and His special
revelation to Israel. They hold Moses to be the one messenger of God,
and superior even to their expected Prophet; they believe in the
immutability and perfection of the written law, and finally in Gerizim
as the earth’s centre, the house of God, the highest mountain on earth,
the only one not covered by the flood, the site of altars raised by
Adam, Seth, and Noah, the Mount Moriah of Abraham’s sacrifice, the
Bethel or Luz of Jacob’s vision, the place where Joshua erected first an
altar, next the tabernacle, finally a temple. On its slope the cave of
Makkedah is also shown, though now closed up. From all these sacred
memories it becomes naturally the central shrine of Samaritan faith.
It appears also that they believe in future retribution, and in angels
and devils as ministers of God in the unseen world, but their views as
to the future life seem to be vague.
Still more interesting is the question of the Samaritan belief in a
future prophet who is to be of the sons of Joseph. This expectation,
founded on the words of Moses, “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee
a Prophet like unto me” (Deut. xviii. 15), is identical with the Jewish
expectation in Maccabean times. It is to this belief, no doubt, that the
Samaritan woman refers in the conversation at Jacob’s well, “I know that
Messias cometh” (John v. 25). In 1860 the Samaritans believed the
Prophet to be already on earth. His name is to begin with the letter M,
his titles are Taheb the “restorer,” and El Mahdy the “guide.” Following
his direction the congregation will repair to Gerizim, under the famous
“twelve stones” will find the Ten Commandments, and under the stone of
Bethel the golden vessels of the Temple and the manna. After one hundred
and ten years the Prophet is to die and be buried beside Joseph in the
valley. Soon after, on the conclusion of seven thousand years from its
foundation, the world is to come to an end.
Whilst agreeing with the Jews in the acceptance of the law in its
strictest and most limited interpretation as immutable and everlasting,
the Samaritans differ in many minor points as to its interpretation, not
only as regards Gerizim, but also in such matters for instance as the
rights of the widow who is married to the nearest relation and not to
the brother of her husband. They allow bigamy if the first wife be
childless, but do not permit more than two wives; they do not allow
earrings to be worn, because of the use of earrings in the moulding of
the golden calf. Any member of the priest’s family may be made a priest
if twenty-five years old, and if his hair has never been cut. The men
marry at fifteen, the girls at twelve, the dowry given by the husband
being from forty to sixty pounds. Generally speaking they adhere more
closely to the original spirit of the law than do the Jews, and have not
invented any of those evasions which are described in the Talmud.
These details, with many more too minute to be now discussed, will be
found in Juynboll’s edition of the Samaritan Book of Joshua, in Nutt’s
“Sketch of Samaritan History,” and in Mills’ “Modern Samaritans.” It is
needless to say that the various accusations of idolatry which have been
brought against these unorthodox Israelites (unorthodox from a Jewish
point of view) are groundless. They do not and never have worshipped a
dove, the story originating probably in their belief in a miraculous
dove which carried letters for Joshua; as to the statement that they
hold the world to have been created by a goat, it appears to be
altogether an invention.
A few words must be added as to the great feasts held yearly, though I
have never been so fortunate as to witness the Passover on Gerizim. In
addition to this great festival, the Samaritans keep the Feast of
Pentecost, and the Fast of Atonement when the Torah is displayed and
kissed, the law read, and sleeping, eating, and talking alike forbidden.
On the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles they repair to booths of
arbutus boughs pitched on the side of Gerizim: these, with the Sabbath,
which is very strictly observed, and a feast in memory of the
deliverance from Egypt, form their principal festivals.
The sacrifice on Gerizim, called Karaban Afsah, has been graphically
described by one of the most picturesque writers on the Holy Land. A
brief _résumé_ of his and other accounts will render the present sketch
more complete.
After special preparation by prayer and the reading of the Law, the
congregation repair to the plateau or lower spur, running out west from
the high ridge of Gerizim, on which are the ruins of the ancient Temple,
and it is at this time covered with white tents; it is, however, only
within the last thirty years that this has been allowed by the Moslems.
At sunset on the 15th of Nizan the service begins, the high-priest
standing on a large stone surrounded by a low dry stone wall. A certain
proportion of the congregation wear long white robes, and all have white
turbans instead of the usual red one. Six sheep are slain, as the sun
goes down, by the Samaritan butcher cutting their throats; the entrails
and right fore-legs are cut off and burnt; the bodies are scalded with
water from two huge cauldrons heated over a fire of brushwood, the
fleeces removed, the legs skewered, and the bodies then thrust into a
sort of oven in the ground (Tannûr in Arabic), covered with a hurdle and
with sods of earth. Here for five hours they are baked. The oven, lined
with stone, can be seen on the mountain all the year round. The men of
the congregation gird themselves with ropes, and with staves in their
hands and shoes on their feet as though prepared for a journey, they
surround the meat when brought out, and generally eat standing or
walking; of late years, however, they have been seen seated. The Jews
have always eaten the Passover seated, in Palestine, but until lately
the Samaritans have adhered to the ancient and prescribed form to eat
“in haste.” The scene of the feast, dimly visible by the light of a few
candles, is one of unique interest, taking the spectator back for
thousands of years to the early period of Jewish history. The men eat
first, the women next; the scraps are burnt, and a bonfire kindled and
fed with the fat; the rest of the night is spent in prayer for four
hours. On the following day rejoicings continue; fish, rice, and eggs
are eaten, wine and spirits drunk, and hymns, generally impromptu, are
sung. On the 21st of the month another pilgrimage is made to Gerizim,
forming the eighth festival held by the nation.
Such is a slight sketch, compiled partly from personal inquiries and
partly from various standard authorities, of the history and customs of
the Samaritans. To sum up the points principally worthy of
consideration. We have seen that while the later Jewish accounts are
contradictory as to the origin of this people, and the Bible itself
silent, we have their own assertion that they are the remaining
descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel. We have noticed that their
physiognomy leads to the conclusion that they are of the same stock with
the Jews, that their sacred book is a version of the Pentateuch and
their religion a very pure form of Judaism, that the first became
apparently their religious standard before the time of Ezra, and that
it is inconceivable that they should have adopted Jewish dogmas at a
period when they were distinguished by their hatred of that nation.
Finally, we see their doctrines to be in the main identical with those
of the most ancient Jewish party, the Karaite or Sadducean.
From these various reasons the conclusion which appears to me personally
to follow is, that the Samaritans are to be believed in respect of their
account of their own origin, and that in them we find the only true
descendants of Israel, and the only remnant of the Ten Tribes with
exception perhaps of those still dispersed in Assyria, who have,
however, in many cases deserted their original faith.
The subject which naturally next claims attention is that of the
Samaritan sacred places, and of their relation to the Biblical history.
The sites in question are all grouped in the immediate vicinity of
Shechem.
The modern town of Nâblus (the Roman Neapolis) probably occupies, in
part at least, the site of the ancient Shechem, as is indicated by the
proximity of the modern cemetery to the greater number of the Jewish
rock-cut sepulchres. It is a town of some thirteen thousand inhabitants,
of whom all but about six hundred are Moslems of a very fanatical
spirit. The town is well built, containing several fine houses and a
good bazaar. It is surrounded with walls and is long and narrow, situate
at the head of the great valley, called “Valley of Barley,” which runs
west to Samaria.
The Vale of Shechem is from a quarter to half a mile wide north and
south, hemmed in between the twin mountains Ebal and Gerizim, the
summits of which are two miles apart in a line. The valley is the most
luxuriant in Palestine; long rivulets, fed by no less than eighty
springs (according to the natives), run down the hill-slopes and murmur
in the deep ravine; gardens surround the city walls; figs, walnuts,
mulberries, oranges, lemons, olives, pomegranates, vines, plums, and
every species of vegetable grow in abundance, and the green foliage and
sparkling streams refresh the eye. But as at Damascus, the oasis is set
in a desert, and the stony, barren mountains contrast strongly with the
green orchards below.
The Crusaders have left their mark on the town: the ruined “Leper’s
Mosque” to the east seems to have been probably the Hospital: the Great
Mosque is a Byzantine Basilica, with an outer court, having on the east
a fine Gothic portal. The little chapel of the “Wailing of Jacob” (over
his lost son Joseph) was also once a Christian church. The names of the
six quarters of the city appear to be ancient.
Just inside the town wall is a modern Moslem mosque, dedicated to the
“Ten Sons of Jacob,” and the site is probably connected with an ancient
tradition of the tombs of the sons of Israel mentioned by St. Jerome in
his account of St. Paula’s travels. Olive-groves extend eastwards for
half a mile from the town, and on the west also there are groves where
the lepers have taken up their abode. The ancient ruins extend some way
beyond the walls on the east, and the foundations of a former monastery
exist above the road on the south-west.
South of Nâblus rises the rocky and steep shoulder of Gerizim. The
mountain is L-shaped; the highest ridge (2848·8 feet above the sea) runs
north and south, and a lower ridge projects westwards from it. The top
is about 1000 feet above the bottom of the valley east of Shechem. As
compared with other Judean mountains, the outline of Gerizim is very
fine; the lower part consists of white chalk, which has been quarried,
leaving huge caverns visible above the groves which clothe the feet of
the hill. Above this formation comes the dark blue Nummulitic limestone,
barren and covered with shingle, rising in ledges and long slopes to the
summit. The whole of the northern face of the mountain abounds with
springs, the largest of which, with ruins of a little Roman shrine to
its Genius, was close to our camp.
In ascending to the summit of the western spur of Gerizim, by the path
up the gully behind our camp, the contrast was striking between the
bright green of the gardens, dotted with red pomegranate blossoms, and
the steel-grey of the barren slope. Riding eastwards and gradually
ascending, we first reached the little drystone enclosures and the oven
used during the Passover. There are scattered stones round, but no
distinct ruins of any buildings; the place is called Lôzeh or Luz, but
the reason of this appears to have escaped notice. The title is of
Samaritan origin, and is due to their view that Gerizim is the real site
of Bethel or Luz, the scene of Jacob’s vision.
The highest part of the mountain is covered by the ruins of Justinian’s
fortress, built 533 A.D., in the midst of which stands Zeno’s church,
constructed in 474 A.D. The foundations alone are visible, showing an
octagon with its entrance on the north, and remains of six side chapels;
the fortress is a rectangle 180 feet east and west, 230 north and south,
with towers at the corners; that on the south-west being now a little
mosque dedicated to Sheikh Ghanim, who is, according to the Samaritans,
Shechem the son of Hamor. The fortress walls are built of those
constantly recurring drafted stones which are often loosely described as
Jewish or Phœnician masonry, though the practised eye soon
discriminates between the original style of the Temple at Jerusalem, and
the rude rustic bosses of the Byzantines and Crusaders.
A large reservoir exists, north of the castle which is called El
Kŭl’ah in Arabic, and below this a spur of the hill projects,
artificially severed by a ditch and covered with the traces of a former
fortress. This is perhaps the station of the Roman guards, who thus
prevented the Samaritans from approaching Gerizim, for it commands the
north-eastern ascent to the mountain.
Of the ancient Samaritan Temple, probably the only relics are the
remains of massive masonry known as the “Ten Stones” (’Asherah Balatât),
near the west wall of Justinian’s fortress. They are huge blocks rudely
squared, forming one course of a foundation, the north-west corner of
which was laid bare by Captain Anderson’s excavation in 1866. There are
two courses, and the lower one contains thirteen stones; this course,
however, was not formerly visible, and the Samaritans considered ten
stones alone to lie buried, and to be those brought from Jordan at the
time of Joshua--thus supposing some supernatural agency sufficient to
carry such huge blocks up a steep slope 1000 feet high, to say nothing
of the journey from the Jordan. Under these stones, as before noticed,
the treasures of the old Temple are supposed to lie hidden.
South of the fortress is one of those flat slabs of rock which occur all
over the summit. It shelves slightly down westward, and at this end is a
rock-cut cistern. The whole is surrounded by a low drystone wall. This
is the Sacred Rock of the Samaritans, and the cave is traditionally that
in which the tabernacle was made. At the time of my second visit some
peasants were using the Sacred Rock as a threshing-floor. Rude stone
walls extend on every side, and farther south there is a curious flight
of steps leading down east. They are called the “seven steps of
Abraham’s altar,” and just beneath them, on the edge of the eastern
precipice at the southern extremity of the plateau, there is a little
trough cut in the rock resembling the Passover oven. This the Samaritans
suppose to be the site of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, for their
version of the story reads “Moreh” instead of Moriah, and makes Gerizim
the scene of the Patriarch’s trial.
This question has been taken up by Dean Stanley, who favours the
Samaritan view; but it must not be forgotten that Moriah is distinctly
stated in the Bible (2 Chron. iii. 1) to be the hill on which the Temple
was built at Jerusalem, as also the scene of Isaac’s sacrifice (Gen.
xxii. 2).
The view from the summit of Gerizim is extensive and interesting.
Northward the dome-like top of Ebal shuts out the distance, whilst the
eastern half of Nâblus, with its gardens, is seen below. The numerous
hills of the “Land of Tampne,” as the Crusaders called it, with the dark
wooded height of Jebel Hazkin, or “Ezekiel’s Mountain,” and the gorge
which leads down by Salem to the waters of Ænon, appear to the right. On
the east the broad Plain of Moreh lies at our feet, and the mountains of
Gilead rise blue and clear behind; in the middle of the plain stands
’Awertah, the place of entombment of the sons of Aaron; farther south
are the mountains round Shiloh, and Tell ’Asûr (the ancient Baal Hazor),
loftier than even Ebal itself by some 300 feet. The ridge of Gerizim
joins on the south the chain of Mount Salmon, on whose summit in 1874
the snow lay white and thick as late as March. Gradually turning to the
south-west the gleaming sand-hills and the shining sea appear, and the
stone villages of the Beni S’ab hills stand up like towers in mid
distance. Here on a clear day the brown ruins of Cæsarea, once the scene
of bloody feuds between Jews and Samaritans, can be descried; and
farther north the range above Samaria is seen over the shoulder of
Gerizim, and behind this the dark woods and volcanic crater of Sheikh
Iskander, with Carmel faint and blue in the extreme distance.
Crossing the narrow valley on another July day, the Survey-party
ascended the eastern brow of Ebal. The Mount of the Curses is even more
barren than Gerizim, the Mount of Blessing. Cactus-hedges clothe its
feet, on which the culture of the cochineal insect has lately been tried
without success. The slope of steel-blue rock is less abrupt than that
of Gerizim, but a band of precipitous cliffs exists near the summit. The
mountain is dome-shaped, its top (3076·5 feet above the sea) is higher
than those of any mountains near, though both in Judea and in Galilee
more lofty points occur; thus Ebal is a conspicuous object from all
sides, especially from the north and from the maritime plain. The
southern face of the hill has no springs on it, but many occur on the
north. The southern slopes are covered with corn, and at sunset the
orange-coloured flush over the bare rocks produces a startling contrast
to the rich foliage of the valley beneath.
There are three curious places on Ebal; one of which is a rude stone
building, enclosing a space of fifty feet square, with walls twenty feet
thick, in which are chambers. The Samaritans call it part of a ruined
village, but its use and origin are a mystery. It resembles most the
curious monuments near Hizmeh, called the “Tombs of the Sons of Israel.”
The second place is the little cave and ruined chapel of Sitt Eslamîyeh,
“the Lady of Islam,” who has given her name to the mountain. It is
perched on the side of a precipice, and is held sacred by the Moslems,
who have a tradition that the bones of the Saint were carried hither
through the air from Damascus. The third place is a site the importance
of which has not been previously recognised. It is a little Moslem
Mukâm, said once to have been a church, called ’Amâd ed Dîn, the
“Monument of the Faith.” The name thus preserved has no connection with
Samaritan tradition, but it is undisputed that the sacred places of the
peasantry often represent spots famous in Bible history. It is therefore
perhaps possible that the site thus reverenced is none other than that
of the monumental altar of twelve stones from Jordan, which Joshua
erected, according to the Biblical account, on Ebal, and not on Gerizim
as the Samaritans believe, charging the Jews with having altered the
names (Deut. xxvii. 4). The hill-top on which this monument stands is
called Râs el Kâdy, “Hill of the Judge.” It was here that the Crusaders
placed Dan, the site of Jeroboam’s Calf Temple, and the present name may
perhaps be connected with this theory, Dan (“the Judge”) being
translated into the Arabic Kâdy (“Judge”), just as it has been at the
true Dan, now Tell el Kâdy, at the source of Jordan. The idea that Dan
was to be sought on Ebal originated, no doubt, in the acceptance by the
Crusaders of the Samaritan site of Bethel on Gerizim, at the foot of
which mountain, according to the mediæval writers, the golden calves
were made. This view cannot, however, be supported from the Bible
narrative.
In the account given of the reading of the Law, we find that the
Israelites stood half “over against” Gerizim, half over against Ebal,
and that an altar of whole stones was built “in Mount Ebal,” where also
a copy of the law was written by Joshua (Josh. viii. 30, 33). Later on
we find reference to a great stone under an oak by “the holy place of
Jehovah” (Josh. xxiv. 26), and the same place is probably intended by
“the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem” (Judges ix. 6); it is even
conjectured that the “oak which was by Shechem,” where Jacob hid the
strange gods (Gen. xxxv. 4), was the same place. The pillar of the oak
must not be confused with the altar on Ebal, and we have next to discuss
the question of the probable position of this sacred oak.
It has been pointed out by Canon Williams and other writers that a
natural amphitheatre exists, between Ebal and Gerizim, in the sloping
sides of two recesses opposite each other, formed by a tributary valley
from each hill; there is space for the assembly of a vast multitude, and
the voice of a speaker in the valley could probably have been heard by
the entire congregation, though such a requirement is not necessarily
involved in the description of the reading of the law. It is striking to
find here at the foot of Gerizim a place called the “Pillar,” but it
cannot represent the altar on Ebal, and if it be the great stone by the
oak, where Joshua made a covenant with Israel, it has no direct
connection with the reading of the law. The Mosque of the Pillar (el
’Amûd) is a little shrine similar to many in the country, with small
whitewashed domes and a wall surrounding a little garden. The gate is on
the north, and cool pitchers of water here await the thirsty pilgrim;
within is a paved court shaded by an aged tree, shrubs and palms are
visible through the doorway, and the small building stands in the midst
with whitewashed walls and wooden door. The modern Samaritans seem to
regard this as the true site of Joshua’s stone by the oak (Josh. xxiv.
26).
It is not, however, at this mosque that the Samaritan chronicles and the
early Christian pilgrims seem to agree in placing the site of the oak.
Jerome and Eusebius speak of a place called Balanus or Balata, the
Samaritan or Aramaic equivalent of Elon an “oak,” and the same place is
noticed in the Samaritan chronicles under the Arabic titles of Balâta
and Shejr el Kheir (the “tree of grace”). The site is thus carried about
half a mile east, to the village of Balâta (equivalent to Ballut, an
“oak”), close to Jacob’s Well.
The sites which next attract attention are situate at the point where
the Vale of Shechem opens into the Plain of the Mŭkhnah or “camp.”
Here close together we find Jacob’s Well and Joseph’s Tomb, and in
connection with them our attention turns naturally to the Sychar of St.
John’s Gospel.
The tradition of Jacob’s Well is one in which Jews, Samaritans, Moslems,
and Christians alike agree. Its credibility is thus much increased, for
there are only three other sites as to the position of which such
unanimity exists, namely the site of the Temple at Jerusalem and those
of Joseph’s and Eleazar’s tombs. In addition to this argument there are
other reasons which lead to the belief that the tradition is
trustworthy; the proximity of Joseph’s Tomb, and of Sychar, and finally
the fact of a well existing at all in a place abounding with streams,
one of which is within one hundred yards’ distance. No other important
well is found near, and the utility of such a work can only be explained
on the assumption that it was necessary for the Patriarch to have water
within his own land, surrounded as he was by strangers who may naturally
be supposed to have guarded jealously their rights to the springs. By
digging the well Jacob avoided those quarrels from which his father had
suffered in the Philistine country, pursuing a policy of peace which
appears generally to have distinguished his actions.
The well then, as being one of the few undoubted sites made sacred by
the feet of Christ, is a spot of greater interest than any near Shechem.
Its neighbourhood is not marked by any very prominent monument, and
indeed it would be quite possible to pass by it without knowing of its
existence. Just east of the gardens of Balâta, a dusty mound by the road
half covers the stumps of three granite columns. After a few moments’
search a hole is found south-west of them, and by this the visitor
descends through the roof of a little vault, apparently modern, as shown
in the illustration. The vault stretches twenty feet east and west, and
is ten feet broad, the hole in the pointed arch of the roof being in
the north-east corner. The floor is covered with fallen stones which
block the mouth of the well; through these we let down the tape and
found the depth to be seventy-five feet. The diameter is seven feet six
inches, the whole depth cut through alluvial soil and soft rock
receiving water by infiltration through the sides. There appears to be
occasionally as much as two fathoms of water, but in summer the well is
dry. The little vault is built on to a second, running at right angles
northwards from the west end, but the communication is now walled up. In
this second vault there are said to be remains of a tesselated pavement,
and the bases of the three columns above mentioned rest on this floor,
the shafts sticking out through the roof--a sufficient proof that the
vault is modern.
The view from the well is good: on the south the rugged slopes of
Gerizim; on the west the olives in the Vale of Shechem, with Ebal rising
behind, and the little hamlet of Balâta with its fig gardens, the
whitewashed walls and dome of Joseph’s Tomb, the mud huts of Sychar: on
the north-east the neighbourhood of Shalem whence Jacob first came; and
on the east the broad brown Plain of the Mŭkhnah, named perhaps (for
the word is of Hebrew origin) from the great encampment of Israel at the
time of the first conquest.
A Christian church was built before 383 A.D. round Jacob’s Well, but did
not exist apparently in 333 A.D., when the Bordeaux Pilgrim visited the
spot. Bishop Arculph, in 700 A.D., gives a plan which shows the building
as cruciform, with the well in the middle; and St. Willibald (722 A.D.)
mentions it as standing in his day. It was probably founded by
Constantine and destroyed in the invasion of Omar, for in Crusading
times it had disappeared. To this church the pavement and pillars seem
to have belonged. As late as 1555 A.D. a little altar stood in the vault
on which yearly mass was offered, but this practice is now discontinued.
About six hundred yards north of the well is the traditional Tomb of
Joseph, venerated by the members of every religious community in
Palestine. The building stands east of the road from Balâta to ’Askar,
at the end of a row of fine fig trees. The enclosure is square and
roofless, the walls whitewashed and in good repair, for, as an
inscription on the south wall in English informs the visitor, it was
rebuilt by Consul Rogers, the friend of the Samaritans, in 1868; it is
about twenty-five feet square, and on the north is another building of
equal size, but older and partly ruinous, surmounted by a little dome.
The tomb itself resembles most of the Moslem cenotaphs--a long narrow
block with an arched or vaulted roof having a pointed cross section. It
is rudely plastered, and some seven feet long and three feet high. It is
placed askew, and nearest to the west wall of the court. A stone bench
is built into the east wall, on which three Jews were seated at the time
of our second visit, book in hand, swinging backwards and forwards as
they crooned out a nasal chant--a prayer no doubt appropriate to the
place.
The most curious point to notice is, however, the existence of two short
pillars, one at the head, the other at the foot of the tomb, having
shallow cup-shaped hollows at their tops. These hollows are blackened by
fire, for the Jews have the custom of burning sacrifices on them, small
articles such as handkerchiefs, gold lace, or shawls being consumed.
Whether this practice is also observed by the Samaritans is doubtful.
The tomb points approximately north and south, thus being at right
angles to the direction of Moslem tombs north of Mecca. How the
Mohammedans explain this disregard of orientation in so respected a
Prophet as “our Lord Joseph,” I have never heard; perhaps the rule is
held to be only established since the time of Mohammed. The veneration
in which the shrine is held by the Moslem peasantry is, at all events,
not diminished by this fact.
The little village of ’Askar stands on the slope of Ebal within sight of
Jacob’s Well, about half a mile from it and little over a mile from
Nâblus. It is merely a collection of mud-hovels like Balâta or any
village near, but it has a spring issuing from a curious cave, and
ancient rock-cut sepulchres beneath it, so that it is in all probability
an ancient site.
It is here no doubt that we recognise the Sychar of the Fourth Gospel.
An unaccountable confusion has grown up lately between Sychar and
Shechem, for which the Crusaders are originally responsible, as they are
indeed for most of the false theories on sacred sites. It is only
through careful study, and by such work as that of the Survey, that we
are beginning to escape from the entanglements and confusion caused by
the ignorance of knights and priests, arriving, in the twelfth century,
strangers and illiterate enthusiasts in a hostile country.
It will be evident to all readers of the Gospel narrative that Sychar,
“a city of Samaria” near Jacob’s Well (John iv. 5, 6), is a description
hardly to be expected of Shechem, which is moreover mentioned by its
original name in the New Testament (Acts vii. 16). The early Christians
recognised the distinction, and place Sychar a mile east of Shechem, as
noticed in the “Itinerary of Jerusalem,” 333 A.D. It is clear that they
refer to ’Askar, and the identity is maintained by Canon Williams and
others; but a difficulty has always been felt by students because the
modern name begins with a guttural, which cannot have occurred in the
name Sychar. This difficulty the Samaritan Chronicle seems to me to
remove, for in it we find a town mentioned apparently near Shechem,
called Ischar, which is merely a vulgar pronunciation of Sychar; and the
Samaritans themselves, in translating their Chronicle into Arabic, call
it ’Askar. Thus the transition is traceable from the Hebrew form, having
no meaning in Arabic but originally “a place walled in,” through the
Samaritan Ischar to the modern ’Askar, “a collection” or “army” in
Arabic.
[Illustration: TOMB OF PHINEHAS.]
But one group of sacred places remains to be noticed, in the village of
’Awertah called Abearthah in the Samaritan dialect. It stands in the
Plain of the Mŭkhnah, and is sacred to the Samaritans and to the Jews
as containing the tombs of Phinehas and Eleazar, Abishuah and Ithamar.
It is probably to be recognised as the Hill of Phinehas, where Eleazar
was buried according to the Bible (Josh. xxiv. 33), and which is
described as in Mount Ephraim.
In 1872 I visited the village and examined the two principal monuments.
That of Eleazar, west of the houses, is a rude structure of masonry in a
court open to the air. It is eighteen feet long, plastered all over, and
shaded by a splendid terebinth. In one corner is a little mosque with a
Samaritan inscription bearing the date 1180 of the Moslem era. The Tomb
of Phinehas is apparently an older building, and the walls of its court
have an arcade of round arches now supporting a trellis covered with a
grape-vine; the floor is paved. A Samaritan inscription exists here as
well as at the little mosque adjacent. The tombs of Ithamar, and of
Abishuah, the supposed author of the famous roll, are shown by the
Samaritans close by.
The “Holy King Joshua” is said by the Samaritans to have been buried at
Kefr Hâris, which they identify with Timnath Heres. This village is nine
miles south of Nâblus.
The Jewish pilgrim Rabbi Jacob of Paris visited Caphar
Cheres--presumably Kefr Hâris, in 1258 A.D., and mentions the tombs of
Joshua, Nun, and Caleb. The Samaritans also hold that Caleb was buried
with Joshua, and thus we have the curious result that Jews and
Samaritans agree as to the site of these tombs, both placing them within
the boundaries of Samaria. The Crusading writers point to the same site
for Joshua’s Tomb, and the place is marked on the map of Marino Sanuto
(1322 A.D.) in the relative position of Kefr Hâris.
The modern village has three sacred places: one of Neby Nûn, the second
Neby Lush’a, the third Neby Kifl. In the two first we recognise Nun and
Joshua; Neby Kifl was an historic character, but his shrine possibly
occupies the place of the medieval Tomb of Caleb.
The site of Joshua’s Tomb seems therefore to be preserved by an
indigenous tradition at least as authentic as that which fixes Joseph’s
Tomb. It has been supposed that Jerome indicates a different site, but a
careful reading of his account of St. Paula’s journey seems to show that
he also refers to the tomb at Kefr Hâris.
[Illustration: HEROD’S COLONNADE. SAMARIA.]
CHAPTER III.
THE SURVEY OF SAMARIA.
It is a remarkable fact, but one which can scarce be disputed, that
while the descriptions given of tribe boundaries and cities in the Book
of Joshua are full and minute in the territory of Judea, and scarcely
less so in Galilee, they are fragmentary and meagre within the bounds of
Samaria. A short inspection of the topographical lists will convince any
student of this fact; he will find there is no account of the conquest
of Samaria, that the list of Royal Cities does not include the famous
Samaritan towns, Shechem, Thebez, Acrabbi, and others; that no list of
the cities of Ephraim and Manasseh is included in the topographical
chapters of the Book of Joshua, no description of the northern limits of
Manasseh, and only a very slight one of the southern border, where that
tribe marched with Ephraim. However it may be accounted for, the plain
fact remains that this portion of the Book of Joshua is manifestly
incomplete.
The places of primary interest between the pass of the Robber’s
Fountain on the south and the Great Plain of Esdraelon on the north, are
five in all. Shiloh just south of the Samaritan boundary, Samaria,
Tirzah, Ænon, and Dothan, north of the Vale of Shechem.
There is no site in the country fixed with greater certainty than that
of Shiloh. The modern name Seilûn preserves the most archaic form which
is found in the Bible in the ethnic Shilonite (1 Kings xi. 29). The
position of the ruin agrees exactly with the very definite description
given in the Old Testament of the position of Shiloh as “on the north
side of Bethel (now Beitîn), on the east side of the highway that goeth
up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah” (Lubben) (Judges
xxi. 19). It is just here that Seilûn still stands in ruins. The
traveller leaves Bethel, descends into the gorge of the Robber’s
Fountain, and emerges into open ground near Sinjil (Casale St. Gilles of
the Crusaders). Here he leaves the main road to Shechem on the west, and
passes over the corn-plain of Turmus Eyya (the Thormasia of the Talmud).
The scenery of the wild mountains is finer than that in Judea; the red
colour of the cliffs, which are of great height, is far more picturesque
than the shapeless chalk mounds near Jerusalem; the fig-gardens and
olive-groves are more luxuriant, but the crops are poor compared to
those in the plain and round Bethlehem; Judea is the more fertile
district, Mount Ephraim the more rugged and picturesque.
We approached Shiloh from the south, by a mountain-road of evident
antiquity, from the little plain. The ruins of a modern village here
occupy a sort of Tell or mound. On the east and north the site is shut
in by bare and lofty hills of grey limestone, dotted over with a few
fig-trees; on the south the plateau looks down on the plain just
crossed. A deep valley runs behind the town on the north, and in its
sides are many rock-cut sepulchres; following its course westward, we
again reached the main road, thus avoiding a steep pass, and turning
northwards found the village of Lebonah perched on the hillside to the
west of the road and north of Shiloh, as described in the Bible.
Shiloh was for about 400 years the chosen abode of the Tabernacle and
Ark. It is a question of no little interest whether this was the first
spot selected after the conquest of the hills by Joshua. That Shiloh
became the gathering-place after the conquest of Shechem there is
abundant proof (Josh. xxii. 12), and it may be inferred that the
Tabernacle was placed there early; but, on the other hand, we find
“Sanctuary of the Lord” (or Holy Place of Jehovah) mentioned, by the Oak
near Shechem (Josh. xxiv. 26), and we may perhaps gather that, though
not recognised by the doctors of the Mishna, there was a time when the
Tabernacle stood, as is believed by the Samaritans, near Shechem. The
date which they give for its transference to Shiloh, in the time of Eli,
whom they consider to have been the first schismatical leader of the
children of Judah, does not, however, accord with the Biblical account,
and the story no doubt originated in consequence of religious hatred.
The site being so certainly known, it becomes of interest to speculate
as to the exact position of the Tabernacle. Below the top of the hill,
on the north of the ruins, there is a sort of irregular quadrangle,
sloping rather to the west, and perched above terraces made for
agricultural purposes. The rock has here been rudely hewn in two
parallel scarps for over 400 feet, with a court between, seventy-seven
feet wide, and sunk five feet below the outer surface. Thus there would
be sufficient room for the court of the Tabernacle in this area, and it
is worthy of notice that the measurement north and south agrees very
closely with the width of the court (fifty cubits), which was also
measured north and south. From the Mishna we learn that the lower part
of the Tabernacle erected at Shiloh was of stone, with a tent above.
There are, however, two other places which demand attention as possible
sites, one being perhaps a synagogue, the other a little building called
the “Mosque of the Servants of God.”
The building which I have called a synagogue is situate on a slope south
of the ruins of Shiloh. It is thirty-seven feet square, and built of
good masonry. The door is on the north, and is surmounted by a flat
lintel, on which is a design in bold relief, representing vases and
wreaths. Inside there are pillars with capitals seemingly Byzantine. A
sloping scarp has been built against the wall on three sides, and a
little mosque sacred to El Arb’ain--“the Forty” Companions of the
Prophet--is built on to the east wall. There is a pointed arch on the
west wall. Thus we have at least three periods--that of the old
synagogue represented by the lintel, which is similar to the lintels of
Galilean synagogues, that of a later Christian erection, and finally
the Moslem mosque, built probably where the apse of the chapel would
have been placed.
The Jami’a el Yeteim, or “Mosque of the Servants of God,” is situate at
the southern foot of the Tell. It is shaded by a large oak-tree, and is
of good masonry like that of the last; there was nothing very remarkable
in the little low chamber within, but the name seems to preserve a
tradition of the position of the Tabernacle.
The only water close to the village was once contained in a little tank
with steps, south of the lower mosque. There is, however, a fine spring
placed, as is often to be observed in Palestine, at a distance of no
less than three quarters of a mile from the town, at the head of the
valley which comes down behind the ruins from the east. A good supply of
water here issues into a rocky basin, and was once carried by an
underground aqueduct to a rock-cut tank, but is now allowed to run
waste.
The vineyards of Shiloh have disappeared, though very possibly once
surrounding the spring, and perhaps extending down the valley westwards,
where water is also found. With the destruction of the village
desolation has spread over the barren hills around.
A yearly feast was held at Shiloh, when the women came out to dance in
the vineyards (Judges xxi. 21). It is possible that a tradition of this
festival is retained in the name Merj el ’Aid, “Meadow of the Feast,” to
the south of the present site.
Shiloh lies in so remote a situation, so hidden by its surrounding
hills, and so out of the main highways, that neither the early pilgrims
nor the Crusaders seem to have ever known of its position, and it is
unnoticed by any writer but Jerome before the sixteenth century. The
Crusaders considered Neby Samwîl (or Mount Joy, as they preferred to
call it) to be Shiloh, and also Ramathaim Zophim, or Gibeah of Saul.
Such wild ideas are sufficient to show their ignorance of the Bible, and
are only noticeable as among the curiosities of Palestine geography.
The Tabernacle and Ark remained so long at this spot that it was
regarded by the Jews as only second to Jerusalem in sanctity. A curious
peculiarity of their worship is noticed in the Mishna, where they are
said to have been allowed to eat certain sacrifices at any spot whence
the Tabernacle could be seen, but not farther from it. As Shiloh was
shut in by mountains, the effect must have been to gather the
congregation much oftener to this remote valley, than when, at Nob or
Gibeon, the same sacrifices (the second tithes) might be eaten in any of
the cities of Israel.
The road from Shechem to Samaria leads down the course of the western
valley through groves of ancient olives with gardens of pomegranates and
figs. The olives are more picturesque than in Judea, as the trees are
not regularly arranged in quincunx order, but grow almost wild with a
tangled underwood. Those in the valley beneath Nâblus seem to be of
great age, and have split up into two or three stems from one root, with
numerous suckers. Leaving these groves, the road climbs the side of a
white chalk swell, where the ground is strewn with gravel from the huge
blocks of beautiful brown flint conglomerate like agate, which runs in
bands through the rock. It finally descends into a valley, open and well
watered, and passes beneath the Hill of Samaria, which is thickly
covered with olives.
Samaria is in a position of great strength, and though it would now be
commanded from the northern range, it must, before the invention of
gunpowder, have been almost impregnable. It stands some 400 feet above
the valley, the sides of the hill being steep, and terraced in every
direction for cultivation, or perhaps for defensive purposes, as
Josephus tells us the hill was scarped by Herod the Great (Ant., xv. 8,
5); broad and open valleys stretch north and south, and the hill is thus
almost isolated, being joined only by a low tongue on the east to the
chain of Ebal. The view northwards extends to the high ridge a few miles
off which divides the Nâblus district from the outskirts of the great
plain. On the east the lower slopes which run out of the great dome of
Ebal are visible, on the south and west the flat Samaritan hills stretch
away, covered with olives, and crowned by numerous villages which stand
on high knolls, generally with a central tower or larger house. It is
wonderful to reflect how great the antiquity of most of these hamlets
is. For four thousand years, in some instances, the little hill has been
covered by a succession of probably just the same sort of cottages which
now rise upon the ruins of their predecessors; for four thousand years
the women have gone down to the same spring, quarrelled, talked scandal,
and returned with their brown jars on their heads; for four thousand
years the cattle have trampled the corn and the wind has borne the
chaff from the great yellow corn-heap; for all this time the same race
has lived on, and has handed down the same village name, scarcely
changed from the time of Abraham to the present day.
The village of Sebŭstieh, representing the ancient Samaria, is built
on the brow of the great white hill, and immediately north-east of the
mud-hovels are the ruins of the beautiful Crusading church of St. John
Baptist, where, in a crypt, now held sacred by the Moslem peasantry, the
saint was supposed to have been beheaded. The tradition, though
erroneous, is ancient, and existed in 380 A.D. The church is a mere
shell, its roof and the pillars of the nave having been destroyed.
The site of the Paradise of Samaria, mentioned in the Talmud, is perhaps
represented by the spring and gardens to the south of the hill. The
ancient tombs, which included those of the Kings of Israel, seem to have
been situate to the north, on the opposite side of the valley, and none
have as yet been discovered on the hill itself.
The most interesting ruins, however, are those of Herod’s colonnade to
the west of the modern village. This building seems to have run round
the hill on a flat terrace, in the middle of which rises a rounded knoll
on which the Temple, dedicated to Augustus, and stated by Josephus to
have been in the middle of the town, presumably stood.
The cloister measures about 2100 feet east and west, and 660 feet north
and south; the walk being fifty feet wide in the one case, and 100 feet
in the other. The total circuit is thus some 5500 feet, but Josephus
(Ant. xv. 8) estimates it at twenty furlongs or 10,000 feet; his
statement is therefore considerably exaggerated, but is no doubt to be
considered as conjectural only.
In the south-west angle there seems to have been a gateway flanked by
small towers, the rock scarps of which remain. On the north-east there
is another street of columns at the bottom of the hill, running in a
line oblique to the sides of the upper colonnade. This seems to have
been an avenue of approach 180 feet wide, 1450 feet long; but it may
have been a distinct building, as no pillars remain on the upper slopes.
The pillar shafts are principally monoliths; they are not, however, of
colossal size like Herod’s work in Jerusalem, but only sixteen feet high
and two feet thick.
Samaria is not a city which can compare in antiquity with Shechem or
Hebron, for only just before Ahab’s time Omri bought the Hill of Shemer.
In the Talmud we find it called Shomron or “watch-tower” as in the
Bible, and also Sebustieh as at present, Sebaste being Herod’s name for
the town in honour of Augustus, to whom the Temple was dedicated.
Strategical reasons may be supposed to have dictated the choice of the
capital of Omri, for on the north the hill commands the main road to
Jezreel over a steep pass, on the west it dominates the road to the
coast, and on the east that to the Jordan through Wâdy Fâr’ah, the
highway to Gilead. Thus we find that when the Syrians, under Benhadad,
raised the siege, and fled by night down the great Fâr’ah valley to
Jordan, their panic was due to the fear of reinforcements which they
imagined they could hear advancing over the pass from the northern land
of the Hittites, and on the west up the open valley from Egypt (2 Kings
vii. 6).
The history of Samaria has often been summarised. It shared the
vicissitudes of Shechem, and was destroyed by John Hyrcanus in 129 B.C.
when he demolished the Temple on Gerizim. It rose to importance under
Herod, and then disappears for a time from history. It became the see of
a Crusading bishop about 1155 A.D., and is mentioned by many of the
Christian pilgrims. It is not, however, connected with the religion of
the people like Shechem, and there is therefore comparatively little to
describe in the political capital of Israel.
The traveller who rides across from Samaria behind Ebal, or who follows
the stony road in the magnificent gorge east of the same mountain, finds
himself gradually descending to the springs which lie at the head of the
great Fâr’ah valley, the open highway from the Dâmieh ford of Jordan to
Shechem. It was up this valley that Jacob drove his flocks and herds
from Succoth to Shalem near Shechem. It was along the banks of its
stream that the “garments and vessels” of the hosts of Benhadad were
strewn as far as Jordan. It was here also that Israel, returning from
captivity (according to the Samaritans), purified themselves before
going up to Gerizim to build the Temple; but the place possesses a yet
higher interest as the probable site of “Ænon near to Salem” where John
was baptizing, “because there was much water there” (John iii. 23).
The head-springs are found in an open valley surrounded by desolate and
shapeless hills. The water gushes out over a stony bed, and flows
rapidly down in a fine stream surrounded by bushes of oleander. The
supply is perennial, and a continual succession of little springs occurs
along the bed of the valley, so that the current becomes the principal
western affluent of Jordan south of the Vale of Jezreel. The valley is
open in most parts of its course, and we find the two requisites for the
scene of baptism of a multitude--an open space and abundance of water.
Not only does the name of Salem occur in the village three miles south
of the valley, but the name Ænon, signifying “springs,” is recognisable
at the village of ’Ainûn four miles north of the stream. There is only
one other place of the latter name in Palestine, Beit ’Ainûn near
Hebron, but this is a place which has no very fine supply of water and
no Salem near it. On the other hand, there are many other Salems all
over Palestine, but none of them have an Ænon near them. The site of
Wâdy Fâr’ah is the only one where all the requisites are met--the two
names, the fine water supply, the proximity of the desert, and the open
character of the ground.
The identification has been questioned on the assumption that Ænon
should be found near the desert of Judea, where John first preached
(Matt. iii. 1), but it will afterwards be seen that there is good reason
for placing Bethabara, where also he baptized, far from Judea and higher
up the valley of the Jordan than even this site of Ænon; and the large
area thus supposed to have been the theatre of the Baptist’s wanderings
fully accords with the words of the third Gospel, “He came into _all the
country_ about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance” (Luke iii.
3).
Here then in the wild desert valley, beneath the red precipices where
the hawk and kite find nests in “the stairs of the rocks,” or by the
banks of the shingly stream with its beautiful oleander blossoms shining
in the dusky foliage of luxuriant shrubs, we may picture the dark figure
of the Baptist in his robe of camel’s hair, with the broad leather
Bedawi belt round his loins, preaching to the Judean multitude of pale
citizens, portly grey-bearded Rabbis, Roman soldiers in leathern armour
and shining helmets, sharp-faced publicans, and, above all, to the great
mass of oppressed peasantry, the “beasts of the people,” uncared for,
stricken with palsy, with blindness, with fever, with leprosy, but
eagerly looking forward to the appearance of that Messiah who came to
preach the Gospel of the poor.
The scenery of Samaria differs from that both of Judea and of Galilee;
with the exception of the rugged hills south of Gerizim--the Mount Heres
(or “rough mountain”) of the Bible--the greater part of the district
consists of chalk hills covered with olives, and of open valleys and
plains which are wonderfully fertile. The great mountain blocks of
Galilee belong to the wilder ranges of Lebanon, and the long ridges of
hard limestone in Judea to a class of far less picturesque scenery.
It was among these hills and valleys that the Survey was extended during
the months of July and August, 1872. The land was stony and colourless,
dried up by the sun, the flowers long dead, and the glare from the white
rock very trying; between the ledges the little owls stared out on us;
the huge grey lizards lifted their tails like race-horses, scampering
across the path, or nodding angrily behind a stone with a sort of
mimicry of Moslem prayer-attitudes which causes them to be killed by the
Mohammedans whenever caught. In the olive-groves the hoopoes were
strutting with their crests lifted, on the rocks the gazelles now and
then bounded past, or a stray jackal was to be seen gazing from a safe
distance. Herds of black long-eared goats, tended by the ragged shepherd
boys, roamed over the uncultivated hills; by the springs the little red
cattle, scarcely larger than an English calf, were huddled in the shade,
flipping off the flies; and processions of blue-robed women came down
from the dust-coloured villages to fetch back water.
The slabs of rock were slippery from the smooth feet of the great camels
which came swinging along the highway, led by men on diminutive brown
donkeys. All was grey and dusty under a sky of lead in the east wind, or
deep blue when it came from the west. At the villages the corn was being
threshed and winnowed with instruments as old as the time of Abraham, in
their peculiarities of form. Palestine was in fact at its worst as far
as picturesqueness is concerned; but all was novel and strange, and the
interest had scarce time to subside before the fine changes of autumn
set in.
On one of our rides we visited the little village of Kuriet Jît, west
of Nâblus, in which there was a very high house fitted for a point in
the triangulation. It was generally better to choose a mountain-top, as
the curiosity of the villagers is often annoying. They were, however,
here unaccustomed to travellers, and behaved with the solemn courtesy
which used to be distinctive of the peasantry before European vulgarity
and European “backsheesh” had spoiled them. They stared hard at the
theodolite, which was variously conjectured to be a watch, a compass, a
telescope, or a combination of all three. At noon we retired into the
room which is kept especially for chance guests in every village. Here
we consumed breakfast, the Sheikh and elders sitting opposite to see us
feed, and afterwards invited to share the remains with our native
followers. The scene in colouring was almost equal to that of
Rembrandt’s interiors, the bright light through the little door touching
here and there the outlines of the swarthy figures in their mantles of
tawny camel’s-hair, striped with darker brown. The Sheikh was glad of
our escort back, as he was carrying the taxes to Nâblus. He inquired, as
he rode with us, how soon the English were coming to take the country
and “build it up again.”
[Illustration: GUEST HOUSE, KURIET JIT.]
On the 16th of August we left Nâblus and moved the camp northwards to
the village of Jeb’a.
The district thus entered is very rich, the villages large and
flourishing, with good stone houses in them, and the olives and corn
very fine. It is called the “Eastern District of the Jerrâr,” from the
name of a famous family of native chiefs, once the governors of all the
hills from the Great Plain to Nâblus on the south. The Sheikh of the
village at which we camped was one of this family, and we were treated
by its members with much courtesy, although this politeness may not have
been altogether disinterested.
The village of Jeb’a was on the east of our camp, on a hillside, and
well built of stone, with olives around it; on the north we looked
across a narrow plain to Remeth of Issachar, and other ancient villages
perched on heights; behind us the hills rose suddenly and stretched
westwards in the long spur from Mount Ebal. East of Jeb’a stands the
strong fortified village of Sânûr, on an isolated hill guarding the pass
into a small plain, called the “Drowned Meadow,” which has no natural
drainage, and thus becomes a marsh in the winter, drying up only in May
or June.
This fortified village has often been supposed identical with the
Bethulia of the Book of Judith, a place which was near Dothan; but Sânûr
does not fulfil one of the main requisites for the site, as it does not
command a view of the Plain of Esdraelon. It is curious that the village
of Mithilia, a little farther north, has been overlooked, the name of
which approaches closely to that of Bethulia, whilst the plain is seen
from the ridge near the village.
The head of the house of the Jerrâr lived at Sânûr, his nephew was
Sheikh of Jeb’a; the younger members of the family were innumerable, and
we were plagued with endless visits from them all. The Jeb’a family
invited us to dinner, and we were thus able to witness a phase in
peasant life not often seen by Europeans.
About six in the evening a man was sent to the camp to escort us, and we
walked through the village to the highest house, that of the Sheikh. The
inhabitants are wonderfully fine men, and used to be famous for their
feuds with the men of ’Arrâbeh, some miles to the north; they are still
redoubtable thieves, but in 1868 the Government came down on them after
a riot, killed some thirty or forty, fined the village heavily, and took
most of the young men for soldiers. The Sheikh’s house was well built
and new; the reception-room, on an upper floor, had a raised daïs, with
a low wooden rail, about six inches high, on the step. It was carpeted,
and pillows arranged against the walls at the upper end in the corners,
where we were requested to sit. The walls were covered with plaster very
brown and cracked. A gallery for sleeping was built at the lower end of
the room.
The Sheikh now appeared in his white robe, with a yellow silk _kufeyeh_
on his head bound with a black cord; removing his red slippers from his
well-washed feet, he stepped on to the daïs, touched our hands and then
his own breast, lips, and head, in token of the submissive formula, “On
my heart, my mouth, and my head.” The oft-repeated greetings, “How is
your health?” “How is your excellency?” “your worship,” “your lordship,”
next followed, with repetitions of the former signs, which are, very
gracefully executed. The host sat at a distance, or rather knelt, until
pressed to come near, when he gradually approached and sunk sideways on
one thigh, with his feet carefully hidden. An aged elder followed, and
then the son of the host; a third and fourth dropped in, and as each
appeared we rose and the same ceremonies were repeated with a dignity
and decorum which made one forget for a time that we were dealing with
ignorant and degraded peasants.
The Natûr, or village-watchman, and some servants now brought in a round
wooden table, about a yard in diameter, on legs some six inches high; it
was of rough wood, and folded down the centre. A huge brass basin
followed, with a brass ewer having a long spout like a coffee-pot; the
Sheikh’s son distributed towels, and we washed our right hands
preparatory to eating with them--to eat with the left hand being almost
as bad a breach of manners as to show the sole of the foot. A dozen
dishes were then brought in succession, taken by the young man from the
servants and placed on the board; they contained lentils, tomatoes, and
_kuzah_, a sort of vegetable-marrow, which were stuffed with rice; bowls
of sour milk (leben), a delicious sauce to such fare, were placed
between, but the centre of the table was still bare, until three huge
wooden dishes of rice, piled up in cones, with fragments of boiled meat
sticking out, were brought in. The most delicate dish, however, was a
kid (as we then thought, but afterwards doubted whether it were not our
own little gazelle which was lost soon after) dressed whole, with its
head and legs still on.
As we were Europeans, the great innovation of a pewter spoon and fork
was allowed, no doubt being considered as a wonderful mark of
civilisation by the Sheikh; thin discs of bread, unleavened and very
leathery, about a foot in diameter, were scattered on the carpet beside
each guest. We were invited to draw near, but had to press our host for
some time before he ventured to eat with us; finally he sat down with
two more, and the son carved--that is to say, pulled the meat in pieces
with his right hand, and made up little parcels wrapped in a funnel of
bread for us to eat: the liver and kidneys of the kid were placed inside
the ribs and considered great delicacies; the whole fare was tender and
good, but rather too oily for European palates, and the want of salt
rendered it insipid. No water was placed on the board, but a servant
brought it when required in a green glass; as each guest drank, his
nearest neighbour turned with a bow and said, “Digestion,” to which the
answer is (for every formula has its proper answer), “The Lord increase
your digestion,” accompanied by a touching of the head with the hand.
The meal completed we retired to our corners, and the basin was brought
again with water and soap--a necessity after using the fingers in
eating. Coffee was then handed round, whilst a fresh batch of guests
fell upon the feast, and was succeeded by a third, who left but little
remaining. The coffee was made clear, as among the Bedawin, which is far
more delicious than the thick Turkish coffee usually given to
travellers. The guests drank quickly, with a loud sipping sound, the
cups being about the size of an egg-cup and only half full, for to fill
the cup is an intimation that the host is anxious for you to go soon, as
is also the offer of a third cup soon after the second. A narghili or
hubble-bubble followed for each of us two, with pipes and cigarettes,
and Drake talked, describing England, London, and the railways, while I,
naturally, had to sit silent, not as yet knowing the language. The
Sheikh supposed we were looking for crosses cut on the ruins, and that
we should afterwards claim ownership of all such places--a belief
probably originating from the crosses cut on the lintels of every ruined
monastery of Crusading and Byzantine times.
About seven p.m. we retired, the host accompanying us to his door. We
slipped a coin into the servant’s hands, and afterwards sent a present
of gunpowder to the Sheikh.
Some days later we had a repetition of this scene at Sânûr. The host, an
unwieldy man in a black cloak, was yet more dignified, and the purple
jackets and green waistcoats of the younger men marked them out as great
dandies and local grandees. This village was so strong that it once
stood several days’ assault by regular troops, and only yielded on being
bombarded by the Pacha. An aged elder described seeing a cannon-ball
enter a room where cotton was stored, and roll the soft heap round
itself. The old Sheikh, once governor of the district, declaimed
bitterly against the Turks. “They rob and impoverish me,” he said. “Are
my women to carry wood and fetch water? Are my sons to plough the
ground?” The Government were following the same policy with the Jerrâr
family which has ruined the Zeidanîyin in the north, and the Abu Ghôsh
in the south, and has certainly broken the national spirit, while
curbing the turbulence of the factions which caused constant local
outbreaks between neighbouring villages.
The most remarkable point in the behaviour of these native gentry was
the reverence for age shown even by grey-bearded men to those some ten
years older. We noticed also that the religious Sheikh of the village
sat above our host after the Jeb’a banquet.
On Friday, the 30th of August, we left Jeb’a and moved on to Jenîn.
By noon we reached Dothan, the scene of Joseph’s betrayal by his
brethren, and halted under a spreading fig-tree beside a long cactus
hedge. Just north of us was the well called Bîr el Hŭfîreh, “Well of
the Pit,” and east of us a second, with a water-trough, thus accounting
for the name Dothan, “two wells.” Above the wells on the north rises the
shapeless mound where the town once stood, and on the west spread the
dark brown plain of ’Arrâbeh, across which runs the main Egyptian
road--the road by which the armies of Thothmes and Necho came up from
the sea-coast, and by which the Midianite merchants went down with their
captive. The cattle stood by the well, huddling in the shade, waiting to
be watered, and rude cowherds and goatherds gathered around us in groups
which were no doubt not far different in dress or language from Joseph’s
brethren four thousand years ago.
One place of interest must be noticed in concluding this
chapter--Tirzah, once the capital of Israel, famous for its beauty.
It is the only Samaritan town mentioned among the royal cities taken by
Joshua, and even this name was changed by the Rabbinical writers into
Tiran, a place in Galilee.
Just twelve miles east of our Jeb’a camp, on a plateau where the valleys
begin to dip suddenly towards Jordan, stands the mud hamlet of Teiâsîr.
We afterwards visited it from the Jordan camp, and found it to have been
once a place of importance, judging from the numerous, rock-cut
sepulchres burrowing under the houses, the fertile lands and fine olives
round, and the monument of good masonry, seemingly a Roman tomb. Just
north of it we discovered a ruin called Ibzîk, which is unquestionably a
Bezek known to Eusebius, and probably the place where Saul collected his
army before attacking the Ammonites (1 Sam. xi. 8).
In the latter ruin is a little chapel dedicated to Neby Hazkîn, “the
Prophet Ezekiel,” and the high mountain crowned with thicket behind is
called “Ezekiel’s Mountain.”
This name Teiâsîr I suppose to be Tirzah. It contains the exact letters
of the Hebrew word, though the two last radicals are interchanged in
position, a kind of change not unusual among the peasantry. The beauty
of the position and the richness of the plain on the west, the ancient
remains, and the old main road to the place from Shechem, seem to agree
well with the idea of its having once been a capital; and if I am right
in the suggestion, then the old sepulchres are probably, some of them,
those of the early kings of Israel before the royal family began to be
buried in Samaria.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM JENIN.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT PLAIN OF ESDRAELON.
Our new camp was fixed at Jenîn, the ancient Engannim or “Spring of
Gardens,” at the southern extremity of the Great Plain, a border city of
Galilee according to Josephus, now a picturesque town of three thousand
inhabitants, with a bazaar and a mosque, surrounded by groves of olives,
through which a little stream finds its way in spring. Our camp was west
of the place, and looked out on the white mosque of ’Azz ed Dîn with its
minaret, the great threshing-floor with its heaps of yellow grain, the
beautiful gardens of palms, oranges, and tamarisks set in cactus hedges,
while behind, on the east, was the stony range of Gilboa, on the north
the brown plain, the blue Nazareth hills, the volcanic cone of Jebel
Dŭhy, and the shoulder of Carmel towards the west.
The Great Plain extends northwards fourteen miles from Jenîn, to Junjâr
at the foot of the Nazareth chain, whilst from Jezreel on the east, to
Legio on the west, is about nine miles. The elevation is about 200 to
250 feet above the sea, and a Y-shaped double range of hills bounds it
east and west, with an average elevation of 1500 feet above the plain.
On the north-east are the two detached blocks of Neby Dŭhy and Tabor,
and on the north-west a narrow gorge is formed by the river Kishon,
which springs from beneath Tabor and collecting the whole drainage of
this large basin, passes from the Great Plain to that of Acre. On the
east of the plain the broad valley of Jezreel gradually slopes down
towards Jordan, and Jezreel itself (the modern Zer’in) stands on the
side of Gilboa above it. On the west are the scarcely less famous sites
of Legio, Taanach, and Jokneam, while the picturesque conical hill of
Dŭhy, just north of the Jezreel valley, has Shunem on its south
slope, and Nain and Endor on the north. Thus seven places of interest
lie at the foot of the hills east and west, but no important town was
ever situate in the plain itself--a flat expanse of arable land, the
loose basaltic soil of which is extremely fertile.
The Great Plain was once the favourite resort of the Bedawin when driven
by war or famine across Jordan. At times it used to be covered with
camels “like the sand which is by the sea-shore innumerable.” The
Ruwalla (a branch of the great Arab nation called ’Anazeh), the Sukr and
other important tribes came over to pasture their camels, and like the
Midianites whom Gideon encountered advancing by the same great
highway--the valley of Jezreel, they oppressed the native population
settled in the villages. Thus in 1870 only about a sixth of the
beautiful corn-land was tilled, and the plain was black with Arab
“houses of hair.” But the Turks wrought a great and sudden change; they
armed their cavalry with the Remington breech-loading rifle, and the
Bedawin disappeared as though by magic. It was of course to be expected
that when external troubles had weakened the Government, the lawless
nomads would again encroach and levy toll and tribute as before; for the
history of Palestine seems constantly to repeat itself from the earliest
period recorded, in a recurring struggle between the settled population
and the nomads, Midianites, Shasu, Bedawin, or whatever other name you
may call them; thus during the year 1877 Fendi el Faiz and the Sukr
again invaded the plain and levied black-mail on the luckless peasantry.
In 1872 no less than nine-tenths of the plain was cultivated, nearly
half with corn, the rest with millet, sesame, cotton, tobacco, and the
castor-oil plant. The springs on the west are copious; from near Legio a
considerable affluent flows north to join the Kishon, and even in August
the streams are running to waste at the foot of the hills. The Great
Plain is indeed one of the richest natural fields of cultivation in
Palestine--perhaps one might say in the world.
The night came down on our newly-erected camp before even a hasty glance
could be obtained of all this interesting scenery. There is something
peculiarly soothing in the Syrian starlight; the planets are brighter
than in the north, the milky way looks like a long white cloud, the
moon, as she rises, is often accompanied by a silvery vapour floating
over the mountain-tops. The silence is broken by the sigh of the night
wind among the olives which form a black lattice-work overhead. In the
village at intervals one hears the barking of the troops of savage dogs,
and in the open plain the shrill gamut of the jackals, rising note by
note, and ending in a sort of shake or quavering sound. The cicalas are
asleep, but the piping of the black mole-crickets continues all night.
Occasionally a horse wakes with a snort, or the English terriers hear a
strange step and give the short sharp warning bark, so different from
the mongrel howls of the native dogs; then once more all is still but
the wind, and the silence becomes almost oppressive.
The Great Plain was the place chosen for the measurement of our second
base to check the accuracy of the triangulation carried up some sixty
miles from its starting-point in the Jaffa plain. On the 2nd of
September we laid out the line for a distance of four and a half miles,
directing it on the white dome of Neby S’ain above Nazareth, and thus
obtaining a prolongation for calculation of nearly six miles. The high
hills east and west gave us a second line of fifteen miles almost at
right angles, and from this, large well-shaped triangles were carried
away to the north. The check was perfectly satisfactory, and the closing
line, when calculated in 1876 at Southampton, had a margin of only
twenty feet, which is an invisible distance on the one inch scale.
One of our trigonometrical stations was placed on a high hill above the
smaller plain of ’Arrâbeh in which Dothan stands just south-west of the
Great Plain. Here there is a chapel dedicated to Sheikh Shibleh, a
famous Emir who in 1697 waylaid the traveller Maundrell. This writer
remarks drily that after extorting black-mail, “he eased us in a very
courteous manner of some of our coats, which now began to grow not only
superfluous but burdensome.” The Emir died, and was canonised, and his
tomb looks down from the stony hill-top on the scene of his former
prowess; but he is not the only sainted bandit in the Syrian pantheon.
In returning from this ride we passed through the little Christian
village of Burkîn, where we were hailed with a pleasure very different
from the hollow courtesy of the Moslem natives. The old Khûri or curé
hastened down to show us his church on the hillside, a small whitewashed
room, with a stone screen on the east shutting off the apses, as in all
Greek churches in the country, and with three entrances guarded by
curtains. The silver plate and ewer were kept in the north apse, the
altar stood in the central one; the church was very rudely built, about
fifty feet square, with a dome some twenty feet high. Two stone lecterns
held the books near the screen, and a stone chair on the south side had
arms with rude dogs’ heads carved on them. The pictures were all painted
on wood in a stiff pre-Raffaelite style, with gaudy colouring dimmed by
age. One represented the ascent of Elijah in a chariot with a red cloud
beneath, and four winged horses harnessed to it, with traces looking
like white tapes attached to the spokes of the wheels. Elisha below
receives the mantle, and is again represented as at a greater distance
striking Jordan with it, whilst a group of sons of the prophets stand
like a shock of corn in a square block with gilded glories on their
heads. Other pictures represented St. George, the Virgin, the Baptist
with red wings and a title in Russian and Arabic characters, St.
Nicholas, and the Saviour enthroned.
The Khûri, was a native, and his robes could not well have been dirtier
or shabbier. He was accompanied by two acolytes who held our horses; his
pride and satisfaction in showing his church were immense.
Whilst at Jenîn we had the unusual honour of a visit from a lady, who
came to ask for medical advice. Peasants suffering from ophthalmia, or
from indigestion, which they explained by saying “the head of my heart
hurts me,” we had to doctor every day, and one poor old gentleman, at
Mujeidil, we afterwards treated with carbolic acid and nearly cured of a
skin disease; but he had many other ailments which we could not treat,
and he consequently became a decided nuisance. The lady came attended by
her slave, a little girl in white with large dark eyes, one of which,
for some unknown reason, she kept steadily shut. The mistress was
dressed in yellow and white striped cotton, with the izâr or white veil
above; her face-veil she was obliged to remove to show her tongue, and
her eyes had a deep fringe of blue kohel all round, the eyebrows painted
to meet, whilst on her chin, forehead, and upper lip, were small dots
tattooed in blue in a sort of trefoil pattern; her hands had bands of
blue paint and dots on the knuckles. She wore heavy rings and a blue
glass bracelet; the sleeves were tight to the wrist, and under her frock
she wore the gay-coloured trousers as we call them, which are in reality
a petticoat sewn up, and the prettiest article of Syrian costume. Her
nails and the palms of her hands were dyed orange colour with henna, and
on her feet she wore the red curly-toed slippers used in walking out of
doors. She described her symptoms with the usual high querulous tone and
rapid chatter peculiar to the native women, and was made happy by a
couple of pills.
The places visited from this camp lay principally east of the plain. We
ascended the high conical peak of Jebel Dŭhy, so-called after Neby
Dŭhy (“the leader or general”), a prophet whose sacred place is on
the summit. Who this prophet was I am unable to say, nor can we with any
certainty apply a Biblical name to the mountain. The Crusaders called it
sometimes Mount Endor, and generally Little Hermon, a title still known
to the Nazareth Christians. The latter name was given in consequence of
the expression, “Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name,” whence
they seemed to have argued that Hermon was to be sought close to Tabor.
They can never have looked northwards from the neighbourhood of Endor,
or they would have seen the rounded, isolated mound, like a huge
mole-hill, which is Tabor, and behind it far away the magnificent, snowy
dome of the second sacred mountain of the text--the true Hermon.
The top of the mountain is composed of blocks of basalt, covered with
grey lichen. The view is magnificent, extending from the Safed ranges
on the north to Mount Ebal on the south, and from the peaks east of the
great Hauran plateau to Carmel and the sea. Fifteen hundred feet below
us is Nain, and north of this the plain in which the mediæval tradition
supposed Abraham to have met Melchisedek, with the unique outline of
Tabor, the Nazareth block, and distant Hermon. On the south side the
broad valley of Jezreel is just below, and the villages of Kûmieh and
Shŭtta, seen almost in bird’s-eye view on their little knolls
surrounded by long patches of arable land, whilst on the south side of
the valley the limestone of the Gilboa ridge is twisted into wavy lines
by the eruptive basalt beneath, and the range is seen, end on as it
were, rising shelf above shelf, while conspicuous on its knoll of rugged
rock, Jezreel stands at the north-west horn of the crescent-shaped
range, 500 feet above the bright pool of “Goliath’s Spring,” where the
early Christians, by some curious misconception, imagined David to have
fought the giant. On a clear autumn day the little Survey cairn was
plainly visible on Mount Ebal at a distance of twenty-six miles. The
prospect is indeed one of the finest in Palestine, with a variety of
outline and extent of view rarely to be found.
The village of Nain lies below on a sort of spur to the north of Neby
Dŭhy, and the road from Nazareth ascends in a hollow to the west of
it. On the right of the road, yet farther west, are the rock-cut tombs,
and thus the procession bearing the young man’s body would have come
down the slope towards the little spring westwards, meeting our Lord on
the main road. The mud-hovels on the grey tongue of limestone have no
great marks of antiquity, but the surrounding ruins show the village to
have been once larger, and a little mosque called “the Place of our Lord
Jesus” marks, no doubt, the site of an early chapel. There are, as far
as we could see, no traces of a wall, and I think we should understand
by “gate of the city,” the place where the road enters among the houses,
just as the word is used often in Greek, and in modern Arabic in such
expressions as “gate of the pass,” “gate of the valley,” and even “gate
of the city,” where no wall or gate exists.
East of Nain is a second similar village of mud-huts, with hedges of
prickly pear. This is Endor, famous in connection with the tragic
history of the death of Saul. The adventurous character of Saul’s night
journey is very striking, when we consider that the Philistines pitched
in Shunem on the southern slopes of the mountain, and that Saul’s army
was at Jezreel; thus, to arrive at Endor, he had to pass the hostile
camp, and would probably creep round the eastern shoulder of the hill,
hidden by the undulations of the plain, as an Arab will now often
advance unseen close by you in a fold of the ground. We are accustomed,
probably from the various pictures of the scene, to think of the witch
as living in a cave; and caves exist at Endor, but they are small, and
seem to be probably modern, having been dug out in seeking for the marl
used in making mortar. The hillside is bare and stony, with a low ledge
of rock in which the rude entrances are cut; round one cave there is a
curious circle of rocks, which form a sort of protection, and resemble
somewhat a druidical circle, though the formation is probably natural.
This cave would, however, offer an appropriate scene for the meeting of
the sorceress with the unhappy king, whom God answered “neither by
dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Sam. xxviii. 6).
On the southern slope stands a third and similar village called Sûlem,
the ancient Shunem. There is nothing specially to mark it as an ancient
site, for it is only a mud-hamlet, with cactus hedges and a spring, yet
it is undoubtedly the place known in the fourth century as Shunem. West
of the houses there is a beautiful garden, cool and shady, of
lemon-trees, watered by a little rivulet, and in the village is a
fountain and trough. Westward the view includes Fûleh--the Crusading
Castle of the Bean, with its fosse and marshy pool outside, and extends
as far as Carmel, fifteen miles away. Thus the whole extent of the ride
of the Shunamite woman (2 Kings iv. 24) under the burning noontide sun
of harvest-time is visible. Were the houses of that time no larger than
the mud-cabins of the modern village, it was not a great architectural
undertaking to build “a little chamber” for the prophet, and the
enumeration of the simple furniture of that chamber--the bed, perhaps
only a straw mat, the table, the stool, and the lamp, seems to indicate
that it was only such a little hut that was intended. Another point may
be noted: how came it that Elisha so constantly passed by Shunem? The
answer seems simple; he lived habitually on Carmel, but he was a native
of Abel Meholah, “the Meadow of Circles,” a place now called ’Ain
Helweh, in the Jordan valley, to which the direct road led past Shunem
down the Valley of Jezreel.
Crossing the valley, we see before us the site of Jezreel on a knoll 500
feet high. The position is very peculiar, for whilst on the north and
north-east the slopes are steep and rugged, on the south the ascent is
very gradual, and the traveller coming northwards is astonished to look
down suddenly on the valley, with its two springs, one (’Ain Jâlûd)
welling out from a conglomerate cliff, and forming a pool about 100
yards long, with muddy borders; the other (’Ain Tub’aûn), the Crusaders’
Fountain of Tubania, where the Christian armies were fed “miraculously”
for three days on the fish which still swarm in most of the great
springs near.
The main road ascends from near these springs and passes by the “Dead
Spring,” which was re-opened by the Governor of Jenîn, and now forms a
shallow pool between rocks of black basalt, covered with red and
orange-coloured lichen, and also full of little fish; thence it passes
on the east side beneath the knoll of Zer’în (Jezreel) to the plain on
the south. Climbing up to the village, we are again struck by the
absence of any traces of antiquity; the buildings, including the central
tower, are all modern, and only the great mound beneath, and perhaps
some of the innumerable cisterns, seem ancient; yet the site is
undoubted, and has never been really lost. Here from a tower, perhaps
standing where the modern one is erected, the watchman could see down
the broad Valley of Jezreel as far as Bethshan, and watch the dust and
the gleam of the armour advancing. The course of the two horsemen and of
Jehu’s chariot was distinctly seen beneath the hill, and the distances
are sufficiently extensive to give time for the succession of events.
On the east and south-east there are rock-cut wine presses on the rugged
hills, where no doubt the “portion of the field of Naboth” and his
vineyard are to be placed,--a good instance of the decay of vine
cultivation in Palestine.
It was by the “fountain which is in Jezreel” that Saul pitched before
the fatal battle of Gilboa. The Philistines removed from Shunem to
Aphek, and, according to Josephus, to Rangan. Perhaps these are the
modern Fukû’a and ’Arrâneh, in which case the strong position of Jezreel
was turned on the south-west, where it is most assailable, and the
doomed monarch was hemmed in between the enemy on the south and the
precipices of the mountain on the north.
On the 28th of September we left the Jenîn camp, where we suffered from
the east wind and the great heat, to find a retreat in the western hills
above the Great Plain, at the modern village of Umm el Fahm.
The large and flourishing stone village above us was built within the
present century, and is called Umm el Fahm, “Mother of Charcoal.” It is
perched on the slope of a high, conical, wooded hill, called from the
little chapel on the top Sheikh Iskander, or “Chief Alexander.” The Kadi
of the village, an amusing little native, who could read and write, told
us many legends of this saint. He was identified apparently with
Alexander the Great, for he was said to have had two ram’s horns, and
also seemingly with Melchisedek, as he was reported to have had a
meeting with Abraham in the valley.
This district was almost entirely unknown in 1872; the cone is a
volcanic crater, and small volcanic outbreaks exist west of it, and also
at the edge of the Great Plain on the east. The range is covered with
thickets of lentisk and spurge laurel, and on the western slopes is an
open wood of good-sized oaks; but on the north a broad valley called
Wâdy ’Arah, divides this range from a plateau of white chalk called “the
Breezy Land” (Belâd er Rûhah), bare of trees and reaching to Carmel. The
thickets of Sheikh Iskander reach southwards almost to the plain of
Dothan; the Yahmûr or roebuck gives its name to one of the valleys in
this region, and every kind of game abounds.
On the western edge of the Great Plain there are three famous sites,
Taanach, Legio, and Jokneam, concerning which a few words may be said.
The ruined site of Lejjûn is the Roman Legio, a town mentioned as a
military station, and an important place in the fourth century. On the
maps it will be found marked as the ancient Megiddo, but this is only an
instance of the very slender basis on which conclusions as to the
positions of important places in Palestine have been somehow founded.
There is nothing definite in the Bible as to the position of Megiddo. It
is often mentioned with Taanach, the site of which, with its name
unchanged, exists about four miles south of Lejjûn; but it also occurs
in connection with Jezreel, and with Bethshean, east of the Great Plain.
In the time of Jerome Megiddo was unknown, though the Great Plain was
apparently then supposed to be the Valley of Megiddon. Dr. Robinson, in
suggesting the Lejjûn site, appears to have been influenced by the
Crusading chronicles, which he, as a rule, condemns. Marino Sanuto, in
1321 A.D., places Megiddo at a town which he calls Sububa, and shows it
on his map as on the west side of the plain. This is evidently the
present Ezbûba, a mud village two miles north of Taanach, and three
miles and a quarter south-east of Lejjûn. But Crusading topography is
unfortunately more remarkable than reliable, and we seek in vain for
further confirmation. Dr. Robinson has relied on Jerome’s comment on a
passage in Zechariah (xii. 11), “As the mourning of Hadad Rimmon in the
Valley of Megiddon,” concerning which St. Jerome says that Hadad Rimmon
was a town afterwards called Maximianopolis in the Valley of Megiddon;
and this place we learn from the Bordeaux Pilgrim was ten miles from
Jezreel on the road to Cæsarea. This distance evidently points to
Rummâneh south of Lejjûn, seven and a quarter English miles from
Jezreel. But we are still no nearer to the satisfactory fixing of
Megiddo, for we have to depend on Jerome, first for the fact of Hadad
Rimmon being a town at all (a fact disputed by many authorities who make
it the name of an idol); secondly, for the town, if it was one, being
the same as Maximianopolis. Supposing these premises both to be granted,
it still does not follow that the town Megiddo was west of the Plain of
Megiddo; nor, if it were, does it follow that it was at Lejjûn.
Such is the flimsy chain of argument which has been considered
sufficient to fix the site. When we discover that there is a large ruin
between Jezreel and Bethshean, which still bears the name Mujedd’a, a
name which occurs in no other part of Palestine, these arguments cannot
be considered worth weighing against so important an indication; and the
new site, as will afterwards be seen, seems perhaps to fit better the
few requirements for the ancient Megiddo.
Lejjûn was indeed once a large town, with a fine water supply from a
beautiful spring, but Legio appears to have been the chief town of this
part of Palestine, and to it the ruins are plainly to be ascribed, the
distance from Taanach fitting with that given by Jerome.
North of Lejjûn the Great Wâdy el Milh runs down from the white plateau
of the “Breezy Land,” which it separates from the southern end of
Carmel. Here at the mouth stands a huge Tell or mound called Keimûn, on
which are remains of a little Byzantine chapel, and of a small fort
erected by the famous native chief Dhahr el ’Amr. The Samaritans have a
curious legend connected with this site. According to them Joshua was
challenged by the giants, and enclosed here with his army in seven walls
of iron. A dove carried his message thence to Nabih, king of the tribes
east of Jordan, who came to his assistance. The magic walls fell down,
and the King of Persia, Shobek, was transfixed by an arrow which nailed
him on his horse to the ground.
The present name is a slight modification of the ancient Jokneam of
Carmel, but the Crusaders seem to have been puzzled by it, and
transformed Keimûn into Cain Mons, or Mount Cain, whence arose the
curious legend that Cain was here slain with an arrow by Lamech, which
they supposed to be the murder referred to in the Song of Lamech (Gen.
iv. 23). The chapel no doubt shows the spot once held to be the site of
the death of Cain, but the derivation of the name was as fanciful as
that of Haifa from Cephas or from Caiaphas the high-priest.
From our pleasant camp at Umm el Fahm, where are no less than twenty
springs within the village lands, and fine gardens of oranges, lemons,
and large shaddocks, we marched north-west to the town of Mujeidil in
the Nazareth hills. On this day (the 19th of October) we crossed the
Kishon and found by experience how treacherous are the banks of this
apparently insignificant stream. The subject which naturally concludes
the account of the Plain, is therefore the great battle in which the
host of Sisera was drowned in the swollen waters of this river.
The amount of light which can now be thrown on this episode is very
great. The topography has hitherto been obscure, but the Survey does
much to explain it. To suppose that Sisera fled from the Great Plain to
the neighbourhood of Kedes in Upper Galilee (a distance of over thirty
miles) has always appeared to me to be contrary to what we know of the
general character of the Biblical stories, the scenes of which are
always laid in a very confined area; nor has the name of the plain,
Bitzaanaim, near Kedesh, been recovered in this direction. Bitzaanaim
was a town of Issachar near Adami (Ed Dâmieh) and should therefore be
sought east of Tabor in the plateau over the sea of Galilee, where we
still find it in the modern Bessûm. The Kedesh of the narrative where
Barak assembled his troops is therefore possibly Kedîsh on the shore of
the sea of Galilee, only twelve miles from Tabor. There is thus, from a
military point of view, a consistency in the advance to Tabor (a strong
position in the line by which the enemy were approaching), which is
lacking if we suppose a descent from the stronger hills of Upper
Galilee. The Kings of Canaan assembled in Taanach and by the waters of
Megiddo, but it was not at either of these places that the battle was
fought. Sisera was drawn to the river Kishon (Judges iv. 7), and the
host perished near Endor, “at the brook Kishon” (Psalm lxxxiii. 10). The
battle-field indeed was almost identical with that from which Napoleon
named the “battle of Mount Tabor,” when the French drove the Turks into
that same treacherous quagmire of the Kishon springs.
There are few episodes in the Old Testament more picturesque than this
of the defeat of the Canaanites. Tabor, the central position, a mountain
whose summit is 1500 feet above the plain, is bare and shapeless on the
south, but to the north it is steep, and wooded with oaks and thickets
in which the fallow-deer finds a home. About three miles west are the
springs from which the Kishon first rises, and from this point a chain
of pools and springs, fringed with reeds and rushes, marks, even in the
dry season, the course of the river. Along this line, at the base of the
northern hills, the chariots and horsemen of Sisera fled. The sudden
storm had swollen the stream, “the river Kishon swept them away, that
river of battles the river Kishon.” The remainder fled to Harosheth, now
only a miserable village (El Harathîyeh), named from the beautiful woods
above the Kishon at the point where, through a narrow gorge, the stream,
hidden among oleander bushes, enters the Plain of Acre.
The flight of Sisera himself was in an opposite direction, under the
slopes of Tabor and across the great lava plateau on which stood, near
Bessûm, the black tent of Heber the Kenite.
The Bedawin have a delicious preparation of curdled milk called Leben,
which is offered to guests but generally considered a delicacy; from
personal experience I know that it is most refreshing to a traveller
when tired and hot, but it has also a strange soporific effect, which
was so sudden in its action on one English clergyman after a long ride,
that he thought he had been poisoned. It was perhaps not without a
knowledge of its probable effects, that Jael gave to her exhausted guest
a tempting beverage which would make his sleep sound and long.
One final illustration may be added. In the magnificent song of Deborah,
the great storm which swelled the Kishon is described:
“They fought from heaven, the stars from their courses fought against
Sisera” (Judg. v. 20).
The season was probably that of the autumn storms which occur early in
November. At this time the meteoric showers are commonest, and are
remarkably fine in effect, seen in the evening light at a season when
the air is specially clear and bright. The scene presented by the
falling fiery stars, as the defeated host fled away by night, is one
very striking to the fancy, and which would form a fine subject for an
artist’s pencil.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. ANNE, SEPPHORIS.]
CHAPTER V.
THE NAZARETH HILLS.
Past Gilboa, Jezreel, Shunem, Nain, and Endor, we sped to the foot of
the great cliff 1000 feet high, which rises straight from the plain by
the narrow pass to the Nazareth hills. From the middle ages down, this
cliff has been shown as that from which the Nazarenes would have
precipitated the Saviour. Old Maundeville quaintly terms it “the Leap of
our Lord,” and other pilgrims were shown a hollow where the rock had
become soft as wax, and formed a hiding-place where Christ was said to
have been concealed.
Up the pass a long train of camels and of black donkeys toiled, laden
with the rich crop of sesame just reaped. Ascending the steep and
slippery track, we reached the soft white chalk which forms the upper
portion of the range, and which produces all round Nazareth a
neighbourhood of bare, white, rolling hills, quite distinct from the
bold mountains of Upper Galilee and from the oak-clad downs near Carmel.
Here in the valley which we were following is a beautiful garden or
orchard; oranges, figs, nuts, lemons, and pomegranates grow beside a
spring, the rich green contrasting with the glaring white of the chalk
and the brown of the burnt grass between the ledges. Still riding
north-east a busy scene greeted our eyes--a great threshing-floor, on
which horses and cows were being driven round, some dragging the rude
threshing-sledge, some trampling only with their feet, while great cones
of corn were being winnowed with a fork. Here we turned a corner, and
suddenly all Nazareth was before us, gleaming white and new-looking on
the side of the hill.
The position of the village is secluded, and it is only visible from its
immediate neighbourhood. The range of hills runs north-east, and the
south slopes are steep; a valley comes down westward on this side, and
then gradually burrows south to its mouth, at the pass by which we had
come up. At the point where it turns an open dell or hollow plateau is
formed, where are the gardens of Nazareth--a sort of little
mountain-plain, shelving down southwards. On it stand the Greek Church
of the Annunciation and the Virgin’s Fountain; the town itself climbs up
from it westwards, and hangs on the side of the steep hill, on the
summit of which is the Moslem Chapel of Neby S’ain. The total extent of
the village or town is only about a quarter of a mile either way, but
the houses stand close together, so that in this small area a population
of nearly 6000 souls is crowded, of whom one third only are Moslem.
Very characteristic of the history of the Holy Land it is to find within
so small an area the sacred places of no less than six sects. The most
ancient building is the Latin Church over the Holy House, in the strong
monastery with its shady garden and palms. North of it the graceful
minaret and the dark cypresses of the mosque rise close to the
Governor’s house. On the west, yet higher up the hill, white and new
stands the Gothic tower of the English Church; still farther west is the
Maronite chapel. In the main street by the market the Greek Catholics
hold possession of the chapel where they believe the synagogue of
Nazareth once to have stood; high above the town on the north a large
orphanage, built by German labour with English money, has been erected
by the Society for Female Education in the East. Farther east is the
palace of the Greek bishop, and above the fountain is the church (also
on the foundations of a building mentioned as early as 709 A.D.), where
the Greeks hold the Salutation of Mary to have occurred beside the
springhead beneath the hill.
Thus we see at a glance how the little town is the centre of Christian
love and veneration, and the goal to which men’s thoughts have been
attracted from the west, from the north, from the east, and from the
south, from civilised Europe, from rough but believing Russia, from the
hills of Lebanon, even from the plains of Mecca.
Twenty years ago Nazareth was a poor village, now it is a flourishing
town. The freedom given to religious worship by the Turks has been
indeed remarkable compared with the tyranny of Arab or Egyptian
governors; thus two Latin Churches, a Latin Hospice, the English Church,
and many fine houses have been built within the last dozen years or so,
and hence the very white and new appearance of the town of which they
are the most prominent buildings.
Past the fortress convent, where a monk was alighting from a
richly-caparisoned horse, up the narrow lanes, between the little hovels
of the older part of the town, up rubbish-heaps, and over slippery
cobbles, we rode to the parsonage, and were hospitably entertained by
Mr. Zeller, the clergyman. The next day we returned early, and thus a
more intimate acquaintance with the town was reserved until later, when
I spent nearly three weeks in the Latin Hospice, and again visited the
city twice for a few days in 1875.
Nazareth is probably not a very ancient place, for it is not noticed in
the Old Testament, though situated very near the boundary of Zebulun;
nor was it probably ever a very large town, for it has but one spring.
Its name is most likely derived from the colour of the hills around, and
may mean “white,” though the early fathers loved to render it “flower,”
and others make it to mean “watchtower.” Ancient Nazareth probably stood
rather higher on the slope than modern Nazareth; the place, in fact, has
slid down the hill, as is indicated by the position of the old cisterns
and tombs. Thus the “brow of the hill” is more probably one of the
cliffs now above the town, or perhaps another hidden beneath the houses,
and there is no necessity to seek it at so great a distance as that of
the Saltus Domini precipice.
It is curious that Jerome scarcely seems ever to have been in Nazareth,
though travelling far and wide over Palestine. In 700 A.D. Bishop
Arculph found it an open village, with two churches--one over the
grotto, one over the spring, both very large; but soon after troubles
began, and it was not till the time of the Crusades that Nazareth became
a bishopric. In 1102 Sæwulf found it entirely wasted, only a few columns
remaining at the fountain, and though enjoying a temporary prosperity
under the Christian monarchy, it was again devastated by the Moslems,
and in 1322 Sir John Maundeville writes of it that it was “formerly a
great and fair city, but now there is but a small village;” whilst of
its inhabitants he says, “they are very wicked and cruel Saracens, and
more spiteful than in any other place, and have destroyed all the
churches.” It is not only Sir John, unfortunately, who can attest this
fact: the zealous missionaries who have seen Moslem and Christian, Latin
and Greek, shedding one another’s blood, Captain Burton who there nearly
lost his life, and my own party who fared but ill in the neighbourhood,
will alike bear witness to the turbulence of the Nazarenes--an evil
character for which they seem to have been notorious ever since the days
when they sought to stone our Lord, and gave cause yet earlier for the
Jewish proverb, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
The people of the town are remarkable for the gay colouring of their
dresses, and the Christian women for their beauty. Many a charming bit
of colour, many a shapely figure set off by picturesque costume, many a
dark eye and ruddy cheek, have I seen in the streets or by the spring.
This beauty is peculiar to the Christians of Bethlehem and Nazareth, and
various reasons are given which agree, however, in supposing a mixture
of European blood. As to the dress, the causes are manifest; the costume
is that commonly worn by Christians, and is only striking by contrast
because the villagers of the neighbouring places are Moslem; the
townsmen are also richer, and can afford better dress, and this partly
accounts for the superior beauty of the better-fed women when contrasted
with the worn faces of the overworked and half-starved peasant women of
the surrounding poor hamlets.
A more special description of the people, their dress, customs, and
religion, must, however, be reserved until they can be treated with the
rest of the natives in a future chapter: suffice it here to notice that
they present a far more pleasing and picturesque appearance than most
of the inhabitants of Syrian towns. Leaving the question for the
present, we may next turn attention to the two sacred places of
Nazareth--the Grotto of the Annunciation and the Virgin’s Spring.
The site of the Holy House was shown, as noticed above, as early as 700
A.D. in a rock-cut grotto. The pillars of the Crusading church built
round it were still visible in 1620 A.D., but the new building erected
in 1730 A.D. with the rest of the present monastery, has no connection
with the plan of the former, the foundations of which still exist
beneath. The modern church is a whitewashed, square structure, seventy
feet long and fifty broad, directed north and south. The high altar
above the sacred grotto is reached by a flight of stairs, from each side
of the seventeen marble steps which lead down to the vestibule, called
the Chapel of the Angel, where left and right are the altars of St.
Joachim and the angel Gabriel. Behind the high altar is the choir, dark
and roomy like that at Bethlehem. Descending into the grotto and passing
through the vestibule, the old Franciscan led me into the little
rock-cut chamber, with marble floor, and an altar on the north wall.
This is the outer half of the grotto, and a wall of separation divides
it from the inner half. The outer is called Grotto of the Annunciation,
the inner that of St. Joseph. From the roof of the former, which
measures twenty feet across and seven feet in depth, hangs pendant near
the west side the shaft of a red granite pillar, apparently a column of
the old chapel in the grotto, and believed to be miraculously suspended
over the very place where the angel stood when bringing the message to
Mary. Lighting the little taper on the altar, and kneeling for a moment
in prayer, the monk drew the veil from before an Italian picture of the
Annunciation, soft and mellow in colour, with a sweet Virgin face, and
tawdry silver crown and nimbus sewn on above her head and that of
Gabriel.
By the narrow entrance on the right we passed into the inner part of the
chapel, dark and damp, equal in width, but double the depth of the outer
part. It is only just about high enough to stand in: its altar is placed
at the back of the last described, with a picture of St. Joseph. From
this a narrow passage twenty feet long, with seventeen steps, leads up
obliquely to the inmost part of the cave, a chamber of irregular shape,
traditionally supposed to be the Virgin’s kitchen, with a chimney hewn
in the rock on the east, and an entrance, now walled up, on the west, by
which the father informed me the Virgin used to go out to fetch water
from the spring. The whole place is very dark and low, with a damp
odour, and resembles the ancient cisterns of which many exist in
Nazareth; yet for nearly twelve centuries this spot has been visited by
millions from every Christian land as the early home of Christ and of
His mother. I observed to the monk that it was dark for a
dwelling-house, but he answered very simply, “The Lord had no need of
much light.”
It is hardly worth while to describe the modern sanctuary of “St.
Joseph’s Workshop,” a Latin chapel, built only in 1859, about two
hundred yards north of the monastery, in the Moslem Quarter; or the
Mensa Christi, a block of rock rudely oval ten feet across and three
feet high, in a church built in 1861 in the west quarter of the town.
The only other ancient site is that of the Virgin’s Fountain, six
hundred yards north-east of the Latin Monastery at the end of a lane
hedged with prickly pear, and near the flat camping ground among the
olives.
As early as 700 A.D. we find Bishop Arculph visiting here a church over
the spring. The present building is only about eighty years old, but
occupies the same site. It is dedicated to St. Gabriel, and even the
Latins admit it to be on the site where first the angel became visible.
It is curious that no artist has pitched upon so charming a subject as
that suggested by a meeting with the Heavenly messenger at the Fountain,
an idea not discordant with the words of the Gospel. As in the eighth
century, so now the spring is under the floor of the church, which is
itself half subterranean. The water is led to the left of the high
altar, past a well-mouth, by which it is drawn up for pilgrims, and so
by a channel to the masonry fountain, where it comes out through metal
spouts under an arched recess broad enough for fifteen women to stand
side by side. A pool is formed below at the trough, and here the
constant succession of the Nazareth women may be seen all day filling
their great earthenware jars, standing ankle-deep in water, their pink
or green-striped baggy trousers tucked between their knees; their heads
are covered, if Moslems, with the moon-shaped tire, if Christians, with
a gay handkerchief or the hair platted in long tails. A negress in blue
here and there mingles with the crowd, which is chattering, screaming,
gossiping, and sometimes fighting.
The Protestant buildings in Nazareth are the most conspicuous, because
higher placed than either the beautiful minaret of the mosque or the
strong pile of the monastery. The hospital, presided over by Dr. Varten,
an accomplished surgeon and a kind doctor, stands towards the north; the
church, well built with a pretty garden and capable of containing five
hundred persons, is to the west, tastefully decorated within, and having
over the altar-table, in Arabic, the words read by the Saviour in the
Synagogue of Nazareth, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me ... to preach
the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to
preach deliverance to the captives” (Luke iv. 18).
Highest placed of all, however, half-way up the hill, the great
orphanage has been building since 1872, and is now complete, and
designed to hold two hundred girls. It is built in the symbolic but very
inconvenient form of a cross with the sides filled in, and is but ill
designed though well executed, and externally a very fine building. From
its esplanade the town is visible, spread out almost like a map on the
lower slopes, with olive and fig-gardens, cactus hedges and yellow
threshing-floors, backed by barren stony hills.
A volume might be written on the history and topography of Nazareth, but
the present sketch is necessarily a short one. A chief feature of the
place must not, however, be forgotten--the view from the summit of the
hill by the little chapel of Neby S’ain, whose untranslatable name is a
puzzle to the residents.
We can scarcely doubt that this scene, unchanged as it must be in its
noble natural features, was one often before the eyes of Christ in
childhood and manhood, and it is remarkable how much that is stirring in
the history of Israel was enacted within the theatre of rolling hills
which bound the view.
Here on the south the broad brown Plain of Esdraelon stretches away to
the hills of Samaria. The peak of the Precipitation stands above it at
the end of the plateau of Nazareth, and beyond, the top of Tabor and the
cone of Jebel Duhy rise up on the left. The ridge of Gilboa appears
farther south, cliff above cliff, tilted eastwards and shelving down
gently to the plain on the west. Turn-to the right the eye follows the
broken outline of mountains rising into the volcanic cone of Sheikh
Iskander, and farther on, the whole range of Carmel, in its length of
twelve miles, is stretched dark and wooded from the Peak of the
Sacrifice to the Convent promontory where Haifa nestles at its feet.
Over the ridge far south the gleaming sea appears; to the north is the
hollow bay of Acre with its white circle of surf, the town itself not
visible; behind us again on the north are the steep Galilean hills, the
Safed mountains, the beautiful plain of Asochis where Kânah stands on
the slope; farthest away of all is the snowy dome of Hermon.
Very beautiful on a clear day is this panorama, and striking indeed is
the jagged and broken hill horizon, purple against the orange sunset.
Here, then, the Saviour may have stood, and seen before His eyes the
theatre of many a tragedy of Jewish history. Tabor, from which the army
of Barak burst on the host of horse and chariots by the Kishon springs
beneath; Endor where Saul crept round the hillside by night to the
witch’s cave; the broad valley down which Gideon drove the Midianites,
up which Jehu came in his chariot to Jezreel, visible on its rocky
knoll; Gilboa, on whose slopes Saul and Jonathan had perished, caught
between the Philistines and the precipices; Carmel, the site of the
great triumph of the God of Elijah, and the great sea on which still in
autumn the little cloud comes up like a man’s hand and swells till huge
thunder-pillars are piled black and high above the mountains. On the
north Sepphoris the Roman capital, Seph the “city set on a hill,” Rumeh
where some said Messias was first to appear, the road to Capernaum, and
the solitary ridges of Hermon where the transfigured Saviour was seen by
the three Apostles.
But, as we look round, nineteen centuries later, we mark the influence
of the history of the Gospels, and of the growth of tradition. On the
south the traditional Leap of our Lord, two miles from the city built on
the brow of the hill. In Nain, beneath and unseen, the Christian chapel,
commemorative of the raising of the widow’s son, now in turn a Moslem
mosque. On Carmel a grotto of Elijah, venerated by Christians and
Druses. On the hill of Sepphoris a ruined church, six centuries old,
once thought to be the home of Joachim and Anne, the Virgin’s parents.
On the plain, a ruined Cana, perhaps only dating from Crusading times.
On Tabor a false site for the Transfiguration, and three churches in
ruins.
Yet with a history so long and eventful, the land itself is unchanged;
the brown plains, the grey barren hills, the wooded cliffs of Carmel,
the gleaming sea, the snow-clad Hermon, are still the same that Christ
once looked on; and we merely add to the theatre of Jewish victory or
defeat the sites venerated, in loving, if mistaken zeal by the Christian
pilgrims of the eighteen centuries before our time.
From the hill-top northwards, the view extends to the ruin of Kânah, a
village destroyed not long ago, to judge from the existing remains;
beneath the hills north-east lies hidden the prosperous village of Kefr
Kenna. These are the two places which claim each to represent Cana of
Galilee, the site of Christ’s first miracle.
Unfortunately there is scarcely anything in Scripture which would lead
to a choice between the two, nor do the chance references of Josephus
enable us to do more than speculate as to the comparative likelihood of
the sites. In the Talmud, Cana is not noticed; thus there is nothing in
contemporary literature to enable us to decide.
One thing only seems pretty certain--that the Crusaders believed
Khŭrbet Kânah to be Cana. Sæwulf in 1102 A.D. gives a very particular
description of the place as six miles north of Nazareth, with a place
called Roma half-way, which he describes as a castle near the road from
Acre to Tiberias, where travellers broke the journey.
Fetellus, again (1130 A.D.), places Cana five miles from Nazareth,
Sepphoris two, and Tabor four. In the “Citez de Jherusalem” (1187 A.D.),
it is made to be three leagues from Nazareth, with a well a bowshot off;
Sepphoris being one league, and Tabor three. John Poloner in 1422 A.D.
makes it four leagues east of Acre, and two leagues north of Sepphoris.
Marino Sanuto describes it most carefully, and draws it on his map as
north of a plain reaching south to Sepphoris, with a mountain behind it
on the north; he gives the distance as four miles, Tabor also as four,
and Sepphoris as two. Brocardus agrees with this description, and
Quaresmius in 1620 A.D. notices the same site as an old traditional
position for Cana.
These accounts, though the distances seem only approximative, agree in
placing Cana at a distance from Nazareth equal to or greater than that
of Tabor, and north of Sepphoris and of Roma. They can only therefore
apply to Khŭrbet Kânah, situate with a plain to the south, a mountain
to the north, and a cave like the crypt described by John Poloner, to
the west. They cannot be applied to Kefr Kenna south of Roma (now
Rûmeh), almost equidistant with Sepphoris from Nazareth and nearer than
Tabor, with a mountain to the south and plain to the north.
The true distances are as follows:
Nazareth to Kefr Kenna 3¾ English miles.
Nazareth to Kânah 8 English miles.
Nazareth to Rûmeh 6 English miles.
Nazareth to Seffûrieh 3½ English miles.
Nazareth to Tabor 5½ English miles.
These measurements, as a glance at the map will show, serve to place
Crusading Cana from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries at the
northern site of Khŭrbet Kânah. John of Wirtzburg, indeed (1100
A.D.), might be thought to mean Kefr Kenna, because he makes Cana east
instead of north-east of Sepphoris; but he gives its distance as double
that of the latter town from Nazareth (four miles, whi
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