Essays on Eastern Questions - The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia (2024)

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

"Essays on Eastern Questions" (London, 1872) is a collection of texts by Gifford Palgrave.

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INTRODUCTION.To expect that the collection of a few Essays from thescattered periodicals in which they originally appeared,and their republication in a more condensed form, canhave any material effect towards removing erroneousideas, or substituting exacter ones, about the Mahometan East of our own times, would be presumptuousindeed. Yet even these writings may in a measurecontribute to so desirable a result; for correct appreciations are, like incorrect ones, formed not at once butlittle by little true knowledge is a construction, not amonolith.These Essays, taken together, form a sketch, mostlyoutline, part filled in, of the living East, as includedwithin the Asiatic limits of the Ottoman Empire.Now, as for centuries past, the central figure of thatpicture is Islam, based on the energies of Arabia andthe institutions ofMahomet, propped up by the memoriesof Chaliphs, and the power of Sultans; and, thoughsomewhat disguised by the later incrustations of Turanian superstition, still retaining the chief lineaments,and not little of the stability and strength, of its formerdays. Round it cluster the motley phantoms of EasternChristianity, indigenous or adventitious; and by itsvi INTRODUCTION.side rises the threatening Russian colossus, with itstriple aspect of Byzantine bigotry, Western centralization, and Eastern despotism. This group, in its wholeand in some of its details, I have at different times endeavoured to delineate; and if the pencil be an unskilfulone, its tracings, so far as they go, have the recommendation, not perhaps of artistic gracefulness, but atleast of realistic truth.The first, second, and third of these Essays have fortheir object the portraiture of Mahometanism, as it nowexists among its followers throughout the greater partof the East-Turkish Empire. A fourth assigns itsspecial attitude at the present day; and a fifth givesthe details of a local development of the same force ina remote corner of its demesnes.In the sixth Essay the most prevalent forms ofEastern Christianity are passed in review; while its' Greek' or Byzantine modification is more minutelyillustrated in the seventh. The eighth describes oneof the many struggles between the Christianity ofRussia on one side, and the Islam of the Caucasus onthe other.The ninth and tenth supply the background of Arablife and vigour in the times which immediately precededor followed the birth of Mahometanism.CONTENTS.PAGEI. MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT 1III.II. MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT-ContinuedMAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT-Concluded43· 81IV. THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL' 111V. THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES OF THE NORTHEAST TURKISH FRONTIER • 142VI. EASTERN CHRISTIANS • 164VII. THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS .VIII. THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION225250IX. THE POET ' OMAR •X. THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET SHURRAN• 271301

I.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.قَدْ كَانُوا شَاهِدُوا دَفْنِي عَلَى قَدْ لِيهِم جَمَاعَةُ ثُمَّ مَاتُوا قَبْلَ مَنْ دَفَنُوا:Dead and buried had they seen me, so their ready tale they spread;Yet I lived to see the tellers buried all themselves and dead.Arab Poet.(PUBLISHED IN " FRASER'S MAGAZINE," AUGUST, 1870. )NOTICE.THIS and the two following were written at Trebizond, in AsiaMinor, after several years of residence or travel. In these threeEssays I have endeavoured to classify, so far as possible, the Mahometan population of the East Ottoman Empire, according to itsprincipal social divisions; with a separate sketch of the characteristicfeatures of each. Those of official rank, civil and military, come first;the landowners and peasants next; then the mercantile classes; thelearned professions follow; while the pastoral tribes, Koorde or Arab,the maritime classes, and the ' mixed multitude ' of the MahometanLevant bring up the rear. Why I have marshalled them in thisorder will sufficiently appear in the treatment of the subject itself.Like the other writings in this volume, these particular Essays haveno pretensions to being exhaustive; they supply samples, suggestgeneral effects, and no more. But the samples are all facts; and thegeneral effects the results of actual and long- continued observation.The only objection I anticipate from some, is that my view ofhuman and Islamitic nature in the East is over-favourable; more so,at least, than that taken by many other European travellers andwriters, modern ones especially. But, after all, as we see and hear,so we judge; and ' to speak of a man as we find him,' is just judgment. Perhaps, then, I have been more fortunate in my Easternexperiences; perhaps less prejudiced. Besides, a disciple in thisB2 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [I.matter of Chrysostom, himself a native of Syria, I hold with him, thatman has naturally more good in him than evil, is of himself moreprone to virtue than to vice; and I find, or seem to find, thatMahometanism, -the nearest approach made by any set creed to whatis called ' natural religion ,'-has perhaps, on the whole, less tendencythan any other system I am yet acquainted with, to cramp and thwartthe innate excellence of human nature. Hence I am not surprised tomeet with much that deserves esteem, much that attracts sympathy,among the followers of Islam; though much also is wanting, muchpositively awry. Yet the earth is, as Clough sa ' s, ' very tolerablybeautiful; ' and so are the men on it too, even though Mahometans.THE East, the Levant East especially, abounds insights charming at a distance, and in general effect,but of which the details will not always bear toonear an inspection. Constantinople when viewedfrom the Bosporus, Damascus from the heights ofAnti-Lebanon, are instances in point.But there are other sights in the Levant, beautifulalike from far or near, partly on their own account,partly from association and suggestion, the perspectivesof the mind. And to this class belongs one that ourWestern friends may at their pleasure share with us,if they will join in a saunter this evening across thebusy Meidan or open space-square we cannot call it,though it answers the purposes of one, for it is themost irregular of polygons-that lies in the easternquarter of our pro tempore home, the town of Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast. Round the verge ofthis Meidan, and visible from it further off at intervalsthrough the town, rises a forest of tall thin minarets,ghostly white against the slaty star-sprinkled sky.But now each minaret is gorgeous with circlets oflight, some more, some fewer, formed by rows of lamps,three, four, and five deep, threaded at intervals on111I1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 3the slender half-seen stem. And even now, beforewe are well across the Meidan, bursts forth from everyturret, from every crowned gallery of rays, the loudmodulated cry that asserts the Unity of God and theveracity of the Prophet.6Some commemoration of more than ordinary sanctity,some night of note, is evidently on hand; but as wedo not happen to be at the moment aware of theprecise date in the Mahometan calendar, we stop aturbaned passer-by, who has just saluted us on his waymosque-wards, and enquire of him what mean all theseextra lamps and accompanying signs of extra solemnity. His reply reminds us that this is Leyletul- Raghey'ib,' or ' Night of Desires; ' the night namelypreceding the first Friday in Regeb, sacred month,and prelude of Ramadan; whence follow many supernatural excellences and privileges; not much betterknowr, mayhap, to the Western world in general thanare those of St. John's or of Hallowmas Eve atTrebizond itself.C6A few minutes more, and beneath the festoonedlamps that illuminate the interior of every mosque,line after line of turbans, reaching back from the' Miḥrab ' or sanctuary (an analogous but not an exacttranslation), where stands the prayer-reciting Imam,'to the outermost door, will at one Allaho-Akbar,' ' Godalone is great,' bow prostrate to the dust; and thehead of the Pasha will touch the floor-mat side by sidewith that of the poorest day- labourer of the town inone act of adoration, one without more or less in eachand all; the act that, while it acknowledges the divinemission of Islam, rejects every other creed, every othersystem.That Mahometanism is fast declining, fading, waningaway; that the day is not distant, may already beB 24 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [I.calculated, when the mosques of the Turkish Empirefrom Galatz to Basrah will convert or re-convert themselves into churches (though in favour of what particular form of Christianity may not be so easy toconjecture-the choice is a large one! ); that pigs willsoon lose their prescriptive immunity from Turkishknives, and beer and wine wash excellent Anatolianhams down once Islamitic throats; that Mecca willonly be known as a railroad terminus, and theKoran be registered by some ConstantinopolitanDisraeli among Curiosities of Literature, are pleasingspeculations, more pleasing as hopes, and fit to cheerthe drooping spirits of those who mourn over the consecration of a heretic, or the disestablishment of aChurch. Nay, even the cool-blooded Gallio of PallMall has been found among the predictors of the fallof Islam; and the verdict of a Mill or a Lefevre mightbe on this subject not dissimilar in the main from thatof a Spurgeon or a Manning.For ourselves, neither prophets nor sons of prophets,but mere lookers-on, by business of the State or otherwise, in Turkey, we must sadly confess that somesixteen years or so of Levant residence have as yetopened to us no glimpse of a so ' devoutly to be wished'consummation; nor do the converging lines of theMahometan prospect indicate to our optics any vanishing point, however distant. On the contrary, if thefuture be, as runs the rule, foreshadowed in the present,and if sight and hearing avail anything to discern thesigns of the times,' these readily lighted lamps, theseanswering cries No god but God,' Mahomet is theProphet of God,' these long lines of Mecca- turnedworshippers, among whom every rank and degree ismerged in the brotherhood of Islam, tell a very different tale.61.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 5The ostrich was believed to hide its head in the sandon the approach of danger; and when it had thusinsured the disappearance of the hunter from its ownfield of vision, to infer illogically that the said hunterhad ceased to exist . Ostriches of this kind arenumerous, not in Africa only, but even in Europe;minds that, when their own horizon, often a verylimited one, does not include a given object, are proneto conclude that there is no such object at all. Addthe paternity of wish to thought, add a fair amountof prejudice, add misinformation, and we shall ceaseto wonder at certain statements and opinions currentenough about numerous topics, where facts would, wemight naturally have thought, have warranted conclusions precisely opposite. Islam, in its present andin its future, may stand for an example.Take misrepresentation only. Thus, we have heard,not once, but repeatedly, and on seemingly good authority, that the fast of Ramaḍān can now scarce laya claim to even a decent pretext of observance; that theveil is already dropping from the faces of Mahometanwomen, the harem opening its jealous gates; that themosque is habitually deserted for the theatre, the'medreseh ' for the café chantant; ' in a word, thatEuropean customs, dresses, inventions, organisations,literature, and so forth, will have soon rendered theAsia of the Muslims a thing of the past.6Let us endeavour to determine first how far all this istrue; and next, if more or less true, what it portends.And here, at the very outset, we may be met by aplausible objection, the objection of those who say,'What need of further research in so beaten a field? andhow should Europe, how should England in particular,not know the East, whether Mahometan or Christian,land, and people, and all? Is not all that lies from the6 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [1.Egean to the Tigris, from the Black Sea to thePersian Gulf, pictured in the pages of Keith, andwritten in the book, the red-bound book, of Murray?Have not a Lane and a St. John given us the entrée ofhouses and harems? has not a Slade passed the armiesand the navies of the East in review before us? has nota Strangford unveiled, evening by evening, the Isisof its politics, a Sale the Cybele of its religion? Whocan err with such guides? or complain of darknesswith so many and so brilliant lights around?'6True, the guides are faithful, the lights brilliant,and the authorities first-rate, each in his kind. Buta handful of gold-dust would not be more surely lostif scattered over a Sahara of sand than are the opinionsand facts conveyed by informants like these, whendiluted beyond all recognition among the far greaternumber of errors, prejudices, and misstatements that,having once found currency, still abound on every side.Witness the giant misconceptions so often reflectedfrom European opinion upon European statesmanshipand diplomacy, regarding the relative positions of'Christians ' and Turks; ' witness the popular portraits of either worthy to rank with Shakespeare's Joanof Arc or Dryden's Aurungzebe; witness nine-tenthsat least of our leading newspaper articles on theSultan's visit in 1867; witness the surprise evincedwhen any truer view of Mahomet and Mahometanism,as Mr. Deutsch's admirable, though somewhat onesided, Essay in a late Quarterly, for instance, is givento the world; surprise which avows pre-existent ideasof a very different colour. It would not be too much.to say that the vulgarly received idea of Mahometanismas it was, is, and may be, bears scarce a closer resemblance to the reality than do Luther's Reformation inthe pages of Baronius or the French Revolution inI.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.those of Alison to their historical counterparts. Noris the reason far to seek.When false has to be sifted from true, it oftenbecomes no less necessary to enquire who was thesayer than what was the said; more especially whenreligions , parties, public characters, and the like,are under discussion.Now, excepting the few already noticed, and settingaside those whom evident interest or national sympathy excludes from the impartial witness - box, wefind our usual masters in the Eastern school to bethree: the Tourist, the Resident, and the Levantine.Let us call them up each in his turn.The average Tourist need not detain us long. Hewho has studied Turks in Pera or in the Frank quarterof Smyrna, and Arabs at Alexandria or Beyrout; hewho has never conversed save through the medium ofa Greek or Maltese dragoman; he who with timelimited by a travelling ticket, and with a stock inhand of knowledge regarding Mahometan history, literature, and customs, equal about to that of ' Tancred 'setting out for Mount Lebanon and the Queen of theAnsarey,' as it pleases him to call them; such a onehas all the right to speak and to be listened to regarding Mahometan Turkey, present or future, that aJapanese or a Spaniard would have on Irish ChurchDisestablishment or the Landlord and Tenant questionafter an equal time passed on the quays of Portsmouth,or in the precincts of Leicester Square. And evenshould his random guesses and hazardous assertionsever happen to be right, small merit of his, a hit,but no archer,' says the Arab proverb.Nor can the resident Europeans, forty-nine out offifty, show a better title to their magisterial diploma.Cigarette-smoking for four or five hours in an office or8 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [1.chancery, lounging for two or three more along aEuropean-frequented road, or boating it on the Bosporus; the rest of their time passed in societyexclusively European and mostly national, amid European cards and billiards, or reading the latest arrivedEuropean periodicals; unless the knowledge of Islamand the solution of its problems be imparted like thewisdom of Solomon during the hours of sleep, it ishard to conjecture when or where our European friendswhom diplomatic, consular, or commercial interestsdetain in the East, can possibly acquire them. Thetruth is, that far the greater number neither possesssuch knowledge, nor care to possess it.But if the Resident, whatever his real or acquirednationality, Latin or Teutonic, be not a genuine European, but a Levantine, that is, one born in the Levant,and with a moiety of Greek or Armenian blood in hisveins to dilute the other half, French, English, orItalian, as luck may have it, then, ' oh thou, whomsoever thou mayst be, ' desirous of solving the Asianmystery, pass on, nor hope in that office, in that parlour, at that table, to read the riddle of the East.No man would seem by birth and circ*mstance betterentitled to cosmopolitanism than the Levantine; noone in fact passes through and out of this world incompleter ignorance of all except its Levantine aspecteven as regards that little corner where he has vegetated. To a more than European non-acquaintancewith the spirit and often with the very letter of theinstitutions around him, the Levantine adds a morethan Greek or any other native Christian ' prejudiceagainst the Prophet and his followers. Rakee ' hisordinary, sometimes his hourly, drink, cards his chiefpastime, dogs his pet companions, swine-flesh, whereattainable, his favourite food; all four objects as reCI11. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 9pulsive to any true Muslim as the first could be toa teetotaler, the second to a Quaker, the third to aGoethe, and the fourth to a Jew; no wonder thathis house is rarely visited by a disciple of Islam, andthen only under the compulsion of some immediatenecessity, some affair to be quickly and exclusivelydespatched. Nor is the Levantine himself more frequently found within the doors of his Mahometanneighbours. A band apart, he and his colleagues passtheir hours in the tattle and scandle-mongering oftheir tribe, aping, but never imitating, Europeanfashion, ‘ alla Franga,' as they call it; of Europe itself, its politics and its tendencies, its feelings andcustoms, they may possibly have what imported knowledge Galignani or Charivari can give at a distance;with the Asiatic, the Mahometan world around them,they have no communion whatever. The nearest, theonly point at which the circle touches the Islamiticis in words of command or abuse to some Mahometanout-of- door servant, whom poverty has induced toaccept the pay of the ' Giaour ' he despises-ah, Byron,Byron! how came you eyer to make the ' Giaour ' intoa hero?--or in the fellowship of some ne'er-do-weel' Be-lillah, ' i.e. scapegrace of a young Turk, in whomstrong drink and its accompaniments have effaced allof Islam except the name.Besides, if we look over to the other side of thehedge, we shall find that the genuine turban-wearer,be he Turk or Arab (of Persians we advisedly saynothing), is on many grounds averse from too muchintercourse with the hat-wearer, Levantine or European even. National pride, the pride of a conqueringthough now a declining race, the haughty memoriesof great Caliphs and Sultans, the sack of Constantinople, the siege of Vienna, the conquest of half a10 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [I. .world keep him at a distance from those whose everygesture is an assumption, not of equality merely, butof superiority; religious pride, the pride of him whobows to one God only, the Unchanging, the All-powerful, the Eternal, estranges him from the polytheist, theidolater, the unbeliever; personal pride contrasts hisown ceremonial purity with the uncleanness of theunablutioned swine-eater; family pride places a barrierbetween the Beg,' the descendant of so many noblechiefs, so many lords, and those of whose fathers heknows nothing, except that they may have been, andprobably were, shopkeepers or spirit-sellers .6Injurious and blameable such feelings may be, butthey exist; nor are we now occupied on a diatribe ora panegyric; we only state simple facts.But no such sentiments intervene to hold aloofthe native Christian ' from welcoming in the European resident or visitant, if not a man and a brother,at least a tool and a gain. He fastens on the strangeras naturally, I once heard a Turk say, as a flea ona dog; and is not more easily to be shaken off. Histongue is ready for any flattery, however gross; hishand for any service, however base; while his eye issteadily fixed on the lodestar of the European's pocket,whither hand and tongue tortuously but surely directhis course. He is the first to greet the new-comeron the steps of the Custom-house, and the last to quithim on the quarter-deck of the steamer; the Alphaand the Omega of the profits are his also. Thus repelled on the one side, and attracted on the other,what wonder if the traveller, ignorant of those heforegathers with no less than of those from whom heturns away, hears and sees only through Greek,Maltese, or Armenian ears and eyes; if the Levantineherds with his kind, or, lower still, with the store-1.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. . 11house keepers and retail-job dealers of the nativeChristian population; while the resident gentleman,diplomatic, consular, or business, strives to preservehis own national mind and tone, by excluding thecontact of every other; and returns, after few yearsor many, to Florence, Paris, or England, almost asItalian, French, or English, as when he first arrivedin the East, and also almost as ignorant? Nor canhe be much blamed for so doing; better, in general,no companionship at all than the companionship ofsuch as hang on the European's foot-track in theLevant.6Enough of these and theirs . Let us now cast aside(in imagination only, of course) the hat, don the turban, and survey the Islamitic world around us froman Islamitic point of view. And, hey presto! thesupposed unit Mahometan ' disentangles itself into around dozen of figures, each different from the other,and each holding a distinct and separate place in thegradations of Islam, as in those of nationality andpatriotism .It is a very trite observation, yet one to be carefullyborne in mind, that in the Levantine East-that is,throughout the entire tract of country included reallyor nominally in the existing Asiatic Turkish Empirenationality and religion are almost convertible terms,so much that not the specific differences only, buteven the intensitive degrees of the latter, go far oninvestigation to trace out the limits of the former;which is itself again, historically considered, thegroundwork and often the ultimate cause of the latter.Among Mahometans, however, the essential simplicityof whose creed hardly admits of other dogmatic variations than shadings too faint almost for the eye ofan outsider, the correctness of this rule is at times12 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [1..less evident than it is among the adherents of themore modifiable, because more complicated, Christianformula; though it may in general be exemplifiednot ambiguously in varieties of practice, even amidapparent uniformity of theory. But these varieties,which arrest at once the eye of an Eastern, mightprove unnoticeable, or, at least, unintelligible, to aEuropean.Hence, while not forgetful of the general rule, wewill on this occasion assume a different classification,and review our Levantine Mahometans according totheir social rather than their national distribution.To the Civil Service, so important in a country whereself-government is not even an aspiration, we willassign the first place; the military must content themselves with the second; land-owners and peasants,merchants and townsmen, lawyers and divines, shallfollow in due order. Shepherds, sailors, dervishes, andsuch like odds and ends of society will find their placeas occasion offers; wholly anomalous classes, Koordesand Bedouins for instance, require to be treated ofapart. Nor will we minutely distinguish in each classbetween its component Turks and Arabs; though, asour actual residence lies-much to our regret―amongthe former, we will give their nationality the precedence throughout.•'Tis known, at least it should be known,' that orthodox Mahometanism admits four doctrinal schools,slightly differing each from each in theory and in practice; those, namely, of Mohammed Ebn Idreesesh- Shafey'ee; of Malek Ebn Ins; of Ahmed Ebn Hanbal;and of No'oman Aboo-Haneefah. Now while the threeformer have found favour among Arabs and otherSemitic or African races, the Turks on their first conversion to Islam adopted and have ever since adhered1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 13to the fourth, or Hanefee school. It was well said bythe shrewd and learned Moḥee-ed- Deen (of Hamah, inSyria), that in the circle of orthodoxy, the teaching ofEbn Hanbal' (the strictest among the four greatmasters) might stand for the centre, and that ofAboo-Haneefah for the circumference.' More indulgent than any of his brother doctors, Aboo-Haneefahstretched the rigid lines of Islam almost to breaking;the doubtful concessions of a moderate indulgence infermented liquors, of non-Mahometan alliance, and ofconsiderable facilitations in the laborious ceremonies ofprayer and pilgrimage, with a general tendency, notunlike that of the Roman Catholic Liguori, to relaxwhatever was severe, and soften whatever was harshin theory as in practice, all characterise his teaching.At the same time, in obedience to a well-known psychological law, the easiest-going of divines was-Liguorilike again-the most superstitious. Omens and auguries,dreams and amulets, the observance of lucky days, andthe annual visitation of tombs, these and more of theirkind found favour in the eyes of Aboo-Haneefah;while his dervish-like austerity of life, and his avowedclaim to no less than a hundred visionary admittanceswithin the celestial regions, revealed the great Doctor'spersonal leanings, and encouraged that fanciful asceticism which in Islam no less than in Christianity hasproved an outgrowth from, if not a corruption of, itsoriginal simplicity.Naturally enough the double trunk bore in due timedouble fruit, and the Turkish Hanefee, even whileholding fast enough, in Cameronian phrase, the rootof the matter,' has been of all times notorious for hisproclivity now to the too much, and now to the toolittle; sometimes lax, sometimes observant in excess.Specimens of either kind abound in all professions and14 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [I.modes of life throughout the Empire; but in somecategories the one, in some the other, is more frequent.However, the former, or lax type, is most often to bemet with in the Civil Service, our first field of inspection, and which has had the honour, more than all therest, of producing that peculiar being commonly designated by the epithet of ' Stamboollee, ' or ' Constantinopolitan,' to which derivative the title Effendee,' a wordequivalent in meaning to our ' Mr., ' but now-a- days ofa semi-official character, is liberally added. Let himcome forward and speak for himself.CHe is easily recognised; for besides his individualfrequency, especially since the publication of the lastnew ' Tashkeelat,' or Regulations, he is the first, andnot rarely the only, Mahometan whose acquaintance ismade by the European traveller or resident. Whetherour ' Stamboollee ' bears the rank of Effendee, of Beg,or of Pasha, matters little. The same loose blackfrock-coat, black trousers, generally unbuttoned justwhere European ideas would most rigorously exactbuttoning, the same padded underclothes, shiny boots,and slight red cap, the same sallow puffy features, indicative of an unhealthy regimen, the same shufflinggait and lack-lustre eye, characterise every man of thetribe:-Facies non omnibus una,Nec diversa tamen.Let us follow our Effendee's career from the daywhen his father first held him up, a swathed infant,with his face towards the ' Kibleh,' and thrice pronounced the Mehemet, Osman, or Ahmed, by whichour hero is to be known in after life. We may, however, omit the gutter- playing period of existence, thatalmost indispensable preface to every Eastern biogra-I.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 15phy, be it gentle or simple; and pass lightly over thefour, five, or six years at the Mekteb, or GrammarSchool, where, however, the young idea learns, notgrammar, but the first rudiments of reading minusspelling, and of writing minus caligraphy, besides acertain number of the shorter ' Soorahs,' or chapters ofthe Koran, consigned to sheer mechanical memory,without so much as an attempt to form any notion ofthe meaning. Issuing with these acquirements fromthe ' Mekteb,' he passes another half-dozen years chieflyunder his father's roof, alternating between the ' Salamlik ' of hourly visitors, and the secluded apartmentsof the Harem; while day by day the spoilt child growsgradually up into a spoilt boy; humoured in everywhim by a fond and foolish mother, a fond and notoverwise father, and servants whose intimacy suppliestimely lessons of vice and roguery, while their obsequiousness promotes not less efficaciously his growth ininsolence and self-will. Of general knowledge, of moraland mental discipline, of self-restraint and self- respect,of the dignity of work, the bond of duty, the life ofhonourable deed, he learns nothing; these are growthsall too strange to the climate of his rearing. Besides theparents and servants already mentioned is some poorlypaid, salary-snatching ' Khojah,' or private tutor, underwhose instruction he attains a fairly good handwriting,a parrot- knowledge of ' Nahoo,' or grammar, that is, ofArab grammar, wholly alien in its principles, andmostly alien in its application, from whatever is Turkish, Tatar, or Turanian, Mr. Ferguson might say, inthe vernacular language. To this he may, perhaps,add a no less parrot-smattering of Arab and Persianliterature. Occasional attendance at a ' Mekteb Rushdee,' or ' School of guidance,' by which name the higherclass establishments of public education are designated,16 [1.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.will probably have coated over his intellectual storewith a superficial varnish of French. Of history,geography, mathematics, and positive sciences, as ofEnglish, German, or any other European tongue, except the all-supplementing French, he is, and will forall his life, remain blissfully ignorant. But in cigarettesmoking, in gambling, probably in vice, perhaps indrinking, and certainly in the arts of lounging and timewasting, he is already a creditable proficient, almost amaster. If learning If only went by contraries, he mighthave further acquired the science of economy from thepaternal housekeeping, truthfulness and honour fromthe Khizmetkars ' and ' Chibookjees ' (house-servantsand pipe-bearers), his earliest and closest associates,diligence from the lads of his own age and standing atschool and in the street, and job-hating probity fromthe French and Levantine examples held up to hisadmiration as pattern types of civilisation and progress.C((Needs not track our hero minutely through thevarious phases of his after career, which we willsuppose an upward one, in service and in salary.But whether his ultimate apotheosis rank him amongthe ' Musheers,' or privy-councillors, those first magnitude stars of the Ottoman Empire, or whether deficiency of patronage and of purse detain him in thedim nebula of Kateebs,' or Government clerks;whether his lines be cast among the Mudeerliks 'and Kaimmakamliks' (local prefectures) of some distant half-barbarous province, or fall in pleasant placesunder the immediate shadow (the broiling sun weshould rather say) of the august Kapoo ' or Constantinople Downing Street itself, the man is stillthe same. At twenty, at eighteen, at sixteen even,his character was formed for life . The intellectualcoating, thinner or thicker, which French professors,"1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 17Cand a certain amount of contact with Gallo- or ItaloLevantine associates may have given, will indeed ruboff; his cosmical science will return to, or sink below,the level of El-Mas'udee; his historical store shrinkwithin the limits of the ' Musteḍrif' or the ' NowadirSoheylee,' at best; and so forth. But moral modifications are more quickly wrought, and, in the averageof things, more firmly retained, than intellectual.Hence our ' Stamboollee ' will all his life long beready, occasion given, to put in practice the lessonstaught in the school whence his real tutors issued,the royal law of which patronage is the first table,and dishonesty the second. Alla Franga ' has beenthe motto of his youth, it will be the guide of hisadvancing years. But what'Alla Franga!' Hisnotions of family life, of social intercourse, of generalmorality, will be a reflex of George Sand and of Balzac; his notions of probity, political or monetary, ofthe Savoy and Jecker transactions; his notions offinance will be borrowed from Khaviar- Khan, theBourse of Galata; his notions of statesmanship fromthe charlatanism of Pera, and the expediencies of theday. Of old Turkish courage, Turkish honour, Turkish decorum, scarce a trace, if even a trace, willremain. A Turkish Pasha afraid to mount a horse,a high-titled Osmanlee jobbing Government lands andpublic works to the profit of his own pocket, a Begthe son of Begs openly drinking ' rakee ' in a streetside tavern among Greek and Armenian rabblethings little dreamt of by the Sokollis and Köprileesof former times-are now not uncommon, are now ofdaily occurrence, but among the Stamboollee tribe.The prospects of Islam if confided to the sole guardianship of such as these may easily be guessed. Lifeless, spiritless, regardless of everything except theC18 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [1..most trifling amusem*nts, the meanest self-interest,the coarsest pleasures, with all the apathetic negligence of the degenerate Turk, united to all thefrivolous immorality of the degenerate Perote Levantine; without public spirit, without patriotism, without nationality; what place can the law of the austere' Omar, the intrepid Khalid, the generous Mu'awiah, theenergetic Ma'moon find in such breasts? How shouldminds like these apprehend the stern, unchangingunity of the all-ordaining, all-regulating Deity ofIslam, the operosus nimis Deus, whom even Cicerorecoiled from? or how entertain one spark of thesingle-minded enthusiasm of the soldier-Prophet, who,having subdued an entire nation to his will, andfounded an empire scarcely less vast but more lastingthan that of the Cæsars, left not in death wherewithal to give his own body a decent burial?In fact, were the type of modern Mahometanismand the presage of its destinies to be sought in thisclass, and among these men, we might here lay asideour task, leave our friends and readers to draw theirown conclusions, and for our own part subscribe tothe nearest date at which-his Infallible Holiness,let us say- may choose to fix the doomsday of Islam.But this would be, in French phrase, a ' massive error,'though it is the very one to which Europeans, officialeven, are prone, led astray by the identical circ*mstance which has led us to place our Stamboollee 'in the vanguard of the Mahometan procession, namely,his bad prominence rather than eminence. The firstglance at a pool rests chiefly on the scum of thesurface; the first object that comes into view on asteeple is the weatherco*ck. Stamboollees ' are but thescum of the pseudo- centralisation of that very dirtypool, the capital, of the varnish civilisation of Beg-1. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 19Ogloo; they are the weatherco*ck, an ominous oneundoubtedly, but indicative only of the Westerlybreeze that for some years past, sweeping over theBosporus and the Ægean, is now awakening a yetstronger counterblast of Easterly antagonism .But before gladly dismissing them, to pass on toother classes in the long catalogue yet before us, letus add a word to anticipate a second error that somemight fall into, imagining the unlovely portrait justdrawn to be so far a family one that it might standat random for any member whatever of the presentOttoman Civil Service. It is not so. That the Kalam,' or civil staff of the Porte, has much too largea proportion of the men above described we cannotdeny; but it contains also in its ranks, both upperand lower, numerous individuals of a very differentstamp, -men whose souls know what it is to have acause, and whose cause is their duty and their country; men of the old sturdy Osmanlee caste, notwholly unadorned by European acquirements; menwho, in Cromwell's words, ' bring a conscience to theirwork,' and whose conscience is that of Islam. But itis not among the ' Stambool- Effendee ' latter-day creation, among the selfish, the frivolous, the emasculateset of those whose sham-Europeanism blossoms in theatmosphere of Mabille and ' cafés chantants,' of gambling-rooms and third-class theatres, that we must lookfor specimens of this better, and in the Civil Service,we say it with regret, this rarer type. They areplants of another soil; the offspring of classes whichwill claim our attention further on. But they arealso less prominent from a stranger's point of view; aEuropean may pass months and even years in Turkey,and yet rarely come across these men, or recognisethem when he does. The others readily, and, as itC 220 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [1..were, by a kind of prescriptive right, obtrude themselves on his notice, and form the staple material ofhis opinions and judgments. On these, with theirstereotyped phrases of borrowed French about civilisation, progress, and so forth, he is apt to build alikehis hopes for Turkey and his prognostics of the evanescence of Islam-hopes and prognostics which, tobe themselves firm, should rest on a deeper and widerbasis than the ephemeral Stamboollee clique, or eventhe administration of which it forms a part. Anygiven bureaucracy is a page easily turned over in thehistory of an empire.The sword is a surer argument than books, ' sang,in the third century of Islam, its great poet Habeebet-Tai'ee; and eminent as undoubtedly were the administrative qualities which for so many lustres gavethe tribe of Osman the ascendency over the countlessraces that bowed to their dominion, yet the swordhas always been their first boast and their ultimatereliance. Nor even now that the Janissaries havereddened the annals of the past with their blood, andthe very names of Sipahees, Segbans, Akinjees, Lewends, and Günellees are almost forgotten, now thatthe breech-loader and the rifled cannon have supplanted the horse-tails and lances of Varna andMohacs; while annual conscription and the Europeandiscipline of the Nizam, or standing army, have replaced the fierce charge of the irregular cavalry, andthe fantastic varieties of tributary and provincialtroops; not even now has the Osmanlee sabre whollylost its edge, or is it less than of old the readyservant of the ' Ghazoo,' the Holy War of Islam .During and after the Crimean war it was a commonfashion to speak slightingly, sneeringly even, of theTurkish army and soldiery, and of the part they took1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 21in the great struggle; and although this tone wasmore marked in the leaders and among the correspondents of the European Daily Press than amongthose actively present on the scene, yet even in manyof the Europeans there concerned, some of them highin rank and command, there was a fixed dispositionto consider the Osmanlee troops, army or navy, asmere cannon's meat, a half-organised, poor- spirited,unsoldierly rabble, deficient alike in discipline andcourage. How far such an idea was true, or ratherhow far it was from all truth, Admiral Slade's faithfuland unprejudiced narrative might alone suffice to show.And we may safely add, that not only they who, likethe gallant admiral, were themselves art and part ofthe Turkish force, but those also who, present underother colours, had the best opportunities for observingwith eyes undazzled by national self-glorification, andof hearing with ears undeafened by national self- applause, came to no dissimilar conclusion from his. And,perhaps, should a veracious account, not one cookedup by Greek dragomans and Levantine consular agents,of the late Cretan war, ever find its way to Europe,it might prove a fair appendix to Slade's CrimeanWar, in spite of Mr. Skinner and the Piraan telegraph.But, meanwhile, leaving the historical field, whereparty spirit too often fights the battles o'er again inink, with scarce less animosity than they were firstfought in blood, we will have recourse to presentobservation; and in the study of the materials whichcompose the existing Turkish army, seek a clue to atolerable estimate of the military class itself, officersand soldiers; after which we may judge what arethe justifiable hopes or fears of Islam in this quarter.Born and bred on some green hill-side, in a wretched22 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [1. .single-roomed cottage, our Turkish lad, after years ofhoeing and reaping, sheep-tending, donkey-driving,wood-cutting, or charcoal-burning, as the case may be,arrives at the age of twenty, or near it. One day heis summoned from his village, along with a dozenother youths of his class, to the ballot-urn of theconscription, and his lot is cast with the army for thenext five years at least, probably more. Findinghimself thus suddenly on the point of being separated,perhaps without hope of return, from the almost destitute family of which he is the principal if not theonly stay, our raw recruit mingles his tears andentreaties for exemption with those of his youngerbrothers and sisters, his aged mother, and his anxious,almost despairing relatives. But all is of no availso he and his say in joint resignation their ' kismetor ' God's allotment,' and Aḥmed takes his place amongthe ragged crowd of his fellow recruits, in accoutrement and guise more scarecrow than any of Falstaff'scorps at Coventry; in warlike spirit, a chance observermight think, a fit companion for a Mouldy orBullcalf.or a

Six months later we enquire in the 101st Regimentafter our tattered, weeping peasant. Summoned bythe ' cha'oush,' or sergeant, Ahmed answers the call;but how different from his former self on the ballotday! Light work, good food, comfortable lodgingsall these, relatively, of course, to what he was accustomed to in his koïlee or peasant stage of existence,have reddened his cheeks, filled out his limbs, andlighted up his once-dull eye; a system of drill thatwould hardly, perhaps, pass muster at Aldershot, butwhich has all the practical advantages that even aR. H. Commander-in-Chief should take into account;a practical though coarse uniform, sadly deficient, weI.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 23allow, in the ingenious Western devices of bear- skins,shoulder-straps, and heart-disease, but not, perhaps,the worse for that after all, have done their work,and transformed every movement, gait, and bearingof the clown into those of the soldier. Add, thathis drill and discipline have, so far as they go, beenacquired under the tutorage of a corporal whosedemeanour towards him has been that of an elder toa younger brother, and beneath the eye ofofficerswith whom kindness to their men is the rule, harshness the occasional and rare exception. Democratic,communistic, as is by nature every Turk, he is doublyso in military life-round, in the old Osmanlee phrase,one caldron, under, in the more refined language ofour time, one standard. Hence throughout the Turkish army distinctions of rank are, when off duty,frequently laid aside to a degree that would startle,and justly so, a European officer, who would, for hispart, have good reason to fear the contempt bred offamiliarity. Of this, however, among Eastern soldierythe danger, unless provoked by intrinsically degradingconduct, is very slight. The professional fellow- feelingwhich binds soldiers most of all men together is herenot only broad but deep, and not only pervades rankand file, but passes upwards and downwards alike,from the general to the bandsman.But to return to our recruit. If sick he has beentended in a good bed by doctors, less learned, perhaps,than those of a Paris hospital, but also, it may be, lessoften unfeeling or negligent, while his hours of illness.have been cheered by the easily-admitted visits of hiscomrades, possibly more than once of his lieutenant orcaptain. In barrack-quarters he has learnt orderly andcleanly habits, not, indeed, of pipeclay severity, butamply sufficient to the service and the climate, while at24 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [I. .all times the camp discipline, however strict in essentials, has been what in Europe would be called easygoing, almost to laxness in details. In a word, the manhas been made comfortable mentally no less thanphysically, and he requites those who have made him soby willing obedience, and a respect no less real becausetempered by the confidence of attachment. At any rate,no Turkish guard-room rings to the sound of a musketdischarged against an officer's head, or through thebearer's own heart; no sergeant need fear the findinghimself at a lonely corner with any private of theregiment, however armed; and no soldier leaves behindhim the in memoriam ' that the conduct of his captainor his colonel has driven him to despair.To this fortunate equilibrium of individual freedomand regimental subordination, or rather to the formationof the temperament which allows and maintains it, manycauses have concurred, but none more so than that onedictum of the Prophet's, ' Surely fermented liquor is asnare of the devil; avoid it if you hope to prosper.'"Pity almost that our Western code should be lessstringent in this particular; its observance would materially benefit our soldiers, and our soldiers' wives andchildren too, let alone others. In fact, how much eviland misery this single prohibitory warning, attended toin the main, has averted from lands which would elsehave been very wretched, those are well aware whohave have had the opportunity of contrasting an Eastend Christmas or a Liverpool Saturday-night with aMahometan Beyram ' or festival- day at Damascus, forexample, or in Stambool itself ( Pera and Galata alwaysexcepted) . But it is in the army, above all, that the illeffects of strong drink, and, by contrast, the good effectsof its absence, are most clearly seen, and justify the foresight of him who sought above all to train up a nation1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 25of fighting-men; and the temperance precept of theKoran is in general as faithfully observed by the Mahometan soldier as it is habitually violated by theblack-coated Effendee. But with the military jacketthe Osmanlee puts on also the mantle of zeal droppedby the Prophet on his best followers; and in this zeal,whether we stigmatize it under the name of fanaticism,or decorate it as patriotic enthusiasm, lies the true secretof the strength of that young-old army; hence itsendurance, its stubborn courage; hence its daring whenworthily led, its amazing patience when neglected andthrown away. The fire of Islam may have been covered,seemingly choked, under the ashes of poverty and care,while the future soldiers were yet in their villagehomes; once within roll-call the ashes are blown away,and the flame bursts forth bright as ever. Witness theannals of the army of the Danube in 1854 and 1855;witness what gleams of military truth have pierced theveil cast by partisanship and misrepresentation over thecampaigns of Montenegro and Candia; we ourselvesmay yet live to witness more.Sober, patient, obedient, cheerful, indifferent todanger, ready for death, and a thorough-going Mahometan in heart and practice, such is the average Turkishprivate. And the officers? It was till lately a commonsaying that in the Ottoman army the men were betterthan the officers by as much as in the Russian army theofficers were better than the men. With all due allowance for the inaccuracy of generalisations, there is evennow some truth in this one-there was formerly muchmore. Nor could it, indeed, be otherwise, in whatconcerns the Turks at least. To form an officer, stillmore to form a corps of officers, possessing the requisiteamount of technical knowledge, perfected by apt experience and animated by the true military spirit, is a26 [1.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.much slower work than to call together a body ofrecruits and equip them with kit and musket. Mahmood II. could do the latter by an act of his will; hecould not do the former; time alone could. And timeis already fast doing it. Forty years since the shamefultreaty of Adrianople, thirteen years of comparativeleisure since the equivocal advantages of the Parissettlement, have indeed been little better than thrownaway on the self-satisfied , French-phraseologising, irresponsible, irreformable ' Kalam ' or civil service. Theyhave not been thrown away on the ' Kileej , ' the sword,the army. Even now we recognise the hope-givingresults of preliminary instruction and examination, ofpromotion accorded more to merit and seniority, andless to backstairs intrigue and vizierial favour; of activeservice in the case of some, of long camp life with others,and, in all, the energetic rivalry natural to men who,while filling a post to which they feel belong of rightthe highest honours of the empire, yet find themselvessunk by the present order of things into a second andsubordinate category; men capable of command, bornsoldiers and trained officers; men too, with but few exceptions, rarer and more anomalous every day, staunchIslam as any of the soldiers in their ranks.Closely connected with this is another feature of theOttoman army, which, rightly considered, bears strongwitness to the intensity of its Mahometanism, we meanthe general absence of that systematic peculation andcorruption which so widely pervade the civil service.Since the day when the Vizier Shemsee Pasha avenged,such was his spiteful boast, the downfall of his ancestors,the Kizil-Aḥmedlees, on the Ottoman dynasty, by inoculating the latter with the corruption which hehimself derived, if tradition says true, from his greatbut greedy forefather Khalid Ebn- Waleed, bribery1. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 27"and peculation, now direct and barefaced, now disguisedunder the decent names of Bakhsheesh,' i.e. present, or' Iltimas,' i.e. favour, have been the dry rot of theTurkish fabric in its almost every joist and beam. Inthe military, and in the military service alone, they rarelyfind place. True, the minute overhauling of accounts,regimental or other, which has wisely been establishedin the Ottoman army, renders dishonest dealing lessfacile there than elsewhere; but no control could longbe efficacious were it not sustained and verified by ageneral spirit above unworthy doings, an honour disdainful of profitable stain. This spirit was that of' Omar, of Aboo- Bikr, of Mahomet himself. The ' proudMoslem,' the ' bearded Turk that rarely deigns to speak,'and many similar phrases have become in a mannerstereotyped from frequent use, and to a certain extentthey represent a truth. No higher nobility than Islam,'says the three-foot character inscription over the mainentrance of our chief mosque at Fatimahpolis; and it iswhen enrolled in the ranks of the army that the Muslimthoroughly feels himself a Muslim, and acts accordingly.In the bureau and on the market-place his associationsare different, and so, but too often, are his dealings also.But be he Turk or Arab, Negro or Circassian, his normalstanding- ground is the camp, his truest name a soldier,and the whole honour of his heart and being is in each.' My foot is on my native heath, and my name isMacGregor, ' is but a feeble counterpart of the AllahoAkbar,' God and victory,' of the Mahometan onslaught.(Meanwhile, earnestness gives stability, and in time ofpeace no men can be more orderly, more amenable, notto military discipline only, but to the customary restraints of law and society, than Turkish soldiers . Thefact, from its very generality, passes without comment.Thus it is only a few weeks since that we have seen28 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [1..four thousand men who, after many weary weeks of hotautumn march from the interior across mountainsrivalling the Pyrenees in height, were shipped off muchafter the fashion of cattle from Hamburg, or negroesfrom Zanzibar, to make part of the imperial holiday forthe crowned quidnuncs of Europe on the Bosporus, andhave now been once more disembarked in this our roadstead of Fatimahpolis, here to wait days and weeks tillthe intervals of winter-storm may permit them to recrossthe mountain wall home again. Market, street, lane,square, beach, fountain-head-all Turkish towns aboundin fountain-heads, often tastefully sculptured-everyplace, in short, is thronged by soldiers, each with thegratuity that French and Austrian liberality or decencyhas bestowed, no insignificant sum for a peasantyoungster to carry about with him at his own disposal.Yet not a single extra case is brought before the policecourts, not a voice of quarrel or complaint is to be heardin the street; the few officers who accompany the menmay sit unanxious and undisturbed in the coffee-houses;evening after evening passes off quiet and orderly intothe unbroken silence of an Eastern night; morningdawns, and if the shops and baths are crowded, themosques are not less so; not one of the four thousandbut turns to Mecca five times a day, in witness to theunity of God and the mission of the Prophet.The Russian soldiers before Silistria, or beleagueredin Sebastopol, were undoubtedly devoted to their Emperor, and zealous for the great orthodox faith. Yettheir zeal and devotion required to be moistened withextra libations of Vodka, and fostered in the hot- houseatmosphere of fictitious weeping Theotokoi, and underground communications affirmed and believed in withPetersburg and Paradise. The French army adoredNapoleon the Conqueror, and was jealous even to slaying1.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 29for the honour of ' la grande nation; ' but for them,too, the stimulant of forty ages had to be invoked fromthe top of the Pyramids, and promised plunder didmuch before Moscow. The British troops stood theirground heroically at Waterloo, but then they had aWellington at their head. Unliquored, unstimulated,unharangued, too often it has been unofficered, the Ottoman soldier has gone unhesitating to the death whichgave new life to his empire in the days of Catherineand of Nicholas. And the sword of Islam, thoughrusted, has not lost its virtue.So far of the Turkish uniform, civil and military, andof the hopes thereby given to Mahometanism; muchfrom the military, little, if truth must be said, from thecivil. Yet the future, after all, lies in the great masses,Arab, Koorde, Turk, Turkoman, and Syrian, of theEastern empire.These masses are chiefly agricultural, owners orcultivators of the soil, and it is for that reason that wehave assigned to the landed proprietors, taken in conjunction with the peasants around them, the priority oforder over the two remaining classes, namely, thecommercial and the learned, or legal. Manufacturinginterest, properly speaking, is, our readers know, nonein Turkey; whatever manufacturing skill formerly existed and even, to a certain extent, flourished, havingbeen long since smothered well-nigh to death under thebales of printed Manchesters and other products ofEuropean machinery that every steamer throws onthese coasts . The artificers and craftsmen who yetsurvive will find place along with other townsmen ingeneral, when we call before us, in due place, the commercial or trading class. But the deep and wide baseof the Mahometan Levant is agricultural industry, andit merits attentive consideration.30 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [1. .Landowners in all countries and at all times havebeen, as a rule, and still are, conservative, the earththey are possessors of seeming on its side to impartsomething of its own immobility to their character.Besides, men who inherit a position titled for generations, and dwellings and domains where their ' foregangers ' have kinged it, perhaps for centuries, are,and not unnaturally, inclined to look down with acertain contempt, if not dislike, on recent dignities andacquisitions of comparatively ephemeral date. Suchmen when assumed into the body of a government giveit a special solidity of character, for good as for evil.When they alone form a government it speedily passes,by petrifactive degeneration, into a Spartan oligarchy,or a Hohen Eulen- Schreckenstein principality.Now it is a peculiar feature of modern Turkey, andone which essentially distinguishes it from its formerself, that the landed classes, once so intimately blendedwith the military, and together all- powerful in theempire, are now carefully and systematically excludedfrom any share whatsoever in the government. Readover the long muster list of pashas and effendees,viziers and musheers of the present day, and you willhardly find among them one in thirty who owes aname, an acre of land, or any title of recognised existence to his grandfather. With exceptions far too fewto be of any weight, these officials are all men of yesterday, writers, Chibookjees, id genus omne, ' raised byfavour, by money, by intrigue, by what you will (birthand hereditary estate excepted) to their present position. The son of a grand-vizier or of a musheer-pasha,who was himself, perhaps, the son of a house- servant ora coffee-shop keeper, is a very Stanley or Vere de Vereamong them. And this, to give the tribe a retrospective glance, is one reason, and not the least either, why1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 31conservative principles are so rare among them. As wellexpect such from the speculators of the Bourse, or themanagers of the Suez Canal."This is the work of the too-famous reforms, or ' Tanzeemat,' which, under the Sultans Mahmood II . and' Abdul- Mejeed, levelled in the dust the old aristocracyof Turkey, and made of the empire a tabula rasawhereon Harem- Sultans and irresponsible ministersmight inscribe at will their caprices, to the multiplication of Bosporus palaces and the desolation of villagesand provinces. The Sultan has laid waste an empireto raise himself a town,' said not long since a Persianenvoy at the Porte, and, though a Persian, said true.For fifty years the French-imported word ' centralisation ' has been the motto of Stambool policy, and thefirst letter in its alphabet is the suppression of provincial existence by the weakening and abasem*nt ofthe landed proprietors.Excluded from the official circles where governmentmeans gambling, with a weatherco*ck for its banner,the conservative spirit has taken refuge among theagricultural population, landowners and peasants, muchas what is sometimes called the fanatical, and mightmore properly be entitled the national or imperial,spirit has concentrated itself in the military and learnedclasses, the Begs and the ' Ulemah. Though not identical, the conservative and the national spirit are herein close connection, and together constitute a force that,gathering intensity from the very fact of long repression, may some day culminate in an earthquake that—But we are venturing into the bottomless gulf of futureand prophecy; let us make haste and draw back ourfoot to the solid ground of fact and present.So to horse, to horse, since Asiatic railroads exist asyet in concessions only, and carriage-ways are repre-32 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [I.sented by the shortest possible ' stria ' from the coastinland, and, with an outrider in front, and a baggagehorse with a servant or two behind, let us set out onour country visits for the interior of Syria, Anatolia,'Irak, or where you will, from the murky waters of theBlack Sea (odious pool!) to the glittering sands ofGhazzeh and the Syro-Egyptian frontier. Let theseason of our rovings be the late spring or the earlyautumn. Winter travelling is always unpleasant, andwe had rather, with all respect, be excused the honourof being thy companion here, O British reader, whenthe suns of July and August are overhead. Spring,then, be it , or autumn. We have already made somehours of road, and, after the noon-day bait, under theshelter of a tree, or nestling up against the narrowstrip of shadow. afforded by chance wall or rock, weremount our beasts and gaze forward over a widehorizon of plain and valley, winding river-line, andendless mountain chain, unable to distinguish amongthe grey dust-haze of the distance even the faintestindication of the resting-place promised us by ourguides and attendants for the evening. After repeatedenquiry and much straining of eyesight, a darkish speckon the third, at nearest, of three bluish ridges will probably be pointed out, with the further indication of aname that, after hearing half-a-dozen times repeated,we give up in despair. But the gist of the matteris, that in the village with the unpronounceable name,or close by it, lives some Tahir- Oghloo Beg, KaraIbraheem- Oghloo Beg, Hasan Agha es- SoweydaneeAdhem Beg, as the case may be. Of this gentleman,whatever be his personal designation, we next joyfullylearn that he is a Khaneh-dan ' or landed proprietor,that he has a large house always open to guests, and,better still, that he himself is ' adablee,' well-mannered,"1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 33'kereem,' hospitable, and so forth, which being paraphrased into Eastern fact means that the house-roof isa wide one and covers plenty of spare room, that itshelters, too, an indefinite number of hangers-on for ourown followers to gossip with, that rice and grease areplenty in the kitchen, and that there is a large supplyof dirty coverlets ready for the night. By such attractions you are violently drawn, or if you are not, yourattendants are (which in the East is all one), towardsthe hospitable loadstone, and on you jog through sunand dust.An hour or so before sunset, after much wearinessand many premature hopes of a speedy arrival at thevillage in question, which your guides for the last threehours at least have invariably stated to be at exactlyone hour's distance-you find yourself among the homebound kine, and accompanying peasants of the locality;you thread five or six huge unprofitable manure heaps,hardened into hillocks of respectable age, and severalcottages of earth and rubble, placed anyhow; till, horseand man, you draw up at the entrance of a huge straggling building, with an amazing number of windows;a wonder no Stambool finance minister has yet thoughtof taxing them. Those on one side are latticed, andbehind those latticed windows lives or live the Beg'slady or ladies, who will have the satisfaction of preparing your evening repast with her or their own fairhands, but to whom you are of course much too wellbred to expect a personal introduction. The windowson the other side are in a state of unmodified openness,without shutters, frames, or any other appendages.You have, according to custom, sent on a fore-rider toannounce your coming, and have in consequence beenmet outside the hamlet by the Beg himself, or, moreprobably, by the Beg's son or cousin, with some othersD34 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [I.of his set while at the entrance door of the dwellinghas already congregated a whole crowd of peasants,partly from respect, partly also from curiosity. Likethe old French ' propriétaires,' and unlike their lesssociable English brethren, Turkish and Arab landownersalways fix their residence in the midst, or, at least, closeto the very entrance of the principal village they are orwere lords of. Close by the portal stand three or fourfigures clad in long loose cloth robes, blue or green,trimmed with cheap furs, which, though their best,have evidently seen much service; and the beardedand turbaned wearers greet you respectfully but briefly,addressing their main conversation, question and answer, to your servants. The truth is, that till you havespoken they seldom give you credit for a knowledgeof the vernacular. A tall young fellow now steps upand holds the bridle of your horse while you alight .Hardly have your feet touched the ground when youare surrounded by the members present of your host'sfamily, brothers, uncles, cousins, &c . , and led quicklyindoors up a most ancient and perhaps half-rotten staircase of wood. Safely landed at the top you find yourself in a large room, on either side of which the floor isslightly raised along a breadth of about three feet fromthe wall, and divided off from the central depressionwhich leads to the great open fireplace at the upperend by a row of wooden pillars, forming a doublearcade, slightly but tastefully carved. A similar arcaderuns across the hall near its lower end and shuts off thatportion of the apartment into a kind of ante-chamber,where servants and the like constantly throng on dutyand off duty, to gaze at or minister to the guests.The centre passage is bare, or at best laid downwith brownish felt; but the double estrade on eitherside is carpeted with gaily-striped Kurdish druggets1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 35or the motley-coloured work of Keer- Shahr or Yuzgat,the original of the much imitated Turkey carpet;while the side furthest from the entrance is the morerichly decorated, and its upper end, on the left of thehuge smoky fireplace, is crowded with cushions, piledup against the wall, sometimes two and three deep.Here you are invited to take your seat, which, however,if you are thoroughly well-mannered, you defer doingtill you have beckoned your faithful follower, Sa'eedor Rihan, to pull off your travel-soiled boots, an officein which possibly some one of your entertainers maywith courteous empressem*nt anticipate the menial.After which you half tuck your legs up with an airof graceful weariness, arrange the cushions comfortablyto your elbow, and thus reclining, somewhat betweenthe dignified and the easy, await the opening enquiriesof conversation. N.B.-Never when a guest open thediscourse yourself. Meanwhile, the master of the houseand land, the Khaneh-dan ' himself, becomes distinguishable from relatives and connections, with whomyou have, probably, thus far confounded him, by thefact of his taking, but in a deferential and by yourleave' manner, the place next you, though considerablylower, and modestly contenting himself with onecushion. Relatives or intimate friends, local grandees,arrange themselves opposite or on a line still furtherdown; retainers and their kind stand below or busythemselves in preparing the stereotyped refreshmentsof immediate requisition, sherbets and coffee; othershave disappeared to commence the necessary preliminaries of supper, the measure for which has beenalready taken on the news gleaned regarding you fromyour outrider and domestics, partly too from your ownpersonal appearance at first sight; all will, withoutfurther notice, be ready some two hours later . That·D 236 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [1.your horses be well looked after and your luggagesafely stowed away is your servants' care; they arenot worth their salt if they do not see to that withoutprompting, and you are not worth yours if your servants be not attentive and faithful in these countries .6CSalutations given and returned, follow questioningsas to your whence and whither (not the great whence'and whither,' regarding neither of which any trueMahometan ever felt the anxieties of doubtful conjecture, but the more proximate ones of your actualjourney); questions, however, put courteously and ina round-about manner. You will do well to answerplainly, but with the quiet unconcern of a man whofeels himself, his ways, and doings, to be above comment as above interference . And here let us presume onexperience so far as to give a hint of etiquette ' to ourlively French brother travellers, our energetic English,and our busy, laborious German investigators. Whenreceived as a guest among Mahometans, whether Turks,Arabs, or Koordes, be ready to speak when called on,but never show forwardness or desire of talk; berespectful in demeanour to the master of the house,and civilly cool to all the rest; be careful, above all,of your own decorum; take your ease easily, and yethave somewhat an air of holding back; never, ifpossible, notice a deficiency in attentions, material orother, at the time, yet never pass it over altogether andas if unperceived when occasion offers later on; if youabsolutely require anything which happens not to beclose at hand, call for it as quietly and simply as ifthe house were your own; in a word, reconcile in yourconduct the two opposite adages of the Levant,guest is a king,' and ' A guest should be modest.' Ifin addition to all this you can conveniently, and atan early date of the interview, show that you areCA1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 37fairly well acquainted with provincial antecedents,ways and doings, and with the Ottoman East ingeneral, so much the better.Our host meanwhile is somewhat reserved, too, onhis side, not feeling sufficiently sure of the dispositionsand intentions of his visitors. He keeps to generalities,or asks questions of no great import. But a casualsneer which escapes him when the name of some Constantinople luminary or some neighbouring Stamboolleeofficial is mentioned in the course of conversation, perhaps a disparaging comment on some late measure ofpolice or taxation, soon reveals the habitual direction.of his thought, and it requires little skill to draw himout in full character, grievances and all.By a firman, stamped with the autograph seal ofSuleyman the Great, Seleem the Conqueror, or Muradthe Terrible, the ancestral Beg, a Janissary perhaps,a Lewend, an Akinjee, or under whatever title andbanner he may have been numbered among the theninvincible army, received in perpetual gift to himselfand his heirs this very village and land. Up to thecrest of yonder range, down to the rapid brook in yondistant valley, far as the skirts of that dwarf- oakforest opposite, all was his-soil, villages, rights , dues,pasture, timber-in requital for deeds of daring donein Hungary or Bosnia, at Mohacs or before Ofen, andin consideration of future services proportioned to theamplitude of this his first reward. A gift imperialin its character, and in the donor's intention, partakingof the stability of the empire itself which the Sipahee'sprowess had aided to confirm or extend. Here, accordingly, his campaigning over, the soldier-noble livedon his estate, practically a Pasha, a Sultan, for thosearound him: the peasants tilled his lands and handedhim over a lion's share of the produce; others were38888MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [I.his attendants, his irregular soldiery, his local guard;all rendered him prompt obedience and feudal duty,repaid by liberality, protection, and often maintenance.Few and far between were his or their communicationswith Stambool, except it were to send some occasionalremittance, more in the form of a present than of adue; or to answer to the call of military service whenAustria threatened the Western frontiers, or Cossackmarauders broke in too often on the north. Takingall in all, the yearly state contributions of landlordand tenants amounted to about one in forty, or 21 percent.; nor were the local burdens of the semi-serfsmuch heavier. In fine, Kara-Ibraheem, or whateverwas the name of the Sipahee family-founder, had agood time of it, and his tenants not a bad one.Here, in like manner, but with a still increasingabsolutism of independence, his heirs lorded it afterhim. Each and all registered in the chronicle of localmemorials and events: this one by his exploits inCandia had merited a further extension of the hereditary demesnes; that one built the mosque close by,and inscribed his name on the portal; a third castthe causeway, now broken up and disjointed, over theadjoining marsh, or bridged the Kara- Soo torrent (halfthe streams in Turkey are Kara- Soo, i.e. ‘ black water')in the valley where the caravan road falls in fromDiar- Bekr; a fourth erected the ogee-arched fountainby the road-side, and the ' Tekkeh,' or chapel of ease,under yon poplar group, where dwelt some dervishmuch reputed for Mahometan sanctity. In those daysthe peasantry on the lands amounted to three, four,five thousand families; a call of Jihad, ' or Holy War(all Mahometan wars are ' holy,' on condition, so runsthe orthodox comment, that the commencement ofhostilities be on the other side) , mustered two thousand61.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 39horsem*n, armed and equipped for a visit to Tabreezor Belgrade as the case might be. The yoke of serfa*gewas lighter, much lighter than ever it was in Europeand Russia; taxation, if taxation it could be called ,was only occasional; and the gathered wealth of thepeasantry remained to their own account or was repaidby an equivalent in local advantages; they too, indeed,were lords and proprietors of the land, not nominallybut really. Meanwhile Christians and other heterogeneous unbelievers occupied a position in subservienceand servility not unlike that of the Jews in medievalEurope, or the Morescoes in later Spain; thoughdeprived by Mahometan tolerance of those accompaniments of Inquisitions and martyrdoms, which enlivenedheretic existence in Christian-Catholic countries. Ourheterodox Easterns enjoyed, however, like the Jews ofthe Ghetto, two profitable monopolies; the one ofcontempt, which exempted them from military service,and the other of usury, which made up for the deprivation of a share in military plunder.6Alas! With the reforms of Sultan Mahmood II. ,and the fatal Tanzeemat,' or ordinances of Sultan'Abd-ul-Mejeed, all these golden days and doings havecome to an end. The firman has been cancelled bya stroke of the pen; the lands, nine-tenths of them,have been resumed by Government and sold off to thefirst buyers; the feudal rights that bound peasant tolord, and, not a little, lord to peasant, have been suppressed, abrogated: the very title of Beg, or nobleman,only survives by courtesy, but without authority,without official recognition or social advantage. Perhaps a life-annuity, equalling in value about onetwentieth of the confiscated property, was granted byway of compensation to the Beg of the epoch; but ithas either been already buried with him,or only40 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [I. .lingers yet for a few months. As for the peasants,in place of the one piastre which they formerly paidto a resident and congenial master, who spent amongthem what he received from them, and provided bread,arms, and horses for the children out of the tillageproduce of the fathers, they now pay ten to a distantunsympathizing clique of unknown and unknowingEffendees in a far-off capital, and receive not a singlebenefit, direct or indirect, in return. They have indeed been permitted to purchase each his own plot ofground, and so far, an Irishman at least would opine,ought to be content at having passed en masse fromtenantship to proprietorship. But tenant rights haveat all times, as understood in Turkey, had all the mainadvantages and only half the responsibility of proprietorship; and taxation at its present scale speedilyabsorbs both the interest and the capital of the groundpurchase alike, till the land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof ' is but an overtrue description ofTurkey as regards her Mahometan peasants.In fine, to hear our host, all are dissatisfied; thecountry gentry or nobility, call them which you will, atthe loss of their estates, position, and power; thevillagers in their exchange of a light yoke for a heavyone, and of occasional contributions to masters acquainted with every circ*mstance of the seasons andthe crops, with the weakness no less than the strengthof their vassals, with the wants as the means of everyfamily and individual, for the unmodified, unyieldingdemands of a strange council board, where provincialcirc*mstances and local variations are neither considerednor known; while every year increases the burden, andthe back is broken before its loaders know so much asthat it is even bent. 'Meanwhile,' concludes our Beg,'the Christians '-alas! he too probably says the "1.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 41Giaours ' or infidels; but how do we ourselves incommon parlance designate those whose religious tenetsdiffer from our own?-the Christians enjoy all imaginable favours and exemptions; their voice alone is heard,their complaint attended to; day by day they riseabove us, buy up with the fruits of usury the land wonof old by the sword and the bow of Islam; and, unsatisfied with equality, aim at avowed pre-eminence andrule.' And with a Fair patience! and God to help,'quoted from the never-failing Koran, he relapses intosilence.Has he said truth? Bating the exaggeration intowhich the laudator temporis acti ' is always apt to run,his statement is true; and the deserted villages, ruinedkhans, abandoned roads, broken bridges, and wide wastelands all around, are there to confirm it.Now in the minds of these men, Begs and Aghas,who are still looked up to by the entire agriculturalmass, that is by two-thirds of the Mahometan population, as their natural heads and chiefs, the idea ofIslam, of the Koran, of the five daily prayers, ofRamadan, of Mecca and its pilgrimage, of God's Unityand Mahomet's mission, is more than part of, it is oneand identical with the idea of those ' good old times 'that they so deeply and not altogether unreasonablyregret; with Ottoman supremacy and the gloriesof the Crescent, with wealth, honour, dominion;with all that men love or hope; with all that makeslife worth the living. And, in their minds also , thepresent Government, the whole Stambool Effendeeclique, with their reforms, loans, French civilisation,centralisation, and novel taxes, are no better thantraitors to the Empire and to Islam: upstart intruders,whom they would gladly thrust out of place and power,gladly transfer, if they knew how, to the blessed '42 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.plane-tree of At-Meidan, whose boughs so many anoppressive Vizier, a rapacious Defterdar, or a corruptMuftee have adorned in former times-the ' lanterne 'of old Stambool.The sun has set; most of the company have alreadyslipped away to their ablutions preparatory to eveningprayers; the unmusical voice of the village Mu'eddin isheard from the low mosque roof and wood-spired towerclose by; the master of the house, with an apology, riseslast; and for a quarter of an hour we prayerless infidelsare left alone.II.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT-Continued.(PUBLISHED IN " FRASER'S MAGAZINE," SEPTEMBER, 1870.)THAT the old landholders, that is, the entire birthnobility of the Ottoman Empire, Turk, Arab, or other,are profoundly discontented with the present position ofaffairs, and would willingly restore-as above said-thegone- by supremacy of Islam and their own, is an incontestable fact. That the peasants, ground down as theynow are by taxation, conscription, and all the tighteningscrews of a purely fiscal administration, which takes allit can and gives nothing in return, heartily sympathisewith the old landholders, and, like them, see, or fancythey see, in a revival of Mahometanism the readiestremedy to the evils they suffer, is no less certain. Andthis very discontent, no less than education and custom,makes them cling all the more firmly to their creed, theone plank left them, so they deem, in the general shipwreck, and sink or swim they will not leave it. Easternmonotheism has a concentrated force that Westernpolytheism, however fair its legends and philosophic theirmeaning, never attained; the fealty there dispersed anddiluted amongst many has here collected its entirestrength in one. And, be it noted, change of religionimplies to the Mahometan mind change of the Deityitself.44 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II. .66Prayers are now over, and our host returns with hisretinue. Supper is spread with a copiousness unknownto the parsimonious Greek or even the more hospitableArmenian; and were the dishes a trifle less greasy, theywould for the most part, though simple, be not unpalatable. Besides, pure air and a hard day's exercise havedoubtless rendered us less fastidious than, it may be, wehad imagined ourselves to be, and quantity, of whichthere is no scant, makes up for rustic deficiencies inquality. Conversation is resumed; and some chanceremark on the date inscribed under a recess gaily paintedin blue and red with an Arabic writing in its vicinity,brings in a new and copious topic of Eastern talk. Forthe niche indicates the Kibleh, ' i.e. the direction of theMeccan Ka'abeh, ' the centre of the Mahometan world;and hitherward, when want of leisure or other causeskeep them away from the mosque, the faces of thehousehold are turned many times a day in their privatedevotions. No Muslim house-interior is without thisreligious sign-post; indeed, the principal rooms are oftenconstructed so that one side of the apartment mayexactly face the proper direction . A workman, who, inan ordinary way, cannot be got to make two windowson a line in the same length of wall, or make level thefloor of a room ten feet square, never fails to direct the' Kibleh ' niche with unerring exactness, and to find toa hair's-breadth the precise angle of the radius thatpoints to Mecca. What love is to the world at large,that is Islam to the Eastern; it renders him architect,poet, metaphysician, carver, decorator, soldier, anything.Taught by Islam, men who even in the long-drilledregiment can never dress a line or form a square withtolerable correctness, range themselves in the most perfect rank and file at the hour of prayer; and clumsypeasants, very Hodges and Dobsons for awkwardness inII.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 45all else, go through the simultaneous prostrations andother accessories of their rite with a nicety that the besttrained seminarists of St. Sulpice, or the acolyte performers of St. Alban's, Holborn, can scarcely rival, neversurpass. Every feature of the village tells the sametale . The cottages are the merest hovels-we hereexcept Syria-half earth, half rubble; and no pretence,not to speak of ornament, but even of common symmetry and neatness, relieves their ugliness. Even theBeg's house is a clumsy barrack, sadly in need too ofrepair: its decorations are of the simplest and cheapestkind. But on the village mosque neat stone-work,subtle carving, elaborate art have all been lavishedhere the injuries of time are immediately and accuratelymade good; here are to be found the best carpets, herethe gayest colours, here the most scrupulous cleanliness.And it is worth our noting, while speaking of mosques,that the care bestowed upon them is not due to anynotion of inherent sanctity or mysterious consecrationaffecting the place or the buildings themselves, suchideas being alien alike from the letter and the spirit ofIslam: though abnormal superstition has in a fewinstances succeeded, however unauthorised and disavowed at large, in attaching such notion to a smallnumber of localities. It is not the building, it is thereligion itself, that they delight to honour; the dweller,not the house, that is the object of so respectful, andoften, in regard of the means of the worshippers, socostly a veneration. All this does not look like anenfeebled or decaying system.C Meanwhile, the date of the Kibleh-Nameh,' or'Mihrab,' the Mecca-turned niche above mentioned, hasled the conversation to that never-exhausted topic,Arabia and its ancient capital; the one spot on earthwhere Islam does to a certain extent hold the place it46 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II..stands on to be hallowed ground. What Jerusalemonce was, and still, though in diminished measure, is tothe Israelite, that, and perhaps even more, is Mecca tothe Mahometan. Enormous as are the distances to betraversed, heavy as is the expense to be incurred,amounting often to 200l. , 300l. , and more, nothing candeter or diminish the yearly crowd of pilgrims, whichlater muster-rolls have indeed much surpassed anyrecorded of the preceding century. Increased facilityof communication has no doubt a large share inthis numerical augmentation; but more must be ascribed to the wide-spread Eastern revival of Mahometanzeal-a revival which itself owes much to that veryfacility of communication. Even among the remotevillages and corners of the far-off land by which ourimaginary journey is now leading us, Anatolia, Koordistan, or Armenia, two or three individuals are often tobe found in a single hamlet who have thrown pebblesin the valley of Muna, passed the night upon the slopesof Muzdelifah, stood to worship on Jebel ' Arafat; compassed the Ka'abeh seven times, and kissed the blackstone of celestial origin; while the rest of the population, old and young, are never weary of hearing talesabout the pilgrimage, which many of them purpose oneday to make in person, and descriptions of the sacredplaces which to visit is, to them, the highest privilegeof life. In such and the like talk the evening wearson; the cry for night-prayers, about two hours aftersunset, arrives; all Easterns are early sleepers, butMahometans, whose morning devotions require matutinal rising, most so. Accordingly the house servantsnow bring from out the recesses of the Harem themattresses and bedding destined for the guests of thenight, while the company one after another take theirleave, our host last.II.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 47Beds on the floor and fleas for bed-fellows are decidedly promoters of early rising, so we will make avirtue of necessity, and having got up with or beforethe sun, we will take a stroll through the village andlook at the peasants, all also up betimes, before ourhorses are yet saddled and breakfast ready.They are a primitive set, these villagers , coarsefeatured, coarse-limbed, and coarsely clad. The strongfamily likeness prevalent among all those of the samedistrict is doubtless partly due to ties of clanship,partly to the mere uniformity of a life confined to onenarrow groove and diversified by no more remarkableincidents than a marriage just like all other marriagesfor two hundred miles round, or a funeral like allother funerals. Pilgrim-deputies excepted, by far thegreater number never go beyond the limits of the landwhere they were born and bred, and where they passtheir days in the most pattern agricultural monotony;each generation treading to the best of its abilityexactly in the steps of that which went before it.Ploughs, harrows, yokes, spades, all the arsenal ofCeres, are as simple as in the days when Proserpinewent a-maying through Enna; houses, furniture (ifthe words are applicable, a double point) , garments,customs, &c. , are on the model of unknown years inbackward reckoning. Posts, newspapers, and the likemeans of intercourse with the outer world, of course,there are none; visitors like ourselves are a rare andmemorable event to be discussed for years after-astray traveller of any kind is, in fact, a godsend. Theinhabitants, too, in their turn have little to communicate to others, did they wish it; Gray's and Goldsmith's villagers were not less ambitious of fame.The intellect of the hamlet, a star of the very smallestmagnitude, irradiates only the neighbourhood of the48 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II..mosque, in the forecourt of which daily gatherings ofidleness are held, and the ' Phosphor ' himself is the' Mollah, ' legist, or ' Imam,' precentor. These men areoften pupils of some small provincial college fiftymiles distant: their profession gives them right tosomewhat of a magisterial tone for the rest see theMemoirs of P. P. Clerk of the Parish. In whichstagnation our readers may suppose they see a chiefreason for the entireness of rural Islam.Yet it is not exactly so. Had these country-folkwider knowledge, were they in more frequent intercourse with their fellow-subjects or with strangers, theresult would most likely be—at least it has proved soin many parallel instances that not of weakeningbut of strengthening the Mahometan element in theircharacter. The practical revelation of the great andvigorous brotherhood of which they form part, thecontact of so many other nationalities, all Islam andproud of being such; the very comparison, not alwaysa favourable one, that they would learn to draw between the conditions, social, moral, and even political ,of some non-Islamitic nations and their own, all wouldtend to intensify rather than to slacken their attachment to their own creed.Another peculiarity of country life, and whichrenders it also in a manner specially favourable to avigorous development of Mahometan practice, is therelative importance of the female sex- fair ' or ' softer 'we would have said, but cannot, for exposure andhard work soon do away with all title to these courteous adjectives in country life. No one acquaintedwith the history of Islam ignores the part borne byKhadijah, Fatimah, and Ayesha, all women of theProphet's own household, in its rise; nor in subsequent epochs are the names of the other Fatimah,11.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 49daughter of Merwan, of the queenly Zobeydah, andthe saintly Zeynab, less prominent. It is a matter ofgeneral experience that in what regards religiousfervour, if men are the coals women are often thebreath that blows them.<Now, of what kind are the women that mostly influence the Stamboollee ' we need hardly say; thereare operas in the capital of Turkey, and Mabilles 'too after a fashion. The military classes are, fromthe nature of their profession, little under femaleagency, for good or bad; but what they want in' esprit de famille ' is made up to them amply inesprit de corps .' But the peasant woman, who sharespretty equally her husband's labours in the field, andhas besides on her almost all the care of a house toosimple for seclusion or privacy, is a being of an equallydifferent stamp from the Light of the Harem ' andfrom the light of the opera-house. The interposing veilexcepted, to lay aside which is in Eastern ideas thetoken not of freedom but of slavery, she mingles inthe daily life of the other sex not less freely, andoften not to less purpose, than her European sisterof similar rank; and above all she aids to fermentthe general mass with that leaven of peculiar devotedness and ' religiosity,' if the word be permitted, whichin all countries is pre-eminently hers.To this circ*mstance may in no small degree beattributed the prevalence among the peasantry of awhole class of devotional practices, not indeed in strictaccordance with the severe monotheism of the Prophetand his first companions, and even now reprobated withmore or less emphasis by the better instructed amongorthodox Mahometans, but for all that harmonisingadmirably with the grosser conceptions of Turks, Turkomans, Koordes, Chaldæans, and the other non-Arab racesE50 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [II.who together make up the bulk of the agriculturalpopulation. First of these practices comes saintworship, never indeed rising to the colossal hagiolatryin vogue among Greek and Catholic Christians, butholding a mid rank between that and the hero-worship of Carlyle and his school; and uniting memorialveneration with a hope of supernatural aid and intercessory benefit. To this feeling, however, unauthorisedby the Koran, yet by pious ingenuity reconciled withit somehow, we owe the countless little shrines knownin the north as Tekkehs,' in the south as ' Mezars,'that stud the entire surface of Anatolia, Koordistan,Irak ( the Bagdad provinces) , and great part of Syria;each one a memorial of some real or mythic saint orchampion of Islam. Four plain walls, a small domeabove; two or three trees without; within, the customary ' Ķibleh ' niche and very often a tomb: suchis the Tekkeh. Hither the country folk, the womenespecially, flock on stated days; each brings his orher small offering of oil to the lamps, of provisions,fruit, garden-stuff, or copper coin to the guardian;others hang rags of cloth on some neighbouring bushfor preservative against disease or cure of it; allrecite prayers, not to the saint indeed, ' for that wereidolatry to be abhorred of all faithful ' Mahometans,but to God; with honourable mention, however, ofthe local saint, whose mediation they suggest. Inreturn, they receive from the saint's earthly representative, the guardian before mentioned, scraps of paper,whereon are inscribed verses of the Koran, names ofProphets and the sons of Prophets, and such like gear,mingled with pious ejacul*tions and cabalistic letters .These are carefully guarded, sewn into little square ortriangular bags of leather, silver embroidered, and subsequently worn round arms and necks, hung upon children,11.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 51horses and mules, inserted into caps, &c. , in the samemanner and to the same ends as scapularies, Virginmedals, and so forth, nearer home—with equal efficacy.The legends attached to the worthies of the Tekkehor Mezar are sometimes simply ascetic and miraculous; more often -for Islam in all its phases isemphatically a Church militant of a pugnaciouscharacter. This holy man annihilated forty thousand infidels with a single blow of his staff; that one,more modest, contented himself with the amputationof ten Greek patriarchs' heads; three saints whomwe may still see-their tombstones at least-restingside by side under the shade of a lovely little poplargrove, here await the boastful and oversecure invasionof the last great armies of Infideldom, commanded bythe Infidel Emperors, all of them, the Russian, theFrench, and the Austrian probably, in person; whenthey the saints, that is-will arise and drive theInfidel Emperors discomfited back to Petersburg,Vienna, Paris, or hell, as the case may be.The guardian of the ' Tekkeh ' is, nine instances outof ten, a dervish. Into the historical origin and progress of that curious class, or rather classes of men,for their varieties like their numbers are legion, wecannot here enter; the subject would require a volume.Offspring of the great ' Alee schism; fostered by theinfiltrated superstition of Magian and Hindoo; accused,and on no doubtful evidence, of secretly subvertingthe very foundations of Islam, of substituting Pantheism, Polytheism , nay, Androlatry itself, for its pureDeism, and worse than Phallic rites and license for theMosaically severe code of the Prophet, prayer and thedecent Harem: they have, nevertheless, thanks tolegists like Aboo Haneefah, doctors like Ahmed ElGhazalee, and sultans like Bayazeed II. , succeededE 252 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II..in vindicating to themselves a sufficient, though notan unquestioned, reputation of orthodoxy, much asBecky Sharp established her own disputed reputationby presentation at Court, and are now at last intolerably secure possession of the same. But, likemany others in analogous situations, they have, withthe name and character of genuine Mahometans tosupport, assumed much of the thing also, and it iswith this alone, their present phase, that we are nowconcerned.A high, conical, Persian-looking cap, long unkempthair, dirty flowing garments, or no garments at all,the Adamitic-saint species not being yet wholly extinct,are the ordinary outward characteristics of the tribe.To these must be added an ostentatious frequency inprayer and other devout practices, some simply ridiculous and offensive, like the over-famous performancesof the whirling, or, in Sir R. Wilson's phrase, waltzingbrotherhood, the glass and snake-eaters of Aleppo, &c .;others extravagant, howling declamations and endlessreiteration of the Divine Name and attributes; others,Koran-readings for instance, and multiplied prostrations, of a quieter description . Every dervish is ofcourse primed with legends and traditions, all equallyveracious, regarding some founder, prophet, or petsaint, till one is tempted to suspect them of plagiarismfrom the Golden Book' or the volumes of the Bollandists. Yet the fire of their zeal, though much lessethereal in quality than that lighted on the primalaltar of Islam, is not, in result and practice at least,incompatible with it; their arms are not those of theProphet and his companions, but they are ranged onthe same side of the battle-field; and however littletheir affected poverty, their renunciation of worldlypleasures and duties, their rules and ways, their charmsII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 53and amulets, would have met the approval of him whosaid-blessings on him for saying it! -' no monkeryin Islam,' and ' a day of business equals in merit twentydays of prayer,' still in the peasant mind these thingscoalesce, however illogically, with the Koran itself,and confirm the supremacy of the book which, rightlyunderstood, disowns them. In a word, the dervishswarms are to Mahometanism allies, though irregular;excrescences, yet props. In the towns they are comparatively little heeded; but in the country districts,and, as above said, among the women especially, theyconstitute a real and energetic force.A strange trio of motives, social discontent, familyinfluence, and abnormal superstition, all three combine in one result, common to the whole countrypopulation; in the production of one feeling, keenalike in the old descendant of the nobility of theland and in the peasant who tills that land, pervading the dingy, decaying hall of what was oncethe manor- house, and the smoke-browned, earth-flooredhovel of the poorest cottager; and that feeling isone of unswerving devotedness to Islam, and equalantagonism to whatever weakens or menaces itsexistence.Widely differing in origin from the spirit thatanimates the military class, the direction they tendtowards is the same. True, the Mahometanism ofthe army is more in accordance with the originaltone of Islamitic institutions; more imperial, moreunselfish, more ideal, so to speak; whereas that ofthe country-folk is more interested, more provincial,more patriotic too, in the etymological sense of theword, because based on the love of the birth-landitself. Both lines, however, converge to one point;and it was their very convergence, or rather the54 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [II.tremendous force evoked by their contact, that sooften, when the incapacity or misconduct of its rulershad brought the Ottoman Empire to the verge ofdissolution, hurled unworthy sultans from their thronesand rolled the heads of corrupt and tyrannical ministersin the dust. The revolutions that gave so abrupt, andsometimes so bloody, a close to the reigns of thecapricious Osman II. , the degraded Ibraheem, the inefficient Mehemet IV. , and the luxurious Aḥmed III.,were no mere Janissary insurrections, as superficialWestern historians and court-salaried Eastern annalistshave represented them; they were national and essentially Mahometan risings against corruptions andmisrule; the Janissaries and Sipahees were herein butthe representatives of the people, the sword in theirhand. That sword has now been shivered: and thenew one forged in its stead has been carefully placedat safe distance from the hand which else might oncemore grasp it to terrible effect. The destruction ofthe Janissaries and Sipahees brought after it in themost correct sequence of historical logic the ruin ofthe provincial nobility and landed interest: this itselfto be soon followed by the ruin of the entire peasantry.Since then we have had the old history of the latterByzantine Empire under the Comneni and the Palæologi over again. And it is a remarkable proof of thestrong grasp maintained by Mahometanism over theminds of its followers that the Turko-Arab population, however wronged and betrayed by their ownMahometan rulers, have never yet, like the French of1792 , confounded in one common hatred the creed oftheir oppressors and the oppressors themselves.. Theirattachment to Islam has not for an instant slackened,though that to the rulers of Islam has been violentlyshaken, if not loosened altogether.II.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 55A truce to politics; the topic is an unsatisfactoryone in the Levant. Let us rather, before biddingfarewell to our Begs and villagers, look round oncemore at them under their better, or positive, aspect,that is as staunch and genuine Mahometans. Ananecdote, for the truth of which local and individualknowledge enables us to vouch, brings this side of theircharacter into full view.A small landowner, married but childless, was livingabout twelve years since on his grounds, not far fromthe town of Erzinghian in Anatolia. His neighbours(an ordinary circ*mstance in the East) were mostly ofthe same kith and kin; but his only near relative wasa younger brother, a lad of eighteen or twenty, a' Deli-kan ' or ' wild-blood -madcap Harry we mightsay. One day this youth engaged in a quarrel withan individual of another village; from words theycame to blows; blows, in a country where every manis constantly girt with the Kamah, a short, sharppointed, double-edged sword, much like some of thosepictured in Adams's Roman Antiquities, mean wounds;and our Deli-kan ' received so emphatic a one on thisoccasion that his hot blood was cooled for ever. Thehomicide, delaying to fly, was seized by the tribesmenof the deceased, and by them delivered up bound tothe head of the family-namely, the elder brother—to suffer condign punishment, surer at the hands ofa relative than of the law. It was evening; andMohammed, after fixing the next morning for theexecution of due vengeance on the culprit, caused himto be shut up, well manacled , in an inner room of hisown house; while the captors dispersed, eager toreturn at daybreak. But during the night Mohammed,while all in the house slept, went secretly to the room,unbound the prisoner, embraced him, and said, ' God56 [II.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.Chas taken my brother and has sent you; I accept youin his place.' He then set food and drink before him,after which he added, ' I would gladly retain you hereas a guest, did I not know that my doing so would befatal to yourself. Take this,' giving him a purse ofmoney, and make good your escape without delay;only do not tell me where.' The man did so; andin the morning when the avengers came, their victimwas gone. The truth of the matter was not divulgedtill some years later; and when it was, all the kinsmenthemselves joined in applauding Mohammed for havingsacrificed the claims of his own brotherhood to save thelife of a Muslim.There is plenty of making in men of this stuff, ifthose whose real interest it is would only give theirminds to it.Leaving our readers to draw their own conclusions,which we would on no account forestall, regardingthe present and the future of Levant Mahometanismamong the country folk and their Begs, let us nextturn our imaginary horses' heads townwards; and fromthe study of a very numerous category pass to oneless largely represented on the Census lists; yet inimportance almost or quite the equal of the former,because much better endowed with means andwealth. For even in the decayed, depopulated Levant,the classic ground of ruined villages, and evenamong the Mahometan inhabitants, whose commercialreputation is, in the West, so absolutely eclipsed bythat of their more business-driving Christian fellowcitizens, the lively Greek and the thrifty Armenian,trade has a nowise insignificant representation; andtowns, however small, take the lead by superiordevelopment of mind over the comparatively uneducated multitudes of the plough.II. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 57Keysareeyah, Diar- Bekir, Aleppo, Mosool, Homs,Bagdad, to whichever we direct our way we shall findfair specimens of the urban and commercial class. Wethread with some difficulty to our horses, ourselves,and the foot-walking throng, the narrow, crooked, illpaved or unpaved streets, enquiring for the abode ofHasan Agha, the great corn-dealer, Mustapha el- Mișree,the cloth-merchant, or some other individual of thekind with whom we purpose taking up our quarters;after repeated enquiries, endless windings in and out,and miraculous escapes of riding over any number ofmuffled women and heedless children, we find ourselves at last before the outer door, and enter the court.There is a considerable uniformity in the externals ofdomestic architecture, or rather a general want of anything worthy the name of architecture at all, in mostmodern Eastern towns. Flat walls with oblong holesin them, a few more or less , for windows-sometimesfor an incredible length with no holes at all; thereason being that the apartments behind are lightedup from the court-yard side-form a surface the insignificance of which no superadded ornament canreally redeem, being wholly insufficient to remove theeffect of drear monotony which characterises the exteriors of these buildings, one and all, from PalaceNo. 3 on the dusty banks of the Alexandrian Canal,to the house of Patronides or Dimitraki at the oppositeand drearier extremity of the empire on the Trebizondian shore of the Black Sea.Thus, in respect of true architectural value, modernEastern houses , whether Mahometan, Armenian, orGreek, are, as before said, much on a level, and thatlevel a low one. Each has, however, something thatindividualises it to a certain extent, and acts the signboard to make known the nationality of the indweller.58 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [II.Thus, the Greek is apt to try his hand, not over-successfully, at European imitation; while the Armeniandisplays a more Oriental taste by protecting ledges,strong colouring, and so forth. The Mahometan townsman has also his own distinctive marks, whereby hishouse may be very generally recognised at first sight.Pious inscriptions, wherein the name of God figuresalways, and that of Mahomet sometimes, decorate thecorners and the upper roof-sheltered lines of the wallsin all the graceful intricacy of Arab caligraphy. Thus,for instance, a blessing on the Prophet takes the formof a dodo-like bird, resolving itself, legs, wings, beak,and all, on laborious anatomical deciphering, intowords and sentences; an invocation of the Deity contracts itself into a scriptural egg, or expands intowhat may be supposed to represent a cypress, a palmtree, &c. Bona - fide flowers, too, wreaths, spears,swords, drums, banners, and other cheerful or martialobjects are often depicted; and, in their complicatedcombination of form and hue, recall something of thegorgeous Saracenic colour school, familiar to Europeansin the relics of the Alhambra. Curious carving, too,is bestowed on lintels, eaves, and doorposts; the woodwork of the windows also is often tasteful , if consideredin itself, though wanting harmony with the generallines and proportions of the building in which it is set.Lastly, the greater extent of lattice along some of thewindow ranges, those, of course, belonging to theHarem, decisively indicates the Mahometan proprietor.But it is in the interior that the characteristics oflife and custom must chiefly be sought. Besides theKibleh-Nameh, or Mecca-pointing niche already described in the country Beg's reception-room, but here,as befits town elegance, more graceful in shape, morebrightly coloured, and more copiously adorned withII.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 59Arabic inscriptions, the entire domestic arrangementbetokens usages widely different from those whichregulate the native- Christian ' dwelling. The Salamlik,' or men's apartment, being here exclusivelydestined to guests and visitors, is smaller than theGreek and Armenian parlour, which serves for familyaccommodation also . But in the Mahometan dwellingthis guest-room is, more carefully and completely furnished. Carpets and cushions, often of costly work,are laid down with prodigality; chairs and tables aredecidedly scarce. Numerous sherbet ' glasses, gilt orstained, are ranged in the open cupboards along thewalls; pipes, pipetrays, nargheelehs and their accompaniments stand in rows, though more from a traditional idea of the suitability of their presence thanfor actual use, so universally has the cigarette superseded them of late years; arms, swords, daggers, guns,pistols, occasionally even lances, bows and arrows, allold- fashioned, and more commendable for their inlayof gold, silver, and mother of pearl, than for anypractical utility, are distributed about the apartment.Pictures, too, under certain restrictions, are not uncommon; birds are a favourite subject; another isafforded by architectural views in ultra-Chinese perspective, purporting to represent some celebratedmosque, that of Sultan Seleem, perhaps, or of Mehemetthe Conqueror; or, more frequently still, the MeccanKa'abeh, the Prophet's tomb at Medineh, or the sacredbuilding at Jerusalem known by the name of El-Akṣa,or the extreme, ' by some supposed to occupy the siteof Solomon's temple, by others elevated to the dignityof the authentic Holy Sepulchre. Also, and in stillgreater abundance, choice poetical inscriptions, framedand glazed. Some are in Persian, some Arabic, manyin that old high-flown Stamboollee jargon, half of which60 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II..was Persian, one-third Arabic, and the remainder atbest of Tartar origin, the despair of the ordinaryTurkish scholar, and seldom wholly intelligible to thefortunate possessor himself; but all the more preciouson that very account, omne ignotum ,' &c., holdingno less true in the East than in the West. Otherwritings, like those before-mentioned, are only triumphsof caligraphy, of illegibility, that is, ' Insha' -Allah,'' God-willing, ' a precautionary phrase frequent on thelips, nor rare in the mind and heart; ' Ya Hafiz,' ' YaRabb,' ' Ya Fettah, ' all invocations of the Deity undervarious propitiatory attributes, perhaps the oft-recurring Es-selam w'es- Selat ' ala kheyr il-Makhlookat,'' Salutation and blessings on the noblest of createdbeings,' Mahomet, bien entendu, are tortured into everyvariety of Runic knot and pictorial misnomer. Othergilded borders enclose congratulatory verses on occasionof the birth of a son, the building of a house, the celebration of a marriage, and so forth. In each of theserhythmic performances the last hemistich gives, bythe decomposition and summation of its letters according to their numerical value, the date of thehappy event in question, a favourite process of Orientalingenuity.Besides the ' Salamlik,' there exists in the larger andbetter style of houses one or more other rooms, also setapart for the entertainment of guests. These are ingeneral less abundantly furnished, and are intended foroccupation by night rather than by day. They haveDivans, and little besides. Should it, however, bewinter, a large brass Mankal,' vulgarly ' Mangal,' orwide-mouthed copper vessel for holding charcoal, abouta foot and a half in diameter, and with a stem of aboutequal height, the whole exquisitely burnished andscoured, will adorn the centre of the apartment. OpenII.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 61stoves, with dog-irons, common in country localities, arerare in towns.The welcome is hearty, not less so than that given byour rural proprietor, but more refined in its manner.Eating, drinking, and smoking come each in its time,but early and abundantly. Conversation, as befits townlife, flows readily in various channels. Trade, politics,literature, religion, all topics are freely discussed. But,unlike what we have been accustomed to in Greek andArmenian houses, there is seldom any particular anxietyor even interest manifested regarding European news;whereas a word about Persia, Samarkhand, Balkh,Bokhara, India, or even China, finds attentive listenersand ready questioners. Above everything, the fortuneof the Mahometan dynasties, better perhaps calledanarchies, of Central Asia, now struggling against theencroaching tide of Russian absorption, is a frequenttheme, and the possible or probable results of Muscovitecontiguity to the British possessions in India are discussed certainly with more earnestness and, it may be,with more understanding of the case, than they commonly are within the precincts of the Victoria Toweritself."We have heard a French traveller-respect for agreat name shall here suppress it seriously assert, andassert believing, that at the bare mention of France 'or French,' every eastern heart, Turkish, Arab, Persian,etc., instinctively thrills with sympathy, every facebeams with fraternal desire; every hand is stretchedout for a loving and longing grasp. Our Englishreaders, young or old, are, we think, not likely to seesuch visions or to dream such dreams regarding theeffect produced by an allusion to their own tight littleisland' and its belongings; nor, we respectfully hope,will they suspect us of seeing and dreaming them either.662 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.[II.If truth must out, liked in general we are not, lovedstill less; but we are respected, and more particularlythe Mahometans of the East. To this feeling manycauses have contributed; two alone need mention here.And firstly, though England and her destinies be notindeed, absolutely considered, matter of much sympathyto Turk or Arab, Russia is one of intense hatred; andin proportion that England is or may be a counterpoise,is she cherished in their minds. Again, Protestantism,in its more simple and intellectual character, shocksMahometan taste less than the tawdry finery and pioussensuality of the Catholic system, or the gross hagiolatry and complicated ceremonialism of Oriental Christianity. Thus the friendship of a common interest isless chilled than it might otherwise be by offensiveadjuncts; and the great gulf fixed between Easternand Western, if not bridged over, is at least perceptiblynarrowed where England forms the opposite brink.Indeed, to govern a Mahometan population, that ofEgypt we deprecate the faintest suspicion of suggestion-for example, though a task difficult enough fora non-Mahometan race of whatever stamp and kind,would yet be easier, far easier, for English rulers thanfor any others. Such, in fact, is the general persuasionamong Mahometans themselves in the Levant; theeventuality is in their mind one by no means to bedesired; yet one also that might, should events soorder, be submitted to with a good grace.'Quo Musa tendis? '-From the dangerous pitfalls ofpolitics, conversation escapes to the safer grounds ofliterature; and here a wide field opens out. We havealready seen how contracted are the limits of ordinaryStamboollee acquirements; while the military class inTurkey, following for the matter of that the example of'the Captain ' in most countries, from the hero ofII.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 63'Hamilton's Bawn ' to Marshal Soult inclusive, enjoy aprescriptive freedom from the labours of the lamp . Norwould any one expect in general to find much book loreamong the agricultural classes, whose talk is about oxen,and whose whole soul is in the furrows of the plough.Little more should we of Europe look for the representation of national learning among those whom weemphatically term business men.' In the East this is,however, precisely the class which divides with theLegists or ' Mollas ' the chief literary honours of theland.see.6The apparent anomaly is easily explained. For whileon the one hand the town-nurtured mind is naturallypredisposed to enquiry and research of all kinds, on theother, business, as it is generally understood in theMahometan world, high and low, has little of the speculative and venturesome character that renders it inEurope and America so all- absorbing to the energies ofthose concerned in it. What is the nature and whatare the precise causes of this diversity we shall presentlyMeanwhile, except during the very hours of theday when the counting-house and store-room are unlocked, and the time that the merchant or shopkeeperhas his books and ledgers actually open before him (andnot always even then), the East- Mahometan ' man ofbusiness ' can, and in general does, as completely leaveaside the cares, anxieties, and even the very thought ofhis ' bread- earning ' labour as ever did Charles Lambhimself when round the corner of Leadenhall Street.But then no one in England would have ever dreamt ofcalling Charles Lamb a good business-man,' whereas hemight have been a very pattern specimen of the articlein the East. Freed from his commercial duties, theintelligence of the Oriental tradesman, already disciplined into activity by stated though light work,64 MAHOMETANISM IN THE [II.LEVANT.(readily seeks and finds occupation in studies congenialto his personal bent, whatever that may be. Manyhave when young received a tolerable education in thelocal schools, ' Mektebs ' and ' Medresehs, ' besides theinstruction derived from private Khojas ' or tutors;and have acquired a knowledge of Arab and Turkishliterature, narrow in its limits, but within those limitsdeep and complete of its kind. This foundation oncelaid, individual diligence, undistracted by daily newspapers, periodicals, and the plethora of books whichoften overlays the Western student almost to suffocation,perfects the task. 'Cave hominem unius libri' stillreceives its full application in the East; and the carefulstudy of a dozen Arabic volumes in the close Boolacprint, read over and over till they have been almostretained by heart, can do much to store the reader'shead with material for thought and discussion. History,poetry, and romance, these volumes contain little else;but so far the library is a very well furnished one, muchmore so than is generally known in Europe, exceptamong that small idiosyncratic class denominated asEastern scholars.' Abnormal beings! for the poles ofEuropean thought and deed, and of Asiatic, lie too farasunder for any sympathetic communication betweenthe twain in the ordinary course of things. Meanwhile,our amateur mercantile student becomes a well-read 'man in his line, and troubles himself little aboutWestern sciences and languages. Besides, man, in hisintellectual, social, and moral aspects, is still the maintopic of Oriental writings, and to him, one way or other,nineteen out of twenty volumes refer. Next to this,proximus, sed longo proximus intervallo ,' comes natural history. Chemistry is still worse represented;geology, palæontology, astronomy, mechanical science,and the like, it would be superfluous to expect.611.] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 65Arab and Turkish poetry and romance; chronicles ofthe Early Arabs (very apocryphal); lives of Mahomet,of his companions, of other Islamitic, and even of a fewnon-Islamitic celebrities; annals of the Caliphs, of theSeljook dynasties, of the Ottoman Empire in war andpeace; narratives of Persia and the trans- Oxian regions;abridgments even of universal history (Abool Feda's isthe most popular); an occasional book of travel; religiomoral, metaphysical, legal, medical, ultra - Galeniantreatises; all our merchant's private studies, as the listjust given sufficiently shows, go to confirm his Mahometan ideas; and while they widen them enough fortoleration, deepen them in precision and certainty.Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his interesting BiographicalHistory of Philosophy, winds up with a trumpet blastproclaiming the final triumph of Positivism overMetaphysics; and declares not inutility merely butimpossibility to be the term of all ontological andspeculative research. How far the European mind atlarge acquiesces in such a conclusion may be questioned;but that the Levant-Mahometan mind is still very farfrom it, we can confidently affirm. And in fact Mahometan Unitarianism-we employ the word in a purelynon-controversial, not in its special and sectarian application-is highly congenial to the entire school ofthought initiated by Spinosa, and worked out byBerkeley, in the West. Ebn-Farid, an authoritativename in these lands, distinctly asserts in his masterlyric, the Tey'yeeyat, that he who acknowledges anyduality whatever in the whole circle of Being is no trueMuslim. For him God is One, God is Force, God isMind, Matter is Force, Matter is Mind, Matter is One,and so on, through the entire array of categories, effects,manifestations, transcendentals, &c. This doctrine ofPantheistic sound in European ears, yet widely removedF66 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [II.in Oriental apprehension from what Europeans ordinarily understand by Pantheism, is widely spread inthe East, and is indeed held by nine- tenths of thethinking world there; nor does it in any way interferewith adherence to the Islamitic system; on the contrary,rather acts as a confirmation. With comparative ease itaccomplishes the feat aimed at, but hardly attained asyet, by the so-called Rational Religion or Broad Churchschool of England and Northern Europe-that, namely,of co-adapting the dogmatically narrow phrases ofcanonical origin, with the later breadth of scientificand philosophical discovery; and of thus effecting notso much an alliance -a suspicious term--as an identification of the new, however rapid and imperious in itsprogress, with the old. In this respect the comparativesimplicity, not to say barrenness, of the holographKoran, is undoubtedly much less embarrassing to theliberal-minded commentator than is the multitudinousarray of fact and dogma contained, or implied, in ourown more composite volume. The Mahometan speculator, while reducing his universe with all its phenomenapresent or possible to an absolute One, affirmation ornegation, only thereby develops to its ultimate consequences, unforeseen perhaps but not unauthorised, thegreat unity doctrine of the Koran and Islam; the pillarwhich not only sustains but which itself is almost thewhole of the edifice. Hence follows a tolerating spirit,which, while admitting all , renders further change nextto impossible, because simply superfluous; and a largeness of belief that no subsequent discoveries can disconcert, because all are pre-included.But let us hear on this subject the most popular ofMahometan didactic poets, Ebn-Farid, speaking asmouthpiece of the personified Unity, in verses of whichthe almost startling clearness may on this occasion11.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 67partly atone for the defects inherent to translation.They occur towards the close of a long poem alreadyalluded to, and known, by name at least, to everyeducated child of Islam, from Bosnia to Bagdad.By Me the Koran illuminates the prayerful recesses of the Mosque;And by Me the sanctuary of the Church is alike lighted up with theGospel.In Me the volumes of the Old Testament wherein Moses addressed hispeopleEvening by evening advantage those who listen to the chaunt of theelders.The savage who falls prostrate to the stone he worships in the plain,It were folly to deny that he occupies a place among my adorers.And they who danced round the Golden Calf may well be excusedFrom the slur of polytheism, by the ultimate meaning of things.Thus it is in no sect or nation has the view been misdirected;And in no system has man's thought gone astray from Me.Whoever has admired the sun in the splendours of its rising,Has but seen in the brilliancy of its light an unveiling of mine.The inextinguishable fire of old tales, the miracles of nature,Mine they are, and all their wonders are included within my Law.Existences ordained in the classification of nominal modalities,And Law working by the diversification of attributes in the Onenessof Substance.That Law balances all for ever between affirmation and negation,Between pleasure and pain, fullness and want, being and not- being.Thus men saw the reflection of my brightness, and imagined itsubstance:And their very error was occasioned by and went no further than myray.And were it not for the veil of existence I would proclaim myself;But the maintenance of phenomenal Law imposes silence.In One the All contemplates Me, and I that am contemplated am theAll,And contemplating I behold it to be myself, and in my light is lightand bliss.In Me the moon wanes not, and the sun never sets,And in Me centre all the starry mazes in unerring order.Mine is all Fact and all Energy of whatever lives and is;I am the ordainer and the ordinance of effect in all space and time.F 288868 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [II.And were it not for the screen of Existences the splendour of myEssenceHad consumed and annihilated the appearances of its own manifestation.Welcome then to the everlasting Unity, the One, the Truth,Before which the greybeards of learning and experience are the merestinfants.With the special conclusions which an over-logicalmind might deduce from such vast premisses, wehave no concern. But whatever opinion be formedregarding the value of the doctrine, it will hardly bedisputed that its immediate and natural result mustbe a tone of mind alike tolerant towards others, andaverse to change in itself. To it we owe thephenomenon, not uncommon, but at times misinterpreted, of liberal-thinking Mahometans, capable offeeling and of expressing high appreciation and esteem for systems other than their own; the Christianfor example. Whence occasionally follow hopes andconjectures as to the reversionary prospects of ourWestern ideas on the anticipated demise of Islam.But the matter is not so. The standing-point whichthe Broad Church ' Mahometan has reached is onebest, perhaps, defined as a pantheistic monotheism,perfectly reconcilable with the exoteric locutions ofthe Koran, and nearer in fact to the famous Chapterof Unity, than to any other known formula. Asreasonably might a Mr. Maurice, or a Mr. Robertson,be expected to coalesce with Islam, as these menwith Christianity.6But to pursue this topic further would lead usbeyond the limits of our present scope; sufficed hereto have sketched the general mental pose of oureducated Levantine-Mahometan merchant.Town-life has, however, furnished examples also ofII. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.69a very different stamp; instances, it will be said,of religious intolerance and violent fanaticism, culminating in scenes like those which have from time totime disgraced Aleppo, Nabloos, Damascus, and Cairo.But the causes of these outbreaks invariably prove,on investigation, to have been of a national or political, nowise of a religious character. The feweducated and well-to-do individuals who have takenan active part in these deplorable events, wereanimated by motives nearer akin to those whichincited Elizabeth to her much harped-on persecutionof Catholics, than to those which lighted up the firesof Smithfield under her devout and bloody predecessor. The plot once laid, the hopes of license andpillage would alone suffice to procure the complicityof the proletarian rabble never wanting in towns,Asiatic or European. But it would be unjust to layeither the malice of the leaders or the ferocity of therabble to the charge of a religion which has, in theperson of its most authentic representatives, Imamsand Mollas, invariably disowned such acts, and brandedthem as the most atrocious of crimes. No IslamiticGregory XIII. has yet caused Te Deums to be sungand medals to be struck in joyful commemoration ofmassacred unbelievers; no Meccan Holy Office hassentenced to death an entire population, even thoughof a creed differing from their own no less widelythan that of the Protestant Netherlands from SpanishCatholicity.That individual cases of ill manners and insultshould here and there occur where the lower anduneducated town-classes are concerned, can hardly bea matter of surprise; the wonder would be at thecontrary. Foreign usages and appearances occasionallyprovoke them, especially in out- of- the - way places;70 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [II.unseasonable displays of zeal, of national peculiarities,of ' pride in the port, defiance in the eye,' have sometimes led to very disagreeable results. Still more isthis the case where the foreign usages ostentatiouslyparaded are in contravention to what the ' nativesconsider as conventional decorum or morality. Thus,unveiled female faces, and street drunkenness, thingsplaced by Levant-Mahometan ideas on much the samelevel, except, indeed, that the former is in their eyesa sign of even deeper depravation than the latter,have from time to time acted unfavourably, and provoked impertinent or brutal demonstrations. But itwould be hardly fair to hold the Mahometan religion.as such responsible in this matter.From the lower order of towns-folk, some of whosedefects we have just noted, but who, on the whole,are quieter and more amenable by much to law anddiscipline than their more intelligent turbulent European counterparts, we return to the upper or mercantile category.Very rare is avarice or even stinginess among thisclass of men. One of them feeds twenty poor everyFriday from his kitchen and under his own roof; anotheryear after year equips two or three pilgrims and sendsthem at his own expense to Mecca; a third takes underhis charge and maintenance some bereaved family; afourth erects public fountains, endows schools, &c.;hardly one but does something in the charitable line,for expiation,' in their ordinary phrase. Fastingconducts a man up to the gate of Heaven; prayeropens it; but almsgiving brings him within,' said theProphet; and in this, as in many other recommendations, he has had the good fortune, rare amongmoralists and lawgivers, to be not only honoured butobeyed, even after the lapse of centuries .II. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 71Hospitality is a praise which the city folk share incommon with the generality of Eastern Mahometans.But with larger means than those which civil, military,or rural householders possess, merchant hospitality islarger also; that it should be more elegant is anatural sequence of town-life. It is remarkable thatwhile the establishment of public hotels at Pera,Smyrna, Beyrout, Alexandria, and many other points,especially on the Levant sea-board, has considerablymodified Christian usage in this respect-so thatthese lodging-places are often crowded with Greeksand Armenians, who prefer them to the privatequarters now more sparingly offered among theirtribesmen-no perceptible change has yet taken placeamong Mahometan travellers, who still, if not boardedby some friend or cousin tenth removed, as is moreoften the case, select for night-quarters the oldfashioned khan; and in the day-time take theirmeals at the hap-hazard of friendly invitations, butrarely within the khan itself; next to never at anhotel.Another quality widely diffused throughout theMahometan world, and of which the merchant enjoysa full measure, is that of being satisfied with hisposition. The restless striving after admittance to a' higher sphere,' whether of rank, fashion, or wealth,which chiefly influences the personages in Thackeray'stales, and perhaps in real English and European life,is here scarcely perceptible; the tradesman has noambition to be classed among the ' Beg ' nobility; andhis wife is not likely to chatter much with her visitorsand friends about noble acquaintances and decoratedconnections. In a word, the man of business is content to be and to pass for a man of business, andnothing more; the merchant for a merchant; the72 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II. .private individual for private. This is partly a result,one desirable in some respects, but not without itsdrawbacks also, of the ' Kena'at' or ' contentment ' doctrine, which forms so important an item in Islamiticteaching, from the Prophet's time downwards; it isalso due in part to that absence of conventional gradations which characterises Levant-Mahometan life. Noone in these lands thinks it anywise extraordinarythat of three brothers one should be, e. g. a smallshop-keeper, the second a General, and the third a Pasha;nor would the latter two deserve or obtain any specialpraise for condescension should they sit down to tabletogether with the first, or walk with him down themost crowded and fashionable street of the Capitalitself. That again this very recognition of individualworth and intrinsic fraternity, independent of socialrank, and even of wealth, is in some measure due toIslam, we do not deny; but the pre-Mahometan annalsof the East show that it has been at all times congenial to the national characters of Arabs and Koordes,Turks and Turkomans. And this in its turn tendsto produce a certain ease and repose of manner, notprecisely that which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere,but sufficient to remove the Levant-Mahometan, generally taken, to an infinite distance from the typical' snob' of our own satirists, and to make him, to acertain extent at least, a gentleman both in thoughtand bearing.But it is time to consider our merchant in thatwhich must constitute his chief praise or blame, hisprofessional capacity. And here, again, we find himequidistant from the European on one side, andfrom the Levant-Christian of the same class on theother.Among the many items in which the MahometanII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 73system requires, if not mending, at least large adaptation to an altered state of things, we must numberthe restrictions it imposes on trade. These belong toa whole category of precepts and prohibitions suchas have fettered most religions; and the comparativefreedom from which was no small merit of Christianityin its original institution. Simple, many would saydefective, on its dogmatic side, the Mahometan codeerrs sadly by excess in its practical regulations, whichextend to almost every detail of life, social and personal. For some the Koran is responsible, for sometradition. Many of these prohibitions were reallyuseful at the time and for the local and nationalcirc*mstances under which they were promulgated;but the inflexibility of religious sanction has renderedthem real evils to a later and altered age. Of thiskind are, for example, the laws regulating marriage,inheritance, and slavery; decided improvements, nodoubt, on what had existed in Arabia, and even inthe greater part of the world, before Mahomet's time;but, for all that, positively injurious when maintainedin the midst of an advanced or advancing order ofthings. And to this list belong the limitations placedon commerce by the Arab legislator; and more especially his two great prohibitions-that of interest, andthat of conditional contract. By the first of these,Credit, and by the second, Speculation, are absolutelyremoved from the sphere of trade; which is thussimplified down to a process sufficient perhaps for aninchoative society and restricted intercourse, but veryinadequate to the requirements, or rather to the essenceof business, as it is now carried on. Under the Mahometan system not only is the smallest percentage onmoney held illegal, but even the exchange of like forlike within what, by Mr. Darwin's leave, we must,74 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II. .for want of a better name, call species, as, e. g. thebarter of corn against barley, of wool against goatskins, of oxen against buffaloes , nay, some doctors aver,of metal against metal, is unlawful in itself; or atleast is rendered null and void by the fact of anyprofit soever accruing from the exchange to either ofthe parties concerned. The same principle applies toall loan, use, or deposit. Again, by the second veto,that placed on conditional contract, all foresale, orbargain regarding a thing not yet in actual existenceunder the precise form bargained for, as, for example,corn while yet in blade, metal still in ore, and soforth, is excluded. And, by the same principle, allinsurances, annuities, and speculations of every kind,are excluded also.Whether or not commerce and business in generalmight ultimately be gainers were these regulationsobserved everywhere and at all times, without the verypossibility of infraction, might be matter of theoreticalenquiry. Loss of activity might, it is possible, bemade up by gain in solidity; and immunity from thechances of bankruptcy might console for the certainimpossibility of accumulated fortunes. Thus much issure; that the trading world would pass into a veryCathay' of stagnation; and better, perhaps, fiftyyears of Europe, with all its national debts, insolvencies, crises, and joint-stock smashes, than that.Anyhow, the thing is now simply out of the question;nineteen-twentieths of the world that is world, haveadopted the credit system in its fullest extent; and theremaining twentieth must, it is clear, join in, underpenalty of an ostracism equivalent to extinction .6In matter of plain straight- forward interest onmoney-loans, a sort of compromise has been allowedrather than accepted; and twelve per cent. has passedII.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 75into permissive legality. Stambool set the example:and the provinces have followed; not readily, indeed,but passively; and under the silent protest of abstaining where possible, or at least ignoring. But in otherrespects the Prophet's original theory has suffered noinfringement. Hence our Mahometan tradesman, imbued from his earliest youth with the persuasion thatnew interest is but old usury writ large; that insuranceis a presumptuous invasion on the rights of Providence, and that all games of chance, from the pack ofcards on the green table to the larger stakes played inthe courts of the Bourse and Stock Exchange, are alikeunlawful things, finds himself not unfrequently in sorestraits; and is put to the strangest shifts by the pressing necessity of reconciling theory with practice , thedictates of Meccan law with the axioms of modern, and,above all, of European commerce.True, where such questionable dealings regard a nonMahometan contracting party, results may be acceptedwhile the steps leading to them are prudishly suppressed; and, so long as a formal avowal is avoided,the Muslim trader may flatter himself that he is noparty to the unrighteous process, however largely hemay share in its subsequent advantages. Casuistry isa plant of all climates; and the Molinas and the Abbesses of Andouïllets of Western celebrity have theircounterparts, though pale ones, in the East. Butwhere the contracting parties are both Mahometans,the flattering unction of self-deceit requires a thickerlaying on; and evasions, which the moralist may laughor cry over according to his mood, are frequently resorted to.For instance, Ahmed Ebn-Tahir wishes to sell toMohammed el-Feyoomee the autumn produce of a vineyard which is not yet in so much as leaf; and reason76 MAHOMETANISM [II.IN THE LEVANT.good, the month is February. Thus, by all the traditions of El- Boaree, all the decisions of Aboo- Hanifeh,and all the glosses of Aboo-Yoosef, a transaction for thevery tendrils would be illegal, let alone the grapes.On the other hand, the bargain is an advantageous one.How can it be brought about?"Witnesses are summoned to the Divan ' of EbnTahir; and all other suitable preparatives for an actof transfer are made in due form. The master of thehouse then gives the word, and a servant enters theassembly, conducting with him a cat, not harmless onlybut necessary on this occasion. Our readers must notpush the association of ideas so far as to suppose thatthe feline animal is specially selected on account ofcertain hypocritical qualities with which it may beendowed; any other quadruped or biped would do aswell, but cats are generally most convenient to handindoors. Accordingly enter puss, with a couple ofgrape branches suspended across her back by a string.A pair of olives, of brick or stone chippings, of piecesof soap, or of any substance whatever may hold place,according to the subject-matter of the proposed contract. Bear witness all you here present, that I havesold this load of grapes to Mohammed el-Feyomeefor twenty thousand piastres,' says Ahmed. ' Bearwitness all present that I have bought them of AḥmedEbn-Tahir at the same price,' subjoins Mohammed.Papers are signed and registered accordingly; and aprivate understanding transfers the entire transactionto the vineyard produce at nine or ten months' date.Meanwhile the consciences of the parties concerned arequieted by the real existence of something belonging tothe kind recorded in the deed of sale at the actual timeof the sale itself.6A very childish proceeding, and belonging to a class11.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 77of ' reservations ' appositely defined elsewhere as ' a lie,plus a shuffle.' For parallel illustrations vid. Liguori,Molina, Bonacina, Gury, &c. passim.Other evasions, more clearly, however, marked withthe broad stamp of dishonesty, are in frequent use.Interest is concealed under a fictitious augmentation ofcapital; insurance is veiled by an imaginary transfer;usury, gambling, all can pass muster under analogousdisguises . How methods like these bring with them adouble evil, that of commercial insecurity, and that ofmoral deterioration, may easily be understood. Yeteven at the cost of such sacrifices at the altar of trade,the Mahometan merchant can but ill compete with themore thorough-going and unhampered Christian votaries of the golden goddess.Very generally, however, and unless some extraordinary gain or urgent need be in view, the LevantMahometan trader eschews ' credit ' under all its forms,and prefers to traffic in actual values. Hence, whilehis operations are slow, they are commonly sure; andhis name figures comparatively seldom on the greatInsolvency List, wherein his Greek, and even hisArmenian brethren occupy so distinguished a position.Thus, for instance, in the great Levant crisis of 1858,when every Maronite and Melchite tradesman in Beyroot had to undergo whitewashing of some kind orother, and but few of the Syrian, Orthodox Greek, orArmenian dealers were able wholly to dispense withthe same daubing process, the substantial Mahometanmerchants of the city passed through the ordeal unscathed; and if they profited little by the mishapsof their colleagues, they at least lost nothing. Indeed,it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, in theLevant business-world an insolvent Mahometan is asrare a phenomenon as a solvent Greek. Thus far the78 MAHOMETANISM [II.IN THE LEVANT.advantage derived from adherence to Koran and ' Sunneh ' is real; though purchased at a price which maybe considered as above its value.Setting aside the casuistical shufflings sometimesinduced, as above said, by religious constraint, a goodfeature of Mahometan men of business is, due allowance made for individual exceptions, their honesty.This quality, from whatever cause, runs through allLevant-Mahometan society, and contrasts it favourablywith the Levant-Christian; but from the nature ofthings it attracts most notice in the mercantile class.A word among these men is, in general, as good as abond; and both are respected. Indeed, we have knownlarge transactions, involving the value of thousands,opened, continued, and satisfactorily concluded withouta single written cypher. Few Europeans of long residence in the East but would rather have to do witha Mahometan than with any other native ' soever,where money or honour are concerned . Black sheepare not wanting among them, indeed, no more than inany other flock; but they are the exception, not therule. Our own Levant experience has more than onceshown us mistakes in an account to the advantage ofthe receiver corrected by the receiver himself; an article omitted by accident spontaneously made good; anextra profit on a bargain acknowledged before enquiredinto, and paid before claimed. But these cases, oneand all, were among Mahometans.Among the citizen classes women have less directinfluence than among the agricultural; nor can it beotherwise. Towns are the strongholds of etiquette,and Eastern etiquette has in all times honoured women,as some printers do the name of the Deity, by a blank.Mahometanism, in an evil hour for itself, took up andexaggerated this tendency. Still it would be strange if11. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.79among races gifted with such intensity of family feeling as Easterns commonly are, and under a systemwhich asserts to the married woman rights in propertyand law equal in almost every respect to those of herhusband, female authority or persuasion should go fornothing. Accomplished women, learned women, too,are not wanting; and in general it may be said thatthe town ladies of the Mahometan Levant, if not quiteup to the standard of Miss Becker or of Dr. ElizabethWalker, have a fair share of the superior culture thatsurrounds them. And if less accessible to saints anddervishes than their rural sisters, they are equally withthem zealous supporters of Islam, only their zeal ismore according to knowledge.Lastly, it may be asked, What is the attitude of themercantile class towards the existing Government, andorder of things? Briefly, it is one less positively hostile than that of the agriculturists, yet far fromfriendly. Some, not a few, indeed, of the merchantsare connected with the old Begs by birth or marriage,and sympathise with their disestablished relatives.Some, the better instructed from their studies, and thecomparatively uneducated from their ignorance, are toozealous Mahometans to approve of measures emanatingfrom Paris, or at least imitative of that capital and itsGovernment. Some, again, murmur, with how muchcause we will not here enquire, against an administration which, say they, takes much and gives nothing;taxes heavily the produce to which it has in no waycontributed, and the commerce that it has rathercramped and fettered than facilitated; in a word, thatreaps where it has not sown, and gathers where it hasnot scattered . Others are disaffected for all thesereasons conjointly. In fine, universal suffrage, were ita possibility in these lands, would return opposition80 MAHOMETAN SM IN THE LEVANT.candidates for the towns scarce less surely than for thecountry. A formidable combination. But as neithersuffrage nor representation exist, the opposition is stillin posse only, and, for the present, seems likely toremain so.From the tradespeople and townfolk we come byan easy transition to the learned Profession.III.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT-Concluded.[PUBLISHED IN FRASER'S MAGAZINE,' OCTOBER, 1870.]"ThisWE now come to that class the members of whichare sometimes, but most erroneously, denominated inEuropean writings, French especially, the MahometanClergy.' How far they are in fact removed from anything to which Western and Christian nomenclatureassigns the title of Clergy we shall soon see.class comprehends ' Mollas, ' ' Kadees,' ' Muftees,' ' Imams,'' Khateebs,' ' Sheykhs,' and some other professions ofminor importance. Of the names now given, the first,' Molla,' more correctly ' Mawla,' literally Master,' isgeneric, and applies to all who have gone through aregular course of legal study, and received a diploma.The attributions of a Kadee, ' analogous to rather thanidentical with those of a judge, are sufficiently knownto all readers of Oriental tales; the Muftee ' is a Q.C.or Sultan's Counsel, to speak correctly, for Turkey;Imam ' is best rendered by Precentor; Khateeb' byPreacher; ' Sheykh ' is a vaguer term of religious, butnot of hierarchical, qualification.6"Among these six categories, to which some minorones of subordinate office are attached, the first threerepresent the legislative, and the latter three the doctrinal element of Islam. And as the legislative elementG82 [III.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.is immeasurably the more copious and complicated ofthe two, so also the professions which it has originatedtake a decided preference over the others in the socialscale. None of them can, however, be, with any propriety of speech, designated as priestly, whether thatterm imply hereditary caste, like the Levites of independent Palestine, and the more enduring Brahmins.of the Indian peninsula; or sacerdotal consecration,after the fashion of Roman and Protestant Christianity.Self-consistent in this particular, Islam, while it deniesall gradational distinctions in the Deity, all mediatoryand intercessory interposition, all the Court of circ*mstance with which Catholic divines love to surroundthe divine Monarch, effaces also from the terrestrialservice of the absolute One all classification and subordinate ranks among the worshippers themselves.' Each one for himself, and God for all,' is an almostliteral translation of what the Koran sums up, anda hundred traditions confirm. Still, social fact recognises in its way what dogmatic theory denies, and gradations and classifications exist; but without themysterious sanction of anointments, imposed hands,transmitted succession, ineffaceable characters, andwhatever else is the dearest dream of ritualistic sentimentalism, and the despair of common sense even inour own day. In a word, the functions to be discharged by Mollas, Kadees, Imams, and the rest, arein many respects intimately connected with, and evenessential to the religion of the land; but the religiousquality remains inherent in the functions alone, uncommunicated to the persons of those who professionally perform them. The Khateeb ' is not moresacred than his hearers, the ' Imam' than his congregation. We are speaking of ' Soonnee' Mahometanism;in the ' Shee'ah ' and Persian theory the case is different.6III.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 83(But if we would correctly understand the positionof the Turkish and Arab Molla ' or Legist, let us takea flight of some two thousand years back into thedomains of history and the regions of Palestine, amongthe men designated as ' lawyers ' in our own versionof the New Testament; men the expounders, and, inpart, administrators of a legal code based on the precepts and prohibitions of a Sacred Book, and stampedin every detail of its decisions with divine authority.The lawyer is thus at the same time in no smallmeasure theologian, and partakes of the well-knownqualities, good or bad, of either profession . Narrowness of mind, bigotry of soul, uncharitable obstinacyblended with casuistic suppleness, the unfavourablefeatures ofthe ' minister,' aggravated by the sharpnessof temper and disputatious acrimony which form the' worser half' of the legist character-all these maybe expected here, side by side with the cultivated andwidened intellect, the tolerant earnestness, the uprightness in judgment, and the sincere piety of thought andpractice which are never wanting among the ranks ofthe learned professions.' Some individuals will partake more of the amiable, others of the unamiabletemperament; some will in strange antithesis blendboth in one; but most will exhibit two or three ofthese characteristics in a sufficiently marked manner;none will be wholly without them. Thus though theessential constituents of a caste are wanting, somethingof a caste-feeling exists-the inevitable result of similarstudies and similar pursuits, both restricted within thenarrow circles of dogma and custom. Nor is outward caste-likeness wanting. A studied gravity ofdemeanour, a countenance of pharisaical severity, anavoidance of rich ornament and gay dress, a serioustone, and a sententious elocution, are no less proper toG 284 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [III. .the ' legist ' than the contraries of all these are to the' Deli-Kan,' or young buck of Turkey. Unlike, however, the barrister's gown or the bishop's apron, thepattern decorum of the Jesuit, and the no less patternslovenliness of the Capuchin, the outward ' notes ' ofthe Mahometan ' Molla ' are not uniform and obligatory.They are in fact the result of association of ideas 'merely, not of official regulation. If he affects flowingrobes and extensive turbans, it is because such habiliments seem becoming and natural to a learned, or atany rate a sedentary man; but neither robe nor turbandeclare themselves by any invariable speciality of cut orcolour: and in these respects our ' Molla ' verifies theEuropean application given to the cognate sobriquet of' Mufti .' The motives and practice that determine hisstyle of dress are in fact precisely analogous to thosewhich clothe the majority of our own M.D.'s and LL.D.'sin sober attire, or conversely decorate the sporting worldwith spotted neckcloths and dog's-head breastpins. Soagain a ' Molla ' is less often to be seen on horsebackthan one of equal wealth and standing but of differentprofession; still nothing forbids the legist to mounthis capering beast ' too, if he has a seat, and a mind.Nor is a fowling-piece ordinarily in his hand; and yetwe could instance a grave Mahometan judge, not farfrom Trebizond, whose performances among partridgesand pheasants might almost provoke the jealousy ofH.R.H. our own heir- apparent. And, to come to moreserious matters, open infraction of Islamitic moralityor gross misconduct of any kind is rare among the'Mollas.' But the love of gain, so says popular rumour,and says true, deeply infects the entire class; few, veryfew, of its members are inaccessible to a bribe in oneform or another.These remarks are general; but in addition theIII.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.85Kadees,' or judges, have some distinguishing peculiarities of their own, by no means unfavourable ones.When our own Bench was to be purified from theshameful contamination communicated to it by thelater Stuarts, the first, and with all deference to theopinion of the great historian who assigns to thismeasure but an inferior importance, the chiefestmeasure taken was to render the judicial office a lifeappointment. Nor is the reason far to seek. A judgewho depends hour by hour for the maintenance of hispost on the Executive is much more likely to be itsservant than the minister of justice and law. Suchis precisely the case with the Turkish or Arab Kadee.But if the circ*mstances of his position tend of necessity to render him servilely pliant with the greatand powerful, they are not less calculated to makehim venal and unjust towards other classes. Theabsence of all effective control in a country where notonly orderly and official superintendence, but even therestraint of public opinion, so powerful in Europe bythe means of newspapers and intercommunication, iswanting, facilitates any amount of corruption; and ifopportunity makes thieves, few Mahometan Kadees arelikely long to remain honest men. In fact, the wonderis not that the Islamitic Bench is not better, but thatit is no worse. A judge dependent on favour andindependent of reputation is much more likely, ashuman nature goes, to prove a Kirke than a ' Daniel.'6་With the Muftees ' or Counsel, matters are muchthe same. Their duty is to draw up and enouncedecisions for the guidance of the judges, and of thenumerous tribunals which the recent Tashkeelat,' orRegulations, of 1867 especially, have multiplied on theface of the Ottoman earth. But they also hold theirposts and their salaries at the caprice of the executive86 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [III..officials, their real masters, and are no more undercontrol, public or special, than the judges themselves.However, a man whose fortune is yet to make is ingeneral more jealous of his own good name than onewhose fortune is already made; and the Muftee beingstill a candidate for future advancement, is in mostinstances less corrupt, though not less subservient,than his judicial seniors .To go into all the details of Mahometan law, andanatomise its courts and procedures, is not here ourscope. We only sketch the men, touching on systemsand institutions merely so far as is necessary to theright understanding of the characters of those whowork them. Nor do we wish our readers to concludethat every Kadee is corrupt, every Muftee servile;such a conclusion would, fortunately, be far from thetruth . We only state the too ordinary results of avicious organisation .One cause which probably contributes much to savethese classes from sinking altogether into the utterabasem*nt of time-serving venality, is to be found inthe severe studies exacted from those who desire toenter its ranks. Whatever be the faults of a ' Molla ,'ignorance of his duty is not likely to be one. The' Softah,' more correctly, but less euphoniously pronounced ' Sootah, ' or student, generally a child of themiddle or lower orders, has at an age varying betweeneleven and fifteen donned the narrow white turban,usual though not universal among the undergraduatesof Mahometan law, and exchanged the Mekteb ' orschool of his early years for the ' Medreseh, ' or collegeof more serious studies. A course, of which fifteenyears form the narrowest, sixteen or even eighteen thenot uncommon limit, now opens before him; agreeablydiversified by five stiffish fences, or probationary trials༦III. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 87at proper intervals, and a six-foot wall, in the shape ofa general examination, at the end. The ground too tobe gone over, always heavy, is of perplexing variety.First comes the minute, the Jewishly-scrupulous studyof the Koran; a study rendered additionally difficultfor non-Arab learners by the foreign language in whichit is composed, and for Arabs themselves by its numerous archaisms, and a dialect now next- to - obsoletebeyond the limits of Nejed and Hejaz. Then followthe commentators, an appalling array in number and inbulk; not always illustrative, often obscurative, and inall cases a severe tax on the memory; -let him trywho will. Concurrent with the commentators comestradition; a vast and shapeless mass of sayings anddoings more or less correctly ascribed to the Prophet,his associate contemporaries, and immediate successors;needs hardly say that much of this congeries is apocryphal, an equal quantity futile, and not a little selfcontradictory. But the ' pièce de résistance ' in thisintellectual banquet is the 'Soonneh,' the Blackstone ofIslam; a collection of opinions and decisions emanatingfrom the four great expounders of Mahometan law,Aboo Haneefah, Malik, Esh- Shafey'ee, and Ebn- Hanbal,besides the scattered rays of other legal luminaries,brilliant doubtless as the stars in the firmament-asmazy also. Last in order of time, but not of importanceto the hapless student, comes the Kanoon,' or CivilLaw of the Empire, the Digest of Sultan Suleyman I.,the Ottoman Justinian; frequently revised, corrected,superseded here, augmented there, by later Sultans,and their Ministers. To these a Frenchified appendixof Tanzeemats, Tashkeelats, Property- Codes, PenalCodes, and what other reproductions of the CodeNapoléon ' the last three Sultans have poured like newwine into the very old and bursting bottle of the6"88 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [II..empire, must now be added. Join to all this a runningeducational accompaniment of ' Nahoo, ' mentioned before, of ' Muntik,' or Logic, of ' By'an, ' or Rhetoric;join the complete study of the Arabic language with afair proficiency in Persian; and the ordinary ' curriculum ' of the average law-pupil or Softah lies beforeyou. Rat thoree w'bahot sang;' ' a short night fortravel, and plenty of baggage to pack,' says the Hindooproverb.Pale and thin, the young student is easily recognised,even independently of his white turban; he has mostlya hard time of it at his college, where idle men and' fast ' men are unknown, no less than the Oxbridgesolaces of wines,' ' pinks,' and proof prints of drowningmartyrs. Here all is sad and sober earnest. Lodged inan unfurnished cell, with a worn shred of carpet forseat, table, and bed, between himself and the dankstones or rotten planks of the floor; bread and onionsalmost his only food, and not too much of that either;far away from his parents and relatives, from the playfellows of his childhood, from the native town or villageto which he clung with the strong local affection of theEastern, stronger than Irishman ever felt for Ballyshannon, or Swiss for the pastures of Uri; the futuremaster in Islam has a weary time of it as well as a longone. Many succumb altogether to the hardships, physical and mental, of the ' Medreseh,' and ' meurent à lapeine,' as the expressive French phrase gives it; othersdrag on, laying up for themselves in store much learning,a sickly manhood, and a premature old age; often tokeep too for life-companion the poverty that attendedthem in their student boyhood; a few come out of theordeal triumphantly, and issuing forth crowned with thelaurels of well- passed examinations, diploma in hand,and health and strength yet in limb and frame, ascendII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 89·the gradations of preferment, and win the higher prizes.But the many fail, the one succeeds,' holds no less trueat the Medreseh than at the Palace of the SleepingBeauty or the London Inns of Court.No traveller through the inlands of the Levant butmust have met on his way more than one band of thesethinly-clad, pale-faced youths, wending slowly on theirlong foot journey to some distant but renowned centre oflearning, half pilgrims, half beggars, and more than halfstarved and wearied out. ' There is no god but God,'' I bear witness that there is no god but God, ' laygasping one whom we ourselves once, on a hot summerday among the dusty hills of Southern Anatolia, foundby the road-side dying of sheer exhaustion, amid halfa-dozen companions, travelling students like himself,unable to afford him any help but the support of theirown lean arms and the repeated assurance of Paradise.One of our attendants hastened to fill a leathern cupfrom a neighbouring fountain, and put it to the mouthof the lad, if that might revive him. There is no godbut God,' repeated he, as the water he vainly tried toswallow trickled back from his lips; a few instantslater he was dead. We rode on to give the news atthe nearest village, and in its cemetery he now rests.6It should also be noted in favour of the Molla ' class,that however questionable their career and deterioratingits effects in after life, their first rise is, with rareexceptions, the result of honest merit and sheer hardwork. A poor student, the son most often of somenameless peasant or shopkeeper, seldom inherits patronage, nor can he afford to purchase it. Hence, unlikethe typical ' Stamboollee,' the first ' ply ' given to hischaracter is an upright one; nor is it always effaced byall the later oblique foldings of a career which offersevery incentive to iniquity and corruption. Besides,90 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [111..the prolonged study of religion and law, when itdoes not and this is sometimes the case-narrow themind and harden the character, has, by a strange butfortunate revulsion, precisely the opposite effect; thebrightest no less than the blackest names have in alllands and times been written on the muster-rolls ofdivinity and law. Arab and Turkish treatises too,however dry and abstract their subject, are alwaysthickly sprinkled with the inevitable Eastern anecdote;and the personal examples of justice, integrity, and forbearance with which Oriental law-books are jotted,remain fixed in the memory of the student, and notunfrequently influence him for life.From this school have come forth time by timeintrepid Muftees, who with the sword over their neckshave refused to call evil good and good evil, to putdarkness for light and light for darkness, to sanctioninjustice and to legalise oppression. Upright Kadeeshave again and again given sentence for the weakagainst the strong, the poor against the rich, the ruledagainst the ruler; Mollas of clear head and bold hearthave appeared in the presence of tyrannical pashas anddegenerate sultans, and have rebuked them to theirface, to the peril and sometimes to the loss of their ownlives. Scattered in a thin but never-failing series, thesebeacon-lights gleam on the path of duty and honour,from the era of ' Omar the Discerner, the severe butrighteous Caliph, down to our own; nor are exampleswanting in the Mahometan Levant at this day. Salt oftheir class, they preserve it from total corruption, andserve to show what judges, what counsel, what legistsIslam might produce under a better order of things, notone that would corrupt an Escalus, let alone an Angelo.6The second category, that including Imams, ' ' Khateebs,' and ' Sheykhs,' with their subordinates, approachesIII. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 916more nearly in the nature of its occupations, thoughdiffering yet more widely in the manner of their performance, to the Western ecclesiastical idea. An' Imam,' as before said, is a kind of precentor or parishclerk; his duty is to stand in front of the congregation,facing the Ķibleh, ' or Mecca-pointing niche, at theappointed hours of devotion, that is, ordinarily, asevery one knows, five times a day, when he recitesaloud the public prayers, marks time for the variousdevotional postures, and, in a word, acts as fuglemanto the worshippers ranged behind him, from whom,however, he is distinguished by no special dress,caste, or ' character.' Primus inter pares; but nothingmore. The Khateeb,' or preacher, usually reads out ofan old well-thumbed manuscript sermon-book, or, thoughmuch more rarely, delivers extempore the Friday discourse, a short performance, seldom exceeding tenminutes in duration; on the same day he recites the'Khotbeh,' an official prayer, wherein the name of thereigning sovereign has obligatory mention. 'TheKhotbeh was read in the name of so-and- so ,' is anordinary phrase in Eastern chronicles, equivalent to'So-and-so was acknowledged ruler. ' On other and extraordinary occasions the Khateeb ' may also ascend thepulpit; the fact is usually indicative of a crisis. Thus,during the riots and massacres of Central Syria, in 1860,the already excited populations of Homs and Ḥamahwere restrained by the humane and judicious exertionsoftheir Khateebs from following the disgraceful exampleset by the Damascene rabble. Of the Friday sermonsa fair specimen may be found in Lane's inimitableEgyptians. Like the Imam, the ' Khateeb ' is a functionary at will, without any professional costume, eitherwhen on duty or at other times.6' Sheykh ' is a denomination of twofold import.92 [III.26 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.Sometimes it coincides in part with that of ' Imam, 'adding, however, an idea of general superintendenceover the mosque and whatever regards it, besidessuggesting a special degree of learning and personalvirtue in its bearer, and thus entitling him to highreputation and influence more than common. Yeteven here the rank is neither inherent nor permanent,nor attended with any invariable colour of robe orwidth of turban. Sometimes the word implies connection with one or other of the Dervish brotherhoodsor assemblies, which the ' Sheykh ' leads, and wherehe not unfrequently arrogates to himself supernaturaland mystic powers, acknowledged by his clique, doubtedor derided elsewhere, disavowed by genuine Islam.6The functions and position of inferior church-mice,'of the ' Mu'eddin ' or Prayer-proclaimer, the ' Bowwab 'or door-keeper, ' Nakeeb ' or Inspector, and so forth,explain themselves.These men, one and all (excepting only the latterand anomalous ' Sheykh ' subdivision, of whom we needsay nothing more at present, having sufficiently discussed Dervish facts and pretensions on a previousoccasion) , as they are chosen from among the ranksof the people, town or country, so they remain in thoseranks; and hence their apparent weakness and theirreal strength. Once outside the mosque, the ' Imam,'the ' Khateeb,' and whoever else may have officiatedduring the prayers, is a house-mason, a greengrocer,a pipe-maker, or anything else as before: a somewhatmore than ordinary cleanliness of person and linen,with a slight tendency to long dresses, can alone markhim out to the practised eye; the practised ear, too,may detect in his conversation the results of privatestudy, and of familiarity with the phrases of the Koran.But no regular course of education is required fromIII. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.9:him; a good general reputation, freedom from debtand scandal, and the elective voice of the ' Harah'town-quarter, or of the village, constitute his sole andsufficient diploma. Any further acquirements, oftennot inconsiderable, are his own individual affair. Andaccordingly, while low in social and high in officialrank, he is high in popular influence and conventionalposition. In fact, the influence exercised by these menis apt to be under-estimated by those men who, fromthe very absence of outward and distinctive signs,are unacquainted with their numbers, and whose earfails to distinguish in the familiar tones of daily lifethe respect with which they are looked up to by themultitude. But that respect is not less real; and onthe occurrence of any public event, from the gatheringoutside the village for the prayers in time of drought 'to the trooping together of an insurrection, some oneof this class is sure to come forward at once as thenatural leader of the people. That these men arezealous, often bigoted, Mahometans, needs scarcely besaid . And their voice is all the more listened to becausecomparatively unpaid for by stipends or emoluments;things which exist, indeed, but in proportions so microscopical that they can at most be considered an adjunct,not a motive. Their zeal has thus the full credit ofpurity, and is founded, so at least their followersbelieve, in knowledge and practice. Were they a casteapart, with means and interests of their own, theywould be much less influential, among the men atleast.The decided preference given by Islam to marriageover celibacy, or rather its unequivocal reprobation ofthe latter, leaves no one unmarried in the learnedclasses, Molla,' ' Imam, ' or other. The women are,however, in general of little consequence, hardly more94 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [III..than housekeepers, though instances have occurredwhere the wife of a Muftee ' or a ' Khateeb ' hasrivalled her husband in acquirements and, pretty certainly, excelled him in what is called ' fanaticism.'In conclusion, we cannot refrain from remarking thatthe Islamitic identification of religion and law is anessential defect in the system, and a serious hindranceto the development of good government and socialprogress in these countries. True, no creed was everless multiple in its articles, less exacting in its practice,and less superstitious in its adjuncts, than the Mahometan. Still it is a creed, and as such tends incommon with all religious systems yet devised tonarrow the mind, cramp the faculties, and, above all,to run precisely counter to the adaptability essentialin a law code made for men and their ever-changingcirc*mstances. On the other hand, there can be no doubtthat this blending of the two faculties into one givesto each additional strength, and so far confirms theedifice which it narrows.We have thus passed in rapid but comprehensivereview before us the five principal categories whichform the bulk of the Levant-Mahometan world; butsome classes, not numerous indeed, yet not whollyunimportant, and included within the national, thoughnot within established social limits, remain for consideration.Among these are the pastoral tribes, occupying ageographical space nearly half the surface of AsiaticTurkey, but in numerical strength scarce one-twelfthof the agricultural inhabitants. They belong to threestocks, Koorde, Turkoman, and Arab. All three areMahometan; but the quality of their Mahometanismis as various as their descent.III. ]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.95"And first, the Koordes; wild men, of whom it maybe said, with even more truth than of the descendantsof Ishmael, that their hand is against every man's,and every man's hand against them.' They are braveto a proverb; a cowardly Koorde, and a stingyBedouin ' -meaning two things alike impossible tofind-runs the Eastern saying. They are in generalexcellent horsem*n also; good shots-the more so considering the condition of their fire-arms, which haverarely progressed beyond the ' stone age ' of flint;brawny fellows, often handsome, fond of dash anddisplay, of gay dresses and embossed accoutrements,knowing in horses, sheep, and cattle, especially theirneighbours' , and good for nothing else.else. Fickle aswater, treacherous beyond all belief, cruel, liars, andwithal more obstinate than mules on any point butright and truth, they are the dregs of a vigorousnation, the nation of Noor-ed-Deen, of Salah-ed- Deen,of the Eyoobite Sultans, of great doings and iron rule,but. a nation whose brief day of turbulent and bloodstained glory was soon over, whose flame flickered upfor once fiercely, and left for after ages a worthlesscinder, light though hard, glittering but sterile.Split up into countless clans, that can now no morecoalesce into a nation than, to resume our formermetaphor, slags can unite into ore, they pass whattime they are not actually employed in the care oftheir herds and horses, or, more rarely, in the cultivation of what grain may suffice their own immediatewants, in skirmishing with each other, and in freebooting raids on those around them. Of art, even inits simplest expressions, they have no skill, of knowledge no tincture.These men, however, are they who, more than anyothers, hold the key of the East Turkish frontier; and96 [III.MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.the doorkeeper, whatever he may be in himself, isalways an important personage from his very position.That key the Koordes, though like the Ottoman raceSoonnee Mahometans, are always ready to hand over,for a consideration, to the Sheea'ee Persian, or theRussian Giaour. This readiness of theirs they haveshowed in fact over and over again; nor ever moreclearly than in the war of 1854-56, when theyenjoyed the double satisfaction of alternately betrayingeither cause. Not that their own Mahometanism,though little exemplified in prayer or fast, is doubtful;but because the shortsightedness which they sharewith the generality of savages prevents them fromappreciating the drift and consequences of their owndeeds. In fact, they never thoroughly attained, andnow are further than ever from, that national selfconsciousness, that acknowledgment of obligationswider than mere family and clan, which is the foundation, if not the principal constituent, of any religionworthy the name. He whose mental and moral sphereextends no further than the relations of his own individuality, will naturally shape to himself an individual god or Fetish; the god of the mere clansmanwill be himself a strong clan-chief, the tutelary divinityof a tribe, not more. The common unity of mankindmust be recognised before a god of all mankind canbe worshipped; and the Universe as such, the harmonious Kosmos, must be, however dimly, apprehendedbefore the idea of a Ruler of the Universe can beimaged in the mind. Thus the Koorde, while adoptingthe nomenclature of Mahometanism, fails to grasp themeaning: his ' Allah ' is degraded from a universal toa particular god; his Islam ' implies no brotherhoodbeyond that of his own clan, no ties beyond thoselimits: the title of ' Muslim,' one of more than MasonicIII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 97sympathy among Turks and Arabs, awakes in theKoorde little interest and commands no fidelity.Very unlike the Koordish clans, the Turkomanpastoral tribes exhibit a decided tendency towardssettlement and ulterior organisation. A comparativelyslow, thick-headed race, they have in themselves firstprinciples of industry, steadiness, and order unknownto their Carduchian neighbours. Hence, a colony ofTurkoman shepherds easily glides upward by progressive amelioration into a collection of villages andvillagers, and becomes in due time an additionalelement of strength, stability, and productiveness tothe country.Ignorant and rough these pastoral tribes naturallyare, such conditions being inseparable from their modeof life. But they possess the capability of progressivecivilisation; and herein lies the essential differencebetween them and what experience has thus far taughtus of the Koordes. Another of their characteristicsis superstition, and to the large admixture of Turkoman blood in the peasantry throughout Asia Minor,and some parts of Mesopotamia and Syria, may bein a measure attributed the favour extended to dervishpractices and præter-Mahometan hagiolatry by the peasantry. In fine, the tendencies of the Turkoman hordesare, with due allowance for the modifications of temperament produced by a different occupation, nearlyidentical with those of the agricultural classes, and tothem and what has been already said of them weaccordingly refer. The prognostic is indeed a gloomyone for the empire, but has slight bearing on Islamitself.What the Koordes are to the East and the Turkomans to the north and centre of the Mahometan Levant,the Bedouins or pastoral Arabs are to the west andH98 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [III.south. Few classes of men have been more frequentlyand more fully described in prose and verse, in narrative and fiction, nor need we in our present surveymount a camel, or eat one under a tent. But it isof importance to the right understanding of Bedouins'in the point of view from which we must here considerthem, to mark the line of cleavage ' running throughtheir mass, and dividing it into two strata of veryunequal value.Many of the genuine or thorough-going Bedouins("Arab-Bedoo ' in their own phrase) are scarcely, if atall, Mahometans. Sun-worship, tree-worship-thoughwithout the accompanying serpent, these two symbolsforming here at least by their disjunction an exceptionto a well-known theory of late years-grave-worship,any or no worship, are to be met among them. Yeta Bedouin, however vague or low his religious ideal,is rarely a savage in the common acceptation of theword. He has imagination, eloquence, vivacity, goodtaste, a great respect for human life (though coupled,unfortunately, with an even greater want of respectfor human property), and, above all, he has a latentcapability of becoming, under favourable circ*mstances,· a social and even a civilised member of society, a factof which many of the best families in Syria and 'Irak,whose ancestry can be undoubtedly traced back toBedoo, ' are sufficient proof. Qualities like these markhim out for a scion of the nobler races,' however alawless and vagabond life may have degraded himin actual semblance. God's likeness,' but only aground-plan. In the same manner Arab- Bedoo,' afterhaving lost the practice of universals , often retainsomewhat of the theory, and while living in the narrowest individuality, like Shanfaraor Ta'abbet- Shurran,are yet capable of apprehending a general idea, and ofIII.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 99expressing it. Accordingly, what Islam they chanceto possess, when they possess it, is elevated and simplein type, and can even be evoked as ' a cause ' whencirc*mstances require it.But the half-and-half nomad, the " Arab-Deereh,' or'Arab of the cultivated lands,' better, though lessliterally, rendered ' frontier- Bedouin , ' is a very differentcreature. His summer encampment, never far removedfrom the habitations of the peasantry, has about it anair of comparative fixity and dirty comfort, that insome measure assimilates it to a village; while hiswinter quarters are often in the villages themselves, oreven in the towns. He is in fine a Bedouin in thetransition stage, on the road to become a civilisedbeing, though not yet one. Seven or eight months ofthe year he tends his horses and asses, his sheep andcamels, on the undulating grass-covered plains of theinland; with intervals of weeks, sometimes, especiallyduring winter months, passed in the hamlets of thefrontier lines; an unwelcome, troublesome, imperiousguest, but easily put down by a steady front and arough tongue. He has lived long enough with the' Ahl-ul- Meder,' or ' inhabitants of bricks, ' as he denominates peasant-folk and town-folk, to feel his own inferiority to them, and has learnt to regard with envy alot in which his own laziness and desultory habits, theresult of a half- savage life, do not yet allow him toparticipate. A peasant sleeps in his bed, with jars ofbutter and mollasses over his pillow,' we have heardthe "Arab-Deereh ' say with an accent of bitter envy,while contrasting his own hot, dusty summer tents, andunfurnished winter hovels, with the comparative luxuryof the neighbouring husbandman. But while contrastgenerates envy, envy at times results in imitation.Tents assume the more permanent character of hovels;6H 2100 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [III.and hovels by degrees refine themselves into the decency of cottages. Next the land around shows signsof tillage, first patch-wise and after a desultory fashion;then lasting and regular; till by a complete conversionthe Bedouin is metamorphosed into a villager. Thereverse process, or that by which villagers degenerateinto Bedouins, though much rarer, is not unknown.These "Arab-Deereh ' are not only Mahometans, but,generally speaking, bigoted ones.The ' little learning 'said to be dangerous, not because it is a little, but because it is not much, gives them a knowledge of Islamsufficient to render them devoted partisans, but notenough for larger views and philosophical toleration.Besides, even while acquiring more or less the stabilityand other social conditions of the peasantry, these Arabslong retain, indeed never wholly lose, something of theirold vivacity and Bedouin fire. Hobbes may have beenwrong or right when he assigned a state of war as thenatural condition of primitive man; but that state isundeniably normal to the Bedouin genus, from Aden toDiar- Bekir. Accordingly a war-like creed, and suchIslam pre-eminently is, chimes in with their first instincts; and they accept it not passively only, so tospeak, but actively. For all other purposes the instability of the Desert cleaves to them through generations; and they are much more readily to be found onthe side of turbulence than on that of order and submission. But whatever be the banner of the moment,they are always Mahometans to the backbone; not awhit the less so because their daily account of prayersis often sadly in arrears; their ' Ramadan ' of uncertainobservance; their women not over-scrupulously veiled;and their children occasionally uncircumcised.The description now given holds good for the entirecategory of "Arab- Deereh; ' that is-putting asideIII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 101exaggeration, which in some narratives, Lamartine's forexample, magnifies them into hosts worthy of a Xerxes-for about one hundred and sixty thousand male inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia. And in most ofthe qualities here assigned they differ widely, it isreadily seen, from the "Arab- Bedoo,' or real, absoluteBedouins of the same territory; whose number, variously estimated, seems to attain somewhat less thanthe double of the former. It may be well to notice,because furnishing the key to many seeming anomaliesin tale and story, that the experiences of most Easterntravellers, stated by them to have occurred amongstand to be illustrative of Bedouin life, are really referable much more often to the "Arab-Deereh ' than tothe " Arab- Bedoo; ' both being easily confounded bythe stranger, and occasionally in loose parlance by theresident, under the generic denomination of ' Bedouin. 'The two classes bear to each other, in fact, a dog andjackal affinity; but between the former and domesticated animal, which may stand for type of the ' Deereh,'and the latter wild beast, the appropriate emblem of theunreclaimed Bedoo,' there is a wide divergence. Shouldour readers desire a criterion: whenever mention ismade in narrative of firearms, other than an occasionaland particularly inefficient matchlock; wherever horsesappear as the ordinary mount, and wherever Mahometanism is prominent in phrase or deed, the charactersdesignated as ' Bedouins ' were in reality, if so theyexisted otherwhere than in the writer's fancy, not' Bedoo,' but ' Deereh.' Such were, to judge by theaccounts given us, most of the ' Bedouins ' who foughtunder the standard of ' Abd-el- Kadir; such certainlywere the Moghrebins ' who followed him to Syria;such were also those who rallied for a moment ofshouting and gun-firing round Lady Hester Stanhope.C་102 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. [111.Accordingly, while the "'Arab- Bedoo ' are of little imperial consequence, and any leader, or rather any paymaster, even a non- Islamitic one, might easily commandtheir allegiance of an hour, the "'Arab- Deereh ' mustbe counted as a real item in the calculations of anygovernment, Mahometan or otherwise, that occupiesor would occupy Syria.Our land survey nears its end, and we turn seawards. Here our way comes on a class of more realimportance than the widely-spread pastoral, yet onefor centuries neglected, undeveloped, despised. Wemean the coast or long-shore population. The merestglance at the map is enough to show that their numbers cannot but be considerable. The extent of waterline from the Turko- Russian frontier at Nicolaieff onthe Black Sea to El-'Areesh on the Egyptian boundarywould, if unravelled, considerably exceed two thousandmiles, and the same glance that scans its length revealsits populousness in the multitude of villages thatfringe it with their names. Nature, which has dealtout to this segment of the Asiatic coast in sadly parsimonious measure, harbours suited to the requirementsof modern seamanship, to vessels of deep draught andiron-clads, has made atonement in some degree by aprofuse liberality in little creeks or bays, excellentlysuited to shelter a fisherman's boat or a long- shorecruiser. Besides, the sea, whether by that name wedenote the brackish waters of the Euxine or the intensely saline waves of the Mediterranean, swarms withfish, an additional incentive to human multiplicationalong its brink.As for the larger maritime towns, Trebizond, Smyrna,Beyrout, and so forth, they have long since been, andare now more than ever, the resort by predilection ofthe Christian natives, ' Greek and Armenian, especiallyIII.]MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 103the former. The determining causes, many in number,of this confluence have some of them been explainedelsewhere, while others lie beyond our present scope.The fact is notorious. But the same fact by no meansholds good of the coast villages, where the populationis, by a large majority, Mahometan.That there is no better preparatory school for themercantile marine than a fishing-boat, and no aptereducation for the imperial navy than the mercantilemarine, may seem a truism; yet, if we may judge bythe degree in which it has been neglected, this truismwould be a discovery in some parts of the world, andparticularly in Turkey. During the long era of theAbbaside Caliphs, and even till the latter days of theTurkoman and Seljook dynasties, no ruler of thesecountries would seem to have so much as thought ofa navy. The first appearance of one, at least undera practical and somewhat organised form-for mereindividual piracy was at no time wanting-precedesthe establishment of the Ottoman power over AsiaMinor by scarce a century. That power, which, withall its defects, yet for two full centuries ranked amongthe best organised of then existing empires, while itbestowed its chief attention on its land troops, the firststanding army on the records of modern history, didnot wholly neglect naval advantages. The Turkishmarine, though never able to maintain an absolutesupremacy over the Eastern seas, was yet a formidablerival to Venice and her allies; and if Europe canboast of Lepanto, Cheshmeh, and Navarino, Turkishannals record the names of Prevesa, Jerbeh, and Monderos with almost equal pride. But the Ottoman navaladministration was, even at its best, too fitful and uneven for permanent results, and irregular success soonsubsided into habitual depression and defeat. How-104 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [III..ever, the ' material,' both men and means, spite ofneglect and misuse, are still there, and the fishing andcoast-traffic population of the Mahometan Levant mighteasily be rendered other than what they now are, amere sum for the yearly census when taken.But political, or, as they are sometimes styled, imperial considerations, are not our actual concern; andwith this, as with other classes, the horizon of oursurvey is bounded by its social and Islamitic conditions.These are sufficiently interesting in the present instance."(Sea-coast men, however deficient their education andscant the scholards ' among them, are, cæteris paribus,usually better informed and of livelier intelligence thanthe land-lubbers ' of the interior. Nature, while offering to the latter only one page of her great book forperusal, opens two at least before the eyes of theformer; often, by freer intercourse with distant lands,she unfolds at least a score. Brisk sea air and hourlychanging skies may also have their influence on temperament: thus much is certain, that the shore hasin all ages and in all countries been proportionally abreathing place for mind, and that new ideas, progress,and freedom have, as a rule, found better fortune withinhearing of the breakers than where the circling sky restson ' eternal hills ' and monotonous plain. Athens andGenoa, Venice and Holland, not to mention England,have each in their turn, and after their fashion, illustrated this fact..Now Mahomet, like all religious leaders, was at hearta Conservative; thus far and no farther ' has alwaysbeen the motto of the preaching tribe. Progress, butup to my standard; improvement, just so far as Iwarrant it,' is the language of every theological legislator from Buddha to Dr. Cullen; nor could the ArabianIII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 105Phoenix be expected to sing on a different note thanthe other birds of his feather. Accordingly, it is nowonder if tradition, ' se non vera, ben trovata,' ascribesto the Meccan Prophet a strong aversion to the sea andthe pursuits connected with it; and fact does certainlyimply some degree of uncongeniality between salt- waterand Islam. M. Renan, who so ingeniously derivesmonotheism from the monotonous aspect of the Desert,and polytheism from the multitudinous life of fountainand forest, could doubtless account for this mental phenomenon also; but mere physical reasons, howeverplausible, cannot be accepted as wholly adequate in suchmatters; moral and social causes must also be takeninto reckoning. What these latter are, the familiarity,theoretical or practical, of our English readers with aseafaring life, may excuse our dilating on. In the casenow before us the result is , that though professionallyand in all good faith Soonnee Mahometans, the fishermen and sailors of the Levant are, considered as awhole, less zealous, less attached to Islam, less imbuedwith its spirit than any other class, the Stamboollees 'and Koordes alone excepted. Still they muster underthe green banner, and proper discipline and worthyleaders would not fail even now to find among thecrews of the Ottoman navy responsive energy andenthusiastic daring. But while the land army, orNizam,' has made real and steady progress, and hasespecially kept itself free from the peculation that isthe leprosy of a debilitated organism, little analogous can be said for the less fortunate Ottoman marine.For details we may safely refer our readers to theauthority of Admiral Slade, a trusty witness and akindly judge, equally well acquainted with the facts hesignalises and with the causes that have produced them.Nor have the thirteen years since elapsed brought any"106 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [III. .serious improvement either of principle or of practiceto the Ottoman navy. Drunkenness, ignorance, andgross dishonesty still too frequently disgrace theofficers; whilst the men suffer as before from all theevils, moral and physical, that the ill-conduct of theirsuperiors naturally entails on them. Both Cheshmehand Sinope witnessed the noblest deeds of Turkish selfdevotion, courage, and patriotism; but they alsowitnessed a more than counterpoise of incapacity,mismanagement, and the deficiency of whatever shouldcharacterise officers, and be by them imparted to theirmen. May the present attempts at reform and improvement be more effectual than the past; they will be soif undertaken in earnest. Any how these three, thesea-faring population, the mercantile marine, and theimperial navy, form together a topic which ought to beone of the very first in the consideration of the Ottoman Government, as it is one of the first, if not the firstit*elf, in importance.Last of what may be termed the social ' specialities 'of the Levant-Mahometan population comes the ' mixedmultitude ' of the camp-Circassians, Abkhasians, Zigeths, and other children of the Caucasus, now scatteredthickly through large provinces of the Empire. Tatars,exiles from the Crimea and Kuban; Nogais, honest,flat-faced, hard-working fellows, from the Caspianshore; Cossacks, who have here taken refuge fromtheir orthodox ' brethren; negroes, mulattos, quadroons, octoroons, and every other tinge of Africanblood, from Darfour, Kordofan, Abyssinia, Nubia, andHeaven or Dr. Livingstone knows where else beside;all these have sought and found in one way or other acomfortable home in a country where popular opinionmeasures the individual by personal worth rather thanby the circ*mstances of descent, and in a brotherhood6111. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 107which merges colour and rank alike in the commondignity of Islam.These men, the guests of the Levant, are all, as arule, intensely Mahometan, though from different motives. The Caucasians, who a century since waveredon a doubtful limit between local paganism and Oriental Christianity, have been tutored into fervent Islamby Russian bayonets and an over-much proselytisinginvader. The Crimean and Nogai Tatars have alsoChristian wrongs to remember and to avenge. As forthe negroes, they bring to Islam the same enthusiasticsingleness of idea that they would have given to theBaptist, the Wesleyan, or any other suitable modification of Christianity, had their lines been cast in Jamaicaor in the States. But all alike form a real accession,numerical and moral, to the Muslim cause, and infusesomething of the convert ardour into the general mass.Half a million of such, to take them at the very least,are no despicable allies.The same can, however, hardly be said of the proselytes properly so called, Hungarians, Poles, Italians,and other Europeans who have at various times andunder various circ*mstances adopted the Osmanleenationality and religion. Passive sincerity, and a beliefthat the system to which they have transferred themselves is for all essential purposes as good as that whichthey have left, is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundredthe most and best that can be expected of them.Many have not even this. Others have, with achivalrous love of adventure, and much aptitude foraction, brought also with them wild unsettled characters, and habits incompatible with a prosperous career,drunkenness, for instance, most often, gambling sometimes. Still the ' refugee ' list has to show somenames of Asiatic no less than of European celebrity,108 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT [III..gallant souls, true to the red banner if not to thegreen, and hearts noble as any of their comrades whoever languished in an Austrian dungeon, or reddened the snows of Siberia with their blood. But thegreater number flag early, and fade like full-growntrees on transplantation, and are soon nothing morethan withered, sapless trunks, useless to others as tothemselves. Few indeed, under any circ*mstances, arethe Europeans gifted with the double vitality requisitefor thriving in the new-adopted life of the East. Hungarians, perhaps from ancient affinities of race, seem tostand the best chance; Italians and Frenchmen theworst; Englishmen have been known to succeed;Scotchmen, it is said, still oftener.With the remaining non-Christian and abnormalclasses of the Ottoman Levant, Kizil-Bashes, Isma-' eeleeyeh, Druses, Mete'waleh, and their likes, who,while themselves in a real state of divergence, greateror lesser, from Islam, yet, on the whole, rank under itsstandard, and would in fact on a crisis rally round itsooner than round any other, we will not here occupyourselves. These tribes or sects occupy a field apart,wide field, often investigated, never thoroughly explored as yet, and to enter on which would lead ustoo far from our present track and goal.Nor will we add a word regarding the actual administration of the Empire, executive, legal, and financial;nor will we speak of its pseudo- centralisation, nor ofits sieve-like treasury, nor of its unrepresented people,nor of its irresponsible bureaucracy, nor of the palaceson the Bosporus, nor of favouritism, nor of the ' morbusGallicus,' the itch of French imitation that has fasteneditself upon every department, nor of ' bakhsheesh,' norof bakalem ' or ' we will see,' i. e. ' call again,' nor ofany of these things. Our study is the MahometanIII. ] MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT. 109man, not the government under which he lives; theinhabitants of the country, not its rulers, their waysand doings.Taking, however, a retrospective view of the groundthus far traversed, we can hardly avoid the conclusionthat, however imperfect or vicious a system Islam maybe in itself, it is yet, in this part of the world at least,a thing by no means devoid of vitality; nay, one thatmay well live on to bury many of those who nowconfidently look forward to assisting at its funeral . Itis also clear that, although the downfall of the OttomanEmpire, and the semi-Caliphate of the Stambool sultans, would undoubtedly be felt as a severe shock to theMahometan world, that shock would be by no means.necessarily, or even probably, fatal to Islam itself;perhaps might even, under the present circ*mstances,prove an advantage. A more vigorous hand than thatof the effete Stambool-bred Effendees who now trail thesceptre of Osman, might bring together the scatteredbut glowing embers; a more vital breath might kindlethem into a flame fierce as of old. Or, to change themetaphor, the materials lie ready to hand, and showfew, if any, signs of disintegration; only the architectis feeble, decaying, wanting. That Constantinople issick, the Ottoman Empire sick, no unprejudiced observer will deny; though he may, without any discreditto his right judgment, also hold that this sickness isnot unto death; barring external violence, and the' nimis cura medici,' the over-officious doctors. Somepatients recover best when most left to themselves;and of such, perhaps, this empire is one.But withstill less hesitation may he pronounce that Islam, takenapart from the Government, exhibits very few symptoms of sickness, and none at all of decrepitude; andthat if either are to come upon her, they must come110 MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.from causes yet undeveloped and unknown . A timemay indeed be in store when all dogmatic systems willdisappear, all sectarian differences be obliterated beforethe communism of Humanity, and the Unity of DivineOrder; but till then, and so long as the children of oneFather shall call on that Father by different names, andthe scholars of one Master repeat his lesson each diversely, we may with tolerable confidence assert thatthe Allah ' of Arabia will not want worshippers, northe Koran of its Prophet those who read, revere, andfollow.IV.THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL.'(PUBLISHED IN ' FRASER'S MAGAZINE, ' FEBRUARY, 1872. )Mahomet said, ' Be joyful, be joyful; my followers are like rain, ofwhich it is unknown whether the first or last fall will be best; orlike a garden from which a multitude has been fed one year, and thenanother the next year, and perhaps the last is more numerous than thefirst, and better.'- Miscat- ul- Masabeeh, book xxiv.NOTICE.I was led to write this Essay by the perusal of Mr. W. W. Hunter'swell-known book, Our Indian Mussulmans, to which it forms in amanner a kind of supplement or appendix. Its object is to show,calmly and without sensational exaggeration, how wide-spread anddeep-rooted is the present ' revival ' of Islam, particularly in that partof the world which may be looked on as its stronghold, the AsianTurkish Empire. Hence it is natural to infer with what caution andsteadiness of statesmanship we should deport ourselves towards suchmanifestations of it as arise within the circle of our own dominion;though I have purposely abstained from specialized conclusions. Amonth after the Essay was written arrived the news of the assassination of Lord Mayo.I will only add that, on careful revision, I find nothing to take awayfrom the Article, though much might be added to it.'WHAT We want is rather an increase of fanaticismthan a diminution of it,' once said, in close conversationwith a well-known English official, the late ' Aali Pasha,112 THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL [IV..then Prime Minister in name, as in fact, of the OttomanEmpire; and what 'Aali Pasha said, that he was in thehabit not of meaning only, but also of doing his best tobring about.Unquestionably, when discoursing with Europeans,especially if of high rank and station, ' Aali was apt tohold a very different language, that, in fact, which hasfor many years been the stereotyped conciliatoryphraseology of external Ottoman diplomacy; but onthe occasion mentioned, he, for reasons known to himselfand to him whom he addressed, cast aside the conventional mask, and spoke what he really thought andfelt. Yet few statesmen ever better understood thanhe how much it imports to sail, when possible, with, notagainst the tide; and in this instance he had certainly,long before, well thought out his purposed line of action,and knew that the current was fully set in the directionwhich he himself then and there indicated and desired.This current was no other than that of the great Mahometan ' Revival, ' now running high, whether it bebetween the broad banks of Ottoman rule, or amongthe outlying waters of the lesser states and colonies ofIslam .Our own Government, part-heir of the liabilities aswell as of the wealth of Asia, has felt with someanxiety the sympathetic rise of level all over theMahometan surface, Soonnee or Sheea'h, but especiallythe former, throughout our East Indian dominions; andthe extent of Muslim disaffection to infidel supremacy,with the causes, special or general, that have contributedto maintain or excite it, have been ably set forth by oneof our best Peninsular writers, Mr. Hunter, in his recentwork, Our Indian Mussulmans.These causes, many in number, may be ultimatelyreduced, so far as India is concerned, to two: one, theIv. ] THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL. 113direct and aggressive action of Wahhabeeism preachedthroughout the Northern Provinces, by the missionariesof that sect, if indeed sect it can rightly be called; anaction hostile not to Christian or European dominiononly, but to every high thing that exalts itself againstwhat the followers of 'Abd-el-Wahhab conceive to bethe purity of Islam; the other cause indirect, being, ifrightly summed up, nothing else than that the Mahometans of India have passed from the conditions of aruling to those of a subject race; and have, as such, hadto endure the consequences partly of a want of pliabilityon their side, partly of some neglect and even unfairness,not to give it too harsh a name, on ours.All this is clearly and convincingly stated by thetalented writer above mentioned, in a manner sufficientfor the limits of his observation and his work, which isexclusively concerned with the Indian problem. But itis curious that most of what he has written is, mutatismutandis, applicable in great measure to a very differentEmpire, namely, the Ottoman, where, east of the Bosporus, similar causes have given rise to similar difficulties, and have necessitated measures bearing a considerable resemblance to some of those suggested by Mr.Hunter, for the disentanglement of our own knots. Thetopic is an interesting one; and its investigation canhardly fail to be, not exactly instructive, perhaps, butcertainly suggestive. Let us, accordingly, cross thebounds of the present century and the Himalaya, andextend our survey over times reaching further backthan Assaye or Plassy, and to lands beyond the IndianOcean and the Sea of Hejaz.A hundred years back, and he who, looking widelydown on the then enormous geographical tract of Islam,and in particular on its choicest garden, the TurkishEmpire, should have predicted the near disintegrationI114 THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL. JIV.and decay, there and elsewhere, of everything likeMahometan organisation and system, would hardly havedeserved the rebuke of rashness for his prophecy. Thedawn of multiplied nationalities, some indifferent, somealien, some even hostile to the system and ideal of Islam,was flashing up on the horizon; and before theirmingled rays the old symbol of the Crescent seemeddestined to fade away and disappear. The semi-Arabrevolt under ' Alee Beg the Georgian, with the avowedChristian sympathies and secret Russian alliances of itsleaders, had almost rent Egypt and Syria from the mapof the ' faithful; ' the varied populations of Roumania,Servia, and Greece had each become conscious of theirgrowing strength, and were already maturing, withinthemselves and without, those fierce outbreaks againstMahometan supremacy which marked the opening of themodern epoch; while in Anatolia itself, in Koordistan,'Irak, and the frontier-lands of the Black Sea, theCaspian, and the Tigris, a chaos of indigenous DerehBegs, Ameers, and Sheykhs, reigned lawless and supreme; and, with one sole exception, that namely ofthe Choban- Oghloo family of Yuzgat, were not lessnoted for their laxity in Islam, both theory and practice,than for their daring rebellion against its acknowledged,and so to speak, official head, the Sultan of Constantinople. Even where the ' Chaliph ' and the Kura'nretained their apparent, they had lost their real supremacy. Throughout the great Empire, Turkish orTurkoman, Koorde, Arab, or Moor, the most distinctiveprecepts of the Book ' were publicly set at nought,nowhere more so than in Constantinople itself; norwere the sacred cities themselves, Mecca and Medineh,much better. The wine-taverns of the Janissaries, therakee-shops of the citizens, the prostitutes of the Hejaz,and the Be-lillahs '-sons of Belial,' we may not"Iv. ] THE MAHOMETAN 6 REVIVAL. 115unaptly translate the name-of Bagdad and Cairo, hadbecome recognised institutions; opium-eating, too, wasnext to universal: the mosques stood unfrequented andruinous; while the public schools and colleges ofMahometan law and dogma had fallen into drearydecay, or feebly languished on amid poverty and neglect.An eclipse, total it seemed, had overspread the Crescent,of which a dim and darkened outline alone remainedvisible, foreboding disaster and extinction.Pass a hundred years, and a change has indeed comeover the spirit of the Eastern dream. The greatreactionary movement, the ' Revival,' originated wherescarce a spark of life had been left, by the too-famous' Abd-el- Wahhab, in the land of Nejd, has gradually butsurely extended itself over the entire surface andthrough all the length and depth of Islam; while theever-increasing pressure of the Christian, or, at least,non- Mahometan, West, has intensified the ' fanatical 'tendency, even where it has modified its specialdirection. For Islam' is a political not less than areligious whole; and the comparative feebleness of thedogmatic element of its composition in some quarters—in Northern and Western Turkey, for instance-is amplycompensated for by a greater strength of social andadministrative cohesion in those regions . It is hardlymetaphor to say, that the religious and the civil systemsof Mahometanism are nothing else than two sides of thesame medal; and it does not matter much for its useswhich lies uppermost.' The signs of the times.' In the East OttomanEmpire-that is, in those very countries whenceemanate the influences which, for good or for evil,most surely and most effectually communicate themselves to and permeate the Mahometan populationsbeyond the Indus-such signs are not wanting; andI 2116 THE MAHOMETAN [IV. 6 REVIVAL.all point in one direction. I pass over, because wellknown to every reader, the yet unbroken vehemence ofArab Wahhabeeism, and its recent aggressive attempts,and come to some less noticed, because less suddenlystartling, but in reality more deeply significant, indications of Revival ' in Oriental Turkey. And, certainly,these indications are of more importance to us, therulers of twenty millions of Mahometans, and to theworld in general, than the fierce intolerance itself of'Abd-Allah- Ebn- Feysul and his restless Metowwa's,'because they are connected, not with special butuniversal, not with transient but permanent causes ofgrievance and strife. I will content myself with statinga few remarkable facts, leaving collateral incidents andresults to inference or minuter observation.The first is the recent modification of the non-denominational or Rushdee ' public schools.These schools were, as everybody is aware, establishedunder official influence and patronage, and partly withthe aid of official subsidies, some twenty years since, inevery considerable town or centre, agricultural or mercantile, over the face of the East Ottoman Empire.Their avowed object was the promotion of a purelysecular and non- denominational ' education . The' course' pursued in them, at their first institution,consisted partly of languages, amongst which those ofEuropean family, especially French, held the foremostplace; partly of general history, mathematics, naturalsciences, and the like. They were intended for, andduring some time were in fact frequented by thechildren of the middle and upper class Christian parentsno less than of Mahometan, without distinction of sector dogma; and their ultimate scope was to qualify therising generation, of whatever religion or race, for acloser and more amicable contact with the people andIv. ]THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL.'117the ideas of the West-a contact based on wider knowledge, and tending to culminate in intellectual andmoral fusion.CThis was twenty, fifteen, years since. But, strange tosay, stranger still to see, there are now throughout theOttoman provinces no stricter denominational,' that is,Muslim schools, than these very ' Rushdee' institutions;and if we poll the lads who attend them, and they aremany, we shall scarcely find among a hundred turbanedscholars one single child of Christian creed or parentage.The education of the Rushdee ' college so wide in itsoriginal programme, has in almost every instance without the walls of the capital, or rather of EuropeanisedPera, restricted itself to the study of the Turkish,Arabic, and Persian languages, with grammar and logicin accordance, Nahoo ' and ' Muntik;' to the authorswho treat of Eastern, that is Mahometan history, institutions and laws, to the physics of Kazweenee, and thegeography of Masa'oodee; European tongues, Europeanlearning, European sciences have dwindled to absoluteextinction; they have departed without being desired,and no one seeks after them or regrets. Masters, pupils,and teaching alike, let alone prayers, usages, and all thedaily or weekly accessories of school education, are, innineteen cases out of twenty, as thoroughly and emphatically Mahometan as an ' Omar or an Othmanhimself could desire; all else is combated or ignored,the training and the trained are once more on thenarrow line of Islam, and Islam only. By whomprecisely and how this change was effected, needs nothere to investigate; but the fact, the ' sign, ' is there.Another sign, one certainly good in itself, but questionable in its ulterior purport, is the great diminutionin the use, or rather abuse, of fermented and alcoholicliquors among the Mahometan populations, high and118 THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL [IV..low, from the shores of the Bosporus to the ' riverof Egypt.' It would be superfluous to call to mentionthe strictly prohibitive precepts of both Kura'n andHadeeth in this matter, or the continually recurringviolation of those precepts which every page of Easternhistory, from the reign of the Omeyyad Chaliphs downwards, bear witness to. But it is worthy of note thatan increasing or decreasing non-observance of this distinctive law has been at all times a kind of thermometrical test of the degree of Mahometan fervour atlarge; and that each period of failing and decadenceand Islam has gone through many such-has been invariably signalized by a public and audacious breachof the negative commandment. Thus, for example, itfell out in the dark decline of the Abbaside Chaliphate;thus again in the distracted epoch that preceded theestablishment of the Fatimite dynasty in Egypt; thusit was in the appalling chaos of Ottoman disorderand decay whence the Empire was in part upraisedby the Küprilee administration. While, on the contrary, the abandonment, or even the total, though ingeneral only, temporary closing of the wine and spiritshops has regularly coincided with a renewal of thatreligious zeal which forms the supplement of patrioticand national vitality in the East.Now the most superficial observer can hardly failto be struck by the difference which has arisen in thisrespect between the Turkish-I use the word in itsimperial sense-Mahometans of 1871 and those of onlythirty years since. The Turkish soldier is now aseminent in his abstemious sobriety as his predecessor,the Janissary, was in his shameless drunkenness; theTurkish sailor has abandoned the grog-shop to theMaltee, the Levantine, and the Greek; the Turkishnot unwashed, for an unwashed Mahometan is aIV.] THE MAHOMETAN 6 REVIVAL. 119contradiction in terms, but he whose rank and stationin town or village would correspond to our unwashed,no longer spends his chance piastre on a glass ofrakee and his night in the lock- up. Twice each yearthe great Mahometan festivals turn the entire Turkishpopulation out to three or four days of continuousidleness and amusem*nt, yet no extra duty necessitatedby popular insobriety devolves on the patrol and policeforce-a fact rendered still more remarkable by thecontrast afforded in this respect on the recurrence ofthe drunken Christian festivals about Easter and theNew Year. This abstinence, the heads of the districtpolice have repeatedly assured me, was by no meansthe rule twenty years since. Even the educated, or,so to speak, modernised alla Franca Turk, howeverlax he may be in other respects, is as shy of indulgingin, and as anxious to conceal any propensity he mayhave to forbidden drinks, as he was formerly ostentatious, and, after a manner, insolent in his display oftheir abuse; and the few of this class who might comeunder the provisions of a ' Habitual Drunkard's Act, 'did such exist in Turkey, are, with hardly an exception,elderly men, whose habit dates from a generation nowalmost passed away, and whom I have often heardgrumbling at the novel strictness which, in public asin private festivities, has substituted water, or at leastcoffee, for the customary wine and spirits of formertimes. Egypt alone would seem, if accounts be correct,to form in this particular an exception to the generallaw of Mahometan progress, or retrogression; yet evenin Egypt my own observation would lead me to thinkthat the westward and alcoholic tendencies of its upperclasses and rulers are only superficial, and find littleor no correspondence among the masses.Akin to this change is the exacter observance of120 THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL [IV. .Ramadan. Travellers' books-Eōthen among the rest,if I remember rightly-used to abound in amusingtales of the tricks and evasions to which Mahometansof all classes were said to resort in order to elude thepenance of the monthly fast. If these tales were oncetrue, or at least had their foundation in truth, theycertainly are quite obsolete now-a-days. High and low,the Stamboolee Field-Marshal Pasha, and the ragged' kaikjee ' or boatman, alike go through the respectivelabours, sedentary or active, of their weary day, unrefreshed by food, drink, or smoke, in equal self-denial,discomfort, and piety; and even when welcome nighthas fallen, few in the midst of their merriment omitattendance at the interminable ' Teraweeh ' or prayerrecitals of the mosque, peculiar to the season; whilecountless private devotions and Kura'n-readings claima lion's share of the vacant hours. That, after allthese, the Muslim finds no less pleasure in attendanceat the licentious spectacles of the ' Karaguz,' or stillmore licentious doings of certain other places of resort,where the theory that coffee acts as a check on thegrosser passions of men finds a too practical refutation,no way proves laxity in his faith; followers of Islam ,like those of every other known creed, being alwaysready toCompound for sins that they're inclined to,By damning those they have no mind to;orthodoxy here, as elsewhere, covering the multitudeof " what may be termed, in one respect, compatible'transgressions.A third, and, in its way, a very important ' sign,'is the progressive diminution in the number of Europeans, and, indeed, of Christians generally, in Turkishemployment, particularly in the Military and PublicWorks Departments. Twenty years ago, to be aIV. ]THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL.121Frenchman, an Italian, a Hungarian, or a Pole, wasalmost a sufficient title in itself for a good post, a highsalary, and a sure advancement in the Ottoman service ,where wanted, a Christian, and if possible a European, ' seemed to be the stereotyped advertisem*nts ofrequest. The numerous works, or at any rate, concessions of roads, bridges, landing-places, and the like,were hence almost wholly in the hands or under thedirection of French adventurers and Polish refugees, somuch so, indeed, that to the mismanagement, dishonesty, or incompetence of these very men may benot unfairly attributed much of the general absence ofsolid progress in these undertakings; the Mining andForest Departments had a manifest tendency to followin the same direction, only that here Native Christians,' Greek or Armenian, have established a preference. Meanwhile, the various branches of themedical profession were the favourite experiment-fieldof Italian quackery; while Hungarians, Croatians, andtheir like, gravitated towards military and adminstrative employments.Turn to the present day, and we see the foreignelement in one and all of these departments undergoinga rapid process of elimination by the Turkish, theChristian by the Mussulman. The great military roadjust completed,-after a fashion, it is true,-betweenTrebizond and Erzeroom, a work five years back whollyFrench, has, long before its termination, passed intoexclusively Turkish hands; the only Christian engineerretained on it to the end having been a native Armenian; the harbour works, civil or military, alongthe south Black Sea coast have followed suit; whilethe concessions for similar undertakings promised ormade to Europeans elsewhere are, so far as may be,persistently thwarted or nullified in their execution.122 THE MAHOMETAN [IV.' REVIVAL.Turkish doctors more and more replace, nor disadvantageously, the normal Italian practitioner; while inthe army the growing intensity of Mahometan spiritand practice leaves but a narrow and an uncomfortableberth for any one who does not regulate his life, professedly at least, by the precepts of the Kura'n andthe Sunneh. In a word, the tendency to exclude Europeans, and, where possible, native Christians, from theranks of service and public employment, is not lessmarked than was the eagerness to make use of themand to bring them forward a century ago. That theTurks, once pupils in mechanical art, have latterlybecome, or think that they have become, masters,may be accepted as part explanation; but the toneadopted on these matters by Mahometan officialsleaves no doubt that more is to be ascribed to the' purism ' of revived Islam, and its jealousy of rivalryor admixture.Lastly, every traveller throughout Asia Minor, Syria,and Koordistan, was formerly expected to note in hisjournal and transfer to print remarks, not wholly thenunjustified by facts, on the declining energies of Islam,evinced by decaying mosques, abandoned schools, andruined buildings of public hospitality or charity. Muchof this kind of book ' stuffing ' was, indeed, due tomisconception and exaggeration, still the deficiency ofnew religious educational constructions during the firsthalf of the present century must have been real, inasmuch as it is noticeable even after this lapse of time.But were I, on the other hand, to attempt the catalogue of mosques, colleges, schools, chapels, and thelike, repaired or wholly fresh-built in the last fifteenyears within the circle of my own personal inspectionalone, several pages would hardly suffice to containit. Trebizond, Batoom, Samsoon, Sivas, Keysareeyah,Iv.]THE MAHOMETAN 6 REVIVAL.' 123Chorum, Amasia, and fifty other towns of names unknown, or barely known, in Europe, each can boastit* new or renovated places of Mahometan worship;new schools, some of law, others of grammar, othersprimary, have sprung up on every side; new worksof charity and public bequest adorn the highways.The ' wakoof,' or mosque-lands, have latterly become afrequent subject of official or semi-official enquiry; notin the view of resumption or confiscation, but of abetter and more efficacious administration to the endsfor which they were originally set apart. Meanwhile,year after year sees a steady increase in the numberof pilgrims to the holy places of Islam; and, althoughthe greater facilitation consequent on steam has undoubtedly contributed not a little to this result, muchmust also be put down to the growing eagernessmanifested by all, high and low, to visit the sacredsoil, the birthplace of their religion and Prophet;while the pride that each town or village takes in its' hajjees ' is manifested in the all- engrossing sympathythat accompanies their departure, and the triumphantexultation of the entire populace that welcomes themhome. It may not have been less a thousand yearsago: it certainly could not have been more.Other ' signs of the times ' might be added, but theycan be fairly reduced to the four already given, orconjectured from them; and all combine in witnessingto the energy and the breadth of the Mahometan' revival.' Enough to say, that from ' him that sittethupon the throne,' the Sultan of Constantinople, ' Abdel-' Azeez himself, down to the poorest ' hammal ' orstreet- porter on the wharves, it embraces every class,every nationality within the Ottoman Empire, northand south, Turks, Turkomans, Koordes, Arabs, withtheir respective sub-branches and cross-races; that the124 THE MAHOMETAN [IV. ' REVIVAL.recent Circassian exiles, who, on their first arrival,hardly knew a morning prayer or a verse of the Kura'n,are now in Muslim exactitude and fervour inferior tonone; and that while all the temporal advantagesoffered by European protection and support, not tomention the direct persuasion and indirect subsidy ofwell-to-do missionaries, can scarcely, or indeed moretruly not at all, procure a single convert from Islamto any form of Christianity, Greek, Armenian, Catholic,or Protestant, on the other hand a reverse processyearly enrolls a very sensible number from one oranother, or all of these sects, under the unity of theGreen Banner. This in Turkish Asia; while fromAfrica reports reach us of whole Negro tribes abandoning their hereditary fetich for the religion calledof Abraham; and, after all due allowance made fordistance and exaggeration, the current idea, that theLibyan Peninsula will soon be, what its best portionsin North and East already are, a land of Islam, seemsby no means destitute of probability.To sum up, Mahometan fervour has first beenthoroughly rekindled within the limits which its halfextinguished ashes covered a hundred years ago; and,next, the increased heat has, by a natural law, extended over whatever lies nearest to but beyond theformer circumference.Now all this should be borne in mind when we takecounsel on our Indo-Mahometan subjects; and weshould accustom ourselves to look on them, not asan isolated clique, girt in by our power, our institution, and, if need be, our bayonets, but as part andparcel of the great brotherhood that radiates, so tospeak, from Mecca, as from its centre, to the shoresbeaten by the wild waves of the Atlantic on the West,and to the coral-reefs of the Pacific on the East; fromIV. ] THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL. 125the confine-steppes of frozen Siberia, to the bananagroves of the Malay Archipelago. With more justicethan the first converts of Christianity, the Muslimmay boast that the multitude of them that believeare of one heart and of one soul; ' loss or gain arereckoned among them in common, the grievance of oneis the grievance of all; and the enemy of one frontieris hated up to, and, where possible, assailed from themost distant other.So strong, indeed, is the bond of union supplied bythe very name of Islam, even where that name coversthe most divergent principles and beliefs, that, in presence of the infidel,' the deep clefts which divideSoonnee and Shee'ah are for a time and purpose obliterated; and the most heretical sects become awhileamalgamated with the most uncompromisingly orthodox,who, in another cause, would naturally reject and disavow them. Very curious in this respect is the evidenceafforded by Mr. Hunter; nowhere more so than in thelight he throws, almost unconsciously it would seem,on the true character of the so-called Wahhabeemovement, spreading from the Rebel Camp of Sittanato Lower Bengal, and re- concentrating itself in thecentres of Maldah, and at Patna in particular. Herewe have the most simple and rigid form that Islam hasever assumed, namely, the puritanical Unitarianism ofthe Nejdean Wahhabee, combined with all that theNejdean Wahhabee as such would most condemn Imean the superstitious belief in a coming Mahdee,' theidea of personal and, so to speak, corporeal virtue andholy efficacy in the Imam ' of the day; and, lastly,with the organised practice of private assassination, apractice long held for distinctive of the freethinkingIsma'eleeyeh, and their kindred sects among the Rafideeheretics. How far the typical Wahhabees of Arabia are""126 THE MAHOMETAN [IV. ‘ REVIVAL.from these credences and usages myself can best testify.At Riad I have repeatedly heard the abhorrent phraseswith which, almost under breath, as men speaking ofsomething too horrible to mention, my friends characterised the idolatrous reverence of the Persian ' Wakeel,'then resident in the town, for his expected Mahdee,' atitle reserved by the Kura'n exclusively to God alone.And, for what regards the Imamat, I have twice, oncein the village of Rowdah on the frontier of Woshem,once in the town of Jelajil, in the most orthodox province of Sedeyr, been myself invested for the noncewith the character and duties of Imam, and as suchhave conducted the customary congregational worship.Yet no townsman or villager, then gathered in themosque, was so deluded as to ascribe to me the veryleast personal sanctity or spiritual superiority of anykind . I was in their eyes a Muslim, of generalgood character, not in debt, and of a more than averageacquaintance with the Kura'n and the stated forms ofprayer; and this was all that was required in my instance, as it would have been in any other throughoutNejd. As to the assassinations recorded in my CentralArabian History, and the subsequent murder of blindold Feysul, these were due not to Wahhabeeism, but toprivate revenge or external causes. But in India, andmost notably on its North-Western frontier, the Shee'ahsuperstitions of Imam and Mahdee,' with the secretassociation and murderous practices of the Isma'eleeyeh,or assassins, so long established in the neighbourhoodof these very provinces (A.D. 1000-1200 circiter) , andnot improbably, as I have heard suggested on excellentauthority, still maintaining an underhand existencethere, have all combined together, and been toughlywelded into one formidable weapon of attack on thecommon foe, the uncircumcised infidel of the land,IV.] THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL. 127governing or governed. But how fervent must be theIslamitic glow required for such a welding, let testifythe hopeless failure of analogous attempts made age byage to bind in one the sundered branches of Christianity;and Greeks and Catholics at internecine war within thewalls of Constantinople, while Mahomet II with hismonster artillery thundered at the gates.This is no light thing; Islam is even now an enormous power, full of self-sustaining vitality, with asurplus for aggression; and a struggle with its combined energies would be deadly indeed. Yet we, at anyrate, have no need for nervous alarm, nor will itsquarrel, even partially, be with us and our Empire, solong as we are consistently faithful to the practical iwisdom of our predecessors, that best of legacies bequeathed us by the old East India Company.Here a word may not unsuitably find place on thevery shortsighted policy which, for the sake of a littlepresent saving, or to satisfy the ever-craving mania of' paring down,' would reduce to a mere nothing ourmost effective foreign representation, that is, our Consular, in those very countries from the shores of theBlack Sea to those of the Hejaz, which are in an eminent degree the focus of growing heat, and, it is farfrom improbable, of future conflagration. To obtain atrustworthy and accurate knowledge of the patient'spulse, a fugitive visit and an inexperienced hand areeither insufficient; and to ensure full and reliable information as to the conditions of Mahometan excitement in the Asiatic districts, not less than to acquirea certain ascendancy of position which may render thatexcitement, ifnot wholly innocuous, at least less injuriousto ourselves, men of more than average power and cultivation are required; and, it might seem superfluous inthe case of any other profession to remark, such men128 THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL [IV..are not to be had for nothing. The imprudent ignoranceof an unqualified British resident appointed for anyother motive than for suitableness, acquired by patientstudy or experience to the post he has been designatedto fill; the intriguing restlessness of a Levantine or aMaltee, decorated with the British Consular title, atJiddah or Damascus, —and an inadequate salary or fortuitous patronage often implies something of this kind,or worse, may suffice to endanger not only our ownimmediate interests at those very places, but may evenby its results compromise the enormous and tangiblestake of our Indian possessions.But most idle, however seemingly shrewd it may be, isthe policy that would virtually sever our Indian from ourImperial Government, and, while drawingbetweenthetwoan unreal line of demarcation, would refuse to burden, asthe phrase goes, the latter with the most trifling measure,the most fractional expense, referable, even indirectly, tothe advantage and benefit of the former. Islam is one;the British Empire, too, is one: and though a numerousclass of purely local, or, it might be expressed, municipaloutlays ought to be and are properly referable to Indiaand its administration alone, yet rulers should rememberthat in the wider category of cause and effect, reachingto the very existence of our Indian dominion, that dominion, in virtue of which more than aught else we arewhat we are, their solicitude ought not to be limited bythe Bay of Bengal on the one side and the Persian Gulfon the other; no, nor even the Red Sea. That thisproposition has a special significance where Islam andits followers are concerned, my readers will have alreadyperceived, or I have written to very little purpose.But to return to the universal ' revival ' itself: towhat cause or causes shall we ascribe it? and is themovement transient in its nature or likely to last? andIV. ] THE MAHOMETAN 6 REVIVAL. 129what difficulties or disturbances has it already produced,or may yet produce, in the existing order of things,that is, outside of India? For with its immediateresults in India Mr. Hunter has made us sufficientlyacquainted. Those who have paid attention to thesomewhat analogous rejuvenescence, if the phrase beallowed, of Christianity, and more particularly Catholicism, in the West, during the same period of time,that is, the last hundred years, might be almost temptedto ascribe both of these simultaneous phases of humanthought to some unseen, powerful Influence-some allpervading ' Weltgeist,' or at least Zeitgeist '-thusmanifesting his action on our common race in Asia as inEurope. But we can easily find more visible and definite agencies at work in the present renovation ofIslam.<The first is, undoubtedly, the Wahhabeeism of Nejd.However hostile in itself the ordinary practices andreceived opinions of the ' Soonnee,' or orthodox body,hostile, too, to the Turkish sceptre and to Ottomanorganisation, yet the zeal it contains for the cause ofIslam in general, and the immense energy of its pureMonotheism, have not failed to arouse correspondingfeelings and sympathies even among those who, in otherrespects, are its professed enemies, and to make halfconquests where denied a complete victory. For certainly, political and national considerations apart, apartalso from the speciality of non-smoking, and some othertrifles of the same description, no genuine Mahometanbut must feel that the doctrines of 'Abd-el-Wahhab arein very truth the doctrines of the Kura'n and theProphet. Accordingly, the whole school of Islamiticteaching has, while denouncing them in one phase,accepted and been modified by them under another;and men at large have learned to set a higher value onK130 THE MAHOMETAN " REVIVAL [IV. .Islam , of which they have thus re-perceived the dignity.Not the common people only, but many of the highestand best educated classes, even the Sultan himselfamong the number, are distinctly inclined to the stricterschool, and so are most of the principal doctors andteachers throughout the Ottoman East, as he will findwho visits the ' Medresehs ' at Of, Koniah, Damascus,Gaza, and even Mosool. Much in the same way asProtestantism in the sixteenth century, though unablewholly to overthrow Romanism, yet exerted a real andpenetrating influence on it, and wrought the indirectreform of many an abuse that it could not reach andcrush face to face, so has the Wahhabeeism of our owntimes modified and purified the very system it condemns,and spread its own tinge over the entire surface ofIslam."A second cause is European pressure. The Mahometan populations of the East have of late yearsfully awakened to the manifold strength and skill oftheir Western Christian rivals; and this awakening, atfirst productive of respect and fear, not unmixed withadmiration, now wears the type of antagonistic dislike,and even of intelligent hate. No more zealous Mahometans, no more exclusive Unitarians,' to adopt theirown phrase, are to be found in all the ranks of Islamthan they who have sojourned the longest in Europe,and acquired the most intimate knowledge of itssciences and its ways. It is a mistake, common amongEuropeans, universal among Frenchmen, to imaginethat Asiatic Mahometans esteem or desire them themore for their mechanical, artistic, or inventive skill.Railroads, steam-engines, telegraphs, and the like,excite now indeed no prejudice, and are, where circ*mstances favour, willingly adopted; but their inventorsare not thought one atom the better of for all theseIV. ]THE MAHOMETAN " REVIVAL. 131things; while, on the other side of the account, Mahometans are keenly alive to the ever-shifting uncertainties and divisions that distract the Christianity ofthe day, and to the woeful instability of modernEuropean institutions. From their own point of view,Muslims are as men standing on a secure rock, and surveying the ships driven hither and thither on thestormy seas around; and they complacently-shall wesay, unreasonably? -contrast the quiet fixity of theirown position with the unsettled and insecure restlessnessof all else.Islam, rightly understood, is neither so flexible norso inflexible as outsiders would have it. It can heartilyadmit all introduction of material improvement andcomfort, and has no serious objection, special causesapart, to any given form of dress or habitation, of scienceor government. But Western speculation and utilitarian positivism run off from it like rain from a waterproof; while, again, on the point which its followershold to be inherent and essential to their creed and tothe social relations necessarily deduced from it, theyneither know how to change, nor will. I praise not, asI blame not; but the facts are so.Mr. Hunter mentions the effect lately produced atCalcutta by the speech of a venerable Sheykh, AhmedEffendee Ansaree by name, who recounted to an attentive audience of Indo-Mahometans the favourableimpressions produced on his mind during a visit toConstantinople; and dwelt more especially on theintimate alliance and mutual good-will existing, saidthe Sheykh, between the Ottoman Sultan and theEnglish nation. Ahmed Effendee was a stranger anda guest, seeing the outside of a capital city, andcoming in contact mainly, it would seem, with thequietest and best of its inhabitants; but had he freK 2132 THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL. [IV.quented the inner provinces, and lodged under theroofs of dispossessed Dereh- Begs and their descendants,his picture might, I fear, have exhibited fewer lightsand more shades. Anyhow, it was well that he spokeas he did; had he spoken otherwise he would havedeserved little commendation. But it is also well thatwe, who are neither Indians nor Mussulmans, shouldunderstand how much there was of truth in his account, how much of error. Thus far was error; thatany real sympathy or stability of friendship on intrinsic motives has ever existed or exists between thetwo tribes, the Asiatic and the European; the good-willof Turkey and England is one merely of mutual advantages, real or supposed; and its intensity andduration are to be measured by those advantages alone.But the Sheykh's narration contained a truth, and amost valuable truth, namely, that the tolerance, thejustice, and the steady adherence to our given word,which have, on the whole, characterised us in our dealings with Turkey and the East, let cynics and rhetoricians say what they list, have not indeed renderedus the brothers, but have thus far removed us fromthe category of the enemies, of Islam. And, it is noless certain that, even without the support, valuablethough it really is, of Fatwahs ' and ' Ilans,' so long aswe thus rule India, in toleration, in justice, and truth,that country will always be to the genuine Muslim, ifnot Dar Islam, yet not Dar Harb ' either, but ' DarAman; ' an abode where the faithful ' may dwell insurety of conscience as of right; and feel well assured,even with the Hadeeth ' open before their eyes, andthe Kura'n in their ears, that they nowise imperil theirheritage of milk, honey, and ' kawther ' in the nextworld, by enjoying the peaceful blessings of this, underBritish protection, whatever may in strict MahometanIv.]THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL. 133credence be the future allotment of the Britons themselves in the Day of Decision.·But, this Revival, ' is it of a transient nature, or permanent? Let those who can argue from causes toeffects, look at the former, here faithfully assigned,and then pronounce on the probable character of thelatter . Doubtless, no creed, no articled system, can beabsolutely lasting upon earth; and the means whichMuslims, Christians, and whoever else, revere, will intheir turn pass away and be superseded. But of all theforms and systems now extant, none has, it would seem,a greater intrinsic power of resistance and persistencethan Islam; and every ' Revival ' necessarily partakes inits measure of the durability of that which is revived.The Ottoman Government has felt this, and hasshaped its course accordingly. Threatened by dangersand embarrassed by difficulties not much unlike thosewhich we have latterly experienced in India, they havemet them by a statesmanship, part of which may betaken as a direct hint or landmark to ourselves, part, asit stands, inapplicable to us, yet suggestive of whatmight be done by us or left undone east of the Indus.Thus, for instance, while we have had our Sittanacamp and its fanatics, Nejd and its warlike Wahhabeeshave played a not wholly dissimilar part on the Ottoman frontier. To these uncompromising foes the Turkshave steadily shown themselves equally uncompromising adversaries, with no alternative to propose, butsubmission or the sword; and God forbid that weshould be more milky to the rebels of the North-West,or ever offer any other alternative than obedience ordeath to the avowed enemies and rebels of our Empire.But with Wahhabees and assassins the course is clear.Setting these aside, we come to the more complicatedquestions which regard the staple, and in ordinary134 THE MAHOMETAN [IV.· REVIVAL.circ*mstances peaceably disposed Mahometan population. This, too, in Asia Minor, Syria, and throughout the East Ottoman territory, has, with its religious' Revival,' learned to feel and to repine against itsgrievances; and these grievances, curious to note,have borne an unmistakable resemblance to thoseof our own Indo-Mahometans, whose cause has beenso ably and judiciously pleaded by Mr. Hunter inthe concluding chapter of his work. Old families, oncerulers, now decaying in discouragement and neglect;education diverted from its former Muslim channelinto courses more or less incompatible with Islam;careers once open to the true ' believer ' only, but fromwhich he now finds himself pointedly excluded; publicfunds once destined primarily and chiefly for the maintenance ofthe ' straight faith,' and its lore, now turned asideto other and even to hostile purposes; the whole currentof official patronage and favour set in a directiondiametrically counter to Islam; last and worst of all,Muslim law, the law based on the Soonnah, Hadeeth,and Kura'n, and as intimately and vitally connectedwith them as a tree with its roots, superseded by codesand courts of ' infidel ' origin, and at times of ' infidel 'members and ways of practice. None of these werewanting in the Turkey of 1830-54; and, though toevery accusation a solid cause might have been assignedand a plausible answer given, yet from a Mahometanpoint of view the cause would have seemed insufficient,the answer unsatisfactory, while the accusation and thegrievance would still remain heavy and real.A little more, another Sultan on the throne like'Abd-el- Mejeed, another minister at the head of theDivan like Resheed Pasha; and a crisis could hardlyhave been averted. The general ' Revival ' was goingon and strengthening; the not less general discontentIv. ]THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL.1356was ripening here and there into conspiracy; and thealla Franca barriers of the modernised Stambool organisation were openly menaced by the advancing tide.But the Osmanlee is rarely taken at fault; and thoughslow to move is sure; The lame donkey,' says theArab alluding to Turkish policy, ' ends by catching thehare.' The Crimean war and its successes, real at thetime for the Ottoman Empire, brought for a space aseasonable diversion of feeling; and before that hadpassed away ' Abd- el- Azeez was Sultan, and the ship ofstate trimmed her sails to the breeze anew rising intoa gale.How the educational difficulty was got rid of, wehave already seen at the outset of this article; all thatnow remains to add on the subject is, that, althoughthe transformation of the non-denominational or ' infidel'into denominational or Muslim schools, was in greatmeasure the spontaneous result of widespread popularfeeling, and the necessity of things, yet the Government bore its share in the change, not only passivelyby the absence of all opposition, but also actively byquietly encouraging it through its servants and officials.Christians of every sect, Greeks, Armenians, and whatelse, continued to give the education they preferred totheir own rising generation, but on their own account;the public method of training for the young of Islamwas gently replaced under the direction of Islamonce more. We have also glanced at the widespreadfoundation and endowment of new colleges, schools,mosques, and similar institutions, by which the disquietude occasioned through a different employment ofthe resources of the land was obviated. In each ofthese measures may be found, not indeed exactly alesson, yet a hint for ourselves; a hint corroborative inits way of Mr. Hunter's proposals regarding Indo-136 [IV.6THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL.Mahometan education, and which, in substance at least,may be followed out not less satisfactorily on the banksof the Ganges than on those of the Euphrates and theHalys .The more dangerous discontent of the old and disoccupied families of the land, has been in manyinstances appeased by a judicious allotment of civil,and more often of military employment. A noble, butdisaffected Koorde, on his way to Constantinople witha burden of many, nor unfounded grievances, applied toa friendly Turkish provincial Governor of Anatolia foran introduction to the all-powerful ' Aali Pasha, PrimeMinister of the Empire. For sale; buy,' were thewords, written in Arabic, and unintelligible to thebearer, inscribed on the paper which was given himat his request. A couple of months later the KoordishBey and his two eldest sons, fine dark-eyed youths, thevery images of their father and fearing no created beingbut him, were holding honourable and advantageouscommissions in the Turkish army. That this methodhas not been more often pursued, and the old scorebetter wiped out, is the fault of the black- coated clique,the Stambool bureaucracy; a fault they may one dayhave cause to rue. However, to the most urgent cases,conciliatory remedies, of which the above is a tolerablespecimen, have, in fact, been applied; and here again auseful hint, with appropriate modifications, of course,and due regard to times, places, and circ*mstances, maybe taken.But the difficulty of all difficulties was that createdby the application of non-Islamitic law to Islamiticsubjects. Law and religion are, most unfortunately onthe whole, not less bound up together in the Mahometan than in the Judaic system; and to tamper with theone is to trench dangerously on the other. Yet theIV.] THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL. 137ever-increasing influx of foreign settlement, enterpriseand policy, with the pressure exerted by foreign ideasand ways, seemed to necessitate some modification inthis matter; new tribunals were absolutely required,and the frequent presence of Europeans, or the implication of their interests, direct and indirect, exacted theintroduction in one form or other of European law. Touse a somewhat technical phrase, the establishment ofnon-denominational tribunals seemed no less inevitablethan that of non-denominational schools; and it wasprecisely the having recourse to such that the Muslimscould not stomach. In Islam, and Islam alone, theylived and moved and had their being; and Islam, andno other, should or could be, they held, their arbiterand judge. Nothing, in fact, had so intensely irritatedMahometan feeling throughout the length and breadthof the land as the new-fangled courts of justice; hateful under any circ*mstances, they were intolerable tothe sensitiveness of the Revival.' Yet the maintenance of these courts was, in the actual state of the East,an undoubted necessity. How then should the Ottoman Government, which, though secretly leaning to the' Revival ' as to its best ally, yet above all thingsdesired to conciliate each party and offend none, solvethe problem?CThe problem, like many others, was solved by anevasion; but the evasion was a skilful one.The newcourts were left, in seeming at least, untouched; but,the commercial and the mixed tribunals excepted, wereconducted, if not on the basis of, at least in fair accordance with, the Sunneh code. Meanwhile all intraMahometan causes, all questions of inheritance, contract,purchase and the like between Muslims, all acts ofmarriage or divorce, all incidents of social or family liferequiring legal intervention, were removed from the138 [IV.THE MAHOMETAN REVIVAL.recently-founded tribunals, and referred exclusively tothe ' Mahkemah,' the normal court of Islam, presidedover by the Kadee, with the Muftee for assessor, andthe 'Ulemah for counsel. Thus Mahometan life waswithdrawn from the dangers and inconveniences of nonMahometan law, and found itself securer than everwithin its own limits; renouncing for good the vainattempt to influence or mould others to itself, it wasguaranteed, in return, against being moulded or influenced by them.Can we derive hence any lesson or hint for our ownguidance with regard to our Indo- Mahometan subjects?A preliminary objection must be explained, before thisquestion can be answered.There are lands where certain phases of thoughtand conduct seem ever to reproduce themselves invariably and infallibly whatever be the new race andcreed that cover the surface of the ground, just asin certain soils the same weeds persistently re-appear,whatever crop be sown there by the husbandman.Thus it is, for example, with Egypt; thus too, andremarkably so, with India. There the sacerdotalsuperstition so proper to the Hindoo, has re-risenand infected with its taint the super-induced settler,the severe monotheist Muslim; so that we now seethe Indo-Mahometan regarding marriage, not to mention other incidents of life, no longer as a merelycivil and social, but as a religious contract, and investing the kadee—or kazee in his pronunciation-witha semi-priestly function and character, wholly alienfrom that personage in the genuine conception ofIslam. If additional evidence were wanted of thisHindoo leaven, and how far it has leavened thewhole lump, it may be found in the fact that, withinthe limits of Hindoostan, the judicial office, else-· 139 Iv. ]THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL.where strictly personal, and in degree capable ofhereditary transmission or successional right, is hereoften looked on as a matter of birth, and is handeddown from father to son. A doubt has consequentlyarisen in the minds of our own legislators - a doubtjustified by local conditions -whether in taking onourselves in India the nomination and the support ofthe Mahometan ' kazees,' we may not be assuming,or at any rate be plausibly accused of assuming, theposition of active promoters of Mahometanism itself?But it is not so. The semi-religious or sacerdotalcharacter of the Indo- Mahometan kadee and his functions is purely subjective, not objective; that is, itmay erroneously find place in some Hindoo mindsand appreciations, but has no real or legitimate foundation in fact and in Islam. The kadee of Mahometanorthodoxy is a civil officer, holding a civil appointment and performing civil duties, no others, for civil,social, or private life; and should the natural andvery pardonable ignorance of a British assembly onsuch matters arouse a ' Mrs. Grundy ' outcry of ' religion in danger' against our Indian Government,for doing what as the rulers of a Mahometan population they cannot refuse in justice and equity to do,the answer is ready and plain.This preliminary objection removed, it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that in what concerns the legal,or, better said, the judicial dilemma, we may, inrespect of our Indo-Mahometan subjects, wisely takea leaf from the book of our Ottoman friends. Whereplaintiff and defendant, where the parties contractingin marriage or otherwise, or rescinding contract, wheretestator and legatee are alike Muslims, let matters bebetween them in a court cognizant of Muslim civil law,and regulated, as near as may be, after Muslim fashion;140 THE MAHOMETAN [IV.' REVIVAL.and let the legal officers of such courts, from thehighest to the lowest, be invested with all the sanctionthat our own Indian Government-the only one onMuslim no less than on non-Muslim principles competent to do so within Indian limits can give. Akazee-el-kuza't in each Presidency, with a SheykhIslam at Calcutta, nominated by Government, salariedby Government, dependent on Government, and removable by Government—all conditions, be it observed,of the Sheykh-Islam and of every kadee in the OttomanEmpire itself-endowed with the appropriate patronagefor subordinate appointments, but requiring for thevalidity of each and every nomination our own confirmatory sign and seal; good Mahometan law collegesand schools, conducted under our supervision, andmaintained on our responsibility; these are what wouldgive us a hold over the most important, because themost dangerous, element in our Indian Empire, such asnothing else could give: a hold that the disaffection,did it ever occur, of others from within, or the assaultsofrival powers, not least of ' infidel ones ' from north orelsewhere without, would only strengthen.Let us be wise and understand this,' and not incurthe reproach of those, rulers too in their day, who' could not discern the signs of the times.' We can nomore check or retard the Mahometan Revival ' inIndia than we can hinder the tide from swelling in theEnglish Channel-I am writing on its fair shore-whenit has risen in the Atlantic. The Revival ' is a worldmovement, an epochal phenomenon; it derives from thelarger order of causes, before which the lesser laws ofrace and locality are swept away or absorbed into unity.But we can turn it to our own advantage; we canmake the jaws of this young-old lion bring forth for ushoney and the honey-comb. And this we can do with-IV. ] THE MAHOMETAN ' REVIVAL. 141out in the least compromising our own Christian character as a Government or as a nation. The measuresrequired at our hands in our Indian heritage are simplymercy, justice, and judgment; and these belong to nospecial race or creed; they are the property of all,Christian and Muslim alike—of West as of East, ofEngland as of Mecca.V.THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES OFTHE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER.¹(PUBLISHED IN THE ' CORNHILL,' NOVEMBER, 1868.)NOTICE.This Essay is in its form topographical; it contains some observations made by myself while on a tour of duty, more than four yearsago, through the extreme North- East provinces of the OttomanEmpire. Since that time I have revisited these same districts, andfound the march of events to be much as I had at first anticipated."Should, however, the proposed Euphrates Valley ' route, or rather,that of the Tigris, be carried out, considerable modifications may beexpected in the Turkoman- Koorde development here indicated. And as,if we do not take the Route into our hands, the Russians will intotheirs, such modifications may, under one form or another, be confidently expected. But it is little likely that Islam will be a loser inany case, though the Ottoman Empire, and the Anglo-Indian, too,perhaps may.INTERESTING as it is to watch the progress anddevelopment of nations, still more interesting is it towitness their first origin and beginnings; not only fromthe very rareness of opportunity for observing suchphenomena, but also from the peculiar and instructivecharacter of the circ*mstances which occasion andaccompany them. Now, during many years passed inThis paper was, in substance, given by the writer at the meetingof the British Association in Norwich, August, 1868.THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES. 143the East, the question has again and again occurred tomy mind, whether the productive powers of thoseregions which have given birth to so many nationalities,so many dynasties, so many empires, those regionswhence not only the outlying districts of Asia itself,but even Europe and Africa, have been so often flooded,were indeed wholly exhausted; or whether any ' newblood ' might yet be expected thence for transfusioninto the veins of this young-old world of ours, any newoutpourings into the stream of time? For a long whileI could not find any satisfactory answer to this query.Only thus much, that a protracted residence amongArabs, Syrians, Persians and Indians, central or southern,had convinced me that no such Revival ' could be expected from amongst them; that in those basins ofhuman life, the water, once so overflowing, had ebbedback for good into its normal limits, and that althoughArabs, Persians, Syrians, Armenians, Mahrattas, Tamilsand the like, might long continue to exist as such, eachrace moving on its gradually progressive or retrogressiveline, yet that no new springs of nation or empire could(-within the reach, that is, of any probable calculationbe expected to be broken up and opened in or fromthat part of the great deep of mankind. But latterly,during two years of residence, partly in Eastern Turkeyand partly in the adjoining Caucasus, I have foundmyself the bystander of a well-head of nationality, ina region where the process of production and formation is rapidly going on, where the elements assumefresh combinations, ferment, and in fermenting increase; promising at no distant day to crystallize intoa new nationality, with a type and destiny of its own,differing from any that have as yet gone before it.The scene of these vital energies, the region on whichwe may now, not unprofitably, fix a half-hour's attention,144 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.is the great Asiatic highland placed south-east of theBlack Sea and south-west of the Caspian. The limitsof this region are assigned: westward by the torrentriver Kizil-Irmak, the Halys of the ancients; southwardsby the Tigro-Euphrates valley, and what adjoins it; eastwards by the deserts and tracks of Central Persia, andnorthward by the Black Sea, Russian Georgia, and theCaspian. The highland itself is formed by a hugemountain- chain, or rather by several intertangledchains, to which the collective name of Anti- Caucasusmight be not inaptly given, as the whole system runsparallel to, and in formation and general character muchresembles, the well-known Caucasus, from which it isseparated by the wide valley of Georgia and the plainswatered by the Rion or Phasis, and the Araxes. Thusthe direction of this Anti-Caucasus, this Asiatic Switzerland, lies from north-west to south-east; that is, fromthe Anatolian coast behind Trebizond to the lofty peakof Demavend and the neighbourhood of Tebreez orTauris. It comprises the whole East of Anatolia, withnorthern Kurdistan, both parts of the Ottoman dominion, besides the Russian provinces of Erivan andKara-bagh, with the Persian province of Azerbeyjan;its central point is an old, almost a pre-historic, startingpoint in the history of our kind, the double cone ofArarat, and its never-melting snows.No part of the world is, it would seem, better fittedto become what men call the cradle of a nation. Thesoil, everywhere fertile, is, up to a height of 6000 feetand more above sea-level, rich to superabundance inall kinds of cereals, -corn, rye, barley, oats, and thelike; higher up are summer pasture lands, or ' yailas,'to give them their local name, of vast extent, clothedwith excellent grass; in the valleys below ripen all theproducts of our own South-European climate, —vines,v.]OF THE NORTH- EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 145fruit-trees, maize, rice, tobacco, and varied cultivation,alternating with forests unexceptionally the noblest thatit has ever been my chance to see: ash, walnut, boxwood, elm, beech, oak, fir, and pine. If to its aboveground riches we add the metallic products of the land,principally iron and copper, with not unfrequent silverand lead, and also, I am informed, but must speak withhesitation on a subject where so much technical knowledge is required, coal; add also a pure and healthyclimate, averaging in temperature that of SouthernGermany; add perennial snows on the heights andabundant rains in the valleys, whence flow down thosegreat rivers, Chorook, Araxes, Tigris, and Euphrates,with all their countless tributaries, and other watercourses of less historic note, but of scarce less fertilizingimportance, some to seek the Black Sea and the Caspian,some the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; -allthis, and we may reasonably conclude that few portionsof the earth's surface are, natural resources considered,better adapted for the habitation, increase, and improvement of man.The population, made up in the main from Armenians,Turkomans, and Koordes, was however, till lately, notdense, scarcely perhaps fifteen to the square mile, andwas, besides, somewhat on the decline. Want of roads,and insufficient or mismanaged government, may beassigned as the principal cause of so unsatisfactory acondition. But now all is rapidly changing. Russianpressure on the north-east is fast driving the Turkomantribes, once settled in farther lands, into the space justdescribed; the same pressure, of which we in Europecan scarcely form an adequate idea, has lately added anumerous, energetic, and increasing population in themyriads of Circassians and their kin, expelled fromtheir native mountains to find here, across the TurkishL146 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.frontier, the toleration and existence which Russiapersistently denies to her own non-Russian subjects.Persian anarchy, for it is no better, supplies also itsyearly quota of emigrants, chiefly Turkoman; whilethe somewhat lax hospitality of Turkey receives allthese new forms of life within the bounds of the empire,and allows them to combine and develope much as theychoose. And they are, in fact, now fast coalescing andorganizing themselves into a new nation.It would be impossible within the limits assigned bya notice like the present, to go over and investigate theentire extent of territory above traced out, or to followin detail the ethnological activities going on at eachpoint of its surface. I will accordingly restrict myselffor the present to the portion which I have most latelyand more thoroughly studied: that, namely, which liesimmediately along the north-east Turkish frontier, andwhich comprises whatever lies between the latitude ofBatoum, Kars, and the town of Moosh to the west, andthe Russian boundary, from the Black Sea to MountArarat, eastwards. From this strip we may estimatemuch of what passes in the adjoining districts. DuringAugust last duty required my presence at Kars, a placewell known to history as the stronghold of EasternTurkey, known also from its gallant though unavailingdefence, under British and Hungarian auspices, againstthe overwhelming forces of Russia, headed by Mouravieff.During my stay there I had the opportunity of formingacquaintance with some of the native Begs, or hereditarynobles, and between us we concerted a visit to thenearer- lying Eastern provinces, namely, those of Kagizmand, Shooragel, Ardahan, and Ajarah, provincessituated, as I have before implied, between the latitudeof Kars and the Russian frontier, reaching from Araratto the Black Sea.v.] OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 147South-east of the rocks of Kars, of its ruined citadeland dismantled batteries, stretches a wide and undulating highland, partly corn-field, partly pasture-land,breaking up into abrupt ravines and craggy heights as itapproaches the deep bed of the Arpa- Chai, or Barleyriver,' now the limit of the Turkish empire in thisdirection. Over this highland we set out on our way,mounted on the hardy horses of the country; and itwas a pretty sight as we descended from the heights ofKars into the grassy level. All the garrison of the fort,about a thousand in number, had been drawn up outsidethe gates under arms, to salute us as we went by: sowilled the Pasha of Kars, who, in answer to my remonstrances at such an excess of compliment, replied , ‘ It isonly right that all the people should see how Turkshonour and respect a representative of the EnglishGovernment.' But besides the Ottoman Pasha, hisofficials and soldiers, with whom, however importantcharacters in their way, we have nothing special now todo, there rode alongside and around a crowd of horsem*n, blending, in one gay and dashing multitude of twohundred or more, every specimen of the various elementsnow combining, if the world's destinies permit, into onenational whole. Omitting names, I may mention amongthe attending crowd, an old Beg, grave, silver-bearded,and with features partaking alike of the harsh Turkomanlines and of the more regular Georgian mould. Descended from the great Atabegs who have held thisland in fief from the earliest Sultans, he was himselffather of the chief now ruling over the very province ofShooragel on which we were now to enter. At a shortdistance further on the young Beg himself, gaily dressed,and with a large retinue of horsem*n, met us: hisKoordish descent on the mother's side had given him awild, almost a brigand look, which, blending with theL 2148 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.austere harshness of his father's expression, made himseem no less worthy than he really was to be ruler overthis populous but somewhat turbulent district, where atight hand and a sharp sword are often needed. In ourband rode also his kinsman, the chief of the greatest ofall the Koordish tribes, and decorated with the title ofPasha; he could command the obedience of at leasttwenty thousand families, all bearing his own name ofSilowan; his residence was at Alajah Dagh, or ' theVariegated Mountain, ' not far from Ararat; and therehe lived in a style much resembling that of a FergusMacIvor and his likes in our own Highland North. Hisdark complexion, long black hair, splendid figure andpowerful build, were well set off by his dress, all scarletand gold; he was covered with arms and embroidery; athorough Koorde; a dangerous enemy, as he has oftenproved himself, and a doubtful friend. But he is nowallied by marriage with the great Georgio-Turkomanfamily; and while, mindful of his rank, he rode slow andstately by my side, three handsome youths, his sons,gaily dizened in scarlet, gold and steel, like their father,careered the plain, unmistakable Turkomans, in allthat their mother could make them so.Such was a sample of the chiefs: their followers, as isusually the case among the lower orders, were still morecharacteristic in their dress and appearance. Some, thegreater number indeed, were genuine Turkomans, short,thick-set, heavy-featured men, with small eyes, brownor black and dusky complexions; their dress made ofdark cloth, trousers and jackets; and on their heads thenational black-wool coverings, slightly conical in shape,which have earned the wearers the nickname of KaraPapacks, or Black Caps,' by which they are commonlyknown on these frontiers. Armed with spear andpistol, rarely with sword or carbine, and mounted on(v.] OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 149small, strong-built, fiery horses, the riders had neverenough of galloping after each other, lance-throwingand pistol-firing in mock fight; utterly regardless ofbroken ground and rock, a severe tumble of horse andman was a matter of constant occurrence, and of muchrough merriment. These Turkomans are fearless andlovers of fight, but they possess also the more sterlingqualities of a dogged perseverance, and a power ofworking to an end hardly inferior to that claimed byour own Anglo- Saxon race. Their fathers, under theSeljook dynasties, Kara- Koiounlis and Ak-Koiounlis, menof the Black Shepherd clan and the White, long ruledover Western Asia; and the sons have a very distinctintention of doing no less, should their turn come.Whether they ever will or not, we shall try to guessfurther on. Others, again, were Koordes, handsomerand more Semitic-to use a worn-out nor very accuratephrase than their Turkoman companions, in face andappearance, gayer in dress, lovers of scarlet and brightsilk girdles, more addicted, too, to the use of the gunand carbine than the Turkomans. More active andfiery also, but less steady and dependable in work. Inthe union, daily cementing, of these northern Koordeswith the Turkoman basis, lies a great hope of power;each element seeming to supply that which is wantingin the other. Others again, and these were themost remarkable in appearance, were newly arrivedCircassians, still wearing their long mountaineer dressof grey or yellow cloth; the breast covered with inworked cartouche pouches; knives are in their girdles,long bright guns are slung at their backs, and on theirheads high cylindrical caps, of the kind that someCossacks also wear, of whitish wool the most. TheseCircassians are generally taller and better proportionedin stature than either Turkomans or Koordes, they are150 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.more regular, too, and handsomer in feature by far: theirhair is generally brown, occasionally auburn; their eyesblue, grey, or hazel. All wear the silver-mounteddagger of the Caucasus, a terrible weapon in close fight,straight, broad, double-edged, and pointed. Their character is much what might be expected of men who,with their fathers before them, have been lifelongengaged in guerilla war for liberty, religion, and evenexistence; such wars turn nobles into intriguers, andpeasants into brigands: it cannot be otherwise. Atfirst, too, they showed but little disposition to unite, oreven to agree with the elder races of their exile home.But now they, like the rest, are fast amalgamating, bymarriage and other social processes, with their Turkomanneighbours; and with this union they acquire moreorderly habits and steadier ways. In the Georgianpopulation too, freely sprinkled hereabouts from theearliest times, especially where we go northwards tothe Black Sea, the Circassians find something of theirown blood and kinsmanship, not severed from themhere, as is the case in Russian Georgia, by difference ofcreed. For all these various races are Mahometan; and,thanks to the violence of Russian bigotry and its encroaching fanaticism, much more earnest Mahometansthan they used to be in past years.To complete our cavalcade we must add to the picture the provincial judge of Shooragel, in his greenturban and wide blue robes, an elderly grizzled personage, but a native of the land, and though a man ofthe gown, not less good in the saddle than any of hisTurkoman kinsmen. Also a Mollah, or Queen's counsel (Sultan's counsel, we should say), white-turbaned,freshly arrived from his studies at Constantinople, nowfor the first time mounted on a young Turkoman horse,decidedly too much for the rider. There are others,v.] OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 151begs and chiefs, allied in kindred, and of various rank;of these, cross-descent has often made it impossibleto say whether Turkoman, Koordish, Circassian, orGeorgian predominates in their blood and brain. Thereare also a few negroes, lively and dashing, gaudilydressed, ånd noisy as elsewhere; great favouritesamong all.Such was our cavalcade, though varying from timeto time as to the precise individuals who composed it ,some dropping off and others replacing them, for agood month. Every day in the saddle, morning andafternoon, we traced from village to village, by valleyand mountain, a serpentine line, from Kars down toKagizmand, at the north-western foot of Ararat, closeunder the ' Variegated Mountain ' already mentioned.Throughout this district, called of Kagizmand, theKoordish element is numerically superior. Then up bythe strange ruins of Ani, once capital of Armenia, anddescribed by Sir W. Hamilton, now utterly desolate,through the great districts of Lower and Upper Shooragel; here the Turkoman population much outnumbers all others. So is it also in the yet higherlying province of Ardahan, north, which we nextvisited; while in the two Ajarahs, higher and lower,which we last traversed, till , through the noble forestsand wild ravines of the mountain-chain, we reached theshores of the Black Sea near Batoum, Georgian andCircassian blood prevails over all other. But in whatregards administration, feeling, and tendency, all theseprovinces are in fact one, governed by the same rulers,and bound together by community of interest, religion,and even topography.The entire length of our line of journey was 450miles; the district itself comprises about 20,000 squaremiles; the fixed population, to the best of my reckoning152 [v.THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBESnumbers about 700,000 souls, thus averaging thirtyfive to the square mile. The nomade or pastoralpopulation, if added to the above, would raise it tosixty at least.It would be pleasant to myself, for remembrance ispleasant, nor, I think, uninteresting to my readers,were I to describe in detail the memorials of past timewhich stud that historical region, the grandeur of itsscenery, the fertility of its produce, the rushing clearness of its many waters. Here are ruins more ancientand not less vast or architecturally graceful than thoseof Ani; some are of Armenian, some of yet earlier date,others of Georgian or Seljook construction. Nature, too,has her wonders. The wild black rocks of Kagizmandclustering up toward Ararat; the great clear lake ofChilder, fifteen miles in length by four or five in breadth,pure as the Swiss Vier-Wald Städter or Walen See,and in winter one firm sheet of waggon-traversed ice;the pine-forests, the precipices, the waterfalls, the richmountain vegetation, bright flowers, dark caves, andiron-laden springs of Ajarah, much surpassing eachand all the boasts of the most tourist-sought nooks ofSwitzerland or Tyrol, which now seem to me but tame;these also would deserve a notice, or at least an attempt.But we must pass them over for the present, and occupyourselves rather with what is, after all, of higher import, namely, the living inhabitants of the land andtheir condition.And, first, I could not but remark with some surprise-for I had come hither imbued with the generallyprevailing notion that the Ottoman territory in itsinterior would present little but waste lands and a diminishing population-that every height we crossed,every valley we entered, opened out to us one or morevillages, many of quite recent construction, each con-v.] OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 153taining from thirty to two hundred or more houses,and ringed by an inner belt of gardens and an outerone of widely cultivated corn-lands . The flat-roofedhouses, their whitened walls, the barns and fences,sometimes an oblong mosque with a little attempt atdome or minaret, shone gaily in the sun; often contrasting in their cheerful life with the black heavy stonewalls of some old Armenian church situated amongthem, and now long since abandoned to the ruin ofdisuse and neglect.6<C"Do you see those villages? ' said Yousef Beg, theTurkoman governor of a ' kaza, ' or sub-district, in theprovince of Shooragel, as he accompanied me throughhis territory. Thirty years ago there were only fifteenvillages here; now there are eighty-three.' I askedwhence this increase, and how. It is all my father'sdoing,' said he; and these new-comers are all fromRussia.' He then proceeded to explain to me thesystem adopted by himself, and by others also, forcolonizing the land. ' The Turkomans,' said he, ' ofErivan and Kara- Bagh,' -you will find these districtsin that part of the Anti-Caucasus chain which lies immediately south of Russian Georgia, and contains thegreat towns of Erivan and Elizabethpol, with the lovelyErivan lake: they reach from the Turkish frontiers to theCaspian, these Turkomans and the other Mahometantribes there dwelling are constantly on the look- out foran opportunity to escape from the territory now that ithas been incorporated into Russia. We on our sidekeep up a constant correspondence with them throughthe means of our agents, and make them free offer oflands, livelihood, and liberty among ourselves. Sooneror later they come, though they have sometimes difficulty in so doing, as the Cossack guards on the frontierhave charge to hinder their passage; when possible,·154 [v.THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBESthey bring their cattle and goods with them; sometimesthey cannot get them across. But whatever be theircondition, each family on arrival receives a plot orground; they find also help to build their houses, and athree-years' exemption from any tax or duty soever.They soon settle down comfortably; till the soil; andin this way the district, from poor and desert, hasbecome rich and populous.' To this explanation, givenby the Beg, I will add that these immigrations are ofconstant occurrence; they are, indeed, in some yearsmore numerous than in others; but the tide is alwaysflowing in, and at its present rate may fairly bereckoned at 1,000 families, or about 6,000 individualsof the Turkomans alone, per annum. By what exactmeans or ways all this is effected, need not here besaid. Suffice that I have reason to believe, or rather toknow, that during the coming years the movement willnot only not slacken, but will assume an extent anda rapidity far exceeding anything that has gone before.History, and, in the further East, the testimony orour own days, show us the Turkomans shepherds andneatherds in the main; rarely as fixed cultivators orvillagers . But from the pastoral life-unlike that ofthe hunter or savage-to the agricultural is but a step;and wherever an opportunity occurs, this step is readilymade; once made, it always tends to become irrevocable.The Turkomans are everywhere making it, and with itfind their consequent bettering in all ways. Their skillin agriculture, the wide and harvest-covered fields thatsurround their settlements, the comparative comfort oftheir dwellings, and the constructive ingenuity of thehuge stables in which their sheep and cattle find refugeand provender during the long winter months, all provethat their nomade condition in Central Asia is more theresult of circ*mstance than of an innate and irrepressiblev. ]OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 155bent; that under the forms of tribe they have the materials of a nation; and that the city, with all its consequences of wealth, culture, and peaceful civilization, isat least as natural to them as the tent and the mountainside. Sometimes gathered in groups, but now more frequently intermixed among the flat Turkoman dwellings,are the gabled roofs of Circassian cottages. When Isay Circassian, I mean to include under that generalterm several tribes, united often rather by communityin their mode of life, their aims and habits, than in theirorigin; at least so it would appear from their greatphysical and lingual diversities . Among these thereadiest to renounce any acquired ways of violence andplunder are the Abkhasians of West Caucasus; weshould also remark that amongst them the anti- Russianguerilla war was comparatively of very short duration.Their general conduct soon becomes excellent andorderly, whether they settle down into peasants ortownsmen. The most unruly, on the contrary, are theChechen, a numerous clan, of East Caucasian origin;yet they, too, amend in time. All have begun to showa tendency to intermarry with the natives around them,which will probably, in this part of the world, soonmerge their nationality in that of the Turkomans. Thiswill indeed be a loss to the linguist and the ethnographer; but it will be a gain to the Asiatic cause ingeneral.Of all the inhabitants hereabouts the most pertinaciously pastoral, and, in consequence, nomade, are theKoordes. The richer and nobler sort among them doindeed take to fixed dwellings, much resembling in construction those of the Turkomans; but the greaternumber remain shepherds, and prefer flocks to tillage.Hence I less often found them in the villages, but frequently witnessed or passed among their black tents on156 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.the high ' yailas,' or summer pastures, and on the rapidgrassy slopes . Unlike the Turkomans, Circassians, andGeorgians, their feelings are more clannish, and evenindividual, than national; but they are pretty sure tofollow the general course of those around them, wherewar or politics are concerned. In the former pursuitthey have always excelled; their courage is proverbial;their chiefs are such in fact, not in name only.But of all others the Georgians are they who, highor low, best ally with the Turkomans, and that tothe greatest mutual advantage. Physically they arehigher endowed than any of the other races, and theyare so mentally also; their only deficiency is in tenacityof purpose, whence they are easily swayed to oneway or another; still the obstinate fanaticism andthe dreaded tyranny of Russia has done much tosteady the Mahometan Georgians in their new andnational cause. Another reason-nor can it be calledan undue one-which goes far to facilitate their unionwith the Turkomans, lies in the treasures of femalebeauty frequently to be found in a Georgian family;and thus it comes that their alliance in marriage iseagerly sought after. I have also noticed that in theoffspring of mixed marriages hereabouts, the Georgiantype is apt to predominate. Still, numbers, and whatfor want of a better and equally concise word we mayterm basal ' qualities, will ultimately cause theGeorgian element to be merged in the Turkoman,rather than the Turkoman in the Georgian.Having thus noticed the various components of thepopulation, in what they differ, and in what theycombine, I will briefly mention the circ*mstances whichhave tended here to prepare the way for, and tofacilitate, the rise of a new and determined nationality,with a special bent and future. The uplands now thustenanted, and, some thirty years ago, comparativelyv. ] OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER.157empty, were before that time the abode of the dispersing and, on its own soil, decreasing Armenian race.Their national capital, indeed, once was Ani, very nearthe centre of the entire district. But their independence was lost centuries ago, and since that timecommercial, and, I must add, usurial tendencies, withlittle aptitude for pastoral or agricultural pursuits,had been ever tending to remove them from the islands,and to accumulate them on coasts and in cities, oftenvery far distant. At last, as if on purpose to completethe emptiness of these regions, the Russian Government had, in the days of Paschievitch, by every meansthat its agents could command, enticed away to withinits own limits to Russian Georgia and the fast depopulating Caucasus-the greater portion of the Armenian agricultural remnant. Thousands of Armenianfamilies then left their villages and fields from Erzeroum to the frontier, and emigrated under the equivocalMoses of Russian guidance towards Tiflis, where, however, not finding the expected blessings of a promisedland, they diminished, scattered, or perished . But intheir rear, a vacant space was thus formed, and it isnow teeming with Mahometan life; the Russians havedone their appointed task, that of destruction: butthey have also unwillingly and unwittingly done thework of Islam; they have converted Armenia intoTurkestan. In another manner, too, the Russians havecontributed towards the creation of a new and Mahometan nationality. They have not only suppliedspace, they have infused spirit. Pressure from without,common hatred and well-grounded fear, have gonefurther to weld these varied materials into one, andto give the new whole a fixed direction, than any skillor enthusiasm from within could ever have done. Itis probable that the effect will remain even after thecause has ceased.158 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.A third circ*mstance, not less influential than thetwo former, is the weakness of the very Governmentwithin whose territory the centre of the new formationis placed. True, the Ottoman Ministry, desirous ofassimilating this part of the empire to the rest, appointfrom time to time an occasional Stamboolee Pasha orBeg, to govern by the name and in the authority ofthe Porte. More still, by the fatal Tanzeemat of theSultans Mahmood and 'Abd-el- Mejeed, regulationsknown as reforms, but in reality destructions, all localand hereditary chieftancy here, no less than in the restof Turkey, has been legally and officially abolished, andthe old land-tenures, howsoever confirmed by firmanor usage, have been taken away. But on thesefrontiers, and at the furthest end of the empire, it isa far cry to Lochaber; ' and the native chiefs, Georgian,Koorde, and Turkoman, or rather each a mixture of allthree, with a stronger proportion of the last, do reallyexercise an authority and collect revenues scarcely lessthan their predecessors did in the good old days ofTurkey.Thus, in addition to the religious bond of Mahometanunion, a second powerful bond, namely, that of hereditary authority, exists and strengthens yearly. Norless efficacious to promote increase and vigour in thenew colony and nation is the land-system here observed. Each peasant, and between peasant andnoble there is no intermediary class, --is a proprietor,owning acres more or less broad, for the use of whichhe must, of course, pay fixed dues, and sometimesarbitrary exactions, but from which neither he nor hisfamily can be ejected by the will of either chief orgovernor. Land is never forfeited except where life isforfeited also. Thus, governed by their own nobles,and cultivating their own soil, not tenants at will butv.] OF THE NORTH- EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 159proprietors in full right, this population is in a positionmuch more favourable to every national and forwarddevelopment than is commonly the case throughout therest of the Ottoman empire. I should add that allmales hereabouts from their earliest childhood learnto ride and to handle arms, and both with much skill;so that at a moment's notice all are soldiers.Nor have the Turkomans, who form a fair threefourths ofthis confederation, and from whom the wholetakes its colouring and character, forgotten that theyare themselves the lineal descendants of the men who,under the great national dynasties of Seljook, Kara- Koiounli , and Ak-Koiounli, ruled over these very lands, andwith them over all Western Asia, from the Sea of Aralto the Ægean, -men of great military and no lessadministrative power; skilled in architecture also theruins of their great constructions at Erzeroum, Sivas,Kaisareeyah, and a hundred other spots still remain, witnessing to a grandeur of conception and graceful skillof detail rarely surpassed even in the West. Theseruins, colleges the most, bear witness also to learningand study, to a literature, history, philosophy, jurisprudence, poetry, imagination, once flourishing inexuberant variety, nor even now, in the East that is,wholly forgotten. Unable to withstand the Tartarflood poured in wave after wave from the East, andthe steady encroaching organization of the Ottomanson the West, these great dynasties broke up and fell;but their ruins have for four centuries formed themain bulk of the population in Eastern Anatolia andNorth-western Turkey, and they await but the hourand the man to reunite into an edifice stately andsumptuous like that of past time.Thus not only within the limits above traced, butover vast tracks east and north where Turkoman160 THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBES [v.villages oror tents lie scattered, the materials of apowerful nation await reorganization, and tend rapidlyto coalesce round the point where that organizationhas already begun; invigorated by the infusion of newblood, that of the keen Circassian, the daring Koorde,and the more reflective Georgian. Here, too, is oneruling family, men of practical good sense, tried courage,and long experience in action, men from amongstwhom the hoped-for head may well arise. Nor shouldwe wonder, under the reaction which Russian pressureis daily intensifying, to see such a one arise verysuddenly. Growths are quick in the East.Lastly, a remarkable symptom in this part of theworld, and one of deep significance, is the revival ofthe old Mahometan spirit, and that too under a formwhich may, in our day, be characterized as armed defensive, but which may soon become distinctly offensive andaggressive. This phenomenon is indeed partly due toRussian encroachment, and to a movement, felt ratherthan reasoned out, of antagonism to western advance; butit is also, and perhaps equally due, to the consciousness of youth and power. New mosques, new schools,new teachers, all on the severer model of what may becalled the nineteenth-century Mahometan revival, thesame of which Arab Wahhabeeism is the exaggeratedprototype, are multiplying over the face of the landeven in excess of actual requirement; and practicescontrary to the teaching of Islam, wine and spiritdrinking for instance, unfortunately too common someyears since, have now fallen into total discredit, and areabandoned to those in whom custom has rendered them,no less than many other vices, scarce a disgrace, Greeksand Armenians. Thus too Ramadan is observed, andprayers performed, with much greater exactitude thanformerly. High and low, the nation is in training.v. ]OF THE NORTH-EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 161And what will there be in the end thereof? Thedestiny of this new frontier nation, of this Turkomanrejuvenescence, may be one of three. Either they maybe, as many others have been, stamped out altogether,and effaced by the uniformity of Russian supremacyand despotism. This, though hardly probable, ispossible: Russia does advance in Asia, and means toadvance; that she covets, earnestly covets, the verylands over which we have now been travelling is, inspite of all esoteric and official denials, a certain fact;whether she will be allowed to attempt their incorporation into her vast dead territories, and whether, ifallowed, she will have strength to do it, were hard to say.Overrated by some, underrated by others, her resourcesare, for all accurate conception, practically unknown. Butthus much can be said for certain: if she succeeds itwill be in an evil hour for Asia; perhaps for othercountries also. Or, by a different course of events,the Ottoman Government, already not wholly unawareof the formation process now going on near its frontier,may, by a wise skill, attract to itself the yet fermentingelements, and gain for its empire an almost impregnablebarrier, not of fortresses but of men and mountains,against Russian encroachment and the fraudulent rivalryof Persia. Should the rulers of Constantinople, renouncing, for this district at least, the fatal policy andpseudo-centralization of their later Sultans, honestlyand in good faith recognize the unalienable authorityof the native nobility, legalize their titles, confirm orrestore the land-tenures, and, by a properly organizedmilitia commanded by its natural leaders, confer thedefence of the soil on those with whom its defenceis a present and personal interest, they may in theirturn rely on numerous and devoted subjects, on allthe advantages of free labour, and, in case of war, onM162 [v. THE TURKOMANS AND OTHER TRIBESbrave soldiers officered by men knowing their duty,and doing it with a will. Old associations, establishedprestige, and that religious sympathy which, in theEast, is almost a nationality, are all in their favour,and help to assure success. And thus, while theTurkish Empire slowly withers, as wither it eventuallymust, to the West, and its branches fall off one by one,new growth and vigorous shoots on the East may morethan repair its losses. But to put this policy in thatentireness of execution which alone can render itavailing, vigorous resolution is required; and it isto be feared that, what with the weakness of Ottomancounsels, a weakness of latter growth, but now rendered almost connatural by political timidity; withthe habit of concentrating all serious attention on thoseparts of the empire where talkative and superficialEuropeans are for ever infiltrating, suggesting, andmeddling with the half counsels of divided and doubtingminds; and the multitude of self- offered counsellors,in whom, whatever Solomon may say, there is notsafety; the Ottoman rulers will let the great chancego by, and the neglected gain will only then be properly understood and regretted when changed to bitterloss. And thus would follow and become fact thethird nor the more unlikely possibility, that is , of anew Turkoman dynasty, with fresh destinies and afuture of its own.But whatever be the event, we of the great Englishempire cannot be indifferent to it. Anxiety is sometimes felt at the news of Russian conquests in CentralAsia, and the security of our Indian possessions is bysome thought to be jeoparded by the appearance ofthe two-headed eagle in Bokhara or Samarcand. But,in truth, the Russian flag over Alexandropol, withina day's ride of Kars, is much nearer India. Let thev. ] OF THE NORTH- EAST TURKISH FRONTIER. 163line of country, the comparatively narrow line, ofwhich we have been now speaking, from Batoum andthe Ajaras on the Black Sea down to Bayazeed andVan, once become Russian territory; and the entireTigro-Euphrates valley, now separated from Russiaand from Russia's obsequious ally, Persia, by Koordistan alone, becomes Russian also. The Persian Gulfand the directest of all Indian routes, a route whereno wide desert tracts, no huge mountain- chains intervene, nothing but the serviceable sea, will thus benot only open to, but absolutely in the hands of, ourvery doubtful friends. The exclusion of all commerce,all communication by this most important line, exceptwhat is Russian and through Russia, will be the firstand immediate consequence; what may be the ulteriorresults time alone can tell. But if India have avulnerable point, next after Egypt, it is the Euphratesvalley and its communications. Of all this the key,held at present for Turkey and for England too, liesin possession of these very races, the inhabitantsof the Turkoman-Koordish territory. To strengthenthe hands of our friends, and to guard lest that keybe wrested from them, were but good statesmanship,if timely done.M 2VI.EASTERN CHRISTIANS.6PUBLISHED IN THE QUARTERLY,' JUNE, 1869.NOTICE.In this Essay, written at Trebizond during the Cretan insurrection, five of the principal sects, or, to use a common phrase,churches, into which Eastern Christianity is divided, namely, theorthodox Greek, the Armenian, the Maronite, the United Greekor Melchite, and the Coptic, are successively sketched. The portraits are, in most respects, unpleasing. But should any oneview them with distaste, let him console himself with the thoughtthat the shadows might have been considerably deepened, and thedeformities of outline rendered even more apparent, without the leastviolence to truth. Indeed much that the original manuscript contained has been purposely suppressed, lest sobriety of judgment shouldyield to disgust; while praise has been bestowed in full measure,wherever possible. Races change little in the East, and the Byzantinepast, as mirrored in Finlay's masterly volumes, bears a correct ancestral likeness to the Levantine-Christian present.THE phrase Eastern Christians ' is one frequent inword and writing, but has very often no better defineda meaning than the much-misapplied names of ' Turks 'and Arabs. Still the phrase is a symbol; and manywho, were they asked what ' Eastern Christians ' reallyare, might be very much puzzled to define them withanything like accuracy, have yet a tolerably precise ideaEASTERN CHRISTIANS. 165of what they themselves mean bythe name. Somethingon Mahometan ground, but antagonistic to Mahometanism and Mahometan traditions, something sympathetic with Europe and the modern West, an element of progress, a germ of civilisation, a beam ofday-dawn, a promise of better things.Is it really so? And first, who and what are these' Eastern Christians?'In matter of nationality, it is well to begin by layingdown, where possible, certain geographical limits.Accordingly, for the subject now in hand, we will, atour first start, exclude India, Persia, Asiatic Russia,China, and their adjacent kingdoms or sub-kingdoms,and we will take for the field of Eastern Christiansthat contained within the bounds of the East TurkishEmpire, and Egypt; to this last we may not unsuitably add Abyssinia. Ask, where's the North? AtYork ' tis at the Tweed,' said Pope. And where's theEast? might have no exacter answer. Be our East ' onthis occasion limited by Persia; with Russia on thenorth, the Mediterranean on the west, and on the southwhatever African lands new Burtons and Spekes mayyet discover. Even after this narrowing, our range willbe wide enough.·6But wide though it be, still wider and stranger in itsspecific variety is the great Eastern Christian ' genusincluded within it. We must, therefore, classify andsub-classify a little for clearness' sake.The first class may consist of the Eutychian Monophysite, or anti- Chalcedonian school. Of the specialdogmas or ritualistic peculiarities implied by these titlesour readers may very possibly be ignorant, at least inpart; nor would it much advantage them to learn.Laying aside therefore the investigation of microscopicdiversities in ceremony or belief-a tedious labour, and,166 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..of no general interest-it will suffice for our purpose tonote that the above denominations indicate a class ofChristians hating Greeks, Greek Church government,and all that pertains thereto, worse than poison; hatingalso all Westerns, Catholics or Protestants, very sincerely, but with a less violent form of hatred; hatingMahometans also not a little, yet less than the dissidentof their Christian brethren.Now this class comprises four sub-classes, namely,Copts, Armenians, Abyssinians, and Syrians. Of these,the Copts have their principal habitat in Egypt, Upperand Lower, though they may be found not unfrequentlyin Syria also; the Abyssinians are limited to thecountry which their name implies; the Armenians ownfor head-quarters the eastern half of Asia Minor, orAnatolia, with the Taurus; they are also to be metwith in large communities throughout all the greattowns and commercial centres of the regions alreadyindicated; the Syrians are, for the most part, inhabitants of Syria proper, especially north of Damascus.Besides their general hatred of outsiders, Mahometanor non-Mahometan, these four sub-classes have amutual sub-hatred of each other, varying, however, inintensity and degree.A second class of Eastern Christians ' is the Nestorian, or anti-Ephesian sect. Here again we need notprolong the examination of distinctive rites or tenets;it may be enough to say that the more special hatredof these Nestorians is directed against the Greeks;they bear also a fair hatred against Mahometans andWesterns in general. There is no sub-class here; allare alike Nestorians or Chaldeans, though the firstappellation is more commonly given to the inhabitantsof Koordistan mountains, the latter to their co-religionists who dwell lower down in the Tigro-EuphratesVI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.167valley towards Bagdad. A few Nestorians are alsoscattered about Syria.A third and a very important class comprise thosebelonging to the orthodox, or Greek, or Chalcedonianformula. None are better haters than these; in extenttheir hatred is correlative with the hatred of thosealready enumerated, but in intensity it surpasses them.This class is divided into two sub-classes, namely,Phanariot Greeks and Russianized Greeks . Of these,the first are to be met with in good numbers everywhere throughout Asiatic Turkey; their head-quartersare, however, in the western part of Anatolia, and theislands of the coast. The second, much less numerous,exist chiefly in Eastern Anatolia; sheltered or attractedby the close proximity of the Russian frontier.The fourth class consist of Eastern Christians ' who,while retaining their special ritualistic peculiarities,profess obedience to the See of Rome; they are sometimes called also ' Melchite, ' or ' United.' These rejoicein five sub-classes-Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Chaldean,and Coptic, each with the prefix ' united,' and eachcorresponding in geographical and other circ*mstanceswith their non-united namesakes, for whom they reservetheir choicest hate, though with a tolerable superabundance of it for each other: also for Mahometans somewhat; less for Westerns.The fifth class contains the well-known Maronites ofMount Lebanon, colonies of whom may also be foundthroughout Syria and Lower Egypt. Roman Catholicsin creed, and partly so in rite, they sympathise best ofall with the Westerns; for all others their hatredscoincide with those above enumerated.The sixth class comprises native ' Eastern Christians,'who have adopted not only the creed and obedience,but also the peculiar rites of Rome. These abound168 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..most in the Cyprus, and in what once was Palestine;a few may also be seen wherever a Franciscan conventcan support a mendicant following. These last are ofno importance, either morally, intellectually, or numerically; the mere Pariahs of their race.We have thus fourteen distinct species of the ' Eastern Christian' genus; each distinct from, and eachantagonistic to, the other. This number may sufficeus; nor need we extend for the present our researchesand our sympathies among certain curious Easternsects, or nationalities; Christian in their origin, buthaving since developed into strange forms, hardlycompatible with the received type of Christianity,though still widely unlike Mahometanism. Such arethe Yezeedis of Mesopotamia, the Anseyreeyeh ofNorthern Syria, and the Sabæans of extreme Chaldea.Their condition and tendencies merit investigation, butthey lie apart from our actual subject.Nor, indeed, should we have run through this longcatalogue of classes and sub-classes, were the lines ofdemarcation merely dogmatic or ritualistic. In suchcase it might have been enough to admit to the title of'Eastern Christians ' all natives of the East who acceptthe Gospel, after one fashion or another, and reject theKoran. But these differences of rite and dogma, seemingly so unimportant, are in reality the surface-lines ofdeep clefts that centuries cannot obliterate; they aredemarcations of descent and nationality, of blood, andspirit. Each so-called sect is in fact a little nation byitself, with its own special bearings and tendencies,social and political, not to be regarded in the samelight, placed on the same level, or treated with onthe same principles as the nearest sect beside it.Distinct conditions imply distinct relations; thelatter are, or ought to be, determined by the former.VI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 1696We should do well, accordingly, before we rush intoan embrace of general sympathy with our EasternChristian ' brethren in a heap, to inspect them closer,class by class; since thus we may learn with whomwe have to deal, what we may expect from them, andthey from us.6We will begin with those whose name has the widestecho on Western ground, the most talked of, and insome respects the best known of Eastern Christians'-the Greeks. No name has created greater interest orembodied brighter hopes. Three causes have contributed to this popularity. First, their claim of descent, or at least of kinsmanship of that ancient nationto which we owe so much in civilisation, literature, andart. Next, their Christianity, supposed to have specialpoints of affinity with our own. And, thirdly, because,rightly or wrongly, they are regarded as containing inthemselves, more than any other Eastern Christians,'the vitalising element of progress. In England thefirst consideration has, perhaps, served them best; inFrance the second; in Europe generally the third.6There is little profit in trying to form an estimate ofa people's worth by vague generalisations and from adistance . We will try a nearer, and, so far as possible,an individual acquaintance; and to do this let us go alltogether and pay a visit to a Greek dwelling- house, beit at Beyrout, Trebizond, Damascus, or Alexandria. Itshall be a house belonging to one of the better, that isthe richer, class; for Greek society, in Asiatic Turkeyat least, acknowledges no distinction based on superiornobility or origin, rank, or talent; the sole discrimination is the drachma. We mean among the laity; forthe clergy form a band apart, and their position ischiefly regulated by hierarchical precedence.We stand before the house, its style, which presents170 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..a certain approximation to the modern French streetarchitecture, the number and symmetrical arrangementof its windows, and a general look of economical neatness, distinguish it at first sight from a Mahometan, oreven from an Armenian dwelling. Lucky for us if hiseagerness to mimic European fashions has not inducedthe master of the house to set up a closed outside door, -with a delusive bell, at which we pull and pull in vainfor a good quarter of an hour; it being much more easyto organise a European bell than European punctuality in attendance on it.At last we are within the small bare garden-forwhatever uses ancient Greeks may have made offlowers, their now-a-days representatives have littlefloral taste and are met at the dwelling entrance bya slatternly barefooted maid-of- all-work, who beingexpected, on inadequate or unpaid wages, to look aftereverything in the large house, takes her revenge bylooking, so much as in her lies, after nothing at all.Spacious in their buildings, costly in their dress,Greeks are miserably parsimonious in what regardsservants; their shortsighted selfishness does not comprehend community of interest with others. In thisrespect they offer a striking contrast to the Turks, withtheir numerous retinues. A second consequence ofGreek economy is the employment of female domesticsrather than male, because cheaper. We inquire afterthe master of the house, Dimitri Agathopylos be it;the barefooted Hebe scuttles off to announce us. Possibly the door of the room where Dimitri is seatedopens out on the entrance passage, and we may thusallow ourselves the benefit of hearing the announcement. This Thekla does by informing her master thatsome σKVλιþрavко (lit. ' dogs of Europeans ' ) are in waiting on him. No particular disrespect is meant to us byVI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 171the canine denomination, but the Greeks have no othername for Europeans; that is when mentioning themamong themselves. English, French, all who took partin the Greek War of Independence, all who furnishedthe hitherto unpaid, nor ever to be paid loan, are alikeσKUλia, (' dogs ') . It is only fair, however, to say thatRussians are not herein included, possibly because notheld, in the East, for Europeans. But the most enthusiastic Philhellenes, even Mr. John Skinner himself, are,to their Greek protégés, ' dogs,' along with the rest.Well, the ' dogs,' who, however, will to their facesbe rather more respectfully titled, are admitted intothe parlour, sitting-room, or divan. The room andits furnishings have something of an European character, and something of an Eastern, being adroitlymanaged so as best to miss the comfort of either.Rows of weak-limbed, cushionless chairs, little unmeaning tables, at best only fit for supporting a trayof glasses and Curaçoa, or for card-playing; divanspared down to their narrowest and most inconvenientexpression; much cleanliness, however,-for the dustin the out-of-the-way corners is the result, not ofwilful unneatness, but of insufficient service; —suchis the apartment. On the walls a looking-glass, aportrait (a twopenny-halfpenny one) of King George;another of some defunct Greek patriarch, now elevatedto the dignity of saint or martyr; and possibly a third,representing three brigand-heroes who came to violentend in the Greco-Turkish war; these, with a fewcoloured French prints of fancy female characters, ofquestionable moral tendency, fill up the spaces on thewall.Dimitri rises to receive us. Not so the burly, bushybearded figure, wrapped up bundle-wise in dark clothand fur linings, that, half-crouching, half-reclining,172 [VI. EASTERN CHRISTIANS.occupies the uppermost corner of the divan. It is anarchbishop, one who never fails in his visits of pastoralinquiry to the fat lambs of his flock, and of these thewealthy Dimitri is one. The muffled archiepiscopalhead slightly inclines in acknowledgment of our salute.Dimitri himself is a middle-aged man, rather thin,sallow, with brown eyes, brown hair, close-shaven face,and an intelligent and pleasing expression of features.Near him, in brisk conversation, are seated (for whyshould not our fancy people the room no less thanconstruct it? ) two other Greeks, merchants also andnatives-born of the place; a third, worse dressed, thin ,and hungry-looking, is at a distance; his clothes andappearance announce him for one come from a distance;in fact he is a volunteer-patriot, or brigand, justreturned from a visit to Crete.AWe take our places next the master of the house,the other Greeks politely exchanging their seats onthe divan for the rickety chairs; the Archbishop, ofcourse, remains immoveable. The customary compliments are exchanged; and cigarettes, less expensivethan the wasteful Turkish chibouk, or the Persiannargheelah, are passed round, or perhaps omitted.little later one of the females of the house, wife it maybe or daughter, will appear, a smile of unmeaninggenerality on her face, and in her hands a silver traywith sweetmeats; of which every one takes an infinitesimal portion. Perhaps another lady, a sister- in-lawor the like, comes in at the same time, with the samegeneral smile, the same approach to prettiness, and thesame want of grace; but as the ladies only talk modernGreek, of which language our party may be supposedignorant, their stay is not long. Coffee may or maynot be served; it is not ' de rigueur,' as among Turksor Arabs.Conversation opens; and the first question put byVI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.173our host, at the whispered suggestion of the Archbishop, is about Crete. Before we have even had timefor an answer, the other Greeks present join in theinquiry. They are all Turkish subjects, grown up andfostered life-long under Turkish rule; men on whomdifference of race and of religion has never entaileda serious disability or burden; on the contrary, it hasexempted them from many a load borne uncomplainingly by their Mahometan fellow-countrymen. However, they do not avow, they proclaim by the veryterms of their inquiry, their entire and active sympathywith the Cretans, that is, with rebels against their ownGovernment; and they go on rapidly (for the agilityof the Greek tongue is marvellous) to boldly-expressedhopes for the near arrival of the moment when not onlyCrete, but the whole Roumelian territory, with Constantinople itself, shall belong to the Greeks. To theaccomplishment of which ends they, the Greeks, aloneand unaided, are fully equal. So runs the discourse.However, the Europeans in general are much to beblamed for not joining in a general crusade for thedestruction of the Turks and the restoration of theGreeks to their capital. Meanwhile, Russian co-operation is spoken of as certain; indeed, the Russianemperor is often entitled, our Sovereign,' or ' theSovereign,' par excellence; though, after all, even heis not to have Constantinople for the price of his cooperative labours; that belongs clearly to the Greeks.alone.so;Very childish all this, and much out of harmony withthe reality of things, our readers may say. Possiblybut childish or inharmonious, such is ordinaryGreek talk, the current index of the ' Eastern Christian'Greek mind; and it is this we are now portraying. Letus return to our seat by Dimitri.Perhaps we venture on an opinion not wholly favour-174 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..able to Cretan success, or express some doubt regardingthe exactitude of the latest triumphant telegram expedited from the Piræus; or, worse still , hint that somemuch-lauded feat of Christian heroism-the self-immolation of some defenders of a convent, for examplehas mainly, if not wholly, existed in newspaper paragraphs and photographic illustrations. Hereon evenpoliteness is endangered; and our Greeks declaim loudlyagainst the apathy of Europeans, and more especially ofthe English, who seem one and all to lie under a strictobligation-never fulfilled as yet-of pouring out bloodand treasure ad libitum in the cause of the Hellenes.The reasons for so doing are sometimes derived fromHomer, sometimes from the Gospel. We insinuate thatat any rate we English once of a time did, for our part,something very material in the Philhellenic line, butthat the subsequent conduct of the Greeks, whether asto policy or payment, has hardly corresponded to theefforts of England, or of Europe in general, on theirbehalf. On which we are informed that Greece neverincurred debt at all, either of gratitude or of anything else, for that they were quite capable of doingwithout us; but meanwhile that a new loan may possibly be better acknowledged.anyNothing but politics, and still politics. Vainly wetry to lead the talk to commerce, to literature, toscience; all such topics drop like lead. Religion , thatis acrid, anti-Latin controversy, and the chroniquescandaleuse of the place, bid fair for better success;but we, on our side, have no predilection for either,and conversation threatens to languish.But here the Archbishop comes in to aid. Hithertohe has said little, except when roused by the Cretandiscussion to some energetic expression of hatred forTurks and Mahometans; or, by the controversial talk,VI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 175to some phrase of not inferior hatred for all non-orthodoxand Latins. Now, however, he slides into the specialobject of his visit. It may be the leasing of a house orshop on Church lands, or perhaps the purchase of someacres for a monastery, or he desires to place out someat a moderate interest of 48 per cent. What- moneyever is the tune, the key-note will assuredly be money.Or, perhaps, our host himself (and this is no uncommoncirc*mstance) has in view a fraudulent bankruptcy, tobe brought about a few months hence; and accordinglydiscusses with his Grace, the form of a deed by whichone half of his real estate may be made over, for a consideration, to the title of St. Spiridion or St. Charilembos; the other half has, by an equally authentic deed,passed already to his wife's grandmother, or the like;and when the bankruptcy comes, and the hungry creditors go in quest of assets, they may find shells in plenty,but no oyster. The other Greeks join cheerfully in;one dilates on some petty local intrigue connected withthe Custom-house, or the Revenue; another on thesupposititious claims of some pseudo- Greek subjects. Intopics like these the Russian Consulate is tolerably sureto be mixed up. And, in fact, while we are yet talking,in comes the Russian dragoman-a Greek too, of course,sallow, pliable, but with more than the ordinary insolence. His talk is much like that of the others, onlymore openly and avowedly seditious.The Archbishop rises, and goes to visit the ladies ofthe house; he has been preceded to their apartments bythe handsome, long-haired young deacon, his companion;but we will not intrude on interviews of, doubtless, apurely spiritual and devotional character.For our own part we have paid our visit, and are gone.But, our readers may ask, how does the ordinary wellto-do Greek pass the bulk of his day?176 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI. .6Six or seven hours go to business, transacted partlyin his own house, and partly in his store-rooms or office,but more by word of mouth than by writing. Fivehours more on an average are devoted to the Casino,'that paradise of the modern Greek; few of them butvisit it for two or more hours at a time, morning andafternoon; here, too, the unmarried Greek passes all hisevenings, the married one, some. Here coffee, ' rakee,'the favourite tipple of the modern Hellene, cards, andsometimes billiards, on a decrepit table of the French pattern, serve as supplements to that one great enjoymentof his life-political talk. Here many an intrigue, manya Philhellenic committee, many a lying telegram, manyan incendiary pamphlet, have birth; here too the Greekcharacter comes out in its freest and its worst display.Exercise, as exercise or amusem*nt, is little to the tasteof the Greek, who, like most, though not all, as we shallsee, of his Christian brethren in the East, prefers theuse of his tongue to that of any other limb. However,the married Greek, who is generally a kind and even aneasy-going husband, and always an affectionate andover-indulgent father, gives much besides of his leisurehours to his family, and there he appears to real advantage. The young and unmarried Greek is seldom, ifever, what we should call well-conducted; he is notimmoral, because in truth he has no morals whatsoever;and when the time comes for marriage, he quits acareer of profligacy as easily and with as little effort orfeeling of shock, as when first he entered on it. He hasno remorse for the ill-spent past, and no self-laudationfor the well-spent present in these matters; on threepoints alone is he accessible to anything like real feeling-family ties, politics, and money. In a word, he has nosubjective conscience; and often , thanks to his clergy,of whom more hereafter, very little objective.VI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 177Well or ill conducted, however, married or single, theGreek has no taste for literature, ancient or modern,beyond that contained in a political newspaper or apamphlet; these are the limits of his reading; history,poetry, science, art, all lie beyond his range. Of theannals of the very country he lives in-of the religion,customs, studies, and even the laws of his Mahometanneighbours he is almost wholly or wholly ignorant;some stereotyped tales of Turkish oppression and ofapocryphal martyrs are all that he can impart; and evento these a recent date is commonly assigned. Of thepolitical side of Europe he knows a little; of its otheraspects next to nothing. The clergy form no exceptionin these matters.In religion, those among ourselves who sympathisewith the Greek might be somewhat disagreeably startled,were they aware how little he sympathises with them.True, he is deeply superstitious and furiously bigotedagainst all strange creeds, Mahometan, Latin, Armenian,all much alike, perhaps the Latin most of all; but hehas no deep belief, none of the intense confidence of theMahometan in God's providence . Greek levity andgossiping in Church, and during prayers, contrastsstrangely with the respectful propriety of Turks andArabs in their mosques; the religion of the Greek is aparty badge; a thing of no great intrinsic value, but forwhich the professor is ready to fight at call, simplybecause it is the badge of his party. Such are themass; the devouter sort, with their mixture of observance and irreverence, have a painful resemblance tofetish-worshipping atheists. Of the unmarried clergyor monks, from whose ranks the higher ecclesiasticaldignitaries are as a rule selected, least said is soonestmended. In no respect can one say any good of them.The non-celibatary, or parish priests, though generallyN178 [VI.EASTERN CHRISTIANS.boorish and ignorant to the last degree, are, onthe whole,hard-working and honest men; a better sort of peasants.In agriculture and whatever belongs to it -in gardening, planting, and the like--no class of men in theEast is so backward, and in fact so incapable, as theGreeks. They cultivate little and badly. Hence, withthe most excellent soil and climate for their vineyards,they have no wine worth mentioning. But for maritime pursuits, from coast-fishing up to deep-sea navigation, they have a decided turn, though not more thansome of the other neighbouring races-the Lazes forexample. In carpentry, though not equal to the Turks,who seem to have a special talent for this craft, they arefair artisans; in stonework they are decidedly superiorto any, whether in Syria or Anatolia; perhaps, thoughhere the Copts may dispute the palm, in Egypt. Theirchiefest skill, however, their speciality (if the term maybe allowed) is commerce, in the fullest acceptanceof the word. No men have a keener, a moreintuitive perception of the laws of exchange, of capital,of productiveness, of fluctuation; none a more heartyrelish of their detailed application. Yet here againtheir inherent love of adventure and intrigue, with acertain restlessness, and, above all, a total want of goodfaith, frequently interfere with the solidity of theirbusiness hence Greek trade (we are speaking of AsiaticTurkey, as our readers will remember) is seldom ofdurable success. A Greek is always gaining and losingmoney, unlike the tenacious Armenian, and the real-property-loving Turk. A further reason of Greek reverseslies in their passion for law-suits, and, we regret to add,their want of honesty in these, as in almost everything else. Besides, although singularly parsimonious,nigg*rdly, indeed, in their table and their hospitality,so much so, that the five olives for six guests ' of theVI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.179Greeks has passed into an Eastern proverb, they areextravagantly fond of everything showy--new houses,gay dresses, expensive furniture, and even, though aGreek is rarely even a tolerable rider, handsome horses;and on these points their expenditure often outgoes thelimits of their gains. The same love of show, joinedwith the superstition which often outlives all that couldonce have deserved the name of religion, renders themalso prone to ' outrun the constable ' in church buildingand ecclesiastical decoration of all kinds; in this theystill show much traditional semi-Byzantine taste andgorgeous skill, and thus justify the assertion that Messrs.Mackonochie, Purchas, and their like would have donemuch better to borrow their questionable finery, sincehave it they must, from Eastern than from Westernmodels. Another and a more creditable cause forprofuse expenditure on the part of the Greeks is education. On this point they are very liberal, founding andmaintaining large schools, well provided with mastersand teachers; though it must be added that the coursesfollowed by the scholars would in Europe be consideredextremely superficial; they consist almost wholly of thestudy of modern languages, with a faint tincture ofclassic and ecclesiastical history, but no other, not eventhat of the country they live in. Science, art, mathematics, and the like, are totally out of the question.The profession of almost all the wealthier sort of' Eastern Christian ' town Greeks is the mercantile; afew, however, hold offices under the Turkish Government in the Custom-house and Revenue Departments.These are not unfrequently confounded by superficialobservers with the Turks themselves, and their rapaciousvenality has thus brought discredit on the latter, and,we must add, not wholly undeservedly, since the badcharacter of the servant is a reflection on the master.N 2180 [VI. EASTERN CHRISTIANS.The poorer Greeks, when inhabitants of the interior, areindifferent agriculturists; when on the coast they aremore congenially employed in the fishing and coastingtrade, often in smuggling. In the towns they becomeartisans, good or bad. A favourite Greek livelihoodalso consists in keeping low spirit-shops and disorderlyhouses. These last the Greek institutes wherever hegoes; and as such establishments are on the one handalien from Mahometan usages, Turkish or Arab, and onthe other offer welcome asylums to the dregs of Europewhich are continually flowing into Turkey, and aboveall into Egypt, it is not to be wondered at if Europeansof a certain class are apt to proclaim that the Greeksare the sole representatives of civilisation and goodfellowship in the Turkish empire. In this respect theyare certainly so, even to the exclusion of other EasternChristians. Another, and, as the East goes, a scarcelymore reputable profession, almost monopolised by the'Greeks,' is that of the dragoman-a profession which,besides bringing in considerable emoluments, has thefurther advantage of giving the Greeks, in nine casesout of ten, the first word where European travellers,and but too frequently where European residents, areconcerned. And this first word, echoed and re-echoedin books and periodicals, is very often the last word ofEuropean opinion on many a matter connected with thepast, present, or future of the Ottoman empire."So much for occupation . But, before concluding, wemust give a glance it shall be no more-at the specialfeature which draws the sympathy of Western Christians, the Christianity of the Asiatic Greek.It is a Christianity, the dogma of which is based onthe Nicene Creed . This, with a slight and well-knownvariation, is identical with the formula adopted in theWest. Greek dogma extends also to many specialVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 181articles taught by the Church of Rome, such as Mass,Transubstantiation, the Intercession of Saints, and Purgatory, though the Purgatory of the Greeks is not in allrespects similar to the Latin; Confession, and much elseof what is called the ' Administration of the Sacraments,'resembles, on the whole, Roman practice. For imageworship the Greeks have substituted, or perhaps maintained, picture-worship; this last they push to theextremest limits of what, when outside Christianity, scommonly termed idolatry. Thus much for dogma andceremony. In its moral aspect the Greek religion is agreat enfranchisem*nt from all restraint, united with anintense, a more than Byzantine, hatred of Latinism andLatins, summing up all in one great commandment,Thou shalt deceive thy fellow, and hate every one else.'A truly ' liberal ' Greek is as rarely to be met with inreligion as in politics; he is a bigot in both, sometimesa fanatical—always a selfish one.6In matter of race, these ' Greeks ' are the mixed descendants of Asiatic tribes converted to Christianity,and amalgamated by ecclesiastical rule in the days ofByzantine supremacy. Syrians, Arabs, Lazes, Galatian,Cappadocian, and others, they have all been for centuriespupils of one school, namely, the Byzantine, and represent its teaching. Their Hellenism is a recent andsuperficial varnish, a political banneret, and no more.Even now their eyes are not on Greece, not on Athensor Thebes, but on Constantinople.Their numbers have been variously estimated:million is sometimes approximately given; perhaps thereal cypher may somewhat exceed it. Like all otherinhabitants of the Ottoman empire, they have of recentyears been on the increase-more so, indeed, than theMahometan population, decimated as this latter is bythe military conscription, from which Christians alone182 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI. .are exempt; less, however, than the Armenians, ofwhomwe shall soon have to speak.To the Turkish empire, considered as such, theGreeks, always discontented-always seditious in intention, if not in fact--are a great political evil. Nor cantheir superficial imitation of whatever is most superficial in European manners and customs, French especially, be held for a real step, or even stepping-stone,towards the civilisation of the East, whatever thatphrase may mean. To the military strength of thecountry, of course, they contribute nothing; to itsfinancial resources as little as they possibly can. Nor isTurkey much indebted to them for the actual extensionof commerce, though to this extension they have, partlyin fact, more in show, added their quota, and continueto take part in it.On the whole, it may well be questioned whetherthis first section of ' Eastern Christians ' are entirelyworth the sympathy and encouragement bestowed onthem by their Western brethren, occasionally at theproximate risk of disorganising or even disintegratingthe empire of which they form a part, however anomalous; perhaps Europe itself.More numerous, and in all the intrinsic means ofstrength far superior to the Greeks,' but less fortunatein outside sympathy, and less favoured in particular bythe great creator and propounder of the ' Eastern Question,' Russia, or by Russia's unconscious, purposelessally, French Foreign Policy, hence also less talked of inEurope-no real disadvantage after all-are the Armenians. Their head-quarters, as we have already indicated, are at Constantinople; also in a manner throughout Anatolia, especially its easterly half; but they arethickly scattered amid the towns of Syria, nor are theyrare in Irak and Egypt.VI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.183We will suppose our readers acquainted -if they arenot already they may easily render themselves so-withthe Armenian history of classic and of Byzantine times;with the annals of Ani and of Sis, with the greater andlesser kingdom, and the fortunes of a state, whichhaving like Poland the triple misfortune of threepowerful neighbours, has, like Poland, endured, butwith far less resistance, a triple partition. But herethe analogy ends. The Turks, unlike the Russians, havenever set themselves to the task of stamping out thenationalities they have conquered; and while the Polesare being proselytized into Russians by the knout andthe mine, the Armenians, under centuries of Turkishrule, remain unchanged, body, mind, religion, usages,and even institutions . Here comes one before us;whether he be from Erzeroum, Kutahaia, or Aleppomatters little . All have the same strong, heavy build;the same thick beetle eyebrows; the full aquiline nose,springing directly, and without the intervention of anyappreciable depression, from under the forehead; thesame dark lustreless eye; the same mass of clothes onclothes, all dingy and baggy; the same large brownhand, and written in each curved finger tip, in everyline of the capacious palm, the same ' It is more blessedto receive than to give .' A race more retentive than theJews themselves of their nationality; more retentive of their money too, and more acquisitive . ' Shutup all the Jews and all the Armenians of the worldtogether in one Exchange,' old Rothschild is reported tohave said, and within half an hour the total wealth ofthe former will have passed into the hands of the latter.'We believe it.Armenian energy is devoted, with few exceptions, tothree occupations -namely, to agriculture, to daylabour, and to usury. The first two are creditable in184 EASTERN CHRISTIANS. [VI.their nature; the last less so; but in all three Armenians excel.And firstly, in agriculture. This has been of all timesa staple Armenian pursuit, and is still followed by abouttwo-thirds of the nation. In their hamlet- dwellings,and in the general appurtenances of village life, theArmenians are in most respects less neat, less compact,so to speak, than are the Turkish or Turkoman peasantsaround them; but their tillage labour is persevering andgood; their hamlet arrangements contain the germs ofmunicipalities; the country population thrives, and,unlike the Greek, has no great tendency of gravitationtowards large towns or to the coast. Very amusing itis to pass an evening with these rustics. A cottage iscleared out and assigned to the guest, a one- roomedcottage, of course, with a low earth-divan on either side,and a fire- place at the further end; on, or rather letinto the walls, are countless wooden cupboards, carvedwith some pretension to taste; at the lower end of thedwelling, near the entrance, is an undefined space,where agricultural implements, mostly broken, largeearthen pots, and other rustic utensils stand or lie; theinner or raised floor is matted, the divans spread withfaded shreds of carpet, the wooden roof is black withsmoke. All denotes a comfortable untidiness, or anuntidy comfortableness, a sufficiency of everything, dirtincluded; but fastidiousness is out of place in a traveller. So we take our corner seat of a fireside dignity,propped on venerable and slightly decaying cushions,probably of faded red silk; and we may recognise theadvantage of Christian over Mahometan lodgings in theabsence of the dim burning lamp common to the latter,here advantageously replaced by two huge woodencandlesticks, borrowed from the church hard by for thenonce, and surmounted by large, shapeless, dirty tallowVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 185·dips, which require and receive snuffing with the firetongs every five minutes. In comes the Muktar,' orElect, ' the village headman, a burly, grey-headed,venerable clown, in deportment and heavy dignity recalling the typical English beadledom; follow four orfive other elders of the plough, probably a young clerktoo, travel-stained, but in succinct Stamboul dress , nowon his way from or to the capital; he knows about fiftywords of French, and ten of English, which he paradeson all occasions. In come the dark blue robes of theparish priest, a respectable peasant like the rest; soonthe whole house is full of those whom age or comparative well-being entitle to take rank among the gapersand starers. Then they talk; good heavens! howtheytalk! -Christian loquacity is not precisely proverbial inthe East, but it ought to be so -but the talk is nolonger, Greek fashion, all politics; news is indeeddiscussed, but so are also literature, history, religion,and the like; one feels that one is here among theinheritors of something like an ancient civilisation anda true history. Remark, too, that although special anddetail complainings are not unfrequent, there is nosettled ill-will against the Turkish Government, andcomparatively little religious bigotry against Mahometans; some grudge, national in origin, against Greeks;some priestly rivalry with the Latins; and, thanks tothe missionary zeal of late years, some dislike of Protestants also, may possibly show itself. The crops,their success and value, the amount of taxation, theconditions of farming, some change in the local government, some projected irrigation or water-mill, such arethe favourite topics of talk. European inventions, thetelegraph, for instance, the steam-engine, some newmachinery, or the like, come not unfrequently underdiscussion. There is much theoretical ignorance, but186 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..considerable native shrewdness also in what is said .Still the Armenian peasant has no pretensions to beinganything but a peasant; he would gladly better himself,but on the same line of life, unlike the restless andambitious Greek; with more wisdom, perhaps.But in large towns-at Constantinople, Smyrna, andthe like Armenian love of labour takes another character, varied by the circ*mstances of city life. Everytraveller, on arriving at the Gates of the Bosporus,must have seen and admired the huge, almost Herculean,hammals or porters of Topkhâneh and Galata, theworkmen of the docks and arsenals; these are, nine outof ten, Armenians, heavy, muscular, large-calved, largeboned men, come up from the country to earn a livelihood; earn it they will, and keep it too. A Europeanworkman, accustomed to recruit his strength on meat,beer, wine, or spirits, might well be at a loss to comprehend abstinence like theirs, coupled with hard, unremitting labour. Bread and onions, washed down with coldwater, cheese and milk for occasional luxuries, such istheir bill of fare; their night's lodging is in somebroken shed, anywhere, where nothing, or next tonothing, is to pay. In the bitter cold of a Bosporuswinter, or the weary, heavy heat of its summer, allwork on, steadily, unremittingly; and day by day theirearnings are put by, till the slow accumulation of copper'paras ' entitles them to an honourable retirement andcomparative ease in their own villages.In the refinements of mechanical work, where taste isrequired, in carpentry, and in masonry, Armeniansseldom excel; they are, however, tolerable tailors andshoemakers, never hardly sailors or fishermen; unlikethe amphibious Greek, the Armenian shuns the water:he is of the earth earthy, more fitted for the inland thanthe coast. But, whatever be his occupation, he is prettyVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 187certain, by diligence, perseverance, and frugality, toattain a tolerable degree of comfort, occasionally ofwealth; and capital once in his hands will not remainidle; it will increase and multiply, too often by themeans of which we have next to speak.Thus far our picture, though not exactly brilliant incolours, has been by no means ill-favoured. But thebusiness of which we have now to speak-a business inthe East almost exclusively Armenian, and one, unfortunately, much less creditable than those hithertoenumerated-is that of money-lending, money-traffic,usury, in short.(Every one knows that by Mahometan law not onlyusury, but even ordinary money-interest, is severelyforbidden. The same prohibition extends to insurances,to several kinds of investment, and, by a necessaryconsequence, to the whole system of credit.' But theresult, like that of most excessive or sumptuary laws,has precisely contradicted the intentions of the lawgiver; and the necessity of borrowing, joined with theimpossibility of obtaining a loan on equitable, becauserecognised and legal terms, has produced an entiresystem, unlawful and usurious in character. Meanwhilereligion, law, custom, hold the wealthier Mahometansback from exercising a profession anathematised bytheir creed, and discreditable in the eyes of society.And thus it has fallen into the hands of Christians, andparticularly of the wealthiest among Eastern Christians,' the Armenians, who pursue it much in the samefashion, under the same conditions, and with the sameresults, as the Jews once did in medieval Europe.<Illegal interest soon becomes illegal usury, and illegalusury has no limit. The Armenian scale varies fromtwenty-four to sixty, or even one hundred per cent. ,sometimes by express contract, sometimes disguised188 [VI. EASTERN CHRISTIANS.under a fictitious loan; frequently by compound progression. All classes are victims, but the chief sufferersare naturally the poor, and more especially the peasants.No Turkish, no Arab landlord, would ever dream ofselling out or evicting a tenant, but an Eastern Christian ' usurer will; and when, as is frequently the case,the usurer, through means that we will shortly explain,can gain to his help the strong arm of government,eviction, with all its results of misery, crime, andviolence, for Whiteboys are not peculiar to Ireland, isthe result over wide tracts of country. Entire villageshave thus been unroofed, and cultivated lands left topasture or to downright desolation. The Europeantraveller, primed with staple ideas about Turkish oppression, the Sultan's horse-hoofs, barbarian rule, andthe like, sees the ruin along the wayside, and notes forsubsequent publication his observations on the decadenceof the Turkish empire, and the fatal results of Ottomanor Mahometan rule - observations which his Greekdragoman will sedulously confirm, and which will perhaps be repeated and believed in Parliament. Butcould he know the real, the active cause of all thisdesolation, his visionary Pasha-tyrant would fade away,and transform himself into no other than some wealthyArmenian money-lender, the usurer whose cent. per cent.has taken away the upper garment and the very millstone, not for pledge, but sale. The Turkish Government is indeed not wholly guiltless in the matter, butit* guilt is not that of principal, but accomplice; sometimes through omission to punish, sometimes throughtacit permission, or even protection, accorded to theChristian usurer; a protection often extorted by theChristianly zealous intervention of some Europeanconsulate, to which the Armenian, in his quality ofEastern Christian, ' has had recourse; perhaps of some "VI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.189embassy. What, indeed, should the unlucky Pasha, thegovernor of the ruined province, do in such a case?Does he declare the usurious contract void, does he aidthe fleeced against the fleecer, immediately a cry of Nojustice to be had for Christians in a Mahometan court oflaw ' is raised by the Christian prosecutor; and thencemay well be re-echoed, through consulate and embassy,to the Porte itself, nervously susceptible, and no wonder,to such reclamations; thence, very likely, in due form,to Europe.CStill more fatal is the result when the money-lender,as is not unfrequently the case, unites in himself thetwofold character of usurer that is, and at the sametime Multezim,' or Farmer of the Public Revenue.Not fear alone, but self-interest, then engages theGovernment in the prosecution of his destructiveclaims.This is the black spot on the Armenian character,else the nation has in itself the materials of much good;but these materials must be looked for chiefly amongthe poorer classes. Indeed we may remark, in ageneral way, that in the moral classification of thedifferent stages of society the reverse generally obtainsin the East to what holds good in Europe; for in thelatter the larger proportion of vice and crime is decidedly among the lower classes, especially in cities;the richer and higher are comparatively free from socialevils-a fact of which the main solution lies not exclusively in better education and the like, but also in thatriches, throughout the greater part of Europe, subjecttheir possessors to that surest safeguard of morality,public opinion, while the poor range comparativelywithout its pale. But in the East, from oppositecauses, the poor are subject to public opinion, the richare emancipated from it, and have always been so;190 EASTERN CHRISTIANS. [VI.and hence the Scriptural canon regarding the goodeffects of poverty, and the corresponding anathemason the wealthy, is a canon by no means of equalliteral correctness in Europe as it is, even in thepresent day, in Asia.In religion the Armenians, though dogmaticallydistinct from, and even opposed to, the Greeks, haveyet a close resemblance with the latter on most pointsof practice, discipline, Church government, and so forth.But the Armenian, with deeper religious feeling, hasless bigotry than the Greek, nor is his creed so constantly subservient to political ends.In matter of education the Armenians stand comparatively well. They erect large schools and maintainthem liberally; the teaching, too, is to a certain degreesolid, and fairly in harmony with the requirements ofthe East. Much attention is paid to the old Armeniandialect- the Haikán, so called, to national history andliterature; Turkish, also, sufficient for elegant readingand writing, is generally taught; French and Englishoccasionally, but in a superficial manner; Arabic orPersian never. However, few Armenian lads, whenonce out of school, pursue their studies, except, indeed,it be in some monastery, where theology and Churchhistory find life- long votaries.The Armenians, our readers may have already conjectured, are not a tasteful people; mentally andartistically, no less than physically, they are a heavyrace. Their public architecture is heavy; their churchessolid, spacious, and ungraceful-a striking contrast tothe elegance of Greco-Byzantine construction, ancientor modern. In one respect only have the Armeniansa decided advantage, that is, in their dwelling-houses.While the Greek spoils his architecture by an unwiseattempt at French or Italian imitation, the wealthyVI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 191Armenian builds on and adorns much after the oldTurkish fashion-a fashion remarkably well suited tothe climate and even to the surrounding scenery. Widebalconies, curiously-carved lattices, deep shadowingeaves, spacious entrances, gay colours in showy patterns; all these he multiplies, and produces a pileunsymmetrical indeed, but picturesque without andcomfortable within, thanks to broad divans, goodcarpets, and plenty of cupboards, painted bright redand green, within which lie folded up for the night'suse silk coverlets and embroidered pillows galore . Theguest's creature comforts will be further insured by acopious kitchen and a good cook, plenty to eat anddrink, and all good: of all Easterns the Armeniansalone really understand culinary art; in this, indeed,they cede, yet only just cede, to Frenchmen. Singularthat on this one point the heaviest nation of the Eastand the liveliest of the West should offer so marked aresemblance. Cooking, like charity, covers a multitudeof sins, and we have for our part little courage toexpose faults hidden beneath such hospitable tablecovers as the Armenian. Ill got and well expended,these feasts reverse our own proverb about who sendsgood meat and who cooks: an Armenian cook is certainly the envoy of the Beneficent Power; the meathas, hardly less certainly, been furnished from a veryopposite quarter.The clergy are, taken on the whole, respectable: tosay that they are grasping, can hardly be held areproach, since this quality they have in common withall their kind of whatever nationality; their moralsand their teaching are neither below the average, certainly above those of their Greek brethren. Nor arelay Armenians, taken altogether, so much addicted tolooser amusem*nts, gambling and curaçoa drinking, for192 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..example, as are the Greeks. Their hospitality is trulyEastern, that is, liberal in deed and manner; not,indeed, equal to that usual among Mahometans, yet initself not deficient.It is curious that among all sects of Eastern Christians ' the Armenians alone have furnished to Protestantism any considerable number of proselytes. This maybe ascribed partly to their greater zeal for education,leading them more readily than others to avail themselves of the numerous American schools and librariesestablished by missionary zeal throughout the land,partly to a certain innate seriousness of thought andcharacter. Whether, however, the progress, such as itis, of Protestantism among them be a benefit, may bedoubted; much might be said on either side.The total number of Armenians in Asiatic Turkeyhas been variously estimated: three millions, including,however, those resident at Constantinople, would beperhaps nearest the mark.In conclusion, we may say that among all EasternChristians ' the Armenians (and in a measure, as weshall afterwards see, the Copts) are those on whomEuropean sympathy would, if given, be perhaps leastthrown away. It is, however, on these precisely thatsuch sympathy is more rarely lavished. Yet, indeed, bywhat special title even they deserve it, would be hardto discover. What social merits they have they sharewith the Mahometan population around them; theirvices are their own. Nor are they the while subject toany disadvantages, civil or otherwise, nor to any persecution, nor inconvenience even; in fact, their exemption from military conscription, their national andrecognised tribunals, and their foreign appeal throughconsuls, ambassadors, and newspapers, render themobjects of envy, not compassion. And the like mayVI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 193<be said of Eastern Christians ' in general-it appliesto all.But the Maronites; those heroes of Lebanon; thosedarlings of France; those pets of Rome; that gem ofEastern Christianity; what shall we say of the Maronites?If we are to believe the Maronite annals as chronicledby themselves, the Maronites were from ancient timesa regal nation, come direct, or nearly so, from theTower of Babel to Mount Lebanon, with a dynasty andkings of their own, ruling over entire Syria, Jerusaleminclusive, and connected by equal alliance with thegreatest monarchies of Christendom. During theCrusades their banners-how could it be otherwise?-floated foremost in the Western ranks; and Maronitevalour not so much contributed to, as determined thevictory of the Cross. But when fortune turned againstthe Franks, and Bibars-el- Dahir completed the work ofruin which Salaḥ-ed-Deen, alias Saladin , had begun, theMaronites, unconquered though alone, still maintainedtheir mountains and their independence against countless infidel enemies, Arab, Turk, Druse, and what not.Who even now hold the keys and balance, not of Lebanon only, but of all Syria; themselves the sole pledgeof Christian and European hope in the East; who havecolonised Malta; who, having received the Christianfaith from the Founder of Christianity himself, transfigured, whatever evangelists may imply or commentators say, not in Galilee, but on the ' exceeding highmountain ' of Lebanon, have, with more than Petral orPapal fidelity, kept it intact, inviolate, unaltered, infallible, among schismatics, heretics, and infidels of allsorts, for nigh two thousand years, Abdiels of theChurch, sole lily among thorns; who in war, trade,arts, literature, and religion, hold the distinct supremacy0194 [VI.EASTERN CHRISTIANS.over all nations and tribes of the East, aye, and ofthe West also; unless, indeed, France be allowed anhonorary equality. A Maronite Patriarch is second,but just second, to the Pope alone; each Maronitebishop is a saint; each Maronite chief an Achilles;each Maronite scribe a Chrysostom; each Maronitepeasant a prodigy of nature's best. And so on, andso on.Now let us descend to facts.During the seventh and eighth centuries of our erafrequent bands of oriental Christians, Syro-Chaldæansespecially, and mostly Monophysites, or at least Monothelites that is, in the judgment of Constantinopleand Rome alike, heretics-being driven from the uplands of Euphrates and Mesopotamia partly by theirruption of the Arabs, partly by the orthodox persecution of Byzantine governors, successively took refugein the almost inaccessible, and, till then, almost uninhabited, heights of Lebanon, and there settled. Bydegrees these colonists organised themselves into a sortof Ecclesiastico-civil Government, with a self- styledPatriarch of Antioch, a Monophysite of course likethe rest, at their head, and a certain number ofsee-less titular bishops for an administrative Cabinet.Nobility or lay chiefs were none; the total Maronitesystem acknowledged but three classes-clergy, monks,and peasants. Neglected by the Arab or Memlookgovernors ofthe Syrian plain, who had little motive forenterprise among barren rocks and unfurnished huts;in open but safe, because distant, hostility with theByzantine Government, which, orthodox or nonorthodox, was in neither phrase friendly to Syriandogmas, they remained tributary, but scarcely subject,to the Mahometan rulers of Damascus, Bagdad, orAleppo.vi.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 195But when the Crusaders, entering Syria, first openeda prospect of successful aggression on Mahometans andByzantines alike, the Maronites -a name by which themixed refugees of North Lebanon were already calledafter their first mountain Patriarch Maron-adjoinedthemselves to the Franks, and claimed the kinship ofcommon hatred to Mecca and to Constantinople. Thebetter to cement this new-found alliance, they disavowed or dissembled their Monophysite ideas, andannounced themselves Roman Catholics. The ignorance of the Latin clergy in whatever regarded thelanguages or subtleties of the East, facilitated a unionseasonable to both parties; and the Maronites wereembraced not as penitents but brothers. Their effectiveshare, however, in the labours and campaigns of theCrusaders, reduced itself to some slight commissariatassistance; so slight that its unimportance eluded thelater perquisitions of Mahometan vengeance.After the expulsion of the Crusaders, their Maroniteallies recontracted themselves within their rocky shell;and for two or three centuries we lose sight of them,till they re-appear the obedient vassals of the Drusehouse of Ma'an, and of the Mahometan Ameers of Shehāb, their warlike neighbours, the former on the south,the latter on the east.During the period which we have thus summarilyreviewed, the frequent recurrence of politico-religiouspressure, analogous though not identical with thatwhich first peopled the northerly districts of Lebanonwith Syro-Chaldean Christians, filled the central rangesof the same mountain with Druses, the southerly withthe Shee'ya' Metewalees, and the hill-lands from Lebanonto Antioch with the enigmatic Anseyreeyes; whilethe old Arab family of Shehab, the almost credibleclaimants of kinsmanship with Koreysh and the Pro0 2196 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [vi..phet, asserted, and sometimes exercised, sovereigntyover the valley of Teym, the door and master-key ofthe Druse mountain. Races differing in origin, andevery origin a history; but united by the similarity ofthe circ*mstances which clustered them together rounda common centre of security. Each was an enemy ofthe powers that were in Syria for the time being,Seljook or Memlook, Arab or Turk; each, the Shehabalone excepted, was a hereditary enemy to, or an apostate from, the Mahometan creed; each sought, in thefortified refuge of the mountain, to maintain its ownusages, laws, and independence. But the Maronites, anunwarlike race, more numerous in monks than insoldiers, and better men with their tongues than withtheir swords, unequal to isolation, sought a guaranteeof their existence in voluntary submission to their nextdoor neighbours, the high-spirited and closely- organisedDruses; and admitted for chiefs the Druse family ofMa'an, who ruled over their Christian vassals, patriarchs and priests, monks and peasants, with a rule,arbitrary it might be but not unkindly, nor unprofitable to the subjects themselves. Meantime the noblefamily of Shehab, whose high blood disdained thesupremacy of Circassian or Turk, strengthened graduallyand prospered on the East; till, passing from independence to sovereignty, they brought all Lebanonunder their power; and, after fierce struggles withwhich this narrative has no concern, saw the last heirof Ma'ān, and his vicegerent the treacherous Yoosef ofJobeyl, submit to their ascendant, till Druse and Maronite alike saluted them sole lords of the mountain.But their elevation was their ruin. Influenced, partlyby the numerical superiority of their Maronite subjectsand partly by the delusive prospect of French support,the Shehab chiefs in a fatal hour deserted the CrescentVI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 197for the Cross, announced themselves Christians, andcast in their lot with the Maronites. All folly is contagious, but politico- religious folly most so; and theonly Druse family of any importance then actuallyestablished within Maronite confines, the Benoo-Lama' ,did after the Shehab example; and thus it came thatthe Maronite peasants discovered themselves for thefirst time with Ameers, that is nobles, counted amongthemselves. Sheykhs they had indeed numbered before, but Sheykh ' among villagers implies simply avillage headman, with no title or claim to nobility except in some dubious French patent, or the mere vauntof self-assumption. Now at last, by the recent Maronitism of the Shehab and Benoo- Lama' , the Maronitesbecame in fact for a few years sole rulers of Lebanon,from Terabolos to Seyda' .' Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride-' weall know whither. The first use made by the Maronitesof their new-found power was an abuse: it was toharass and oppress their old lords and protectors theDruses. Forgetting that the Shehab, however powerfulwhile Mahometans, had now by the very fact of theirbecoming Maronites sunk to the ordinary Maronitelevel, and could thus no longer uphold those amongstwhom they reckoned as equals, they set themselves tocut away the only remaining prop of the independenceof the mountain, the Druse chieftains. Meantime 1840inaugurated a new era for Syria: Lebanon was thrownopen to European arms and politics, and foreign interference combined with Maronite insolence in bringingabout the guerilla war of 1841 , the bipartition of themountain, and the long series of double-dealing andwrong which at last culminated in the bloody summerof 1860, and the calamities with which our readers are,no doubt, already well acquainted. Since that time,198 EASTERN CHRISTIANS. [VI.irremediably weakened from within, and subject to thePorte and its Pashas from without, the Maronites havetalked much, intrigued much, and done nothing.The Maronites of our day may best be divided intothree classes; namely, the clergy (monks included), thetownsmen, and the peasants. Of the so- called Princesor Ameers, the descendants of Shehab and Lama', thenewly-adopted Maronites, we will say nothing. ' Nonragionar di lor, ma guarda e passa;' the nobility oftheir origin may be allowed to cast a veil of decentsilence over their present degeneracy. As for theSheykhs, Khazin, Hobeysh, Kerem, or others, they shallbe considered under the class of peasants from whomthey derive, and amongst whom they find their properplace.And first, the clergy: that is, the patriarch, thebishops, the parish-priests, and the monks. All these,partly owing to the circ*mstances under which Maronite nationality first came into existence, partly to thesuperstitious character of the Syro-Chaldæans themselves, exercise in Lebanon an authority after which anInnocent III. may have aspired, but never attained .Nor do they either serve God or man for nought. Onevery pleasant hill of Lebanon, in every fruitful valley,the first object that attracts the traveller's notice is forcertain an episcopal residence, a snug convent, or acomfortable priest's house; the fattest olive-groves, themost generous vineyards, the choicest tobacco-fields,the good of the land is theirs; and one-fourth of theMaronite territory is, at the most modest computation,the patrimony of the Church. No roof covers betterfurnished apartments, no vaults hold goodlier stores ,than those of His Holiness the Patriarch; whether hedescend to his winter residence at Zook, or refresh hiswearied sanctity in the summer coolness of his palacevi. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 199at Wadee-Kadeesho. Encircled by troops of attendants,some in the appropriate garb of deacons, some in themore dubious array of pipe-bearers or chibookjees, clad,not metaphorically but literally, in the costliest ofpurple and fine linen; seated at a table, the copiousness of which may in the East be held for luxury; orhaughtily admitting the homage of prescriptive superstition, the Maronite Patriarch is at once a parody anda burlesque of an Italian Pontiff, and a model whicheach of his hierarchical subordinates-bishop, priest, ordeacon-strives in due proportion and with tolerablesuccess to reproduce.The monks, in habits of black serge and asceticgirdles, parade an edifying modesty; but their profession of poverty is belied by the size and constructionof their monasteries, by their well-built and betterfilled store-rooms, and yet more by the vast extent oftheir lands. The thin veil of personal disappropriationill conceals from the eye of the laity, and perhaps fromtheir own, the insatiate greed of the community; andfrom the prior of the great Convent of Koshey'a, downto the aged hermit of Wadee- Kadeesho, who extends hisvenerable hand for a blessing and a ' bakhsheesh ' to thevisitor of his abnegation, the Maronite regular is themost grasping, the most retentive of all his mendicantbrethren, West or East.The first impression of the secular clergy, or parishpriests, is at times more favourable. A smattering ofstudies, Latin, French, and Italian, is a frequent resultof connexion with Rome, of visits to Italy and France,also in many cases of education received, or at least ofyears passed, in the College of the Propaganda. Thenames of Latin Fathers and of more recent theologians, strange elsewhere in the East, are familiar here;and the garbled history of ecclesiastical authors is re-200 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [vi..chronicled, and believed, under the roofs of Fetooh andKesrewan. Hence a Maronite priest not rarely obtainsthe credit of being learned, while in truth only superficial. To the same education they owe their specialhatred against Protestantism and Protestants, a hatredbigoted and violent to a scarcely credible degree. Inthe same they carefully instruct their flocks; and theirefforts are effectually seconded by Lazarists, Jesuits,and Capuchins, thickly disseminated all over the mountain; who delight, moreover, to give a practical turn tothis anti-heretical fervour by carefully identifying incommon use the names of Protestant and of English. Thecertain and universal salvation of all Maronites; thepossible, but hardly probable, salvation of any otherCatholics; and the inevitable, unexceptional damnationof all non- Roman sects, schismatic, heretic, Mahometan,Druse, and so forth, but especially of all Protestants;such is the foremost lesson in this Christian and clericalschool. And it is from their clergy that the Maronites,more than any other tribe of the earth, take theirhabitual direction of thought and action.Such are the distinctive features of the Maroniteclergy; in other respects they share the ordinary praiseor blame of average Eastern priesthoods .These are the men who, in '59 and '60 , after havingby their ceaseless and unscrupulous intrigues broughton the bloody catastrophes of Jezzeen, Ḥasbeya,Rasheya, Jaḥleh, Deyr- el - Kamar, Damascus -afterhaving provoked a war in which thousands of theirpeople were slaughtered, some on the field of battle,more in cold-blooded massacre, and other thousandsutterly and irretrievably ruined-refused the sacrifice ofa piastre from their own full coffers, of an acre fromtheir own broad lands, to support a cause, which theyproclaimed the cause of God, or to relieve and sustainVI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.201the widows and orphans whom they themselves hadmade. Without a blush the wealthiest clergy of theEast saw the misery of their flocks comforted by European, and, in no small measure, by Protestant charity.They snarled at the givers, and greedily swallowed thegift. These are they who then--they had learnt thetrade before-paraded their long beards, sanctimoniousfaces, and flowing robes in Europe; and claimed thealms intended by the easily-gulled charity of the Westto feed the orphan, house the homeless, cure the sickand wounded, rebuild villages, schools, and churches;and which in reality found their way so far as thepocket of Bishop this and Prior that, but no further.These are the men who unite all the pretentious bigotryof Catholic Rome with all the vices and meanness ofthe Christian East; these are they who give to theirtribe and nation its special tone, a tone arrogant alikeand cringing, base and vainglorious, fanatical to adegree no Greek ever attained, servile to a depth belowthe servility of a eunuch or a Persian.Next follows the lay portion of the Maronite nation;we will begin with the inhabitants of the towns.As townsfolk, Maronites offer in their ways a certainresemblance, not wholly superficial, with the EasternGreeks. Substitute France for Russia, Catholicism forOrthodoxy, and you will find in any Maronite house ofBeyrout, Damascus, or Aleppo, much the same style ofintrigue, the same restlessness, the same unabasheddisloyalty to their own, that is, the Turkish Government,that characterise the Greeks of the Levant. But inmore essential respects the Maronite differs much fromthe Greek Rey'ah. Colder in blood, duller in brain,clumsy of hand, timid in heart, he is less dangerous,and less interesting. Among all Easterns it is theMaronite who most affects to copy Europeans; but of202 [vi.EASTERN CHRISTIANS.all Easterns also his copy is the most blurred by ill-taste,or incomplete by nigg*rdliness. In the same fashion aMaronite will often hanker after trade, and will talkmuch about it; but here again his cowardice interferes,and he seldom rises above the paltriest commercialpeddling. Shop-keeping is generally the limit of thewealthier; the poorer sort follow mostly those pursuitswhich imply least enterprise, and least manly vigour;they are shoemakers, weavers, tailors, and house- servants.Very rarely does a Maronite find place in a Governmentbureau; the Christian directors, writers, or accountantsin the Syrian Custom-houses or Serey's, are almostinvariably Greek or Armenian.With want of spirit the Maronite unites want oftaste; his house, if he be himself an architect, is formless and gloomy; his Church heavy and disfigured bytawdry ornament. When indeed anything that indicates architectural or decorative feeling occurs in aMaronite building, public or private, we may be almostsure that some strange artist has been called in, probably a Greek. The very dress of a Maronite, thoughthe same in the main with those of other Easterns, isgenerally duller in colour, heavier in fold, and lessgraceful in cut.As might be expected from the patronage so longaccorded them by France, a patronage to which most oftheir calamities, and in particular those of 1860, are ingreat measure due, the Maronites are eager in the studyof the French language, which they can often not onlyspeak, but even read and write with considerable fluency.But of French literature they know little, havingneither the power nor the desire to appreciate it;indeed, the utmost goal of their European studies is theposition of Dragoman, or a place in a European countinghouse, or an employment under a French master.VI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 203Rarely do they learn Turkish or English; indeed, theyhave a kind of antipathy to both these languages; norcould it be otherwise considering their fanaticism, andperhaps also the speciality of their European patronage.It is, however, to their credit that, though with lesssuccess than some other Eastern Christians ' theirneighbours, they carry their studies of Arab grammarand literature to a considerable length, and are occasionally not contemptible masters in this field.CBe it also told to Maronite credit, that, although thestandard of truth among them is certainly not our own,and a European who should model his veracity on theirsin word and deed would strongly risk passing for acheat and a liar, yet seldom do they push falsehood tothose lengths of deception, swindling, and treachery,which have made the Levant infamous from Byzantinetimes to the present. Perhaps it is slow-wittedness,perhaps a modified honesty; we willingly ascribe itto the latter; the more so that, left to themselves, theMaronites are on the whole a good- tempered race, fairlysociable, imitative, and, though not enterprising, laborious. Drink and gambling also are only occasionalvices among them; their morality, in the narroweracceptance of the term, was never severe, nor hasEuropean contact tended to straighten it.From the Maronites of the town we turn to theMaronites of the country; and here, as is usual amongraces whose virtues and vices are the result of circ*mstance rather than of will, we find not much indeedto admire, but less also to condemn. Still their visitorwill be startled by the grossness of their ignorance;for although schools are plenty among the Maronitevillages, the bigotry of the masters, mostly priests,has in general narrowed down the teaching to somechildish Catechism, badly translated from the Italian204 [VI. EASTERN CHRISTIANS.or French. Another characteristic of the Maronitepeasant is dirt; and, with every natural advantageof situation and climate, the commonest expedientsof municipal cleanliness are so strangely neglected, orunknown, that even the pure air of the Syrianmountain-tops seems hardly a security against endemicpestilence.In the culture of the mulberry-tree and the rearingof silk, in tobacco-growing and in the care of vineyards, Maronite husbandmen are commendable fordiligence and skill. Their industry, like that of theup-country Armenians, is of the heavy, perseveringkind. Like the Armenians, also, they have little turnfor sea-pursuits; and while the entire line of Maronitecoast, from St. George's Bay to the river of Terabolos,is indented with countless creeks and shallow inlets,well adapted to the small craft and fishing-boats ofSyria, the number of sailors or fishermen supplied fromamong the Maronites is inconsiderable .The village chiefs or Sheykhs, Khāzin, Ḥobeysh, andothers, are distinguished from the peasants aroundthem by their habits of childish intrigue and pretentiousidleness, and are confounded with them by a clownishawkwardness, the common badge of the Maronitemountaineer. This clownishness refines itself in theMaronites of Beyrout and Terabolos into mere heaviness and lack of taste. However, their kinsmen ofDamascus and Aleppo have, by long separation fromthe bulk of the tribe and residence among strangers,acquired somewhat of the courtesy and polish properto the natives of inner and Mahometan Syria.The total number of the Maronite nation, or ratherclan, is variously estimated from 150,000 to 230,000,or even more. We incline to the higher cypher itselfnot a very considerable one, after all. Yet it morevi. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 205than doubles the census of the Druses, by whom theMaronites were long held in subjection, and at last,in 1860, utterly discomfited, and that of the less renowned nor over-courageous Metewalees, by whomthey are habitually insulted.Here our reader may pause, and consult his reasonor his sympathies.We have now passed in review the three mostnumerous or the most talked- of Christian populationsof the East: those with whose name Europe is notunfamiliar, and to whom her patronage is most readilyextended . Eleven of the fourteen species of ' EasternChristian' yet remain; but the minuter inspectionof some of these would be superfluous, and of othersuninteresting. Among the former we may numberthe Catholic or Protestant Armenians, in every respect-niceties of creed excepted-closely resembling theirorthodox brethren; the Russianised Greeks, hardlydistinguishable from the Phanariot; while the Syriansand Chaldæans, orthodox or Catholic, of Upper Syriaand Mesopotamia, are best comprised in a generalsketch of the inhabitants of those regions. The insignificance of the Eastern Latins eludes research; andwant of sufficient information to reconcile or rejectconflicting statements compels us to pass over in silencetwo remarkable, though somewhat anomalous, offshootsof Eastern Christianity, the Nestorians of Kurdistan,and the more recently famous Abyssinians. There yetremain, however, two classes-the one a clan, the othera nation-each possessed of high interest, and eachdeserving a distinct, however cursory, notice. Theseare the Greek Catholics, or Melchites, of Syria, and theCopts of Egypt.The former present a phenomenon startling in European eyes, easily explicable from an Eastern point of206 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..view. Bearing the name of Greeks, they have yetnothing in common either with the Hellenes of Athensor with the Byzantine Greeks of the Levant, exceptthe use of the same ritual and liturgy, and these, too,not in Greek, but translated into excellent Arabic.The history of the Greek Catholics of Syria shallexplain for us alike their name and their character.Long before the Christian era several tribes of theYemen, Arab Arabs-so they style themselves, to indicate the unmixed genuineness of their race -emigrated northwards, and, after many fortunes, settledfinally on the confines of Syria, to the east and southof Damascus. Their colony was again and again recruited, now from their Yemen brethren, now from thetribes of Nejed and Hejaz; but the superior dignityand number of Benoo-Ghassan gave them a commonname as well as government; and with Jefnah, the sonof ' Amr, began the series of Ghassanite kings, whor*igned for more than four hundred years, till the risingsun of Mahomet eclipsed all the stars in the Arab sky.But few tribes have shone with brighter lustre inpre-Mahometan peace or war than Benoo-Ghassan;few have attained equal celebrity in prose or verse.Valour, generosity, eloquence -whatever forms thestaple of Arab worth- all is ascribed to them, and thesilence of their rivals admits the praise of theireulogists.In common with their king, El-Harith, the BenooGhassan embraced Christianity towards the end ofthe fourth century, and, like most converts, adopted theceremonial of their first apostles, namely, the Byzantine. Hence they derived, as Christians, the surnameof Greeks, and hence for many centuries the use ofthe Greek language in their churches, or in the tents,of which, as their annals and some relics of portableVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 207sanctuaries yet show, these half-nomades made use forthe rites of worship. But that language, confinedwithin strictly Church limits, remained always alienfrom the every-day life of Benoo- Ghassan; and theiroff-lying position, situated on the extreme verge ofByzantine rule, allowed but a feeble union, politicalor ecclesiastical, with Constantinople.When the Mahometan armies, led by Khalid- ebnWaleed and his brother generals, overran Syria, thegreater number of the Ghassan Arabs adopted thecongenial faith which fused them with their conquerors;some, however, availed themselves of the tolerance of' Omar and the Ommey'ah Khalifs, and remainedChristians. From their Mahometan neighbours theyhad nothing to fear; and their retired position beyondthe passes of the Leja sheltered them alike from thedangerous sympathies or rivalities of their Westernbrethren, and, from the blood-stained vicissitudes ofTurkoman or Tartar conquest. Thus guarded, theirhistory presents an enviable blank, till in the seventeenth century the comparative centralisation of theTurkish empire brought the Greek-Arabs of Hawraninto a contact too intimate to be friendly with the encroaching Phanariotes of Constantinople; while at thesame time European and especially French influencebegan once more to penetrate into the long- closedEast. The Christian-Arabs of Ituræa and Trachonitishad, in their own and almost in English phrase, no'back' to lean on; and the desire of finding one toprop them up against their overbearing co-religionistson the one side, and against the possible or existinghostilities of their non-Christian landsmen on the other,induced the Benoo-Ghassan Greeks to change the nameof orthodox for Catholic: a name occasionally, by asomewhat factitious reminiscence of ancient partizan-208 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI .ship, commuted with that of Melchite. By this changeof title they separated themselves from the orthodoxor Byzantine Greeks of Syria, and obtained two things,-a hierarchy of their own, and the permissive substitution of the Arabic for the Greek language in theirChurch service. And thus they have remained a clanapart, readily distinguishable by the features of racemuch more than by those of dogma from the orthodoxGreeks of the province; still more alien from theSyro-Chaldæan Maronite, also with much less Europeward sympathy and imitation ."Divided from their Arab brethren of town or tentby the profession of Christianity, they have, in almostevery other respect, retained the distinctive characteristics of pure Arab descent. Their courage has beenproved in many a well-fought fray with the wild tribesof the Desert and with the warrior Druses of theadjoining Lejà and the anti-Lebanon; their endurancehas, within the last century, adorned the chroniclesof Aleppo with a respectable list of martyrs who havepreferred death to Phanariote subjection. In generosityand hospitality they surpass-we can ourselves witness to it—not only all other Eastern Christians,' buteven many non-Arab Mahometan populations. In thenational ornaments of eloquence and poetry they still,as of old, outshine every competitor. The Arabiclanguage is spoken in an almost primitive purity evenby the lowest and most uneducated classes amongstthem, while it is cultivated in all its lexicographical andgrammatical refinements by the higher; and the GreekCatholic author, Elias Yazjee, has in our own timeventured to imitate and almost rival the exquisite' Makamāt ' of the justly-celebrated Hareeree. But thetalent of the Melchite- Arab is principally shown in acapacity for the management of affairs, which hasVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 209peopled the palaces and residences of the governorsand chief men of Syria with Greek- Catholic counsellors,treasurers, accountants, writers, till the number of postsof trust filled by them throughout these regions amazesby its disproportion with the scanty census of theirclan. This heritage, unimpaired by time, by religiouschange, or by foreign influence, they have received andkept from their ancestors of the Yemen. But theyshare, with most other Arabs, an ineradicable, becausean inbred, aversion to Ottoman rule; and when Ibraheem Pasha, acting as lieutenant for his still moretalented father Mehemet-' Alee, appeared in Syria todismember that province from the Turkish empire andunite it, so hope proclaimed, to a new and Arab kingdom, nowhere did the Egyptian find a readier welcomeand a more cordial and effectual assistance to his projects than among the Melchite-Arabs of the land.One fatal heritage, however, it must be allowed, theGreek Catholics have, along with their better heir-loom,derived from their ancestors of the desert-the spiritof divided counsels. The same impatient individualism,the same inaptness for unity or even co-ordination,which once, and only once, in Arab history yielded tothe colossal genius of Mahomet, but which so soon afterhis death re-appeared to break up his great nationalwork into countless fragments, never again to unite;this spirit still exists unabated, and repeats itself inevery tribe, in every clan; nor has the brotherhood ofChristianity, nor the fellowship of belief and rite,availed the Catholic-Greeks of Ituræa and Trachonitis,of Hawran and the Belkaà, from its fatal influence.'See how these Christians hate one another,' may bea true, though a most discreditable satire elsewhere;it is nowhere truer than among the Melchite- Arabs,nowhere more fatal in its consequences. At war moreP210 EASTERN CHRISTIANS. [VI.or less open with all around them, children of Ismael,their hand against every man, and every man's handagainst them, they are not the less at ceaseless conflict among themselves, always at variance, alwaysdisunited; till not so much as a single village acknowledges one hand, one purpose, or one action. Nosooner has an individual of their number attained byenergy or talent some superior position, than envy—the curse of the Arab race-raises up ten others topull him down, and, after having done that, to quarrelamong themselves for the very honours of which theyhave despoiled their tribesman, for no other reasonthan that he was worthy of them. Blood is perhapsshed; and then the feud is irreconcilable to the tenthgeneration. The quarrels of Beyt Aboo-Khāṭir andBeyt Ma'aloof, the rivalry of the Ḥarat- Raseeyeh andthe Ḥarat-et-Tahta, did more than even the arms ofthe Druse Khoṭṭar and the cowardice or treason ofYoosef Kerem for the ruin of Melchite Zahleh: norcould all the losses of 1860, in which fatal year nonesuffered more, because none fought more, than theGreek Catholics, persuade the Damascene survivors ofthe family of Honeyneh to lay aside their hereditaryenmity with the survivors of the family of Foreyj, andto remember at least the brotherhood of misfortune,since they had forgotten that of race and faith.Blame and praise, yet more, perhaps, the latter thanthe former, are merited by another noted quality ofthe genuine Arab mind, faithfully reproduced in theMelchites of Central and Eastern Syria, namely, animmense personal pride; a pride based on self-consciousness, and hence unaugmented by prosperity,undiminished in adversity,—a pride independent ofcirc*mstance of sect, of condition, and even of age.As ' Abd-Allah, the son of the heroic Zobeyr, and aVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 211C"child then of some ten years old, was playing with hisyoung companions in one of the streets of Medeenah,the Khalif Ma'aweyah passed by on horseback withnumerous attendants. Stand up out of the way ofthe Commander of the Faithful,' said some one of theriders to the boy. Neither are you my father that Ishould stand up to you for respect's sake, nor is theroad so narrow that I should stand up to you forroom's sake,' answered the child . Similar in character,but more dignified, was the reply of ' Omar, second ofthe Khalifs. Feeling thirsty during a conversationprolonged till late into the night with ' Amroo, the conqueror of Egypt, 'Omar rose from his feet, and, treadingon tiptoe, lest he should disturb the slumber of anattendant, who, tired of watching, had, like the Luciusof Shakespeare, fallen asleep on the floor, crossed theroom, quenched his thirst from a pitcher of water, andreturned softly to his place. 'Commander of theFaithful, you might as well have awakened the servantand let him bring it you,' remarked ' Amroo. I got up,and I was ' Omar; I returned, and I am ' Omar,'answered the Khalif.This is the pride which, among Mahometan Arabs,is enhanced, while veiled, by the modest title of the' servant of God;' an affirmation which implies andalmost expresses the negation of any other service orinferiority. Among the Pagans or Christians of therace it dispenses with even this disguise. But thedefiant vaunts of a pre-Mahometan Ta'abbet- Shurran,the self-laudatory lyrics of a sceptical Aboo- 1 - ' Ola orMutenebbee, the devout exultations of innumerablereligious or ascetic poets, from the great Gheeläneedown to ' Abd-el-Ghanee En-Nabloosee, and the vigorous, though imitative, war-notes of Nikōla-el- Khooree,Greek-Catholic priest of Aleppo, however they mayP 2212 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI. ..*vary in the form and wording of the phrase, are trulyone in meaning, and that meaning is unconquerableself-reliance. Christian humility may condemn, asMahometan humility has frequently done, the vice ofpride; but a philosophical mind will hardly be severein its censure of what is the root of much real greatness, of noble exertion, of dignity in misfortune, and ofmoderation in success. The Melchite-Arab is oftenhated, but can rarely be despised; and his independentspirit, if it conciliate him few friends, merits him yetan esteem impossible to bestow on the borrowed vanityof the Greek, the boastful meanness of the Maronite,and the tame servility of most other ' EasternChristians.'The small number of the Melchite- Greeks-theyscarce come up to fifty thousand souls-is aboutequally divided between the inhabitants of the townsDamascus, Zaḥleh, Aleppo, Beyrout, Seydà, and therest, and the inhabitants of the open plains, of theBekaa, Hawran, and the lands beyond the Jordan.We have already sketched the character of the townspeople; whoever visits them will be further struck bythe good taste of their domestic and ecclesiastical architecture, in which the true genius of the Arab orSaracenic style is still conspicuous in graceful carvings,airy porticos, bold arches, and slender columns, and bythe easy good manners of his Melchite host, who prideshimself on courtesy and hospitality to his guests, afterthe old Arab fashion. A Greek- Catholic house atDamascus recalls the Thousand and One Nights,' bothin the decorations of the building and in the refinedpoliteness of its inhabitants. But the Damasceneproverb, ' Like a rose, smell it from a distance, andware thorns,' is too often exemplified in prolonged intercourse; quarrels are of frequent occurrence, andVI. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 213hard to appease; and even a casual acquaintance,however amiably welcomed, will do prudently to avoidin his conversation whatever may wound a proud andsusceptible race. But in literature, history, localgovernment, poetry, and the like, the visitor, if qualified to enter on such topics, will find before him, inArab phrase, a wide and fertile meadow.The Melchite peasants are, at first sight, scarcelydistinguishable from the Mahometan Arabs aroundthem, whether in dress, habitation, or manner. Thesame broad cloak, dark, striped, or gaily embroideredthe same yellow and red handkerchief, bound with thesame twist of camel's hair round the head-the sameold-fashioned arms, sword, lance, or pistol-the samebeard, the same idiom and language-the very churchesare in their simplicity hardly dissimilar from villagemosques. Nor only the Mahometan Arab peasant, buteven the half Bedouin, the "Arab Deerah,' or Bedouinof the frontier, is often reproduced among the Melchitesof Hawran and the Balkaà. Besides, the bonds ofunion between Christian and Mahometan are in thesedistricts tightened by the doubtful neighbourhood ofDruses, and the visits, more frequent than welcome, ofthe plundering Roo'ala and Woold-' Alee tribes. Whoever is not afraid of roughing it a little, may pass someweeks with pleasure, nor without profit, in the studyof Arab manners and eloquence among the GreekCatholics of Trachonitis; he will learn more there andbetter in a week than Beyrout, or even Aleppo, couldteach him in a year.The Melchite clergy, like that of all ' Eastern Christians ,' whatever their sect, have considerable influence;yet they do not constitute a ruling class, as among theMaronites, or a caste apart, as among the Armeniansand orthodox Greeks. They are often men of much214 EASTERN CHRISTIANS. [VI.public spirit, active and well furnished with the currentaccomplishments of the East. Like all Eastern priesthoods, they are divided into two sorts-the marriedsecular clergy and the unmarried monks, from amongstwhom bishops and patriarchs are selected. Thesemonks, in particular, are much superior to the ordinaryrun of their fellow- ascetics in the East, and theprinting- press of the monastery of Showey'r—a pressunrivalled throughout Syria in beauty of type andaccuracy of labour-may almost atone for the ambitiousrevolt of its celibate workmen against the lawful authority of the Prior of Damascus. We should, however,not forget to add that similar praise is due, and forsimilar reasons, to the Catholic- Armenian monks,whether in Europe or Asia.We have dwelt somewhat at length on the descriptionof one of the smallest sections of Eastern Christianity,because that section alone, among all others, offers theagreeable spectacle of a race neither servile nor degenerate. Yet the want of servility implies the wantof patrons, and the Melchite-Greeks of Syria neitherpossess the sympathy of Europe, nor, indeed, muchdesire its questionable advantage. European sympathyin the East too generally implies, for those who seekor enjoy it, a mendicant spirit, a dependent tone, anaimless dissatisfaction, a new element of intrigue, aloss of what one has for an unprofitable striving afterwhat one has not. Further, it implies the hatred ofthe surrounding Mahometan populations and of theOttoman Government itself, which, naturally enough,sees with disgust that its subjects have their faceshabitually turned to the worship of another star thanits own. Hence it may occasionally, and in the progressof events, imply violence and even massacre. Did notthe Mahometans in general, and the Turks more espe-vi. ] EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 215cially believe, nor without reason, that the EasternChristian population is the chosen field of Europeanintrigue, the door always open for European interference; -did they, and could they, look on theChristians simply as subjects of the Empire, differingfrom themselves in form of belief only, united andloyal in all besides; -the Christians of the East wouldnot be left in peace merely, but would take rankamong the most favoured subjects of the Porte, fromConstantinople to Bagdad. History testifies to theirhonourable security in the days of the Khalifs; andwe have ourselves witnessed their promotion underthe brief administration of Ibraheem Pasha. But now,and as a general rule, none are so ill looked on, andwith but too much reason. The hatred, first originatedby the Crusades, has been continued and aggravated bydiplomatic protections and armed interference; andwhile we condemn the ferocity or fanaticism whichpresided at the risings of Aleppo and Nabloos-atthe massacres of Jeddah and Damascus-we cannotwonder; rather, all things considered, might we thinkthat the Mahometans, with Clive, have reason tobe astonished at their own moderation .' Vexatiousattempts to extend a miserable and undue influencefallacious but incendiary hopes-promises even ofsupport from the West or the North-encouragementto ready insolence, and irksome interference with thenormal course of local government-all these haveworked, and still work, till the Mahometan populationand the Porte alike lose their long-provoked patience,and the debt of years is paid off in a day of blood andfire. Thus it is that remonstrances against imaginaryoppressions and complaints of wrongs which do notexist end in giving reality to the very subjects ofcomplaint and remonstrance; and intriguing ambition216 EASTERN CHRISTIANS CHRL . [VI.has more than once viewed with open horror andsecret satisfaction the realisation of evils to justify theprotest which had preceded and caused them when asyet they were not. ' Save us from our friends,' wouldbe the most rational prayer, did they but know it, ofEastern Christians; and in keeping aloof from European favour and influence the Melchite-Arabs of Syriado but show their wisdom.There is yet another race of Eastern Christians,more ancient in their Christianity than Syrians, Maronites, and Armenians-of more undoubted descentthan the Greeks of the Islands and Anatolia-a racethat dates its nationality from no special creed orritual, older than the Hebrew itself-old as the firstrational records of the inhabited world, the Copts ofEgypt.By what fate a nation, born, it would seem, to command-the skilful organisers of a mighty and longenduring kingdom-the claimants of eternity in theimperishable monuments of their greatness thebuilders of Thebes and the Pyramids-the heirs ofRameses and Pharaoh-have for more than two thousand years remained the scarce impatient slaves, nowof Persia, now of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, thenof Arab or Memlook princes, of Tartars and Turks,till they have sunk to their present deep degradation,were hard to say. The extinction of national energyis often a harder problem to solve than its origin anddevelopment. Yet even now, after so long a servitudeand depression, they still retain, and this may increaseour wonder, many of those very qualities which oncerendered them lords, not of their own Egypt and Nileonly, but of Syria, and of no inconsiderable portionof Asia also; crushed, but scarcely changed.Since, however, the Arab conquest in 638, the bloodVI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS. 217of the now Mahometan inhabitants of the Nile valleyhas so mingled with that of their Arab invaders, besides what further modification it may have admittedfrom Negro and Nubian, Circassian and Turk, that wewill in these pages restrict the nationality as the nameof Copt to the native Christians of the land, who havealong with their peculiar form of belief retained alsothe purity of their national descent without any appreciable admixture.Except a few thousands, five at most, of so-calledCatholic Copts, who to all practical intents and purposes resemble the rest of the nation, the Copts ofEgypt belong, by tradition if not by knowledge, to theEutychian or ultra- Monophysite school; a circ*mstancewhich, combined with the hereditary remembrance ofhistorical injuries, divides the Egyptian from theGreek by a deep cleft of national and religious hatred.Towards the Mahometan population around the Coptshave little ill- will, though of all ' Eastern Christians 'they have had the most cause to complain. The transient atrocities of the mad Khalif Hakim can, indeed,be scarcely laid to the charge of Islam, from whichHakim himself was notoriously an apostate; but thereis no doubt that in following and purely Mahometantimes oppression, and even persecution, have at frequent intervals weighed heavily on the Copts. Thedangerous proximity of their Western co-religionists,the intrusive sanctity of Louis IX, and the Crusades,which involved the loss of other and better lives thanthose of the Crusaders themselves, may explain theanti-Christian bitterness of the rulers of Egypt; andthe knowledge of the mediate cause may have renderedthe Copts less hostile than might have been else expected to their immediate oppressors. Besides, theyare a patient people.218 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI..In all times and under every dynasty the Copts havebeen the scribes and accountants of Egypt; a positionproductive of much influence to those who hold it, andalso of not a little wealth. Their natural turn forcalculation, however intricate-their habits of enduringand accurate labour-their sedentary and somewhatphlegmatic disposition-all agree to fit them for thiskind of work, and to render them pre-eminent in it.The inventors of papyrus-scrolls and hieroglyphics arestill the best book-keepers of the East; and thecalculating and mechanical skill of old days, to whichthe hydraulic system, no less than the architecturalmonuments of the land, bears witness, is yet theirs,though employed at the bidding and for the behests ofstrangers. Instances are not wanting-how shouldthey be in a land where law is arbitrary, andwhere public opinion has no general expression?—ofCoptic accountants who have scandalously abused theconfidence placed in them to their own personal advantage; but, on the whole, opportunity makes fewerthieves among the Copts than might have been reasonably anticipated; and, under its present régime ofmercantile swindlers and foreign adventurers, theEgyptian Government may have room to regret thetraditions of former times, and the diligent service andaverage fidelity of the Copts.Commerce, that, at least, which involves distantventure, and speculation in general, have no specialattraction for this race. Whatever wealth they mayhave, much or little, is not to be looked for among theinvestments of a Suez Canal or of a Government loan.That wealth, if not placed in local and immediate trade,in a corn-store or a warehouse, is by preference converted, where possible, into buildings and land.Copt is fond of building; and when he can keep clearTheVI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.219of the wretched pseudo- French taste which has disfigured Egypt with huge uncomfortable card-paperedifices, and palaces or pavilions more suited, if eventhat, to the banks of the Seine than of the Nile, hisstyle of architecture is not only, like that of his ancestors, solid and enduring, but handsome, and appropriate to the climate and scenery. Skilful and delicatestone-carving, patterns intricate, yet in harmony withthe main lines of the building, nicely-balanced vaultingsand galleries, graceful pillars, wonderful lattice-work,and bright colours so used as best to carry out thegeneral effect, such is the genuine Egyptian architecture of our times, where applied to lesser or domesticedifices. But in larger constructions, and especially insome recently-built churches, the solidity and polish ofthe granite columns, and the bold grandiosity, almostgrandeur, of the general outlines, heavier than theSaracenic, yet not so heavy as the older Byzantine,vindicate the descendants of the Luxor and Esneharchitects from the imputation of degeneracy.We enter the house of Markos or Georgios; weare received in roomy apartments, well carpeted, andadorned with candlesticks or mirror-frames of massivesilver, and furniture curious in carving and inlay.From the windows we look out under far- projectingeaves, into the dense shade of green gardens, wherethe waters of the Nile, infiltrated through the earth,and drawn up by the creaking water-wheel, orNa'oorah, run divided and subdivided into a thousandchannels, under the broad leafa*ge of bananas, magnolias, and a hundred other trees gay in flower andcopious in fruit, or between luxuriant sugar-cane andthe famed pot-herbs of Egypt, the regret and envyof Palestine; within, gaily-dressed servants, mostlynegroes, bring in jewelled coffee or sherbet cups on220 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI. .6huge silver trays; the amber mouth-pieces of the longpipes are ringed with diamonds; and when the ladyof the house appears, her massive gold ornaments, thepearls and diamonds on her head-dress, her ponderousbracelets and anklets , all gold, compel the exclamationascribed, truly or not, to the great Prussian General onhis view of London from the top of St. Paul's: Mywhat a plunder!' Though, by the way, the word' plunder ' in German has often the simple meaningof a multitude of good things, quite apart from theidea of their forcible appropriation; and Blucher, whowas better at tactics than at vocabularies, may verypossibly have only used the English word in its German sense, by a too literal translation of his thought.So be it far from us also to regard with violentcovetousness the festive treasures of our Coptic hostess.Let us, now that coffee and sherbets are disposedof, enter into conversation with the master of thehouse. We find that he takes little interest in European news and politics; the very names of Gladstoneand Disraeli are possibly unknown to him, and thoseof Alexander II. or Napoleon III. excite no sympathy:in a word, he has small science of the West, and evenless disposition to share or follow its movements. Butif our own reciprocal ignorance permits us to enter onsuch topics, we shall find him well instructed in thehistory of his own country; well read, too, in Arab andMahometan literature; shrewd and far- sighted in hisviews of what may best befit Egypt and her government, her agriculture, irrigation, trade, and so forth;we shall find in him, too, a kindly and tolerant disposition, an easy-going view of life, a keen relish forits pleasures, and a singular love of music, dance, andsong. His tastes, though more refined, are not in kindunlike those of his dusky and perhaps elder brotherVI.]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.221the negro. In fact, some ethnologists go about toprove the Copts of Caucasian, Arian, or Turaniandescent; they quote analogies, real or imagined, oflanguage; measure the length and breadth of skulls;and discover conformities of jawbone or forehead. Allthis may be; but this much is certain, that a Copt isto all intents and purposes, in thought, ways, manners,and even, so far as we can learn from history, in hismode of government, when he had one, and fashion ofreligion, a whiter and more intelligent negro; not,indeed, after the type of the western coast, but that ofDarfoor, Kordofan, Sennar, and the east inland districts.The very skull of the Darfooree and that of the Copthave the same well-arched, rounded form; and it ispossible that the Copts, no less than the great bulk ofthe Arab nation, are not of Asian but African origin.Still, African or Asian, the Copt is always a son ofCleopatra, and a brother of the too fascinating Pleiadsof our own day, the seven songstresses of Ķena; andon near acquaintance, we shall be shocked or gratifiedto find that Christianity, whatever inner and invisibleeffects it may, doubtless, have on his spiritual being,has left the physical and moral man remarkably unchanged. We see a book lying on a corner of hisdivan-he was reading it when we came in—we takeit up; it is not a political pamphlet, as, a hundred toone, it would have been under a Greek roof; nor is ita French or English vocabulary, the probable subjectof Armenian study; nor is it a devotional translationof Liguori, or the ' Sacré Cœur, ' the frequent ornamentof a Maronite cushion; no, it is an odd volume of the' Thousand and One Nights,' or the mirthful tales ofthe Rowdet-el-Abrar, or the chronicles of Makreezee,or a collection of Arab love-poems. The paper lyingby is no Gazette, it is a series of accounts calculated222 EASTERN CHRISTIANS [VI. .to a length of figures that might puzzle Bidder; or,perhaps, it is a copy of some choice passage fromHareeree. Did we find the Koran itself in companywe need hardly be surprised.Yet the Copt is a devout, indeed a superstitiousChristian; only his Christianity, however intense inbelief and copious in rite and symbol, does not greatlyinterfere with the general tenor of his practical anddaily life, either for better or for worse. Nor are hisdark-turbaned priests likely to teach him much ofwhat we should term morality; guileless of it themselves, why or how should they impart it to theirflocks? A Coptic marriage ' has passed into a proverb;enough to say, that certain obliging and temporaryfamily arrangements, said to prevail among the Abyssinians, are certainly and avowedly current among theirfairer brethren and sisters of Egypt. It would be hardto suppose that the clergy deny themselves the indulgences which they permit or encourage in the laity;and the multiple precautions which fence in the exactercelibacy of the Patriarch himself seem to imply therareness of the virtue they ensure. The fact is, thatin all respects, dress and ecclesiastical ceremonies excepted, the clergy and the laity are much alike; unlessthat the former, condemned by the endless Ritual ofDioscoros to pass nigh half their lives in the mechanicaland unmeaning repetition of words, and thus deprivedof leisure for the studies and pursuits that in somedegree form and instruct the mind of the latter, areconsiderably the more ignorant of the two. Even thePatriarch, when in his ordinary out-of-church dress, andseated among his town friends on an informal divan,might, to the unforewarned eye or ear, easily pass fora respectable landowner or a Cairo tradesman. Norprobably would his inner man, could we see it, offerVI. ]EASTERN CHRISTIANS.223any very distinctive mark of superiority either intellectual or religious.But a darker stain than that of ignorance or commonlaxity of morals rests on the monks of Upper Egypt,who for centuries past have constituted themselves thepurveyors and even the makers of that half- sex whichguards and disgraces the harems of the East. Many ofthe unfortunate slave-children, brought into the conventfor the purpose, die under the knife; and the infamyof the ascetic operator is aggravated by the guilt ofmurder. However, in our own time a revival ofhumanity, perhaps of shame, has rendered the employment of eunuchs much rarer than formerly in most partsof the Turkish empire; and thus allows a hope thatthe failure of demand may finally induce the successorsof Anthony and Pachomius to abandon a traffic insufficient to their greed, if not adverse to their conscience.From the above sketch our readers may conclude,that although the Copts are gifted by nature with anintellect fully up to, and in some respects above, theaverage standard, education among them is desultory,partial, and following rather the local and Arab thanany special track of its own. The ancient Copticlanguage is, indeed, still maintained in church ritualsand the like; but though all among the clergy can read,we have never yet found any one of them who couldunderstand the meaning of its characters. Coptic was,however, till within recent memory, spoken by thepeasantry in some towns of Upper Egypt, at Achmimin particular; but want of school instruction has allowedthis curious remnant of the past to fade away and ultimately disappear altogether. French or English israrely studied in a Coptic school, a subject of regret,considering how widely these languages are diffused ordiffusing among the other inhabitants of Egypt. Thus224 EASTERN CHRISTIANS.in the general race the Copts are left behind, for wantof acquirements so necessary that they are fast becomingcommon among the surrounding tribes of the land; andthe old masters of Egypt have neglected, and still continue, with few and faint exceptions, to neglect theopportunity of re-asserting the empire of mind, sinceevery other form of empire has irrevocably passed awayfrom them. In a word, the Copts are non-progressive,a position equivalent, where all else advance, to retrogressive; their qualities, good or bad, they have receivedby inheritance of birth, and still retain; but the talentnot put out to interest, and that wrapped up in anapkin, or hid in the earth, are much alike in uselessness; and the fate of such is often to be wholly takenaway.The census of Copts in Egypt and its neighbourhoodis variously given from one hundred and fifty to twohundred thousand; it certainly does not exceed thelatter sum.And with this brief notice of an aged, nor whollyunvenerable nation, we will conclude our present surveyof Eastern Christians; ' and recommend our ownWestern Christians to love their brethren at leastwisely, before they love them perhaps too well.VII.THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS.[ PUBLISHED IN ' FRASER'S MAGAZINE,' FEBRUARY, 1871. ]NOTICE.A sketch of travel, in which I have endeavoured all along to giveprominence to the pleasing rather than the unpleasing, the comelythan the ungraceful. Here, as in the Fifth Essay, much that is topographical is superadded to personal delineation. Nor are the monksthemselves deprived of their due of human sympathy; nor is acknowledgment wanting of their hospitality and other merits. But thereader may in conclusion not inaptly ask, ' If such be the best resultsof orthodox Greek training, what are the average ones? what theworse?'' IN concluding the history of this Greek State, weenquire in vain for any benefit that it conferred on thehuman race, ' says Finlay, as he winds up the crimestained scroll of the Byzantine empire of Trebizond.A severer sentence could hardly have been passed; yetnone perhaps has been ever more thoroughly borne outby facts and memorials, in annal or in monument. Originated, to borrow the same able historian's phraseonce more, in accident, continued in meanness, andextinguished in dishonour, the Comnenian dynasty hasleft on the Pontic coast but few enduring records, andQ226 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. [VII.those few unmistakeably stamped with the leadingcharacteristics of the empire itself. The straggling,loose-built walls of the ill-constructed citadel of Trebizond; the dwarfish littleness and tasteless ornamentation of the over-vaunted church of St. Sophia; the stillfeebler proportions of the churches of St. Eugenius,St. John, and others, now doing duty as mosques indifferent quarters of the town, belong to and attest thetype of those who reared them; and their defects arerendered but the more glaring by a servile attemptto copy the great though ungraceful models of earlierByzantine date. If this be true, as, begging Fallmereyer's pardon, true it is, of the quondam capital,what can we expect in the less important and outlyingpoints of the ephemeral empire, where the littlenessof art is still more disadvantageously contrasted withthe gigantic proportions of nature?Yet even here, among these relics of a debased age,we occasionally come across some grand constructionaloutline indicative of others than the Comnenes; ofnobler races, or at least of superior organisation. Suchare the Cyclopean fragments at Kerasunt, the brokencolumns of Kyrelee, and the solid though shatteredwalls of ' Eski-Trabezoon,' or ' Old Trebizond,' situatedsome sixty miles east of the present town. With thesemay rank the rock-built monasteries scattered throughout the mountains that line the coast; and which,though bearing the traces of later modification and,too often, defacement, are yet not unworthy relics ofthe time when Chrysostom preached and Pulcheriareigned. And of these is the monastery of the Virgin,the Panagia of Sumelas.High-perched among the upper ranges of the Kolatmountain chain, south-east of Trebizond, from which itis distant about thirty miles inland, Sumelas is theVII. ] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 2276pilgrim-bourne of innumerable Greeks,' to use a customary misnomer for the mongrel population of Byzantine, Slavonian, and Lazic origin that here professes the' orthodox ' faith, who flock to the shrine of the Panagiaon the yearly recurrence of her great festival day, the27th of August in our calendar, the 15th in theirs. Atother seasons her visitors are comparatively few; indeed,snow, rain, and mist render the convent almost inaccessible for full eight months of the twelve; norcan the road be called easy travelling at any time.Hence the convent, in spite of its wide-spread nor undeserved reputation, is visited by Europeans seldom, bythe inert and uninformed Levantines hardly ever. Forus, however, Ovid's fellow-convicts in our PontineSydney, a trip to Sumelas, so managed as to coincidewith one of the rare intervals of clear weather on thismurky coast, and yet avoid the crowd and other inconveniences of the festival epoch, was too desirable abreak in the sameness of Turko- Levantine life not to beundertaken; and a fine week towards the beginning ofAugust at last afforded the wished-for opportunity.So in the early dawn, while the waning moon yetglittered above the morning star in a calm slaty sky,we started, a band of five horsem*n in all, two negroservants included, bound for the celebrated ‘ Mariamana,'as the convent is here popularly called; and rode outof Trebizond with the huge bare mass of Boze-Tepeh,or the ' Brown Hill,' once Mount Mithrios, on our right,and the black and brackish pool, entitled by geographical courtesy a sea, on our left. We followed the newroad, that, when Turkish engineers shall have learntthe first rudiments of their art, is to render the routebetween Trebizond and Erzeroom amenable to wheeledcarriages instead of the classic caravans that now, asfor centuries bygone, alone thread the double mountainQ 2228 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .6>pass. For at present the roughest waggon that everlumbered along a Devonshire lane could not venture onfour miles of the Erzeroom track without an unpleasantcertainty of being either upset or jolted to shivers onthe way. To us, however, on the present occasion thismatters little, for Turkish horses are sure-footed asSpanish mules; so on we ride; and after rounding thegreat corner cliff that, jutting right out on the water'sedge, retains the classic-sounding name of Eleusa, weenter on the sandy delta of the Pixartes river, nowdegraded into the Deyermend-Déréh,' or ' Mill-Courseof Turkish nomenclature. Its valley, penetrating southwest far into the mountains, has at all times served asdirecting line to the great commercial track that, bending eastwards to Erzeroom, brings Koordistan andPersia into communication with the basin of the BlackSea and Constantinople. Up this valley we now turn,and soon cross a huge barrier-ridge of rolled stones, thejoint work of sea and river in glacial times, when thenow shrunk torrent was full fed by vast tracts of snowand ice in its parent mountains. And here I may addparenthetically that over all the highland of innerAnatolia, from the Lazistan coast range to the watershed of the Euphrates, I have met with numeroustraces of that cold Post-Pliocene epoch, such as furrowedrocks, erratic boulders, rounded prominences, and hugemoraines, stretching far down into the plains from thesummits that even now, though long since bared oftheir icy caps by a milder climate, maintain patchesof snow all the year through.Next we thread a pass of remarkable beauty, wherepicturesque rocks jut out among thick brushwood, orsteep slopes, all grass and wild flowers, run high upagainst the sky; at times the gorge narrows into aravine, where black volcanic crags barely leave roomVII.] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 229for the pathway along the right bank of the brawlingtorrent; while the old traffic- route, despairing of afooting below, passes by the heights several hundredfeet overhead. The general type of scenery recallsNorth Wales, or the Rothen-Thurm pass of the Carpathian district. At last, just as the eastern sun burstsin full light and heat over the fir-crowned mountaintops on our left, we reach a point where the valleyexpands into a wide marshy plain, thick-planted withmaize, while the roadside is lined with rows of Khans,or halting-places-long low sheds, with no accommodation to offer beyond shelter from the weather, and thepossibility of fire-lighting: some are in good repair;others in various stages of broken roof and crumblingwall; others mere traces. For in Khans, as in everyother kind of building, Eastern custom or superstitionforbids repair, and prefers to supplement the injuries oftime or accident by a new construction in toto alongside,rather than attempt the restoration of the old one oncedecayed. Hence, among other causes, the frequentvestiges of deserted houses, mosques, and the like, thatcumber the lines of traffic everywhere in EasternTurkey, and convey to the traveller's mind the ideaof even more ruin and decay than is really the case;being in fact the symbols of transportation as oftenas of desertion.Little shops, mixed up with the Khans, offer eggs,sour apples, coarse tobacco, cigarette paper, matches,nuts, cheese, and such like articles of cheap consumption to the caravan-drivers and other passers- by. Allaround the hill-sides , here more moderate in their slope,and patched with corn, maize, and tobacco, are studdedwith rubble-built cottages, each one at a neighbourlydistance from the other; these, taken collectively, formthe village of Khosh-Oghlan,' or the ' Pleasing-Boy. '230 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .Such is the name; though who was the individualboy, and in what respect he made himself so particularly agreeable, were vain now to enquire. It is thefirst stage of the inland journey; so, obedient to theusage of which our attendants have not failed witha broad African grin to remind us, we alight at oneof the booths for a cup of coffee, over-roasted and overboiled as all Turkish coffee is, yet refreshing; and thengo on our way. Seven or eight miles more lead usstill up the same ' Deyermend ' valley, past some prettySwiss-like wooden bridges, and many fine points ofmountain view, past the straggling hamlet of ' YeseerOghlou,' or the ' Son of the Prisoner '-a Prisoner anda Son now no less forgotten by history and traditionthan the Pleasing- Boy ' before mentioned-where, notlong since, two Frenchmen, hacked and slashed, paidwith their life-blood the penalty of the meddlesomehectoring usual to their tribe among strangers; till wereach the high stone-arched bridge called of ' Maturajik,' and, crossing by it to the other side of thevalley, climb aloft above the torrent as it forces itsway through huge clusters of columnar basalt, piled uptier over tier of rusty brown; then descend to thelittle plain known, as are also the many scatteredhouses that jot the green or brown mountain sidesall round, by the title of Jevezlik,' or the ' Place ofWalnut-trees ' these last stand before us, green andspreading by the water's edge. Here again the roadruns the gauntlet between shops and Khans, for wehave now done eighteen miles, the ordinary day's marchof a caravan from Trebizond. Besides, Jevezlik is aplace of some note, partly as the residence now of adistrict sub-governor, formerly of a dreaded ' DerehBey,' or ' Lord of the Valley '-a euphemism for Lordof Robberies-but more so from its central position,VII. ] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 23166which renders it the meeting-point of three greattracks, and which would in classic Italy have insuredits dedication to Diana Trivia: ' the winter road toErzeroom; the summer ditto; and the road of Sumelasor Mariamana. Of these routes, the first follows themain valley south-west up to where it culminates inthe far-off snow-flecked summits of Ziganah; thesecond, or summer road, scrambles rather than climbsdue south across the dreary heights of Kara-Kapan,'or Black- Covering, ' so called, I conjecture, from itsalmost perpetual veil of cloud and mist, whencebut it must have been on an unusually clear day- Mr.Layard, if memory serves me right, makes Xenophonand his Greeks shout their θάλαττα, θάλαττα; the thirdpath, that which leads to Sumelas, goes off south-eastby a side gorge that here falls into the Deyermendvalley. The sun is now high and hot; so we haltfor a noon-tide bait in the spare room of a ricketyTurkish coffee-house overhanging the torrent; receivethe visits of some land-farmers, conservative and discontented as farmers are by prescriptive right all theworld over; feast on brown bread and eggs fried ingrease, vice anything else, unattainable in this cornerof the gorgeous East; and would fain have crownedour midday rest with a nap on the floor, had not theimmemorial fleas of Asia Minor pronounced theirabsolute veto on any such proceeding.Well; Sumelas, not Jevezlik, is our goal. So, noonover, we remount and turn south-east, following overrock and grass the rise of the noble mountain cleft,hemmed in here and there by great basaltic masses,suddenly protruding through the limestone rocks ofan older formation. Next to the cape of Hieros, orYoros, with its fan-spread columns, the basalt pillarsof Melas are the grandest-I have never visited either232 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII..Skye or the Giant's Causeway-that it has been myfortune to witness anywhere. Next we cross thefierce but now diminutive torrent on a covered woodenbridge that might have been imported from Zug orLuzern; and begin the final Sumelas ascent.It follows for several miles the upward course ofa deep and precipitous ravine, where huge rocks andcliffs , many hundred feet in height, are interspersedamong or overhang forests of walnut, oak, beech,and pine, that might do honour to the backwoods ofAmerica themselves. Under the shade, now of thebranching trees, now of the wall-like crags, winds thepath, bordered by a dense fringe of laurel, dwarf fir,azalea, rhododendron, and countless other tangledshrubs; it is kept in fairly good order, propped upby stone counterforts, and protected by trenches anddykes against the descending watercourses, by the careof the monks, whose convent we are now approaching.On either side and in front glimpses of bare and lonelyheights, herbless granite, and jagged ridges far up inthe blue sky, show that we have penetrated far intothe Kolat- Dagh, the great Anatolian coast chain, thateven here averages ten thousand feet in elevation, andultimately out-tops the Caucasus, its northern rivaland parallel. At last a turn of the way brings ushalf-round at the foot of a monstrous rock that hasfor a long while barred our direct view along theravine in front; and there, suspended like a bird's-nestin air far overhead, we see rejoicingly the white wallsof the convent, the object of our journey.One last corkscrew ascent of almost Matterhorn steepness brings us up through the dense forest that somehow manages to cling to and girdle the cliff half-way;till, just on the edge of the leafy belt, we reach thenarrow ledge, almost imperceptible from below, onVII. ]THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 933which the convent is niched rather than built. Twothirds in length of this ledge are occupied every inch,from precipice above to precipice below, by the monastic buildings; the remaining third partly forms akind of landing-place, where visitors may wait admittance within the claustral precincts, partly is occupiedby large stables and outhouses for horses and cattle.From this shelf sixty-six stone steps, of recent construction, conduct to a little iron-bound door in theconvent wall, conveniently commanded by some gratedwindows above. Till within the last few years a longwooden ladder, let down as circ*mstances required,then drawn up again within, afforded the sole andoccasional link between the monastery and the outerworld; while sinister arrivals might, if they triedentrance by other means of their own, receive fromthe flanking windows a warmer welcome than theyexpected or desired .Our coming has already been witnessed by themonks; and as we slowly climb the steps, the irondoor ahead half opens for a moment, in sign of recognition, then closes again, while consultation goes onwithin as to our admittance . After a short intervalthe portal reopens, and displays an old monk, in thedirty blue dress and black head-gear of his order,that of St. Basil-I may as well remark here thatthe orthodox Greek Church recognises this one orderonly; a silent protest against the more modern multiplicity of Latin discipline-standing in the entry, whileother brethren group behind him in the dim perspectiveof the narrow vaulted passage. Glancing at us, henotices the dagger and silver-mounted pistol of ourprincipal negro attendant, and requests him to consignthese ornaments to monastic keeping before crossingthe threshold. To this preliminary ceremony the Dar-234 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .fooree objects; nor does the argument that such is therule of St. Basil, with which the Sultan himself, werehe present in person, must, under penalty of non-admittance, comply, produce any effect on African obstinacy.So, armed as he is, he turns back to look after thehorses; while the monks obligingly assure us thatneither animals nor groom shall want for anythingduring our stay here.We enter the passage. The ' Economos '' or Accountant of the monastery, an elderly man, longbearded and long-vested, at his side a stout, jovial,gray-haired, red-cheeked old monk, apparently vergingon the seventies, but hale and active, our destined' bear-leader,' and several other brethren, all bluedressed, bearded, and dirty, came forward to greet"and conduct us up and down by a labyrinth oflittle corridors, ruinous flights of stairs, dingy cells,and unsavoury well-like courtyards, all squeezed upclose between the rock on one side and the precipiceon the other; till, having thus traversed the oldbuildings,' which form an irregular parallelogram abouttwo hundred feet in length by forty in breadth, weemerge on a little flagged space, neater kept than therest; and find ourselves in presence of the famousshrine of the Panagia herself.The body of the church, a cavern natural in itsorigin, but probably enlarged by art, is hollowed outin the rock, which here faces due east. The sanctuary,which, in accordance with the prescription of ecclesiastical tradition, also points eastwards, is here representedby a small construction, double staged, about fourteenfeet in total height, and sixteen in length; its generalappearance from without brings to mind the conventional ark of Biblical pictures and children's toy-shops.It projects at right angles from the stone wall withVII.] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 235which the entrance of the cavern all round it has beenclosed; and, like that wall, is covered with the mostappalling specimens of modern Greek mural painting;impossible saints with plate-like halos; crowded daysof judgment where naked but sexless souls are beingdragged by diabolical hooks into the jaws of a hugedragon, which is hell; Scriptural scenes from thestories of Moses, Elijah, &c . , where large heads, noperspective, and a stiffness unrivalled by any boardare the chief artistic recommendations; red, yellow, andbrown the favourite colours; the whole delicatelytouched up with the names of innumerable pilgrims ,mostly terminating in ' aki ' or ' ides,' scratched, withno respect of persons, across saints, souls, demons, anddeities alike. The entrance door is close alongsideof the sanctuary; and three square grated windowsadmit the light above. The roofing of the sanctuaryis sheet copper, thick encrusted with dirt; so thick,indeed, as to enable the monks to assure you, withouttoo violent a contradiction of your own ocular evidence,that it is not copper, but silver; the costly gift-socontinue the same chroniclers -of the famous SultanMurad IV. himself; who, when on his way from Constantinople to Bagdad to fight the Persians, seems tohave led his army-Heaven only knows how or whyacross the Kolat mountains, and to have encamped,horse, foot, and artillery, on the goat's perch of theravine here opposite. That Sumelas lies hundreds ofmiles away from the route which the said Sultan reallytook, and that Hannibal or Napoleon I. himself wouldhave been puzzled to drag the smallest field- pieceamong these precipices, are considerations which matternothing in legend. Accordingly, so continues the tale,when the ferocious Murad first turned his bloodshoteyes on the convent, he enquired of his Begs and236 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .Pashas what that building might be; and, on theiranswer that it was the abode of Christian monks, gaveimmediate orders to his artillerymen to batter it down.But, lo! no sooner were the cannon pointed at theconsecrated edifice than they spun round self-moved,and began firing among the Sultan's own troops.Hereon Imperial amazement and further enquiry; metby the information that all this was the doing ofthe miraculous Virgin, the Panagia, who, or whosepicture for in popular orthodox as in Roman devotionthe distinction between the symbol and the original isinappreciable to any but a controversialist-tenantedthe monastery. Murad, deeply impressed, and nowonder, by the miracle and its explanation, at onceabandoned his destructive intentions, did due honourto the Panagia and her ministers, and amongst otherofferings presented the silver roof in question-onlyhe never did anything of the sort, and it is reallycopper.Looking up, we now perceive that the rock above,which here overhangs sanctuary and court in an almostthreatening manner, supports in one of its darkest recesses a little Byzantine picture, the Theotokos, ofcourse . Dingy and faded, till at first sight hardlydiscernible from the damp stone against which it rests,this painting occupies the exact spot-we have themonks' word for it-where in the fifth century somegoatherds discovered the original Panagia, the workof St. Luke, here placed by angelic agency seeminglyin order to keep it out of the way. Now, however,it is deposited for more convenient veneration in thesanctuary below, where we will visit it a little later;but the copy has itself, like iron near a magnet,acquired a good share of useful efficacy by juxtaposition. From the rocky brow above, in front of theVII. ] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 237picture, fall without ceasing drops of water, which tothe eyes of faith are always three at a time, neithermore nor less; but for all I looked I could not detectany special numerical system in their fall; these dropscarefully collected in a little cistern below possessmiraculous virtues equal to any recorded of the sameelement in the veracious pages of Monseigneur Gaume.While we have been thus gazing and listening, thefour church bells, hung outside in a pretty little openbelfry of four light columns and graceful arching-thework and its costs having been alike furnished by thedevotion of a wealthy Russian pilgrim -have beenringing a very hospitable though untuneable peal inhonour of our arrival; and the monks invite us toenter the sanctuary without further delay. But it isnear sunset; and the monotonous chanting of thepriests inside warns us that vespers are even nowgoing on, and the church full of worshippers. Unwilling to disturb the congregation, we defer our visit;and, adding that we are somewhat tired by our day'sjourney, we are conducted by our hosts across the courtyard, and up a neat stone staircase to our eveningquarters, namely, the chief apartment in the newbuildings.'These, completed only three years since, rise sevenstages in total height, vaults included, from the precipice below to the beetling crag above; the front faceseast; and its white-painted masonry, its four tiers oflarge square windows, and its handsome open gallerysupported on slender stone pillarets that run along thewhole length of the topmost story, are what firstattract the admiration of the traveller as he reachesthe opposite point of the ravine. The edifice is eightrooms in length and only one in thickness throughout;but the great solidity of the stone work, and the238 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII . .shelter of the hollow rock in which it nestles, neutralisethe danger of over-height. From foundation to roofnarrow space, protected from the weather by thewide eaves above, is left between the building and thecrag behind; and here winds an ingenious zigzag ofgalleries and staircases, all stone, that afford entranceto the several chambers of each story. Beneath, andpartly hollowed out in the living rock, are cellars andstore-caverns to which the monks alone have access;besides a large reservoir of excellent water, filled fromthe oozings of the inner mountain . The entire work,whether considered in itself or in the difficulties ofscaffolding and construction, where not a spare inch isleft of the narrow shelf on which the building stands,balanced as it were hundreds of feet in mid-air, is oneof no small skill; and its well-considered proportion ofwall, window, and gallery, with the just adaptation ofevery part to the practical exigencies of domestic use,claim high constructive praise, and evince a degree ofgood taste not always to be found among the housearchitects of Western Europe. Yet the builders of' Mariamana' were from no European, not even fromthe Constantinopolitan school; they were mere indigenous stone- cutters, Greek ' the most, from theadjoining villages of Koroom, Mejid, and Stavros.6We stroll along the top-story corridor, the openingsof which are guarded by high iron railings, and lookacross the dizzy depths below, whence rises the ceaseless roar of the Melas torrent, and beyond the densemasses of beech and pine that cluster on the ravineside opposite, to the lonely peaks of Kolat- Dagh,seemingly close in front, and rose-tinted with the lastrays of the setting sun. Soon the evening air blowscool; at this elevation-4,100 feet above the sea, asmy aneroid informs me-the night temperature isVII. ] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 239rarely such as to detain one long out of doors. Fivemonths of the year on an average the convent snowlies unmelted, and for five more of the remaining sevenmist and rain are the rule, not the exceptions. Thevery cats of the establishment, large, tame, and wellfed, bear witness by their long fur and bushy fox-liketails to the general coldness of the atmosphere in whichthey live. Still the site is healthy, and in proof ofthis an old centenarian monk presents himself toview hale and hearty among his comrades, who, tojudge by appearances, are mostly themselves in a fairway to rival his longevity. But besides, absence ofcare, and indeed of brain-work in general, has doubtlesssomething to do with this prolonged and vigorousvitality. Nor have they many privations to endure,except what the numerous fasts and abstinences oftheir antique ritual impose; the convent is wealthyto a degree that might have long since moved thegreed of any but a Turkish Government, while themonks in residence are not over numerous-fifteen, indeed, is their average. However, besides its regularinmates, this convent contains also several members ofdistant monasteries from different parts of Anatolia,Roumelia, and even Syria, sent hither to a quiet retreat, or mitigated prison, or both, thus to expiatesome past breach of discipline, or to prevent somemenaced scandal. Lastly, a large number of themonks -though how many my grizzled informant couldnot, or perhaps would not, say—are scattered on longeror shorter leave of absence without the walls, in questof the temporal welfare of the community, or superintending the numerous farms belonging to it, someby purchase, more by legacy. For in the Orthodox,no less than in the Latin Church, the passports of therich to a better world are seldom countersigned ' gratis.'240 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII..As a natural consequence, the fields and havings of theSumelas Panagia lie thick scattered along the entireSouth Euxine coast from Trebizond to Constantinople,and bring in revenues sufficient for a moderate-sizedduchy. Nor is all this wealth consumed in selfish indulgence, or hoarded up by miserly precaution. Whilethe monks still, as before, content themselves with thenarrow and cranky buildings of the original convent,the handsome and commodious lodgings of newer construction, the cost of which cannot have fallen shortof 4,000l. at least, are freely abandoned to the eightthousand pilgrims or guests who, on a rough calculation, pass from twenty-four hours to fifteen days,some more, some less , within these walls, free of boardas of shelter. Nor should we forget the neat pathway,solidly constructed and sedulously repaired by the solecare and cost of the monks, along many difficult milesof mountain ravine, which else would be not onlydangerous but almost inaccessible; a path, thanks tothe self-taught workmen of Mariamana, now safe, andeven, comparatively speaking, commodious-qualitiesestimable in roads and creditable to the road- makersanywhere; most creditable, because most rare, in Anatolia.Escorted by our hosts we re-enter our night's lodging.The large and handsome room-neat still, because new-is garnished with divans, carpets, and a supplementary stove for cold weather in the centre; over thefireplace hangs conspicuously a photographic print ofRussian manufacture, representing an apocryphal actof Cretan heroism, wherein a priest is enacting, torchin hand, an imitation of ' Old Minotti's ' suicidal exploitin Byron's Siege of Corinth. Perhaps it is meant asa hint on occasion for the Economos ' of Sumelas: ifso, let us hope that he will be slow to take it . TheVII. ] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 241period of strict abstinence, which among the ' orthodox'precedes the great festival of the Virgin, has alreadycommenced; and as the hour for supper draws on, weown to a horrible anticipation of finding ourselves included among the eaters of olives and unseasonedvegetables -poor restoratives after a long day's ride.But such treatment of their guests forms no part ofour hospitable entertainers' programme. Soup, flesh,fowl, eggs, caviare, butter, and so forth, soon cover thetable; and the wine, produce of conventual vineyards,is good enough to show how excellent a liquor mightbe afforded by the Anatolian grape under more skilfulculture . Coffee and tea follow, and when time comesto rest we recline on well-stuffed mattresses beneathquilted coverings of silk, embroidered with gold andsilver thread, not unworthy of the state-bed of Elizabeth at Kenilworth, or of James at Hatfield.Next morning we pay our promised visit to thechurch, and entering by the narrow door at the angleof the sanctuary, find ourselves in a cavern about fortyfeet in length and breadth, scarcely sixteen in height,lighted up by the three east windows in the outer wall.Sides and roof are decorated with paintings in thestyle already described, where to disjoin art from devotion, and to throw ridicule on both, seems the aim;damp and incense-smoke have, however, charitablydone much to cover the multitude of pictorial sins.Within the church are many other objects worthier ofobservation, and some even of real interest. At theentrance of the sanctuary hang, one over the other,two small silk curtains, richly worked; which beingwithdrawn disclose to our view the identical Panagia,the likeness (Heaven forfend it! ) of the Virgin bySt. Luke of equal merit in all respects, natural andsupernatural, as of equal antiquity, it would seem, andR242 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .certainly of equal authenticity, with the Madonna ofSanta Maria Maggiore at Rome. A blackish outline,chiefly defined by the gold-leaf ground that limits headand shoulders, indicates the figure. Close beside ithang, obliquely from the ceiling, like masts in slings,two huge wax tapers, wrapped in some material, costly,but now indistinguishable through its dingy encrustments; these form part of the præter-historical peaceoffering of Sultan Murad IV. , mentioned further back.Near the tapers is also suspended an enormous circularchandelier of silver gilt, with a quantity of little exvotos, silver boats, gold filagree ornaments, coins, andthe like, dangling from its rim: this too, if we creditthe monks, is the memorial of the repentance of another Sultan, Selim II. -on what occasion shall berelated in its place . Meanwhile we deposit the offeringthat courtesy requires in the all-receiving platter beforethe Panagia; and are next called on to revere thespecial object of devout pilgrimage, a small silverrocking-cradle, of pretty but not ancient workmanship, consecrated to the goddess of the shrine. Intothis cradle a piece of money (the more precious themetal, the greater its efficacy) is to be laid; afterwhich the pilgrim, having thrice raised and loweredthe toy and its contents on the palm of his or herhand, before the unveiled Panagia, deposits it on theplate of offerings. Should the cradle when thus setdown continue to rock, the happy votary will infalliblybecome before long a father or a mother, as the casemay be; its immobility, on the contrary, is a sad butconclusive presage of married sterility. Now barrenness is at the present day no less an opprobrium inthe East than it was in the age of Hannah andPheninnah; and its prevention or cure is the motiveof far the greater number of pilgrimages to Maria-VII .]THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 243mana; even newly-married Mahometans, not to mentionArmenians, Latins, and other unorthodox Christians ofeither sex, prove by their frequent visits to the cradleof Sumelas how catching a thing is superstition. Theresidue of the pilgrims are mostly petitioners for therecovery of a sick child, or relative , or self, and forthem also the cradle obligingly extends the subjectmatter of its oracles. The origin of this particularobservance probably does not go back further thanComnenian times; though the monks refer it, like thefoundation of the convent itself, to the fifth century.Passing rapidly over the inspection of a copiousstore of ecclesiastical vestments and gewgaws, thatmight call forth the raptures of a ritualist or a pawnbroker, we come in front of a small wooden cabinet,placed in a recess of the cavern, and carefully locked.This the monks now open, and draw forth from itsnook the famous Golden Bull of Alexios III., Emperorof Trebizond, who in 1365 confirmed by this documentthe privileges and exemptions of the Sumelas conventand its possessions; and, amongst other precious tokensof Imperial liberality, bestowed on them the right ofdefending themselves as best they could against theTurkoman inroads, which the sham empire was unableto check, even at but a day's distance from the capital.At the head of the ' Bull,' a long narrow strip of rolledpaper, appear the portraits of Alexios and his wife, theEmpress Theodora, holding between them on theirjoined hands a small model church, much as ecclesiastical donors love to appear in Western monuments ofa corresponding age: the characters of the writing arelarge and fine drawn; the Imperial autograph, in hugered ink letters, sprawls below; but the gold seals onceappended have long since disappeared from the footof the scroll. The most remarkable feature in thisR 2244 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .memorial of later Byzantine times (published at fulllength by Fallmereyer in 1843) is the inflated verbosity of the style; a verbosity subsequently adoptedwith many other vices of the degraded empire by thevictorious Ottomans.Of more real importance, though inferior in antiquity, is the paper next unrolled before our eyes,namely, the firman of the Sultan Selim II., also confirmatory, but this time to good purpose, of all theold monastic rights, privileges, and exemptions. It isremarkable that in this document the handwritingconforms to the stiff and old-fashioned Naskhee ofArab origin, instead of the elegant semi-Persian Divanee of later official use. The quotations from theKoran that garnish it from first to last exemplify atone frequently adopted by the Osmanlee rulers intheir day of power. Certainly no miracle is neededto account for the concession of this favour, one inentire accordance with Turkish and even with Mahometan usage everywhere. The Sumelas monks have,however, a legend ready to hand, and thus it runs:Once on a time Sultan Selim came on a hunting-partyto this neighbourhood, and while pursuing his chaseup the Melas ravine beheld for the first time the greatmonastery. To become aware of its existence andresolve its destruction were one and the same thing inthe mind of the tyrant. But before he could so muchas form his guilty thought into words of command,he was stricken with paralysis, and laid up a helpless sufferer in a village close by. There he might haveremained to the end of his wicked life, had not thePanagia graciously appeared to him in a vision, andsuggested the expiation of his crime and the simultaneous recovery of his health by means of the document in question, further accompanied by the douceurVII. ]THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 245of the great circular chandelier that we have alreadyseen suspended before the sanctuary; and, to borrowSmith the weaver's logic, the firman and the chandelierare both alive at this day to testify the prodigy:' therefore deny it not.' Anyhow, the firman of SelimII. proved a more efficacious protection to the monastery and its land than the Bull' issued by theComnenian emperor; and its repeated renewals bysucceeding Sultans, from Selim II. to Abd-el- Mejeed,form a complete and not uninstructive series in theMariamana archives, to which we refer the denouncersof Turkish intolerance and Islamitic oppression.Here were also many other curious documents andmanuscripts laid up, say the monks; but a fire whichsome years since consumed a part of the convent, andpilfering archæological pilgrims, are assigned as thecauses of their disappearance. A Greek Testament,supposed to be of great antiquity, was shown us; butthe paper on which it is written, and the form of thecharacters, bring its date down to the fourteenth orthirteenth century at earliest.We go the round of what else remains for notice inthe cavern: a fine carved reading- desk, eagle-supported,for the lessons of the day; three or four more Panagias,all miraculous; more church plate; a painted screen,and the like; but these objects have no exceptionalinterest, and we soon find ourselves again in thedazzling sunlight of the paved court outside . Nextwe roam about the ' old buildings,' timber the most,with huge overhanging eaves, and something of a Swisscottage appearance. But nowhere does any inscription,carving, or the like indicate date or circ*mstance ofconstruction, nor has any diary or ' log-book' of eventsever been kept within these walls. The memories ofthe monks, mere uneducated peasants they, form the246 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS [VII. .only chronicle; and memory, like other mental faculties,has but a narrow range when deadened by the sameness of a life that unites agricultural with conventualmonotony. Little is here known of the past, and thatlittle is uncertain in epoch and apocryphal in detail,if not in substance. Nor has the establishment everundergone what, had it taken place, would have beenof all other things a sign-mark in its annals—theprofanation of the spoiler. Roving bands, Koorde orTurkoman, have indeed been often tempted by thereport of hoarded treasures to prowl about the woodsof Sumelas, and have cast wistful eyes at the Panagia'srock-perched eyrie; but the narrow path that winds upthe precipice is available only at the good-will andpermission of the convent inhabitants themselves; andfrom all other sides, around, above, the birds that flaptheir wings against the sheer crag of a thousand feetand more could alone find access to Mariamana; whilea blockade, if attempted, would be indefinitely baffledby the capacious store-rooms and cisterns of the fabric.From the Ottoman Government itself the monks, likemost of their kind in other parts of the empire, haveexperienced nothing but protection, or, better still, noninterference; and the freedom of their hospitality, whileit does credit to the convent, bears also good witnessto its inviolate security. This hospitality is indeedproportioned in some degree to the rank and socialposition of visitors or pilgrims, but no one is whollyexcluded from it, nor is any direct recompense exactedor received from rich or poor, ' Greek' or stranger. Ofcourse the shrine gets its offerings-small ones, as arule, from Greeks; larger from Russians and Georgians;most munificent in any case when prayers are believedto have been heard. The birth or convalescence of achild contributes to the wealth no less than to theVII.]THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 247fame of the Panagia. But payment for board andlodging is unknown, however numerous the guests, andhowever long their stay. Indeed, so scrupulous arethe monks regarding the gratuitousness of their welcome, that when, after having deposited our offeringsin the church, we wished before leaving the convent,some hours later, to make an additional and moregeneral donation, it was at first absolutely refused, andwas at last only accepted under the assurance that ithad been originally meant for the sanctuary, where itspresentation at the foot of some shrine or other hadbeen, said we, unintentionally omitted.Yet hospitality is after all a virtue that has nonecessary connection either with present civilisationor with future progress; one that to fail in is a reproach, but to possess no very high praise. Besides,it is, with comparatively rare exceptions, a quality toocommon in the East for special commendation; Koordes,Turkomans, Arabs, Armenians and the rest are allhospitable after their kind, some profusely so . Whatparticular merit then shall we assign to the monks ofSumelas to justify the existence of a not inconsiderablenumber of men, and of widely extended demesnes,withdrawn from the natural current of life, and the' ringing grooves ' of the onward world? Learningthese monks certainly neither store up in themselves,nor encourage in others; of moral science and teachingthey are wholly ignorant; in agricultural industry theydo not exceed the average or tend to improve thepractice; from a religious point of view they representand aid to maintain one of the grossest compounds offable, bigotry, and superstition that has ever disgracedthe inventors. Individually benevolent, hospitable, industrious even, they belong to a system essentiallynarrow, retrograde, odious. If this be the Cross ' of248 THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. [VII.the East, what advantage has it over the Crescent? 'And is it from night like this we are to look for thedawn of a better day in the regions of the Levant?If there is little to commend in the Turkish Government symbolised by the Mosque at Trebizond, was therule of Alexios III. , the feeble and ostentatious patronof Sumelas, a whit better? nay, was it not the moresterile, the more corrupt, the more worthless of thetwo? Whatever may be the handwriting on the wallof the Ottoman palace, the ' Tekel ' of ' Greek ' rule and' Greek' mind is unmistakably inscribed on the memorialsof the Byzantine past; nor do the wonder-workingpictures and rocking cradles of Mariamana tend toreverse, rather they deepen and confirm the sentence.It is now mid-day; and before we redescend intothe valley, thence to attempt some sketch of thepicturesque building from the opposite side, we standa few minutes in the gallery, and take a last look atthe lovely scene before us, now bathed in the silentsplendour of a southern noon. Far aloft stretch thebare snow- streaked heights where passes the summertrack to Beyboort and Erzeroom; below the densetree-tops are pierced here and there by fantastic rockpinnacles, splinters detached centuries ago from theprecipice on either side; ten of these grey islets inthe leafy depth are crowned by as many little whitechapels; they also belong to the Mariamana jurisdiction, and in each of them, when the appropriateanniversary comes round, the festival of its peculiarsaint, Eugenius, John, or some one else of the tenspiritual guardians of Trebizond, is duly celebrated bythe Basilian monks of Sumelas. Far beneath rushesand foams the Alpine torrent, the waters of which wehave thus traced backwards from their marshy exit atTrebizond almost to their fountain-head.VII.] THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 249The monks with undiminished hospitality press usto stay; and when we insist on the necessity of settingout, lest night should overtake us before regainingJevezlik, are warm in their farewell. You will makeyour English friends acquainted with us and our convent,' says, with an accent of request, the old monkwho has been our chief attendant; we promise; andthus we keep our word.VIII.THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION.' Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.'"(PUBLISHED IN THE CORNHILL,' SEPTEMBER, 1867.)NOTICE.THE events recorded in this Essay had some degree of publicity atthe time, and were considerably distorted and misrepresented inEuropean periodicals . Circ*mstances rendered me, shortly after, aresident in Abkhasia itself, and thus gave me special facilities for investigation of what had happened . In the facts here narrated, wehave a fair sample of one of those many outpost struggles, in whichChristian Russia has been .pitted against semi- barbarous CaucasianIslam; the ultimate result has been much the same in every instance.may interest the reader to know, that in the following year betweentwenty and thirty thousand of the Mahometan remnant in the WestCaucasus provinces emigrated into Turkey, and settled there, thusmaking the loss of Russia the gain of her neighbour.It' So'OUK- Soo,' or ' Cool Waters,' is one of the loveliest spots in the lovely province of Abkhasia. Lyingonly a few miles inland from the eastern Black Seashore, and on the first rise of the wooded Caucasus, aday's ride north of the town and harbour of SoukhoumKalé, it was from old times a favourite summer residenceof the chiefs of Abkhasia; their winter was more oftenTHE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 251passed at Drand or Otchemchiri, further down thecoast.But in addition to its natural beauty and residentialimportance, this locality has acquired a special title toalmost European interest since August, 1866, when itbecame the scene and starting-point of an outbreak-disguised in distorted newspaper accounts underfictions of brigandage, slave-driving, and the like, butwhich was in fact nothing else than an Eastern re-enactment of events familiar, since 1830, to Warsaw and theWestern Provinces of the Russian Empire.During the month of November, 1866, while the memories of the Abkhasian insurrection were still recent,and the lingering autumn of the Caucasus yet permittedhorse-travelling (for in winter these mountains becometotally impassable) , we-that is, myself with a Mingrelian servant and guide -arrived at So'ouk- Soo, aftera ten hours' ride from Soukhoum- Kalé, through bushand forest, stream and mire. Roads are luxuries oftenannounced in programme, sometimes talked of, butnever seen in these provinces. It was already darkwhen, after much clambering and slipping, we foundourselves on a sort of plateau, entangled in a labyrinthof hedges, where scattered lights glimmered among thebrushwood, and dogs barking in all directions gave usto know that we had reached So'ouk- Soo. Like mostother Abkhasian villages, its houses are neither rangedin streets nor grouped in blocks, but scattered as at random, each in a separate enclosure. The houses themselves are one- storied and of wood, sometimes mere hutsof wattle and clay; the enclosures are of cut stakes,planted and interwoven latticewise; the spaces betweenthese hedgerows serve for the passage of countlessgoats and oxen that pass the night within their master'sprecincts, and go out to pasture during the day. Old252 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION [VIII. .forest-trees, fresh underwood, bramble, and grass groweverywhere, regardless of the houses, which are often ina manner lost among them; one is at times right in themiddle of a village before one has even an idea of havingapproached it.—After much hallooing and much answering in sibilants and gutturals, really the Abkhasian alphabetseems to contain nothing else, -we prevailed on somepeasants to get up and guide us through the darknessto the house of the Natchalnick, ' or Governor of thedistrict. Here we passed the remainder of the nightwith his Excellency, a Georgian by birth, and, likeevery one else of these ilks, who is not of serfish origin,a prince by title, but now an officer in the Russian army,into which the ' natives, ' fond as negroes of gay dressand glitter, are readily attracted by lace and epaulettes.Many of the princes ' of the land elsewhere chiefs orsheykhs at most-have, on this motive, with the additional hope of a decoration, assumed the badges ofRussian military service, wherein they easily obtainsubordinate posts; and there aid as spies or as toolsin disarming the constantly recurring discontent oftheir countrymen, till some day or other their ownpersonal discontent breaks out, and then the tool, nolonger serviceable, is broken and thrown aside, to bereplaced, where wanted, by another.Early next morning, while the dew glittered on therank grass, and the bright sun shone slant through theyet leafy trees, we rode, accompanied by the ' Natchalnick' and his whole suite of Georgians and Mingreliansin Cossack dress, to visit the ' Meidan ' of So'ouk- Soo,where the first shot of insurrection had been firedfour months before.A ' Meidan,' or ' open ground,' is -all know whohave visited the East-the necessary adjunct of everyVIII. ] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 253town or village honoured by a chieftain's residence. Itserves for town-hall, for park, for parade-ground, forscene of all public gathering, display, business, oramusem*nt. On it is invariably situated the chief's orgovernor's abode; a mosque, if the land be Mahometan,a church, if Christian, is never wanting; the mainstreet or artery of the locality terminates here. Lastly,it is seldom devoid of a few large trees, the shadeof loiterers .The Meidan of So'ouk- Soo offers all these characteristic features, but offers them after a manner indicatingthe events it has witnessed, and the causes or consequences of those events. It is an open book, legiblywritten by the Nemesis of history, ' the measure formeasure,' the reciprocated revenges of national folliesand national crimes.'Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,'says Byron, contrasting the quiet prolonged existence ofgreat nature with the short and turbulent period ofhuman life. Much the same feeling comes over one atSo'ouk-Soo. The green grassy plot dotted with nobletrees-beech, elm, and oak; around, the swellinguplands, between which the ' cool waters ' of the torrent-whence the name of the place-rush sparkling downto the blue sea; beyond, the huge Caucasian mountainchain, here seen in all its central magnificence of darkforest below and white fantastic peaks above, in unearthly wildness of outline beyond the dreams of themost enthusiastic pre- Raphaelite landscape-painter;above, the ever-varying sky; around, the fresh hillbreeze the chiefs of Abkhasia could not have found inall their domains a fairer, a more life-giving place fortheir residence. But another story is told by the tracesof a ruined mosque on one side of the Meidan, and nearit some neglected tombs bearing on the carved posts--254 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION [VIII..which here replace monumental stones-the Mahometansymbolic turban. Close by are four wooden crosses,sunk and awry, freshly planted in the- still loose mouldof as many recent graves. Next, the blackened wallsand empty windows of a large burnt house surroundedby a broken stone-wall. Further on, a second fire-ruin,amid the trees and shrubs of a yet thickly-growinggarden. Opposite, on the other side of the Meidan,and alone intact and entire, as though triumphing overthe ruin it has in no small measure caused, stands achurch-a small building of the semi-Byzantine styleusual in Russian and Georgian ecclesiastical architecturehereabouts. Close by is a large house, symmetricallybuilt, with a porch of Greek marble and other signs offormer display. But all within has been gutted andburnt the long range of stone windows opens intoemptiness, the roof has fallen in, and the marble columnsare stained and split with fire. Here, too, in the samestrange contrast of life and death, a beautiful garden,where the mixture of cypress and roses, of floweringtrees and deep leafy shrubbery, betokens Turkish taste,forms a sideground and a background to the dismantleddwelling. Some elms and a few Cossack-tenanted hutscomplete the outer circle of the Meidan.Each one of these objects has a history, each oneis a foot-print in the march of the Caucasian Nemesis,each one a record of her triumph and of her justice.The ruined mosque and turban-crowned tomb-postsrecall the time when Mahometanism and submissionto the great centre of orthodox Islam, Constantinople,was the official condition of Abkhasia. This passedinto Russian rule and Christian lordship; and theNemesis of this phase is marked by the wooden crossesunder which lie the mutilated corpses of Colonel Cognard,Russian Governor-General of Abkhasia, of Ismailoff,VIII. ] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 255Russian Natchalnick ' of So'ouk- Soo, of Cheripoff, theTiflis Commissioner, and of Colonel Cognard's aide-decamp: they perished in the outbreak of August. Thelarge burnt house close by was the abode of AlexanderShervashiji, brother of the last native chief of Abkhasia.Less than half a century since the family barterednational independence and Islam against Russian popesand epaulettes. Their Nemesis has come too. In thisvery house Cognard and his suite were slaughtered .The ruin close by was once the residence of the illfamed Natchalnick ' Ismailoff; it recalls the specialvengeance of licentious tyranny-how, we shall seeafterwards. The church, alone yet intact, is of olddate and of Georgian construction -once abandoned,then revived and repaired by the regenade Shervashijis,its Nemesis is now in its lonely silence . The ruin ofhewn stone, Turkish in style, was the palace of MichaelShervashiji, the last native-born ruler of the province.Russian in uniform, Abkhasian at heart, true to hisown interests, false to those of others, he constructedthis palace on his return from a visit to the west: itinaugurated the beginning of a late return to the oldOttoman alliance; but with the general fate of returnmovements —especially when undertaken after theirtime-it inaugurated also his own ruin and that of hisnation. The Cossack and Abkhasian huts further onwere yet tenanted in November last: they are nowempty.We alighted, visited these strange memorials one byone, heard the story of each, remounted our horses,galloped up and down the springy turf of the Meidan,and then plunged into the deep wooded ravine northeast, and left the scene of inconstancy, violence, andblood, on our way to the districts of Bzibb and northernAbkhasia.256 [VIII. THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION.VBut our readers must halt a little longer on theMeidan if they desire to understand the full importof the tragedy of which we have just seen the stagedecorations.·Of the early history of the Abkhasian race little isknown, and little was probably to be known. Morethan two thousand years since we find them, in Greekrecords, inhabiting the narrow strip between the mountains and the sea, along the central eastern coast of theEuxine, precisely where later records and the maps ofour own day place them. But whence these seemingautochthons arrived, what was the cradle of their infantrace, to which of the great earth-families,' in Germanphrase, this little tribe, the highest number of whichcan never have much exceeded a hundred thousand,/ belonged, are questions on which the past and thepresent are alike silent. Tall stature, fair complexion,light eyes, auburn hair, and a great love for active andathletic sport, might seem to assign them a Northernorigin; but an Oriental regularity of feature, and alanguage which, though it bears no discoverable affinityto any known dialect, has yet the Semitic post-fixes ,and in guttural richness distances the purest Arabicor Hebrew, would appear to claim for them a differentrelationship. Their character, too, brave, enterprising,and commercial in its way, has yet very generally acertain mixture of childish cunning, and a total deficiency of organising power, that cement of nations,which removes them from European and even fromTurkish resemblance, while it recalls the so- calledSemitic of south- western Asia. But no tradition ontheir part lays claim to the solution of their mystery,and records are wanting among a people who havenever committed their vocal sounds to writing; they✅ know that they are Abkhasians, and nothing more.vin. ] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 257Pagans, like all early nations, they received a slightwhitewash of Christianity at times from the ByzantineEmpire; at times from their Georgian neighbours; tillat last the downfall of Trebizond and the extensionof the Ottoman power on their frontier by sea and byland rendered them what they have still mostly remained, Mahometans. Divided from time immemorialinto five main tribes, each with its clannish subdivisions,the un-euphonic names of which we pass over out ofsheer compassion to printers and readers, they first, atthe beginning of the seventeenth century, received acommon master in the person of Tahmuras-khan, aPersian by birth, native of Sherwan, whence the familyname of Sherwajee, modified into Shervashiji, but claiming descent from the ancient kings of Iran. Having inthe year 1625 lent considerable aid to the Turks intheir interminable contest with the Persians for themastery of Georgia, he was by them confirmed in thegovernment of Abkhasia; his residence was at Soukhoum, whence for a while his descendants, still knownamong the Turks by the by-name of ' Kizil- Bash,'synonymous with ' Persian, ' ruled the entire province.But when somewhat later Soukhoum became the abodeof an Ottoman Pasha, the Shervashijis transferred theirquarters to So'ouk- Soo, which henceforth became in amanner the capital of Abkhasia.The treaty of Adrianople, in 1829, handed over theWestern Caucasian coast to Russian rule; and theruling Shervashiji (Hamood Beg) , then in the primeof life, showed himself a devoted worshipper of therising, if not sun,-Aurora Borealis of Petersburg.Quitting his ancestral religion and name, he was baptized into Russian Christianity under the title ofMichael Beg, received a high rank in the Russian army,and, head and hand, did the work of his new masters .S258 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION [VIII .For all the long years that the Circassian strugglelasted, through the months wasted by Omar Pashain Mingrelia, and during all the squandered and lostopportunity-squandered in 1855, lost in 1856 -ofrestoring and of securing the freedom of the Caucasus,perhaps of all Central Asia, from the yoke to whichmore and more necks must daily bow, Michael Shervashiji was by turns the main implement of Russiandiplomacy in disuniting Western Caucasus from thecommon cause, and the military executioner to whomwas entrusted the subdual, and even extermination, ofhis more patriotic neighbours. With the short-sightedacuteness common among Easterns he saw only his ownpresent advantage, and took no heed that while helpingto destroy his petty though hereditary rivals he was, inthe Russian point of view, cutting away the last propsof his own rule. Meanwhile his every request wasgranted, every privilege confirmed. Russian garrisonswere indeed at Soukhoum-Kalé, at Gagri, at otherstations of the coast; but inland Michael Shervashijiwas sole lord and master, and not even a Russian officercould venture a ' werst ' up the interior without hispermission and escort.All this was very well for a time; Shamyl was stillunconquered, and Michael Shervashiji was too valuablean ally for the Russians not to be humoured-Shakespeare might have said ' fooled '-to the top of his bent,even at some temporary sacrifice of Russian uniformization and monopoly. But at last the circle of huntersnarrowed round the mountain deer at bay in the heightsof Gunib, and eyes less keen than Michael's could foresee near at hand the moment when the last independenceof the Caucasus would have ceased to be. Tua resagitur paries cum proximus ardet, can be thought inAbkhasian no less than expressed in Latin; and MichaelVIII. ] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION.259grew uneasy at the prospect of a boundless horizon ofRussian friends. His health suddenly but opportunelyfailed, a change of air, —of water, Eastern M.D.'s wouldsay,--became necessary; a journey to Europe wasrecommended; a passport was taken, rather thangranted; and the great Shervashiji, like many otherprinces, went to try the waters.That the said waters should in a few months haverestored his health was quite natural; it was, however,somewhat singular that they should at the same timehave had an Osmanlizing effect on his own constitution.Some say they were the waters of the Bosporus thatacted on him thus; others attribute it to a reactionproduced by the waters of the Volga, which, in a visitto Moscow, he drank near their source about this verytime. Certainly on his return strange and anti- Muscovitesymptoms appeared. His new residence at So'ouk- Soo,the ancestral seat of his independence, rose on a Turkishmodel; his manners, his speech, grew less Russian. Itwas noticed, too, that on entering church he no longeruncovered his head, a decided hint, said the Russians,that church and mosque were for him on much thesame footing. Perhaps the Russians were not farwrong.Then came 1864, the great Circassian emigration—i.e. the expulsion of well nigh a million of starving andplundered wretches from their country, for the crimeof having defended that country against strangerswas accomplished; in Eastern phrase, the Abkhasian'back was cut, ' and now came their turn to receive therecompense of their fidelity to Russia and their infidelity to their native Caucasus. The first and maintool of Tiflis had been Michael Shervashiji; he wasaccordingly the first to receive his stipend.Too late aware what that stipend was likely to be,S 2260 THE [VIII.ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION.he had retired into an out-of-the-way country residencesome hours to the interior, behind Otchemchiri. Here,in November, 1864, the Russian ' pay-day ' found him,in the shape of a detachment of soldiers sent by hisImperial Highness the Grand Duke Michael to inviteand escort him to the viceregal presence at Tiflis.Whether thinking that resistance would only makematters worse, or reckoning on the deceptive chancesof what is called an appeal to generosity,' the Beg atonce gave himself up to the troops. By them he wasforthwith conducted, not to Tiflis, but to the coast,where lay the ship appointed to convey him to Kertch,whence began his destined journey to Russia andSiberia. A traitor, he met a traitor's recompense, andthat, as was most fitting, at the hands of those in whosebehalf his life had been for thirty-five years one prolonged treason to his country. Yet that country wepthim at his departure-he was their born prince, afterall, and no stranger-and they wept him still morewhen the news of his death-the ready consequence ofexile at an advanced age into the uncongenial Siberianclimate and Siberian treatment, but by popular rumourattributed to Russian poison- reached them in thespring of 1866. His corpse was brought back to hisnative mountains, and he was buried amid the tearsand wailings of his Abkhasian subjects.They had, indeed, already other cause for their wailings. Hardly had their last prince ceased to live, thanmeasures were taken by the viceregal Governmentfor the nominal demarcation, the real confiscation, ofthe lands of the Abkhasian nobility; while the peasants,for their part, found the little finger of Russian incorporization heavier than all the loins of all the Shervashijis. Russian custom-houses formed a cordon alongthe coast; Russian Cossacks and Natchalnicks wereVIII.] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 261posted everywhere up the country; the whole provincewas placed under Russian law and military administration; Abkhasian rights, Abkhasian customs and precedents were henceforth abolished. More still, theirreligion, the great supplement of nationality in theEast-because in its Eastern form it embodies whatevermakes a nation, its political and social, its public andprivate being-was now menaced. Russian chronologists discovered that the Abkhasians had once beenChristians, whence the Tiflis Government drew the selfevident conclusion that they had no right to be atpresent Mahometans. An orthodox bishop or archbishop, I forget which, of Abkhasia, appeared on thescene, and the work, or rather the attempt at proselytism was diligently pushed forward by enticementand intimidation under hierarchical auspices. Lastly,a census of the population, -a process which ever sinceDavid numbered the children of Israel and brought onthem the plague in consequence, has been in ill- odourin the East, was ordered.Of the Shervashiji family many remained. Michael'sown brother, Alexander, still resided, though without authority, at So'ouk- Soo; George, Michael's eldest son, nowa Russian officer, and the Grand Duke's aide-de-camp,had returned from Petersburg, where no amount ofchampagne and cards had been spared to make him a genuineRussian; epaulettes and aigrettes would, it was to behoped, retain him such. But bred in the bone will notout of the flesh, and he was still a Shervashiji, nor hadhe forgotten the rights of heir-apparent. Another anda powerful branch of the same family, the relatives ofSaid Beg Shervashiji of Kelasoor, a Mahometan, andwho had died poisoned, it was said, by his Christiankinsman and rival, Michael, were also in the country,and seemed inclined to forget family quarrels in the262 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. [VIII." common cause. Besides these were two other houses'of special note, the Marshians and the Ma'ans. Theformer had, like the Shervashijis, been in general subservient to Russia-some had even apostatized fromIslam; but their chief, Shereem Beg a Mahometan, hadmarried Michael Shervashiji's sister, and state marriagesin the East are productive of other results than merenon-interventions and children. The other family, theMa'ans, staunch Islam, had for some time previousbroken off Russian connection: one of them, MustaphaAgha, had even taken service in the Ottoman army.Their head, Hasan Ma'an, had quitted his Abkhasianabode at Bambora, half way between Soukhoum andSo'ouk- Soo, for the Turkish territory of Trebizond ,where he lived within call, but without grasp.Discontent was general and leaders were not wanting;yet just and judicious measures on the part of theRussians might have smoothed all down; but theirNemesis and that of Abkhasia had decreed that suchmeasures should not be taken--the exact reverse.In the month of July, 1866, a commission headed bythe civilian Cheripoff had come from Tiflis to completethe survey and estimate of the lands, those of the Shervashijis in particular. This commission had taken upits head-quarters at So'ouk- Soo along with the localmilitary Governor, Ismailoff, and a body of Cossacksabout two hundred strong. Some of these last werestationed at the coast village of Gouda'outa, a few milesdistant. To So'ouk- Soo now flocked all the discontentedchiefs, and of course their followers; for no Abkhasiannoble can stir a foot out of doors without a ' tail' of atleast thirty, each with his long slender- stocked gun, hisgoat-hair cloak, his pointed head-dress, and, for the rest,a knife at his girdle, and more tears than cloth in histight grey trousers and large cartridge-breasted coat.vm .] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 263Some mezzotints in Hughes' Albanian Travels, oldedition, two volumes quarto, where Suliotes, Albanians,and the like are to be seen clambering over rocks, gunon shoulder, in the evident intention of shooting somebody, give a tolerable idea of these fellows, only theyare more ragged than the heroes of the said mezzotints,also less ferocious. The commission lodged in thehouses about the Meidan; the Abkhasians-for it wassummer-camped on the Meidan itself, filling it withguns and gutturals.Much parleying took place. The Abkhasians werehighly excited -why, we have already seen; the Russians, not yet aware with whom they had to deal, wereinsolent and overbearing, The fire of contest was, unavowedly but certainly, fanned by many ofthe Abkhasianchiefs, not unwilling to venture all where they saw thatif they ventured nothing they must lose all. AlexanderShervashiji was there in his own house on the Meidan;his nephew George had arrived from Tiflis: the Russiandecorations on his breast lay over a heart no less antiRussian than his uncle's and his father's-so at leastsaid the Russians: perhaps it suited them to incriminate the last influential representatives of the Shervashiji family. There too were many of the Marshians:was Shereem Beg amongst them? Some said, somedenied. ' Se non è vero è ben trovato,' was the Russianconclusion. But more active than any, more avowedlyat the head of what now daily approached nearer torevolt, were the two Ma'an brothers, Mustapha andTemshook the former lately returned from Turkeyboth men of some talent and of much daring.Meanwhile news of all this was brought to ColonelCognard, the Russian Governor - General of Abkhasia,and then resident at Soukhoum- Kalé. A violent,imperious man, full of contempt for all natives ,' and264 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. [VIII.like many of foreign origin, more Russian than theRussians themselves, he imagined that his presence atSo'ouk- Soo would at once suffice to quell the risingstorm and awe the discontented into submission. Accordingly, on the first week of August, he arrived onthe scene, and lodged in the great house of AlexanderShervashiji-whither, in consequence, the whole attention of either party, Russian and Abkhasian, was nowdirected.Throughout the whole of this affair, it is curiousto observe how the Russians, men of no great sensibility themselves, ignored the sensibilities of others,and seemed to think that whatever the injury, whatever the wrong, inflicted by a Russian Government, itought to arouse in its victims no other feeling thanresignation at most. Here in Abkhasia the hereditaryruler of the country had, after life-long services, in timeof profound tranquillity, with nothing proved or evendistinctly charged against him, been suddenly draggedinto exile and premature death; his family, those ofall the Abkhasian nobility, had been deprived of theirrights, and threatened with the deprivation of theirproperty; ancestral customs, law, religion, national existence, for even Abkhasians lay claim to all these,-had been brought to the verge of Russian absorption intonot-being; and all the while Cognard with his friendscould not imagine the existence of any Abkhasian discontent that would not at once be appeased, be changedinto enthusiastic, into Pan-slavistic loyalty, by theappearance of that deus ex machina,' a RussianGovernor-General. Vide Warsaw passim .Nemesis willed it otherwise. Cognard's demeanourwas brutal, his every word an insult. The noblespresented their griefs; he refused to recognize themas nobles. The peasants clamoured; he informedVIII. ] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 265them that they were not Abkhasians but Russians. Invain Alexander, Shervashiji and the Marshians, sensibleand moderate men the most, expostulated and represented that the moment was not one for additionalirritation; Cognard was deaf to expostulation andadvice; his fate was on him. It did not delay. Onthe 8th of August a deputation composed of theprincipal Abkhasian nobility laid before him a sortof Oriental ultimatum in the form of an address; theRussian Governor- General answered it by kickingaddress and nobles out of doors. It was noon: acry of vengeance and slaughter arose from the armedmultitude on the Meidan.The assault began on the Cossacks stationed aboutthe house; they were no less unprepared than theirmasters, and could offer but little resistance. Alreadythe first shots had been fired and blood had flowedwhen Cognard sent out George Shervashiji to appeasethose who should by right have been his subjectswhose rebellion was, in fact, for his own father's sake.That he never returned is certain. By his own account,which was confirmed on most hands, he did his bestto quiet the insurgents, but unsuccessfully. Theyforced him aside, said he, and detained him at adistance while the outbreak went on. The Russiansascribed to him direct participation in what followed;the reasons for such imputation are palpable, the factit*elf improbable.In a few minutes the Cossacks before the gate.were overpowered and slaughtered; the Abkhasiansburst into the house. Its owner, Alexander Shervashiji,met them on the inner threshold, and implored themto respect the sanctity of their chief's hearth. Butthat moment had gone by, and the old man was laidhold of by his countrymen and led away-respectfully266 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION [VIII. .indeed, but in a manner to preclude resistance-whilethe massacre begun without doors continued within.Whatever was Russian perished: the luckless Commissioner from Tiflis first; Cognard's aide-de-camp andhis immediate suite were cut down; but the mainsearch of the insurgents was after Cognard himself.A Russian picture, largely copied and circulated, represents him seated composedly in his chair, unblenched infeature, unmoved in limb, confronting his assailants .Pity that so artistic a group should have existed onlyin the artist's own imagination. The Colonel hadnot, indeed, made good his retreat, but he had done.his best thereto by creeping up the large fireplace,of Abkhasian fashion, in the principal room. Unfortunately for him his boots protruded downwards intothe open space; and by these the insurgents seizedhim, dragged him out to the mid apartment, and theredespatched him. His colleague , Ismailoff, had a worsefate. Specially obnoxious to the inhabitants of So'oukSoo for the impudence of his profligacy, he was firstmutilated and then hewn piecemeal, limb by limb.It is said that the dogs were already eating morselsof his flesh before life had left his body. Such atrocitiesare not uncommon in the East where female honouris concerned, rare else. At So'ouk- Soo, Ismailoff wasthe only instance.All was now in the hands of the insurgents, who sackedand burnt the houses of Russian tenants, killing allthey found. Only twenty Cossacks escaped, and theseowed their lives to the humane exertions of the wifeof Alexander Shervashiji, who gave them refuge in herown apartments, and kept them there safe till themassacre was over. A few Georgians and Mingrelians,a Pole too, though wearing the Russian uniform, werealso spared. ' You are not Russians, our quarrel isVIII.] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 267not with you,' said the Abkhasians, as they took themen's arms, and sent them off uninjured to Soukhoum.On the same afternoon the insurgents attacked thenearest Russian post, that of the Cossacks stationedon coast-guard at Gouda'outa. Here, too, the assailantswere successful, the Russians were killed to a man, andtheir abode was burnt. The Nemesis of Abkhasia hadcompleted another stage of her work.' To Soukhoum ' was now the cry; and the wholemass of armed men, now about three thousand innumber, were in movement southwards along the coast,through thickets and by-paths, to the Russian stronghold. Next morning, from two to three hundred hadalready crossed the Gumista, a broad mountain torrentnorth of Soukhoum, and were before, or rather behindthe town."A small crescent of low one-storied houses, mostlywood, Soukhoum- Kalé lies at the bottom of a deep baywith a southerly aspect. At its western extremity isthe Old Fort, ascribed to the Genovese, but moreprobably of Turkish date, whence Soukhoum derivesthe adjunct of Kela'at , ' or ' Castle ' ( Kalé is erroneous,but we will retain it for custom's sake), a squarebuilding, with thick walls of rough masonry and afew flanking bastions; within is room for a musteredregiment or more. From the town crescent somestraight lines, indications of roads, run perpendicularlyback across the plashy ground for about a quarterof a mile to the mountains; along these lines areranged other small wooden houses, mostly tenantedby Russian officers. The garrison-camp, situated onthe most unhealthy site of this unhealthy marsh, lieseast. Behind is a table-land, whereon in August lastthere still stood the barracks of a Russian outpost,a hospital, a public vapour-bath, and a few houses.268 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION [VIII. .The coast strip is low and swampy, a nest of morefevers than there are men to catch them; the mountains behind, thickly wooded and fern-clad betweenthe trees, are fairly healthy.At the moment of the first Abkhasian onset, the 9thof August, three Russian vessels-a transport, a corvette, and a schooner, all three belonging to the longshore fleet of Nicolaieff-were lying in the harbour.But the number of men in the camp was small, fallingunder a thousand, and of these not above one- half werefit for duty.Had the Abkhasians been able at once to bring theirwhole force to bear on Soukhoum- Kalé, town and fortwould probably have alike fallen into their hands. Atthe first approach of the enemy, the Russian garrisonhad abandoned the plateau and all the upper part ofthe town, confining themselves to the defensive in thelines along the shore, where they were in a measurecovered by the fire of the ships, and in the Fort itself.Meanwhile all the mixed multitude ' of Soukhoumsmall Greek and Armenian shop-keepers, Mingrelianand Georgian camp-followers, a few Jews and the like-had fled for refuge, some into the Fort, some onboard the vessels in the harbour. But their best auxiliary on this occasion was a violent rain-storm , whichat this very moment burst over the mountains, and ina few hours so swelled the Gumista torrent that themain body of Abkhasians mustered behind it were forthe whole of the ensuing day unable to cross over tothe help of their comrades, the assailants of Soukhoum.These last had already occupied the plateau, burntwhatever was on it, and, descending into the plain,plundered and set fire to the dwellings of severalRussian officers close below. They then advanced someway down the central street, ostentatiously called theVIII. ] THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION. 269'Boulevard ' in honour of some little trees planted alongit. But here they were checked by the fire of theRussian vessels, and by the few troops whom theirofficers could persuade to remain without the fort inthe lower part of the town.Two days, two anxious days, matters remained onthis footing. But news had been despatched to Poti,and on the third morning arrived a battalion from thatplace, just as the main body of the Abkhasians, headedby the two sons of Hasan Ma'an, Mustapha and Temshook, crossed the now diminished Gumista and enteredSoukhoum.Fighting now began in good earnest. The numberson either side were pretty fairly matched, but theAbkhasians, though inferior in arms, were superior incourage; and it required all the exertions of a Polishcolonel and of two Greek officers to keep the Russiansoldiers from even then abandoning the open ground.However, next morning brought the Russians freshreinforcements; and being by this time fully doublethe force of their ill-armed, undisciplined enemy, theyventured on becoming assailants in their turn. By theend of the fifth day the insurgents had dispersed amidthe woods. The Russian loss at Soukhoum-Kalé wasreckoned at sixty or seventy men, that ofthe Abkhasiansat somewhat less; but as they carried their dead andwounded away with them, the exact number has neverbeen known. During the short period of their armedpresence at Soukhoum they had killed no one except infair fight, burnt or plundered no houses except Russian,committed no outrage, injured no neutral . Only theBotanical Garden, a pretty copse of exotic trees, thecreation of Prince Woronzoff, and on this occasion thescene of some hard fighting, was much wasted, and aPolish chapel was burnt. Public rumour ascribed both270 THE ABKHASIAN INSURRECTION.these acts of needless destruction, the first probably,the latter certainly, to the Russian soldiery themselves.The rest of the story is soon told. Accompanied bya large body of troops, the Russian Governor-General ofthe Western Caucasus went to So'ouk- Soo . He metwith no resistance. Cognard and his fellow- victimswere buried—we have seen their graves-and the houseof Alexander Shervashiji, that in which Cognard hadperished, with the palace of the Prince Michael, wasgutted and burnt by a late act of Russian vindictiveness. The Nemesis of Abkhasia added these furthertrophies to her triumph at So'ouk- Soo.Thus it was in November last. A few more monthshave passed, and that triumph is already complete.After entire submission, and granted pardon, the remnant of the old Abkhasian nation-first their chiefs andthen the people-have at last, in time of full peace andquiet, been driven from the mountains and coast whereGreek, Roman, Persian, and Turkish domination hadleft them unmolested for more than two thousand years,to seek under the more tolerant rule of the OttomanSultan a freedom which Russia often claims withouther own limits, always denies within them. The Meidanof So'ouk- Soo is now empty. Russians and Abkhasians,Shervashijis and Cossacks, native and foreigner, havealike disappeared, and nothing remains but the fastcrumbling memorials of a sad history of national follyrewarded by oppression, oppression by violence, violenceby desolation.IX.THE POET ' OMAR.[ PUBLISHED IN ' FRASER'S MAGAZINE,' APRIL, 1871.]NOTICE.This Essay, as well as the following, or Tenth, is here inserted inorder to illustrate the Arab mind and character taken wholly, or ingreat measure, apart from the reaction produced by the Mahometansystem which originated amidst them. No code or religion can becorrectly estimated without a knowledge of the life and thought ofwhich it was an outgrowth or development; later ages retain theletter, but the spirit and meaning are only to be gathered from thecontemporary surroundings of its first origin. In the life and writingsof the poet ' Omar, we see the civilization and refinement, in those ofthe brigand Ta'abbet- Shurran and his companions, the barbarousenergy by both of which Islam was cradled, and to which the Bookowed much of its inspiration, and the Sword of its conquests.THE princes of Benoo-Omeyyah, who during ninetyfour years (A.D. 661-755) ruled from their throne atDamascus over the already immense extent of theMohammedan world, enjoyed a title to sovereigntypeculiarly their own; one denied to all Caliphs andSultans of later date; whether the orthodox monarchsof Bagdad and Constantinople, or the schismaticalImams of Cairo or Teheran; that, namely, of beinggovernors genuinely and unreservedly co-national with272 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR.the main body of those they governed, not in descentonly, but also in character, manners, and system .Even the four elective Caliphs, Mohammed's immediate successors, though themselves essentially Arab,were yet too much cramped, ' Alee in particular, byexcessive zeal and righteousness overmuch, to be afaithful expression of the real national type. Deeplyimbued though Arabs are, more so indeed than thegenerality of men, with reverence for the eternal lawthat, as one of our own poets has unconsciously rendered an every-day Arab phrase, ' On every side ourbeing rings,' few people are less inclined than they tomultiply complicated observances, and to make ofreligion and its ceremonies the staple of practical life.Hence it came that Aboo- Bekr, ' Omar, ' Othman, and'Alee, however congenial, the first three at any rate,to the special phase of mind through which theircountrymen were then passing, which was in fact theinflammatory or fever stage of Islamitic inoculation,were yet even then, in common parlance, almost toomuch for them: 'Alee was so decidedly. Indeed, beforethe initial half- century was over, the Kharajee or freethinking reaction of avowed infidelity and license hadalready set in; and the dagger of Ebn-Muljem didbut give effect to the general desire of freedom froma yoke which for some years past the Arabs had feltand declared that neither they nor their children wereable to bear.6But in the splendid, jovial, adventure-loving, devilmay-care sons of Omeyyah, very heathens in thecarnal part,' however sad, good Mohammedans at heartthey may have been, and indeed unquestionably were,the Arabs had not merely their own flesh and blood,but, what was much more, their own heart and soul,to reign over them; and it was accordingly during theIx. ]THE POET ' OMAR.273period of their supremacy that the Arab ' geist,' toplagiarise the convenient German word, breathed freestand obtained its fullest expansion . Hence we may notinaptly, before approaching the Damascene Court itself,and the principal figures that gave it splendour andimportance, take a general survey of the social conditions around in town or country, as illustrated bythose individual sketches of which the records of theage furnish us with abundant choice.The almost pre- historic winter, the early and themid-spring of Arab civilisation had already passedaway; it was now summer, the time of brightestbloom and of most abundant vigour. Simple in theirinnate restlessness, and restless in their innate simplicity, as Arabs still were, the young manhood ofthe nation imparted itself to every individual, andheightened the aims of life, while giving them at thesame time a depth and a breadth unknown before.War, counsel, eloquence; these had always formed thetriple excellence that Arabia claimed for her sons astheir noblest praise; and it was now, under the starof Benoo- Omeyyah, that she fully realised her ownideal, and gave simultaneous birth to her greatestwarriors, her most skilful statesmen, and her choicestpoets. The change which had come over the spiritof these last is in itself a remarkable illustration ofprofoundly modified social conditions throughout theentire peninsula.Poverty of means, isolation of circ*mstance, andinsecurity of life, had, during the long ante-Islamiticperiod, cramped the energy, narrowed the ideas, andmarred the taste of almost all, indeed in some degree ofall Arab poets. The circle they moved in was rough,barren, and contracted; their genius dwarfed itselfinto proportion with the limits which it could notT274 THE POET [IX.' OMAR.overpass. The high rank and noble birth of thepre-Islamitic ' Amroo-ben- Kelthoom and ' Amroo- 1-Keyshad not exempted them from ever-recurring personaldangers and privations on the road and in thefield; while the vigorous spirit of Shanfara', Ta'abbeṭShurran, and their like, was distorted by the physicalmisery and the savage loneliness to which theirwritings bear such frequent witness. All this hadnow passed away. Union had given security, conquest riches; while intercourse and Islam had developed the intellect of the nation. Two entirely newclasses of society henceforth came into existence -themen of pleasure, and the men of literature: the formerheirs of a wealth they cared rather to enjoy thanto increase; the latter seekers after wealth, fame, andname, but by intellectual, not by physical distinction.Love and song tissued the career of the former; poetryand eloquence, but chiefly poetry, were the businessof the latter. Meanwhile a select few, the spoiltchildren of destiny, the Mirandolas or Byrons of theirland and day, combined the advantages of birth andfortune with those of genius. Foremost among thesestands the nobleman, the warrior, the libertine , butabove all the poet -the Don Juan of Mecca, theOvid of Arabia and the East -'Omar the Mogheeree,the grandson of Aboo- Rabee'ah.He, by universal award, placed on the head of hiskinship, the great Koreysh clan, the only garland thathad heretofore been wanting there. In every respectbut one, Koreysh had long occupied the first place, notin the Hejaz only, but throughout the whole extentof the Arabian Empire. The elevation of their tribesmen, the sons of Omeyyah, to the Caliphate, had addedthe temporal supremacy to the spiritual leadershipalready bequeathed to them in another branch of theirIX. ]THE POET 'OMAR. 275family by the great Prophet: Khalid, the sword ofIslam, ' Amroo, the conqueror and legislator of Egypt,and Moosa, the terror of Spain, had each in his turncontributed to the common heirloom of glory; andfrom the frontiers of India to the sea of Cadiz theirwill was obeyed by subject millions to whose fathersthe very names of Hejaz and Koreysh had been unknown. But in literature, and especially in the choicestform of literature, poetry, the foremost rank was stillmonopolised by names of other lineage, by the childrenof Nejd and Yemen. The Koran, indeed, written asit was by a Koreyshee of the Koreyshees, was trulytheirs; but its supernatural pretensions exempted thiswork, though first-rate of its kind, from literary praise,no less than from literary criticism. Besides, thoughhardly prose, at least in the ordinary acceptance of theword, the Koran, unfettered by metre, and aboundingin rhythm rather than rhyme, could not pass musteras poetry. It was reserved to the grandson of AbooRabee'ah to achieve by his undoubted pre-eminence inthat art the last crowning triumph for the hereditaryprinces of Mecca.Five generations reckoned backwards united thebranch of Koreysh to which ' Omar belonged with thatwhich had given origin to Mohammed himself, toHashim, the ancestor of the Abbaside Caliphs, and to'Abdesh-Shems, from whom descended Mua'wiah andhis royal line. ' Omar's own great-grandfather, Mogheerah, had by his marriage with the noble andwealthy Reyṭah re-united two powerful subdivisions.of Koreysh descent, and had thereby become thefounder of a clan which under the title of the Childrenof Mogheerah rapidly acquired a leading position bothin peace and war. All were men of renown; but distinguished among them was Hodeykah Aboo-Rabee'ah,T 2276 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR.·the grandfather of ' Omar: his gigantic stature hadearned him the surname of 'Two-spears, ' equivalentin meaning to our own historical Longshanks; ' andin the decisive battle of ' Okad, which, shortly beforethe birth of the Prophet, assured to Koreysh the exclusive guardianship of the Ka'abeh and the lastingsigniory over their Nejdean rivals, Hodeykah was byall admitted to have won the first honours of the day.But however great the reputation of Hodeykah, itwas in a manner eclipsed by that of his son Bojeyr,the contemporary of Mohammed, by whom in personhe was converted to Islam, and from whom he receivedon that occasion the new name of 'Abd-Allah, or'Servant of God.' It was an ancient, almost immemorial, custom at Mecca, that the expenses -noinconsiderable ones --of decorating the Ka'abeh, orcentral shrine, for the yearly sacrificial solemnity,should be supported by its guardians, once the chieftains of Khozaa'h, now of Koreysh, who sharedamongst themselves alike the cost and the honour.But the grandson of Mogheerah took on himself alonethe entire responsibility of each alternate year, thusearning the title of ' El ' Idl,' or, the Equipoise,' ashaving shown himself equal singly to the entire clanin this their religious munificence. His wealth wasindeed enormous; its sources were partly hereditary,through his grandmother Reyṭah (for the fatal law oftestamentary partition, rendered obligatory by Mohammed, had not yet come into force) , and were partlyderived from the trade in metals, cloth, and spicescoffee was still unknown- with Abyssinia and Yemen,which he had in a manner monopolised, not by officialprivilege, but by superior skill and enterprise. Awhole army of attendants, Abyssinian and Negro,followed in his train; and the greatest part of the<IX. ]THE POET ' OMAR.277province of Tehamah, as the sea-coast south of Mecca.to the neighbourhood of Mokha was then and is popularly still called, obeyed his bidding.The offered assistance of ' Abd-Allah's negroid soldierywas declined by Mohammed, who may have prudentlyshunned the imputation of subjugating his own fairskinned countrymen by the help of a dusky and alienrace. But the democratic and yet absolutist tendencywhich led the Prophet systematically to depress, andeven where possible to destroy, the existing aristocracyof the land had perhaps a greater share in the motivesof this refusal. In Bojeyr, alias ' Abd-Allah the Mogheeree, we see the type of a class then recentlyoriginated yet already preponderant in Arabia, andwhich would have soon become supreme, but for themilitary despotism, based on popular equality, introduced by Mohammed: a system often tried, with slightand superficial modifications, from the days of Alexanderand of the Cæsars down to those of Napoleon III . , andinvariably resulting in a brief and delusive splendour,followed by rapid and irretrievable decay. Had thearistocratic element survived, Arabia would probablyhave boasted less extensive conquest, but she wouldhave made far greater and more durable acquisitionsin progressive civilisation and real prosperity. Butthe Koranic equipartition of land and property, andthe absorption of all effective and hereditary dignityin one only family, soon effaced the aristocracy, andwith it, by a necessary consequence, the future of thenation. In the merchant-noble, ' Abd-Allah the Mogheeree, we see the fulness of a type that might haveensured alike advance and permanence; with itsdisappearance scarce a century later begin rapiddecadence and anarchical dissolution.Two wives, one an Arab woman of Haḍramout, a278 THE POET ' OMAR. [IX..province famed in all times for female beauty, theother a Christian and native of Abyssinia, gave to'Abd- Allah two children, widely differing in characterand in pursuits both from himself and from each other:the dusky half-blood Hirth, an austere Muslim, whoselife was passed in the discharge of Government employments, some of the highest trust; and the gay, idle,talented poet, ' Omar."This latter was born, so it chanced, on the verysame day that the great Caliph, his namesake, wasassassinated by the Persian slave Firooz. ' WhatVerity then set, and what Vanity rose! ' said ' Omar'ssarcastic half-censor, half-admirer, Ebn-'Abbas; who,like many others of the poet's contemporaries, manifested more annoyance at the scandals of his personalthan admiration for the brilliancy of his literary career.Beware of permitting your children to read the compositions of ' Omar-Ebn-Abee- Rabee'ah,' said the austereEbn-' Orwah, a great authority on such matters in histime, unless you wish to see them plunge headlonginto vice.' And ' Abd-Allah Ebn-Musa'b, the highborn rival of the reigning Caliphs, having once on atime, while seated in his porch, noticed a maidservantof his about to enter the house with a book in herhand, called her to him to look at it; and on findingthat the book in question was no other than a collectionof ' Omar's poems, ordered her to return it unreadwithout a moment's delay to those from whom she hadborrowed it; adding, Are you mad, to bring a booklike that into a house for girls to read? Do you notknow that ' Omar's verses steal away the heart, andinsinuate themselves into the very soul? Off with it!'Had the poet himself been by, he might not improbablyhave pardoned the censure for the compliment itimplied.IX.] THE POET ' OMAR. 279His half-brother Hirth, the respectable, incorruptible,unimpeachable Governor of Başrah, had plenty oftrouble on his brother's account; and many, thoughineffectual, were the efforts he made to recall ' Omarfrom the evil of his ways. An instance recorded by thepoet's best biographer, Aboo-l-Faraj , is too characteristic of the men and the times to be omitted.One year, on the very high day of the great annualfestival, when the pilgrims, assembled from all quartersof the Mohammedan world at Mecca, were engaged inthe evening performance of their solemn traditionaryrite, pacing seven times in prayer round the sacredKa'abeh, Zeynab, a young girl of noble birth, happenedto be present among the crowd of worshippers, fromwhom, however, she was easily to be distinguished byher surpassing beauty and the gay dresses of hernumerous attendants . What next followed ' Omar maybest recite after his own fashion, and in his own metre,which we have as far as possible preserved in thetranslation; though the rhyme, which if renderedwould have necessitated too frequent divergence fromthe original style and imagery, has been omitted:—Ah for the throes of a heart sorely wounded!Ah for the eyes that have smit me with madness!Gently she moved in the calmness of beauty,Moved as the bough to the light breeze of morning.Dazzled my eyes as they gazed, till before meAll was a mist and confusion of figures.Ne'er had I sought her, and ne'er had she sought me;Fated the love, and the hour, and the meeting.There I beheld her as she and her damselsPaced ' twixt the temple and outer enclosure;Damsels the fairest, the loveliest, the gentlest,Passing like slow-wending heifers at evening;Ever surrounding with courtly observanceHer whom they honour, the peerless of women.280 THE POET [IX.' OMAR.Then to a handmaid, the youngest, she whispered ,"Omar is near let us mar his devotions.Cross on his path that he needs may observe us;Give him a signal, my sister, demurely.'Signals I gave, but he marked not or heeded,'Answered the damsel, and hasted to meet me.Ah for that night by the vale of the sand-hills!Ah for the dawn when in silence we parted!He who the morn may awake to her kissesDrinks from the cup of the blessed in heaven.The last four lines of this lyric seem, however, to havebeen written under the influence of poetical anticipapation; for many weeks and even months passed without any closer intercourse than that of love-messages,and glances at a distance . Zeynab, with her fatherMoosa, and her two elder sisters, prolonged their visitat Mecca. ' Omar was now in the prime of youthand personal beauty, advantageously set off by rank,wealth, and idleness. No wonder that his reputationas a lady-killer was already pretty well established;and that Zeynab, young herself, and only too susceptible of attentions like ' Omar's, should have receivedfrom her alarmed relatives much prudent cautioning';with what result her lover thus gives us to judge: —Still of me their converse: they at length beheld meScarce a furlong distant on my white- starred charger.Said the eldest, ' Tell us, who the youth approaching?'Said the second, ' Sure ' tis no one else, ' tis ' Omar. 'Said the youngest, she whom deep my love had smitten,' He, ' tis he; and can the full moon hide her splendour? 'Diffidence of his own merits was certainly not amongthe poet's defects; and we can scarcely, in a characterlike his, wonder even at the impudence which dictatedthe following verses:-IX. ] THE POET ' OMAR. 281Then I called a handmaid of my household,Saying, ' Take good heed, let nought betray thee,Whisper gently, gentlier yet, to Zeynab,"But one kiss for him, thy own, thy ' Omar. "Zeynab heard, and shook her laughing tressesLaughing answered, ' Whence so pert an envoy?Thus would ' Omar trick the hearts of women?"Tis a tale oft told; I know the sequel.'Spring and summer passed thus, but ' Omar's suitadvanced little; thanks to the coyness of the lady, andstill more, it may be well believed, the vigilance of herguardians. The lover's passion had meanwhile risen towhite heat; but fear of offence prohibited even hiscustomary solace of verses, except under the disguise ofan assumed object. Hind ' was a name of historicalreputation of beauty among Arabs, no less than ' Helen 'among Greeks; and to ' Hind ' accordingly severalpieces of poetry, inspired by no other than Zeynab thedaughter of Moosa, were now dedicated by the youngMogheeree; they rank among the freshest and sprightliest of his whole collection. One in particular, apopular favourite, and often selected for song by Arabmusicians even at the present day, must not be hereomitted:-Ah that Hind would keep the word of love she promised,Keep the word, and heal the heart herself has wounded;And for once at least be fairly self-dependent!—Weak indeed who never dares be self-dependent.Once she stood with maidens in the tent conversing;Hot the day, and naked she to cooling waters;' Am I,' said she, ' fair indeed as ' Omar sings me?Tell me, tell me truly, or does he but flatter? 'To each other then apart they smiled, and answered,' Lovely in the lover's eye was aye the loved one. 'Not from truth they answered thus; ' twas all from envy;Woman's envy still was beauty's shadow.282 THE POET [IX.' OMAR.Love, however, at last prevailed; and a rendezvouswas given at some distance from the town, in one of thevalleys that lie south- east of Mecca, bordered by highabrupt rocks, and green in its winding course belowwith thick gardens and palm groves; the very placefor a stolen interview. Thither Zeynab was to betakeherself for an afternoon stroll with a few chosen attendants; while ' Omar was to meet her quite promiscuous,'as if returning from a journey. The plan succeeded;its opening scene is thus described by ' Omar in verseswhich long remained the envy and despair of rivalpoets:-6Late and early Love between us idle messenger had gone,Till his fatal ambush in the valley of Khedab was laid:There we met; nor sign, nor token, needed but a glance -no more;All my heart and all its passion mirrored in her heart I saw;And I said, Tis evening cool; the gardened houses are not far;Why unsocial bide we seated weary on the weary beasts? 'Turned she to her damsels with, 'What say ye? ' They replied,'Alight;Better far the cool earth's footing than the uneasy saddle perch. 'Down they glided, clustering starlike round the perfect queen of night,Calmly wending in her beauty, as to music's measured beat.Shyly drew I near and greeted , fearful lest some jealous eyeShould behold us, or the palm- trees tell the story of our loves.Half withdrawn her veil, she whispered, ' Fear not; freely speak yourmind.Kinsmen none are here to watch us; thou and I may claim our own.'Bold I answered, Were there thousands, fearless would I bide theirworst;But the secret of my bosom brooks no ear, no eye but thine.'Then the maidens-ah the maidens!-noted how apart we drew;Well they guessed unspoken wishes, and the inmost thoughts of love.Said they, ' Give us leave to wander; bide thou here alone awhile;We will stroll a little onwards, ' neath the pleasant evening star.'' Be not long,' she answered; said they, Fear not; we will straightreturnStraight be with thee; ' and at once like trooping fawns they slippedaway.Ix.]THE POET ' OMAR.283Little need to ask their meaning; if they came or if they wentKnown to her, to me, the purpose: yet we had not said a word.It may be easily imagined that Zeynab's attendantswere too discreet to return in a hurry; and the lovers,regardless of time, prolonged their meeting till eveninghad passed into night, when there came on a suddenstorm of rain, such as is not uncommon among the hillsof the Hejaz coast. 'Omar, gallantly fearful lest thelight dress of his fair companion should suffer, took offhis cloak, one of red embroidered silk and wool, such asstill may be often seen worn by the upper classes in thepeninsula, and cast it over her shoulders; while sheplayfully refused to accept the shelter except on condition that he should keep a part of it over himself; andin this amiable proximity they remained a while tillthe shower had blown over, and the approach of dawnwarned them to separate.Thus far all was well, and might perhaps have continued so but for the vanity of ' Omar himself, who afew days afterwards published the whole adventure,not forgetting the circ*mstance of the shower and thecloak, in verses that expressed much and suggestedmore. In spite of the thin disguise of fictitious personages, Zeynab's name, joined with that of ' Omar, wassoon in every mouth; and Moosa, the father of theyoung lady, began to have serious fears as to the consequences of so compromising a courtship. Young ' Omar,wealthy and powerful, not only in the popularity ofrising genius, but in the near relationship of princes andcaliphs, was beyond the reach of his anger; and Moosadetermined accordingly to seek for his daughter inflight the security which he could not hope from opencontest. Silently and secretly he prepared his departure from the Ḥejaz; but ' Omar had notice of it in time284 THE POET [IX.' OMAR.to obtain yet one more interview with the young lady.Zeynab, however, took her precautions, and broughtwith her this time, not her own attendants only, butseveral others of her Meccan female friends, easilyinduced to accompany her by their curiosity to make anearer acquaintance with the first poet of the day. Therendezvous was in a valley at some distance out of town;and there the whole party remained from evening tosunrise; the result was a serious proposal of marriageon ' Omar's part, accepted by Zeynab; but on conditionthat, after her own and her father's removal to theirprojected establishment in the neighbourhood of thePersian Gulf, ' Omar should follow them thither, andthere make his offer in due form. In the meantime hewas neither to see her nor speak with her, either inpublic or in private.'Omar accepted the conditions, intended probablyin part as a trial of his constancy; and, with characteristic levity, had hardly accepted than he broke them.Only a few days later he learnt that Zeynab, beforequitting Mecca, designed a visit to some one of thenumerous memorials in its vicinity; and, thereon,mounted his celebrated ' white-starred charger ' Komeyt,and alone, but armed, set out on a side-track in hopesof a meeting with the daughter of Moosa. On his wayhe fell in with another horseman, also armed and alone,travelling in the same direction . Conversation followed; and ' Omar, finding his new acquaintancesprightly and accomplished, was led on to treat himwith a recital of his latest poem, commemorative of thevery rendezvous just described. ' It would seem youdo not know that the lady is my cousin, ' said the other,with a dark look. ' Omar, disconcerted, did not evenventure explanation or excuse, but turned his horse'shead, and rode back full speed for Mecca.IX.]THE POET ' OMAR. 285Further concealment was impossible, and the worstconsequences might be reasonably expected. Hirth,in great distress at the follies of his young half-brother,called him up; and, giving him a large supply ofmoney for the road, sent him off to look after somefamily estates in the extreme south of Yemen, aftera serious warning and a solemn promise exacted thathe would amend his doings in future. ' Omar obeyed;but once alone, a male Mariana in the south, separationand solitude proved too much for him; and beforemany weeks of his banishment were over, he hadbegun to solace his loneliness with several patheticeffusions, to all of which Zeynab was the key-note.The following may serve as a specimen:-Ah! where have they made my dwelling? Far, how far, from her, the loved one,Since they drove me lone and parted to the sad sea- shore of ' Aden.Thou art mid the distant mountains; and to each, the loved andlover,Nought is left but sad remembrance, and a share of aching sorrow.Hadst thou seen thy lover weeping by the sandhills of the ocean,Thou hadst deemed him struck by madness: was it madness? was itlove?I may forget all else, but never shall forget her as she stood,As I stood, that hour of parting; heart to heart in speechlessanguish;Then she turned her to Thoreyya, to her sister, sadly weeping;Coursed the tears down cheek and bosom, till her passion found anutterance;'Tell him, sister, tell him; yet be not as one that chides or murmurs,Why so long thy distant tarrying on the unlovely shores of Yemen?Is it sated ease detains thee, or the quest of wealth that lures thee?Tell me what the price they paid thee, that from Mecca bought thyabsence? 'These verses, repeated, though without the nameof the composer, and taken up from mouth to mouth,ended by reaching Hirth, who on hearing them ex-286 [IX.THE POET ' OMAR."claimed, 'Omar, by Allah! he has broken his wordalready; ' and for a time he seems to have given upthe hope of reclaiming the irreclaimable.'Omar returned to Mecca; and in exquisite poetrycontinued, now to lament the absent Zeynab, now tomake love to other girls and women for five or sixyears. Meanwhile Zeynab's father, Moosa the Jomahee, with the sale-money of his Hejaz property hadpurchased houses and lands between Başrah andKoweyt, and lived there awhile in comfort, though inexile . His two elder daughters married; but Zeynab,whether faithful to 'Omar's memory or from some othermotive, remained single. At the end of this timeher father died; and Zeynab, while attending hisfuneral, noticed with alarm that among the crowdgathered on the occasion not a single kinsman or relative appeared; all were strangers. Returning homeshe summoned an old negress, once her nurse, and said,My father is now dead, and there is no one to protector care for us here; why should I remain any longer ina strange country? Let us return to Mecca.' The oldnurse made no opposition; so Zeynab sold her sharein her father's newly-acquired estates, and having madea good bargain ( for Başrah was then a rising town),took advantage of the yearly pilgrim caravan andreturned with it Hejaz- wards. ' Omar happened to beat Mecca that year; and, as was his wont on theseoccasions, he had mounted his best horse, and gone out,splendidly dressed and attended, to divert himself bythe sight of the new arrivals, and to coquet, whereverpossible, with any pretty faces that might happen tobe among them. While thus employed he saw approaching in an open litter, amid a respectable retinue,two persons: one a woman, evidently beautiful, thoughveiled; the other an aged negress. The contrastIx.] THE POET ' OMAR. 287piqued his curiosity. Who are you, and whence doyou come? ' said he, addressing the black. The answerwas a Scotch one in substance, if not in form: ' Godhas set you a weary task if you have to enquire ofevery one in this crowd who they are, and whence theycome. ' ' I beg your pardon, aunt,' replied the polite' Omar, but pray do me the kindness of telling me;perhaps I may have a good reason for making thequestion.' ' Well,' said the negress, ' if you will have it,we are just now come from Başrah, but by our originand birthplace we are of Mecca; so now wereturning to our birthplace and origin.' ' Omar smiled .The negress looked at him, and noticed that two of hisfront teeth were discoloured (this had been done bya blow received during boyhood, some said in a battle,some in a love adventure), and rejoined, ' We knowyou at any rate. ' ' And who may I be? ' 'Omar,' sheanswered, ' the grandson of Aboo- Rabee'ah.' ' How doyou come to know me? ' asked he. By those discoloured teeth of yours, and by your whole appearanceand manner. ' 'Omar burst into poetry:-rate.'Captive my heart had been, a slave to sorrow,Since first she left me, bound on distant journey;Years blurred the past with change and seeming solace,But unforgot love once is love for ever.Soft blew the wind, the garden rose and jasmineBreathed all of her; ' She is not far,' they whispered.'Who may you be? ' I said: she frowned and answered,'What wouldst thou have, of strangers thus enquiring?This road we came from Başrah, but our dwellingOnce stood beside the sacred walls of Mecca.Truth have we told; but say, thyself who art thou?Answer the question is not void of purpose.:Sure we have known thee, and thy name; conjectureIs ours at least; and certitude may follow.Stained are thy teeth: thy stature and appearanceGive thee for one long sundered, long remembered. 'are288 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR.One thou and I; how could I brook thy absence?Is there who brooks that self from self be parted?Blind to all else, my eyes behold thee only;Cold to all else, to thee my heart is burning.The courtship, thus resumed, was now carried onin good earnest. ' Omar married Zeynab; she borehim two children, a son, the stately and austere Ju'an,and a daughter, Amat-el-Wahid, of whom ' Omar seemsto have been very fond: she finds an affectionatemention in some of his poems.Whatever the beginning and progress of this intriguemay have been, its end at least was honourable success; but the ' universal lover ' met sometimes withthe rebuff which his conduct more frequently deserved.Thus, we learn that a young and lately married womanof the noble Dey'lee clan happening to be present ona pilgrim-visit to Mecca, ' Omar saw her during prayerswithin the Haram, ' or inclosure of the Ka'abeh, andwas struck by her beauty: he approached and spoketo her, but received no answer. On a second eveninghe dogged her steps till he found an opportunity foragain addressing her; when she turned sharp on himwith ' Away, fellow! Are you not on sacred ground?and is not this the time of prayer and worship? 'Unabashed, ' Omar continued to pursue her with hisattentions; till she had reason to fear some openscandal. So on the third evening she said to herbrother (one version gives it her husband, Aboo- 1-Aswad), ' I cannot easily find my way in these streets:would you come with me? ' They set out together.'Omar, who had perceived the lady at a distance,was already approaching, when the sight of the brotherand his sword warned him off, just in time to hearrepeated behind him a well-known couplet of the poetJereer:-Ix. ]THE POET ' OMAR. 289Wolves attack the unguarded flock of the sheep they have no fear;But aloof they stand, and howl, if a watchdog grim be near.The seventy or eighty years for his biographerswith true Eastern contempt of accuracy vary as to thenumber of decades they assign him-of ' Omar's lifeoffer few of what are called leading events. Our herowas a gentleman, or rather a nobleman, at large, witha good income, the result of his father's mercantileenergy, and the produce of his own estates. His customary residence was on the coast in the province ofTehamah, south of Mecca, to which latter place hepunctually made his yearly pilgrimage, with whatdevotional zeal may be sufficiently inferred from theadventures already related . Nor did he make anysecret ofthe matter.When this chanced we were on pilgrim journey;Heaven best knows the pilgrims and their object!are the lines with which he concludes a lyric of intrigueand dissipation. Not unnaturally did his friend Ebn-' Akeek subjoin, ' The facts of your pilgrimage are asufficient indication of its object, and no need to lookfurther. '' Omar is twice mentioned as taking part in thenumerous military expeditions of the time: one, againstthe restless inhabitants of Hasa, then fermenting intothe rebellion which ultimately separated them from thebody of the Empire; the other, when he was alreadyover seventy, if dates be exact, against the Byzantinecapital itself during the reign of Suleyman, the seventhCaliph of the Omeyyah family. In this latter expedition the poet, according to Ebn-Khallikan, found asoldier's, and, in Mohammedan estimation, a martyr'sdeath; perishing with countless others by the Greekfire that consumed the beleaguering Arab fleet. OnU290 THE POET ' OMAR. [IX.the other hand, the Isphahanee chronicler Aboo-l- Farajbrings him back to die some years later in his bed, atthe advanced age of eighty. The former account isprobably the more correct one; but in no case has thecharge of military incapacity been laid against ' Omar;and personal cowardice, a fault rare among Arabs,whatever their tribe or clan, would have been indeeda prodigy in one descended from Koreysh.Active, however, and energetic as he was in thepursuit of pleasure, 'Omar was incapable of the seriousattention and steady work required for public andpolitical duty. Leaving these cares to others of hiskindred, his own most serious business in life seemsto have been the administration of his large estates,some of which lay many hundred miles away fromMecca; and an occasional visit of courtesy to hiskinsman, the ruling prince of the time being atDamascus. But he never took serious part with anyof the countless factions that eddied over the seethingsurface of Mohammedan torrent, and already prenotedits ultimate and irreparable divergence into the twogreat streams, Sonnee and Shee'ah. Love and versewere all in all to him; and, like the founder of' Strawberry Hill, ' he made pleasure the constant business, business the occasional diversion, of his life.At a later period of history Mohammedanism becomesalmost synonymous with despotism in public life, anddulness in private. Rulers separated from their peopleby the multiple fences of a slavish court, and a wearisome, semi-idolatrous ceremonial; peoples stagnatingin stupid ignorance and unmeaning fanaticism; womensundered from men by eternal veils, lattices, andeunuchs; apathy, monotony, varied only by franticsensuality and joyless debauch-such is the picturethat Western imagination is apt to form of the IslamiticIx. ]THE POET ' OMAR.291East; and though undoubtedly overcharged, it is apicture not, alas! wholly unfaithful to truth and tofact. But they are the facts of another age, andof other lands than those of ' Omar the Mogheeree.Persian satrapism and Turkish heaviness had notyet overshadowed and crushed Arab nationality andmanners; and the innate tendency to freedom, almostequality, of intercourse between rulers and ruled,between men and women, with the semi-republicaninfluences of commerce and literary genius, and theintensely social spirit that has made the generic nameof man' identical in Arabic with companionship,' hadyet their way, and held their own against the mysticand unamiable fanaticism breathed from Persia andTurkistan, and the despotic austerity of the family of' Alee, that evil genius of the Mohammedan world.In fact the anecdotes thus far selected from or inconnection with ' Omar's biography show us the Arablife of the day in its true form, and hint, not obscurely,what it might ultimately have become had Damascusremained its capital, and the children of Omeyyah itsleaders. Two more adventures, taken almost atrandom from the mass of narrative that the poet'sbest chronicler, Aboo-l- Faraj, has left us, may servefurther to illustrate and complete the picture.It is a hot autumn afternoon, the third before theyearly commemorative sacrifice of Mecca; north, south,and east the dusty roads and red slopes leading tothe town are closely studded with bands of pilgrims,from Damascus, from Nejd, from Yemen, from thebanks of the Euphrates; riders on horses, on asses,on mules, on camels, on dromedaries; all travel-stainedand sunburnt; some weary and silent; others, thegreater number, singing, laughing, and shouting forjoy to find themselves at the end of their long andU 2292 [IX.THE POET ' OMAR.tedious journey. Men and women, black and white,wealthy and poor, young and old, splendidly dressedor in rags, crowded together as they moved on, slowlynearing the low mud walls and taper minarets yetconcealed from view by the rising grounds amid whichthe religious and patriotic centre of the Mohammedanworld lies buried; or pitched their black travellingtents against the approach of evening among the sandyvalleys that branch off from the main roads on everyside. Mingled with the wayfarers, gazing or greeting,are knots of Meccan townsmen, brought out thus farto meet the new arrivals by general curiosity or specialexpectation; their light gay robes contrasting strangelywith the coarse and soiled equipments of the pilgrims.Handsomest of the handsome, gayest of the gay,our friend ' Omar the Mogheeree is easily distinguishedamong the multitude, or rather attracts to himself thenotice of all. He is mounted on a cream-colouredOman dromedary, its smooth coat tastefully stainedwith saffron and henna; its saddle and housings embroidered with silk and gold; the sword sheath thathangs by the rider's side is golden also. ' Omar'sfavourite negro Jennad follows him on foot, leadinghis master's choicest horse, a bay with a white off hindleg and a white mark on its forehead: this is ' Star,'who has often carried his master on visits of gallantryto the mountain- girls of ' Aseer and Nejd, and has beenrewarded with a gold collar round his neck, besideswhat immortality verse can give.Alongside of ' Omar, on a white mule, and gorgeousin embroidered robes of Heera manufacture, rides EbnSoreyj, the Mario of Hejaz singers: his dusky andirregular features, half-hidden by a veil, betray hismulatto origin; he is known everywhere as the firstmusician, the sprightliest boon-companion, and theIX. ]THE POET ' OMAR, 293ugliest face of his day. A large train of attendants,' Omar's men, dressed in the light yellow garmentsstill popular in Yemen, surround their master. Thewhole party had strolled out of Mecca in the directionof Mina, gazing and gazed at, till they came to where anobleman of Ḥejaz, a descendant of ' Abd-Menaf, wealthyand proud like all his kindred, had pitched for himselfand his suite a whole cluster of tents-their temporaryabode during the solemnities, which they had comelike the rest to share. Stopping to look at them, ' Omarcaught among the curtains of the encampment aglimpse of a lovely girl: it was the chieftain's onlydaughter, who had at that moment stepped out unveiled to take the air; several maids waited on her,to form as it were a screen between her and thepassers-by. ' Omar urged his dromedary a step forward,and came full in view of the young lady. She, too,looked up; her attendants exclaimed, That is ' Omarthe grandson of Aboo- Rabee'ah; ' her eyes met his;but at the same instant the servants, prudent a moment too late, hurried her back into the tent andclosed the hangings. ' Omar remained staring like onemazed; then, after a short silence, broke out intothe following verses:-6In the valley of Moḥassib I beheld her where she stood:Caution bade me turn aside, but love forbade and fixed me there.Was it sunlight? or the windows of a gleaming mosque at eveLighted up for festal worship? or was all my fancy's dream?Ah those earrings! ah that necklace! Nowfel's daughter sure themaid,Or of Hashim's princely lineage, and the Servant of the Sun!But a moment flashed the splendour, as the o'er-hasty handmaids drewRound her with a jealous hand the jealous curtains of the tent.Speech nor greeting passed between us; but she saw me, and 1 sawFace the loveliest of all faces; hands the fairest of all hands.Daughter of a better earth, and nurtured by a better sky;Would I ne'er had seen thy beauty! Hope is fled, but love remains.294 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR.However, the favourable occasion had gone by, andeven ' Omar's tried ingenuity could not forecast a secondmeeting. Desirous to distract his thoughts, he addressed himself to Ebn- Soreyj, and said, ' I have beenthinking how disagreeable it would be for us to returnthis evening to Mecca through such a crowd and dust.What do you say to our going on a little further tillwe find some quiet spot where we can lie all alone,and overlook at a distance the comers and goers, thepilgrims and the townspeople? We could stop thereand pass the night undisturbed, and get back into town.at our leisure in the morning. ' Nothing better,'answered Ebn- Soreyj; but do you know of any suchconvenient place in particular? ' ' Yes,' said ' Omar,' the hillock called ' Aal- Shajrah, just above the roadthat joins Mina and Senef: we can sit up at the top,while the pilgrims pass on their way below; and thencewe shall see them all distinctly, without their beingable to see us.' Ebn- Soreyj joyfully agreed to theplan; and ' Omar, calling some of his attendants,ordered them, ' Go back to my house in town, and getready a good supper, and bring it with plenty of wineto the hill ' Aal- Shajrah; we mean to ride round a littleway, and shall find you arrived there before us.'The hill in question is about six miles out of Meccaon the north-east; it stands between the branch roadto Medinah and the direct road to Damascus; thesummit is pointed, and overlooks the whole countryto some distance. So thither ' Omar and Ebn- Soreyjwent, and clambered up to the top, where they sat,eating and drinking, till the wine got somewhat thebetter of them. Then Ebn-Soreyj took up a cymbal,sounded it, and began to sing one tune after another,unremarked by the pilgrims who passed on their waybelow, till the evening darkened in. Then he raisedIx.] THE POET 'OMAR. 295his voice to its utmost pitch, and sang the very versesthat 'Omar had composed a few hours before; till allwho were going by, horse or foot, in the deep shadow ofthe sunken road stopped to listen; and some one calledout through the darkness, ' O, you who are singing upthere, have you no fear of God, that you thus hinderthe pilgrims from the accomplishment of their duty?'Then he stopped singing, and the crowd beneath movedon; till after a little while he forgot, and raised hisvoice higher than ever, for he was now fairly drunk';and so he continued, sometimes bewitching the pilgrimsinto a halt, and sometimes pausing to let them go ontownwards; while ' Omar sat by enjoying the sporttill it was now midnight. Then there came by alongthe road from Damascus one mounted on a blood horseof the highest breed; he too stopped to listen like oneunder a spell then suddenly he turned out of thepath, and rode right up the hill till he came close underthe crest; when, folding one leg over the saddle,he called out, ' O singer, whoever you are, can you, soAllah bless you, do me the favour to go over that lasttune of yours again? ' Ebn- Soreyj answered, ' Yes,and twenty others, may Allah bless you into thebargain which tune is it you wish for?' The horseman named it; and when Ebn- Soreyj had sung it,called for a second and a third; but on his askingfor a fourth, With all my heart, ' rejoined Ebn-Soreyj,' but on condition that you alight from your horse, andcome up hither and sit and drink with us.' ThatI cannot do,' answered the other from the darkness;' but I beseech you to excuse me, and to sing me butone more tune, and regard not my being on horseback.'Ebn- Soreyj complied: when he had finished, the ridercalled out, ' In Allah's name are you not Ebn-Soreyj? ''Yes I am he.' ' Life and happiness to you, Ebn-<•296 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR.Soreyj! And is not the other, who is sitting withyou, ' Omar the grandson of Aboo- Rabee'ah? ' ' Yes.'' Life and happiness to you also, ' Omar, son of AbooRabee'ah! ' ' To you also,' called out ' Omar; butnow that we have told you our names, pray what isyours? and who are you? ' "That is a question whichI may not answer,' replied the horseman. On thisEbn- Soreyj grew angry and exclaimed, By Allah, ifyou were Yezeed himself, the son of ' Abd-el-Melik (thereigning Caliph) , you could not be more insolent.' 'Youare right; I am Yezeed, the son of ' Abd- el- Melik,' wasthe answer. On this ' Omar jumped up and ran downthe hill to greet him; Ebn- Soreyj followed . ' I wouldwillingly have stayed the night with you here, ' saidthe heir-apparent of the Mohammedan throne, but tis festival-time as you know; and my attendants haveall gone on before me to the town; so that my absencethe whole night alone would certainly be remarked;and scandalous conjectures might be made; but here,'turning to Ebn- Soreyj, ' take this cloak and ring—they will do for a remembrance; ' and with this,throwing the cloak from his shoulders, and drawingthe ring from his finger, he set off at full gallop. EbnSoreyj, the singer, left in the dark with the presents,turned round without a moment's delay and made themover to ' Omar, saying, ' They will become you betterthan me.' ' Omar, not to be outdone, put a purseof three hundred gold pieces into the hands ofthe musician; and next day, when the mosque wasat its fullest with townsmen and strangers from allquarters of the empire, appeared at public prayerswearing the imperial cloak and ring, at once recognised by all present; nor was ' Omar behindhand intaking to himself the full honour implied by suchdecorations.IX. ] THE POET ' OMAR. 297It was a merry life; and Caliph, poet, and musicianseem one and all to have been bent on enjoying it tothe utmost. In this story art and talent level thebarriers of rank; in the next they go further, andalmost do away with those which in the East have beenof all times yet more insuperable, the barriers of sex.6(One spring morning ' Omar, lately arrived from hisestates in the south, had pitched his travelling gear inthe valley of Mina near Mecca; and had seated himselfto enjoy the fresh air at the tent door, while his attendants stood around. A fine- looking middle-aged woman,handsomely dressed, approached the group, and wishedthem good morning. ' Omar returned the salute. ' Arenot you ' Omar grandson of Aboo-Rabee'ah? ' said thewoman. He answered, The same; what do you wantwith me? ' 'Omar's servants had discreetly withdrawnbehind the tent. Long and happy life to you,' saidthe woman; have you any wish for an interview withthe loveliest face, and the sweetest disposition, and theperfectest breeding, and the noblest birth of all livingcreatures?' 'Omar answered, What could I wish formore? ' ' But under one condition. ' ' Say it.' 'Youmust allow me,' continued the woman, ' to blindfoldyou with my own hands, and thus to lead you myself,till I have brought you into the very place which Iintend; there I will undo the bandage; but beforeyou leave I will tie up your eyes again, and so leadyou back to your tent.' ' Omar, whose curiosity wasonly the more roused by such a proposition, consented.When,' said he, in his own version of the adventure,she had brought me to my destination, and taken thebandage off my eyes, I found myself in presence of awoman whose like for beauty and bearing I had neverShe was seated on a kind of throne. I salutedher; she motioned to me to seat myself on the ground66seen.298 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR,opposite. "Are you ' Omar, the grandson of AbooRabee'ah? " said she. "My name is ' Omar," Ianswered. " You," she continued, " are the man whotakes away the character of noble ladies. "How so,in Heaven's name? " said I. She answered, “ Are notyou the author of these verses? "-66"By my brother's manhood," said she, " and my father's honoured age,I will wake the whole encampment if thou leav'st not straight thetent."And I turned, in fear departing, for the maiden's oath was strong:But she smiled, and oath and menace in that smile dissolved away.Followed kisses, followed raptures: -known to her and me the rest;Think your will, and ask no questions: closed the tent, and dark thenight.Then she exclaimed " Up and off with you!" At theword the woman who had brought me there re-entered,blindfolded my eyes, led me out, and conducted meback to my own quarters, where she left me alone. Iundid the bandage, and then sat down to pass the restof the day in sorrow and heaviness of mind -God onlyknows how heavy. Night came at last. Next morningI took my place at the tent door, when lo! I beheldthe same woman coming to me and saying, " Do youwish to pay a second visit? " " At your bidding,” Ianswered. Hereupon she did exactly as she had donethe day before, and took me with her to the rendezvous.I entered, and when permitted to look, sawthe samelady on the throne. "So," said she, " it is you, theslanderer of damsels." "How so, in Heaven's name?"said I. She answered, " By your verses. "Swelled her lovely throat and bosom, as I said " Recline awhileOn the sand-hill: " half she leant her, half her fears forbad the couch;And she said, " My plighted promise; -I submit to thy behest;Though I tremble, and I know not-all so new; what wouldst thou,dear? "Ix. ]THE POET ' OMAR.299Passed the night; cool broke the dawning. " Thou hast ruined me,'she said;" Rise and ' scape; I would not bid thee: -if thou wilt, returnagain."After which, "Off with you!" she exclaimed. I roseand was led out as before: then she recalled me, andsaid, "Were it not that we are on the eve of departure, and I fear lest I should hardly be able tocontrive another meeting (besides the real desire I haveto hear you talk, and that I wish to make the mostof our interview), I would have sent you away thistime too. Come now, take your ease, talk, and letme hear some more of your naughty poetry." I didas she bid me, and found that I was indeed addressinga woman the first of her sex in grace and learning.After a long conversation she rose and left theapartment. Meanwhile the middle-aged woman, herattendant, delayed a minute or two, so that I foundmyself all alone. On this I began looking about me,and saw close by an open vase, containing some kindof sweet-smelling ointment; into this vase I dippedmy fingers, and then hid my hand under my cloak.Immediately afterwards the woman came in, bound upmy eyes, and led me out of the room. But when Ifelt the fresh air, and knew that I was just at theentrance of the tent, I quietly slipped the hand, whichI had smeared with the ointment, out from under mycloak, and laid it on the outside canvas; then drew itin again. Once back at my own place, I called someof my slaves, and said, " Whoever of you will find outfor me a tent, on the canvas of which near its entranceis a grease-stain, scented, and looking like the mark ofa palm and fingers, I will give him his liberty and fivehundred gold pieces into the bargain." I had not longto wait when one of them ran in with, " Sir, come this300 THE POET [IX. ' OMAR.

way." I went with him: the tent he brought me tobore in fact the mark of five fingers freshly impressed.It was the tent of Fatimah, the daughter of ' Abd-elMelik, son of Merwan; and close by were theattendants and slaves, already busy in getting allthings ready for their departure.' ' Omar returnedhome; but hardly had Fatimah set out than he startedtoo, keeping the same road, though at a little distance.Arrived at a halting- place she looked out, and seeingnot far off another pavilion with travelling tents roundit, and a goodly suite, she enquired to whom theybelonged the answer was, ' To ' Omar, the grandsonof Aboo-Rabee'ah.' She now became seriously alarmedon his account; and calling the woman whom she hadbefore employed as a go-between, said to her, ‘ Tellhim that I beseech him, in the name of God and of ourcommon relationship, not to disgrace himself and me.What has he got in mind? and what can he want?Let him take himself away before I be shamed, andhis own blood be shed.' The woman conveyed him themessage in Fatimah's very words. But ' Omar answered,'Come what may, I will not turn back unless she sendme for a keepsake and token her under garment, thevery one she has on her at the moment, next herperson.' Fatimah consented, and the gossamer shirtwas sent; but on receiving it 'Omar's indiscreet passiononly increased, and he continued following in her tracktill she was within a few miles of Damascus, when,after a last interview, he gave up the hopeless pursuit,and returned unmolested to his own land, wherehe dedicated several poems to the adventure and to thepraises of Fatimah.The opening scene of that in which he describes hisdaring nocturnal visit is among the most spirited asthe most graphic in his collection:-Ix. ]THE POET 'OMAR. 301' Whence, friend, so pale? ' thou ask'st me; ' tis remembrance:Tents furled, and laden beasts, and crowds departing.Midmost her place, closed in with crimson curtains,From wind and sun, from lover's eyes secluded.By hill and dale t..ey passed, the North-star leading,Band after band in long procession winding.Night fell; they pitched their rest; disguised I ventured;Well tried the sword, sole helpmate of my venture.Dark rose the tent; within the watch-light flickeredO'er beauty's self on silken couch reclining.All round the guards in iron-vested circle,Prostrate they lay, of watch and post forgetful;Death-like they seemed to strew some field of battle,Not dead, but toil outworn, and drunk with slumber.Roused at my step, she started; woke the damsel;Woke to her call a sister maiden hastening;"'Tis he,' she cried, ' himself; ' tis he, ' tis ' Omar!What brought him here, through midmost foes and darkness?Ah me! too mad the love! too rash the lover!How ' scape the death? how bide the shame, the danger? 'Fear not; my fame, my life for thine,' I answered,' From thousand foes secure this arm to shield thee.'And so on, through sixty more couplets, containingmuch of love, and not a little of vanity.Under the later Abbaside Caliphs, the fate of a poet,whatever his rank or talent, who should have daredto make free with the name of the reigning sovereign'sdaughter in amatory verse, would have been doubtfulat best`; and under Persian or Turkish rulers it wouldnot have been doubtful at all. But the BenooOmeyyah, though often despotic and even sanguinaryat the bidding of ambition or policy, were yet genuineArabs; and among Arabs, not the Benoo-' Aḍra only,Heine's favourites, who when they love they die,' butthroughout the tribes of Nejd, and the northern peninsula, adventures like those of ' Omar the Mogheereeand Fatimah the Caliph's daughter were neither uncommon nor even disreputable. True, when pushed·302 THE POET ' OMAR.too far, or when the principal parties concernedhappened to belong to hostile tribes, or when someparticular hot-tempered cousin or jealous rival cameon the stage, the issue might be serious, and, in rareinstances, fatal; but under no circ*mstances diddisgrace attach itself to the loved or the lover so longas their affection was proof against inconstancy andunstained by vice. The so-called chivalrous feeling,that lays the laurels won by sword or pen at the feet,not of a chief or a party, but of female beauty andexcellence that consecrates its efforts to the honourof woman, and ennobles daring and danger by hername and behoof, had always existed in germ amongthe Arab tribes, even during the epoch of the firstbarbarism, and may be yet found among the inhabitants of Nejd, where the first ranks of battle are evenin our day, as in old time, headed by a maiden, thestandard-bearer and arbitress of the fight. But it wasin the genuine days of Arab leadership, from the estab-.lishment of the Damascene throne till its removal toBagdad, that this form of Arab life-poetry spreadwidest and produced its most brilliant examples.To return, however, to ' Omar. Though unvisited byany direct chastisem*nt for his rashness, he underwentfor some time the indirect penalty of exclusion fromthe Court, where indeed his presence, so long as thedaughter of ' Abd-el-Melik remained there, could hardlyhave been permitted; but at last her marriage withone of her numerous cousins, and shortly afterwardsthe death of her father, did away with this exclusionand his son and successor the Caliph Waleed, on a visitto Mecca during the first year of his reign, restored thepoet to all his former favour and easy intimacy. Theprudence of family decorum seems to have abstainedfrom any notice of Fatimah's share in the adventure.X.THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN.[ PUBLISHED IN ' MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE, ' 1872.]6A FEW months' experience of Arabia Proper suffices toteach the traveller of our day that the terms Arab'and Bedouin,' though not unfrequently used as ifconvertible, are by no means such in reality. It mayfurther teach him, if he knew it not before, that'Bedouin' and robber are also not necessarily synonymous; that the latter designation is no less ill-soundingto the ordinary Arab ear, than it would be to theEuropean; and that the class which it represents isamenable to whatever penalties Arab law and societycan inflict, much as it would be in more civilized landsof juries and police-force . Nor is this, so far as Arabiaitself is concerned, a recently introduced order of things,due to comparatively modern influences, social or political; on the contrary, a retrospective view of thenational annals, even when carried back to the firstday-dawn of præ- Islamitic history, presents no otheraspect; and full five centuries before the appearance ofthe Meccan lawgiver, we find the thief, the robber, andthe brigand already paled off from and at war withestablished order and right; already marked with theoutlaw's brand, and subject to all its sternest consequences. And yet, in spite of these facts, it cannot304 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.be denied that, in these same earliest times, the greatpeninsula bore, as it still, and to a certain extent notundeservedly, bears, an evil name for the number andthe audacity of its robbers. The cause is inherent, andnot far to seek.A population much too scanty in proportion to thegeographical extent of the land it occupies, as also,though from different reasons, one notably overcrowded,must always render the efficacious protection of individual life and property a difficult task, even for thestrongest and most energetic administration: and thedifficulty will, under a weak or negligent rule, amountto absolute impossibility. Thus, for example's sake,the open spaces of the lonely Campagna, the wildglens of Albania or Koordistan, the parched sierras ofcentral Spain, and the defiles of southern Greece, havelong been, and, bating external influences, may longremain, under the feebleness of decrepit or malformedGovernments, Papal or Turkish, Spanish or Hellene,the dread of the wayfaring merchant and the defenceless tourist. In lands like these, the town gates areoften the ultimate limits of security. Indeed it is not,as we all know, many centuries since, that scantinessof inhabitants, combined with a defective, because anincipient, organization, rendered large tracts of France,of Germany, and of England itself, dangerous travellingfor the unarmed and unescorted.But nowhere, perhaps, in the old world at least, doesthere exist an equal extent of land in which all thesinister conditions that favour brigandage are so perplexingly combined and aggravated, as in ArabiaProper. There, for distances measured, not by milesbut by degrees, vast expanses of stony, irreclaimabledesert, of pathless sands and labyrinthine rocks, placeutterly disproportionate intervals of enforced solitudex. ] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 305between the watered valleys and green slopes wherealone anything like settled life and social union canmake good its footing. A week of suns may notseldom rise and set on the slow-moving caravanwithout bringing into view a single roof: indeed, theknown life-sparing clemency of the Arab robber ischiefly due, not to any favourable speciality of character, but to this very circ*mstance of solitude; in otherwords, to the brigand's certainty that long before hisplundered victims can reach help, or even give tidings ,he himself and his booty will be far beyond pursuit.' Desert means license,' says the Arab proverb; thewild lands breed wild men; and thus it is that centuries of comparative law and order, the organizingvigour of Mahomet and his first successors, the sceptreof the Caliphs, and the military discipline of the Turks,have each in their turn failed to render the sand-wavesof the ' Nefood' and the gullies of ' Toweyk' whollysafe ventures for the traveller; while even the rigour,amounting almost to tyranny, of the more recentWahhabee rulers, who avowedly tolerate no spoilersbesides themselves, cannot render permanently securethe intercourse and traffic of one Arab province-oasis ,I might better say—with another.But during the latter years of the præ-Islamiticperiod, when the entire centre of the peninsula, and nosmall portion of its circumference—that is, whateverwas not immediately subject to the rule ofthe Yemenite kings, and of their or the Persian viceroysresembled best of all a seething cauldron, where theoverboiling energies of countless clans and divisions ofclans dashed and clashed in never-resting eddies; whenno fixed organization or political institution beyondthat of the tribe, at most, had even a chance of permanence in the giddy whirl, -open robbers were, asX306 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET-SHURRANmight have naturally been expected, both numerousand daring; nor can we wonder if, when every mandid more or less what was right in his own eyes, thelist of the colour-blind to the moral tints of mine'and ' thine ' should have been a long one, and haveincluded many names of great though not good renown.Indeed, it might almost have been anticipated that theentire nation would have been numbered in the illfamed category, till the universality of fact absorbedthe distinction of name; and none would have beencalled robbers, because all were so.Fortunately the clan principle interfered; and bytracing certain, though inadequate, limits of socialright and wrong, rendered trangression alike possibleand exceptional. He who, led astray by private andpersonal greed, plundered, not on his clan's account,but on his own; who, without discrimination of peacetime or war, of alliance or hostility, attacked thefriends no less than the foes of his tribesmen, was, fromthe earliest times, accounted criminal; while he who,in concert with his kin, assailed and spoiled a commonand acknowledged enemy, was held to have performedan honourable duty. After this fashion the Arabslearned to draw the line-in no age or country a verybroad one-between war and brigandage; and by vehement reprobation of the latter, stood self-excused fortheir excessive proneness to the former.From such a state of things, where geographicalconfiguration and political confusion conspired to encourage what nascent organization and primal moralityagreed to condemn, arose the præ-Islamitic brigandclass. This, although recruited in the main, after thefashion of other lands, by idleness, want, and the halfidiocy that has much, if physiology tell true, to do withhabitual vice, yet comprised also men who under morex.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 3076propitious circ*mstances might have led a different andan honourable career. These were they who, having,in consequence of some special deed of blood, suddenmishap, or occasionally sheer innate fierceness of temperament, become nearly or quite detached from theirown particular clan and its alliances, led, henceforthat large, a life of sturt and strife,' of indiscriminateplunder and rapine; disavowed by all, hostile to all,yet holding their own; and that, strange though it mayseem, not by physical force merely, but also by intellectual pre-eminence. They stand before us in thenational records, apart from the great chiefs and leadersof their age, apart from the recognized heroes, the' Antarahs and Barakats of epic war, wild, half- naked,savage, inured to hardship, danger, and blood; yetlooked upon by their countrymen with a respectamounting almost to awe; and crowned with a haloof fame visible even through the mist of centuries, andunder the altered lights of Islam; men to be admired,though not imitated; to be honoured while condemned;a moral paradox, explained partly by the character ofthe times they lived in, partly by their own personalqualities.When a nation is either wholly barbarous or whollycivilized, the records of its ' criminal classes ' are of littleinterest, and of less utility. In the former case theyform, indeed, the bulk of the local chronicle; but thetale they tell of utter and bestial savagery, the mererepetition of brute force, cunning, and cruelty, is alikepurportless, tedious, and disgusting. On the otherhand, among nations well advanced in civilization, theban laid on exceptional rebels against the reign of lawis so withering, and the severance between them andthe better life of the land so entire, that nothing remains to a Jack Sheppard or a Bill Sykes but stupid,X 2308 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.hateful, unmeaning vice, unfit either to point the moralof the novelist or to adorn the tale of the historian.But between the two extremes of barbarism andof culture, the records of most nations exhibit a middleor transition period, when the bonds of society, thoughformed, are still elastic; while public morality isalready sufficiently advanced to disallow much thatpublic order is as yet too feeble to repress. In sucha period the highway robber is apt to be regarded witha sort of half-toleration, as a relic of the ' good oldtimes; ' and even becomes in the estimation of manya sort of conservative protest against the supposeddegeneracies and real artificialities of progress; a semihero, to be, metaphorically at least, if not in fact,hung in a silken halter, and cut down to the tune ofa panegyric. On these frontier lines between orderand anarchy, in this twilight between license and law,flourish Robin Hoods, Helmbrechts, Kalewi-Poegs, andtheir like; equivocal celebrities, brigands by land andcorsairs at sea; feared, respected, and hated by theirinjured contemporaries; more honoured by later andsecurer generations, and ultimately placed on pedestalsof fame side by side with their betters in the nationalValhalla. And what the era of King John was toEngland, the Interregnum' to Germany, the days ofSueno and his peers to Scandinavia, that were toArabia the two centuries that preceded the appearanceof Mahomet, but chiefly the former. Heroes had ceasedto be robbers, but robbers had not wholly ceased to beheroes.A more special reason for the peculiar and prominentrank held in præ- Islamitic Arab story by these wildrovers of the desert, is to be sought in the intensevigour and activity of the prevailing national spirit,of which these very men were an ill-regulated andx.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 309exaggerated, yet by no means an unfaithful representation. To the physical advantages of strength,fleetness, quickness of eye, and dexterity of hand-allobjects of deliberate and systematic culture in PaganArabia, no less than in Pagan Greece-they addedmany of the moral qualities then held in the highestesteem by their countrymen-patient endurance, forethought, courage, daring, and even generosity; whilesome of them in addition attained lasting fame forexcellence in poetry, then, as now, the proudest boastof the Arab. Thus it was that although rapine, bloodshed, and, not rarely, treachery, might dim, they couldnot wholly eclipse the splendour of their betterqualities and worthier deeds.Such was the classical præ-Islamitic brigand, asportrayed to us in the pages of the Hamasah, of Aboo1-Faraj, Meydanee, and others; not indeed the fullimage, but the skeleton and ground-plan of his race;a type in which the Arab character, not of those agesonly but of all succeeding generations, is correctlythough roughly given; untameable, self-reliant, defiant,full of hard good sense and deep passion, a vivid thougha narrow imagination, and a perfect command of themost expressive of all spoken languages; while at thesame time these very men, by their isolation, theirinaptitude for organized combination, their contemptfor all excellence or development save that of theindividual, their aversion to any restraint howeverwholesome, and above all their restless inconstancyof temper, give the measure of Arab national weakness,and too clearly illustrate that incoherent individualismwhich ruined the Empires of Damascus, Bagdad, andCordova, and blighted even in its flower the fairestpromise of the Arab mind.Their muster-roll is a long one; but at its head310 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. [x.stand eminent three names of renown, illustrated byrecords of exceptional completeness. These are Ta'abbet- Shurran, Shanfara' , and Soleyk, men each of whomdeserves special mention, because each represents inhimself a peculiar subdivision of the great brigandclass."' Ta'abbet- Shurran,' or, ' He has taken an evil thingunder his arm,' is the composite appellation by whichArab story recognizes its robber-hero of predilection.His real name was Thabit, the son of Jabir; the clanof Fahm, to which he belonged, formed part of thegreat Keys-' Eglan family, the progeny of Modar; andaccordingly of ' Most'areb, that is adscitious Arab,'or, in mythical phrase, of Ismaelitic, not of " Aarab,'' pure Arab, ' or of Southern and Kahtanee origin.The Fahm Arabs, nomade once, but tamed down bythe process of the suns into semi-agriculturists, still,as in the century, the fifth of our era, when Ta'abbetShurran lent his sinister lustre to their name, frequentthe wild and secluded, but well-watered gorges thatlie immediately behind the mountains of Ta'if andAseer, south-east of Mecca, somewhat apart from themain lines of Arab land communication; and whilethey have secured a practical independence by nominalacquiescence in the political or religious phases of theirmore powerful neighbours, scarcely bear themselvesa trace of the many influences that have again andagain remodelled the not distant capital of the Peninsula . A few earth villages with low yellowish walls,a somewhat larger number of black tent-groups; hereand there a scraggy enclosure of palms, melons, andvetches, or a thinly verdant patch of pasture; a fairallowance of goats and camels, of rock and sand between; lean dusky men in long shirts and tatteredcloaks, striped or black; near the houses some muffledx.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. 311?women in dark-blue cloth, and glass arm-rings; somevery brown and naked children, seemingly belongingto no one in particular, -such is the land and tribeof Fahm, rich in blood and genealogies, miserably poorin all besides, and a fit nursing-stock for robbers, evennow.How the Fahmite Thabit, son of Jabir, came bythe denominative sentence which has almost supersededhis original name in his country's literature, is variouslyrelated . According to one account, he had gone outwhile yet a mere boy on some lonely errand, probablyto look after some stray camel, and had advanced farinto the desert, when suddenly he saw what seemeda large goat perched upon a rock before him. At hisapproach the thing darted away; the lad followed, andbeing fleet and sure of foot, soon overtook and capturedit. But to bring it home was no easy matter, for thebrute, not content with kicking and struggling, tookto becoming heavier and heavier every minute, tillThabit, whose strength had only just sufficed to carryit up to the limits of the encampment, was forced tolet it drop. But hardly had it touched the groundthan, in full view of all the horrified bystanders, itassumed its proper form, that of a Ghowl, or demon,and vanished. Ta'abbet-Shurran ' (' He has broughta mischief under his arm') said the clansmen one toanother; and this henceforth was Thabit's name. Inthis story is adumbrated what the Greeks, like theArabs, would have called the ' dæmon ' character ofthe man himself. Another and a more prosaic versionsubstitutes for the goat-ghowl, Thabit's own sword,which he was in the habit of thus carrying no lesspersistently than Louis Philippe his umbrella, andwhich certainly wrought mischief enough, as we shallsoon see.312 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.man; 'On details like these historical criticism would bea mere waste of learning and ingenuity; the generaltruthfulness of a portrait is more to our present purpose than the minute precision of a photograph. Allannalists agree in representing Ta'abbet- Shurran as anessentially ' wild man; ' clever, talented even, butirreclaimable; a born rebel to all social law andcustom; one of the fera natura whom the literatureof modern times is wont to paint in somewhat roundedcontours and prismatic colours, but whose real lineaments stand out harsh and vigorous in one of theson of Jabir's authentic poems, where his own ultimatehero-ideal is thus portrayed:-·-Nor exults he nor complains he; silent bears whate'er befalls him,Much desiring, much attempting; far the wanderings of his venture.In one desert noon beholds him; evening finds him in another;As the wild ass lone he crosses o'er the jagged and headlong ridges.Swifter than the wind unpausing, onward yet, nor rest nor slackness,While the howling gusts outspeeded in the distance moan and faulter,Light the slumber on his eyelids, yet too heavy all he deems it;Ever watchful for the moment when to draw the bitter faulchion;When to plunge it in the heart- blood of the many-mustered foemen,While the Fates bystanding idly grin to see their work accomplished .Loneliness his choice companion; and the guide- marks of his roaming.-Tell me, whither guide the mazes of the streaky- spangled heavens?As the dawn, so the day,' says an Arab proverb;and the circ*mstances under which Ta'abbet- Shurranquitted his family and tribe while yet a mere boy, givea tolerable insight into what his character even thenwas, and what an after career might be augured forhim. The ' frightful, desperate, wild, and furious ' ofShakespeare's young Richard is no less applicable tothe former stage of Ta'abbet's life, than daring, bold,and venturous ' to the latter. To Western ears thetale may sound a strange one; but to those who have(x.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 313passed a day among the tents of Wadee- l- Kora, ora night on the gravel-strewn plains of ' Aared, it haslittle startling, and nothing incredible.The mother of Ta'abbet- Shurran, left a widow bythe death of her first husband Jabir, while our heroand his four brave but less celebrated brothers were yetmere children, had married again, and this time herchoice had fallen on a man named ' Amir, of the tribeof Hodeyl; a clan famous alike for warriors and poets,the latter of whom have bequeathed to posterity anentire volume, or Divan, of verses, oftener studied thanunderstood, even by Arab commentators and critics.'Amir himself was a poet; and some by no means contemptible performances of his in this line have comedown to us. Second, or even third and fourth marriageshave never involved any discredit in Arab opinion,whether Pagan or Mahometan; nor would the merrywife of Bath have needed much argument to make goodher case, had her pilgrimage been to ' Okad, or Mecca,instead of Canterbury. The only inconveniences abuxom and well-to-do Arab widow needed, or for thematter of that, still needs carefully to avoid, werefamily jealousies and clannish dissensions: the relictof Jabir ran her matrimonial ship in its second voyageon both these rocks. Hodeyl, though a neighbouringwas not a kindred clan to Fahm; and Ta'abbet- Shurran,or, to give him his domestic name, Thabit, who wasthe eldest and fiercest among his brothers, soon learnedto look on his stepfather as an intruder, and on hisposition in the household as an abiding insult. When'Amir (so continues the narrative) saw the lad besidehim growing up with evident signs in his face of ahatred which he took no pains to conceal, he said oneday to his wife, ' By heaven, this youngster's mannercauses me real uneasiness: our marriage is the cause;314 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN [x,"6dis-"With all myhad we not better separate at once before worsehappens? Divorce is a less evil than bloodshed.' Butthe woman, who seems to have liked the company ofher new husband better than the children of her oldone, answered: First try if you cannot clear thefellow out of the way by some stratagem.' 'Amiraccordingly waited his opportunity, till when a convenient time came he said to the lad, Are youposed to accompany me on a raid?'heart,' was the ready answer. ' Come along, then,' said'Amir. So they set out both of them together; but'Amir purposely omitted to take any provisions withthem for the road. They journeyed on all that nightand the next day, without once halting, till the secondevening closed in, by which time ' Amir made certainthat the lad must be well-nigh famished for want offood. Thus thinking, he led the way in a directionwhere enemies were likely to be, till at last there appeared the gleam of a fire burning at some distance infront. 'Amir then stopped and said to his stepson,Halloa, boy we are short of food, and must get something to eat; go over to where you see that fire, andask the folk who are cooking by it to give us a shareof their meal.' Thabit answered, What, man! is thisa time for eating?' Time or not, I am hungry,''Amir rejoined, ' so off with you, and bring me somesupper.' Thabit made no further answer, but went.As he neared the fire he saw two of the most notoriousruffians in the whole land sitting by it; they were infact the very men into whose hands his stepfather haddesigned that he should fall. When the reflection ofthe fire fell on the lad, the ruffians saw him and sprangup to seize him; he turned and ran; they followed;but he was lighter of foot than they, and kept ahead,till looking over his shoulder he observed that one of6x. ] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. 315"his pursuers had outstripped the other; then suddenlyturning on the nearer of the two, he closed with him,and laid him dead at a blow. This done, without amoment's pause he rushed on the other, who stoodbewildered, and disposed of him in the same manner.He then walked leisurely to the fire which they hadlighted, and there found some unleavened bread bakingunder the cinders; this he took, and brought it,without tasting it, to his stepfather, saying, ' Eatmay it choke you! ' But he himself refused to toucha morsel. ' Amir said, ' Tell me all about it, and howyou came by it.' The lad answered, What is that toyou? eat, and ask no questions .' So ' Amir ate, butmore from compulsion than appetite, while his fear ofthe young devil increased every instant, till , unable tocontain his curiosity, he again begged the boy, adjuringhim by all the rights of companionship to tell him thewhole adventure. Thabit did so, and the result wasthat 'Amir now feared him worse than ever. Aftersome hours' rest they again went on, and soon reachedthe pasture grounds of the hostile tribe, whence theysucceeded in driving off some camels, and then turnedhomewards with their booty, taking, however, a distantand circuitous way to avoid pursuit. For three successive nights on the road ' Amir said to his stepson,' Make choice which half of the night you would bestlike to keep watch over the camels; as for me, I willtake charge of them for the other half, while yousleep .' But Thabit as regularly answered, ' Makeyour choice yourself; it is all one to me. ' Free thusto arrange matters according to his own liking, ' Amirused to sleep during the first half of the night, whilehis stepson sat up and kept guard; at midnight ' Amirrose and relieved the lad, who then went and lay downfor a few hours; but when Thabit seemed once to be316 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.fast asleep, ' Amir took the opportunity to lie down andgo to sleep also; so that in fact he never kept watchat all. Thus passed three nights. On the fourth andlast-for they were now nearing their own land-' Amirthought that the lad must certainly be overcome withfatigue and drowsiness. So he lay down as usual andtook his fill of sleep, while Thabit remained keepinggood watch till midnight came, when it was 'Amir'sturn to rise and guard. This he did, till after a whilehe saw the lad to all appearance sound asleep, when hesaid within himself, ' Surely the fellow must now betired out, and hard of waking; now or never is thetime to get rid of him altogether.' Not feeling, however, quite sure whether his stepson's slumbers were inreality as deep as they seemed, he thought it best totry an experiment first; so, taking up a pebble fromthe ground beside him, he flung it to some distance,when lo hardly had the stone touched the sand, thanthe lad started up bolt upright, with What noise wasthat?' ' Amir, feigning surprise, answered, ' On mylife I do not know; but it seemed to me to come fromthe direction where the camels are. I heard it, butcould not make it out clearly.' Hereon Thabit wentand prowled about, searching on all sides in the darkness, till, having discovered nothing, he returned andlay down. A second time the stepfather waited, longenough as he thought; then took a little pebble,smaller than the first, and jerked it away. It fell along way off; but no sooner had it struck the plain,than the boy was on his feet again, exclaiming, ' Whatwas that?' Really I cannot say,' was the answer;this is the second time I have heard it; perhaps oneof the camels has got loose.' Instantly Thabit beganprowling hither and thither in the dark night, but ofcourse could find nothing on which to fix his suspicion;6x. ] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 317so he returned to his place and laid him down oncemore. A third time ' Amir waited till a full hour hadpassed, and then took up the very smallest pebble hecould find, and flung it away with all his force as faras possible. But the result was all one; up leaped thelad, fresh as at first, only that this time he asked noquestions, but, setting off without a word, searchedthoroughly on all sides around; then returned, andcoming close up to his stepfather, said, ' Fellow, I donot like these doings of yours; so I give you now fairwarning, the next time I hear anything more of thiskind, by G―d you are a dead man .' With this hewent a little apart and settled himself again to sleep;while ' Amir, as he himself afterwards told the story,passed the remaining hours of darkness wide awake,and in mortal fear, lest by some accident any one ofthe camels should really stir, and the lad jump up andkill him. Next day they reached the tents of Fahm;but Thabit, who guessed rightly enough that a plothad been laid against him, and that his mother hadbeen privy to it, would not remain any longer in thefamily, but took to the desert. ' Amir also shortly afterfound his position in the tribe, who had got an inklingof the matter, an unpleasant one; so he divided hisgoods with his wife, and divorcing himself from her,returned to the pastures of Hodeyl.However, Thabit, or Ta'abbet- Shurran, as, in compliance with his Arab chroniclers, I shall henceforth callhim, became subsequently reconciled with his mother;and often when weary, or hard-pressed by pursuers,availed himself of the temporary repose and shelter ofher tent. With his own tribe too, the men of Fahm, healways remained on friendly terms, though he took nopart henceforth in their public affairs; nor was he regarded by them as entitled to their protection, much318 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN [x.less assistance . But for all others whatever, he wassimply an outlaw and a robber; while the clan ofHodeyl, which he had early learned to hate on his stepfather's account, was, his whole life through, the specialobject of his depredations.There is a region which, while it belongs to none ofthe three great provinces of Western and CentralArabia-to Hejaz, that is, Nejd, or Yemen-yet forms akind of junction-tract between them, and is in consequence traversed by most of the great Arab routes thatlead from all directions to the old centre of commercialand social activity, the territory of Mecca. From theearliest times down to our own, this border-land hasbeen a favourite resort of highwaymen; partly onaccount of the frequent opportunities of plunder afforded by passing travellers and caravans, partly fromits own topographical peculiarities, which seem to makeit out as a fitting repair for brigands and outlaws. Itis an intricate labyrinth of valleys, narrow and windingwhere they first descend from the rugged ranges ofJebel Aseer on the west, but widening out as theyapproach the low level of the great desert or ' Dahna','and assuming the form of long shallow gullies wherethey rise again towards the table-land of Nejd. Westward the hills are frequently wooded with ' Ithel,' theArabian tamarisk, with ' Rind,' or wild laurel, with' Sidr,' a pretty dwarf acacia, besides the spreadingMarkh,' and other large semi-tropical trees; whileunder the shade of these coverts numerous wild animals make their lair; wolves, foxes, jackals, hyænas,and especially the small but ferocious Arabian panther,black-spotted on a light yellow ground, the terror ofthe herded gazelles, and sometimes of the hunter also.In other places the rocks are precipitous, bare andinaccessible to all but the wild goats that browze the"x.]THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. 319occasional tufts of thin grass or dwarf shrubs springingfrom their clefts. The valleys, where narrow, formwater-courses in the rainy season; and even in the heatsof mid-summer not unfrequently shelter deep pools,protected from sun and wind by some over-hangingrock; little patches too of cultivation occur here andthere, marking the permanent establishment of a fewfamilies, or a moderate stretch of green justifies the presence of some herdsmen's tents. But nowhere do theconditions of the land allow of anything like real populousness; and the abruptness of the local barriers tendsto divide the scanty inhabitants into small, almost isolated clusters, while by the same fact it detains them ina state of semi-barbarism, scarcely, if at all, affected bycenturies of comparative civilisation around.Further on however, where these valleys enter the' Dahna' ,' the prospect is dreary indeed; rock and sand,the latter light and ever shifting, the former abruptand rugged, or spreading into miles of continuous stonesheet; the whole appearing much as the bottom of theocean might possibly do were it upheaved and leftexposed to the sun; an imagination not far removed, itmay be, in this case, from the geological reality ofthings. But, jotted as at random through the waste,where least expected amid the utter seeming drought,and discoverable only by long practice and that intimacy with the desert which few but outlaws are likelyto acquire, lie small pale green spots, marked out bythe wild palm, the feathery ' Ithel,' and the tangled' Semr ' thorn. Here water is to be found when dug forat the depth of a few feet under earth; here also iswood enough for the modest requirements of Arabcookery; here the traveller may occasionally halt atmid-day or night-fall; and here the robber, flying orpursuing, may take a few hours' stolen repose.320 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET-SHURRAN.This is the land now known as El-Kora, Soleyyel,Bisha', and Aftaj; a land long unchanged, and likelylong to remain so, both in itself and in its inhabitants.On its outskirts west and north spread the pasturesof Hodeyl, a tribe once numerous and powerful, andeven now not only independent of, but actively hostileto, the powers that be; to the south are the small butmany villages of Bajeelah, a Yemenite or ' 'Arab ' tribe,who, with others of their kindred, extend down to thefrontiers of rich and populous Nejran; to the eaststretched, in Ta'abbet-Shurran's time, the vast encampments of Temeen and ' Aamir, the chief of all the central'Most'areb,' or ' adscitious ' clans; but these last arenow crystallized into Wahhabee provinces.On all of these, now one, now the other, Ta'abbetShurran made his predatory attacks, disregardful alikeof national alliance or enmity; sometimes alone, moreoften in company with other outlaws, to whom he actedas a temporary leader. Many of these raids have beenrecorded at great length by Arab chroniclers, who havebesides preserved to us the verses in which the robberhero, not more modest in self- praise than the generalityof poets, celebrated his own prowess. A few of these ·anecdotes, rendered as literally as may be, consistentlywith transferring, or at least attempting to transfer, thevividness of the original Arab picture to the dissimilarcanvas of the European mind-no easy task-will bestillustrate the man, and those amongst whom he lived.Once of a time he had led a band of fellow-brigandson an expedition directed against the herds and havingsof the Benoo Hodeyl, not far from Ta'if. On their waythe party passed beneath a precipice of great height;its face showed far up the entrance of a cavern, abovewhich Ta'abbet- Shurran's practised eyes could detect aswarm of bees hovering. Now, wild honey- for art-x.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 321made hives and tame bees were yet unknown—was theonly substitute possessed by the Arabs of those daysfor sugar, and ranked accordingly as a choice, almostindeed a necessary, dainty. Ta'abbet and his crew atonce postponed their original design on sheep andcamels in favour of this rarer booty; and by long andcircuitous paths clambered up the mountain till theystood on its brow, right above the caverned cliff. Next,Ta'abbet tied a camel-rope round his waist, while hiscomrades made fast the other end to the stump of atree, and taking with him a couple of empty skins,allowed himself to be lowered against the mountainface, till he dangled opposite to the mouth of the cave,into which he then contrived to swing himself; muchlike Shakespeare's samphire-gatherer, or a Norwegianin quest of sea-fowl. As he had conjectured, a largestore of excellent honey had collected within thecavern, and he proceeded at his leisure to fill the skinshe had brought with the desired prize, unsuspicious ofany danger from without. But while he thus busiedhimself, some men of Hodeyl, who, hidden in the brushwood on the upper slope, had watched all these doings,suddenly rushed out on the associates of the Fahmbrigand, and drove them off from their post. TheHodeylees, now masters of the position, began twitching the upper end of the rope that girdled Ta'abbet'swaist, and thus apprised him of an unfriendly presence.Without hesitation he cut the cord with his dagger, andthen advancing to the mouth of the cave looked up.'Caught,' exclaimed his enemies.،Caught, indeed! ' sneeringly replied Ta'abbet; thatwe have yet to see. Do you mean to take ransom andlet me go unharmed?'' No conditions with such as you,' they answeredfrom above.Y322 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET- SHURRAN." 'Aha! is that your game? ' rejoined the robber. Youthink that you have already caught me, and killed me,and eaten my honey too, which I have been at suchpains to get. No, by G-d! that shall never be.'Thus saying, he brought the skins to the mouth ofthe hole, and poured out all the honey, so that it wenttrickling down the face of the precipice in their sight;next he took the empty skins, honey-smeared as theywere, and tied them tight against his breast and body;and then, while the men of Hodeyl stood looking on instupid amazement, let himself slip feet foremost down.the crag, with such dexterity that in a few minutes hewas safe at the bottom, some hundreds of yards below;and long before his intended captors, descending by theordinary path, had circled the mountain and reachedthe other side, was far away beyond all chance ofpursuit.So brilliant an escape deserved to be commemoratedby its hero in a spirited poem, from which I will quotea few lines:-This my answer to the foemen, when alone I stood defenceless,Closed the paths behind, before me, in the hour of doubt and danger.' Is it thus the choice ye give me ransomed life, and scornful mercyy?These, or death? -not two the offers; one alone befits the freeman.Yet a third is mine, ye know not; reason scarce admits the venture;Daring prompts it; and the peril bids me test it to the utmost.'Iron-hard the rocks, and ' neath them Death securely waits his victim;-Harder than the rocks my breast; and Death askance beholds mysafety.The image of Death enraged at his escape, like thatof the Fates, idly grinning, their occupation gone, overthe enemies he had slaughtered without biding theirpermission, was, it would seem, in Ta'abbet-Shurran's wildfancy, more than a mere poetical figure of speech . Forhim-so the Arab narrative, half credulous, half sceptic,x.]THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN 3236records —the desert was peopled with weird phantomshapes, all horrible, and befitting the guilty imaginingsor companionship of a man of blood. Foremost amongthese was the Ghowl,' a monster half flesh, half spirit;tangible, yet ever changing its form; endowed withspeech and reason, but for evil only; hating man, andever seeking his harm. It may not be amiss here toremark, that præ- Islamitic Arab spiritualism, in themetaphysical sense of the word, seems, like that of theJews, to have been nearly if not quite exhausted by thesole conception of a Supreme Ruler; all else, whateveris known among other races as soul, ghost, spectre, angel,demon, fairy, sprite, goblin, and so forth, was for themcorporeal, or at best quasi-corporeal, and subject, thoughwith certain appropriate modifications, to the principalconditions of animated matter, such as we experimentally reckon them. Nor was Mahomet himself, theKoran to witness, much ahead of his ancestors in thisrespect. It is not till a later date, when Persian, Greek,and Tatar ideas had infiltrated the national mind, thatanything like the Teutonic, Celtic, or even Norse spiritappears among the phantasmagoria of Arab literature.As for the Ghowl,' that most popular of præ- Islamiticsuperstitions, and the nearest approach to a genuineArab ' devil,' it was, to complete its corporeality, maleand female, and, though remarkably tenacious of life,mortal; but when it happened at last to be killed, itscarcase had the faculty -an annoying one for curiousinvestigators of disappearing altogether, or of presenting at most the appearance of a small pieceof burnt leather, or some equally uninstructive substance. Masa'oodee, the author whose discursive work,the Golden Meadows,' has procured him the overflattering title of the Arab Herodotus,' speculatesnot quite unreasonably on the matter, and inclines"Y 2324 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. [xto the opinion that the ' Ghowl ' of old times wasnothing else than some ferocious and ill-favouredwild beast, probably of the ape genus, rarely metwith, and exaggerated by excited imaginations intoa demon. Thus much is certain, that in proportion asArab records approach an era of increased populationand of freer intercourse between province and province,the Ghowl' becomes less frequent, and ultimately disappears altogether; while more spiritual conceptions,such as ' Jinn,' ' Hatif ' or Banshee, "'Ayid ' or ' hauntingghost, ' and the like, take its place. However, even atthe present day, the inhabitants of Beja' on the Nubianfrontier, and the negroes of Kordofan and Darfoor, havethe good fortune to retain their ' Ghowls Kotrobs'they call them of the genuine Arab kind, perhapstheir gorillas.But in Ta'abbet's epoch the ' Ghowl,' whether demon,ape, or fancy, was no rarity; and a night-long duel between the great robber and one of these unamiablebeings in the dreary valley of Roha-Batan, near KalaatBisha', a few days' journey to the south-east of Mecca,may at least claim what authenticity Ta'abbet- Shurran'sown verses can give it. The curiosity of the record,almost unique of its kind in its completeness, may serveto excuse the childishness of the subject:-O bear ye the tidings to all of my clan,The wondrous encounter in Roha's lone dell .The fiend-guarded land, where the Ghowl of the wasteIn horror and blackness contested my path.I said, ' We are kinsmates, our fortunes are oneThou and I; why assail me? in peace get thee gone.'It spoke not, but darted to rend me; I turned,Upraised in my hand the keen faulchion of Yemen;Then fearless I struck, and the spectre before meLay shapeless and prone on the earth at my feet .' Depart, ' so it groaned; but I answered, Await,x.]THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN.325Not threats can avail thee, nor guile set thee free.'Slow wore the long night as I grappled the foe,Till morning should show me what darkness concealed.Then gleamed to the dawn the green fire of its eye,The jaws of the panther, the snake's cloven tongue;Distorted the foot; -who the monster would knowMay seek where I sought it, and find where I found.This last-mentioned diabolical peculiarity, the distortedor cloven foot, reappears in every Arab or negro taleof the kind, from the earliest to the latest. By whatlaw of analogy or derivation this peculiar featurehas been selected to identify the embodied power ofevil in the popular myths of almost every, if not ofevery nation, Turanian, Arian, Celtic, or ' Semitic,' isa question to which Mr. Tylor alone can perhapssupply a satisfactory answer.So far, however, as daring and violence carried toan almost preternatural degree are concerned, Ta'abbetShurran himself seems to have deserved a place amongthe worst ghowls of his day. I pass over the long list ofplundering excursions that fill page after page of Aboo1-Faraj, his best chronicler, with lances, swords, andblood; nor need his adventures in the southern ' valleyof tigers,' where, out of sheer bravado, he passed thenight unarmed and alone, nor his cattle-drivings inNejd, nor his vengeance on the chiefs of Bajeelah,who had, treacherously enough, attempted to poisonhim, be here related in detail. 'What on earth doyou want with the doings of Ta'abbet- Shurran?' saidhis own tribesmen of Fahm, some five centuries later,to the inquisitive ' Omar- esh- Sheybanee, an annalistof some note, when he paid them a visit in their remoteencampments, on purpose to learn what memories theclan might still retain of their equivocal hero; ' do youtoo want to set up for a highwayman?' An answernot wholly without a moral. Nor need we wonder326 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.if, where such was the general feeling, Ta'abbet- Shurran, however distinguished for personal bravery andpoetical talent, was yet, in spite of these recommendations, ordinarily so attractive, no favourite with thosewhose goodwill should have been the best reward ofhis exploits, the fair ones of the land; nay, he hashimself handed down to us in verse the refusal withwhich a Nedjee girl of high birth met his proposalsof marriage; though he consoles himself with theungallant reflection that after all he was perhaps toogood for her.Before quitting him, however, I will relate, or rathertranslate at length, one more of his adventures, a veryspirited one in itself, and, besides, associated withanother name almost equal in the records of brigandage, and much higher on the list of præ-Islamiticpoets than that of Ta'abbet- Shurran himself, the nameof Shanfara' the Azdite.With some insignificant variations, due to theremoteness of the era and the uncertainty inherentin hearsay Arab tradition, the story is as follows: -One summer Ta'abbet- Shurran, Ebn- Barrak, also afirst-class brigand, and from the same tribe of Fahm,and Shanfara' the Azdite, set out all three togetheron a plundering expedition against the Yemenite orsouthern tribe of Bajeelah, and drove off some of theircattle. Intelligence of the raid soon spread throughthe injured clan, and a considerable band of Bajeelahwarriors set themselves on the track of the marauders,who, abandoning their booty, fled northwards, till theyreached the highlands of Sorat, somewhat east of theMeccan territory, where they hoped to find refuge,and thence to pass on beyond reach into the labyrinthine entrances of Nejd. But their pursuers, awareof their intentions, anticipated them by a short cut;x. ] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 327and Ta'abbet- Shurran with his companions were compelled to turn aside into the low grounds behind Ta'if,westwards. It was summer, and no water fit fordrinking was to be had for miles around, except inthe well-known pool, or rather reservoir, of Waht, adeep hollow, overarched by rocks, and sheltered fromthe scorching air and sunbeams all the year through.Here the men of Bajeelah hastened to arrive the first,and here they laid ambush, certain that the brigands,parched with thirst after their long wanderings on thedry stony hills, and unable of course to carry waterwith them in so precipitate a flight, must necessarilyattempt to refresh themselves at Waht; there wasno other place. The calculation proved correct; andafter nightfall Ta'abbet- Shurran, Ebn- Barrak, andShanfara', all unsuspecting of the snare, arrived at thewater. But while they stood a moment to take breathon the sheeted rock near the pool's edge, Ta'abbetturned short round, and said to his comrades, - *' Better dispense with drinking just now; we shallneed all our wind for another good run this night.''What makes you think that? ' they answered.·Because,' he replied, there are men here in ambush; I can hear the beating of their hearts vibratingthrough the rock under my feet. ''Nonsense,' rejoined the others, whose senses werenaturally less acute, or perhaps were dulled by fatigue;' it is only the palpitating of your own heart thatyou hear.''My heart! no, by G-d,' said Ta'abbet, as he graspedthe hands of both his fellows, and pressed them closeagainst his breast; ' feel for it; it never palpitated yet,nor is it subject to weaknesses of that kind.' Thenhe stooped down, and placing his ear against the ground,said, ' I hear it distinctly; there are several of them.'328 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET- SHURRAN.' Be that as it may,' exclaimed Ebn- Barrak, ' I formy part am almost dead with thirst, and drink I must;so here goes.' With this he advanced a few stepsalong the ledge into the cavern, and then going downon his hands and knees, took a full draught of thewater. Meanwhile, the Bajeelah ambuscade, hiddenunder the hollow rock further within, could, from wherethey were, distinctly see his form against the glimmerat the cave's mouth, for it was near moonrise; butas he was not the one they had specially set theirminds on taking prisoner, they gave no signs of theirpresence. So when Ebn- Barrak had drunk his fill,he got up and returned to his associates outside, saying,I have been there, and you may take my word forit, that there is never a man hidden in the cave.'CThere are, however, and many, only it is not youbut me they want to catch,' rejoined Ta'abbet- Shurran.6Next Shanfara' went in and drank, but he also wasnot the one, and the men of Bajeelah let him comeand go quietly; so he too returned uninterfered withto the others. Now,' said Ta'abbet- Shurran to Shanfara', is my turn to try the cavern; and I knowbeforehand that the moment I stoop to drink, thewater-ambuscade will spring out on me and make meprisoner. The instant this happens you must run off,as though you meant to escape altogether; but whenyou are near that rock,' pointing to one at no greatdistance, turn aside and hide up under cover of itsshadow, and there keep quiet, till you hear me cry,"Catch him! catch him! " then rush suddenly back andcut my bonds .' Next addressing Ebn-Barrak: ' Asfor you, you must make as though you were willingto surrender yourself to them, yet take good care theydo not actually get hold of you; keep clear of them,but do not go too far off.'x.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SIURRAN. 329After giving these directions, he entered the gloomof the cavern, and hardly had he stooped and put hislips to the water, when the men of Bajeelah rushedon him from their hiding-place; some grappled him,while others bound him fast with a cord; when theyhad him safe, they led him out a prisoner into theopen air.Shanfara', as had been already agreed on, startedoff like a deer, till he hid himself out of sight underthe rock; Ebn- Barrak, meantime, also made a feintof escaping, but stopped short at easy distance, wherehe could be clearly distinguished by the level moonlight down the valley. Then Ta'abbet- Shurran saidto his captors, I will make you a fair offer: will youspare my life and let me go free on ransom, on condition that Ebn- Barrak also shall give himself up asprisoner, and pay you a handsome ransom too?' Tothis they, nothing suspecting, gave a ready assent.Hereon Ta'abbet-Shurran raised his voice and shouted,' Halloa, you there, Ebn- Barrak! Shanfara' has gotoff already, and will this very night be comfortablyseated before the night-fires of such and such a tribe;let him go, he is a stranger to us, and may shift forhimself; but you and I are blood- relations, and havealways held together for better for worse.Will younow prove yourself a friend in need, and give yourselffreely up of your own accord to these men on myaccount, that so we may both be ransomed together?'Ebn-Barrak at once perceived his ulterior purport,and shouted back,-' Agreed to; but whoever wants to have me mustbe at the pains of catching me first; and I do not meanto let these fellows make me their prisoner till I havefirst taught them how easily I could have escaped themhad I chosen.'330 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.Thus saying, he ran off at full speed towards themountain, then doubled back, repeating this manœuvretwo or three times, as though out of sheer ostentation,while the men of Bajeelah amused themselves lookingon. At last they thought he must be tired, and setafter him in good earnest, while Ta'abbet- Shurran, aslike one who enjoyed the sport, called out after them,' Catch him! catch him!'At the signal, Shanfara' rushed suddenly out of hishiding-place, came up to Ta'abbet- Shurran, and cut hisbonds . The two without delay joined Ebn-Barrak; andthen the whole band, now reunited, turned for aninstant on the top of the hill, while Ta'abbet- Shurrancalled out to his bewildered captors, -' My friends of Bajeelah, you have no doubt admiredEbn-Barrak's speed of foot, but now, by this heaven, Iwill show you something to put all else out of mind.’He turned and fled with the swiftness of the wind;his comrades followed, and all three had soon escapedinto the depths of the desert, this time not to beretaken.ByBut Shanfara' , he who figures in this story, was nomere ordinary or professional robber like Ta'abbetShurran and Ebn- Barrak, with whom chance ratherthan mode of life associated him on the present occasion. Not plunder, but revenge, was the motorprinciple of Shanfara's life. By birth he was ofYemenite or Aarab' origin, and belonged to the tribeof Azd, being thus, according to Eastern genealogists,a direct descendant of Saba, the Sheba, it would seem,of Jewish records. While yet a child he was capturedby the hostile tribe of Shebabah, on the southernfrontiers of Nejd, where Manfoohah now stands amid itspalm-groves and gardens; subsequently he was sold bythose of Shebabah to the tribe of Benoo- Salaman,x. ] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 331Keysite Arabs, hostile from time immemorial to theraces of Yemen. The lot of a slave was a very easyone among the pastoral Arabs of that early age; andhardly, if at all, differed, so far as treatment was concerned, from that of ordinary servants; while, on theother hand, the general conditions of free life were sohard and rough that, except for the social inferiorityattached to the servile designation, slave and freemanwere much on a level, and the former might easily loseeven the consciousness of his own degraded state, unlesspurposely and exceptionally reminded of it by a tauntor a blow. This was yet more the case where, as itoften happened, a slave, taken young, and brought upwith the children of the family, would find little or nopractical difference day by day between himself andthose of his own age around him; that is, in an Easternhousehold, where, as a Hebrew writer has justlyremarked, ' the heir differeth in nothing from a bondsman, ' whatever be his dormant rights and his ultimateprospects. And thus it fell out with little Shanfara',who, purchased by a tribesman of Benoo- Salaman, grewup among his master's children, and for many yearsnever doubted in the least that he was really one ofthem, till one unlucky day, while playing indoors witha girl, his master's daughter, he requested her to dohim some piece of household service, addressing her atthe same time by the title of ' my little sister. ' Theanswer was a slap on the face, and a flat denial of anyrelationship whatever. Surprised and offended, thelad however kept his counsel, till his supposed father,who had been at the moment absent in the pastures,returned to the tent, when he at once demanded whatwas his own true origin and parentage. The man,wholly unaware of what had passed in the meanwhile,told him the facts. Shanfara' replied, For you, I have332 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. [x.been an inmate of your dwelling, and I will not harmyou; but for your tribe, the Benoo- Salaman, by GodI will never rest till I have killed a hundred men ofthem, in requital for the wrong they have done me indetaining me so long among them as a slave; me,free-born and noble as I am.' That very day he betookhimself alone to the desert on the outskirts of theFortribe, there to bide his time for the vengeance to whichhenceforth he devoted his whole mind and soul.subsistence, he had perforce recourse to plunder, ofwhich he went in quest the most often unaccompanied,more rarely attended by others, as, for instance, wehave just seen him associated with Ta'abbet- Shurranand Ebn- Barrak. But whether banded or single, henever lost sight of his sworn purpose upon the BenooSalaman. On the tracks that led to their pastures, inthe neighbourhood of their encampments, by their wellsat which they watered their cattle, he would lie fordays and weeks together in patient, venomous wait;till when at last some one of the doomed clansmencame in view, he would draw his bow, and, Gudrun-like,exclaiming At your eye, ' would send an unerringshaft into the right eye of his victim. Thus he continued to do, year after year, keeping careful record ofthe slain, till their total amounted to ninety-nine innumber, and only one remained to complete thelist. But here, so recounts the popular legend, fateinterposed.What follows is savage beyond the wont of præIslamitic story, nor can it be read without a mixedfeeling of horror and disgust. Yet it should not beomitted, because it presents us with a true picture ofthe darker side of the Arab character; of that strangeferocity which is indeed ordinarily concealed from viewin the later and more civilized history of the nation;x. ]THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. 333yet even there, from space to space breaks out throughthe outer surface of acquired refinement; like plutonicrock, cropping up through the superimposed tertiarylevel. Nor, indeed, taking the Arab nature as a whole,could it be otherwise; for the man who has no ' devil,'or, better said, no ' beast,' in his composition, is apt toprove on emergency but half a man; and the nationthat has no understratum of coarse brutality among itsmasses, will also there is experience both positive andnegative to show it seldom bring a hero to light.And with this apology, if apology it can be called, Iproceed to the closing scene in Shanfara's career.Three men, two by name Khazim and Aseed, with athird, a youth and nephew of the latter, all belongingto the Salaman tribe, had pledged themselves to destroythe enemy of their race, and had long dogged hisfootsteps in vain. But at last they received certainintelligence of his whereabouts, and laid their ambushfor him in the narrow rock-cleft gulley of Abeedah, notfar from Wadee Haneefah, in the very heart of Nejd.It was night, and Shanfara', who wisely thought prevention better than cure, was accustomed, whenever hesaw before him on his roamings the outline of anythingthat seemed a living creature through the darkness, tolet fly an arrow at it, and so make sure. On the presentoccasion, as he came along all alone down the valley,he did not fail to discern the darker outline that, thistime at least, indicated a real danger; so, stopping amoment, he said aloud, ' You are something, I think;but what you are I will soon find out,' and drew his .bow. The dart, surely aimed, rent the arm of Aseed'snephew from the elbow to the shoulder, but the youthneither uttered cry nor stirred. If you are anythingI have settled for you, and if you are nothing I haveput my own mind at ease, ' said Shanfara', and kept334 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET- SHURRAN.forward on his way. But when he was close to theplace where Khazim lay flat along upon the ground,right in the path waiting for him, Aseed, who hadposted himself at a little distance on one side under thedeep shade of the rock that edged the gulley, calledout, Khazim, draw.' ' Oho,' said Shanfara' , ' thatlooks as though you meant to strike next,' and instantly unsheathing his own sword, he aimed a blow atKhazim, and cut off two of his fingers. But Khazim,though wounded, threw his arms round Shanfara'swaist, and grappled him, till in the struggle both fell,Khazim undermost, yet still holding fast. Meanwhilethe other two came up. It was pitch dark. Aseedcaught hold of a foot and called out, Whose foot isthis?' 6 Mine,' at once replied Shanfara' , but Khazimyelled out, ' No, it is mine, ' on which Aseed let it go,and this time grasped Shanfara' himself, and kept himdown, while the three together managed to bind hishands. He said nothing more, and there the otherssat beside him in silence till the morning, when theybrought him prisoner to the tents of the tribe; that is,to death. Young and old, all gathered round to seehim who had been so long the evil genius of BenooSalaman, now helpless in their power. As they ledhim out to the open ground behind the encampment,one said mockingly, ' Now recite us a poem of yours,Shanfara'. ' Poems are for rejoicings,' answered Shanfara'. At the place of execution they tied him toa palm-tree, and one of them, exclaiming ' At youreye,' let fly an arrow at him and blinded him. Justmy way,' was all Shanfara' said . Next, they struckoff his right hand; he looked at it as it lay quiveringon the ground, and said, ' Why leave me? ' tis theworse for thee,' but neither groaned nor complained.When, however, his executioners, before giving him theCx.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 335third and death blow, asked him, ' Where do you wishus to bury you? ' in the belief that such a compliancewith his last request would serve to avert any revengeful visits from the other world-a common andyet existing Eastern superstition-he answered inverse -At your hands a tomb I take not; right or portion in my burialYours is none; but hear and welcome thou, hyæna of the desert:Thou my heir; my head they claim it; once my glory, now theirtrophy;But to thee the rest abandoned on the naked sands, thy portion .Then no better life awaits me, dark and hopeless the hereafter,Endless night to night succeeding; unatened my crimes for ever.Defiant of this world, defiant of the next, such wasShanfara' at all times, and not least so at the momentwhen that very hidden thing, the real self of man , isoften most revealed. But nowhere is his indomitableself-reliance more savagely expressed than in his famouspoem, famous so long as Arab literature shall exist,and known under the title of Lameeyat-ul-'Arab,' thecompletest utterance ever given of a mind defying itsage and all around it, and reverting to, or at leastidealizing, the absolute individualism of the savage;a poem the spirit of which, tamed down in accordanceto our later day, and enfeebled by the atmosphere inwhich the individual withers, and the world is moreand more,' still breathes in Locksley Hall,' and after amitigated fashion in the ' Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.'To attempt a translation of this remarkable lyric,remarkable alike in itself and in its author, would toomuch exceed the limits here allowed to poetical illustration; and isolated passages, if extracted, would notdo it justice. It is a monolith, complete in itself; andif ever rendered, though I doubt the possibility, intoEnglish verse, must stand alone. Yet so deeply rooted<336 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.is the wild feeling that gave it origin in every Arabbreast, even where law and system might most havebeen expected to have levelled its native roughness andsmoothed away every irregular line, that we find noother a person than the austere legislator and devoutCaliph, ' Omar Ebn-el-Khattab, expressly recommendingthe ' Lameeyat-ul-' Arab' to the careful study of theyouth of his time, as a lesson of genuine manliness fortheir riper years. It was the manliness of the oldPagan times, which perhaps the shrewd Caliph hadalready perceived to be endangered by the incipientasceticism of Persianized and Christianized Islam.It should not pass unremarked that the six versesalready quoted belong to the very few of præ-Islamiticdate-nor indeed are there over many later on- inwhich an allusion is made to a future personal existence; a topic about which the early Arabs, like theJews of the Pentateuch, seem to have troubled themselves but little; though without positively denyingsuch a hope -rather the reverse. It is curious toothat whatever other scanty notices of Pagan Arabnext-world conjecture have come down to us, do notgo beyond a dreamy shadowy continuation of this life ,much akin to the Odyssean Hades; Shanfara' alonehints at a retributive hereafter. But however isolatedin their significance, criticism leaves no doubt as tothe genuineness of the verses; and if the sentiment somoodily expressed in them be indeed peculiar toShanfara', it only proves that his range of thoughtwas in this respect wider and deeper than that of hiscontemporaries.The Azdite had vowed the death of a hundred fromamong Benoo- Salaman; he accomplished it -so concludes the legend -but not till after his own. Yearshad passed, and his dry and fleshless skull layx.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN 337whitening on the field of doom, when a man of thehated tribe passing by, noticed and kicked the relic,in ungenerous insult to the dead. A splinter of boneentered his foot; the wound festered incurably; andin a few days more the tale of the hundred and ofShanfara's vengeance was complete.6To these two, the ' Most'areb,' or ' adscitious ' Ta'abbetShurran, and the ' Arab, or pure blood, Shanfara', mustbe added one belonging to the numerous Muta'areb,' orhalf-caste Arab class, namely Soleyk, the son of Solakah. His name is more than once coupled with thoseof two others in the annals of præ- Islamitic brigandage;but his career, though not a whit more creditable, wasyet in many respects different from theirs.By his father's side Soleyk belonged to the greatclan, or rather confederation of clans, named BenooTameem, the occupants then, as now, of the centralprovinces ' Aared, Yemamah, Aftaj, Hareek, and theiradjoining pastures. His mother Solakah- after whom,either on account of resemblance in duskiness of complexion and African features, or, it may be, owing tothe mere assonance of the words, he is generally surnamed Soleyk Ebn- Solakah,' or the son of Solakah ( >was a negress. A remarkable knowledge of topography, and an unerring skill in the right choice ofroutes, however intricate, procured him further thetitle of Soleyk-el-Makanib, or of the tracks.' As apoet he stands high on the præ- Islamitic list, thoughon the whole inferior to Ta'abbet- Shurran, and yetmore to Shanfara'; as a robber hero, he ranks as theirequal, or even their superior. Nor is the estimation inwhich Arab annalists and littérateurs hold him impairedby his semi-African descent; for intermarriages between Arabs and negroes, especially in the midlandand southern districts of the Peninsula, have been atZ338 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.no period rare or abnormal; to such admixtures,indeed, the East owes not a few of her best celebrities: Noseyyeb the poet, Ebn-Soreyj the musician,and 'Ambarah the warrior, are well-known examples,each in his kind.Soleyk, the son of Solakah, comes nearer to theabsolute individual robber-type than either of hisfellows in the historical brigand-triumvirate. Ta'abbetShurran organized his predatory expeditions on a scaleso vast as to raise them almost to the dignity of wars;while Shanfara' had for the ultimate goal of his lawlesscareer revenge, plunder being with him a mere accessory, necessitated by the position of an outlaw.But Soleyk, in whom the savage instincts of Africaseem to have been heightened and intensified, ratherthan diluted, by the infusion of Arab blood, gives usin his story and adventures an unmitigated portraitof the præ-Islamitic wild man; ' and indicates evenmore distinctly than Shanfara' himself the peculiar andtransition stage of Arab civilization, which renderedbrigandage almost an acknowledged institution of thatepoch, as in Greece now.South-east of Mecca, on the high road to Ta'if andYemen, spreads a wide, open, sandy space, called theplain of ' Okkad; it is within an easy ride from thecapital itself. Here, from the earliest ante-historictimes down to the era of Mahomet and the establishment of Islam, a great meeting, representative of theentire Arab nationality, used to be held every year,beginning with the first and ending with the twentiethday of the month that preceded the then Pagan ceremonies of the annual Hejaz pilgrimage. This ' gathering' of ' Okkad, as it was called, bore a mixedresemblance to the Amphictyonic Council of old Greece,to the games of Elis, and to a modern Leipsic fair.x.]THE BRIGAND 339 , TA'ABBET- SHURRANLike Elis, ' Okkad was the theatre of public and international trials of strength and skill, of horse-races,foot-races, wrestling matches, and the like; but aboveall, of those famous poetical contests to which we owethe seven ' Mu'allikat,' the most finished productionsof the primal Arab muse. Meanwhile the innate commercial spirit of the race, a spirit that has survived theextinction of almost every other energy in Syria andArabia, took advantage of the games and their attendantcrowd to add the attractions of a yearly mercantileexhibition, in which the choicest produce of every partof the Peninsula, as also that of neighbouring and tradeconnected countries, was exposed to admiration or forsale. But over and above all this, the gathering, ' or' fair,' of ' Okkad, had a more important, because a political and Amphictyonic, or parliamentary, character;and while the multitude betted-as Arabs no less thanEnglishmen will-on the horse-race, or chaffered overthe wares, the chiefs of the entire Arab confederacy,or at least of what part of it was not subject tothe Himyaritic " sceptre, here met to discuss topics ofnational interest-war, alliances, treaties; to settle disputes; to regulate the conflicting claims of the socialtribes; to impose new laws or abolish old; and thelike. Aristocratic, in that it was composed of chiefsand leaders; democratic, in that all who met therewere equal among themselves, and moreover separatedby no distinction of caste or of inherent prerogative fromthose they governed; occasionally elective- monarchical,by the common choice of some one chieftain, preeminent in wisdom, valour, or influence, to whom allthe rest agreed for the time to defer,-it was aninstitution excellently adapted to the unstable, impatient, yet reflective Arab character; and, had it survived the Islamitic crisis, might, and probably would,Ꮓ 2340 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET-SHURRANhave ultimately acquired that consistency and executivepower which alone were wanting to render it a realArab Congress. A matter of regret, when we consider how much more likely to be fortunate in itsresults such an institution would have been than thetheo-monarchical rule substituted by Mahomet and hissuccessors for the confederation sketched out in theGathering of ' Okkad.(6One year, in the midst of the innumerable crowdthere collected from every Arab province-chiefs, merchants, athletes, poets, jockeys, buyers, sellers, loungers,and the rest-there suddenly appeared a lean, dusky,half- naked figure; on foot, dust-soiled, bare-headed,bare-footed, with a waist-cloth alone round its gauntloins, and a spear in its sinewy hand. It was Soleyk,who, cool and unabashed amid the general astonishmentof Arab respectability and fashion, wound in and outamong the various groups assembled on the racecourse,calling aloud to each and all, Who will tell me thehaunts of his tribe? and I will tell him the haunts ofmine,' -words in technical import of unlimited defiance,and which may thus be rendered: Any one herepresent is free to attack me, and I am free to attackhim in turn. ' All stared and wondered, but no oneseemed inclined to take up this extraordinary challenge,till a young chieftain, by name Keys, son of Maksooh,a Yemenite of the Murad clan, confronted the mulattowith ' I will tell you the haunts of my tribe, and doyou tell me those of yours.' A crowd gathered round,and the two challengers mutually pledged their wordof honour that neither would in any way disguise thetruth from the other. Keys then said, ' Set your facebetween the points of the horizon whence blow thesouth-east and the south winds; then go on your waytill you lose sight of the shadows of the trees,'-x. ]THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN.341meaning, far enough south to have the sun verticaloverhead, or nearly so,- and you will come on torrentbeds: cross them, and journey on four more, '—that is,four days, ' till you come in view of a sandy plain;take the mid track that threads it, and you will reachmy tribesmen, who are Murad and Kha'them, much atyour service.'Soleyk replied: ' Take your direction between therising of Soheyl ' (Canopus) , and the left hand ofGemini which reaches up towards the top of theheavens' (indicating north-east-by-east on the compass),and follow straight before you; this will lead youto the haunts of my tribe, and their name is BenooSa'ad, of Zeyd Menat. 'Herewith the challengers separated, and Soleyk,having obtained his object, disappeared as abruptlyas he had come. Keys remained at ' Okkad till themeeting was over, and then returned to his clan, towhom he recounted his strange adventure with theunknown mulatto. But when his father Maksoohhad heard the story, he exclaimed, -' A plague on you, Keys; are you aware whosechallenge it was that you accepted?'' How should I know?' answered Keys. ' It wasa half-naked black fellow on foot, who looked morelike a waif than anything else. What might he be,then?'' By heaven, it was no other than Soleyk Ebn- Solakah; and a good day's work you have done for usall, ' replied his father.Meanwhile Soleyk had betaken himself to hiscustomary haunts in Nejd; and there had got together.about him several young fellows of his acquaintance,belonging to the families of Benoo- Sa'ad, and Benoo-'Abd-Semeea, both branches of the restless Tameem342 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN [x.stock, the same who now form the kernel of theWahhabee coalition. Now Soleyk had for some timepast been in the habit of laying in a store of emptyostrich egg-shells; these it was his wont from time totime to fill with water, and after stopping themcarefully, to bury them in the sand, one here andanother there, in the loneliest tracks that led acrossthe desert to Yemen: and when afterwards he wenton his plundering raids in the full heat of summer,he was thus able, by shaping his course accordingto these hidden reservoirs, of which he alone had thesecret, to traverse tracts of country generally believedimpassable in that season of the year for want ofwater. On the present occasion he led his companionsby one of these lonely paths. They followed, relyingon his guidance; but when they were now far in thedesert, and their supply of drink failed them, with nomeans of renewing it in view, the band turned onSoleyk, saying, ' You have brought us out into thiswilderness to kill us with thirst.'6Soleyk laughed, and answered cheerily, Take heart,boys; there is water close at hand.'Unluckily, so it happened, that when they came alittle further on to the place where he knew that hehad formerly hidden a supply, he missed the preciselandmarks, and began in great distress to search backwards and forwards in every direction, like one distracted; while some of his associates said to the others:'Whither do you mean to let this negro lead you?By heaven he will be the death of us all .'Soleyk heard them, but took no apparent notice,and went on digging in silence, till at last he rediscovered the shells, and the whole party drank theirfill . Now, however, that the injustice of the suspicionthrown upon him was clearly shown, he went a littlex. ] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 343apart, and deliberated with himself whether he shouldnot fall on the mutineers sword in hand and kill them;yet he restrained himself, and returning, merely counselled those who were fearful and discontented togo back, which they did then and there. The lessernumber remained firm, and amongst them a young man,Sard by name, who however wept bitterly when hesaw his companions disappearing in the distance.Soleyk consoled him with the remark that none solucky as those despaired of.' So they went bravelyon, till the diminished band reached at last the bordersof their furthest goal, the territory of Kha'them. Herethey halted awhile on the frontier; but during thenight Sard's camel got loose; and its owner, after vainlytrying to re-capture it in the darkness, was at firstbreak of dawn descried by some of the villagers about,who, recognizing him at once by his appearance for aninterloper from Nejd, laid hands on him and madehim prisoner. The alarm-cry was raised, and beforethe sun was well above the horizon a troop of Kha'-themite horsem*n, with Keys the son of Maksooh attheir head, came out to meet Soleyk. A sharp fightensued, and the marauders were already beginningto yield to the superior numbers of the true men,'when Soleyk, singling out Keys, made straight at him,and dealt him a blow which laid him disabled on theground. This event, Homeric fashion, decided the day;and the Kha'themites fled, leaving Keys and someother prisoners in the hands of the victors. Soleyknow took as much booty as he could conveniently driveoff, exchanged Keys against Sard, let the other captivesgo free, and returned northwards with such good haste,that he overtook those who had abandoned him yeton their way home. Once within the limits of Nejd,Soleyk divided the booty among the few companions"344 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. [x.who had remained by him staunch to the last, refusingany share in it to the mutineers; and further celebratedthe whole affair from first to last in a poem, someverses of which have been preserved in the pages ofAboo-Faraj the Ispahanee.Like others of his kind, Soleyk underwent greatvicissitudes of fortune, in which his ingenuity, forwhich he was not less celebrated than for his courage,had full opportunity of displaying itself. Once, whenreduced to the severest straits, he found himself atnightfall alone, supperless and shelterless, on an openplain, where the moon was slowly rising full and brightover pathless sand and stone. Soleyk, unwilling toform too conspicuous a part in a landscape where, asthe only moving object, he could not fail to be at onceobserved by any chance comer, lay down as he was onthe ground, and wrapping himself in the coarse darkmantle that forms the entire upper clothing of thepoorer Arab, as the long shirt does the whole of hisunder raiment, was soon fast asleep. About midnighta man passed by, and, noticing the sleeper, stopped;then suddenly throwing himself upon him, pressed himdown with all his weight, saying at the same time,'Give yourself up; you are my prisoner.'Soleyk, whose hands were entangled in his cloak,raised his head, and looking his captor in the face,quietly remarked, —' The night is long, and the moon at the full; ' aproverbial expression equivalent to take your timeabout it.'The other, provoked at his coolness, began hittinghim with his fist, repeating all the while,—6Give yourself up, wretch! you are my prisoner.'At last Soleyk grew tired of this game, and havingmanaged unperceived to disengage one of his armsx.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN. 345from under his cloak, slipped it round the man whowas still above him, and drawing him down, pressedhim with so terrible a grip that the would-be aggressoryelled for pain.6'What! yelling, and uppermost! ' observed Soleyk;words which have passed among the Arabs for a proverb when one who seems to have the best of it reallyhas the worst.6Who are you? ' he added, after the other hadsufficiently felt his iron strength.' I am one,' replied the man, who was once rich andprosperous, but have now fallen into utter want, tillfor very shame I have abandoned my tribe, vowing thatI would never return among them till I should, somehow and somewhere, have regained my former wealth .'All right! ' answered Soleyk; ' do you come alongwith me.'When morning dawned they went on together, andchanced on a third man, in much the same conditionas themselves, and who readily associated with them.Soleyk now took the lead, and all together shaped theirway for the ' Jowf,' or ' hollow; ' not the Jowf ofNorthern Arabia, on the confines of Syria, but thelarge Oasis, low- lying as an oasis always does intropical deserts, and situated amid the sands of theDahna',' behind mid-Yemen. It is a region, so Arabtravellers inform us, of wonderful fertility, but littlevisited from without, owing to the encircling sands,and, so far as Europeans are concerned, wholly, Ibelieve, unexplored . After many weary days Soleykand his companions arrived at their land of promise,and, sheltered from view by a ledge of rock, peepeddown into a long green valley, full of sheep and camelsgrazing securely among unarmed herdsmen: an easyprey, it seemed. But the marauders, who had never346 THE BRIGAND [x. , TA'ABBET-SHURRANvisited the spot before, feared lest some encampment orvillage might be near, where alarm could be given intime to prevent their own escape with their meditatedbooty. After some deliberation Soleyk said, -' I will go down, alone, and have a talk with theshepherds, while you two remain ensconced here, andkeep a sharp look out. If then I learn that theowners themselves of the cattle are in the neighbourhood, I will turn quietly back, as if nothing were thematter, and rejoin you; should they however happento be a good way off, I will give you a signal, and doyou two then rush down and help me drive off theplunder.'Accordingly the associates remained crouching intheir place, while Soleyk, after rounding some waybehind the hill , began sauntering down into the valleyfrom another direction, with an easy, careless air, tillhe reached the herdsmen, negroes like himself. Sittingdown beside them, he engaged them in conversation,till, from question to answer, he found out who weretheir masters, and that they belonged to a villagesituated at a considerable distance from the grazingground. Satisfied on this point, Soleyk stretched himself lazily on the grass, and proposed a song to whileaway the time. The herdsmen, fond of music as beseemed their colour, approved the idea, and Soleyk,raising his voice so as to be heard by his friends intheir hiding- place, thus beganO! the valley, -lone and peaceful; not a soul amid the rocks,But the maids that milk the cattle, and the slaves that guard theflocks!Come and see them, nearer yet; ' tis a pleasant sight to view;Or we'll rove amid the pastures by the morning breeze and dew.There was no mistaking the hint; out rushed thebandits, off ran the shepherds, while Soleyk and hisx.] 347 •THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN.accomplices drove off cattle enough to enrich them allthree, and were far away from pursuit long before theowners could come to the rescue.On another occasion, however, Soleyk had nearlycome to grief. While prowling about the grazinggrounds of the ' Awara tribe, on the frontiers of Nejd,he was observed and surrounded in such a mannerthat to fight or to fly seemed alike impossible. Hereonhe made straight for the tents of the tribe itself, and,reaching them, entered the nearest at a venture;within he found no one but a young girl, Fakihahby name, whom he besought to protect him from thefury of her own clanspeople. Without hesitation shecast the skirt of her long garment-the trailing robeworn by Arab women up to the present day, andwhich the fiction of Mahometan tradition affirms tohave been introduced by Hagar, the mother of Ishmael,when cast out by Abraham-over him; caught downa sword from where it hung on a tent-pole, unsheathedit, and thus stood waiting the pursuers, who sooncrowded in. Enraged at finding themselves baulkedof their certain prey, they began by reviling the girl;and, when she took no heed of words, prepared to dragaway her suppliant by force. But Fakihah, nothingdaunted, tore off her veil and cast it on the ground,while bare-headed and sword in hand she loudly calledon her own brothers for help. At her cry they came,and, putting every other consideration aside, took theirsister's part so effectually, that Soleyk got away unharmed, and, in grateful acknowledgment, afterwardspresented Fakihah with the following verses:-Be thy fame far- spread as thy deservings,Trustiest friend, fair daughter of ' Awara!In their child her parents well may glory,In their sister's honour vaunt her brothers.348 THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET- SHURRAN. [x.Perfect as her mind each outward feature,Perfect beauty linked to perfect virtue.Not the free, the flaunting, wins affection,But the chaste, the bashful, leads me captive;She the fearless, when her pledge redeemingSword in hand, unveiled, she faced the danger.Outlaws, and in many respects savages as these menundoubtedly were, they yet contrast favourably withthe average robbers and brigands of medieval and latertimes; not least so in the care they took to maintainfresh the intellectual and poetical element in their ownnature, as though seeking by it to colour or gild actionselse unseemly, and to avoid the commonplace vulgarityof mere prosaic crime. Nor were they- the pressureof imminent danger or special motives of revenge, suchas animated Shanfara', for instance, apart-cruel orbloodthirsty; on the contrary, they seem to havederived from the old Mephistophelian doctrine, oftensung in Arab verse, that ' blood is quite a peculiar sortof juice,' the very anti-Mephistophelian conclusion, thattherefore it should not be needlessly shed. If to theRob Roy of Walter Scott-not the Rob Roy of history-were added the poetical faculty and imaginativerange of a Skald or a Minnesanger, the mountainborders of Scotland would, in fiction at least, have hadtheir Ta'abbet- Shurrans and Soleyks no less than thedebateable lands of Nejd and Yemen. Meanwhile, itis evident that men of this stamp could take theirrise only among a people of excessive, though as yetunorganised, energy; and that such sparks could onlybe thrown out from a mighty and glowing volcano,not far off some general eruption. Soleyk was earlier,but the era of Ta'abbet - Shurran preceded that ofMahomet by scarce a century.However, for all their better qualities, the ban ofx.] THE BRIGAND, TA'ABBET-SHURRAN 349the ' bloody and deceitful ' was on them. Shanfara'send we have already seen; and Ta'abbet- Shurran andSoleyk, both of them, closed their wild and restlesslives by a violent death: the former being killed whileon a raid against his old enemies of Hodeyl, within theconfines of Jebel Aseer, where he was buried in a cavethat tradition yet points out at the present day;the latter met his fate far away in the depths of Yemen.It was long before the particulars of the precise howand where of his death reached Nejd; and during thisinterval Soleyk's epitaph was composed by his negressmother, Solakah, from whom it would seem that herson inherited his poetical talent. It is a wail notunbefitting such a life and such an endFar he wandered; but when farthestFated death o'ertook the wanderer.O! my loved one! would thy motherBut could know how died her offspring.Was it sickness lone and dreary,None to aid thee, none to comfort?Was it guile of hidden foeman?Was it that, the unknown shadowThat outspeeds the bird of passage?—Man is ever death-attended,Ambushed death, and we the victims.Yet adorned with all that honours,Satiate of success he found thee.Answerest not?-how wide the sevranceThat forbids my call thy answer.Still, one hour, my heart; -it stills not.How cnsole me? Drear the silence,Drear the path whence no returning.Would for thine, my son, my hero,Were thy mother's death the ransom.BRISH14DE 72HUSEUMBY THE SAME AUTHOR.Sixth and Cheaper Edition.A PERSONAL NARRATIVEOFA YEAR'S JOURNEYTHROUGHCENTRAL AND EASTERN ARABIA.1862-63.WITH MAP, PLAN, AND PORTRAIT OF AUTHOR.Crown 8vo, 6s.' The work is a model of what its class should be; the stylerestrained, the narrative clear, telling us all we wish to know ofthe country and people visited, and enough of the author and hisfeelings to enable us to trust ourselves to his guidance in a tracthitherto untrodden, and dangerous in more senses than one.•He has not only written one of the best books on the Arabs, andone of the best books on Arabia, but he has done so in a mannerthat must command the respect no less than the admiration ofhis fellow-countrymen.'-Fortnightly Review.(Considering the extent of our previous ignorance, the amountof his achievements, and the importance of his contributions toour knowledge, we cannot say less of him than was said once ofa far greater discoverer-Mr. Palgrave has indeed given a newworld to Europe.'-Pall Mall Gazette.' As amusing as a tale of the Arabian Nights.'-Spectator.MACMILLAN & Co. , LONDON.BOOKS OF TRAVEL.THE ALBERT N’YANZA GREAT BASIN of theNILE, and EXPLORATION of the NILE SOURCES.By Sir S. W. BAKER, F.R.G.S. New and Cheaper Edition.Crown 8vo, with Maps and Illustrations, 6s.' Charmingly writt n, full of incident, and free from that wearisome reiteration of useless facts which is the drawback to almost all books of African travel.'-Spectator.THE NILE TRIBUTARIES of ABYSSINIA,and the SWORD HUNTERS of the HAMRAN ARABS.By Sir S. W. BAKER. New and Cheaper Edition.8vo, with Maps and Illustrations, 6s.Crown' The best book of sporting adventure it was ever our lot to read.'- Spectator.AT LAST: a Christmas in the West Indies. ByCHARLES KINGSLEY, Rector of Eversley, Canon of Chester.New and Cheaper Edition, with numerous Illustrations.Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d.' Better than a novel, even when it comes from such a masterly hand as Mr.Kingsley's, is this fresh and vigorous description of life , the life of nature and ofman.'-Spectator.THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO: the Land of theOrang- Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative ofTravel. By ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE. Third and CheaperEdition, with numerous Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.' A vivid picture of tropical life , which may be read with unflagging interest.We may safely say that we have seldom read a more agreeable book of its kind.’—Saturday Review.GREATER BRITAIN. A Record of Travel inEnglish speaking Countries during 1866-67. By SirCHARLES W. DILKE, M. P. Fifth and Cheaper Edition .Crown 8vo, 6s.‘ An entertaining and spirited record of travel in lands which have a fascinatinginterest for Englishmen.'-Spectator.MACMILLAN & CO. , LONDON.

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ESSAYSONEASTERN QUESTIONS.a 24DE72ESSAYSONEASTERN QUESTIONS.BYWILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE,AUTHOR OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARABIA.'RLondonMACMILLAN AND CO.1872.OXFORD:BY T. COMBE, M. A. , E. B. GARDNER, E. PICKARD HALL, AND J. H. STACY,PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.BRITIMUSELΤΟTHE RIGHT HONOURABLETHE EARL OF DERBYWHOSE GUIDANCE OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN POLICYBYHAS BEEN ALWAYS MARKEDA STATESMANLIKE INSIGHTINTOCHARACTER AND RACETHESE ESSAYSARE RESPECTFULLY AND GRATEFULLYDEDICATED BYTHE AUTHORa 3