Part 18

Into one of these gardens, a public one, and one of the most celebrated in the rhapsodies of travellers and by the inventive poets, we finally turned. When you are walking for pleasure in your native land, and indulging a rural feeling, would you voluntarily go into a damp swale, and sit on a moist sod under a willow? This garden is low, considerably lower than the city, which has gradually elevated itself on its own decay, and is cut by little canals or sluiceways fed by the Abana, which run with a good current. The ground is well covered with coarse grass, of the vivid green that one finds usually in low ground, and is liberally sprinkled with a growth of willows and poplars. In this garden of the Hesperides, in which there are few if any flowers, and no promise of fruit, there is a rough wooden shed, rickety and decaying, having, if I remember rightly, a balcony,—it must have a balcony,—and there pipes, poor lemonade, and poorer ice cream are served to customers. An Arab band of four persons, one of them of course blind of an eye, seated cross-legged on a sort of bedstead, was picking and thumping a monotonous, never-ending tune out of the usual instruments. You could not deny that the vivid greenery, and the gayly apparelled groups, sitting about under the trees and on the water's edge, made a lively scene. In another garden, farther on around the wall, the shanty of entertainment is a many-galleried shaky construction, or a series of platforms and terraces of wood, overhanging the swift Abana. In the daytime it is but a shabby sight; but at night, when a thousand colored globes light it without revealing its poverty, and the lights dance in the water, and hundreds of turbaned, gowned narghileh-smokers and coffee-drinkers lounge in the galleries, or gracefully take their ease by the sparkling current, and the faint thump of the darabouka is heard, and some gesticulating story-teller, mounted upon a bench, is reeling off to an attentive audience an interminable Arabian tale, you might fancy that the romance of the Orient is not all invented.

Of other and private gardens and enclosures we had glimpses, on our walk, through open gates, and occasionally over the walls; we could imagine what a fragrance and color would greet the senses when the apricots are in bloom, and the oranges and lemons in flower, and how beautiful the view might be if the ugly walls did not conceal it. We returned by the saddlers' bazaar, and by a famous plane-tree, which may be as old as the Moslem religion; its gnarled limbs are like the stems of ordinary trees, and its trunk is forty feet around.

The remark that Damascus is without monuments of its past needs qualification; it was made with reference to its existence before the Christian era, and in comparison with other capitals of antiquity. Remains may, indeed, be met in its exterior walls, and in a broken column here and there built into a modern house, of Roman workmanship, and its Great Mosque is an historical monument of great interest, if not of the highest antiquity. In its structure it represents three religions and three periods of art; like the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, it was for centuries a Christian cathedral; like the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, it is built upon a spot consecrated by the most ancient religious rites. Situated in the midst of the most densely peopled part of the city, and pressed on all sides by its most crowded bazaars, occupying a quadrangle nearly five hundred feet one way by over three hundred the other, the wanderer among the shops is constantly coming to one side or another of it, and getting glimpses through the spacious portals of the colonnaded court within. Hemmed in as it is, it is only by diving into many alleys and pushing one's way into the rear of dirty shops and climbing upon the roofs of houses, that one can get any idea of the exterior of the mosque. It is, indeed, only from an eminence that you can see its three beautiful minarets.

It does not appear that Chosroes, the Persian who encamped his army in the delicious gardens of Damascus, in the year 614, when he was on his way to the destruction of Jerusalem and the massacre of its Christian inhabitants, disturbed the church of John the Baptist in this city. But twenty years later it fell into the hands of the Saracens, who for a few years were content to share it with the Christian worshippers. It is said that when Khâled, the most redoubtable of the Friends of the Prophet, whose deeds entitled him to the sobriquet of The Sword of God, entered this old church, he asked to be conducted into the sacred vault (which is now beneath the kubbeh of the mosque), and that he was there shown the head of John the Baptist in a gold casket, which had in Greek this inscription: “This casket contains the head of John the Baptist, son of Zachariah.”

The building had been then for over three centuries a Christian church. And already, when Constantine dedicated it to Christian use, it had for over three hundred years witnessed the worship of pagan deities. The present edifice is much shorn of its original splendor and proportions, but sufficient remains to show that it was a worthy rival of the temples of Ba'albek, Palmyra, and Jerusalem. No part of the building is older than the Roman occupation, but the antiquarians are agreed to think that this was the site of the old Syrian temple, in which Ahaz saw the beautiful altar which he reproduced in the temple at Jerusalem.

Pieces of superb carving, recalling the temple of the Sun at Ba'albek, may still be found in some of the gateways, and the noble Corinthian columns of the interior are to be referred to Roman or Greek workmen. Christian art is represented in the building in some part of the walls and in the round-topped windows; and the Moslems have superimposed upon all minarets, a dome, and the gay decorations of colored marbles and flaring inscriptions.

The Moslems have either been too ignorant or too careless to efface all the evidences of Christian occupation. The doors of the eastern gate are embossed with brass, and among the emblems is the Christian sacramental cup. Over an arch, which can only be seen from the roof of the silversmiths' bazaar, is this inscription in Greek: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”

It required a special permit to admit us to the mosque, but when we were within the sacred precincts and shod with slippers, lest our infidel shoes should touch the pavement, we were followed by a crowd of attendants who for the moment overcame their repugnance to our faith in expectation of our backsheesh. The interior view is impressive by reason of the elegant minarets and the fine colonnaded open court. Upon one of the minarets Jesus will descend when he comes to judge the world. The spacious mosque, occupying one side of the court, and open on that side to its roof, is divided in its length by two rows of Corinthian columns, and has a certain cheerfulness and hospitality. The tesselated marble pavement of the interior is much worn, and is nearly all covered with carpets of Persia and of Smyrna. The only tomb in the mosque is that of St. John the Baptist, which is draped in a richly embroidered cloth.

We were anew impressed by the home-like, democratic character of the great mosques. This, opening by its four gates into the busiest bazaars, as we said, is much frequented at all hours. At the seasons of prayer you may see great numbers prostrating themselves in devotion, and at all other times this cool retreat is a refuge for the poor and the weary. The fountains of running water in the court attract people,—those who desire only to sit there and rest, as well as those who wash and pray. About the fountains and in the mosque were seated groups of women, eating their noonday bread, or resting in that dumb attitude under which Eastern women disguise their discontent or their intrigues. This is, at any rate, a haven of rest for all, and it is a goodly sight to see all classes, rich and poor, flocking in here, leaving their shoes at the door or carrying them in their hands.

The view from the minaret which we ascended is peculiar. On the horizon we saw the tops of hills and mountains, snowy Hermon among them. Far over the plain we could not look, for the city is beset by a thicket of slender trees, which were just then in fresh leafage. Withdrawing our gaze from the environs, we looked down upon the wide-spread oval-shaped city. Most conspicuous were the minarets, then a few domes, and then thousands of dome-shaped roofs. You see the top of a covered city, but not the city. In fact, it scarcely looks like a city; you see no streets, and few roofs proper, for we have to look twice to convince ourselves that the flat spaces covered with earth and often green with vegetation (gardens in the air) are actually roofs of houses. The streets are either roofed over or are so narrow that we cannot see them from this height. Damascus is a sort of rabbit-burrow.

Not far from the Great Mosque is the tomb of Saladin. We looked from the street through a grated window, to the bars of which the faithful have tied innumerable rags and strings (pious offerings, which it is supposed will bring them good luck) into a painted enclosure, and saw a large catafalque, or sarcophagus; covered with a green mantle. The tomb is near a mosque, and beside a busy cotton-bazaar; it is in the midst of traffic and travel, among activities and the full rush of life,—just where a man would like to be buried in order to be kept in remembrance.

In going about the streets we notice the prevalence of color in portals, in the interior courts of houses, and in the baths; there is a fondness for decorating with broad gay stripes of red, yellow, and white. Even the white pet sheep which are led about by children have their wool stained with dabs of brilliant color,—perhaps in honor of the Greek Easter.

The baths of Damascus are many and very good, not so severe and violent as those of New York, nor so thorough as those of Cairo, but, the best of them, clean and agreeable. We push aside a gay curtain from the street and descend by steps into a square apartment. It has a dome like a mosque. Under the dome is a large marble basin into which water is running; the floor is tesselated with colored marbles. Each side is a recess with a halfdome, and in the recesses are elevated divans piled with cushions for reclining. The walls are painted in stripes of blue, yellow, and red, and the room is bright with various Oriental stuffs. There are turbaned and silken-attired attendants, whose gentle faces might make them mistaken for ministers of religion as well as of cleanliness, and upon the divans recline those who have come from the bath, enjoying kief, with pipes and coffee. There is an atmosphere of perfect contentment in the place, and I can imagine how an effeminate ruler might see, almost without a sigh, the empire of the world slip from his grasp while he surrendered himself to this delicious influence.

We undressed, were towelled, shod with wooden clogs, and led through marble paved passages and several rooms into an inner, long chamber, which has a domed roof pierced by bulls'-eyes of party-colored glass. The floor, of colored marbles, was slippery with water running from the overflowing fountains, or dashed about by the attendants. Out of this room open several smaller chambers, into which an unsocial person might retire. We sat down on the floor by a marble basin into which both hot and cold water poured. After a little time spent in contemplating the humidity of the world, and reflecting on the equality of all men before the law without clothes, an attendant approached, and began to deluge us with buckets of hot water, dashing them over us with a jocular enjoyment and as much indifference to our personality as if we had been statues. I should like to know how life looks to a man who passes his days in this dimly illumined chamber of steam, and is permitted to treat his fellow-men with every mark of disrespect. When we were sufficiently drenched, the agile Arab who had selected me as his mine of backsheesh, knelt down and began to scrub me with hair mittens, with a great show of energy, uttering jocose exclamations in his own language, and practising the half-dozen English words he had mastered, one of them being “dam,” which he addressed to me both affirmatively and interrogatively, as if under the impression that it conveyed the same meaning as tyeb in his vocabulary. I suppose he had often heard wicked Englishmen, who were under his hands, use it, and he took it for an expression of profound satisfaction. He continued this operation for some time, putting me in a sitting position, turning me over, telling me to “sleep” when he desired me to lie down, encouraging me by various barbarous cries, and slapping his hand from time to time to make up by noise for his economical expenditure of muscular force.

After my hilarious bather had finished this process, he lathered me thoroughly, drenched me from head to heels in suds, and then let me put the crowning touch to my happiness by entering one of the little rooms, and sliding into a tank of water hot enough to take the skin off. It is easy enough to make all this process read like a martyrdom, but it is, on the contrary, so delightful that you do not wonder that the ancients spent so much time in the bath, and that next to the amphitheatre the emperors and tyrants lavished most money upon these establishments, of which the people were so extravagantly fond.

Fresh towels were wound round us, turbans were put on our heads, and we were led back to the room first entered, where we were re-enveloped in cloths and towels, and left to recline upon the cushioned divans; pipes and coffee were brought, and we enjoyed a delicious sense of repose and bodily lightness, looking dimly at the grave figures about us, and recognizing in them not men but dreamy images of a physical paradise. No rude voices or sharp movements broke the repose of the chamber. It was as in a dream that I watched a handsome boy, who, with a long pole, was handling the washed towels, and admired the unerring skill that tossed the strips of cloth high in the air and caused them to catch and hang squarely upon the cords stretched across the recesses. The mind was equal to the observation, but not to the comprehension, of this feat. When we were sufficiently cooled, we were assisted to dress, the various articles of Frank apparel affording great amusement to the Orientals. The charge for the whole entertainment was two francs each, probably about four times what a native would have paid.

XIV.—OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS.

DAY after day we continued, like the mourners, to go about the streets, in the tangle of the bazaars, under the dark roofs, endeavoring to see Damascus. When we emerged from the city gate, the view was not much less limited. I made the circuit of the wall on the north, in lanes, by running streams, canals, enclosed gardens, seeing everywhere hundreds of patient, summer-loving men and women squatting on the brink of every rivulet, by every damp spot, in idle and perfect repose.

We stumbled about also on the south side of the town, and saw the reputed place of St. Paul's escape, which has been lately changed. It is a ruined Saracenic tower in the wall, under which is Bab Kisan, a gate that has been walled up for seven hundred years. The window does not any more exist from which the apostle was let down in a basket, but it used to be pointed out with confidence, and I am told that the basket is still shown, but we did not see it. There are still some houses on this south wall, and a few of them have projecting windows from which a person might easily be lowered. It was in such a house that the harlot of Jericho lived, who contrived the escape of the spies of Joshua. And we see how thick and substantial the town walls of that city must have been to support human habitations. But they were blown down.

Turning southward into the country, we came to the tomb of the porter who assisted Paul's escape, and who now sleeps here under the weight of the sobriquet of St. George. A little farther out on the same road is located the spot of Said's conversion.

Near it is the English cemetery, a small high-walled enclosure, containing a domed building surmounted by a cross; and in this historical spot, whose mutations of race, religion, and government would forbid the most superficial to construct for it any cast-iron scheme of growth or decay, amid these almost melancholy patches of vegetation which still hover in the Oriental imagination as the gardens of all delights, sleeps undisturbed by ambition or by criticism, having at last, let us hope, solved the theory of “averages,” the brilliant Henry T. Buckle.

Not far off is the Christian cemetery. “Who is buried here?” I asked our thick-witted guide.

“O, anybody,” he replied, cheerfully, “Greeks, French, Italians, anybody you like”; as if I could please myself by interring here any one I chose.

Among the graves was a group of women, hair dishevelled and garments loosened in the abandon of mourning, seated about a rough coffin open its entire length. In it lay the body of a young man who had been drowned, and recovered from the water after three days. The women lifted up his dead hands, let them drop heavily, and then wailed and howled, throwing themselves into attitudes of the most passionate grief. It was a piteous sight, there under the open sky, in the presence of an unsympathizing crowd of spectators.

Returning, we went round by the large Moslem cemetery, situated at the southwest corner of the city. It is, like all Moslem burying-grounds, a melancholy spectacle,—a mass of small whitewashed mounds of mud or brick, with an inscribed headstone,—but here rest some of the most famous men and women of Moslem history. Here is the grave of Ibn' Asâker, the historian of Damascus; here rests the fierce Moawyeh, the founder of the dynasty of the Omeiyades; and here are buried three of the wives of Mohammed, and Fatimeh, his granddaughter, the child of Ali, whose place of sepulture no man knows. Upon nearly every tomb is a hollow for water, and in it is a sprig of myrtle, which is renewed every Friday by the women who come here to mourn and to gossip.

Much of the traveller's time, and perhaps the most enjoyable part of it, in Damascus, is spent in the bazaars, cheapening scarfs and rugs and the various silken products of Syrian and Persian looms, picking over dishes of antique coins, taking impressions of intaglios, hunting for curious amulets, and searching for the quaintest and most brilliant Saracenic tiles. The quest of the antique is always exciting, and the inexperienced is ever hopeful that he will find a gem of value in a heap of rubbish; this hope never abandons the most blase tourist, though in time he comes to understand that the sharp-nosed Jew, or the oily Armenian, or the respectable Turk, who spreads his delusive wares before him, knows quite as well as the Seeker the value of any bit of antiquity, not only in Damascus, but in Constantinople, Paris, and London, and is an adept in all the counterfeits and impositions of the Orient.

The bazaars of the antique, of old armor, ancient brasses, and of curiosities generally, and even of the silver and gold smiths, are disappointing after Cairo; they are generally full of rubbish from which the choice things seem to have been culled; indeed, the rage for antiquities is now so great that sharp buyers from Europe range all the Orient and leave little for the innocent and hopeful tourist, who is aghast at the prices demanded, and usually finds himself a victim of his own cleverness when he pays for any article only a fourth of the price at first asked.

The silk bazaars of Damascus still preserve, however, a sort of pre-eminence of opportunity, although they are largely supplied by the fabrics manufactured at Beyrout and in other Syrian towns. Certainly no place is more tempting than one of the silk khans,—gloomy old courts, in the galleries of which you find little apartments stuffed full of the seductions of Eastern looms. For myself, I confess to the fascination of those stuffs of brilliant dyes, shot with threads of gold and of silver. I know a tall, oily-tongued Armenian, who has a little chamber full of shelves, from which he takes down one rich scarf after another, unfolds it, shakes out its shining hues, and throws it on the heap, until the room is littered with gorgeous stuffs. He himself is clad in silk attire, he is tall, suave, insinuating, grave, and overwhelmingly condescending. I can see him now, when I question the value put upon a certain article which I hold in my hand and no doubt betray my admiration of in my eyes,—I can see him now throw back his head, half close his Eastern eyes, and exclaim, as if he had hot pudding in his mouth, “Thot is ther larster price.”

I can see Abd-el-Atti now, when we had made up a package of scarfs, and offered a certain sum for the lot, which the sleek and polite trader refused, with his eternal, “Thot is ther larster price,” sling the articles about the room, and depart in rage. And I can see the Armenian bow us into the corridor with the same sweet courtesy, knowing very well that the trade is only just begun; that it is, in fact, under good headway; that the Arab will return, that he will yield a little from the “larster price,” and that we shall go away loaded with his wares, leaving him ruined by the transaction, but proud to be our friend.

Our experience in purchasing old Saracenic and Persian tiles is perhaps worth relating as an illustration of the character of the traders of Damascus. Tiles were plenty enough, for several ancient houses had recently been torn down, and the dealers continually acquire them from ruined mosques or those that are undergoing repairs. The dragoman found several lots in private houses, and made a bargain for a certain number at two francs and a half each; and when the bargain was made, I spent half a day in selecting the specimens we desired.

The next morning, before breakfast, we went to make sure that the lots we had bought would be at once packed and shipped. But a change had taken place in twelve hours. There was an Englishman in town who was also buying tiles; this produced a fever in the market; an impression went abroad that there was a fortune to be made in tiles, and we found that our bargain was entirely ignored. The owners supposed that the tiles we had selected must have some special value; and they demanded for the thirty-eight which we had chosen—agreeing to pay for them two francs and a half apiece—thirty pounds. In the house where we had laid aside seventy-three others at the same price, not a tile was to be discovered; the old woman who showed us the vacant chamber said she knew not what had become of them, but she believed they had been sold to an Englishman.