Syria, the Desert & the Sown

A further acquaintance with Antioch did not destroy the impressions of the first evening. The more I wandered through the narrow paved streets the more delightful did they appea...

You do not see Ḥamāh until you are actually upon it--there is no other preposition that describes the attitude of the new comer. The Orontes at this point flows in a deep bed an...

We left next day at an early hour, but the people of Ḥomṣ got up to see us off. Nothing save the determination to afford them no more amusement than I could help kept me outward...

The Vāli had inquired of me closely whither I was going from Damascus, and when I told him that Ba'albek was my goal he had replied that he must certainly send a small body of a...

All my leisure moments during the two days in Aleppo were occupied in changing muleteers. It seemed a necessary, if a regrettable measure. At Antioch we should reach the limits...

When I had come to Damascus five years before, my chief counsellor and friend--a friend whose death will be deplored by many a traveller in Syria--was Lütticke, head of the bank...

My objective that day was the village of Umm Ruweik on the eastern edge of the Druze hills. Remembering the vagaries of the map, I took with me one of Muḥammad en Naṣṣār's nephe...

The next day's journey is branded on my mind by an incident which I can scarcely dignify with the name of an adventure--a misadventure let me call it. It was as tedious while it...

Salcah, the city of King Og in Bashan, must have been a fortified place from the beginning of history. The modern village clusters round the base of a small volcano, on the top...

The village of Salt is a prosperous community of over 10,000 souls, the half of them Christian. It lies in a rich country famous for grapes and apricots, its gardens are mention...

There is an Arabic proverb which says: "Ḥayyeh rubda wa la ḍaif muḍḥa"--neither ash-grey snake nor midday guest. We were careful not to make a breach in our manners by outstayin...

We started from Bāsufān at eight o'clock on the morning of April 4, and rode south by incredibly stony tracks, leaving Ḳal'at Sim'ān to the west and skirting round the eastern f...

The morning of Sunday, the 12th of February, was still stormy, but I resolved to go. The days spent at Ṭneib had not been wasted. An opportunity of watching hour by hour the lif...

To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel. The gates of the enclosed garden ar...

Bedouin of the Syrian Desert Frontispiece The Mosque of 'Umar, Jerusalem The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem A Street in Jerusalem St. Stephen's Gate, Jerusalem A Mahomm...