Part 10

At the southeastern extremity of the mountain is the spot known as “the place of burning,” or sacrifice, because tradition assigns it as the locality where Elijah had his controversy with the prophets of Baal, and in commemoration thereof the Carmelite monks are at this moment building a church there, and using, by the way, some of the carved stones of a neighbouring ruin, regardless of all antiquarian considerations. I feel, therefore, a malignant satisfaction in the conviction at which I have arrived that they are building their church on a spot which is indisputably not the place on which the altar of Elijah was erected, if we are to believe the Biblical record, for it is in full view of the Mediterranean, and it would have been quite unnecessary for Elijah to tell his servant to “go up and look toward the sea,” for there is no higher point to go up to, and he could see the sea himself. But about a mile from this spot there stands, curiously enough, a pile of stones in a locality which would exactly fulfil the required conditions. I came upon it unexpectedly, almost concealed in a thicket of underwood. The stones are placed one upon the other without cement, and average eighteen inches square and eight or nine thick, forming a rude altar about twelve feet long and four high. The breadth varies, as they have been broken away, but there is a large artificial slab, six feet square, lying at the base. Though I do not for a moment mean to imply that this was the original altar, the unusual shape and position of this pile suggests that it may have been the result of some sacred tradition connected with the Biblical event, or it may be the remains of an ancient vineyard watch-tower. From it the ground swells back and upward in every direction, so that a vast host might have been assembled around and witnessed whatever was going forward, which would have been impossible at the traditional locality. A ten minutes' walk would have taken Elijah's servant to a neighbouring summit which commanded a full view of the sea, and the twelve barrels of water required to drench the altar could have been obtained from some rock-hewn tanks in the immediate vicinity, while the path that passes the pile leads straight down to the hill on the bank of the Kishon, where tradition has it that the priests were massacred. Moreover, it was in the centre of the most populous part of the mountain. Within a radius of two miles and a half from this pile of stones there are no fewer than twelve ruins of ancient towns and villages on the various hill-tops and mountain-spurs which surround it.

No fact could give a better idea than this of the populous character of Carmel in the days of the prophet. Not very far from this I discovered, half-way down the steep flank of the mountain, a fortress of a most ancient race, the stones which were piled one above another three high to form the rampart being immense natural unhewn boulders weighing from two to three tons each. I am not aware of anything of the kind having yet been found in Palestine, and as carrying one back to a period probably anterior to Jewish occupation, I regard it as the most interesting discovery I have made on Carmel.

A PLACE FAMOUS IN HISTORY.

St. Jean d'Acre, Oct. 14.—Of all the towns on the Syrian coast, from Antioch to Gaza, none has had a more eventful history than Acre, or one which more directly affected the fortunes of the rest of the country at large. Napoleon I. called it the key of Palestine, and it is doubtless owing to its important strategical position that it has undergone so many vicissitudes, and been the scene of so many sanguinary battles. There is, indeed, probably no similar area on the face of the globe on which so much blood has been shed.

I was at some trouble the other day to add up the list of sieges it has undergone, and the total was fifteen, not counting doubtful ones in the earliest history of the country, when it was invaded and conquered by the ancient Egyptians; but beginning with the siege of Acre by Shalmaneser, 721 B.C., when the fortress belonged to the Tyrians, and ending with its bombardment, in A.D. 1840, by the English Admiral Sir Charles Napier, the list is one which suggests a record of blood unparalleled in history. Its worst time was undoubtedly during the two hundred years when it was taken and retaken several times by Crusaders and Saracens successively. On one of these occasions when, after a two years' siege, the town fell into the hands of the Saracens, sixty thousand Christians are said to have fallen by the sword. The place is still shown, at the northeast salient of the outer wall, where stood the English tower, which was guarded by the troops of Richard Cœur de Lion.

The town now contains only about nine thousand inhabitants, cooped up by the fortifications in the very limited area of about fifty acres; and it is more picturesque than agreeable to live in. There is no more characteristic bazaar in the East than that of Acre, with its motley crowd of wild Bedouins from the desert, Persian devotees gathering around a Persian holy man who has taken up his residence here, Turkish soldiers who form its garrison, Druses, with their white turbans and striped abeihs, or overcoats, Metawalis, who are wild and gipsy-looking Moslem schismatics, Syrian Christians, and Moslem peasantry; add to these veiled women, long strings of camels, with an occasional foreigner, or sailor from a merchant-ship in the harbour, and you get a population as varied as any town in the country can show. Acre, therefore, is a most interesting place to spend a day in, apart from any antiquarian attraction it may possess, or monuments of more modern architecture which are worthy of attention.

There are few finer mosques in Syria than that of Jezzar Pacha, which stands within a large rectangular area, where there are vaulted galleries, supported by ancient columns ornamented by capitals brought from the ruins of Tyre and Cæsarea. Along these galleries have been built cells, destined for the people employed at the mosque, or the pilgrims who came to visit it. They surround a magnificent court, under which are cisterns, and upon which are palms, cypress, and other trees. Among them are white marble tombs, notably those of Jezzar and Suleiman Pacha. The town contains three other mosques, the columns in which and the pavement have certainly belonged to more ancient buildings. There are four Christian churches in the city, which belong to the Roman Catholics, the Schismatic Greeks, the Maronites, and the United Greeks respectively. Under the house of the Sisters of Nazareth and the neighbouring houses extend vast vaulted cellars which are now divided by walls of separation, and belong to different proprietors; they are doubtless of crusading origin. Deep cisterns also date from that period. Of the same date also are certain remains of walls and vaults near the convent, which are the ruins of a church almost completely destroyed. The most remarkable khan is near the port, called the Khan el Aurid on account of its columns, the galleries surrounding it being built on pillars of gray or red granite, covered by capitals of different orders, brought from more ancient monuments.

The citadel, as may be imagined, has often been destroyed and rebuilt. On one side is the military hospital, the lower part of which belongs entirely to crusaders' work, and consists of large subterranean magazines. In the middle is a great court, shaded by fig, palm, and other trees, under which are vaulted galleries and cisterns. Under the ramparts also extend immense ogival vaults, many of which belong to the time of the crusades. These have furnished magazines for later defenders of the fortress, and, during the bombardment by the English in 1840, the principal one exploded, with a loss to the defenders of 1600 men, 30 camels, 50 asses, besides horses, cows, and a great store of arms. Some of the guns lying about the ramparts are of old French manufacture, with the dates 1785, '86, '87. They are those which were sent by sea, for the use of Napoleon, but were captured by Sir Sydney Smith, and brought here to serve for the defence of the city. About half a mile from the city walls is an artificial hill or tumulus, called Napoleon's Hill, from the fact that he used it as his headquarters during one of the sieges of Acre. It was occupied for the same purpose six hundred years before by Richard Cœur de Lion.

In ancient times Acre was the most populous and flourishing port on the sea-coast after the decline of Tyre and Sidon, and contained an immense population; the town must have extended over the plain to the east of the city, which is still rich in ancient débris, fragments of pottery, and marble carvings. A great part of the modern fortification has been built from the ruins of Athlit, which I have described in a former letter, and which, before it was thus despoiled at the beginning of this century, must have been an ancient crusading fortress in almost perfect condition. When one thinks how lately it has been destroyed, one is all the more inclined to regret the disappearance of a monument which would have been the most interesting relic of its kind in existence. Acre possesses little Biblical interest. It is only mentioned once in the Old Testament, where it is alluded to as being a town from which the tribe of Asher, in whose territory it was situated, did not succeed in driving the Canaanites, but seemed to have lived with them in it upon friendly terms; and once in the New Testament, where, under the name of Ptolemais, it was visited by Paul on his way from Greece to Jerusalem.

There are many old people now in Acre who tell thrilling stories of the episodes which occurred here during the years when it was occupied by the Egyptians, between 1830 and 1840, and when it became necessary not merely to conciliate the conquerors, but to play a double game of keeping on good terms with the Turks, to whom it was ultimately, and, as it now turns out, foolishly, restored by the British; but none so thrilling as those which they have heard from their fathers, of the incidents which marked the reigns of Jezzar and Abdullah Pacha, especially the former. The following story was told me by the son of the man who was the confidential secretary of this fiend in human shape, who gloried in the name of “The Butcher.” In youth he sold himself to a slave-merchant in Constantinople, and, being purchased by Ali Bey of Egypt, he rose from the humble station of a mameluke to be Governor of Cairo. In 1773 he was placed by the Emir of the Druses in command at Beyrout. There his first act was to seize 50,000 piastres, the property of the emir, and the second to declare that he acknowledged no superior but the sultan. The emir, by the aid of a Russian fleet, drove Jezzar from Beyrout, but he was soon after made Pacha of Acre and Sidon. Under his vigorous rule the pachalik extended from Baalbec on the north to Jerusalem on the south. My informant told me that he was not originally a cruel man, but that one day he was playing with a little daughter who pulled his beard. “This is very wrong,” he said; “how did you learn to play with men's beards?” “Oh,” she replied, “I always play with the beards of the mamelukes when they visit the ladies of the harem in your absence.” This excited a fit of frenzied jealousy. Taking an escort, he announced that he was going on an official visit to a distant part of his pachalik. When he was a stage out of Acre, he told his escort to remain where they were, disguised himself, and returned rapidly and secretly to his harem. Here he found all his favourite wives disporting themselves with his mamelukes or military body-guard. Instantly he drew his cimeter and fell, not upon the men, but upon the women. Fifteen of these he is said to have killed with his own hand, and then, growing tired of the effort, he called in some soldiers to complete the massacre, not leaving one alive. My informant did not remember the total number slain. The mamelukes rushed to the great magazines, and swore they would blow themselves up and the whole town if a hair of their heads was touched. They were allowed, therefore, to saddle their horses and ride of in peace; but from that day the whole character of Jezzar Pacha was changed, and he made it a rule never to allow a week to pass without executions. His Jew banker was a handsome man. One day Jezzar complimented him on his looks, and then, calling a servant, ordered him to put out one of the Jew's eyes. Some time after Jezzar observed that the banker had arranged his turban so as almost to hide the lost eye, and he then, without a moment's hesitation, had his nose cut off. The poor Jew finally lost his head. The family of this man are still among the chief bankers of Damascus.

This butcher also employed his own leisure moments in unexpectedly drawing his sword and cutting off the ears and noses of his favourites and the people about him, and sometimes their heads, with his own hand. This was the man whom Napoleon besieged in Acre, and with whom British troops were unfortunately compelled to ally themselves to prevent the fortress from falling into French hands. My informant told me that during the latter years of Jezzar Pacha's life his character again changed for the better, and he gradually gave up his cruel practices. In fact, he described his cruelty as a monomania produced by a fit of jealousy, which it took him some years to get over.

THE BABS AND THEIR PROPHET.

Haifa, Nov. 7.—The Nahr N'aman, called by the ancients the river Belus, rises in a large marsh at the base of a mound in the plain of Acre called the Tell Kurdany, and, after a short course of four miles, fed by the swampy ground through which it passes, it attains considerable dimensions. Before falling into the sea it winds through an extensive date-grove, and then, twisting its way between banks of fine sand, falls into the ocean scarcely two miles from the walls of Acre. Pliny tells us that glass was first made by the ancients from the sands of this river, and the numerous specimens of old glass which I found in grubbing bear testimony to the extensive usage of this material in the neighbourhood. The beach at its mouth was also celebrated as a locality where the shells which yielded the Tyrian purple were to be found in great abundance, and I have succeeded in extracting the dye from some of those I have collected here. It was also renowned for a colossal statue of Memnon, which, according to Pliny, was upon its banks, but the site of this has not been accurately identified. The only point of attraction now upon its waters is a garden belonging to an eminent Persian, whose residence at Acre is invested with such peculiar interest that I made an expedition to his pleasure-ground on the chance of discovering something more in regard to him than it was possible to do at Haifa.

Turning sharply to the right before reaching Acre, and passing beneath the mound upon which Napoleon planted his batteries in 1799, we enter a grove of date-trees by a road bordered with high cactus hedges, and finally reach a causeway which traverses a small lake formed by the waters of the Belus, and which, crossing one arm of the river, lands us upon an island which it encircles. This island, which is about two hundred yards long by scarcely a hundred wide, is all laid out in flower-beds and planted with ornamental shrubs and with fruit-trees. Coming upon it suddenly it is like a scene in fairy land. In the centre is a plashing fountain from which the water is conveyed to all parts of the garden. The flower-beds are all bordered with neat edges of stone-work, and are sunk below the irrigating channels. Over a marble bed the waters from the fountain come rippling down in a broad stream to a bower of bliss, where two immense and venerable mulberry-trees cast an impenetrable shade over a platform with seats along the entire length of one side, protected by a balustrade projecting over the waters of the Belus, which here runs in a clear stream, fourteen or fifteen feet wide and two or three deep, over a pebbly bottom, where fish of considerable size, and evidently preserved, are darting fearlessly about, or coming up to the steps to be fed. The stream is fringed with weeping willows, and the spot, with its wealth of water, its thick shade, and air fragrant with jasmine and orange blossoms, forms an ideal retreat from the heats of summer. The sights and sounds are all suggestive of languor and _dolce far niente_, of that peculiar condition known to Orientals as _kief_, when the senses are lulled by the sounds of murmuring water, the odours of fragrant plants, the flickering shadows of foliage, or the gorgeous tints of flowers and the fumes of the narghileh.

The gardener, a sedate Persian in a tall cap, who kept the place in scrupulous order, gave us a dignified welcome. His master, he said, would not come till the afternoon, and if we disappeared before his arrival we were welcome to spread our luncheon on his table under the mulberry-trees, and sit round it on his chairs; nay, further, he even extended his hospitality to providing us with hot water.

Thus it was that we took possession of Abbas Effendi's garden before I had the honour of making that gentleman's acquaintance, an act of no little audacity, when I inform you that he claims to be the eldest son of the last incarnation of the Deity. As his father is alive and resident at Acre—if one may venture to talk of such a being as resident anywhere—my anxiety to see the son was only exceeded by my curiosity to investigate the father. But this, as I shall presently explain, seems a hope that is not likely to be realized. Meantime I shall proceed to give you, so far as I have been able to learn, an account of who Abbas Effendi's father is, and all that I know about him, premising always that I only do so subject to any modification which further investigation may suggest.

It is now forty-eight years since a young man of three-and-twenty appeared at the shrine of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet, who was made a martyr at Kerbela. He was said to have been born at Shiraz, the son of a merchant there, and his name was Ali Mohammed. It is supposed that he derived his religious opinions from a certain Indian Mussulman, called Achsai, who instituted a system of reform, and made many disciples. Whether this is so or not, the young Persian soon acquired a pre-eminent reputation for sanctity, and the boldness and enthusiasm of his preaching and the revolutionary sentiments he uttered attracted many to his teaching. So far as I have been able to judge, he preached a pure morality of the loftiest character, denouncing the abuses of existing Islam as Christ did the Judaism of his day, and fearlessly incurring the hostility of Persian Phariseeism. A member himself of the Shiite sect of Moslems, he sought to reform it, as being the state religion of Persia, and finally went so far as to proclaim himself at Kufa the _bab_, or door, through which alone man could approach God. At the same time he announced that he was the Mahdi, or last Imaum, who was descended from Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and whom the Shiites believe to have been an incarnation of the Deity. Mahdi is supposed by all Persian Moslems not to have died, but to be awaiting in concealment the coming of the last day.

As may be imagined, the sudden appearance after so many centuries of a reformer who claimed to be none other than the long-expected divine manifestation, created no little consternation throughout Persia, more especially as, according to tradition, the time had arrived when such a manifestation was to be looked for, and men's minds were prepared for the event. The Persian enthusiast, as soon as his preaching became popular and his pretensions vast, roused the most violent hostility, and he was executed at Tabriz in 1849, after a brief career of fourteen years, at the early age of thirty-seven. The tragic circumstances attending his death enhanced his glory, for he was repeatedly offered his life if he would consent to abate his claims, or even leave the country. He preferred, however, a martyr's crown, and was executed in the presence of a vast multitude, leaving behind him a numerous and fanatic sect, who have since then been known as the Babs, and whose belief in the founder subsequent persecutions on the part of the government have only served to confirm.

The Bab before his execution gave it to be understood that though he was apparently about to die, he, or rather the divine incarnation of which he was the subject, would shortly reappear in the person of his successor, whom, I believe, he named secretly. I do not exactly know when the present claimant first made known his pretensions to be that successor, but, at all events, he was universally acknowledged by the Bab sect, now numbering some hundreds of thousands, and became so formidable a personage, being a man of high lineage—indeed, it is whispered that he is a relative of the Shah himself—that he was made prisoner by the government and sent into exile. The Sultan of Turkey kindly undertook to provide for his incarceration, and for some years he was a state prisoner at Adrianople. Finally he was transported from that place to Acre, on giving his parole to remain quietly there and not return to Persia, and here he has been living ever since, an object of adoration to his countrymen, who flock hither to visit him, who load him with gifts, and over two hundred of whom remain here as a sort of permanent body-guard.