Travels in Syria and the Holy Land. John Lewis Burckhardt

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СКАЧАТЬ and a half from El Heimte. We slept at El Heimte, in the house of the Druse Sheikh, and the Khatib, or Turkish priest of the village, gave us a plentiful supper. The Druses in this district affect to adhere strictly to the religious precepts of the Turks. The greater part of the inhabitants of El Heimte are Druses belonging to Rasheia. Near it are the villages of Biri and Refit.

      October 11th.—We set out at day-break, and at the end of an hour passed on the left the Druse villages Deneibe and Mimis, and at two hours Sefa on our right, also a Druse village. Our road lay over an uneven plain, cultivated only in spots. After three hours and a half, we came to Ain Efdjur, direction S.W. by W.; from thence in two hours and a half we reached the Djissr-Moiet-Hasbeya, or bridge of the river of Hasbeya, whose source is hard by; the road lying the whole way over rocky ground little susceptible of culture. From the Djissr we turned up a steep Wady E. b. S. and arrived, in about three quarters of an hour, at Hasbeya, situated

      [p.33] on the top of a mountain of no great height. I had letters from the Greek patriarch of Damascus to the Greek bishop of Hasbeya, in whose house, four years ago, Dr. Seetzen spent a week, having been prevented from proceeding by violent snow and rain. The bishop happened to be absent on my arrival, and I therefore took up my lodging in the house of a poor Greek priest, with whose behaviour towards me I had every reason to be satisfied.

      October 12th.—The village or town of Hasbeya may contain seven hundred houses; half of which belong to Druse families; the other half are inhabited by Christians, principally Greeks, though there are also Catholics and Maronites here. There are only forty Turkish families, and twenty Enzairie. The inhabitants make cotton cloth for shirts and gowns, and have a few dyeing houses. The principal production of their fields is olives. The chief of the village is an Emir of the Druses, who is dependent both on the Pasha of Damascus and the Emir Beshir. He lives in a well-built Serai, which in time of war might serve as a castle. The following villages belong to the territory of Hasbeya: Ain Sharafe, El Kefeir, Ain Annia, Shoueia, Ain Tinte, El Kankabe, El Heberie, Rasheyat el Fukhar, Ferdis, Khereibe, El Merie, Shiba, Banias, Ain Fid, Zoura, Ain Kamed Banias, Djoubeta, Fershouba, Kefaer Hamam, El Waeshdal, El Zouye.

      The neighbourhood of Hasbeya is interesting to the mineralogist. I was told by the priest that a metal was found near it, of which nobody knew the name, nor made any use. Having procured a labourer, I found after digging in the Wady a few hundred paces to the E. of the village, several small pieces of a metallic substance, which I took to be a native amalgam of mercury. According to the description given me, cinnabar is also found here, but we could discover no specimen of it after half an hour's digging. The ground all around, and the spring near the village, are

      SOUK EL KAHN.

      [p.34] strongly impregnated with iron; the rock is sandstone, of a dark red colour. The other mineral curiosities are, a number of wells of bitumen Judaicum, in the Wady at one hour below the village on the west side, after recrossing the bridge; they are situated upon the declivity of a chalky hill; the bitumen is found in large veins at about twenty feet below the surface. The pits are from six to twelve feet in diameter; the workmen descend by a rope and wheel, and in hewing out the bitumen, they leave columns of that substance at different intervals, as a support to the earth above; pieces of several Rotolas in weight each[The Rotola is about five pounds.] are brought up. There are upwards of twenty-five of these pits or wells, but the greater part of them are abandoned and overgrown with shrubs. I saw only one, that appeared to have been recently worked; they work only during the summer months. The bitumen is called Hommar, and the wells, Biar el Hommar [Arabic]. The Emir possesses the monopoly of the bitumen; he alone works the pits, and sells the produce to the merchants of Damascus, Beirout, and Aleppo. It was now at thirty-three paras the Rotola, or about two-pence-halfpenny the pound.

      I left Hasbeya on the same day, and continued to descend the valley on the side of the river. Half an hour from the bridge, I arrived at Souk el Khan. In the hills to the right is the village Kankabe. Souk el Khan is a large ruined Khan, where the inhabitants, to the distance of one day's journey round, assemble every Tuesday to hold a market. In the summer they exhibit their merchandize in the open air; but in the winter they make use of some large rooms, still remaining within the Khan. The road to Banias leads along the valley, parallel with the course of the river; but as I had heard of some ruins in the mountain, at a village called Hereibe, to the east of the route, I turned in that direction, and reached the

      HEREIBE.

      [p.35] village in two hours after quitting Hasbeya. Between Souk el Khan and Hereibe lies the village Ferdous. Hereibe is considerably higher than the river. All this neighbourhood is planted with olive-trees; and olives, from hence to Damascus, are the most common food of the inhabitants, who put them into salt, but they do not thereby entirely remove the bitter taste. At Aleppo and Damascus, olives destined for the table are immersed for a fortnight in water, in which are dissolved one proportion of chalk and two proportions of alkali; this takes away all bitterness, but the fruit is at the same time deprived of a part of its flavour.

      On the west side of the village of Hereibe stands a ruined temple, quite insulated; it is twenty paces in length, and thirteen in breadth; the entrance is towards the west, and it had a vestibule in front with two columns. On each side of the entrance are two niches one above the other, the upper one has small pilasters, the lower one is ornamented on the top by a shell, like the niches in the temple at Baalbec. The door- way, which has no decoration whatever, opens into a room ten paces square, in which no columns, sculpture, or Ornaments of any kind are visible; three of the walls only are standing. At the back of this chamber is a smaller, four paces and a half in breadth, by ten in length, in one corner of which is a half-ruined staircase, leading to the top of the building; in this smaller room are four pilasters in the four angles; under the large room are two spacious vaults. On the outside of the temple, at the east corners, are badly wrought pilasters of the Ionic order. The roof has fallen in, and fills up the interior. The stone employed is of the same quality as that used at Heusn Nieha and Baalbec.

      From Hereibe I came to the spring Ain Ferkhan in one hour; and from thence, in three quarters of an hour, to the village

      BANIAS.

      [p.36]Rasheyat-el-Fukhar, over mountainous ground. The village stands on a mountain which commands a beautiful view of the lake Houle, its plain, and the interjacent country. It contains about one hundred houses, three-fourths of which are inhabited by Turks and the remainder by Greeks. The inhabitants live by the manufacture of earthen pots, which they sell to the distance of four or five days journey around, especially in the Haouran and Djolan; they mould them in very elegant shapes, and paint them with a red-earth: almost every house has its pottery, and the ovens in which the pots are baked are common to all. The Houle bears from Rasheyat-el-Fukhar, between S. by E. and S.E. by S. Kalaat el Shkif, on the top of the mountain, towards Acre, E. by N. and Banias, though not visible, S.

      October 13th.—We set out in a rainy morning from Rasheyat-el-Fukhar. I was told that in the mountain to the E. one hour and a half, were considerable ruins. The mountains of Hasbeya, or the chain of the Djebel Essheikh, divide, at five hours N. from the lake, into two branches. The western, a little farther to the south, takes the name of Djebel Safat, the eastern joins the Djebel Heish and its continuations, towards Banias. Between the two lie the lake of the Houle and the Ard el Houle, the latter from three to four hours in breadth. We descended from Rasheyat-el-Fukhar into the plain, in which we continued till we reached Banias, at the end of four hours, thoroughly drenched by a heavy shower of rain. We alighted at the Menzel or Medhaafe; this is a sort of Khan found in almost every village through which there is a frequented route. Strangers sleep in the Medhaafe, and the Sheikh of the village generally sends them their dinner or supper; for this he does not accept of any present, at least not of such as common travellers can offer; but it is custmary to give something to the servant or watchman (Natur) who brings the meal, and takes care that

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