Early Travels in Palestine Part 40

Returning, therefore, by our former stages without any notable alteration or occurrence, we came in eight days to the Honey Khan, at which place we found many of our Aleppine friends, who, having heard of our drawing homeward, were come out to meet us and welcome us home.

Having dined together, and congratulated each other upon our happy reunion, we went onward the same evening to Aleppo.

Thus, by G.o.d's infinite mercy and protection, we were restored all in safety to our respective habitations. And here, before I conclude, I cannot but take notice of one thing more, which I should earnestly recommend to the devout and grateful remembrance of every person engaged in this pilgrimage, viz., that amongst so great a company as we were, amidst such a multiplicity of dangers and casualties, such variety of food, airs, and lodgings (very often none of the best), there was no one of us that came to any ill accident throughout our whole travels, and only one that fell sick by the consequences of the journey after our return, which I esteem the less diminution to so singular a mercy, in regard that, amongst so many of my dear friends and fellow-travellers, it fell to my own share to be the sufferer. ???a Te?.

Since the book was printed off, the two following letters, relating to the same subject, were communicated by the Rev. Mr. Osborn, Fellow of Exeter College; to whom they were sent by the author, in answer to some questions proposed by him.

SIR,

I RECEIVED yours of June 27, 1698, and returned you an answer to it in brief, about three months since, promising to supply what was then wanting at some other opportunity, which promise I shall now make good. You desired an account of the Turks, and of our way of living amongst them. As to the former, it would fill a volume to write my whole thoughts about them. I shall only tell you at present that I think they are very far from agreeing with that character which is given of them in Christendom, especially for their exact justice, veracity, and other moral virtues, upon account of which I have sometimes heard them mentioned with very extravagant commendations, as though they far exceed Christian nations. But I must profess myself of another opinion; for the Christian religion, how much soever we live below the true spirit and excellency of it, must still be allowed to discover so much power upon the minds of its professors as to raise them far above the level of a Turkish virtue. It is a maxim that I have often heard from our merchants, that a Turk will always cheat when he can find an opportunity. Friends.h.i.+p, generosity, and wit (in the English notion), and delightful converse, and all the qualities of a refined and ingenuous spirit, are perfect strangers to their minds, though in traffic and worldly negotiations they are acute enough, and are able to carry the accounts of a large commerce in their heads without the help of books, by a natural arithmetic, improved by custom and necessity. Their religion is framed to keep up great outward gravity and solemnity, without begetting the least good tincture of wisdom or virtue in the mind. You shall have them at their hours of prayer, which are four a day always, addressing themselves to their devotions with the most solemn and critical was.h.i.+ngs, always in the most public places, where most people are pa.s.sing, with most lowly and most regular protestations, and a hollow tone, which are amongst them the great excellencies of prayer. I have seen them, in an affected charity, give money to bird-catchers (who make a trade of it), to restore the poor captives to their natural liberty, and at the same time hold their own slaves in the heaviest bondage; and at other times they will buy flesh to relieve indigent dogs and cats, and yet curse you with famine and pestilence, and all the most hideous execrations, in which way these eastern nations have certainly the most exquisite rhetoric of any people upon earth. They know hardly any pleasure but that of the sixth sense. And yet with all this, they are incredibly conceited of their own religion, and contemptuous of that of others, which I take to be the great artifice of the devil, in order to keep them his own. They are a perfect visible comment upon our blessed Lord's description of the Jewish Pharisees. In a word, l.u.s.t, arrogance, covetousness, and the most exquisite hypocrisy, complete their character. The only thing that ever I could observe to commend in them is the outward decency of their carriage, the profound respect they pay to religion and to every thing relating to it, and their great temperance and frugality. The dearness of any thing is no motive in Turkey, though it be in England, to bring it into fas.h.i.+on.

As for our living amongst them, it is with all possible quiet and safety; and that is all we desire, their conversation being not in the least entertaining. Our delights are among ourselves; and here being more than forty of us, we never want a most friendly and pleasant conversation. Our way of life resembles in some measure the academical. We live in separate squares, shut up every night after the manner of colleges. We begin the day constantly, as you do, with prayers, and have our set times for business, meals, and recreations. In the winter we hunt in the most delightful champaign twice a week; and in the summer go as often to divert ourselves under our tents, with bowling and other exercises; so that you see we want not divertis.e.m.e.nts, and these all innocent and manly. In short, it is my real opinion, that there is not a society out of England that for all good and desirable qualities may be compared to this. But enough of this confusion, which I would have shortened, and put in better order, if I had had time.

March 10, 1698.

SIR,

As for your questions about Gehazi's posterity and the Greek excommunications, I have little to answer; but yet, I hope, enough to give you and your friend satisfaction. When I was in the Holy Land I saw several that laboured under Gehazi's distemper, but none that could pretend to derive his pedigree from that person. Some of them were poor enough to be his relations; particularly at Sichem (now Naplosu) there were no less than ten (the same number that were cleansed by our Saviour not far from the same place) that came begging to us at one time. Their manner is to come with small buckets in their hands, to receive the alms of the charitable, their touch being still held infectious, or at least unclean. The distemper, as I saw it in them, was very different from what I have seen it in England; for it not only defiles the whole surface of the body with a foul scurf, but also deforms the joints of the body, particularly those of the wrists and ankles, making them swell with a gouty, scrofulous substance, very loathsome to look upon. I thought their legs resembled those of old, battered horses, such as are often seen in drays in England. The whole distemper, indeed, as it there appeared, was so noisome that it might well pa.s.s for the utmost corruption of the human body on this side the grave; and certainly the inspired penmen could not have found out a fitter emblem whereby to express the uncleanness and odiousness of vice. But to return to Gehazi, it is no wonder if the descent from him be by time obscured, seeing the best of the Jews, at this time of day, are at a loss to make out their genealogies. But, besides, I see no necessity in Scripture for his line being perpetuated. The term "for ever" is, you know, often taken in a limited sense in holy writ, of which the designation of Phineas's family to the priesthood[632] may serve for an instance. His posterity was, you know, cut entirely off from the priesthood, and that transferred to Eli (who was one of another line) about three hundred years after.

I have inquired of a Greek priest, a man not dest.i.tute either of sense or probity, about your other question. He positively affirmed it, and produced an instance of his own knowledge in confirmation of it. He said that, about fifteen years ago, a certain Greek departed this life without absolution, being under the guilt of a crime which involved him in the sentence of excommunication, but unknown to the church. He had Christian burial given him; and, about ten years after, a son of his dying, they had occasion to open the ground near where his body was laid, in order to bury his son by him, by which means they discovered his body as entire as when it was first laid in the grave. The shroud was rotted away, and the body naked and black, but perfectly sound. Report of this being brought to the bishop, he immediately suspected the cause of it, and sent several priests (of whom the relator was one) to pray for the soul of the departed, and to absolve him at his grave; which they had no sooner done, but (as the relator goes on) the body instantly dissolved and fell into dust, like slacked lime; and so, well satisfied with the effect of their absolution, they departed. This was delivered to me _verbo sacerdotis_. The man had hard fortune not to die in the Romish communion; for then his body being found so entire would have ent.i.tled him to saints.h.i.+p; for the Romanists, as I have both heard and seen, are wont to find out and maintain the relics of saints by this token; and the same sign which proves an _anathema maranatha_ amongst the Greeks, demonstrates a saint amongst the Papists. Perhaps both are equally in the right.

_April 12, 1700._

FOOTNOTES:

[526] Maundrell was chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo. See the Introduction.

[527] Bell-Maez, "I don't know," probably an answer to Maundrell's question, "What is the name of that village?" and not the name itself.

[528] Mr. Ainsworth informs me that he verified the account given of this fissure by personal examination, and found it to be perfectly correct in its descriptive details.

[529] The Nosairi, or Ansarians.

[530] Markah, the ancient Marathus.

[531] Nat. Hist., lib. v. cap. 20.

[532] Gen. x. 18.

[533] Strabo, p. 518.

[534] Nat. Hist, lib. v. cap. 20.

[535] 1 Mac. xii. 25, 30.

[536] Antiq. Jud., lib. 14, cap. 7, 8.

[537] Page 213.

[538] Strabo, lib. 16, Pomp. Mela, lib. i. cap. 12.

[539] Half per Frank, quarter per servant.

[540] This is certainly an erroneous notion: the Druses are alluded to by the rabbi Benjamin in the 12th century. See pp. 79, 80.

[541] Vales. Not. in Euseb. Eccl. Hist., lib. vii. cap. 9.

[542] ???? ???? ??ta?? ????s?, p. 521.

[543] Ezek. xxvi. 27, 28.

[544] Ezek. xxvi. 14.

[545] Eccl. Hist., lib. x. cap. 4.

[546] Mentioned Josh. xix. 29, and Jud. i. 31.

[547] Judges, i. 31.

[548] Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus says the Greek and Roman names of places never took amongst the natives of this country, which is the reason that most places retain their first oriental names at this day.-Hist. lib.

xiv., non longe ab initio.

[549] Acre has gained a new celebrity by the events of which it has been the scene in more recent times. Most of the ruins described by Maundrell have disappeared to make place for modern buildings; and the population, said to have been not more than 300 or 400 in the seventeenth century, is now estimated at above 20,000.

[550] Judges, v. 21.

[551] For both caphars, eight _per_ frank, and three _per_ servant.

[552] Many of the pillars still remain. According to the accounts of modern travellers, the ruins of Sebaste appear to be more interesting than we might suppose from Maundrell's slight notice.

[553] Antiq. Jud., lib. v. cap. 9.

[554] Ibid., lib. iv. cap. ult.

[555] Deut. ii. 29.

[556] Deut. xxvii. 4.

[557] Deut. xi. 29.

[558] Num. xi.

[559] See before, p. 8.