Superstitions and Monuments
Near [Cana] they pretend to shew the field where the Disciples of Jesus Christ plucked the ears of corn upon the Sabbath-day. The Italian Catholics have named it the field “degli Setti Spini;” and they gather the bearded wheat, which is annually growing there, as a part of the collec-tion of relics to be conveyed to their own country.[1] [1817]
The first three sections of this chapter deal with the mysterious question of who built the monuments of Syria (some older than Adam, apparently[2]), with inscriptions leading to treasure and as a source of superstition, and finally with the vandalism involved in ransacking ruins.
For the Christian traveller the distinction between superstition and verita-ble truth might have been clear: what I believe is justifiaverita-ble faith; whereas what you believe (especially if you are a Muslim!) is mere superstition. However, as well as amongst Muslims, accounts of miracles and miraculous discoveries abounded in the Christian sphere, such as the 16th-century discovery, while looking for building stone, of the body of Joseph, “tout resplendissant de grâce et de beauté, et il s’exhala de l’endroit des parfums de musc.”[3] Such accounts proved that treasures were to be found when digging in ruins (although in that instance the workmen replaced everything as they found it, taking the hint offered by a violent wind).
The locals cottoned on quickly to the fact that many Western travellers were looking for biblical links, and they were often happy to provide them, some-times for a useful fee. Therefore to the gullibility of those travellers who took the words of the Bible as a literal guide to the ruins they encountered (rather than testing the ruins as perhaps a guide to the Bible), we may add those of the locals which might both help and hinder the work or pleasure of travellers.
Tall stories were often the order of the day, such as for Turner who, in 1820, was shown “the spot where St. George killed the Dragon, and showed me, still running down the walls, what he called the soap with which the saint had washed off the blood of the dragon.”[4] Similarly, Nazareth showed the column against which Gabriel had leant for the Annunciation,[5] straight competition for the Dome of the Rock, between two of the columns of which Gabriel stood
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The Life and Death of Monuments 117 for the same task.[6] Jolliffe was at Nazareth in 1819, and reported the location of the “interview between the angel Gabriel and the wife of Joseph.” The arte-facts (including Joseph’s house) seemed suitably antique, but “the monk who attended to point out the different objects usually held sacred, injured the effect of his narrative by intermixing a fabulous statement of the flight of one part of the edifice to Loretto!”[7] Here was a man not disposed to accept Biblical truth because there were sheep in the Bible and he had seen sheep in Palestine;
his analogy was with the stone jars he saw:
As relics of antiquity they are entitled to some attention; but the authen-ticity of the gospel narrative cannot, surely, be affected by any such evidence: the author, even of a work avowedly fictitious, would hardly describe the usages of any known country otherwise than they were uni-versally recognized to exist at the period of his writing.[8]
Nor were Old Testament heroic deeds omitted from the pilgrim round, for Damer in 1841 sought the “brook from which David is said to have selected the five stones, when he went against Goliath.”[9] Stretching anyone’s credu-lity (and certainly that of Lindsay in 1838) was a visit to the tomb of Noah himself,[10] and Macleod ascended Mount Gerizim, but found questionable the
“twelve stones which Joshua brought from the Jordan.”[11] Fiske in 1857, going from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, remarked on “the identical tree, (possibly two hundred years old,) on which Judas hanged himself.”[12]
Sites with supposed biblical connections were still being shown in the 1870s.
Thus at Nazareth, which had “scarcely any remains of antiquity,” they conjured up “no end of traditional sites into a real existence, for the benefit of such trav-ellers as are inclined to be sentimental. Among these are the ‘Fountain of the Virgin,’ ‘Joseph’s Workshop,’ and many others of a similar nature.”[13] As Saewulf wrote in 1102, the fountain there, still rich in marble, was where Jesus “often drew water for the use of his mother.”[14]
But what about large complexes of ruins? According to Dimashqi the Pyramids were designed as they were in order that they be safe against earthquakes, and were erected before the Deluge specifically “d’y renfermer les manuscrits et les trésors qu’on craignait de perdre à cette occasion.”[15] Treasure was also available at other Egyptian sites, the same author writing of one discovered which filled one hundred date-sacks for transport to Cairo.[16] If most mediaeval and later Muslims were clear about which monu-ments they had not built (cf. section on Locals and Antiquities later in this chapter), they were splendidly ecumenical about who did so, and also about
sharing other religions’ holy sites and objects.1 Solomon was a favourite with everyone, especially for Baalbek.[17] Yakut, writing in 1225, notes that he built Baalbek, “consisting of palaces with marble columns,” and that it was the dowry of the Queen of Sheba.[18] In 1701 Veryard heard about Solomon from Baalbek’s inhabitants, and he described the site as “the Rests of divers stately Buildings, and the Ruins of an ancient Castle.”[19] The stones of Baalbek were so large who but a devil could have raised them into place?[20] Fermanel in 1670 heard the story, but thought Baalbek was Roman.[21] Wood related that everyone in Syria thought Solomon built both Baalbek and Palmyra.[22]
Of course, Solomon did not build Baalbek on his own: he commanded the djinns/genii to do it for him, the aim being to conceal immense treasures (still there!) in the structures’ underground vaults.[23] What about the famous mono-lith in the nearby quarry? The djinns carried the stones but, “being one day offended at something, this stone was dropped in the quarry, and no human strength has been found capable of lifting it since.”[24] Solomon’s father King David was also a builder but, according to Maqdisi, so punctilious about attri-bution that he inscribed the following on a monument of the Ad people: “Nous y sommes descendus, mais nous ne l’avons pas construit; nous l’avons trouvé ainsi bâti. Notre ennemi de Persépolis, nous l’avons culbuté; puis nous le quit-terons pour la Syrie, s’il plaît à Dieu.”[25] Ibn Khaldun countered such notions of djinns and building because “dans ce (faux calcul), on ne tient aucun compte du secours de la mécanique, du treuil et d’autres machines dont l’emploi, en pareil cas, est exigé par l’art de l’ingénieur.”[26] And, in any case, look around:
nous voyons beaucoup de monuments élevés par des hommes qui ont appartenu à des nations dont la taille nous est parfaitement connue, et ces monuments cependant égalent et surpassent même en grandeur ceux (qu’on attribue aux Adites).[27]
According to Maqdisi, the same people were responsible for the ruined towns and villages to be seen far to the north east of Syria.[28]
Some 19th-century Syrians had a sometimes good, sometimes hazy under-standing of their country’s past. In 1858 Graham met the Imam of the Druzes at Qanawat, and together they talked of history:
He told me that in olden times Abraham had lived, and that he spoke Hebrew, then came Izaac who spoke Syriac, then in our Lord’s time Greek
1 Khalek 2011, 85–134 Chap. 3: Icons: John the Baptist and Sanctified Spaces in Early Islamic Syria.
The Life and Death of Monuments 119 was the language of the country, and now all speak Arabic . . . He told me that Job had been a native of his city, and he took me to Job’s house. I asked him who Job was. “O,” said he, “Nabi ‘Ayub (the prophet Job) was a great sheikh, who had, oh! such numbers of oxen and sheep, oh! kitar, a very great number, and he ruled this country.” He seemed to know noth-ing of Job’s misfortunes; nor did he know the names of Job’s friends or anything about them.[29]
He also claimed English was not a (separate) language: it was in fact Turkish.
People like Lady Stanhope seemed to breed superstitions. Walpole was assured in 1851 that “the Bint el Vizier, the vizier’s daughter, four times every year, sent them [her relations] a ship-load of silver.”[30] According to her doc-tor, there also came into her possession a manuscript, “written in Italian, and disclosed the repositories of immense hoards of money, buried in the cities of Ascalon and Sidon, in certain spots therein mentioned.”[31] She dug in both cities, as we shall see.
At the fortress of Merkab by 1850 the local governor (whose father had bought an old 18-pounder from an English merchant ship), wanted an expla-nation of the contents of a sarcophagus lid built into the walls, and relayed to Walpole “a tradition that huge stores of treasure are hid over the door, where they are kept by magic spell.”[32] Probably the lid was inscribed, so this is one of many examples of a local believing that inscriptions gave directions to hiding places; but that only Westerners could decipher them and thereby retrieve the treasure. Seetzen met the same belief in the Hauran in 1805, when a sheikh offered to lead him to a site rich in antiquities, including inscriptions, but Seetzen declined: “Man sprach häufig über meine Absicht, und Manche glaubten, ich würde ihnen nachher alle Inschriftensteine durch Zauberey stehlen.”[33] From the context, it is evident that such sheikhs were convinced Seetzen also believed that inscriptions led to treasure! Another superstition collected by Schumacher in the Jaulan was that inscriptions were holy, because once (re-)built in mosques, which was no less than the truth:
The Fellah who gives any stone of a mosque to a foreigner will be pun-ished for it by Allah, either by death or by a misfortune in his house; and as they consider all architectural remains to have formed portions of old mosques, they decline to give any information about such stones unless they happen to be found in the sites of deserted houses.[34]
Ancient designs needed explaining, and talismans perhaps took the place of tutelary deities. Thus Baalbek had one in the form of a mirror[35] – a widespread
mediaeval magical device. Again, in the 11th century a gate at Maarat al-Numan (73km south of Aleppo) bore an unreadable inscription. This was interpreted as a talisman to prevent scorpions entering the town.[36] At Jerusalem a column decorated with snakes protected inhabitants even after they had been bitten, so long as they did not travel far.[37] A similar talisman worked at Tripoli, wrote Boullaye Le Gouz in 1653, because no scorpion entered the town although out-side there were plenty.[38] The idea of such talismans is pagan, going back to ancient magicians and the symbols they had sculpted, to guard against scorpi-ons and mosquitoes.[39]
In 1909 a Bedouin met what he thought was a djinn, as recounted by Butler.
He was in the Ledja, “Msekeh, a most interesting deserted ruin where there were many hours of work in measuring buildings and copying inscriptions.
There was no sign of inhabitants, and we went about our task in the peace and comfort that only deserted ruins afford.” But then a Bedouin leapt over a wall brandishing a club, but was calmed somewhat by hearing the Expedition’s guide speak Arabic. Why, then, the agression? A misunderstanding:
He had been in search of a stray sheep and, without having seen any sign of human beings in the vicinity, had leaped over a wall to find a creature in strange garb mysteriously examining a written stone. He took this crea-ture for a djinn and, being unable to retreat, had thought best to attack him, fully expecting to be killed.[40]
Treasure-hunting and Locals’ Knowledge of the Past
On n’oseroit aller visiter par curiosité les anciennes ruines des Villes Chasteaux & Eglises à la campagne, de crainte d’estre soupçonnez qu’on y va chercher des thrésors. Quelques Turcs amis me voulant un jour mener dans un lieu souterrain, qu’ils disent estre une Cité abis-mée . . . d’autres m’en dissuadèrent pour la raison que je viens d’alléguer, afin de ne donner point de prise sur nous aux Magistrats, qui venant à le sçavoir ne manqueraient pas de nous mettre en peine, & de nous faire payer une avanie.[41] [1682]
Another common belief amongst locals was that sculptures and inscriptions, as well as just pointing to its location, could sometimes actually contain trea-sure, and that Westerners came to Syria to search it out. This seems to have been perennial, merchants in 1678 recording the astonishment of a local at
The Life and Death of Monuments 121 seeing Franks, the more so “wondering that we travelled thus in the Desart, only out of Curiosity.”[42] No, exclaimed a local at another unnamed site, built by Solomon, that “we understanding the writing on the Pillars, came to seek after Treasure.”[43] Several years later, returning from Palmyra, other merchants recorded the same notion in the heads of the locals, “that the Franks go to see old Ruines, only because they there meet with Inscriptions which direct them to some hid Treasures.”[44] At Jerash in 1829, Fuller was shadowed everywhere by the Bedouin, “and never allowing me to be a moment out of their sight, lest I should appropriate any thing unobserved by them. This perpetual surveil-lance I found very irksome; and I now took the opportunity of stealing out, as I hoped unnoticed, to make another tour of the ruins by myself, and at leisure.
But in this I was disappointed: I had scarcely reached the fountain, when my persecutors overtook me.”[45]
The worst illustration (and part-confirmation) of the belief associat-ing Westerners with treasure was Lady Stanhope, niece to William Pitt the Younger, who lived in the Lebanon. She confirmed that treasure-hunting was the Western aim by allowing her workmen during excavations for antiquites at Ascalon to destroy a handsome colossal lion they uncovered for precisely this reason.[46] The dig, employing 150 workmen for a fortnight, was on the supposed site of the Temple of Astarte, where it was believed a treasure lay buried.[47] There are further details in the account of Ascalon, in Chapter Four.
Everyone must have known that digging amongst ruins could and did unearth treasure. Fabri, writing in the 1480s, knew that this had happened at Athlit, to a set of knights evidently uninterested in old coins and medals, but very well aware of their straight bullion value:
While [the Crusaders] were laying the foundations thereof, an ancient and thick wall was laid bare, into which they dug with iron tools, and found a great plenty of certain golden coins, the inscription and figure whereof was unknown to the moderns, which coins they melted down, and paid their soldiers’ wages with them.[48]
In spite of cogent explanations of the stupidity of announcing the location of hidden treasure,[49] any traveller copying inscriptions was constantly shad-owed by locals who thought him “a confirmed lunatic, if he goes out sketching, and spends his time in spoiling good paper with scratches and hieroglyph-ics; and a magician when inquisitive about ruins, and given to picking up stones and shells, gathering sticks and leaves of bushes, or buying up old bits of copper, iron, and silver.”[50] Burckhardt guarded against such nuisances by
sallying forth with a very small notebook he could conceal under his Arab robes, and enter his memoranda when nobody was looking – but “these restraints were, however, extremely unfavourable to fullness, accuracy, or method in arrangement.”[51] Drummond, in fact HM Consul at Aleppo in 1754–6, sketched at Lattakia to the wonder of the locals who, perhaps mistaking his scarlet coat and sword for the garb of a soldier, did not interfere.[52]
Further east, near Burj el Abiadh [the White Tower, not far from Hama], a Westerner copied Greek inscriptions in peace, and these survived, because
“happily these Fellahin have not the organ of destructiveness so fully devel-oped as their brethren in Palestine.”[53] On the seabord, however, such for-eigners were known for their skill in sniffing out treasure. At Lattakia, Lucas recorded that “Les Francs en ce païs ont la réputation de les sçavoir trouver,”
and he refused to get down into a likely underground vault in case he was kept there.[54] So strong was the belief about treasure-hunters at Lattakia that a landowner would not let an inscribed pillar be unearthed:
Qui sait, avait-il dit, si ces Chrétiens, dont les connaissances leur viennent du diable, ne trouveront pas dans cette écriture l’indication de quelque trésor caché dans mon champ, qu’ils ne manqueront pas de m’enlever furtivement? Qui sait s’ils ne feront pas quelques maléfices qui porteront préjudice à mes plantes et à mes fruits?[55]
One explanation could be that the landowner was suspicious that such a fine piece of building material could disappear, for this town had a whole colon-nade incorporated into its modern houses: “des rangées de belles colonnes de granit gris encore sur pied, mais tellement embarrassées dans la maçonnerie des maisons qu’on y a adossées, qu’il est impossible de juger à quelle sorte d’édifice elles peuvent avoir appartenu.”[56] There had of course been Christians in Syria from the early years of the religion, and locals were clear that churches, just like pagan structures, might contain treasure. When Fletcher visited Idana, near Aleppo, in 1850, and investigated the ruins of the church, the villagers
“asked if we were looking for gold, and whether there really were any treasures buried below.”[57]
Columns certainly contained treasure if they were in drums (witness the iron pins frequently retrieved from such shafts at Baalbek[58]), and such shafts were often disfigured or even ruined for very little return. In 1853 the Turkish general Tadmour Pacha blew up a shaft at Baalbek, but only retrived some 20kg of lead from it; he probably needed the metal for bullets to use against insurgents.[59] According to Ellis, “the drums of the columns are so huge that these miners were unable to get up to the first joint, or many more would have
The Life and Death of Monuments 123 been lying prostrate.”[60] He noticed exactly the same gougings at Palmyra, and for the same reason.[61]
Monuments built by the djinns/genii (that is, most large buildings on most sites?) were frequently held to contain treasure. In 1822 Buckingham was greeted by a peasant at Jerash “who insisted that we were come to take away the hidden treasures of the genii who had built these palaces and castles.”[62] But he was assured the riches were safe, for “a guardian genius, or demon,
Monuments built by the djinns/genii (that is, most large buildings on most sites?) were frequently held to contain treasure. In 1822 Buckingham was greeted by a peasant at Jerash “who insisted that we were come to take away the hidden treasures of the genii who had built these palaces and castles.”[62] But he was assured the riches were safe, for “a guardian genius, or demon,