Hiring an Arab boat at Ayas, we crossed over the Gulf of Scanderoon, passing close to the lagoons near that place, which are very dangerous for navigation; in fact, so much so, that in speaking of it we say in Arabic, “As dangerous as the Black Sea.” They, however, abound in fine turtle, such as would meet with a ready and profitable market in London. We landed at Scanderoon, a wretched and deserted village, surrounded with pestiferous marshes on all sides. The fever was at that period prevalent, so that our stay was limited to a few hours, during which brief interval horses were engaged to carry us to Antioch, and we partook of some slight refreshment at the residence of my friend, Suleiman Bey.
Leaving Scanderoon, or Alesandretta, as it is also called, we rode for upwards of an hour through marshes, and hot, humid, unhealthy ground, till arriving at the foot of the Beilan mountains, we commenced their rather abrupt ascent, and after half an hour’s scrambling and hard work, reached an elevation from which we caught an uninterrupted view of the sea for many miles on either side, and so pushing forward, in three hours we reached the picturesque village of Beilan, which is situated on either side of a high mountain gorge, and is one of those natural barriers which, like Kulek Bughaz, afforded a stronghold in times of disturbance and war to several rebel chiefs, who from these fortresses set at defiance the invading armies from the neighbouring plains: but since the death of Kuchuk Ali Oglu, who so long reigned in terrorem over the peaceful inhabitants of the plains, this class of people have been entirely exterminated; and Beilan, being on the highway from Constantinople to Aleppo, is now inhabited by a civilised though very poor class of Turks and Armenians, whose constant intercourse with Europeans and other merchants has tamed them into honesty, and taught them to respect and fear the prowess of all European nations, more especially the English, of whose fleets they have sometimes caught sight when cruizing about the Gulf, and the roar of whose cannon, echoing from mountain to dell, whispered to them not mildly of the power and valour of that surprising nation.
From Beilan to Aleppo our journey occupied two days and a half; and as we travelled with our own tents, etc., we were entirely independant of such wretched accommodation as is usually afforded to travellers in the villages. Aleppo had much the appearance of Damascus when viewed from the distance. The bright foliage of the trees dotted with occasional domes and terraces—the lofty minarets, and the picturesque hill and castle in the centre, all contributed to render the tableau complete; besides which, around as far as the eye could stretch, the barren and desolate appearance of the mountains made Aleppo stand forth a perfect Oasis in a wilderness. On our arrival we were lodged at the Latin convent, but shortly afterwards removed to hired apartments in Jedida, the Christian quarter of the town, where I had the pleasure of forming the acquaintance of several wealthy native families.
The Aleppines are with truth styled polished; they are innately gentlemen and ladies, from the highest to the lowest; the graceful walk—the well-bred salutation—in short, the whole deportment is such as would well become, and even grace, an English aristocratic re-union. During our stay, Signor Fatallah, a wealthy neighbour, who was likewise proprietor of a silk manufactory, married his son to the daughter of an opulent fellow-townsman; preparations on a grand scale had long been going forward, and amongst a vast concourse of friends and acquaintances invited to celebrate the nuptials, we also were included. The auspicious moment arrived, and we proceeded to Fatallah’s house escorted by a band of native musicians whom we met going there. On arriving at the residence of the bridegroom, we were ushered into a long room in which guests were seated from the door to the upper part according to their rank in life; the chief guests being seated at the head of the divan on either side of the master of the house, others were ranged lower and lower, the poorest guests were close to the doorway, and one or two so poor that they did not even aspire to a place on the divan, but squatted themselves cross-legged on the ground. On the arrival of a fresh guest the master of the house would rise and come forward to receive him; and if, as happened on some occasions, the guest from mock humility would seat himself in a position lower than what his actual rank of precedence entitled him to, an absurd scuffle would ensue, in which the master of the house would endeavour to drag the other higher up into the room, and the guest with many “Stafer Allahs” (God forbid) and many false protestations, would pretend reluctantly to yield to the distinction proferred him, and so gain honour in the sight of the assembled multitude. Such scenes brought vividly to my mind our Lord’s parable about the meek being exalted; and rendered it clearly evident that this etiquette, so strictly adhered to by the natives of all Syria to this present hour, existed in the time of the Redeemer, and has been practised from the Patriarchs downwards. The very costume—the method of salutation—the seats arranged methodically for the guests, all helped to contribute not a little in forcibly recalling to mind several portions of Scripture often read with pleasure in my childhood.
After we had arrived and taken our seats, the musicians struck up some popular and lively Arabic air familiar to the ears of us Syrians, as connected with many pleasant recollections of like spectacles and occasions. Numberless servants were busily occupied in handing to the guests sherbet, pipes, narghilies, and a large assortment of candied and other sweetmeats. As the visitors continued rapidly arriving they were sprinkled by the bridesman with essences, and the scene in the court-yard outside the reception-room assumed a more animated appearance. Groups of young men in gaily-coloured and picturesque coats, were seated in separate circles each possessing a kanun or other instrument players of its own, emulous to surpass the notes of his neighbour. Occasionally one or two men from each circle would stand up and go through the wild but elegant figures of the Bedouin dances, whilst groups of pretty and timid girls, collected in knots round the walls of the house, watched with the deepest interest the wrestling matches of their lovers or brothers, and joined loudly in the plaudits which crowned a successful competitor with the full-blown honours of championship. As the evening advanced, their hilarity increased; strings of servants with heavily-laden trays were seen occasionally crossing the court-yard, bringing quantities of confectionery and other gifts of the friends and relations of the bridegroom, for it is always expected that everyone invited will contribute in some small way to set up the young couple in life. To this intent the presents comprise all sorts of articles, such as handkerchiefs, caps, scarfs, wax-tapers, coffee, sugar, sweet-meats, live fowls, wheat, tobacco, etc. Every one gives his mite; it costs the donor only a trifle, but in the mass very materially assists the newly married pair. This custom of friends sending presents is also adopted upon the accouchment of a lady; her friends, the ensuing week, send her various small presents on trays, such as a couple of roasted chickens, or some delicate tit-bit, well suited to the palate of an invalid. These small civilities are productive of much good will, and really cost nothing, but I wonder what any fashionable lady in London would say, if a friend, under similar circumstances, volunteered to send her a dish of roast fowl. I understand that among the middle and lower classes in England such presents are not unfrequent, though generally in cases not entirely above the reach of want; whereas, with us in Syria, when we have any dish that is particularly nice, or any early fruit that is very choice the custom of sending a portion to our neighbours is observed by all classes alike, as a mark of regard and delicate attention.
But to return to the gay nuptials of our friend, Fatallah’s son, the bridegroom was nowhere visible, neither were there any signs of the fair bride or her attendant nymphs. Towards evening, however, the Greek bishop, marshalled in by three or four priests, made his appearance, and as soon as his reverence had been saluted and seated himself, servants appeared with low round tables, which they set before the guests, and covering them with heavily-laden trays, removed the napkins, and displayed to the hungry multitude the very choice collection of viands that had been cooked for the nuptial dinner.
Richly flavoured soups, aromatic dishes of minced meat, gravies, and numerous other delicacies, both sweet and sour, were all plentifully supplied; the first course consisting chiefly of light dishes, in which vegetables and curdled cream figured in abundance; the second, comprising various kinds of meat; the whole repast terminating with one vast pillaf, kids and lambs roasted whole, and stuffed with pistachio nuts, currants and spices. Before commencing dinner, a small glass of arraki [76] was handed round to the guests; afterwards, an abundant supply of wine of Lebanon was at hand for those who wished to partake of it.
Whilst this festivity was going forward indoors, those outside were not one whit behind in enjoyment. Sheep cooked whole, were set before the musicians and singers; also huge platters of pillaf, which made two men stagger under their weight. At the conclusion of dinner, all the guests were served with basins and ewers of water, and very liberally besprinkled with rose and orange-flower water.
During the repast, the bridegroom, who had entered the room very meanly clad, was conducted by young men, his companions, into an adjoining apartment, and there having been shaved and washed, then stripped of his beggarly rags, he was clothed in splendid bridal attire and led back into the presence of the guests. Here he passed round from one to the other, humbly taking their hands and kissing them, commencing with the bishops and priests, until he had completed the circle; he then received the blessing; after which he was permitted to seat himself upon a low chair placed in the centre of the room, and there, with his head hanging down from feelings of bashfulness, the young man awaited the arrival of the propitious hour. After some little delay, the distant sound of darbekirs and firing off of muskets warned the assembly that the bride had quitted her home for the last time, and was now being escorted with all the pride of Eastern pomp through the streets to the residence of her destined husband. The road chosen on this, as on all similar occasions, is the longest and most circuitous, in order to show that the bride is in no hurry to arrive at the house of her beloved. No sooner did the shouts and acclamations reach the ears of the young men congregated in the court-yards, than these as though inspired by martial music, leapt up from the ground and seizing upon their fire-arms, rushed out into the streets accompanied by drums and other instruments, to be in readiness to receive the bride’s escort, and exchange with them feux de joie of musketry.
Some servants of the house now carried into the reception-room a common low table which was speedily covered with snow-white drapery, and on which were placed the bishop’s mitre, prayer-books, chalices, censers, etc., all to be in readiness for the consecration of the nuptials. The bishop and attendant priests were speedily arrayed in clerical costumes; two small crowns of olive branches richly gilt and decorated with flowers were placed upon the table; and these arrangements had scarcely been completed, when the bride was ushered in by her attendant nymphs, followed by a concourse of friends and relations, having previously thrown some yeast upon the outer door of the house, and broken a pomegranate over it. The former signifying that she is to be attached as closely to her husband as the yeast adheres to the door; while the latter figures that she is to be as fruitful a mother as this fruit is full of seed.
The bride was covered from head to foot in a long, loose veil, white as snow; but of sufficiently thin texture to admit of her features being partly distinguishable, and to show that over her under garments, which were composed of richly embroidered silks and satins, she was literally bespangled with costly gems; large festoons of gold coins encircling her head, and falling over her shoulders, reached to the ground.
The priest now lighted the candles placed on the temporary altar: [78] deacons with censers in their hands went the round of the room, sprinkling benedictions on all around; the bride and bridegroom were duly arranged before the bishops and priests—a bridesman and a bridesmaid stood behind, their right hands resting on the crowns which had now been placed on the heads of the young couple about to be married; the chaunt commenced, and the serious part of the ceremony began. As the nuptials progressed, the bridegroom and bride three times exchanged crowns; then the rings were placed upon the fingers of both, and the bishop made them drink out of the same cup of wine; once did they make the circuit of the altar-table; and then amidst a shower of small silver coins, confectionary, and flowers, which fell like heavy rain all around, the bishop gave his blessing; and the young couple were bound by indissoluble ties from that moment forward, throughout life, as man and wife. The bride was shortly after led away into an antechamber, where she was partly relieved of her many cumbrous veils, and where such of the friends of the family as desired, had a fair opportunity of admiring her pretty face. She then stepped forth and kissed the hands of male intruders, in token of her humble submission to one of their sex from that day forward. [79]
The latter part of the evening was passed much in the same way as the earlier part of the day had been; with music, songs, and dancing. What added much to the general effect, was the numerous variegated lamps and brilliant torches, that cast a light upon and added greatly to the picturesque effect of the various costumes; for by this time many of the European residents were present, in some instances accompanied by their ladies, and some of the military and other officers in the government service, dressed in their respective uniforms. It was near upon midnight when we withdrew, but the festivities were kept up till daybreak; and then the wedding-feast terminated, the gaieties of which had been sustained with hardly any intermission throughout the three preceding days.
Such is the general custom amongst our people; and even the poorest man on such joyful occasions, as they occur only once in a lifetime, will spend his last piastre in endeavours to make the ceremony as brilliant an affair as he can. When a widower or widow is married, all these rejoicings are abandoned—the simple nuptial ceremony, in the presence of a few relatives, is all that is expected or in fact deemed decorous; and this arises from a very honourable notion, that the memory of a deceased partner should be held in religious esteem; so as to prevent the outraging the feelings of their relatives upon the occasion of entering a second time into that estate, by any display or great rejoicing: indeed a man or a woman is supposed to marry a second time purely from motives of mutual advantage; to be a helpmate to each other, especially in the case of a man having had a family by his first wife, in which case, the children are often unavoidably neglected, as the husband’s occupations preclude the possibility of his devoting much time or thought to their welfare. A stepmother in Syria is not a proverb of harshness; stepmothers in that country, in direct contrariety to what is believed to be the case in Europe, are affectionate and kind to their step-children; and even in such rare instances as that of a man marrying again, when his first wife’s children are already nearly grown up, even then perfect harmony reigns between the different members of the family, for filial respect is so powerfully inculcated in a young Syrian’s breast, that however young the stepmother may be, she is always looked up to and respected as the wife of a father; and with regard to the wife herself, the rule acts the same, only vice versa, the children are regarded as the children of her husband; and however many children a second wife may have, the first one’s always claim the precedence. It is indispensable amongst all Syrian families, that every member should know and keep his or her respective place, and quarrels on this score are seldom if ever known.
We remained long enough in Aleppo to become familiar with all its quarters, Christian, Jewish, and European; the latter reside principally at Kittab, a pleasant little hamlet of neatly constructed houses, which dates after the period of the shocking earthquake in 1822—an event which so alarmed the populace that for many weeks afterwards they thought themselves insecure within the walls of the city, many of the massive houses, though built upon arches, having given way, carrying everything before them, and crushing alike inmates and passers-by in the streets. Aleppo is perhaps the most fashionable town in the East, not even excepting Damascus. The fashions change there as often almost as they do in Paris, and all the young ladies are as particular about their dress as the more aristocratic belles in the North; the result of all this is, that an Aleppine lady proves usually an expensive wife; but I must acknowledge, that their extreme neatness, the snowy-white veils, and gaily-coloured tunics, add much to the picturesque appearance of the gardens on festive days, when the whole population throngs these favourite places of resort as much for air and exercise as from a wish to shew themselves, as it is only on this day many of them have an opportunity of escaping from the narrow and confined streets of the city.
“Shamm al Hawa,” is a favourite expression of Aleppines, for they dearly love the open country, and delight to rove amongst trees and flowers; Aleppo is a country I should have great hopes for with regard to the success of missionary labour. The Aleppines are too courteous to mock at or hold in derision the tenets of any man, or to interrupt a man when he speaks, nor indeed to listen inattentively. Many amongst them are naturally intelligent: and did any schools or institutions exist from which their families might derive any clear and indisputable benefit—education for their children—instruction in any arts or sciences—physic and medical attendance for the sick and poverty-stricken (they are by no means an ungrateful people), their attention would most assuredly be arrested by such attentions to their own and their townsmen’s wants, and they would be brought to reflect that such kind benefactors must be trustworthy people, and people that love truth.
The last Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society gives the population of Aleppo to be 90,000 souls, of which number 19,000 are said to be Christians of various denominations, and yet there was only one Protestant missionary on the spot; the Rev. Mr. Benton having been obliged to revisit America for the benefit of his health. When it is considered that at Aintab, a considerable town, only a day distant from Aleppo, the efforts of a single missionary, the Rev. Dr. Smith, of the American mission, have been crowned with unprecedented success, and that chiefly amongst the Armenians, of whom there are also numbers established in Aleppo, it cannot but be regretted that so favourable a field should be neglected. The fact of this missionary being also a physician is another proof in support of what I shall endeavour to prove in a subsequent chapter, namely, the advantages derivable from the wide establishment of Medical Missions, a subject which I trust, under the Almighty blessing, will attract the attention of the Christian inhabitants of Great Britain.
Few towns in the East can rival Aleppo in a commercial sense. Every resident is more or less of a speculator; and thousands have lost and gained a fortune in the failures or successes of mercantile speculations. Even the women are imbued with this spirit of enterprise; and the female broker is no inconsiderable person in a merchant’s appreciation. She penetrates into the restricted precincts of the harem, and displays, to the admiring gaze of its fair secluded inmates, jewels and tinselled fineries, such as would barely merit a moment’s pause or attention in the over-crowded bazaars, but when presented by themselves, prove an inducement to purchase; and this is a means of no small profit, above all to the poorer class of speculators who are obliged to restrict their purchases to their very limited means. Even children hawk about minor commodities, and little urchins who have scarcely a rag to cover their nudity, will offer to the stranger carefully hoarded up bits of glass and old coins picked up in some of the most deserted and ruinous portions of the city, hoping that amongst them a valuable antique may invite his attention.
We left Aleppo after a prolonged stay, and mounting our horses joined a caravan loaded with produce for the supply of the Antioch market. The first few hours, after leaving Aleppo, our road lay over a rocky pathway difficult to ride over, bleak and monotonous in the extreme; but soon the glorious plains of the Amuk spreading before us as far as the eye could reach, burst like a splendid panorama on our gaze. We rapidly descended to their level, and the remainder of our first day’s journeying was over a flat country, whose natural prolific soil, interspersed as it was at short distances with small tributary streams, would have been a sight to gladden the heart of any emigrant who should seek for rich pasturages for his cattle—abundant harvest of wheat and barley—rich orchards and valuable plantations.
All these doubtless once existed at a time when the ruined cities, portions of whose past grandeur still remain to gratify the curious antiquarian, were in their zenith; indeed tradition reports the whole of this extensive plain (which it took us two days’ hard riding to traverse), at its narrowest breadth, to have been once an extensive forest, in some parts almost impenetrable. Now there is hardly a tree to be seen; immense pasturages and fields stretch on every side, and numbers of horses, cattle, and sheep, browse on the luxuriant herbage. We arrived on the third day at the Gessir il Haded, or iron bridge, where we first crossed the Orontes, and after skirting the river for a few minutes, struck off on a wide pathway leading over a mountainous country, richly dotted with trees, and verdant with wild thyme and lavender. Small herds of gazelles, startled from their resting-places by the echo of our horses’ tramp, darted across our pathway, and sought refuge on the further side of the many lofty hills that now surrounded us. The Orontes, in its meandering course, occasionally took a sweep and glided close under our elevated pathway; by and bye we closed in with the river; myriads of water-fowl and other game flew over our heads. There was a stately old ruined castle, on a bleak isolated hill; we passed under its deserted battlements, and in ten minutes afterwards were riding through the streets of the once famed city of Antioch.
