THE long narrow strip of country on the east shore of the Mediterranean, which in a manner was the centre of the ancient world, has in all ages been a land of pilgrimage. For five hundred miles it stretches from the deserts of Sinai to the rugged Taurus, and its width, shut in between the Syrian deserts and the sea, is rarely more than fifty miles. It can never be quite the same to us as other lands, bound up as it is with our earliest memories, with the Bible and the story of the faith; and it is to the credit of our native land that we have been the first to gather that complete account of the country, of its ancient remains, and of its present inhabitants, which (if we except India) does not exist in equal exactness for any other Eastern land.

The oldest explorer of Palestine—if we do not reckon Abraham—was the brave King Thothmes III., who marched his armies throughout its whole length on his way towards Euphrates. Many are the pilgrims and conquerors who have followed the same great highways along which he went. When, in the early Christian ages, the land became sacred to Europe, the patient pilgrims of Italy, and even of Gaul, journeyed along the shores of Asia Minor, and sometimes were able to reach the Holy City, and to bring back to their homes some account of the country; while in later ages the pilgrims came not singly, but in hosts continually increasing, and finally as crusaders, colonists, and traders.

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PALESTINE AND PART OF SYRIA ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY, c. 100 A.D.
PALESTINE AND PART OF SYRIA ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY, c. 100 A.D.

The literature of Palestine exploration begins, therefore, with the establishment of Christianity. Before that date we have very little outside the Bible except in the works of Josephus, whose descriptions, though at times unreliable as regards measurement, are invaluable as the accounts of an eye-witness of the state of the country before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. We have scattered notes in the Talmud, in Pliny, in Ptolemy,[1] in Strabo, and in other classic works, which have been collected by the care of Reland and of later writers; but it was only when the Holy Land became a land of pilgrimage for Christians that itineraries and detailed accounts of its towns and holy places began to be penned.

The Bordeaux pilgrim[2] actually visited Jerusalem while Constantine’s basilica was being built over the supposed site of the Holy Sepulchre, and in Palestine his brief record of stations and distances is expanded into notes on the places which he found most revered by Syrian Christians. In the same reign, Eusebius, the historian of the Church, constructed an Onomasticon, which answered roughly to the modern geographical gazetteer. His aim—and that of Jerome, who rather later rendered this work from Greek into Latin, adding notes of his own—was to identify as far as possible the places mentioned in the Old and New Testaments with places existing in the country as known to themselves. This work is both scholarly and honest in intention, but the traditions on which Eusebius and Jerome relied have not in all cases proved to be reconcilable with the Biblical requirements as studied by modern science. The Onomasticon is, however, of great importance as regards the topography of Palestine in the fourth century, and has often led to the recovery of yet more ancient sites, which might otherwise have been lost. Jerome had an intimate personal knowledge, not only of the country round Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where he lived so long, but also of the whole of Western Palestine. Places east of Jordan are noticed in the Onomasticon, but that region was less perfectly known to the Christian co-authors of this work. In the fourth century the Roman roads were marked by milestones, and thus the distances given by Eusebius and Jerome are actual, and not computed distances. Measurement on the Survey map, which shows these milestones whereever they remain by the roadside, proves that for the most part the Onomasticon distances are very correct, and the sites of places so described can, as a rule, be recovered with little difficulty.

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A SECTION OF PEUTINGER’S TABLE.
A SECTION OF PEUTINGER’S TABLE.

The Peutinger Tables, representing the Roman map of Palestine about 393 A.D., give us also the distances along these roads; but the knowledge of the map-maker as to the region east of Jordan was most imperfect, and the map, which presents no latitudes or longitudes, is much distorted. To the same century belongs Jerome’s elegant letter on the travels of his pious friend Paula, which is, however, but a slight sketch, more remarkable for its eloquence and fanciful illustration of Scripture than for topographical description.[3]

A short tract—very valuable, however, to the student of Jerusalem topography—was penned by Eucherius in the fifth century; and in the sixth we have the account by Theodorus (or Theodosius) of the Holy Land in the days of Justinian.[4] The eulogistic record by Procopius of the buildings of Justinian also gives accounts and references to the names of his monasteries and churches in Palestine, which are of considerable use.[5] In the same reign also (about 530 A.D.) Antoninus Martyr[6] set forth from Piacenza, and journeyed to Constantinople, Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine. He even crossed the Jordan and went through the Sinaitic desert to Egypt. Like the Bordeaux pilgrim, Antoninus was a firm believer in the apocryphal Gospels, which already began to be held in high estimation. The former pilgrim repeats stories from the Gospel of the Hebrews; the latter, in addition, refers to the Gospel of the Infancy; but, in spite of the superstitious tone of the narrative of Antoninus, his itinerary is valuable, because it covers the whole region west of Jordan, and contains notes of contemporary custom and belief which are of great antiquarian interest.

The conquest of Palestine by Omar did not by any means lead to the closing of the country to Christians. One of the best known and most detailed accounts of the Holy Land written up to that time was taken down from the lips of the French Bishop Arculphus[7] by Adamnan, Bishop of Iona, about 680 A.D., in the monastery of Hy. It appears that Arculph was in Palestine during the reign of Mu’awÎyeh, the first independent Khalif of Syria ruling in Damascus, and the same policy of toleration and peace which was inaugurated by this ruler enabled St. Willibald in 722 A.D.[8] to journey through the whole length of the land. These writers are concerned chiefly in description of the holy places, which increased in number and in celebrity from century to century. Arculphus constantly interrupts his narrative with pious legends, much resembling those of the modern Roman Catholic guide-books to Palestine, though some of the sites which were correctly identified by these early Christian pilgrims were transferred by the Latin priests of the twelfth century to impossible localities, where they are still in some cases shown to Latins, while the older tradition survives among the Greek Christians. We often encounter an interesting note in these pilgrim diaries, such as Arculphus’ description of the pine-wood north of Hebron, now represented by but a few scattered trees. St. Willibald seems to have been regarded as a harmless hermit, who, when once the object of his journey was understood, was allowed by the “Commander of the Faithful” to travel in peace throughout the land.

In the reign of Charlemagne good political relations existed between that monarch and the Khalif of Baghdad, HarÛn er RashÎd. The keys of Jerusalem were presented to the Western monarch, who founded a hospice for the Latins in that city. About half a century later, at the time when Baghdad was at the height of its glory as a centre of literature and civilisation, Bernard, called the Wise,[9] with two other monks, one Italian, the other Spanish, visited the Holy Land from Egypt, and they were able to obtain permits which were respected by the local governors.

The rise of the Fatemites in Egypt altered materially the status of the Christians in Syria. We have no known Christian account of Palestine between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hakem, the mad Khalif of Egypt, destroyed the Christian churches in Jerusalem in 1010 A.D., and the country seems to have been then closed to pilgrims.

During this period, however, we have at least two important works, namely, that of El Mukaddasi (about 985 A.D.), and the journey of Nasir i Khusrau in 1047 A.D.[10] El Mukaddasi (“the man of Jerusalem”) was so named from his native town, his real name being Shems ed DÎn. He describes the whole of Syria, its towns and holy places (or Moslem sanctuaries), its climate, religion, commerce, manners and customs, and local marvellous sights. The legends are no less wonderful than those of his monkish predecessors, but his notes are often of great historical interest, and he is the earliest writer as yet known who plainly ascribes the building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to its real author, the Khalif ’Abd el Melek. It is remarkable that he speaks of the Syrian Moslems as living in constant terror of the Greek pirates, who descended on the coasts and made slaves of the inhabitants, whom they carried off to Constantinople. The Christians were still, he says, numerous in Jerusalem, and “unmannerly in public places.” The power of the Khalifs was indeed at this time greatly shaken by the schisms of Islam, and the Greek galleys invaded the ports, which had to be closed by iron chains. The Samaritans appear to have flourished at this time as well as the Jews, and the Samaritan Chronicle, which commences in the twelfth century, speaks of this sect as very widely spread even earlier, in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.

Abu Muin NÂsir, son of Khusrau, was born near Balkh, and journeyed through Media and Armenia by Palestine to Cairo, thence to Mecca and Basrah, and back through Persia to Merv and Balkh, the whole time spent being seven years. He gives good general accounts of Jerusalem, Hebron, and other places, though his description does not materially add to our information.

The rise of the Seljuks boded little good to Syria. Melek Shah in 1073 A.D. conquered Damascus, and by the end of the century Jerusalem groaned under the Turkish tyranny. It was at this time—just before the conquest of the Holy City, which had been wrested from the Turks by the Egyptians—that Foucher of Chartres began his chronicle of the first Crusade, which contains useful topographical notes. The great history of the Latin Kingdom by William of Tyre is full of interesting information as to the condition of the country under its Norman rulers (1182-85 A.D.), and to this we must add the Chronicles of Raymond d’Agiles and Albert of Aix, which belong to the time of the first Crusade.[11]

Two other early works of the Crusading period are of special value. SÆwulf[12] visited the Holy Land in 1102 A.D., before the building of most of the Norman castles and cathedrals; and the Russian Abbot Daniel, whose account has only recently been translated into English,[13] is believed to have arrived as early as 1106 A.D. From Ephesus he went to Patmos and Cyprus, and thence to Jerusalem and all over Western Palestine. His account is one of the fullest that we possess for the earliest Crusading period. In the middle of the twelfth century we have the topographical account by Fetellus,[14] which refers to places not generally described; and rather later we have the valuable descriptions by Theodoricus and John of Wirzburg,[15] while only two years before Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, John Phocas[16] wrote a shorter account in Greek upon silk, which is interesting as the work of a Greek ecclesiastic at a time when the Latins were the dominant sect. The names of monasteries in the Jordan Valley, otherwise unnoticed, are recoverable in his account.

Much interesting topographical information of this period is to be found in the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre,[17] which gives striking evidence of the rapidly increasing possessions of the Latin Church, due to the gifts and legacies of kings and barons. The cartularies of the great orders and the laws contained in the Assizes of Jerusalem are equally important to an understanding of Palestine under the rule of its feudal monarchs. It is possible to reconstruct the map of the country at this period in a very complete manner from such material.[18]

The Jews were not encouraged in Syria by the Normans. Benjamin of Tudela, however, made his famous journey from Saragossa in 1160, and returned in 1173 after visiting Palestine, Persia, Sinai, and Egypt; he was interested in the “lost tribes,” whom the mediÆval Jews recognised in the Jewish kingdom of the Khozars in the Caucasus, and his account of Palestine is a valuable set-off to those of the Christian visitors.[19] We have pilgrimages by Rabbis in later centuries, viz., Rabbi Bar Simson in 1210 A.D., Rabbi Isaac Chelo of Aragon in 1334, and others of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.[20] These refer chiefly to the holy cities of the Jews, especially to Tiberias and Safed in Galilee, and record visits to the tombs of celebrated Rabbis, many of which are still preserved, and some yet visited by the Jews of Palestine. Several important points regarding early Christian and Talmudic topography are cleared up by these works.

One of the favourite accounts of the Holy City and of Palestine at the time of its conquest by Saladin was written by an unknown author, and was reproduced in the thirteenth century in the Chronicle of Ernoul.[21] There are many manuscripts of this, as of earlier works, which were preserved in the monasteries of Europe, and recopied by students who seem to have had little idea of the importance of preserving the original purity of their text. Some of the versions are mere abstracts, some are supplemented by paraphrases from Scripture. The original work known as the Citez de Jherusalem was evidently penned by one who had long lived in the Holy City, and knew every street, church, and monastery. He gives us the Frankish names for the streets, and the topography is easily traced in the modern city. There are perhaps few towns which are better known than Jerusalem in the latter part of the twelfth century A.D., and the varying manuscripts throw an interesting light on the way in which errors and variations crept into a popular work before the invention of printing.

The vivid and spirited chronicle of the campaigns of Richard Lion-Heart by Geoffrey de Vinsauf (1189-1192 A.D.) informs us of the condition of the maritime region, and describes a part of Palestine which few have visited, between Haifa and Jaffa, as well as the region east of Ascalon and as far south as the border of Egypt. The topography of this chronicle I studied on the ground with great care in 1873-75. The charming pages of Joinville, though of great interest as describing the unfortunate Crusade of St. Louis in 1256 A.D., contain much less of geographical value than the preceding.[22]

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MAP OF MARIN SANUTO.
MAP OF MARIN SANUTO.

In the fourteenth century men’s minds were often occupied with schemes for the recovery of the Holy Places. Marino Sanuto, a Venetian noble, who is said to have travelled in the East, wrote an elaborate work on the subject, which he presented to Pope John in 1321. The greater part is taken up with his views as to the military steps necessary for an expedition against the Saracens, but a very full gazetteer of Palestine, with a map, is also introduced into the work. Some have doubted whether Marino Sanuto ever visited Palestine. His information is, however, very correct on the whole, and his account of roads, springs, and other features appears to be founded on reliable observation.

During the transition period of the struggle between Christendom and Islam, Palestine had narrowly escaped the horrors of a Mongol invasion. Mangu Khan, to whom St. Louis had sent the mild and pious William de Rubruquis at his distant capital of Karakorum (in Mongolia) in 1253, was defeated by the Egyptian Sultan Kelaun, successor of the terrible Bibars, in 1280, and had already been defeated in 1276 by Bibars himself near La Chamelle (now Homs) in Northern Syria. A very interesting letter has lately been published by Mr. Basevi Sanders from Sir Joseph de Cancy in Palestine to Edward the First in England,[23] written in 1281, and describing the later defeat near Le Lagon (the Lake of Homs), which saved the country from the cruelty from which other lands were then suffering. The Mameluk Sultans ruled in Palestine down to 1516 A.D., when the Turkish Selim overthrew their power at Aleppo, since which time Palestine has been a Turkish province. During the three centuries of Mameluk rule there are many descriptions, Christian and Moslem, of the country, and the well-known Travels of Sir John Mandeville are among the earliest. He was a contemporary of Marino Sanuto, and although those portions of the work (with which he consoled his rheumatic old age) that refer to more distant lands are made up from various sources, going back to the fables of Pliny and Solinus, still the account of Palestine itself appears to be original, and contains passages (such as that which relates to the fair held near Banias) which show special knowledge of the country. In 1432 Sir Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, with other knights, made an adventurous journey through the whole length of the country, and through Northern Syria and Asia Minor to Constantinople.[24] To the same period belongs John Poloner’s description, which shows us how tenaciously the Latin monks held to their possessions in the Holy Land.[25]

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THE HOLY LAND, FROM THE ATLAS OF ORTELIUS, c. 1591.
THE HOLY LAND, FROM THE ATLAS OF ORTELIUS, c. 1591.

In the fifteenth century we have Moslem accounts by KemÂl ed DÎn and Mejr ed DÎn, which are of value in tracing the architectural history of Jerusalem. Mejr ed DÎn was Kady of the city, and his topographical account, though brief, is minutely detailed.[26] Among other Christian travellers of this century, Felix Fabri (1483-84), a Dominican monk, has left one of the best accounts. But how little these later Christian pilgrims contributed to enlarging our exact knowledge of Palestine may be judged of from such a map as that contributed by Christian Schrot to the Atlas of Ortelius, a map very decidedly inferior to that supplied more than two centuries earlier by Marino Sanuto.

Of travellers who visited Palestine during the early Turkish period, the first in importance is the shrewd and moderate Maundrell (1697 A.D.).[27] He was chaplain of the English factory at Aleppo, which dated back to the time of Elizabeth, and the account of his travels shows that it was more difficult to traverse Palestine in his days than to penetrate into Eastern Mongolia in the days of Rubruquis and Marco Polo. Among the tyrannical chiefs of various small districts who robbed and annoyed him was Sheikh Shibleh near Jenin, whose tomb is now a sacred shrine on the hill above Kefr Kud. Of this holy man he records that “he eased us in a very courteous manner of some of our coats, which now (the heat both of the climate and season increasing upon us) began to grow not only superfluous but burdensome.”

In these early days travelling was perilous, and, as a rule, only possible in disguise. In 1803 the journey of Seetzen was specially valuable, and the travels of the celebrated Burckhardt followed soon after in 1809-16. Both these explorers died in the East before their self-allotted tasks were complete. In 1816 Buckingham (still remembered by the elder generation as a gallant explorer) visited Palestine, and in 1817 Irby and Mangles made an adventurous journey in the country east of the Jordan. Their account is still valuable for this region. From that time forward the accounts of personal visits to the country become too numerous to be here recorded. The names of Bartlett, Wilson, TÖbler, Thomson, Lynch, De Saulcy, Van de Velde, Williams, and Porter are among the better known of those who preceded or were contemporary with the celebrated Robinson.

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PORTRAIT OF DR. EDWARD ROBINSON (Born 1794, Died 1863).
PORTRAIT OF DR. EDWARD ROBINSON (Born 1794, Died 1863).

But it was only in 1838 that really scientific exploration of Palestine began with the journey of the famous American (Dr. Robinson), whose works long continued to be the standard authority on Palestine geography, and whose bold and original researches have been so fully confirmed by the excavations and explorations of the last twenty years.

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PORTRAIT OF SIR CHARLES WILSON. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox, Piccadilly.
PORTRAIT OF SIR CHARLES WILSON.
From a Photograph by Maull & Fox, Piccadilly.

To this same period, preceding actual surveys, belongs the work of De VogÜÉ, whose monographs on the Temple, the Dome of the Rock, the churches of Palestine, and his splendid volume of plates for Northern Syrian architecture, together with his collection and decipherment of various early inscriptions in the country, give him the highest rank as an Orientalist. With his name must be coupled that of Waddington, who first attempted to form a corpus of Greek texts from inscriptions found in Palestine, while the standard authority on Phoenician and Hebrew texts is the recently published corpus of Semitic inscriptions by Renan.

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PORTRAIT OF SIR C. WARREN.
PORTRAIT OF SIR C. WARREN.

Sir C. W. Wilson’s survey of Jerusalem and travels in Palestine in 1864-66, and his subsequent exploration of the Sinaitic desert in 1867, roused public attention to the neglected state of Palestine geography, leading to the execution for the Palestine Exploration Fund of the wonderful excavations by Sir C. Warren at Jerusalem. These excavations round the walls of the old Temple area, carried out in the teeth of fanatic and political obstruction, have enabled us to replace the weary controversies of half a century ago by the actual results of measurement and scientific exploration. Sir Charles Wilson’s already published survey of the Holy City, his reconnaissances throughout the length of the Palestine watershed, preceding his Sinai Expedition, his survey of the Sea of Galilee, and his exact determination of the level of the Dead Sea, 1292 feet below the Mediterranean, were the first efforts of modern science to supply really valuable statistics concerning Palestine itself. The shafts and tunnels of Sir Charles Warren were the first serious attempts of the engineer to place our knowledge of Jerusalem on an equal footing with that which had been in like manner attained at Nineveh and Babylon some twenty years before.

It was by the advice of these experienced explorers that the survey of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba, and from the Jordan to the Great Sea, was undertaken, a work which commenced in 1872, was completed in the field in 1877, but not fully published till 1882. It is with this work that the present volume is chiefly concerned, since it was my good fortune to conduct the parties almost from the first, and to carry out the publication of the maps and memoirs. It had first been intended that Captain Stewart, R.E., should have commanded the party, but that officer was unfortunate in falling ill almost at once on reaching the field of work; and it was through the kindness of the late Major Anderson, R.E., the comrade of Sir Charles Wilson in Palestine, that my name was brought forward as one who had been deeply interested in the work of previous explorers, and who desired to act as Captain Stewart’s assistant. By the sudden illness of that officer, the non-commissioned officers were left in Palestine without a military superior; and as my military education at Chatham had just been completed, I was fortunate in being selected, at the age of not quite twenty-four years, to the command of the Survey Expedition.

Since the completion of the survey of Western Palestine, the survey of Moab, Gilead, and Bashan has been commenced. In 1881 I set out in charge of a small party, hoping to finish this new enterprise in about three years’ time. But alas! I found much change in Syria during the interval of my absence. The suspicions of the Sultan were aroused; the Turkish Government refused to believe in the genuineness of our desire to obtain antiquarian knowledge. Political intrigues were rife, and after struggling against these difficulties for fifteen months, after surveying secretly about five hundred square miles of the most interesting country east of the Dead Sea, and after vainly attempting to obtain the consent of the Sultan to further work, it became necessary to recall the party in the same year in which the researches of Mr. Rassam in Chaldea were suspended and a general veto placed on all systematic exploration.

Since that year, however, a little work has been done from time to time by residents in communication with the Home Society. Herr Schumacher, a young German colonist, has made some excellent maps of parts of Bashan, and Dr. Hull has explored the geology of the district south of the Dead Sea, while further discoveries have even been made in Jerusalem by Herr Konrad Schick, who has recovered part of the second wall and one of the important pools (the Piscina Interior) in the north-east corner of the city.

The most interesting result of Herr Schumacher’s journeys have been the discovery of the sites of Hippos and Kokaba east of the Sea of Galilee, and of dolmen centres like those which I found in Moab.

The task with which I am charged is, however, to give a general account of the exploration of Palestine conducted by the parties under my command; and taking the subject roughly in the order of date of survey, I hope to show that not only in a geographical sense, but also as a contribution to the true understanding of the ancient history of the East, our labours were not in vain, and our method was such as to give exhaustive results.

In concluding this introductory sketch, I should wish to point out that the Palestine of 1889 is not the Palestine which I entered in 1872. Partly on account of the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, partly because of political changes, the number of travellers has enormously increased. In 1873 it was possible to visit villages where the face of a Frank had never been seen, but now even the Arabs beyond Jordan are often brought in contact with Europeans. Such a chance of studying the archaic manners of the peasantry and the natural condition of the nomadic Arabs as we enjoyed cannot now recur. For six years I lived entirely among the peasantry, but since then war, cruel taxation, and the rapacity of usurers has broken up and ruined the peasant society as it existed fifteen years ago. In 1882 I saw only too plainly the change that had come over the land. The Palestine of the early years of the Survey hardly now exists. The country is a Levantine land, where Western fabrics, Western ideas, and even Western languages, meet the traveller at every point. In the present pages I have attempted to give some idea of the country as it was in the last years of its truly Oriental condition, with a peasantry as yet hardly quite tamed by the Turk, and regions as yet hardly traversed by the European explorer.