AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH
In Arabia the Old Testament law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, still holds good; complicated feuds drag on for centuries. A murderer can rarely escape the death penalty; it is almost impossible for him to avoid being found by the murdered man’s relatives somewhere in the desert sooner or later. His only chance is to relinquish tent-dwelling and become a townsman; and since the Bedouin regards people who live in villages and cities as greatly inferior to him, he can seldom bring himself to such an indignity.
Photograph: LAWRENCE’S MOUNTAIN GUNS IN ACTION
Photograph: LAWRENCE’S MOUNTAIN GUNS IN ACTION
Photograph: LAWRENCE CONFERS WITH ARAB NATIONALISTS LEADERS FROM BAGDAD AND DAMASCUS
Photograph: LAWRENCE CONFERS WITH ARAB NATIONALISTS LEADERS FROM BAGDAD AND DAMASCUS
A peculiar feature of Arabian unwritten law is that for purposes of retribution no distinction is drawn between accidental and intentional manslaughter. If one Bedouin kills another, whether by chance or design, it is customary for him to flee and send regrets and explanations back by courier. Lawrence’s body-guard was involved in an affair of this sort. During a raid an Arab climbed through the window of a railway station and attempted to open the door from the inside. Meanwhile, some of his companions were trying to batter it open from without. One of them fired his rifle through a panel, and when the door finally was forced, the man who had entered through the window was lying dead. The Bedouin who had fired the shot immediately dashed through the crowd, jumped on his horse, and galloped off. Now, it is the custom that the slayer may avoid the penalty of death by paying damages if the lost man’s relatives are willing to accept money in lieu of life. In this case the guards collected among themselves a sum of £100, which they sent to the relatives, and all was well. The rate of exchange on an ordinary life varies from £100 to £500. This particular fellow was rather a bad lot, and so his companions of the bodyguard thought £100 was ample. Shereefs (members of the Prophet’s family) have a far higher blood value than other Arabs. Having killed one of them, a slayer must forfeit not less than £1000, unless he has arranged a bargain price with his victim’s family before committing the deed.
Lawrence never met a case of treachery against himself among the tribes with whom he established friendly relations, and even among unfriendly tribes he encountered only one serious violation of the laws of hospitality. Alone he had passed through the Turkish lines for a tour of inspection among the enemy’s camps. He called on a chieftain of the Beni-Sakr, a tribe which had been coöperating with the Turks and Germans. The sheik broke the unwritten law of the desert and attempted to double-cross his guest. He sent a courier to some Turkish forces that were ten miles distant and, in the meantime, attempted to persuade Lawrence to remain in his tent. His intention was to betray his valuable visitor and claim the £50,000 reward offered for the capture of the “uncrowned king of Arabia.” But Lawrence’s uncanny insight into the minds of Orientals caused him to surmise that there was villainy afoot, and he hurriedly left the Beni-Sakr camp. The fate that befell the sheik of the Beni-Sakr is instructive. Although he was one of the leaders of a tribe considered hostile to the Arabs coöperating with Lawrence, his own people gave him a cup of poisoned coffee because he had been treacherous to a guest. The people of the Beni-Sakr felt themselves disgraced by the act of their sheik.
The strict observance of the rules of desert hospitality is almost a religion. If in his own district an Arab has a man at his mercy and is about to kill him, the victim can usually save himself by saying “dakhilak,”an Arab word implying, “I have taken refuge with you,” or, “I am in your tent and at your coffee-hearth as your guest.” Among the Bedouins the protection is a sacred obligation. The meaning of this magic word“dakhilak”is one of the points of difference between the nomads of Arabia and the town Arabs of Syria. The Syrian uses it as a variation of “please,” which to a Bedouin is a ghastly breach of etiquette.
In the gigantic task that he set himself, Lawrence had to win the adherence not only of the wandering tribesmen but of the less reliable Arabs of the towns and villages. He accomplished this by taking into account the many differences between the two types, and using correspondingly different methods. The Bedouin is of a pure breed and to-day lives in much the same manner as he did three thousand years ago when Abraham and Lot were wandering patriarchs. The townsman, a mixture of all races in the East, has many a bar sinister in his racial ancestry. The nomad is a sportsman, a lover of personal liberty, and a natural poet. The villager is often indolent, dirty, untrustworthy, and entirely mercenary. There are even differences in the every-day observances of life; in the form of salutation, for instance. The townsman shows his respect for shereefs and other notables by kissing the hand, but the Bedouin considers such action undignified and only performs it when he wishes to convey the deepest reverence.
Although Lawrence received support from many town Arabs, it was primarily the Bedouin who, under the guidance of Lawrence and Feisal, carried the Arabian revolution from small, localized beginnings to glorious success. The Bedouin passion for raiding and looting was a valuable asset in the guerrilla campaign against the Turks. But the true Bedouin is nearly always content with booty and abhors the sight of blood. He will rob but will not otherwise abuse a stranger.
The pure Arabs of the desert belong to a race that has one of the oldest forms of civilization. They had a philosophy and literature when the inhabitants of the British Isles were undeveloped savages. They are one of the few peoples of the world whom the Romans failed to conquer. Their primitiveness is due to the necessity of leading a nomadic life, as they are obliged to follow their herds from place to place in search of grass and water. They are wanderers on the face of the earth; creatures who trek behind their camels across the sand-dunes, who sleep under starry skies, and who live as their forefathers lived when the human race was young.
Both the regulars and the irregulars in the Arabian army were paid wages just the same as other Allied troops in other parts of the world. They received their pay in gold coin, all of which was supplied by the British Government. Lawrence usually had a bag or two of sovereigns in his tent, and whenever a sheik came in and asked for money, Lawrence would tell him to help himself. He allowed them to keep all that they could take out of the bag in one handful. A swarthy two-fisted Howeitat giant dropped in for a cup of coffee and a cigarette one morning. In the richly ornamented language of the people of the black tents he reminded Lawrence of the valuable assistance that he had been rendering King Hussein. Lawrence took the thinly veiled hint, and, pointing to his gold bag in one corner, he asked his guest to help himself. The sheik broke all records by picking up one hundred and forty-three sovereigns in one hand!
The nomad tribes are amazed at the sordid lack of hospitality in the towns. They despise their settled kinsmen for their selfishness. In older times, just as to-day, the Arabs prided themselves on four things: their poetry, their eloquence, their horsemanship, and then hospitality. Among Arab legends are many which glorify and keep alive the tradition of hospitality. One concerns three men who were disputing in the sacred mosque of the Kaaba as to who was the most liberal person in Mecca. One extolled the virtues of a certain Abdullah, the son of the nephew of Jaafar, the uncle of Mohammed. Another praised the generosity of Kais Ibn Said. The third proclaimed Arabah, the aged sheik, to be the most liberal. At last a bystander, to end the discussion and avoid bloodshed, suggested that each should go and ask for assistance from the one whose liberality he had extolled and return to the mosque, where the evidence would be weighed and judgment given. This agreed upon, they set forth. Abdullah’s friend going to him, found him mounting his dromedary for lands beyond the horizon, and thus accosted him: “O son of the nephew of the uncle of the apostle of Allah and Father of Generosity, I am traveling and in dire necessity.” Upon which Abdullah bade him take his camel with all that was upon her. So he took the camel and found on her some vests of silk and five thousand pieces of gold.
The second went to Kais Ibn Said. The latter’s servant told him that his master was asleep and desired to know his mission. The friend answered that being in want he came to ask Kais’s assistance. The servant protested that he himself preferred to supply the necessity rather than wake his master; so saying, he gave him a purse of ten thousand pieces of gold, all the money in his master’s house, and likewise directed him to go to the caravansary with a certain token and take therefrom a camel and a slave. When Kais awoke, his servant informed him of what had occurred. Kais was so much pleased that he gave the servant his freedom, at the same time upbraiding him for not arousing him. “By my life!” he said, “would that thou hadst called me that I could have given him more.”
The third man went to Arabah and met the old sheik coming out of his house on his way to noonday prayers at the Kaaba. His eyesight having failed him, he was supported by two slaves. When the friend made known his plight, Arabah let go the slaves and, clapping his hands together in the name of Allah, loudly lamented his misfortune in having no money, but he offered to give him his two slaves. The man refused his offer, whereupon Arabah protested that since he would not accept them he must give them their liberty. Saying this, he left the slaves and groped his way along the wall. On the return of the adventurers a unanimous judgment was rendered in favor of Arabah as the most generous of the three. “May Allah reward him!” cried they with fervor.
This legend may well be founded on fact, for one sees many examples of this spirit of liberality, a liberality which increases one’s admiration for these children of Allah. Lawrence, recognizing generosity to be a cardinal virtue with the Arabs, made it a point to excel them in this as well as in bravery, physical endurance, and nimbleness of wit, which they so much admire. After the first successes, which enabled him to gain the confidence of his own government, he brought caravans laden with presents rich and rare, and bewildered them with a prodigality surpassing even the legends in the classic poems recited round their camp-fires and extolling the generosity of the califs of old.
The Bedouins were all particularly fond of wrist-watches, revolvers, and field-glasses, so that Lawrence used to take two or three camels laden with trinkets of that sort to give away. He also gave his men from fifty to one hundred pounds of ammunition each day, and they always shot it off into the air regardless of whether they were fighting or not! In most armies if a man fires off a single round of ammunition without the permission of his commanding officer, he is court-martialed. The Arabs shot at every sparrow they saw, and one day, when a false rumor came in to us at Akaba that Maan had been captured by Feisal’s chief of staff, General Nuri Bey, thousands of rounds were fired wildly into the sky. If the Bedouins who came into the supply-bases along the Red Sea coast happened to see a British officer strolling along with nothing but a riding-crop or a stick, they would shake their heads, stroke their beards, and say: “Mad Anglesi! Mad Anglesi!” But if the officer were wandering about with a rifle blazing away at every rock or bird in sight, they would remark in the Arabian equivalent: “I say, these blighters are not such silly asses after all. Really, they are quite sane, don’t you know.”
Like the sepoys of India in the days of Clive, the Bedouins refused to clean their rifles with grease made from pork, simply because the Mohammedan religion teaches them that pork is unclean. So Lawrence either had to clean all the rifles in the Arabian army himself or provide rifles that did not have to be cleaned. He solved this problem by equipping them with German nickel-steel rifles which Allenby had captured on the Palestine front, rifles that could survive a year’s service without being cleaned.
The freedom of the desert has been his for thousands of years; so naturally the Bedouin is independent by nature. “Discipline” and “obedience” are unknown words to him. Probably none of Lawrence’s men would have made a high record in the senior examinations at Sandhurst or West Point, but they did know how to fight the Turks—and how to whip them. They regarded themselves as of equal rank with any general!
These, then, were the men Lawrence had to mold from an inchoate, intertribal conglomeration into a large army capable of defeating highly trained and well-officered forces. All the organization had to be improvised on original lines. There was no commissariat department. When the Bedouin irregulars started off on an expedition, each man carried a small bag of flour and some coffee. Every meal was the same. The entire army lived and fought on unleavened bread baked in ashes. The Arabs could eat a pound or two at a time, but Lawrence usually carried a chunk in the folds of his gown and nibbled at it as he rode at the head of a column.
The Bedouin looked upon tinned food as a dubious institution. One day, when Major Maynard was accompanying us on a journey over the desert northeast of Akaba, he handed a tin of bully beef to each of the men with us. They took the meat reluctantly and seemed to regard it as unholy. It was then we discovered how suspicious the Arab was of things in tins—but from religious, not hygienic motives. It is customary for an Arab, when he cuts the throat of a sheep or of any other animal, to say, as he inserts the knife, “In the name of Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate!” When they opened the tins they repeated these same words, fearful lest the Chicago packers had not performed the ceremony according to the law of the Prophet.
Apart from a few such formal observances, the average Bedouin is by no means a religious fanatic. He refuses to take notice of the three cardinal principles of Mohammedanism. He never fasts for, says he, “We never have enough to eat as it is!” He rarely bathes, using the excuse, “We have not even enough water to drink.” He seldom prays, for he maintains, “Our prayers are never answered, so why bother?”
But with all his looting and his lack of religion, the Bedouin is a man of honor and a man of humor.
A ROSE-BED CITY HALF AS OLD AS TIME
One of the most colorful and romantic episodes of the war in the Land of the Arabian Nights was a battle fought in an ancient deserted city that had been asleep for a thousand years, only to wake to the booming of big guns and the spirited clash of Turks and Arabs. Here, among the immemorial and perfect ruins of a lost civilization, Lawrence the archæologist and Lawrence the military genius merged in one. To the few travelers who have ventured into that hidden corner of the Arabian desert it is known as a “rose-red city, half as old as time,” carved out of the enchanted mountains of Edom. It lies deep in the wilderness of the desert, not far from Mount Hor, where the Israelites are believed to have buried their great leader, Aaron.
The battle took place on October 21, 1917, shortly after the fall of Akaba. It was important from a military standpoint because it definitely decided that the uprising against the Turks in Holy Arabia was to develop into an invasion of Syria, an affair of worldwide importance destined to revolutionize the history of the Near East. In this battle Lawrence and his Bedouins fought the Turks on the same mountain-tops from which Amaziah, king of Israel, hurled ten thousand of the inhabitants to the canons below. Lawrence successfully defended the city against the Turks in much the same way that the Nabatæans defended it against the armies of Alexander the Great three hundred years before Christ. He trapped the Turks in the same narrow gorge that resounded to the tramp of Trajan’s conquering legions two thousand years ago.
After hearing Lawrence’s enthusiastic description of the palaces carved out of the living rock, where he had camped with his Bedouins, I asked Emir Feisal if he would permit me to do a bit of exploring among the mountains of Edom. He not only granted the request but gave us a picked band of his wildest brigands as a body-guard to protect us from robbers and enemy patrols. From Akaba we trekked thirty-eight miles through the Wadi Ithm to one of Feisal’s outposts, at Gueirra. The Wadi Ithm is a narrow gorge hemmed in by jagged granite mountains crisscrossed with black lava veins from twenty to two hundred feet wide caused by volcanic eruption ages ago. This weird wadi pours out on to a mud plain which reminded us of the Bad Lands of Dakota and the high plateaus of Central Baluchistan. Here we occupied a deserted bell-tent for several days before continuing our trek across arid mountain ranges and sandy desert stretches. Up and up we went over a precipitous rocky zigzag trail, where our camels, time after time, stumbled to their knees. Reaching the summit of the Nagb, the camel-track led across a grassy plateau to the battle-field around the wells of Abu el Lissan. General Nuri Pasha, one of the commanders of Feisal’s army, turned out his troops to welcome us. We stopped a few minutes for coffee, and as I left the general’s tent he picked up the princely Persian lamb rug on which we had been sitting and threw it over my camel-saddle, insisting, in spite of all my protests, that I should take it along and use it as a cushion. He also lent me a hippopotamus-hide cane, presented to him by the king of Abyssinia, with which to guide my dromedary. A few miles beyond Abu el Lissan a courier from Feisal caught up with us and handed me a letter of introduction from the emir to his commander at Busta. The courier was a swarthy rascal, who looked like Captain Kidd, with his flashing black eyes and fierce upturned mustachios. His red head-cloth was embroidered with huge yellow flowers, and his robes flashed as many colors as Joseph’s coat. At his belt were a pearl-handled revolver and two wicked-looking daggers. To my amazement he spoke typical New York Bowery English and dropped such remarks as, “Say, cull, will youse slip me de can-opener?” He informed me that he had lived fourteen years in America as a machine-operator in a cigarette factory.
He was born in the mountains of Lebanon, and his real name was Hassan Khalil, but in New York he was plain Charley Kelly. At the outbreak of the World War, he was working for Thomas Cook & Son in Constantinople and was immediately conscripted into the Turkish army. At the second battle of Gaza he deserted and joined the Australian forces as an interpreter. After serving with the British in Egypt, he was finally transferred to the Hedjaz army. As soon as we became better acquainted, Charley told me he was not a Mohammedan, but an “R.C.,” which he explained in a whisper stood for Roman Catholic. But he begged me not to reveal his secret to any of the other members of the caravan, for he feared that he would be killed instantly by some of our over-zealous Moslem companions, should they discover his apostacy. Charley Kelly entertained us around the camp-fire with detective yarns. He had several Arabic translations of “Nick Carter” in his saddle-bags and said the Egyptians believe Nick Carter to be the actual head of the American Secret Service. According to Charley, “Nick Carter” is a best seller in Egypt, where his exploits are regarded as authentic history. If an Egyptian cannot read himself, he hires a public reader to entertain him with one of these detective tales. Another member of our column was a silent Egyptian with an immobile face that might have been chiseled out of stone. We dubbed him Rameses because he looked so much like the statues of that mighty potentate along the Nile. The rest of our picturesque body-guard was made up of Lawrence’s Bedouins. All these Beau Brummels used kohl-sticks under their eyebrows and rouge on their lips and cheeks. The prophet Mohammed is said to have remarked on one occasion that there were two things no true believer should ever lend to his brother—his kohl-stick and his wife.
Every morning Charley had to help Chase, who is a little man, mount his camel. Practically every camel Chase rode died in its tracks before the end of the journey. He was singled out as the special object of attraction by all the insects of the desert. Several mornings when we crawled out of our sleeping-bags we found scorpions and centipedes between Chase’s blankets. One morning Chase handed a treasured can of bacon to one of the members of our body-guard with instructions to cook him a breakfast that would remind him of home. But he ended by frying his own bacon. As soon as the can was opened the Bedouin cook dropped it in horror and backed off, aghast that his Moslem nostrils had been profaned with the aroma of unclean meat. Like all Mohammedans, Arabs will not use pork in any form. They cook their food in butter made from goat’s milk.
That day we passed a flock of white sheep, all of them fat as butter, with thick curly wool and cute little corkscrew horns. A Bedouin shepherd sat near-by on a lump of basalt strumming an ancient Arab love-song on his lute. Some of these uplands of the Hedjaz are carpeted with barely enough grass for sheep pasture, and a few of the more settled tribes tend flocks rather than breeding camels or horses. One schemer from Bagdad, hearing of the uprising in the Hedjaz, was far-sighted enough to realize that the Allies were bound to take an interest in the affair sooner or later and that British gold pieces would supplant the Turkish sovereigns which long had been the medium of exchange along the desert fringe. So, from lead gilded over, he made thousands of counterfeit British sovereigns, and as soon as the first gold began coming into the Hedjaz from Egypt, but before the Bedouins were familiar enough with it to detect the spurious from the genuine, he trekked across the country buying all the sheep he could find. Instead of the normal price of one pound for each animal, he offered two of his counterfeit pieces. Then before the Bedouins had time to get into Jeddah, Yenbo, and Wedj to spend their gold in the bazaars, the Bagdadi drove his sheep north to Palestine, and sold them at two pounds a head to the British army. When the hoax was discovered he had vanished into the blue.
Distances in Arabia are not gaged by miles but by water-holes. The night after our unfortunate bacon incident, just as we had finished putting up our pup-tent at “third water,” otherwise known as Busta, twenty Arab regulars came along mounted on Peruvian mules. The mules were camel-shy, and as soon as they saw our caravan they bolted at top speed in all directions, some of them bucking off their riders and disappearing into the mountains of Edom. These soldiers, who hailed from Mecca, sat up all night shouting and singing around our campfire and firing their rifles into the dark. The Turkish lines were only a few miles away, and I had a presentiment that a Turkish patrol would slip up during the confusion and put a finish to the hilarity by scuppering the lot of us. Nothing happened, however, and after trekking eighty miles across country without a single skirmish with the Turks to make the expedition more lively, we came out on the top of a high plateau.
Spreading off to the northwest before us were magnificent ridges of white and red sandstone. About twenty miles to the north lay the valley of the Dead Sea, and beyond, disappearing in purple and gray haze, the Central Arabian Desert. The peaks ahead were the sacred mountains of Edom. Our problem was to penetrate that massive range of sandstone before us. We descended from the high plateau into a valley twelve miles wide that narrowed to twelve feet, a mere defile through the mountain wall. Through this gorge, or sik, as it is called by the Arabs, our camels and horses scrambled over boulders and pushed their way through thousands of oleander-bushes, while the Arabs popped away with their pistols at the lizards creeping across the stones. As we wandered through this rent in the rock we marveled at its beautiful walls towering hundreds of feet above us, at times almost shutting out the sky.
And on each side, aloft and wild,Huge cliffs and toppling crags were piled.
And on each side, aloft and wild,Huge cliffs and toppling crags were piled.
And on each side, aloft and wild,
Huge cliffs and toppling crags were piled.
Hassan Morgani, one of our Bedouins, who wore a purple jacket trimmed in green and a pair of cavalry boots that he had taken from a dead Turkish officer, told us that the gorge was the Wadi Musa, the Valley of Moses. Charley Kelly confirmed this with the assertion that it was here that Moses brought the water gushing from the rock. To-day every Arab family in this region has its little Moses. Through the narrow gorge a brook plunged in and out among the great boulders, the oleanders, and the wild fig-trees. High above, the sun warmed the tops of slender cathedral rocks to a wonderful rose red.
After pushing our way through the gorge for more than an hour, we suddenly rounded the last bend and stood breathless and speechless. There, in front of us, many miles from any sign of civilized habitation, deep in the heart of the Arabian Desert, was one of the most bewildering sights ever revealed to the eye of man—a temple, a delicate and limpid rose, carved like a cameo from a solid mountain wall. It was even more beautiful than the Temple of Theseus at Athens or the Forum at Rome. After trekking nearly a hundred miles across the desert, to come suddenly face to face with such a marvelous structure fairly took our breath away. It was the first indication we had that we had at last reached the mysterious city of Petra, a city deserted and lost to history for fourteen hundred years and only rediscovered during the last century by the famous Swiss explorer, Burckhardt.
The secret of the enchantment of this first temple we saw lies partly in its position at one of the most unusual gateways in the world. The columns, pediments, and friezes have been richly carved, but it is difficult to distinguish many of the designs, which have been disfigured by time and Mohammedan iconoclasts. At one side are two rows of niches, evidently the traces of ladders used by the sculptors who carved their way down. These artist-artisans used a tooth tool that they might get the maximum effect out of the colored strata, which seem to form a perfect quilt of ribbons and swirl like watered silk in the morning sunlight. Although the temple is wonderfully preserved, it shows the effects of the sand-blasts of the centuries. The auditorium within is almost a perfect cube, forty feet each way. The architecture is of a corrupt Roman-Grecian style. The temple was carved from the cliff almost two thousand years ago during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who visited Petra ina. d.131. The desert Arabs who were with me said it was called El Khazneh, or the Treasury, because of the great urn that surmounts the edifice, which the Bedouins believe is filled with gold and precious jewels of the Pharaohs. Many attempts have been made to crack the urn, and it has been chipped by thousands of bullets. My body-guard also fired away at it, but fortunately it was nearly a hundred feet above their heads. Colonel Lawrence is of the opinion that the building was a temple dedicated to Isis, a goddess popular during the reign of Hadrian. One traveler had carved his name in letters a foot high on one of the pillars of the temple, but Lawrence ordered his men to polish it out.
The city lay farther down on the plain of an oval valley, a mile and a half long and half a mile wide. How populous it was there is no way of telling, but several hundred thousand people must once have lived there. Only the more insignificant buildings have perished, and even of these some striking ruins remain. The upper part of the valley is the site of ancient fortresses, palaces, tombs, and amusement resorts—all carved out of the solid rock. The lower part was apparently a water circus where the people indulged in aquatic sports and tournaments. Petra is a huge excavation made by the forces of nature. From the nine-thousand-foot plateau from which we first saw the mountains of Edom, we had dropped down to an altitude of one thousand feet when we entered the ruined city.
All the travelers who have visited Petra have marveled at the wonderful tints of its sandstone cliffs. It is carved from rock the colors of which beggar description at certain hours of the day. In the morning sunlight they are like great rainbows of stone flashing out white, vermilion, saffron, orange, pink, and crimson. Time and the forces of nature have played the magician, painting the different strata in rare tints and hues. In places the layers of rock dip and swerve like waves. At sunset they glow with strange radiance before sinking into the sombre darkness of the desert night. We wondered at times whether we were really awake or whether we had not been transported to fairy-land on a magically colored Persian carpet.
Stairs carved from the rock, some more than a mile in length, run to the top of nearly all the mountains around Petra. We climbed one great staircase ascending to a height of one thousand feet above the city to the temple which the Arabs call El Deir, or the Convent, a most impressive gray façade, one hundred and fifty feet high, surmounted by a gigantic urn, and decorated with heads of Medusa. Most of the steps cut into the mountains lead to sacrificial altars, where the people used to worship on the high places thousands of years ago. An even greater staircase winds up to the Mount of Sacrifice, an isolated peak that dominates the whole basin. On the summit are two obelisks and two altars. One altar is hollowed out for making fires, and the other is round and provided with a blood-pool for the slaughter of the victim offered to Dhu-shara and Allat, the chief god and goddess of ancient Petra. One of my Bedouin companions insisted upon taking off his raiment and bathing in the rain-water which had collected in the pool. The average Bedouin needs a little encouragement along these lines, and so we did not reprimand him for his sacrilegious act. Lawrence told me that it was supposed to be the most complete and perfect example in existence of an ancient Semitic high place. Near the altars are the two great monoliths, each about twenty-four feet high, which the people of Petra carved out of the solid rock and used in their phallic worship, one of the oldest forms of worship known to man. The names of these monoliths and the nature of the worship do not admit of description. The mountain-top commands a view of all the surrounding valleys and mountains, as well as most of the ruins of the city. The outlook is sublime. It is a scene to stir in one’s heart those emotions which have ever led man to worship his Creator. On a peak near-by are the broken remains of a Crusader’s castle. Further off to the left rises a black lava mountain. On its summit, glistening beneath the burning rays of the Arabian sun, we saw a small white dome, white like the bleached skeletons we passed in crossing the desert between Akaba and the mountains of Edom. This peak is Mount Hor, and the dome a part of a mosque built by the Bedouins over the traditional tomb of Aaron, high priest of the Israelites and brother of Moses. We spent a day ascending it and upon reaching the summit found a Turkish flag flying over Aaron’s tomb. As a propitiation before any important event takes place, the desert Arabs climb Mount Hor with their sacrifice of a sheep and cut its throat before the tomb of Aaron. Although no news of it reached the outside world at the time, the far-flung battle-lines of the Great War reached even to the slopes of Mount Hor.
All the buildings of this city of ghosts have elaborate façades, but within they are simple and austere. The magnitude and beauty of them even now strikes one with awe. How much more they must have meant to beauty-worshipers in the days ‘when the city pulsed with life! Most of the stone is rose-colored when the sun falls upon it, and shot with blue and porphyry. The deserted streets are rich with laurels and oleanders, whose hues seem copied from the rock itself. In fact, the only inhabitants of this rose-red city for hundreds of years have been the countless millions of brilliant wild flowers that flourish in the cracks of the hundreds of former palaces and temples and wind themselves around half-ruined columns. Petra’s mighty men and beautiful women have passed on to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns. It is indeed a scene to impress one with evanescence of all life.
The worldly hopes men set their hearts uponTurn ashes, or they prosper,And anon like snow upon the desert’s dusty faceLighting a little hour or two—are gone.
The worldly hopes men set their hearts uponTurn ashes, or they prosper,And anon like snow upon the desert’s dusty faceLighting a little hour or two—are gone.
The worldly hopes men set their hearts upon
Turn ashes, or they prosper,
And anon like snow upon the desert’s dusty face
Lighting a little hour or two—are gone.
In the center of the city, surrounded on all sides by temples and palaces and tombs, is a great amphitheater, cut out of the base of the same mountain that leads to the great high place of sacrifice. Tiers and tiers of seats face the mountain avenues of tombs. The diameter of the stage is 120 feet, and the theater is the one symbol of life and mirth in all this mysterious deserted city. The laughter and cheers of thousands once rang here across this hollow cemetery of ancient hopes and ambitions. Here thousands of years ago the Irvings and Carusos of that bygone age performed and received the plaudits of their admiring thousands. Where now are all the gay throngs who occupied these tiers on feast-days and watched the games? The lizards are crawling over the exquisitely colored seats to-night, and the only sounds that have been heard in the theater for centuries have been the desolate howls of jackals. Little did the ancient Edomites or Nabatæans imagine that a people called Americans from an unknown continent would one day wander among the ruins of their proud city.
It seems no work of man’s creative handBy labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;But from the rock as if by magic grown;Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone.All rosy-red, as if the blush of dawnThat first beheld it were not yet withdrawn.The hues of youth upon a brow of woeWhich man deemed old two thousand years ago.Match me such marvel, save in Oriental clime;A rose-red city, half as old as Time.
It seems no work of man’s creative handBy labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;But from the rock as if by magic grown;Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone.All rosy-red, as if the blush of dawnThat first beheld it were not yet withdrawn.The hues of youth upon a brow of woeWhich man deemed old two thousand years ago.Match me such marvel, save in Oriental clime;A rose-red city, half as old as Time.
It seems no work of man’s creative hand
By labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as if by magic grown;
Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone.
All rosy-red, as if the blush of dawn
That first beheld it were not yet withdrawn.
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe
Which man deemed old two thousand years ago.
Match me such marvel, save in Oriental clime;
A rose-red city, half as old as Time.
[By Dean Burgon (fellow of Oriel and afterward vicar of St Mary’s), prize poem, Newdegate, 1845.]
The presence of Egyptian architecture and symbols indicates that Petra must have been built by a race that had come in contact with the culture of the peoples who carved the Sphinx and piled up the pyramids. Even the desert traditions of nomenclature support the belief that Petra was at some time identified with Egypt. The nomads believe that these rocks were carved by Jinn, under the order of one of the Pharaohs, and not only are they certain that the great urn on El Khazneh contains the wealth of the old Egyptian tyrants but they believe that they actually lived in Petra and call a ruined temple down in the valley Kasra Firaun, the Palace of Pharaoh. But nobody knows when or by whom Petra was built. Some think that it had its beginning long before the time of Abraham and was an old city when the Israelites fled from Egyptian bondage.
As we stand there amid the ruins of this forgotten city, we are reminded that
When you and I behind the veil are passed,Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last,Which of our coming and departure heeds,As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast.
When you and I behind the veil are passed,Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last,Which of our coming and departure heeds,As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast.
When you and I behind the veil are passed,
Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds,
As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast.
The region around Petra was known as Mount Seir in the time of Abraham, and it is said that Esau, with his followers, came to this country after he had lost his birthright. We read in the Old Testament about Petra. It is called Sela, which is Hebrew for rock. It is believed that when the children of Israel were wandering in the Wilderness they came upon Petra and asked for permission to enter and rest. But the people of Petra refused, and Israel’s prophets predicted its desolation. Obadiah accused it of being proud and haughty, saying: “Though thou mount on high as the eagle, and though thy nest be set among the stars, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord.” In the time of Isaiah it was a proud and voluptuous city, of which the stern old Jew predicted destruction.
The Nabatæans, an ancient Arab tribe, conquered Edom, and by 100b. c.had created a powerful kingdom extending north to Damascus, west to Gaza in Palestine, and far into Central Arabia. Lawrence told me that the Nabatæans were great pirates who sailed down the African coast and made devastating raids on the Sudan. They had reached a high stage of civilization, did beautiful glass-work, made fine cloth, and modeled pottery. They frequently visited Rome and Constantinople. Both King Solomon and the queen of Sheba had employed the Nabatæans, who rivaled even the Palmyrians in organizing a rich caravan trade and made Petra their principal commercial center in Arabia. Antigonus visited Petra in 301b. c.and found there large quantities of frankincense, myrrh, and silver.
The Greeks, knowing of this fortress city impregnable in its mountains, were the first to name it Petra, which means rock. Tradition says that Alexander the Great conquered all the then known world and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. But tradition is wrong. Here is one city that Alexander the Great failed to conquer. Diodurus Siculus tells us that Alexander considered Petra of such importance that he sent Demetrius with an army to capture it. Demetrius tried to force his way into it by the same narrow defile through which we entered. But the inhabitants shut themselves up in their mountain fastness and successfully defied both siege and assault. Although the city refused itself to the visitor who came with the sword, it welcomed him who came with the olive-branch.
As the capital of the Nabatæans, it rose to its zenith in the second century before Christ. Greek geographers of those days called the land of Edom by the name “Arabia Petræa.” Under Aretas III, surnamed Philhellene or friend of the Greeks, the first royal coins were struck, and Petra assumed many of the aspects of Greek culture. Even in the golden age of Rome when Augustus sat on the throne of the Cæsars the fame of this far-away city had reached Europe. It was a Mecca for tourists from all over the world, and it must have had a population of several hundred thousand souls. It was a seat of arts and learning to which the Praxiteleses, the Michelangelos, and the Leonardo da Vincis of that day repaired. Its hospitality was a byword among the ancients. It opened its doors to the early Christians, who were permitted to have their houses of worship there side by side with the temples of Baal, Apollo, and Aphrodite. Petra was to this part of Asia what Rome was to the Romans and Athens to the Greeks. Ina. d.105 one of Trajan’s generals conquered Petra and created the Roman province of Arabia Petræa, but the city continued to flourish as a trade-center under the strong peace of Rome. In those days Petra was the focusing-point on the caravan routes from the interior of Arabia, Persia, and India to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. It was a great safe-deposit of fabulous wealth, fortressed by frowning cliffs. Both Strabo and Pliny described it as a great city. But when Roman power waned, the Romanized Nabatæans were unable to withstand the desert hordes. The caravan trade was diverted through other channels; Petra declined in importance and ultimately was forgotten. In the twelfth century the Crusaders, under Baldwin I, sent an expedition through the locality and built many castles; they were expelled by Saladin.
There are many indications that Petra was a pleasant and pleasure-loving city. Its wealthier classes must have lived in luxury such as even the luxurious East has not known in many centuries. With its concert-halls, its circuses, its mystic groves, its priests and priestesses of many sensual religions, its wealth of flowers, its brilliant sunshine, and its delightful climate, it must have been at the same time the Paris and the Riviera of Asia Minor. But, except for its immortal sculpture and the few casual tributes to it by writers from alien lands, it has not left a single record of its manner of living, or handed down the name of a single one of its Homers or its Horaces.
Rose-red there lies, and vivid in the sun,A magic city, hid in Araby;Of her no ancient legend has been spun,And all her past the silent years have wonTo the deep coffers of antiquity.About her brooding stillness there blowThe scarlet windflowers, as a carpet flungUpon the stones. And oleanders growWhere, in the night, the mourning jackals goA-prowl through temples of a god unsung.And so she stands, and centuries have keptHer olden secret, tragic or sublime;Without her gates, what tides of men have swept,Within her portals, race of kings have slept?This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”Was there no poet’s voice to chant her pride,To clarion her magic down the years?No warrior famed, to set her valourous stride?No splendid lovers who for love’s sake died,Gifting to song their passion and their tears?Was there no storied woman’s golden faceTo glimmer down unnumbered years to come?No prophet’s vision to foretell her place,Mysterious city of forgotten race?Only her beauty speaks, and it is dumb.And so she stands, while Time holds jealouslyHer olden secret, tragic or sublime;Her sorrows, joys, her strength, her frailtyAre in the coffers of antiquity,This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
Rose-red there lies, and vivid in the sun,A magic city, hid in Araby;Of her no ancient legend has been spun,And all her past the silent years have wonTo the deep coffers of antiquity.
Rose-red there lies, and vivid in the sun,
A magic city, hid in Araby;
Of her no ancient legend has been spun,
And all her past the silent years have won
To the deep coffers of antiquity.
About her brooding stillness there blowThe scarlet windflowers, as a carpet flungUpon the stones. And oleanders growWhere, in the night, the mourning jackals goA-prowl through temples of a god unsung.
About her brooding stillness there blow
The scarlet windflowers, as a carpet flung
Upon the stones. And oleanders grow
Where, in the night, the mourning jackals go
A-prowl through temples of a god unsung.
And so she stands, and centuries have keptHer olden secret, tragic or sublime;Without her gates, what tides of men have swept,Within her portals, race of kings have slept?This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
And so she stands, and centuries have kept
Her olden secret, tragic or sublime;
Without her gates, what tides of men have swept,
Within her portals, race of kings have slept?
This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
Was there no poet’s voice to chant her pride,To clarion her magic down the years?No warrior famed, to set her valourous stride?No splendid lovers who for love’s sake died,Gifting to song their passion and their tears?
Was there no poet’s voice to chant her pride,
To clarion her magic down the years?
No warrior famed, to set her valourous stride?
No splendid lovers who for love’s sake died,
Gifting to song their passion and their tears?
Was there no storied woman’s golden faceTo glimmer down unnumbered years to come?No prophet’s vision to foretell her place,Mysterious city of forgotten race?Only her beauty speaks, and it is dumb.
Was there no storied woman’s golden face
To glimmer down unnumbered years to come?
No prophet’s vision to foretell her place,
Mysterious city of forgotten race?
Only her beauty speaks, and it is dumb.
And so she stands, while Time holds jealouslyHer olden secret, tragic or sublime;Her sorrows, joys, her strength, her frailtyAre in the coffers of antiquity,This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
And so she stands, while Time holds jealously
Her olden secret, tragic or sublime;
Her sorrows, joys, her strength, her frailty
Are in the coffers of antiquity,
This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
[by Mona Mackay, Christchurch, New Zealand.]
A little more than a century ago, John Lewis Burckhardt, a Swiss traveler, who had heard rumors of a great city of rock, lying far out on the fringe of the Arabian Desert, penetrated the gorge and found once more this wonderful old city of Petra, which had not been mentioned in any literary record sincea. d.536. In the century or more since Burckhardt wrote of his discovery of the rock city in a letter from Cairo, only a comparatively few travelers and archæologists from the West have visited Petra. The danger of violence from Bedouin nomads was so great that not many had the zeal to attempt it. The lion and the lizard kept the court where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep, until Lawrence brought his fighting Bedouins into this city of tombs and empty palaces.
A BEDOUIN BATTLE IN A CITY OF GHOSTS
The possession of Petra is necessary to the holding of Akaba, the most important strategical point on the west coast of Arabia, where the great fleets of King Solomon rode at anchor three thousand years ago. But Lawrence’s battle was the first fought in Petra in the last seven hundred years. The Crusaders, with their flashing spears and pennants blazoned with the coats of arms of half the medieval barons of Europe, were the last warriors to clank in armor through the ribbon-like gorge. Lawrence, the archæologist, garbed in Arab kit, had wandered over this country before the war and knew every foot of the region from the driest water-hole to the most dilapidated column in Petra. After he had forced the Turks to surrender at Akaba, he was determined to capture all the approaches to the high plateau which begins fifty miles inland from the head of the gulf of Akaba and crosses Arabia to the Persian Gulf. At the same time the Turks realized that they must either recapture Akaba or reconcile themselves to the loss of all Holy Arabia. So they brought ten thousand fresh troops from Syria and stationed them at the various strategical positions on this plateau. But Lawrence was certain that the Turks would never be able to retake Akaba, because there is only one feasible avenue of approach for an army by land to that ancient seaport—down the Wadi Ithm. To be sure, he had marched his own irregular army through the same gorge a few weeks before, but he had caught the Turks napping and swept down on Akaba before they were aware of their danger. He had no intention of giving the Turks a similar opportunity. The Wadi Ithm is one of the most formidable passes in the world for an armed force to enter; it is as difficult of accesses as the famous Khyber Pass between India and Afghanistan. It penetrates the barren volcanic range called King Solomon’s Mountains, which extends along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Akaba and rises a sheer five thousand feet on either side of the pass. An invading army, if attacked from the tops of the peaks crowning its sides, would have no protection. Lawrence would have annihilated any Turkish force attempting to advance on Akaba through the Wadi Ithm.
From July until the middle of September, 1917, the Turks were quiet. Then they made several reconnaissances around Petra in an effort to dupe Lawrence and the Arabs into believing they were going to attack Petra, although their real intention was to advance direct on Akaba. The last of these three reconnaissances was a gloomy affair for the Turks; Lawrence and his men cut off and wiped out one hundred of the scouting-party.
Fifteen miles northeast of Petra an old Crusader castle frowns down on the desert from a steep hill of white chalk. It is known as Shobek. Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem, built a great wall all the way around the crest of the mountain in the days of the Crusaders. Both the castle and the modern Arab village are within the wall, and the only approach to the summit is up a winding precipitous trail. Shobek was still in the hands of the Turks, but Lawrence’s spies brought him word that the garrison was made up entirely of Syrians, all men of Arabian blood, in sympathy with the new Nationalist movement. So Lawrence sent Malud and ten of his lieutenants to Shobek by night, followed by Shereef Abd el Mu’in and two hundred Bedouins.
The Syrians in a body transferred their allegiance to him. Next morning the combined Syrian and Arabian forces descended the chalk mountain and destroyed three hundred rails on a side-line of the Damascus-Medina Railway, near Aneiza. They also tried to capture the terminus of this spur, where seven hundred Armenian wood-cutters, whom they wanted to rescue, were at work. But this time the Turks had erected such strong fortifications around the terminus that, although the Arabs and Syrian deserters took the Turkish outposts, they were unable to capture the main positions. The Turks, badly frightened, sent couriers to Maan and Abu el Lissal asking for reinforcements. By weakening their garrison at Abu el Lissal the Turks played directly into Lawrence’s hands, for as soon as the Turkish reserves arrived Lawrence called his men back to Petra from the railway.
After the desertion of the entire Shobek garrison and Lawrence’s bold sortie against the railway terminus, Djemal Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Turkish armies in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, decided, against the advice of Field-Marshal von Falkenhayn, then German generalissimo in the Near East, that before he could hope to recapture Gueirra and Akaba it would be necessary to retake Petra. Djemal transferred a crack cavalry regiment, an infantry brigade, and several organizations of light artillery from Palestine down the Hedjaz Railway to Maan. This was a clever strategic coup for Lawrence. First, the Germans and Turks had to diminish their forces opposing Allenby in the Holy Land. Secondly, they were walking into the trap which had been set for them; because it was Lawrence’s belief that if a battle were fought by his irregular Bedouin troops in the mountain fastnesses of ancient Edom, the superior mobility of his army would eventually enable him to defeat any division of methodically trained regulars in the world.
Malud Bey, Lawrence’s first in command at the battle of Petra, was one of the most interesting figures of the Arabian revolt, as well as one of the most picturesque. He wore very high purple-topped Kafir boots—like Jack the Giant-Killer must have worn; also spurs that jangled musically as he strode about, a long medieval sword, and a long mustachio, which he tugged like the villain of a melodrama. But there was no more charming and gallant officer in the whole Arabian army. He was the son of a Bedouin sheik and a Circassian concubine and from boyhood had been an ardent Arab Nationalist. He made a thorough study of modern military science in order that some day he might help to overthrow the Turk, and he even went so far as to spend three years studying at the Turkish Staff College before they discovered his revolutionary leanings and expelled him. Then he went into the desert and became secretary to Ibn Rashid, one of the potentates of Central Arabia. There Malud participated in scores of raids and earned such a reputation as a fighter that the Turks forgave him his past sins and invited him to return and join their cavalry. At the outbreak of the World War he was raised to the rank of captain, but he was later court-martialed and imprisoned for taking part in a conspiracy against the sultan. After his release he fought the British in Mesopotamia and was captured by them near Basra. Eventually he was allowed to join Feisal. He was wounded in every single engagement in which he took part, because he was so foolhardy that he would not hesitate to charge the Turkish army by himself.
Djemal Pasha selected Maan, the most important station on the Hedjaz Railway between the Dead Sea of Medina, as the starting-point for three columns comprising over seven thousand men, several units of light artillery, and a squadron of German aëroplanes. One column made the Crusaders’ castle at Shobek its base; another came up from the south by the way of Abu el Lissal and Busta; and the third moved direct from Maan on the east. The Turks directed the movements of their columns so that they would all converge on Petra on October 21.
In the meantime Lawrence and his Bedouins were comfortably and safely lodged in the ancient capital of the Nabatæans, behind those mighty rocky ramparts which had defied the armies of Alexander the Great. For the first time in many centuries the silent avenues throbbed with life. Camp-fires were lighted on the old altars of the gods; and sentinels stationed on the ancient great high places watched for the coming of the Turks. In the vast echoing chambers of the tombs the Arabs sat around in circles until late at night, telling interminable stories and singing old chants of epic battles. Lawrence himself occupied princely headquarters, the Temple of Isis (El Khazneh), the rose-tinted palace at the entrance of the gorge. If he wished he could have used his archæological imagination and re-peopled the gloomy hall with the vision of handmaidens of Isis dancing before the shrine of their goddess.