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The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria’s Holy Places
Rev. J. L. Porter D. D.
LONDON: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK
1877
Pages: 48 - 63
III.
"And Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits."
This text was constantly in my mind while I wandered through Bashan.
In riding down from the ruins of Kenath, among the mountains, to the
ruins of Suweideh at their base, it struck me that the beautiful words
in which Cowper describes modern Sicily, are strikingly descriptive of
modern Palestine.
"Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scattered where the shapely column stood.
Her palaces are dust. In all her streets
The voice of singing, and the sprightly chord
Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause;
While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works his dreadful part alone."
We might begin, "Alas for Palestine!" and go on
through the whole passage; for Palestine’s palaces are dust, her
stately columns fallen, her streets silent, her fields desolate, while
God alone performs his dreadful part, fulfilling to the very letter the
prophetic curses pronounced upon the land long, long centuries ago.
WONDERFUL FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY.
We
rode along the line of the Roman road, at least as closely as branches
of the great old oaks, and jungles of thorns and bushes, would permit;
for "the highways lie waste" (Isa. 33:8). Every opening to the
right and left revealed ruins; - now a tomb in a quiet nook; now a
temple in a lonely forest glade; now a shapeless and nameless heap of stones
and fallen columns; and now, through a long green vista, the shattered
walls and towers of an ancient city. The country is filled with ruins.
In every direction to which the eye turns, in every spot on which it
rests, ruins are visible-so truly, so wonderfully have the prophecies
been fulfilled: "I will destroy your high places, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation" (Lev. 26:30). "The palaces shall be forsaken" (Isa. 32:14). "I will make your cities waste. The land shall be utterly spoiled" (Isa. 24:3). Many other ruins, doubtless, lie concealed among the forests, buried beneath giant
oaks, or shrouded by luxuriant brambles. Judging by the "thorns and
thistles" which hem in every path, and half conceal every ruin, one
would suppose that Bashan had received a double portion of the curse.
The mountains of Bashan,
though not generally very steep, are rugged and rocky; yet everywhere
on their sides I saw the remains of old terraces-along every slope, up
every bank, from the bottom of the deepest glen, where the oleander
bends over the tiny streamlet, to the highest peak on which the clouds
of heaven sleep, cradled on winter snows. These tell of former toil and
industry; and so do the heaps of loose stones that have been collected off the soil, and piled up in the comers of the little fields. In the days of Bashan’s
glory, fig-trees, and olives, and pomegranates, were ranged along those
terraces; and vines hung down in rich festoons over their broken walls.
But now Bashan has shaken off its fruits. "For
a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number. He hath
laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made it clean bare,
and cast it away. The field is wasted, the land mourneth. The new wine
is dried up, the oil languisheth. The vine is dried up, the fig-tree
languisheth; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the
apple-tree; even all the trees of the field are withered; because joy
is withered away from the sons of men" (Joel 1:6-12).
The scenery is still rich. It is rich in the foliage of the evergreen oak-the "oak of Bashan;"
rich in numbers of evergreen shrubs; rich in green pastures. It is
picturesque too, and occasionally even grand; for the glens are deep
and winding, and the outlines of the intervening ridges varied with
many a dark cliff and wooded bank. The whole mountain range is of
volcanic origin, and the peaks shoot up, conical or cup-shaped, forming
long serried lines. One thing struck me as peculiar. The rocks are
black, the soil is black, the buildings are all black. It might be
thought that the landscape would thus have a gloomy aspect; and it
would have, were it not for the fresh green grass of the glades and
meadows, and the brilliant foliage of the oak forests, which often
glitter beneath the blaze of sunshine like forests of prisms.
I confess it was with feelings of awe I looked
from time to time out over those desolate, but still beautiful slopes,
to that more desolate plain. I knew what caused the desolation. The
silence, too, awed me yet more, for it was profound. The voice of
nature itself was hushed, and not a leaf in the forest rustled. There
is always something cheerful, something reviving to the flagging
spirit, in the unceasing murmur of a great city, now rising and now
falling on the breeze, as one approaches it or passes by; and in the
continuous hum of a rural scene; where the call of the herd, and the
whistle of the plough man, and the roll of the waggon, and the
bleatings of the flock, and the lowing of the kine, melt into one of
nature’s choruses. Here cities studded the whole country, but the
stillness of death reigned in them; there was no ploughman in the
field, no shepherd on the hill-side, no flock on the pasture, no
waggon, no wayfarer on the road. Yet there was a time when the land
teemed with an industrious, a bustling, and a joyous population. At
that time prophets wrote: "Your highways shall be desolate" (Lev. 16:22). "The wayfaring man ceaseth. The earth mourneth and languisheth" (Isa. 33:8). "The
land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled -- for the Lord hath
spoken this word. Therefore hath the curse devoured the land. Therefore
the inhabitants of the land are consumed, and few men left. Every house
is shut up. The mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left
desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction" (Isa.
24:3-12). Many of the people of those days, doubtless, thought the
prophets were but gloomy dreamers. Just as many in our own day regard
their writings as gorgeous fancy pictures of Eastern poets; but with my
own eyes I saw that time has changed every prediction into a historic fact. I saw now, and I saw at every step through Bashan,
that the visions of the prophets were not delusions; that they were not
even, as some modern critics suppose, highly wrought figures, intended
perhaps to foreshadow in faint outline a few leading facts of the
country’s future story. I saw that they were, one and all, graphic and
detailed descriptions of real events, which the Divine Spirit opened up
to the prophet’s eye through the long vista of ages. The language is,
doubtless, beautiful, the style is poetic, and gorgeous Eastern imagery
is often employed to give sublimity to the visions of the seer, and to
the words of the Lord; but this does not take away one iota from their
truth, nor does it detract in the slightest degree from their graphic
power. Were the same holy men inspired now by the same Divine Spirit to
describe the actual state of Palestine, they could not possibly select
language more appropriate or more graphic than that found in their own
predictions written thousands of years ago. This is no vague statement
made at random, or penned for effect. God forbid I should ever pen a
single line rashly or thoughtlessly on such a topic. It is the result
of years of study and years of travel. It is the result of a calm and
thorough comparison of each prophecy of Scripture regarding Palestine’s
history and doom with its fulfilment, upon the spot. I had no
preconceived theory of prophetic interpretation to defend. My mind was
not biassed by a false faith in literality on the one side, nor by a
fatal scepticism regarding prophetic reality on the other.
Opportunities were afforded me of examining evidence, of testing
witnesses, of seeing with my own eyes the truth or the falsehood of
Bible predictions. I embraced these opportunities, as God gave them,
and to the utmost of my power and the best of my ability. I examined
deliberately, cautiously, and, I believe, conscientiously. My
examinations extended over all Palestine, and over most other
Bible lands; and now I thank God that, with the fullest and deepest
conviction-conviction that all the ingenuity of modern criticism, and
all the plausibility of modern scientific scepticism can never
overthrow, could never shake - I can take up and re-echo the grand, the
cheering statement of our blessed Lord, and proclaim my belief before
the world, that "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled."
I observed around Kenath, and especially in the
thickest parts of the forest on the way to Suweideh, that many of the
largest and finest oak trees were burned almost through near the
ground, and that a vast number of huge trunks were lying black and
charred among the stones and brushwood. I
wondered at what appeared to be a piece of wanton and toilsome
destruction, and I asked Mahmood if he could explain it.
"The Bedawîn do it," he replied. "They make large
quantities of charcoal for the Damascus market, as well as for home
use; and that they may get more easily at the branches, which are the
only parts of the tree used, they kindle a fire round the roots of the
largest oaks, burn them deeply, and then the first blast of wind blows
them over, and the boughs are chopped off with little axes."
"But," I said, "in this way they destroy vast quantities of splendid timber."
"True; but they do not care. All they want is a present supply, and they try to get it in the easiest way possible."
"They will soon make your mountains as bare as
Jebel esh-Sheikh, and where will you go for firewood and charcoal then?
You are fools to permit such needless waste and destruction."
"O my lord?" said Mahmood - and there was a
degree of solemnity and pathos both in his tone and in his words - " O
my lord! it is you Franks alone who have wisdom to look to the future,
and power to provide for it. We! what can we do in this unhappy
country? We are all wanderers - here to-day, away to-morrow. Should we
attempt to preserve these oaks, or to plant vineyards and olives, or to
spend labour and money on fields or houses, we would only be working
out our own ruin. The Bedawîn would be attracted in clouds round the
tempting fruit; and the Turks would come, drive us out with their
cannon, and seize our whole property. No, no! We can have no permanent
interest in the ground. We can only hold it as we have got it, by the
sword; and the poorer it looks, the less will our enemies covet it."
It was a sad picture, and, unfortunately, a true
one. By such mad acts, and by still more wanton destruction in times of
war, and of party and family struggles, fruit-trees and forests have
been almost annihilated in Palestine. And would it not seem as if the
old prophets had been able to look down through the mists of long
centuries, and to see the progress and the effects of this very mode of
ruin and desolation, clearly as I saw it in Bashan?
Isaiah thus wrote: "The defenced city shall be desolate, and the
habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf
feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. When
the boughs thereof are withered they shall be broken off; the women
come and set them on fire for it is a people of no understanding" (Isa. 27:10, 11).
Descending from Kenath, I saw, about a mile to
the right, the deserted town of Atyl. Burckhardt and one or two others
visited it, but I was compelled from want of time to pass it by. It
contains some fine buildings, among which are two beautiful temples
nearly perfect. One of them was built in the fourteenth year of the
Emperor Antonine (A.D. 150), as a Greek inscription tells us. Like
Kenath, this city was in a great measure rebuilt during the Roman age,
and consequently there are not many of the very ancient massive houses now remaining. Further down on the plain I saw Rimeh and Welgha, two deserted towns. Every view we got in Bashan
was an ocular demonstration of the literal fulfilment of the curse
pronounced on the land by Moses, more than three thousand years ago: "If
ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments ...
I will scatter you among the heathen; and your land shall be desolate,
and your cities waste" (Lev. 26:14, 33).
THE RUINS OF SUWEIDEH.
Emerging
from the oak forests we found ourselves on a low bare ridge which juts
out from the mountains some distance into the plain. It is divided down
the centre by a deep rocky ravine, through which a winter torrent
flows. The portion of this ridge south of the ravine is covered with
the ruins of Suweideh. We were riding up to them when my attention was
attracted by a singular monument standing alone on a commanding site, a
few hundred yards north of the city. It is a square tower, about thirty
feet high. The sides are ornamented with Doric semi-columns supporting
a plain cornice, and between them, on panels, are shields, helmets, and
trophies of arms sculptured in relief. A legend, inscribed in Greek and
Palmyrene, states that "Odainatus, son of Annelos, built this monument to Chamrate, his wife."
Few and simple are the words. The story of Chamrate is unknown. What
were her private virtues, or public services, we cannot tell. Strange
that this monument should stand as the tribute of a husband’s
admiration and love, when the histories of husband, wife, and native
city have passed away for long centuries! It is worthy of note that
Odainatus was the name of the celebrated husband of the still more
celebrated Zenobia. The Palmyrene inscription on the monument would
seem to indicate that its founder was a native of the desert city.
Perhaps the great Odainatus himself, during his warlike expedition into
Syria, may have thus celebrated the virtues of a former wife.
Crossing the ravine by a Roman bridge, we rode up
to Suweideh, and under the guidance of the sheikh’s son, a fine manly
boy of some fourteen years, splendidly dressed in a scarlet robe, and
armed with silver-hilted sword and dagger, we proceeded to examine in
detail the wide-spread ruins. We visited a Corinthian peristyle; a
Roman gateway at the end of a straight street, nearly a mile in length,
and paved throughout; the ruins of a temple of the age of Trajan; the
remains of a very large church, within whose crumbling walls is the
modern Christian burying-ground; a mosque, the roof of which was once
supported on marble columns, doubtless rifled from an old church, or a
still older temple. Then we inspected the ruins of a fountain, of an
opera, and of a large theatre; and we saw two immense reservoirs,
anciently supplied by aqueducts which brought water from the
neighbouring mountains.
Verily the destroyer has been long at work in
this old city! Here are ruins heaped upon the top of ruins; temples
transformed into churches; churches again transformed into mosques, and
mosques now dreary and desolate. Inscriptions were here, side by side,
recording each transformation, and showing how the same building was
dedicated first to Jove, then to St. George, and finally to Mohammed.
We walked on after our little guide, winding among vast heaps of ruins
- ruins, nothing but ruins, and desolation, and rent walls, and fallen
columns. The modern dwellings are just the lower stories of the ancient
houses, which have been cleared out and occupied; and the whole site
has become so deeply covered with fallen structures, that the people
seem, for the most part, to be residing in caves.
Thirty or forty boys, with a fair sprinkling of
men, followed us, shouting and dancing in high glee at the strange
figures of the Franks, the first, probably, that most of them had seen.
We should have been seriously incommoded by their attentions, had it
not been for the threats of our manly little guide, accompanied now and
then by a volley of stones at the boys who
ventured too near. As we passed the houses, too, and the cavern-like
court-yards, portly women and coy girls peeped at us with one eye over
the corners of their long white veils, and laughingly pointed out to
each other some wondrous oddity about our dress. Our hats - or kettles,
as they persisted in calling them-attracted most attention. In fact, we
created among the quiet people of Suweideh quite as great a sensation
as a party of Arabs with their bronzed faces, flame-coloured turbans,
and flowing robes would do in Cheapside or in the High Street of
Edinburgh.
No city in Bashan - not
even Bozrah, its Roman capital - surpasses Suweideh in the extent of
its ruins; and yet, strange to say, its ancient name is unknown, and
there is no mention of it in history previous to the Crusades. It seems
to have suffered more from time and from the chances of war than any
other city in the whole country. Inscriptions found on its monuments
show that it was a flourishing city long before the conquest of Bashan
by the Romans in A.D. 105, and that it carried on an extensive trade
with Egypt and other countries down to the middle of the fourth
century. William of Tyre, the historian of the Crusades, says of the
region round the city: "It is rich in the choicest products of nature,
- wine, corn, and oil; the climate is salubrious and the air pure." So
late, therefore, as the twelfth century the country was prosperous and
the city populous. We can see the evidence of this still. The
hill-sides are everywhere terraced, and plain and mountain alike bear
the marks of former careful cultivation. The terraces are admirably
fitted for the growth of the vine, the fig, and the olive; and the rich
plain even now bears crops of grain whose luxuriance is proverbial.
Nowhere in Bashan, nowhere in all Syria, did I
see such convincing evidences of the surpassing richness and vast
resources of the soil, as around Suweideh. One would suppose that Moses
had his eye upon it when he penned these words - words equally
beautiful and true: "The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good
land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring
out of the valleys and hills; a land if wheat, and barley, and vines,
and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land
wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack
anything in it" (Deut. 8:7-9).
And one would suppose, too, looking at the Bible
and looking at the land-comparing prophetic description with authentic
history and present reality-that the prophets must surely have read the
long and sad history of Palestine as I read it, and that they must
surely have seen the present utter ruin and terrible desolation of this
part of it as I saw it, and that they must surely have heard from the
lips of the people the story of their oppression and their dangers as I
heard it, before they could possibly have written such graphic words as
these: "I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries
unto desolation. I will bring the land into desolation; and your
enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it" (Lev. 26:31, 32). "The
generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and
the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see
the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid
upon it, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? what meaneth
the heat of this great anger?" (Deut 29:22, 24).
These are only a few, a very few, of multitudes
of similar predictions. And, let it be observed, the predictions are
not made in mere general terms, capable of a wide rendering and a
somewhat vague reference. They are special, graphic, and detailed; and
their fulfilment is evident as it is complete. The fields are waste,
the roads deserted, the cities abandoned, the houses without
inhabitants, the sanctuaries desecrated, the vineyards, orchards, and
groves destroyed. And the land is desolated by the "violence" and the
folly "of all them that dwelt therein," - of the Turks, its nominal
owners, and of the Arabs, its periodical "spoilers," who come up "upon
all high places through the wilderness." "Everyone that passeth by it
is astonished" at its deserted cities and waste fields; and "the
stranger that comes from a far country," - the thoughtful student of
history, the thoughtful observer, the thoughtful reader of his Bible, -
cannot refrain from exclaiming, as he rides through Bashan, "Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land?"
The noble Druse chief of Suweideh, Sheikh Waked
el-Hamdan, was absent on our arrival, but in the evening he returned,
and entertained us with a hospitality that would have done honour to
the patriarch Job, who is represented, by a local tradition, as having
been the first prince of Suweideh. When the evening banquet was over,
the whole elders of the town crowded into the large reception-room of
Sheikh Waked, and squatted in concentric circles round the blazing
fire. We occupied the seat of honour, on a raised dais, beside the
sheikh. Rings of white turbans, the distinguishing head-dress of the
Druses, appeared round and round us, here and there broken by the
crimson kefiyeh of a Bedawy, or the black kerchief of a Christian. An
Egyptian sat by the fire preparing and distributing coffee, while an
Abyssinian slave behind him pounded the fragrant berries in a huge oak
mortar, beating time with the pestle, which bore some resemblance, in
form and size, to an Indian war-club. Each guest, on drinking, rose to
his knee, touched forehead and lips with his right hand, and bowed to
the sheikh; then, on sitting down again, he made another similar salam,
intended for the rest of the company, and those near him retuned it,
with a muttered prayer that the refreshment might do him good. It was
an interesting scene, and was probably not unlike the receptions of
guests in the mansion of Job and in the tents of Abraham.
We talked of politics, of war, and of poetry; and
most of the company took part in the conversation with a respectful
propriety and a good sense that surprised me. The poetry of the Arabs
has some striking peculiarities. Their poets often describe the virtues
and achievements of distinguished men in short stanzas, containing two
or four measures; and the beauty of the rhythm and boldness of the
imagery are sometimes of a high order. There is a species of
composition which they often try, and in which many are adepts. It is
difficult for those who are ignorant of the peculiar structure of the
Arabic language to understand its nature. A word is taken, and, by
changing its form, a series of distinct acts is described, each act
being expressed by a different inflexion of the root. One word will
thus occur six, eight, or ten times in a stanza, with the addition of a
prefix or suffix, or the insertion of an intermediate letter, or an
alteration in a vowel point; and each change conveys a new and definite
meaning. The warlike achievements of a favourite leader are not
unfrequently graphically described in this manner by skilful and varied
inflexion’s of his own name. The Hebrew scholar will find something
analogous to this in Jacob’s play upon the word Gilead, in Genesis 31:46-48; but the best examples of the kind in Scripture are given in Hosea, chapters 1 and 2, on the word Jezreel.
The morning we left Suweideh dawned gloomy and
threatening. A heavy thunder-storm had passed over the place during the
night. Never before in Syria had I seen rain heavier or lightning more
vivid. For an hour or more the flashes seemed to form one continuous
stream, lighting up the ruins of the city, and the glens and rocks of
the neighbouring mountains with an intense though lurid blaze. In the
morning, dark, lowering clouds still swept along the surface of the
ground, and enveloped the whole mountains. The air was cold, and the
smart showers which fell at intervals made it feel still colder; but as
the wind was high, and veering round to the north, we knew the day
would be fine; for the Scripture statement still holds good in
Scripture lands,-" Fair weather cometh out of the north" (Job 37:22).
A few minutes' ride down the rocky slope of the ridge on which Suweideh stands brought us into the plain of Bashan,
properly so called. I had heard much of its richness. I had heard of
the wonderful productiveness of that deep, black, loamy soil, of the
luxuriance of its grass, and of its teeming crops of grain; but up to
the moment I first set foot on it, I thought-indeed I was fully
persuaded-that a large amount of exaggeration must run through all
those glowing descriptions. Now I saw that there had been no
exaggeration, and that no part of Palestine could be compared in
fertility to the plain of Bashan. No wonder the
pastoral tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh made choice of this noble
country, preferring its wooded hills and grassy plains to the
comparatively bleak and bare range west of the Jordan, visible from the
heights of Moab. The plain extended in one
unbroken expanse, flat as the surface of a lake, for fifty miles, to
the base of Hermon. Little hills - some conical, some cup-shaped-rise
at intervals like islands, and over their surface, and sometimes round
their bases, are scattered fragments of porous lava, intermixed with basalt of a firmer texture; but the rest of the soil is entirely free from stones.
On or beside these tells many of the ancient towns stand; and their
black walls, houses, and towers, shattered by time and the horrors of
war, often look in the distance like natural cliffs.
The Roman road which anciently connected Damascus and Bostra, passing close to some of the chief cities of Bashan,
lay a few hundred yards to the right of our path. Its line can still be
traced, - indeed the old pavement is in many places quite perfect, as
much so as any part of the Appian Way; and yet, in a ride of some
twenty miles this day along that route, we did not meet, we did not
see, a single human being. The "wayfaring man" has "ceased" here, and "the highways are
desolate." Before reaching the town of Ary, about eight miles from
Suweideh, we passed two villages, and we saw four others a little way
up the mountain-side, on the left, - all of which contain a few
families of Druses; while away on the plain, to the right, no less than
five towns were in view at one moment, entirely deserted. The words of Jeremiah are surely fulfilled: "I
beheld, and, lo, there was no man ... I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful
place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at
the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger" (4:25, 26).
The town of Ary stands on a rocky tell. It is
about a mile in circuit; but there are no buildings of any importance;
nor are there any traces of wealth or architectural beauty. It appears
to have been a plain country town, which became the seat of a bishopric
about the fourth century, as we learn from the old ecclesiastical
records.
We had ascended the hill-side, and were quietly
occupied in examining the ruins of what seemed to have been a church,
when a party of the inhabitants came up, headed by their sheikh, and
invited us to accept of their hospitality. They would take no excuse.
It would be a disgrace to their village if they would permit
us to pass; it would be an insult to their chief if we should attempt
it. They entreated as Abraham would have done at his tent-door, or Lot
at the gate of Sodom. We entered the sheikh’s house; and while coffee
was being prepared, the whole household - in fact a great part of the
town-got into a state of commotion. A woman came into the apartment
with a large copper vessel in her hand, - took "a measure" of flour out
of a huge earthen jar in the corner, poured on water, and commenced the
process of "kneading unleavened cakes." A moment afterwards we
heard a confused noise of cackling and screaming; then a flock of hens
flew in terror past the open door, followed by a troop of women and
boys in full chase. We saw they had resolved to make us "a feast." The
flocks were at a distance, and it would take hours to obtain a lamb or
a kid, - fowls must therefore serve as a substitute. We were fully
aware of the despatch of Arab cooks, and that in this respect they were
not surpassed even by the patriarchal; but our time was too precious to
be wasted in mere ceremony, however interesting. Firmly, but
respectfully, we assured our worthy host that we must proceed at once
to Bozrah. To the evident regret of the stately sheikh, and the
unbounded astonishment of crowds of his people, who gathered round us,
and who could not understand how it was possible for any
polite or respectable person to decline proffered hospitality, we
mounted our horses and rode off.
Our route lay near the base of the mountains of Bashan,
which rose up in dark frowning masses on our left, most of their
conical peaks wooded to the summit. Kuleib, the highest of the whole
range, was in full view, its top covered with snow. Low spurs here shot
far out into the plain, having between them rich vales covered with
luxuriant pastures. Through the midst of each vale, between high
alluvial banks, now flowed a tiny winter stream. Passing the villages
of Mujeimir and Wetr, we gained the crest of a ridge commanding a noble
view over the plain southward. We drew bridle for a few minutes, to
examine 'more minutely this magnificent panorama. On the west, south,
and south-east, the plain was unbounded. Every section of it to which
we turned our eyes was thickly dotted with large towns and villages;
yet, with the exception of a few spots near us, there was no
cultivation, and we did not see a single tree or bush on that vast
expanse. Mahmood pointed out the more important cities. Due southward,
some five miles distant, a broad black belt extended far across the
green plain; in the midst of it rose the massive towers and battlements of a great castle; while other towers and tapering minarets shot up here and there. That was Bozrah, the ancient stronghold of Bashan,
the capital of the Roman province, and the first city in Syria captured
by the Saracens. We saw Jemurrin, Keires, Burd, Ghusam, and a host of
others on the right and left - all deserted. Low in a valley, on the south-east, lay the wide-spread ruins and ancient colossal houses of Kerioth, one of the old cities of the plain of Moab (Jer. 48:24); while away beyond it, on the horizon, rose a graceful conical hill, crowned with the castle of Salcah, which Joshua mentions as the eastern limit of Bashan, and of the kingdom of the giant Og (Josh. 13:11; 12).
This southern section of Bashan
is richer in historic and sacred associations than the northern. I
looked at it now spread out before me with feelings such as I cannot
describe. Those large deserted cities, that noble but desolate plain, -
the whole history of the country for four thousand years, from the Rephaim down to the Osmanlis, is written there. The massive dwellings show the simple style and ponderous workmanship of Giant architects. Jewish masonry and names; Greek inscriptions and temples; Roman roads; Christian churches; Saracenic mosques; Turkish desolations; - all, all are there; and all alike are illustrations of the accuracy and confirmations of the truth of the BIBLE.
The Giant Cities of Bashan IV