Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6
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2010
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The Project Gutenberg eBook,
Oriental Encounters, by
Marmaduke Pickthall
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: Oriental Encounters
Palestine and Syria, 1894-6
Author: Marmaduke Pickthall
Release Date: September 25, 2006 [eBook #19378]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORIENTAL
ENCOUNTERS***
E-text prepared by Jeannie Howse
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
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(http://www.pgdp.net/)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/Million Book Project
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Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet
Archive/Million Book Project. See
http://www.archive.org/details/OrientalEncounters
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document
has been preserved. Inconsistent spellings of
Arabic terms have been preserved.
A number of obvious typographical errors have
been corrected in this text. For a complete list,
please see the end of this document.
ORIENTAL ENCOUNTERS
ORIENTAL ENCOUNTERS
PALESTINE AND SYRIA
(1894-5-6)
BY
MARMADUKE PICKTHALL
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLANDCopyright 1918
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
I. RASHÎD THE FAIR 11
II. A MOUNTAIN GARRISON 20
III. THE RHINOCEROS WHIP 28
IV. THE COURTEOUS JUDGE 36
V. NAWÂDIR 45
VI. NAWÂDIR (continued) 54
VII. THE SACK WHICH CLANKED 68
VIII. POLICE WORK 77
IX. MY COUNTRYMAN 87
X. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 96
XI. THE KNIGHT ERRANT 106
XII. THE FANATIC 117
XIII. RASHÎD'S REVENGE 125
XIV. THE HANGING DOG 134
XV. TIGERS 142
XVI. PRIDE AND A FALL 151
XVII. TRAGEDY 161
[vi]XVIII. BASTIRMA 171
XIX. THE ARTIST-DRAGOMAN 181
XX. LOVE AND THE PATRIARCH 188
XXI. THE UNPOPULAR LANDOWNER 198
XXII. THE CAÏMMACÂM 209
XXIII. CONCERNING BRIBES 218
XXIV. THE BATTLEFIELD 226
XXV. MURDERERS 237
XXVI. THE TREES ON THE LAND 245
XXVII. BUYING A HOUSE 255
XXVIII. A DISAPPOINTMENT 264
CONCERNING CRIME AND
XXIX. 273
PUNISHMENT
XXX. THE UNWALLED VINEYARD 282
XXXI. THE ATHEIST 291XXXII. THE SELLING OF OUR GUN 302
XXXIII. MY BENEFACTOR 311
[1]
ToCINTRODUCTION
Early in the year 1894 I was a candidate for one of two vacancies in the
Consular Service for Turkey, Persia, and the Levant, but failed to gain the
necessary place in the competitive examination. I was in despair. All my hopes
for months had been turned towards sunny countries and old civilisations, away
from the drab monotone of London fog, which seemed a nightmare when the
prospect of escape eluded me. I was eighteen years old, and, having failed in
one or two adventures, I thought myself an all-round failure, and was much
depressed. I dreamed of Eastern sunshine, palm trees, camels, desert sand, as
of a Paradise which I had lost by my shortcomings. What was my rapture when
my mother one fine day suggested that it might be good for me to travel in the
East, because my longing for it seemed to indicate a natural instinct, with which
she herself, possessing Eastern memories, was in full sympathy!
I fancy there was some idea at the time that if I learnt the languages and
[2]studied life upon the spot I might eventually find some backstairs way into the
service of the Foreign Office; but that idea, though cherished by my elders as
some excuse for the expenses of my expedition, had never, from the first,
appealed to me; and from the moment when I got to Egypt, my first destination,
it lost whatever lustre it had had at home. For then the European ceased to
interest me, appearing somehow inappropriate and false in those surroundings.
At first I tried to overcome this feeling or perception which, while I lived with
English people, seemed unlawful. All my education until then had tended to
impose on me the cult of the thing done habitually upon a certain plane of our
society. To seek to mix on an equality with Orientals, of whatever breeding, was
one of those things which were never done, nor even contemplated, by the kind
of person who had always been my model.
My sneaking wish to know the natives of the country intimately, like other
unconventional desires I had at times experienced, might have remained a
sneaking wish until this day, but for an accident which freed me for a time from
[3]English supervision. My people had provided me with introductions to several
influential English residents in Syria, among others to a family of good position
in Jerusalem; and it was understood that, on arrival in that country, I should go
directly to that family for information and advice. But, as it chanced, on board
the ship which took me to Port Said from Naples I met a man who knew those
people intimately—had been, indeed, for years an inmate of their house—and
he assumed the office of my mentor. I stayed in Cairo, merely because he did,
for some weeks, and went with him on the same boat to Jaffa. He, for some
unknown reason—I suspect insanity—did not want me in Jerusalem just then;
and, when we landed, spun me a strange yarn of how the people I had thought
to visit were exceedingly eccentric and uncertain in their moods; and how it
would be best for me to stop in Jaffa until he sent me word that I was sure of
welcome. His story was entirely false, I found out later, a libel on a very
hospitable house. But I believed it at the time, as I did all his statements, havingno other means of information on the subject.
So I remained at Jaffa, in a little gasthaus in the German colony, which had
[4]the charms of cleanliness and cheapness, and there I might have stayed till
now had I awaited the tidings promised by my counsellor. There for the first two
weeks I found life very dull. Then Mr. Hanauer, the English chaplain, and a
famous antiquarian, took pity on my solitary state, walked me about, and taught
me words of Arabic. He was a native of Jerusalem, and loved the country. My
sneaking wish to fraternise with Orientals, when I avowed it after hesitations,
appeared good to him. And then I made acquaintance with a clever dragoman
and one of the most famous jokers in all Syria, who happened to be lodging at
my little hostelry, with nothing in the world to do but stare about him. He helped
me to throw off the European and plunge into the native way of living. With him I
rode about the plain of Sharon, sojourning among the fellâhîn, and sitting in the
coffee-shops of Ramleh, Lydda, Gaza, meeting all sorts of people, and
acquiring the vernacular without an effort, in the manner of amusement. From
dawn to sunset we were in the saddle. We went on pilgrimage to Nebi Rubîn,
the mosque upon the edge of marshes by the sea, half-way to Gaza; we rode
[5]up northward to the foot of Carmel; explored the gorges of the mountains of
Judæa; frequented Turkish baths; ate native meals and slept in native houses
—following the customs of the people of the land in all respects. And I was
amazed at the immense relief I found in such a life. In all my previous years I
had not seen happy people. These were happy. Poor they might be, but they
had no dream of wealth; the very thought of competition was unknown to them,
and rivalry was still a matter of the horse and spear. Wages and rent were
troubles they had never heard of. Class distinctions, as we understand them,
were not. Everybody talked to everybody. With inequality they had a true
fraternity. People complained that they were badly governed, which merely
meant that they were left to their devices save on great occasions. A
Government which touches every individual and interferes with him to some
extent in daily life, though much esteemed by Europeans, seems intolerable to
the Oriental. I had a vision of the tortured peoples of the earth impelled by their
own misery to desolate the happy peoples, a vision which grew clearer in the
[6]after years. But in that easy-going Eastern life there is a power of resistance, as
everybody knows who tries to change it, which may yet defeat the hosts of
joyless drudgery.
My Syrian friend—the Suleymân of the following sketches—introduced me to
the only Europeans who espoused that life—a French Alsatian family, the
Baldenspergers, renowned as pioneers of scientific bee-keeping in Palestine,
who hospitably took a share in my initiation. They had innumerable hives in
different parts of the country—I have seen them near the Jaffa gardens and
among the mountains south of Hebron—which they transported in due season,
on the backs of camels, seeking a new growth of flowers. For a long while the
Government ignored their industry, until the rumour grew that it was very
profitable. Then a high tax was imposed. The Baldenspergers would not pay it.
They said the Government might take the hives if it desired to do so. Soldiers
were sent to carry out the seizure. But the bee-keepers had taken out the
