September 25th.--Took A Walk Through The Town With Sheikh Hadj Farakh.
There Are Eight Or Nine Hundred Houses, Which Daily Increase, By
Fugitives From The Oppressions Of The Pashas Of Damascus And Of The
Neighbouring Petty Tyrants.
Twenty-five years ago there were only two
hundred houses at Zahle:
It is now one of the principal towns in the
territory of the Emir Beshir. It has its markets, which are supplied
from Damascus and Beirout, and are visited by the neighbouring Fellahs,
and the Arabs El Naim, and El Harb, and El Faddel, part of whom pass the
winter months in the Bekaa, and exchange their butter against articles
of dress, and tents, and horse and camel furniture. The inhabitants, who
may amount to five thousand, are all Catholic Greeks, with the exception
only of four or five Turkish families. The Christians have a bishop,
five churches and a monastery, the Turks have no mosque. The town
belongs to the territory of the Druses, and is under the authority of
the Emir Beshir, but a part of it still belongs to the family of Aamara,
whose influence, formerly very
[p.6] great in the Mountain, has lately been so much circumscribed by
the Emir, that the latter is now absolute master of the town. The Emir
receives the Miri, which is commonly the double of its original
assessment (in Belad Baalbec it is the triple), and besides the Miri, he
makes occasional demands upon the town at large. They had paid him
forty-five purses a few weeks before my arrival. So far the Emir
Beshir's government resembles perfectly that of the Osmanlys in the
eastern part of Syria: but there is one great advantage which the people
enjoy under his command--an almost complete exemption from all personal
exactions, and the impartiality of justice, which is dealt out in the
same manner to the Christian and to the Turk. It is curious, that the
peace of so numerous a body should be maintained without any legal power
whatsoever. There is neither Sheikh nor governor in the town; disputes
are settled by the friends of the respective parties, or if the latter
are obstinate, the decision is referred to the tribunal of the Emir
Beshir, at Deir el Kammar. The inhabitants, though not rich, are, in
general, in independent circumstances; each family occupies one, or at
most two rooms. The houses are built of mud; the roofs are supported by
one or two wooden posts in the midst of the principal room, over which
beams of pine-wood are laid across each other; upon these are branches
of oak trees, and then the earth, which forms the flat terrace of the
house. In winter the deep snow would soon break through these feeble
roofs, did not the inhabitants take care, every morning, to remove the
snow that may have fallen during the night. The people gain their
subsistence, partly by the cultivation of their vineyards and a few
mulberry plantations, or of their fields in the Bekaa, and partly by
their shops, by the commerce in Kourdine sheep, and their manufactures.
Almost every family weaves cotton cloth, which is used as shirts by the
inhabitants and
[p.7] Arabs, and when dyed blue, as Kombazes, or gowns, by the men.
There are more than twenty dyeing houses in Zahle, in which indigo only
is employed.
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