Their Ideas Of Decency Appear Singular, When Compared With Our Own.
A
Turkman will talk before his wife, daughter, or sister upon subjects
which are banished from our discourse; at
The same time that he would be
much offended if any friend should in the presence of his females speak
in raptures or poetical terms of the charms of a beloved mistress.
Remains of Antiquity.
One of the principal motives of my visit to the Turkmans was my desire
to visit some ruins near their encampments, particularly those of Deir
Samaan, which at Aleppo I had heard compared to the temples at Baalbec.
I therefore made it a condition with my Turkman host, that he should
take me to Deir Samaan as well as to several other ruins whose names I
had collected from different Aleppines. The day after my arrival under
his tent, he set out with me towards the Deir, and we reached it after a
ride of four hours over the rocky hills which encircle the mountain of
St. Simon, called Djebel Samaan, or Sheikh Barekat. The Deir Samaan
consists of the ruins of a church, monastery, or episcopal palace, built
upon the top of an insulated hill, bearing from the top of the mountain
of St. Simon, N. 20 E., about eight miles distant. It is now inhabited
by several families of Kurds, who have their black goat hair tents
pitched in the middle of the ruins. They received us with much
hospitality; a sheep was immediately killed, and all the delicacies of
the season were served up to us. After dinner and coffee, Tshay[FN#1]
was served round, which the Aleppines and all Syrians esteem as one of
the greatest dainties: it is a heating drink, made of ginger, cloves,
rosewater, sugar and similar ingredients, boiled together to a thick
syrup. Mursa Aga, the chief, a handsome young man, then took up his
Tamboura or guitar, and the rest of the evening passed in music and
singing.
The whole summit of the hill, which is six hundred paces in length and
one hundred and seventy in breadth, was once covered with stately
buildings. A thick wall of square hewn stones, is traceable all round.
The principal ruins consist of two separate buildings, a palace, and a
church, or monastery, which were separated from each other by a court-
yard one hundred and ten paces in length. The palace, or perhaps the
high priest’s habitation, is not remarkable either for its size or
elegance. I could not enter it because it was occupied by the Harem of
Mursa Aga. A colonnade led from the palace to the church gate; the
broken fragments only of the columns remain. Of the church most of the
side walls are still standing, ornamented with pillars and arches worked
in the walls; it is divided into two circular apartments [p.645] of
which the inner may have been the sanctuary. On the eastern side of the
church is a dark vaulted room, which receives the daylight only from the
door, and which appears to have been a sepulchre. A number of niches (if
I recollect right, nine), not perpendicular like the Egyptian sepulchral
niches, but horizontal, have been built around the wall. Into this
chamber opens a subterraneous passage, which is said by the Kurds, to
continue a long way under ground, in the direction of Antakia. I could
not persuade any body to enter it with me. Adjacent to this sepulchre is
another vaulted, open hall, which has been changed by its present
proprietors into stables, and an apartment for receiving strangers in
the heat of summer. The softness of the calcareous stone from the
adjacent hills, with which the buildings are constructed, has caused all
the ornaments of the arches and columns and even the shafts themselves
to decay; enough remains however, of their clumsy and overcharged
ornaments, to shew that the edifices are of an advanced period of the
Greek empire. The columns are very small in proportion to the arches
which they support, and I did not see any above eighteen or twenty feet
high. The perishable nature of the stone has not left a single
inscription visible, if there ever were any, with the exception of some
names of Frenchmen from Aleppo, who visited the place eighty years ago.
The sign of the cross is visible in several places. If these buildings
were constructed in pious commemoration of the devout sufferings of St.
Simon Stylites, who passed thirty-five years of his life upon a column,
they are probably of the sixth century. St. Simon died towards the end
of the fifth century, and in the seventh century Syria was conquered and
converted to Islamism by the successors of Mohammed. The structures are
certainly not of the date of the Crusades. On the eastern side of the
building are the remains of an aqueduct, the continuation of which is
again met with on the opposite hill. The Kurdine inhabitants of these
ruins collect at present the rain water in cisterns.
Descending from the top of the hill on the western side, the remains of
a broad paved causeway lead to an arch, which stands about ten minutes
walk from the castle, and faces the ruins of a city, built at the foot
of the hill, of which a number of buildings are still extant. These
ruins, called Bokatur, are uninhabited, their circumference may be
estimated at about one mile and a half. Amongst the many private houses
a palace may be distinguished, surrounded by a low portico, at which
terminates the causeway leading from the arch. At half an hour’s
distance to the S.W. of Bokatur, are ruins resembling the former in
extent and structure. I saw several houses of which the front was
supported by columns, of a smaller size than those of the palace at
Bokatur. This place is now called Immature, at three quarters of an hour
to the W. of it, are other similar ruins of a town called Filtire, which
I did not see.
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