It Seems Rather Extraordinary That The
Druses, The Known Enemies Of The Mohammedan Faith, Should Be Allowed To
Inhabit The
Country so near to the gate of the holy city, as Damascus is
called; for not only Deir Ali, but
Three or four villages, as Artous,
Esshera, Fye, and others, at only three hours distant from Damascus, are
for the greater part peopled by them. Numbers of them are even settled
in the town; the quarters called Bab Mesalla and El Hakle, in the
Meidhan, or suburbs of the city, contain
MERDJAN.
[p.213]more than one hundred Druse families, who are there called
Teyamene [Arabic]. In another quarter, called El Khereb, live three or
four hundred Metaweli families, or Shiytes, of the sect of Aly; of this
sect is the present Mutsellim, Aly Aga. The religious creeds of all
these people are publicly known; but the fanatism of the Damascenes,
however violent, is easily made subservient to their fears or interests;
every religious and moral duty being forgotten when the prospect of gain
or the apprehension of danger presents itself.
At three hours and a quarter from Kessoue is the village El Merdjan.
When I passed this place in 1810, I found a single Christian family in
it; I now found eight or ten families, most of them Druses, who had
emigrated hither from Shaara, a well peopled village in 1810, but now
deserted. They had brought the fertile soil round El Merdjan into
cultivation, and had this year sown eight Ghararas of wheat and barley,
or about one hundred and twenty cwt.
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