My Hosts At Deir Samaan Asked Me Many Questions Relative To
European Politics.
I found the opinion prevalent among them which
Buonaparte has taken such pains to impress upon the winds of the
continental nations, that Great Britain is and ought to be merely a
maritime power.
This belief, however, proves very advantageous to
English travellers in these countries. A Frenchman will every where be
taken for a spy, as long as the French invasion of Egypt and Syria is in
the memory of man, but it seems never to enter into the suspicions of
these people that the English can have any wish to possess the countries
of the Levant. I was astonished to find that all the Kurds spoke Arabic
fluently, besides the Turkish and their own language, which latter is a
corrupted mixture of Persian, Armenian, and Turkish. On the other hand,
I only met three or four Turkmans who knew how to express themselves
[p.647] in Arabic, though both nations are alike in almost continual
intercourse with Arab peasants and Aleppines.
Besides the ruins just described, there are many others dispersed over
the Turkman territories; which, to judge from the prevailing
architecture, are of the same date as those already mentioned. Tisin,
Sulfa, Kalaa el [B]ent, Jub Abiad, and Mayshat, all of them at two or
three hours distance from the tent of Mohammed Ali, are heaps of ruined
buildings, with a few remains of houses. Kalaa el Bent and Jub Abiad
contain each of them a square tower about sixty feet high. They have
only one small projecting window near the top; the roof is flat.
Tradition says that Kalaa el Bent or in Turkish Kislar Kalassi, (the
castle of girls), was formerly a convent; probably of nuns. At Mayshat,
a Turkman encampment on the top of a hill, at the foot of which is a
large deep well, with a solid wall, I was shewn a subterraneous chamber,
about twenty feet long and fifteen in breadth, hewn out of the rock, at
the entrance to which are two columns; there are two excavations in the
bottom of it, like the sepulchral niches which I saw in the Deir Samaan.
I have been told that near Telekberoun, a village situated at the foot
of the hills which encircle the plain of Khalaka, there are remains of
an ancient causeway elevated two or three feet from the ground, about
fifteen feet broad, running in the direction from Aleppo to Antioch; it
may be traced for the length of a quarter of an hour. In the plain of
the Afrin, about three miles from Mursal Oglu’s residence, and half an
hour from the Afrin, stands an insulated hillock in the plain with the
ruins of a Saracen castle, called Daoud Pasha; four miles to the N.E. of
it is situated another similar hillock, with ruins of a castle, called
Tshyie. The sight of these numerous ruins fills the minds of the
Turkmans and Kurds with ideas of hidden treasures, and they relate a
variety of traditionary tales of Moggrebyn Sheikhs, who have been once
on the point of getting out the treasure, when they have been
interrupted by the shrieks of a woman, &c. &c. Having provided myself at
Aleppo with a small hammer to break off spesimens of rocks, the Turkmans
could not be pursuaded that this instrument was not for the purpose of
searching for gold.
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