Cities of the Dawn

It is an awful history, that of the Jew in Jerusalem, of incessant revolt on the part of the people, of incessant conquest and massacre on the part of the sanguinary conquerors. Again and again the Jew seemed on the brink of extermination. Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Titus, Hadrian, successively exerted their utmost power to extinguish, not merely the political existence of the State, but even the separate being of the people. Hadrian, to annihilate for ever, writes Dean Milman, all hopes of the restoration of the Jewish kingdom, accomplished his plan of founding a new city on the site of Jerusalem, peopled by a colony of foreigners. The city was called Ælia Capitolina: Ælia after the prænomen of the Emperor, Capitolina as dedicated to the Jupiter of the Capitol. An edict was published to prevent any Jew from entering the new city under pain of death, or approaching its environs even at a distance so as to contemplate its sacred height. More effectually to keep them away, the image of a swine was placed over the gate leading to Bethlehem. The more peaceful Christians were permitted to establish themselves within the walls, and Ælia became the seat of a flourishing church and bishopric. At a later period Julian the Apostate – as the ecclesiastical writers term one of the noblest men who ever wore the imperial purple – embraced the extraordinary design of rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem. In a public epistle to the nation or community of the Jews, he pities their misfortunes, condemns their oppressors, praises their constancy, declares himself their gracious protector, and hopes, after his return from the Persian war, he may be permitted to pay his grateful vows to the Almighty in the holy city of Jerusalem. The Jews from every part of the world gave freely to assist this pious enterprise. According to the Christian writers, Heaven interfered, and the Temple was left unbuilt. This glorious deliverance was speedily improved by the pious art of the clergy of Jerusalem and the active credulity of the Christian world. It is evident, as Gibbon remarks, the restoration of the Jewish Temple was secretly connected with the ruin of the Christian Church, a Church for which Julian had little love. From the confessions of Jerome himself, Jerusalem seemed saturated with every form of vice and crime.

They tell me the Jew is blind because he is waiting for the coming Messiah, but, I ask, are we not all waiting for a coming Messiah? And the sooner He comes the better for all of us, Jew and Gentile alike. If the Jew is waiting for a coming Messiah, that is surely to his credit – that he remains true to the teaching of his fathers – and shows him to be no more blind than those of us who piously await the dawn of a millennium, which, according to all human appearances, seems as far off as ever. When the Turkish Empire breaks up, it will be no easy matter how to settle in whose hands Jerusalem shall be placed. There may be a terrible fight about the Holy City yet.

It is now the fashion for everyone to rush to Jerusalem. At one time to go there required no little expenditure of money, and time, and trouble. An excursion-steamer takes you there for a trifle compared with the expense of the journey only a few years ago. You land at Jaffa, take the train to Jerusalem, and in due time find yourself outside the Jaffa Gate, guarded by Turkish soldiers. Amidst a dirty, many-coloured mob of donkeys, camels, and people, exhausted by the heat, suffocated by the dust, and bewildered by the noise, you are at the Holy City, as lying superstition terms it. It certainly is not Jerusalem the golden, but is very much the reverse. Its smells are indescribable, and to drink its water is death. Your first wonder is why David and Solomon should ever have made it a royal residence at all. It is a city set upon a hill, but it is dominated by hills all round, where no verdure is seen, and where the black goat alone finds a scanty existence. Climb one of these hills, and you look down on the gray, stony city, surrounded by a high wall, over which rise minarets, and mosques, and church spires in wild confusion. There is nothing to charm the eye there. Enter through one of the gates, and you are still more disappointed. You wander in hopeless confusion, shut in on all sides by lofty buildings, with no windows to speak of, only here and there a door; or you plunge into a street with a dark awning, which serves as a bazaar, with shops of all kinds around, where so dense is the crowd that it is with difficulty you make your way. Poverty seems to be the prevailing characteristic of the place. Even the shops fail to attract.

Money is the one thing Jerusalem sucks in as a thirsty soul does water when it comes, and many well-meaning people find there a living prepared for them who would otherwise have to starve. As to the real state of the people you never hear a word. The Turkish tax-gatherer may grind them down. The wild Bedouin of the desert may come and take what the tax-gatherer has left. But you hear nothing of that, and the daily topic of conversation among the European settlers is the repetition of dogma and the fulfilment of prophecy. It is not till you have cleared out, taken the rail to Jaffa, and sail along the blue waters of the Mediterranean, that you get rid of the nightmare, have done with cant, and once more breathe free.

The fact is, the Holy City is one gigantic fraud. All we know is that there Christ lived and laboured and suffered and died. Not a stone remains of the Jerusalem over whose impending fate He shed bitter tears. The cunning of an interested priesthood has done all the rest, from the discovery of the true cross by the mother of Constantine, to the holy fire which is seen at Easter by a panting, perspiring crowd in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The town itself covers an area of more than 209 acres, of which thirty-five are occupied by the Haram-esh-Sherif. The remaining space is occupied by Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews.

The Greek Church is the strongest branch of the Christians in Jerusalem, having eighteen monasteries, with schools, churches, a hospital, hospice, and a printing press. The Russian church on the Mount of Olives is the grandest ecclesiastical building in the city of the modern type. The Roman Catholics have fine churches, monasteries, and convents. The Armenian Patriarch resides in his convent between the Jaffa and Zion gates. The Latins, Abyssinians, and Copts are also well represented. The Knights Templars of the Holy Sepulchre, a Roman Catholic body under the patronage of the Emperor of Austria, have a fine convent just outside the walls. Priests, and nuns, and sisters of mercy, and devotees, meet you at every turn.

One ought to go to Jerusalem if only to see what priests can build up on small foundations, and to what length superstition can be carried, even in what are termed days of light and progress. In this respect the Turk is as great a sinner as the Christian, and tells you how at the resurrection the risen will have to cross the Valley of Jehosaphat by a bridge of the Prophet’s hair, from which the wicked will fall straight to Gehenna, while to the righteous heaven, with its houris, will open its diamond gates. You see in Jerusalem what you see nowhere else, a city built up by religion, true or false.

In a letter from the Rev. Ben Oliel to a friend, he says:

‘You want to know what is (1) the actual population of Jerusalem; (2) the Jewish population in it; and (3) the number of Jews in all Palestine.

‘The Turkish Government, like that of other lands, has its statistical “bureau” – office; but whatever may be its success in the European provinces of the empire, here in Asia its computations are believed to be imperfect, unreliable, and mainly guesswork. The conscription and consequent tax for exemption from military service operate against it. The heads of the several religious communities – Turkish or Moslem, Jewish, Latin, Greek, Armenian, Copt, Maronite, Melchite, etc. – who co-operate in the census, have powerful motives to frustrate exactitude, for it means a larger annual taxation, for which they are made responsible; and, apart from this, the inhabitants have strong prejudices against being numbered. Therefore, all estimates of population are merely approximate, and nothing more.

‘A young Jew of the highest family in this city, who is employed in offices of trust in the Pasha’s court and has access to official records, a convert of this mission, who confessed his faith in the Lord Jesus on October 27, tells me that in official circles the population of Jerusalem, including its suburbs – Bethlehem, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, etc. – is now computed at 100,000, of which 60,000 are believed to be Jews; and he declares my estimate of the general population of Jerusalem and its immediate suburbs at from 65,000 to 70,000, and the Jewish at about 40,000, to be far too low. He is custodian of the roll of the Sephardim poor – widows, orphans, blind and decrepit old men and their families – amounting to 7,000 souls, that have to be provided for regularly; and yet the Ashkenazim constitute the majority of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem now, and they have a roll of poor as large proportionately. He says the Sephardim pay £1,000 annually for exemption from military service, and the Ashkenazim £1,250, which, at the rate of two medjidis per head, represents 5,625 men of the age liable to service. Jewish families are prolific, and must therefore be calculated at seven rather than five per family, and if one in each family is liable to service, the result is 39,375 souls. But this has reference to the Jewish rayahs– Turkish subjects; whereas there is a large admixture of those under Russian, Austrian, German, etc., protection, who are free from taxation, military or other. By such a process of reasoning his estimate of 60,000 Jews for Jerusalem is almost proved mathematically.

‘I have before me Luncz’s First Hebrew Almanack for the Jewish year 1895–96, an interesting compilation; it gives the population of Jerusalem thus: “Number of inhabitants 45,420, of which Jews 28,112 (viz., Ashkenazim 15,074, Sephardim 7,900, Mughrabim 2,420, Gurgis 670, Bucharis 530, Tamanites 1,288, Persians 230); Moslems 8,560; Christians 8,748 (viz., Armenians 695, Greeks 4,625, Abyssinians 105, Syrians 23, Protestants 645, Catholics or Latins 2,530, Copts 125).” He does not say so, but he can only mean the population inside the walls.’

As an illustration of the difficulties awaiting the Jew who is led to renounce Judaism, I quote from a convert’s letter a few particulars:

‘I will briefly say that I commenced the journey of life in Jerusalem as son of one of the first Jewish families that found their way back to the fatherland. According to the custom of our people, my dear mother sent me to school when I was only two. I sat at the feet of our Rabbi school-teachers until I was twelve; then I studied the Rabbis’ commentaries and had an Arab tutor. At thirteen years of age I entered the Seraya, or Government House of Jerusalem. I studied to be an Arabic and Turkish scribe, and attended the Jewish school to learn French.

‘In the Government House there are three judges appointed to represent respectively the Christian, Jewish, and Moslem citizens. My uncle is the Jewish judge. At sixteen I became one of the scribes of the Chief Justice, and two years ago his assistant secretary.

‘When I used to visit Jaffa I heard about Mr. Ben Oliel from many Jews who frequented his house for discussion and study of God’s Word. In 1890 he came up to Jerusalem, and at last I met him. The first time that I called upon him I was in company with my father, my uncle the judge, the son of the Chief Rabbi, and another Rabbi, one of the judges of the Jewish Court.

‘The Chief Rabbi appoints twelve judges, who each serve a term of three months every year, and every dispute between Jews must first be brought before them, and, if needs be, is referred by them to the Turkish Court.’

In time the writer became a Christian and was baptized. He adds:

‘It was my desire to get the training that would make me a good Christian teacher, but I could not travel without a passport, and could not get this except through the application of my father, who, instead, gave strict orders that no passport should be made for me. After a year of vain endeavour, I was able to persuade a friend who was in the office where they are written, on the score of friendship, to give me a tishcara, or local passport, which, however, he did not dare to record; off in the country it served me well. My plan was to start on a trip through the country and seize any opportunity that might offer of getting to Egypt. I started from the Damascus Gate, my faithful horse being my only companion. We travelled first to Nablous, the ancient Sichem, and finding that the Samaritans were soon to keep their passover, I waited to see their celebrated sacrifice. Each family took a lamb, and they went out and pitched their tents on Mount Gerizim before the tomb of Sichem, the son of Hamor, whom they hold in great reverence, and camped out there for eight days. On the first day their high-priest sacrificed a lamb for each family, and every day he himself mixed the unleavened cakes. Leaving Nablous, I struck across country till I came to an Arab village on the Jordan, and then followed its course until I came to Tiberias. Along this part of the country many of the villagers knew me, and wherever I was acquainted they entertained me freely with their proverbial hospitality. At one Bedouin encampment they insisted on roasting an entire sheep. This they did in a very primitive fashion. They dug a ditch in the earth, and made fire within it until it was very hot, and then, removing the fire, they laid the lamb, well seasoned, on the hot ashes, and then buried it for a couple of hours. It then made a very savoury dish, of which we all partook, dipping into the same dish.

‘Tiberias is one of the four sacred cities of the Jews, and there I found a large number residing. It is also a favourite resort because of its hot springs of healing qualities. I had left Jerusalem almost ill, and so was very glad to take a course of baths here.

‘From Tiberias I journeyed towards Nazareth, and visited the Tomb of Jethro, near the horns of Hassau, where probably our Lord preached His wondrous Sermon on the Mount. At Nazareth I was hospitably entertained at the Latin Convent, and a priest showed me all the sights of the town. Next day 400 or 500 French pilgrims arrived, and I shared their entertainment.

‘After three days I resumed my journey, with the intention of embarking at Haifa and passing on to Egypt without being seen at Jaffa.’

And in due time the writer made his escape, and was welcomed in America, mainly owing to the assistance of Mr. Ben Oliel, who had been the means of his conversion.

CHAPTER XIII

ALEXANDRIA

We left Jaffa on the Monday, and in twenty-four hours after were landed at Alexandria. Alexandria is not a desirable place to land at; travellers have to trust generally to native boatmen, who are a race of robbers. For instance, an American gentleman described to me how it fared with him on attempting to land a few years since. He and a friend made a bargain with a respectable man to put them ashore. He called a boatman, into whose boat they got with their luggage. No sooner had the man rowed a little way from the ship than he stopped and demanded the instant payment of a sum four times the amount that had been agreed upon. The travellers said they had made an agreement with his master, and he was bound to carry it out. He replied that he had no master; that the boat was his, that the oars were his, and that he would neither take them back to the ship nor row them ashore unless they complied with his request. One of the gentlemen had a revolver, which he held at the rascal’s head, telling him to prepare for instant death. The man sullenly obeyed, but no sooner had he reached the shore than he landed and preferred against the travellers a charge of attempting to murder him. The affair promised to be serious, but it was discovered by the judge that the revolver was not loaded, nor ever had been loaded, and the travellers were at length allowed to depart in peace. I heard of another case of a Frenchman shooting his boatman, who refused to fulfil his contract. In my case, happily, I landed on the quay, and had no trouble with the boatmen at all.

At length I am fairly landed in the land of the Pharaohs – a land whose records are engraved in stones, and date thousands of years before the birth of Christ. You see nothing of Alexandria till you approach it, and then it spreads out before you in all its charm, from Pharos, the most ancient lighthouse in the world, on one side, to Pompey’s Pillar on the other. Soon after I land at the quay, I make my way to the railway-station in a carriage and pair, for which I had agreed to pay a shilling. At the station the driver has the impudence to demand two shillings, which I refuse to give, whilst a dragoman, who has fastened himself on to me, though I have attempted to get rid of him, demands a shilling for his unnecessary attendance. I offer him threepence; he is indignant. ‘I am a dragoman,’ he exclaims in an angry tone. ‘What do you take me for?’ At length I give him sixpence, and he goes away in peace. I smoke my first pipe of excellent Egyptian tobacco, swallow a tiny cup of coffee, all sugar and grounds, and survey the scene from the outside of the excellent railway-station, which is a credit to the city. Every minute a blacking boy begs me to let him clean my boots, but as I need not his services they are declined. On my way I have seen every sign of industry and wealth: spacious shops, and a fine square adorned with handsome houses, and with a good statue of Ibrahim Pasha – the man to whom modern Egypt owes its first dawn of revived prosperity. The municipal authorities of the place have done much to promote its prosperity. The traveller will find it to his advantage to stop here a day or two. The hotels are excellent, and, with one exception, by no means dear. The harbour is full of shipping and steamers, and the number of trains laden with merchandise running between Cairo and Alexandria seems incessant. The railway-carriages are an immense improvement on those which take you from Jaffa to Jerusalem. Alexandria has a population of over 300,000, and its prosperity has greatly increased of late. The English reside principally at Ramleh, five miles off, to which there is a local train service. On your way you pass the battlefield between the English and the French, where our General, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, lost his life in the hour of victory.

Commerce seems to have had her birthplace in Egypt. In the time of Joseph, we read, all countries came there to buy corn. Fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ its merchants brought indigo and muslins from India, and porcelain from China, and the fame of its mariners was great. The trade route was down the Persian Gulf, along the Tigris, through Palmyra – the Tadmor of old – down to the cities of the Mediterranean. Arab mariners also sailed from India, keeping close to the coast till they reached Berenice, in the Red Sea, whence the goods were transported to Captos, thence down the Nile to Alexandria. ‘Under such Emperors as the cruel and dissipated Commodus,’ writes Mr. R. W. Fraser, in his ‘British India,’ ‘the plundering barbarian, Caracalla, and the infamous Heliogabalus, the wealth that came from the East through Alexandria to the imperial city of Rome, passed away to Constantinople and the rising cities along the Mediterranean.’

The glory of Alexandria in the olden time was the Serapeum, sacred to the worship of Serapis, a god originally worshipped in Sinope, and brought to Alexandria by the Emperor Ptolemy – worshipped eventually by the Romans as the Supreme Being, the beneficent Lord of Life and Death. It is clear the Ptolemies – at one and the same time Egyptian Pharaohs and Greek princes – felt the need of a real and presiding deity for the great city, with its enormous population, not only from Greece and its colonies, but from all the nations and tribes of the Mediterranean and the East.

As the seat of a god-worship became important, so did the deity its patron. When Alexandria became the official and mercantile capital of Egypt, Serapis became the chief of all the gods of the land, and there his shrine was worshipped for nearly one thousand years. The worship of Serapis was the last to fall before the advancing force of Christianity. The philosopher saw in Serapis, writes Macrobius, nothing more than the anima mundi, the spirit of whom universal nature is the body; so that by an easy transition Serapis came to be worshipped as the embodiment of the one Supreme whose representative on earth was Christ. This is clear from a letter written by the Emperor Hadrian a. d. 131. ‘I am now become,’ writes Hadrian, ‘fully acquainted with that Egypt which you extol so highly. I have found the people vain, fickle, and shifting with every change of opinion. Those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians; even those who style themselves the bishops of Christ are actually devoted to Serapis. There is no chief of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian bishop, who is not an astrologer, a fortune-teller, or a conjurer. The very Patriarch of Tiberias is compelled, when he comes to Egypt, by one party to adore Serapis, by another to worship Christ.’

And this seems to show that some Christians, in order to escape persecution, enjoyed their own faith under the cover of the national and local worship, which was susceptible of a spiritual interpretation quite cognate to their own ideas. A similar case occurred in Spain, as the historical reader may remember, when so many Jews, in fear of the Inquisition, nominally became Roman Catholics. Accordingly, it is clear that the tone of the higher, the fashionable society in Alexandria was to believe that on some grander or philosophic theory all these religions differed in form, but were essentially the same; that all adored one Logos or Demiurge under different names, all employed the same arts to impose on the vulgar, and all were equally despicable to the real philosopher.

The worship of Serapis was abolished in the reign of Justinian, and of the former glory of the Serapeum nothing now remains, unless it be Pompey’s Pillar, which was said by some to have formed part of the Serapeum. According to Tacitus, sick persons were accustomed to pass a night in the Serapeum in order to regain their health. The colossal statue of Serapis was involved in the ruin of his temple and religion. It was believed that if an insult were offered to that statue, chaos would ensue. When a Christian soldier aimed his first blow, even the Christians trembled for the event. The victorious soldier, Gibbon tells us, repeated his blows; the huge idol was overthrown and broken in pieces, and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His mangled carcase was burnt in the amphitheatre amidst the shouts of the people, and many persons attributed their conversion to this discovery of the impotence of their great deity. A process something similar, attended with similar results, has more than once occurred in the history of missionary enterprise.

Deeply interesting is Alexandria from a historical point of view. It was founded by Alexander the Great more than 300 years before Christ. King Ptolemy, the first of that name, made it the capital of his kingdom, laid the foundations of its enormous library, and held out inducements to men of learning to come from all parts of the world to settle there. During the siege of the city by the Romans the library was burnt, but Antony afterwards gave the library a large collection of manuscripts, which formed the nucleus of a second library. In the early centuries of our era the town was torn with religious dissensions about the Jews and religious dogma. It was here the beautiful Hypatia, the fair heroine of Kingsley’s celebrated novel, was torn to pieces by an infuriated mob. St. Mark is said to have preached the Gospel here. It was here that there arose fierce discussions between Arius and Athanasius and Cyril. The Christians were persecuted with great severity by Decius, by Valerianus, and Diocletian. The city then declined in wealth and importance. Its population dwindled away. All fanatics, Christian or pagan, seem to me equally to blame.

It was at one time, as I have said, the headquarters of the worship of Serapis. The temple stood to the east of Alexandria, near Pompey’s Pillar. It is said to have been one of the most remarkable buildings in the world, and was filled with excellent statues and other works of art. It was destroyed by the Christian fanatic, Theophilus, during the reign of Theodosius II. Gibbon describes the prelate as ‘a bold, bad man, the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and blood.’ The library of the Serapeum is said to have contained about 400,000 manuscripts; at any rate, when it was burnt by the command of the Khalif Omar, the manuscripts were said to have been sufficiently numerous to heat the public baths for six months. Perhaps it is as well they were not all preserved. Of making many books there is no end, and many are the books published in this intelligent age, the burning of which would be no loss, but a gain, to the reading public. Among the famous men who studied in the original library of Alexandria were Strabo, Hipparchus, Archimedes, Plato, and Euclid.