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Giant cities of Bashan; and Syria's holy places

I. Lebanon ..

II. Hamath and the Northern Border of Israel

III. Paimyra ..

IV. Damascus ..

Appendix


“All Dashan, unto Salchah and Edrel, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. For only
Og king of Baslscen remained of the remnant of the giantS; behold, his bedstead
lOSS a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits
the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man 
And the rest of Gileacl, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, gave I unto the half tribe of
Manatseh; all the region of Argob, with oil Baehan, which was called the land of
giants.”—DEUT. iii. 10—13.


HISTORICAL NOTICES.


remotest historic period down to our own day
B ASHAN is the land of sacred romance. From the
there has ever been something of mystery and
lot of strange wild interest connected with that old
kingdom. in the memorable raid of the Arab chiefs of Me-
sopotamia into Eastern and Central Palestine, we read that
the “Rephaim in Ashteroth-Karnaim” bore the first brunt of
the onset. The Rephaim,—that is, “the giants,” for such is
the meaning of the name,—men of stature, beside wham the
Jewish spies said long afterwards that they were as grass.
hoppers (Nnm. xiii. 33). These were the aboriginal inhabi.
tants of Bashan, and probably of the greater part of Ca-
naan. Most of them died out, or were exterminated at a
very early period; but a few remarkable specimens of the
race_such as Goliath, and Sippai, and Lahmi (i. Chron
BASHAN AND ITS GIANT CITIES.


xx.)—were the terror of the Israelites, and the champions of
their foes, as late as the time of David ;—and, strange to
say, traditionary memorials of these primeval giants exist
even now in almost every section of Palestine, in the form

of graves of enormous diniensions,—as the grave of Abel,
near Damascus, thirty feet long; that of Seth, in Anti-Le-
banon, about the same size; and that of Noah, in Lebanon,
which measures no less than seventy yards! The capital
and stronghold of the Rephaim in Bashan was Ashteroth-
Karnaim; so called from the goddess there worshipped,—
the mysterious “two-horned Astarte.” We shall presently
see, if my readers will accompany me in my proposed tour,
that the cities built and occupied some forty centuries ago
by these old giants exist even yet. I have traversed their
streets; I have opened the doors of their houses; I have
slept peacefully in their long-deserted halls. We shall see,
too, that among the massive ruins of these wonderful cities
lie sculptured images of Astarte, with the crescent moon,
which gave her the name Carnaim, upon her brow. Of one
of these mutilated statues I took a sketch in the city of Ke-
nath; and in the same place I bought from a shepherd an
old coin with the full figure of the goddess stamped upon it.
Four hundred years after the incursion of Chedorlaomer
and his allies, another and a far more formidable enemy,
emerging from the southern deserts, suddenly appeared on
the borders of Bashan. Sihon, the warlike king of the Am-
orites, who reigned in Heshbon, bad tried in vain to bar
their progress. The rich plains, and wooded hills, and
noble pasture-lands of Bashan offered a tempting prospect
to the shepherd tribes of Israel. They came not on a sud-
den raid, like the Nomadic Arabs of the desert; they
aimed at a complete conquest, and a permanent settlement.
The aboriginal Rephaim were now all but extinct: “Only
Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of the giants.”
The last of his race in this region, he was still the ruler of
his country: and the whole Ainorite inhabitants, from
HISTORICAL NOTICES. 13

J-Jerrnon to the Jabbok, and from the Jordan to the desert,
acknowledged the supremacy -of this giant warrior. Og
resolved to defend his country. It was a splendid inherit-
ance, and he would not resign it without a struggle. Col-
lecting his forces, he marshalled them on the broad plain
before Edrei. We have no details of the battle; but, doubt-
less, the Amorites and their leader fought bravely for coun-
try and for life. It was in vain; a stronger than human
arm warred for Israel. Og’s army was defeated, and he
himself slain. It would seem that the Ammonites, like the
BedawIn of the present day, followed in the wake of the
Israelitish army; and after the defeat and flight of the
Amorites, pillaged their deserted capital, Edrei, and carried
off as a trophy the iron bedstead of Og. “Is it not,” says
the Jewish historian, “in Rabbath of the children of Am-
mon? nine cubits the length thereof, and four cubits the
breadth of it, after the cubit of a man” (Dent. iii. 11).
The conquest of Bashan, begun under the leadership of
Moses in person, was completed by Jair, one of the most
distinguished chiefs of the tribe of Manasseh. In narrat-
ing his achievements, the sacred historian brings out another
remarkable fact connected with this kingdom of Bashan.
In Argob, one of its little provinces, Jair took no less than
sixty great eitiee, “fenced with high walls, gates, and bars;
besides unwalled towns a great many” (Dent. iii. 4, 5, 14).
Such a statement seems all but incredible. It would not
stand the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso for a moment.
Often, when reading the passage, I used to think that some
strange statistical mystery hung over it; for bow could a
province measuring not more than thirty miles by twenty
Support such a number of fortified cities, especially when
the greater part of it was a wilderness of rocks? But

mysterious, incredible as this seemed, on the spot, with my
own eyes, I have seen that it is literally true. The cities
are there to this day. Some of them retain the ancient
names recorded in the Bible. The boundaries of Argob are
BASHAN AND ITS GIANT CITIES.

as clearly defined by the hand of nature as those of our own
island home. These ancient cities of Bashan contain prob-
ably the very oldest specimens of domestic architecture now
existing in the world.
Though Bashan was conquered by the Israelites, and al-
lotted to the half tribe of Manasseh, some of its native
tribes were not exterminated. Leaving the fertile plains
and rich pasture-lands to the conquerors, these took refuge
in the rocky recesses of Argob, and amid the mountain fast-
nesses of Hennon. “The Geshurites and the Maacathites,”
Joshua tells us, “dwell among the Israelites until this day”
(xiii. 13). The former made their home among the rocks
of Argob. David, in some of his strange wanderings, met
with, and married the daughter of Talmai, their chief; and
she became the mother of Absalom. The wild acts of his
life were doubtless, to some extent, the result of maternal
training; they were at least characteristic of the stock from
which she sprung. After murdering his brother Amnon, he
fled to his uncle in Geshur, and found a safe asylum there
amid its natural fastnesses, until his father’s wrath was ap-
peased. It is a remarkable fact,—and it shows how little
change three thousand years have produced on this Eastern
land,—that Bashan is still the refuge for all offenders. If
a man can only reach it, no matter what may have been his
crimes or his failings, he is safe; the officers of government
dare not follow him, and the avenger of blood even turns
away in despair. During a short tour in Bashan, I met
more than a dozen refugees, who, like Absaloin in Geshur,
awaited in security some favourable turn of events.
Bashan was regarded by the poet-prophets of Israel as
almost an earthly paradise. The strength and grandeur
of its oaks (Ezek. xxvii. 6), the beauty of its mountain
scenery (Ps. lxviii. 15), the unrivalled luxuriance of its pas-
tures (Jer. I. 19), the fertility of its wide-spreading plains,
and the excellence of its cattle (Ps. xxii. 12; Micah vii.
1 4),—all supplied the sacred penmen with lofty imagery.

GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS OF BASHAN. 


Bemfla1t of the oak forests still clothe the mountain-sides;
the soil of the plains and the pastures on the downs are rich
as of yore; and though the periodic raids of Arab tribes
have greatly thinned the flocks and herds, as they have de-
solated the cities, yet such as remain,—the rams, and lambs,
~nd goats, and bulls,—rnay be appropriately described in
the words of Ezekiel, as “all of them fatlings of Bashan”
(Xxxix. 18).
Lying on an exposed frontier, bordering on the restless
and powerful kingdom of Damascus, and in the route of the
warlike monarchs of Nineveh and Babylon, Bashan often
experienced the horrors of war, and the desolating tide of
conquest often rolled past and over it. The traces of an-
cient warfare are yet visible, as we shall see, in its ruinous
fortresses; and we shall also see that it is now as much ex-
posed as ever to the ravages of enemies. It was the first
province of Palestine that fell before the Assyrian invaders;
and its inhabitants were the first who sat and wept as cap-
tives by the banks of the rivers of the East. Bashan ap-
pears to have lost its unity with its freedom. It had been
united under Og, and it remained united in possession of


the half tribe of Manasseh; but after the captivity its very
name, as a geographical term, disappears from history.
When the Israelites were taken captive, the scattered rem-
nants of the ancient tribes came back, — some from the
parched plains of the great desert, some from the rocky defiles
of Argob, and some from the heights and glens of Her-
mon,—and they filled and occupied the whole country.
Henceforth the name “Basban” is never once mentioned by
either sacred or classic writer; but the four provinces into
which it was then rent are often referred to,—and these
provinces were not themselves new. Gaulcinitig is manifest-
ly the territory of Golan, the ancient Hebrew city of refuge;
Auranicis is only the Greek form of the Iiauran of Ezekiel
(xlviii. 16); Batanea, the name then given to the eastern
mountain range, is but a corruption of Bashan; and 

BASHAN - ITS GIANT CITIES.

ehonitis, embracing that singularly wild and rocky district
on the north, is just a Greek translation of the old Argob,
“the stony.” This last province is the only one mentioned
in the New Testament. It formed part of the tetrarchy of
Philip, son of the great Herod (Luke iii. 1). But though
Bashan is not mentioned by name, it was the scene of a
few of the most interesting events of New Testament his-
tory. It was down the western slopes of Bashan’s high
table-land that the demons, expelled by J~sus from the poor
maim, chased the herd of swine into the Sea of Galilee. It
was on the grassy slopes of Bashan’s hills that the multi-
tudes were twice miraculously fed by the merciful Saviour.
And that “high mountain,” to which He led Peter, and
James, and John, and on whose summit they beheld the
glories of the transfiguration, was that very Hermon which
forms the boundary of Bashan. And the sacred history of
this old kingdom does not end here. Paul travelled through
it on his way to Damascus; and, after his conversion, Ba-
shan, which then formed the principal part of the kingdom
of Arabia, was the first field of his labours as au apostle of
Jesus. “When it pleased God,” he tells us, “who separat-
ed me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace,
to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the
heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:
neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apos-
ties before me; but I went into Arabia” (Gal. i. 15—1~).
His mission to Arabia, or to Bashan, seems to have been
eminently successful; and that Church, which may be
called the first-fruits of his labours, made steady progress.
In the fourth century nearly the whole inhabitants were
Christian; heathen temples were converted into churches,
and new churches were built in every town and village.
At that period there were no fewer than thirty-three bishop.
rics in the single ecclesiastical province of Arabia. The
Christians are now nearly all gone; but their churches, as
we shall see, are there still, — two or three turned into
PATRIARCHAL MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 

mosques, but the vast majority of them standing desolate
ia deserted cities. Noble structures sonic of them are, with
marble colonnades and stately portico; showing us alike
the wealth and the taste of their founders, and now remain-
ing almost perfect, as if awaiting the influx of a new Christ-
ian population. There was something to me inexpressibly
mournful in passing from the silent street into the silent
chureh and especially in reading, as I often read, Greek
inscriptions over the doors, telling how such an one, at such
a date, had consecrated this building, formerly a temple of
Jupiter, or Venus, or Astarte, as the case might be, to the

worship of the Triune God, and had called it by the name
of the blessed saint or martyr So-and-so. Now there are
no worshippers in those churches; and the people who for
twelve centuries have held supreme authority in the land,
have been the constant and ruthless persecutors of Christ-
ians and Christianity. But their power is on the wane;
their reign is well-nigh at an end; and the time is not far
distant when Christian influence, and power, and industry,
shall again repeople the deserted cities, and fill the vacant
churches, and cultivate the desolated fields of Palestine.
The foregoing notices will show my readers that Bashan
is, in many respects, among the most interesting of the
provinces of Palestine. It is comparatively unknown, be-
sides. Western Palestine is traversed every year; it forms
a necessary part of the Grand Tour, and it has been de-
scribed in scores of volumes. But the travellers who have
hitherto succeeded in exploring Bashan scarcely amount to
half-adozen. and the state of the country is so unsettled,
and many of the people who inhabit it are so hostile to
Europeans, and, in fact, to strangers in general, that there
seems to be but little prospect of an increase of tourists in
that region. This very isolation of Bashan added immense-
ly to the charm and instructiveness of my visit. Both land
and people remain thoroughly Oriental. Nowhere else is
Patriarchal life so fully or so strikingly exemplified. The
BASHAN AND ITS GIANT CITIES.

social state of the country and the habits of the people are
just what they were in the days of Abraham or Job. The
raids of the eastern tribes are as frequent and as devastat-
ing now as they were then. The flocks of a whole village
are often swept away in a single incursion, and the fruits
of a whole harvest carried off in a single night. The arms
used are, with the exception of a few muskets, similar to
those with which Chedorlaomer conquered the Rephaim.
The implements of husbandry, too, are as rude and as sim-
ple as they were when Isaac cultivated the valley of Gerar.
And the hospitality is everywhere as profuse and as genu-
ine as that which Abraham exercised in his tents at Mamre.
I could scarcely get over the feeling, as I rode across the
plains of Bashan and climbed the wooded hills through the
oak forests, and saw the primitive ploughs and yokes of
oxen and goads~ and heard the old Bible salutations given
by every passer-by, and received the urgent invitations to
rest and eat at every village and hamlet, and witnessed the
killing of the kid or lamb, and the almost incredible de-
spatch with which it is cooked and served to the guests,—I
could scarcely get over the feeling, I say, that I had been
somehow spirited away back thousands of years, and set
down in the land of Nod, or by the patriarch’s tents at
Beersheba. Common life in Bashan I found to be a con-
stant enacting of early Bible stories. lYesterii Palestine
has been in a great measure spoiled by travellers. In the
towns frequented by tourists, and in their usual lines of
route, I always found a miserable parody of Western man-
ners, and not unfrequently of Western dress and language;
but away in this old kingdom one meets with nothing in
dress, language, or manners, save the stately and instruc-
tive simplicity of patriarchal times.
Another peculiarity of Bashan I cannot refrain from corn-
municating to my readers. The ancient cities and even the
villages of Western Palestine have been almost annihilated;
with the exception of Jerusalem, ilebron, and two or three

ANCIENT HOUSES. 

others, not one stone has been left upon another. In some
cases we can scarcely discover the exact spot where a noted
city stood, so complete has been the desolation. Even in
Jerusalem itself only a very few vestiges of the ancient
buildings remain: the Tower of David, portions of the wall
of the Temple area, and one or two other fragments,—just
enough to form the subject of dispute among antiquaries.
Zion is “ploughed like a field.” I have seen the plough at
work on it, and with time hand that writes these lines I have
plucked ears of corn in the fields of Zion. I have pitched my
tent on the site of ancient Tyre, and searched, but searched
in vain, for a single trace of its ruins. Then, but not till then,
did I realize the full force and truth of the prophetic denun-
ciation upon it: “ Thou shalt be sought for, yet shalt thou
never be found again” (Ezek. xxvi. 21). The very ruins of
Capernaum—that city which, in our Lord’s day, was “ exalted
unto heaven”— have been so completely obliterated, that
the question of its site never has been, and probably never
will be, definitely settled. And these are not solitary eases:
Jericho has disappeared; Bethel is “come to nought”
(Amos v. 5); Samaria is “as an heap of the field, as plant-
ings of a vineyard” (Micah i. 6). The state of Bashan is
totally different: it is literally crowded with towns and
large villages; and though the vast majority of them are
deserted, they are not ruined. I have more than once
entered a deserted city in the evening, taken possession of a
comfortable house, and spent the night in peace. Many of
the houses in the ancient cities of Bashan are perfect, as if
only finished yesterday. The walls are sound, the roofs
unbroken, the doors, and even the window-shutters in their
places. Let not my readers think that I am transcribing a
passage from the “Arabian Nights.” I am relating sober
facts; I am simply telling what I have seen, and what I
purpose just now more fully to describe. “But how,” you
ask me, “can we account for the preservation of ordinary
dwellings in a land of ruins? If one of our modern Eng
BASHAN AND ITS GIANT CITIES.

lish cities were deserted for a millennium, there would
scarcely be a fragment of a wall standing.” The reply is
easy enough. The houses of Bashan are not ordinary
houses. Their walls are from five to eight feet thick, built
of large squared blocks of basalt; the roofs are formed of
slabs of the same material, hewn like planks, and reaching
from wall to wall; the very doors and window-shutters are
of stone, hung upon pivots projecting above and below.
Some of these ancient cities have from two to five hundred
houses still perfect, but not a man to dwell in them. On
one occasion, from the battlements of the Castle of Salcah,
I counted some thirty towns and villages, dotting the sur-
face of the vast plain, many of them almost as perfect as
when they were built, and yet for more than five centuries
there has not been a single inhabitant in one of them. It
may easily be imagined with what feelings I read on that
day, and on that spot, the remarkable words of Moses:
“The generation to come of your children that shall rise
up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far
land, shall say when they see the plagues of this land, even
all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done this
unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great
anger ?“
My readers are now prepared, I trust, to make a pleasant
and profitable excursion to the giant cities of Bashan. I
shall promise not to make too large a demand upon their
time and patience, and yet to give them a tolerably clear
and full view of one of the most interesting countries in the
world.

TUE CARAVAN.

On a bright and balmy morning in February, a party of
seven cavaliers defiled from the East Gate of Damascus,
rode for half-an-hour among the orchards that skirt the old
city, and then, turning to the left, struck out, along a broad
beaten path through the open fields, in a south-easterly di-
rection. The leader was a wild-looking figure. His dress
OUR ARAB GUIDE. 


was a red cotton tunic or shirt, fastened round the waist by
a broad leathern girdle. Over it was a loose jacket of
dressed sheepskin, the wool inside. His feet and legs were
bare. On his head was a flame-coloured handkerchief;
fastened above by a coronet of black camel’s hair, which
left the ends and long fringe to flow over his shoulders.
He was mounted on an active, shaggy pony, with a pad for
a saddle, and a hair halter for a bridle. Before him, across
the back of his little steed, lie carried a long rifle, his only
weapon. Immediately behind him, on powerful Arab
horses, were three men in Western costume: one of these
was the writer. Next came an Arab, who acted as drag-
oman or rather courier; and two servants on stout hacks
brought up the rear. On gaining the beaten track, our
guide struck into a sharp canter. The gmat city was soon
left far behind, and, on turning, we could see its tall white
minarets shooting up from the sombre foliage, and thrown
into bold relief by the dark hack-ground of Anti-Lebanon.
The plain spread out on each side, smooth as a lake, cov-
ered with the delicate green of the young grain. Here
and there were long belts and large clumps of dusky olives,
from the midst of which rose the gray towers of a mosque
or the white dome of a saint’s tomb. On the south the
plain was shut in by a ridge of black, bare hills, appropri-
ately named Jebel-el-Aswad, “the Black Mountains ;“ while
away on the west, in the distance, Hermon rose in all its
majesty, a pyramid of spotless snow. From whatever point
one sees it, there are few landscapes in the world which,
for richness and soft enchanting beauty, can be compared
with the plain of Damascus.
After riding about seven miles, during which we passed
straggling groups of men—some on foot, some on horses and
donkeys, and some on camels, most of them dressed like our
guide, and all hurrying on in the same direction as our-
selves~we reached the eastern extremity of the Black
Mountains, and found ourselves on the side of a narrow green


 

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