Habeeb Risk Allah
The Thistle and the Cedar of Lebanon
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066189396
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. SCENES OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
CHAPTER II. PIRATICAL ATTACK ON BEYROUT.
CHAPTER III. DESCRIPTION OF DAMASCUS.
THE STORY OF THE JINN AND THE SCOLDING WIFE.
CHAPTER IV. THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES AT BEYROUT.
CHAPTER V. EXCURSION TO CYPRUS.
CHAPTER VII. ANTIOCH AND LATTAKIA.
CHAPTER VIII. FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND.
CHAPTER X. STAY AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
CHAPTER XII. VISITS TO LADY ROLLE AND TO BATH AND CHELTENHAM.
CHAPTER XIII. IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER XIV. LIFE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF SYRIA.
CHAPTER XV. SYRIA AND HER INHABITANTS.
CHAPTER XVI. SYRIA, HER INHABITANTS, AND THEIR RELIGIONS, CONTINUED.
CHAPTER XVII. CHRISTIAN INHABITANTS.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE POPULATION OF SYRIA, CONTINUED.—THE PAGAN INHABITANTS.
CHAPTER XIX. APPEARANCE AND COSTUMES OF THE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER XX. THE OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER XXI. THE COMPARATIVE INFLUENCES OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT FAITHS IN SYRIA.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
In presenting the British public with the following pages, containing a brief sketch of my life and travels, together with a description of the customs and present condition of my native land, I am actuated solely by motives which, I trust, a careful perusal of this work will prove to be disinterested.
All nations are more or less patriotic; none more so than the inhabitants of the British isles. With them the inducements to this love of home are all-sufficient, for their religion is the purest, their government and laws the best in the world, and they are second to no people in the enjoyment of privileges and blessings, such as could be only enjoyed by a “peculiar people,” under the immediate protection of the Almighty Benefactor. Next to them we may rank, as promoters of freedom and enlightenment, the citizens of the United States, those other scions of a noble stock.
Yet so peculiar is that innate love of man for the particular country and people with which are associated the early years of his childhood, that even the son of utter darkness, born and bred a savage, inured to every hardship and privation, who boasts of no city, scarcely professes a religion, whose home is the desert waste, his bed the warm sands of Arabia, even he, the wild Bedouin, in his untutored heart, sets boundless store by the place and people to which early attachment has rivetted his affections. Separate him from these and from his beloved mare, and no riches or pleasures could compensate him for the loss. This is also applicable to the humble and oftentimes oppressed natives who dwell in the towns and villages of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Though for centuries they have been subjected to the heavy yoke of bondage, and of late years, like the Israelites of old, were bondsmen to Egypt; however much they may have deplored their hard fate, none have ever dreamt of quitting the dear land of their forefathers—those ancestors who were coeval with the patriarchs. Some till the ground where Abraham once tended his flocks; others cut timber where the men of Hiram and Solomon once hewed cedars for the temple at Jerusalem; but the boast and glory of all these is, that they dwell in the land where the Promise was fulfilled. One may be by birth a Nazarene, another a townsman of Cana. A day or two’s journey enables him to reach that very Bethlehem where the blessed Redeemer was born, to track His holy footsteps in His pilgrimage of mercy from place to place, to weep and bemoan Him on the site of the last closing scenes of His holy life, and to raise up their hearts with grateful thanksgivings for the great salvation wrought out for their souls by His glorious resurrection.
Apart from these cherished associations of the spiritual with the temporal world, the native of the Holy Land is fondly attached to his country,