Syria, The Land of Lebanon

CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF SATURN

"And behold, I am now in Beirut." Thus wrote Prince Rib-addi to his royal master, Pharaoh Amenhotep, thirty-three centuries ago; and when the Tell el-Amarna Letters were sent from Syria to Egypt, about 1400 B. C., Beirut had long been one of the chief commercial cities of the eastern Mediterranean. According to a Greek tradition, it was founded in the Golden Age by the Titan Kronos, or Saturn, the father of Zeus. The tutelary deity of the seaport, however, was Poseidon (Neptune), another son of Saturn, who is represented on its coins driving his sea-horses, or standing on the prow of a ship with his trident in one hand and a dolphin in the other.

The Bay of Beirut and Mount Sunnin

Among the pine groves of the Cape of Beirut

The authentic history of the city begins with the records of its conquerors. Rameses II. of Egypt and Sennacherib of Assyria commemorated their successful Syrian campaigns by inscriptions still existing on the cliffs of the Dog River, just north of Beirut. Centuries later, Alexander the Great marched his conquering army through the city, Pompey added it to the Roman Empire, and Augustus visited here his son-in-law, the local governor. It was in Beirut that Herod the Great appeared as the accuser of his two sons, who were thereupon convicted of conspiracy and put to death by strangling. Vespasian passed through its streets in triumphal progress on his way to assume the imperial crown, and in its immense amphitheater Titus celebrated his capture of Jerusalem by a magnificent series of shows and gladiatorial contests. During the First Crusade, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and ruler of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, wrested the city from the Moslems after a long siege and put its inhabitants to the sword. Seventy years later, the greatest of all Saracen leaders, Saladin, recaptured the city from the Christians. The names of the mighty warriors who since then have fought for the possession of this old, old seaport are less familiar to Western readers; yet few cities have had for so many centuries such intimate association with the most renowned characters of history. There is a local tradition that Christ Himself visited Beirut on the occasion of His journey "into the borders of Tyre and Sidon," and during the Middle Ages there was exhibited here a miracle-working picture of Him, which was said to have been painted by Nicodemus the Pharisee.

The inner harbor, still known as Mar Jurjus or "St. George," is associated with what is perhaps the oldest of all myths. This took on varying forms during the millenniums of its progress westward from the Euphrates to the Atlantic. We find it first in the Babylonian Creation Epic, which tells of the destruction of the chaos-monster by the solar deity, Marduk. When the Greeks took over the ancient Asiatic mythology, it was Perseus, child of the sun-god, who slew the dragon at Jaffa and released the beautiful Andromeda. In the sixth century A. D., the exploit was transferred to St. George, whose victory over the sea-monster was perhaps an unconscious parable of the overthrow of heathenism by Christianity.

St. George appears to have been a real person, who suffered martyrdom about the year 300, possibly at Lydda in Palestine, where his tomb is still shown. Singularly enough, this Syrian Christian has not only been the patron saint of England since Richard Cour de Lion came to the Holy Land on the Third Crusade, but is also a very popular hero of the Moslems.

The historic character had, of course, nothing to do with any dragon, and it was only many centuries after his death that he became identified with the hero of the ancient Semitic myth, under its Perseus form. A mighty monster, so the story runs, had long terrified the district of Beirut, and was prevented from destroying the city only by receiving the annual sacrifice of a beautiful virgin. One year the fateful lot fell upon the daughter of the governor. When the poor girl was taken to the appointed place, she knelt in prayer and besought God to send her a deliverer. Whereupon St. George appeared in shining armor and, after a tremendous battle, slew the monster, delivered the maiden, and freed the city from its long reign of terror. Whether, like his prototype Perseus, he married the rescued virgin, the story does not relate. We are told, however, that the grateful father built a church in honor of the valiant champion and also instituted a yearly feast in commemoration of his daughter's deliverance. During the Middle Ages, this was celebrated by Christians and Moslems alike. Beside the Dog River can still be seen the ruins of an ancient church and a mosque, both of which marked the supposed locality of the contest; and here also is a very old well, into which the body of the slain dragon is said to have been thrown.

The word Beirût is doubtless derived from the ancient Semitic place-name Beeroth,[8] which means, "wells," and throughout the Arab world such a designation immediately calls up a picture of fertile prosperity. The triangular cape on whose northern shore the city is situated projects from the foot of Lebanon five miles into the Mediterranean and has an area of about sixteen square miles. This level broadening of the coastal plain appears in striking contrast to the country just north and south of it, where there is often hardly room for a bridle-path between the cliffs and the sea. Beirut itself has a population of nearly 200,000, and within sight are many scores of flourishing villages. Indeed, with the possible exception of Damascus and its environs, this is the most densely populated, intensely cultivated and prosperous district in either Syria or Palestine.

The southwest side of the cape is bordered by great piles of sand, which is said to have been brought hither by wind and tide all the way from Egypt. Perhaps it did not travel so far as that; but after every heavy rain a yellow stream runs northward through the Mediterranean close to the shore and deposits its sediment when it strikes the edge of the cape. The rapid shifting of these sand dunes under the influence of the prevailing west winds is a continual menace to the city, and the surrounding orchards would soon be overwhelmed if it were not for a series of closely-planted pine groves which, since the first trees were set out here in the seventeenth century by the Druse prince Fakhreddin, have served as a barrier against the inroads of the wind-swept sand.

Back of the dark line of protecting pines, millions upon millions of olive trees appear as one great mass of shimmering green. When Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian conqueror of Syria, looked down from Lebanon upon the country about Beirut, he exclaimed that three seas lay beneath him; the blue Mediterranean, the yellow waste of sand and the silvery surface of the olive forest which floods the fertile plain.

Near the lighthouse on the point, where perpendicular cliffs rise two hundred feet out of the Mediterranean, the storm waves have cut a number of lofty caverns. The water in most of these is so filled with fallen rocks that, except when the sea is absolutely calm, it is unsafe to take a boat into them; but the series of deep, gloomy caves is a challenge to the swimmer. Beneath the surface of the crystal water can be seen huge boulders covered with brilliant sea-anemones and sharp-spined sea-urchins. From the liquid pavement the roof arches up into the darkness like the nave of an old cathedral, or like some ruined palace of Neptune. Occasional ledges provide convenient resting-places where one can sit and watch the pigeons flying in and out, or listen to the twitter of the swallows and the chatter of the frightened bats. The caves sometimes harbor larger denizens than these. More than once, when swimming before them, I have been startled to see the dog-like head of a seal appear in the water close beside me.

Slanting up into the walls of these caverns are narrow tunnels where the softer rock has been worn away by the seeping of the surface water from above. If one cares to risk losing a little skin from the elbows and knees, it is possible to climb many yards up these steep, slippery shafts. One day, while walking along the top of the cliff, I came upon the upper end of a natural chimney whose formation appeared so unusually regular that I became curious to see what it might lead to. So I slid down twelve or fifteen feet and dropped into the ashes of a recent fire which had been built in the center of a cozy little cave high above the water. The rocky point of the cape, honeycombed with dark passages and secret hiding-places, is a favorite resort of smugglers, especially on moonless nights; and in the bazaars of the city you can buy many articles which have not been submitted to the extortions of the Turkish custom-house. While I was a resident of Beirut, the "king of the smugglers," who lived near me, killed three revenue officers who were interfering with his illicit trade. Bribery and intimidation, however, soon removed all danger of prosecution for his various crimes; and a few days later I saw him driving defiantly along the Shore Road in his elegant carriage.

Beirut has suffered so severely from earthquakes, as well as from besieging armies, that there remain no traces of very old buildings except some columns of reddish Egyptian granite. Only a few of these can now be seen above ground or lying under water at the bottom of the harbor, where doubtless they were rolled by earthquake shocks; but from the frequency with which they appear whenever...