NOTE A. HOUSE OF SIMON AT JAFFA. One of the few localities which can claim to represent an historical scene of the New Testament is the site of the house of Simon, the tanner, at Jaffa. The house itself is a comparatively modern building, with no pretensions to interest or antiquity. The outer door is from the street in which stand the Latin and Armenian convents, but no church or convent appears to have been built on the site and no other place is shown as such. The house is occupied by Mussulmans, and regarded by them as sacred; a small mosque or praying-place is in one of the rooms, which is said, by the occupants, to commemorate the fact that "the Lord Jesus here asked God for a meal, and the table came down at once,' a remarkable instance of the vulgar corruption of miracles so common in Mussulman traditions; and, in this case, curious as an evident confusion of the Mahometan version of the Feeding of the Five Thousand with the vision of Peter. Such a tradition, even from the fact of its distortion, and from its want of European sanction, has some claim to be heard. And this claim is remarkably confirmed by the circumstances of the situation. The house is close "on the sea shore;" the waves beat against the low wall of its court-yard. In the court-yard is a spring of fresh water, such as must always have been needed for the purposes of tanning, and which, though now no longer so used, is authentically reported to have been so used in a tradition which describes the premises to have been long employed as a tannery. It is curious that two other celebrated localities may be still identified in the One is in Jerusalem. At the southern end of the Church of the Sepulchre stood the palace of the Knights of St. John. When Saladin took the Holy City, it is said that he determined to render the site of the palace for ever contemptible, by turning it into a tannery. And a tannery still remains with its offensive sights and smells amongst what are the undoubted remains of that ancient home of European chivalry. Another case is nearer home. Every one knows the story of the parentage of William the Conqueror, how his father, under the romantic cliff of Falaise, saw Arlette amongst the tanneries. There again, the tanneries still take advantage of the running streams which creep round the foot of the rock, living memorials of the ancient story. The rude staircase to the roof of the modern house, flat now as same manner. See Weil's Legends of the Koran, &c. p. 226. So we were informed by the hospitable and intelligent consul of Jaffa, Assaad Kayat. of old, leads us to the view which gives all that is needed for the accompaniments of the hour. There is the wide noonday heaven above; in front is the long bright sweep of the Mediterranean Sea, its nearer waves broken by the reefs famous in ancient Gentile legends as the rocks of Andromeda.' Fishermen are standing and wading amongst them-such as might have been there of old, recalling to the Apostle his long-forgotten nets by the Lake of Gennesareth, the first promise of his future call to be "a fisher of men," El-Haram It NOTE B. VILLAGES OF SHARON AND PHOENICIA. may be expedient to give here two or three notices of places, not as being directly connected with Sacred History, but as having been omitted in previous accounts. About an hour N. of Jaffa is a village on the sandy ridge of and Arsuf. the "Ramleh," "El-Haram Ali-ibn-Aleim," "the sanctuary of Ali the son of Aleim," so called from the mosque and tomb of that saint, whose story as related to us by the keeper of the mosque as follows: "He was a dervish in the adjacent village of Arsuf, Sultan of all the dervishes of all the country round. The villagers thought not at all about God. When Sultan Bibars (from Egypt) came to besiege it, Ali-who lived in the town on alms that were given to him-baffled him by catching all the cannon-balls in his hands. A dervish from the besieging army, after some time, came to ask him the cause of the failure of all their attacks. Ali replied, 'Will the Sultan make me a good mosque and tomb, and is he a good Mussulman?' 'Yes,' answered the dervish. Send him then to me, disguised as a dervish.' The Sultan Bibars came and promised to build for Ali the mosque and tomb; and Ali stipulated for twenty-four hours before the cannonading was to begin anew. He then warned the people of Arsuf to become Mussulmans, threatening the fall of the town if they refused to listen to him. They disbelieved him: the twenty-four hours elapsed -the cannonading recommenced-Ali no longer intercepted the balls, and the town was destroyed." The ruins of Arsuf are still visible on an eminence a little north of "El-Haram," with a fosse on the land-side, and walls on the sea-side. The mosque of the "Haram" professes to be the one built by Sultan Bibars in accordance with his promise, and the tomb which stands in the court of the mosque to have been built for the saint before his death, the body having been let down into 1 Compare Kenrick's Phoenicia, p. 20. the vault below through the two ends of the tomb, which are now walled up.' Schwarze, confounding Eli and Ali, supposes the inhabitants. to represent this as the grave of Eli. He says that on one side of the tombstone is a Hebrew, and the other a Samaritan, inscription; and that the Samaritans constantly go to perform their devotions at it (p. 143). 66 3 Um-Khalid is one of the chief villages of the plain of Sharon, Umand the height above it commands one of the most striking views of Khalid. the mountains of Ephraim, the very view in all likelihood intended in the description of Abraham's approach to Mount Gerizim when he saw the place afar off." It is so called from a great female saint, "Sittah Saba, the mother of Khalid," whose tomb is marked, not as usual by a mosque, but by a large enclosure in which it stands in the open air, under the shade of an enormous fig-tree. The ancient and Hebrew name of Antipatris, which is situated about ten miles from Um-Khalid, was Caphar Saba, which is still preserved in the Arabic Kafar-Saba. The not unnatural belief of the peasants of Um-Khalid is, that this name is derived from the Lady Saba who lies buried under their own fig-tree. It would be a curious question to know whether this is an accidental coincidence, or whether there was a real Hebrew or Syrian worthy in earlier times, who has been thus connected with the later Arabian traditions of Khalid of Damascus. The identity of Surafend with Sarepta is unquestioned. It is a Sarepta. village seated aloft on the top and side of one of the hills, the long line of which skirts the plain of Phoenicia, conspicuous from far by the white domes of its many tombs of Mussulman saints. It throws no light on the story of Elijah, beyond the emphasis imparted to his visit by the complete separation of the situation from the Israelite territory on the other side the hills. But it may be worth while to record, as characteristic, the curious confusion of the story which lingers in the Mussulman traditions of the neighbourhood. Close on the sea-shore stands one of these sepulchral chapels dedicated to 1 Pliny speaks of the town and river of Crocodiles in Phoenicia (H. N. v. 19), and Strabo (xvi.) places the town of Crocodiles between Accho and Cæsarea, apparently near the latter. The fact is noticed by Pococke. The river in question is a stream-fordable, but deepimmediately north of Cæsarea, marked in Zimmermann's map as Nahr Zerka. The keeper of the mosque of El-Haram curiously confirmed the old story. He said at once that the river was called "Moi Temsah"-"the water of the crocodile" -and described, without any suggestion on our part, that he had seen in it crea tures nearly as long as a boat, with long 2 See Chapter IV. ; note on Gerizim. "El-Khudr," or "Mar Elias." There is no tomb inside, only hangings before a recess. This variation from the usual type of Mussulman sepulchres was, as we were told by the peasants on the spot, "because El-Khudr is not yet dead; he flies round and round the world, and those chapels are built wherever he has appeared. Every Thursday night and Friday morning there is a light so strong within the chapel, that no one can go in." Tomb of Nebi-Zur. NOTE C. PHOENICIAN ANTIQUITIES ON THE MARITIME PLAIN. The Phoenician plain, far beyond any part of Palestine Proper, is strewed with distinct fragments of older civilisation. One of these is the "Tomb of Hiram," which has been shortly described by Robinson (iii. 384), and Van de Velde (i. 184); and engraved as a frontispiece to Captain Allen's work on the Dead Sea. It stands inland amongst wild rocky hills, about three miles from Tyre. It is a single gray sarcophagus hollowed out so as just to admit a body. A large oblong stone is placed over it, so as completely to cover it, the only entrance being an aperture knocked through at its eastern extremity. The whole rests on a rude pedestal of upright unhewn stones. There are other broken stones in the neighbourhood. Our guide from Tyre (professing to derive his information from an Arabic work on Tyre, called "Torad,") said "that it was the tomb of King Hiram, buried at the eastern gate of old Tyre, which thence reached down the hill towards the sea." Another monument of unknown age is a circle of upright stonesas of Stonehenge-which rises amongst the bushes near the shore, about an hour N. of the mouth of the Khasimeyeh, or Litâny, near Adloun. These must be what M. Van de Velde (i. 203) saw from a distance, and what his guide told him "were men turned into stone for scoffing at Nabi Zur." They are not, however, statues, as he erroneously conjectures, but mere rough blocks of stone. Nabi Zur (of whom he here and elsewhere speaks) is evidently the "Prophet Zur," i. e. the Founder (Eponymus) of Tyre-as Nabi Sidoon of Sidon. A third monument of great antiquity is the celebrated reservoir south of Tyre, called "the head of the spring"-" Râs-el-Ain." This is the spot to which mediæval tradition attached the visit of Christ to Tyre. He rested on a large rock, and sent Peter and John to bring him some water thence, which he drank, and blessed the beautiful spot whence it came. (See Maundeville, Early Travellers, pp. 141, 142; Phocas, Acta Sanctorum, Maii. vol. ii.) 1 For the legend of El Khudr, see Jelal-ed-din, 128; Schwarze, 129, 446. CHAPTER VII. THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. Gen. xiii. 10. "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the 'round' of Jordan." Josephus' Wars of the Jews, IV. viii. 2. "The country between the two ranges of mountains which extend to the Lake of Asphalt is called 'the great plain.' Its length is 230 furlongs, and its breadth 120. It is divided in the midst by the river Jordan, and it contains two lakes, the Lake of Tiberias, and the Lake of Asphalt, of the most opposite natures; for the one is salt and barren, and the other sweet and full of life. In the summer season the plain is burnt up, and from the excessive drought the air becomes pestilential; for the whole plain is without water except the Jordan; and so it results that the palm-groves on its banks are flourishing-but less so those that are further off." T |