of an enumeration of the names of cities is still farther in store, in demonstration of that excellence of Israel's own land, which gave it a first place among the kingdoms or provinces of the Roman Empire. Subjugated by the mightiest nations of the earth, it has been permanently retained by none, however great their power or high their pretensions, even though descendants of those who had laid Jerusalem in the dust and subdued the world, and the professors of a faith which, if real, would have saved its numerous cities from destruction. We now come to the time when woes, denounced by that very name in the Word of God, fell upon apostate Christendom, or on those who had fallen away from the faith once delivered to the saints; for on such alone those woes could fall, which were to touch only those men who had not the seal of God upon their foreheads.* When Goths, and Vandals, and Huns had long desolated Italy, and a "barbaric king" reigned over it, Syria continued to be one of the fairest provinces, or tributary kingdoms of the lower empire; and some of its regions ranked among the most populous, and some of its cities among the most princely in the world. In describing the siege of Bosrah on the east, and those of Heliopolis and Homs on the north of Palestine-but, on either side, far within the borders of Israel's destined heritage-Gibbon incidentally testifies the goodliness of the land, as it existed down to the Saracenic invasion, in the seventh century. "One of the fifteen provinces of Syria, the cultivated lands to the eastward of the Jordan, had been decorated by Roman vanity with the name of Arabia, and the first arms of the Saracens were justified by the resemblance of a national right. The country was enriched by the various benefits of trade; by the vigilance of the emperors it was covered by a line of forts; and the populous cities of Gerasa, Philadelphia, and Bosra were secure at least from a surprise, by the solid structure of their walls. Twelve thousand horse could sally from the gates of Bosra." "Syria, one of the countries that had been improved by the most early cultivation, is not unworthy of the preference. The heat of the climate is tempered by the vicinity of the sea * Rev., ix., 4. + Gibbon, vol. ix., p. 383, 384. and mountains, by the plenty of wood and water; and the produce of a fertile soil affords the subsistence, and encourages the propagation of men and animals. From the age of David to that of Heraclius, the country was overspread with ancient and flourishing cities; the inhabitants were numerous and wealthy; and, after the slow ravages of despotism and superstition, after the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could still attract and reward the rapacious tribes of the desert. Among the cities which are enumerated by Greek and Oriental names in the geography and conquest of Syria, we may distinguish Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis or Baalbec, the former as the metropolis of the plain, the latter as the capital of the valley. Under the last of the Cæsars, they were strong and populous; the turrets glittered from afar; an ample space was covered with public and private buildings; and the citizens were illustrious by their spirit, or at least by their pride, by their riches, or at least by their luxury."* "Chalcis alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold, five thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as many figs and olives as would load five thou sand asses. The terms of capitulation were faithfully observed."† "The safety of Antioch was ransomed with three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government in the East, was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a provincial town. Bosra, Damascus, Heliopolis, Emesa, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Antioch, fell successively into the hands of the Saracens. From the north and south the troops of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the seashore, till their banners were joined under the walls of the Phonician cities: Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed. Their labours were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Cæsarea. The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs," &c. The Saracens formed the first wo-not the last-that *Gibbon, vol. ix., p. 403-405. Gibbon's Hist., chap. li., passim. + Ibid., p. 407. came on idolatrous Christendom. On their invasion of the Roman Empire, Jerusalem was rather to be given unto the Gentiles than rescued from them. Ages were thereafter to intervene before the land should reach the last degree of predicted desolation. The judgments of the Lord were to be executed in it on those who had anew profaned it by their idolatries. But while this charge was given to the Saracens, which, as all students of prophecy well know, they failed not to execute, a prohibition was simultaneously written in the book of the Lord, and as simultaneously issued in the appointed time, against laying the land desolate; and stripped as it would finally be, like an oak that had cast its leaves, not a tree or green thing was then to be hurt. It was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men that had not the seal of God on their foreheads.* The unconscious "commander of the faithful" thus issued his instructions accordingly to the chiefs of the Syrian army. "When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood of women and children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons, who live retired in monasteries; let them alone, and neither kill them, nor destroy their monasteries; and you will find another sort of people that belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shorn crowns; be sure you cleave their sculls, and give them no quarter till they either turn Mohammedans or pay tribute." When "The rapacious tribes of the desert" made Syria. their own, and richly was their conquest rewarded. Notwithstanding "the slow ravages of despotism and superstition," and its subjugation to the Persians, to whom for fourteen years it had been given for a prey, till reconquered by Heraclius, Syria could still boast of its numerous cities, and its fertile soil sustained a vast population. Five thousand ass-loads (proverbially great) * Rev., ix., 4. + Gibbon's Hist., vol. ix., p. 381. of figs and olives, necessarily the produce of a single year, gave proof, as part of the tax imposed upon one city, that the combined excellence of climate and soil were not then lost upon man, and that the circumjacent region might lay claim to be a portion of a land where every man might sit under his own fig-tree, and the lords of which, in the expressive language of Scripture, might " dip their feet in oil." Edifices of Saracenic structure, scattered over Syria, show that these invaders, like the Romans, sought to perpetuate their conquest, and made it their work to build rather than destroy. But these were chiefly mosques or castles, the former displacing churches, the latter for repressing the inhabitants, as well as resisting foreign foes. "The tribute, the Koran, or the sword," were not the heralds of prosperity and peace. Syria faded rather than flourished under the dominion of those "hordes of fanatics that issued from the desert," and whose office it was to torment rather than to destroy. The promised land was to be given only for a limited period to any alien race, while its ancient inhabitants were scattered abroad. The Arabs, like the Romans, claimed it by right of conquest as their own. But though they appointed the land, which the Lord called His, into their possession with the joy of all their heart, and shall still strive to regain or retain it, as they first won it by the sword; and though they said, while the stronghold of Zion was in their hands, and Saracen fortresses towered throughout the land on the heights of Israel, even the high places are ours in possession, yet they were there only to execute judgments, as the temporary tenants of a land that was not theirs. Their possession of it was not unchallenged or undisturbed. After its subjugation to them, Judea "ceased not to be the scene of grand revolutions." The victors becoming successively the vanquished, it was in after ages the contested territory of Saracens, Persians, Turks, Egyptians, and Fatimites, till, in still more bloody warfare between Christians and Mohammedans, it became, as described by Gibbon, "the theatre of nations," where the tragedy of the crusades was enacted—the battle-field of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The land which men called Christians sought to redeem, by a phrensy that matched the fierce fanaticism of Moslems, was thereby smitten with another curse. * D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, p. 260. CHAPTER IV. SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. "I will give it unto the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall pollute it."- Ezek., vii., 21. “Thou land devourest up men, and hast bereaved thy nations."- Ezek., xxxvi., 13. SYRIA, peopled by conflicting races, could scarcely be said to repose under the dominion of the caliphs. It was at best, as under the Romans, a subjugated country, a prey and a spoil to strangers.* The comparatively quiescent state which succeeded to its conquest, was soon, from various causes, disturbed anew; and this prophecy, together with many others, ever meets with renewed illustrations in all its history, while it was given, age after age, to the wicked for a prey, the sword of the Lord shall devour from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land; no flesh shall have peace.t Even the subjugated Christians soon persecuted each other. The general council of Constantinople (A.D. 681) condemned the Maronites; and, chased from the greater part of the cities of Syria, they betook themselves to the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.‡ In a few years after, Syria was the scene of fierce contests between Ali the cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed, and Moaviah, the caliph of the Ommiades, whose cause the Syrians espoused.§ Profiting by their divisions and mutual conflicts, the Maronites descended from their mountains, and ravaged all the land from the extremity of Lebanon to the vicinity of Jerusalem. The termination of the dynasty of the Ommiades, and the commencement of that of the Abassides, was marked by great earthquakes, which overthrew a great number of churches and monasteries beyond the Jordan and throughout Syria, and the violent and frequent shocks destroyed many cities. The death of Haroun-alRaschid (A.D. 808) plunged Syria into new calamities. While his sons disputed for the empire, various usurpers invaded and ravaged Syria. Eleutheropolis, the capital of * Ezek., vii., 21. Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, p. 557. Guene, Lettres, Mém. de Littérature, tom. iii., p. 318. Р † Jer., xii., 12. |