Travels in Syria and the Holy Land. John Lewis Burckhardt
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of Sermein is a large subterraneous vault, cut in the solid rock, divided into several apartments, and
EDLIP.
[p.122]supported in various places by round pillars with coarsely wrought capitals; near this are several other excavations, all inhabited by the poor peasants. Sermein belongs to the family of Khodsy Effendy of Aleppo.
February 16th.—Half an hour to the left, near our road, is an insulated hill, with the tomb of a saint, called Kubbet Denneit [Arabic]; the plain is here well cultivated, but nothing is sown at present between Khan Touman and Sermein. To the right of the road, on a similar hill, stands Mezar Kubbet Menebya [Arabic]; and one hour to the right, also upon a Tel, Mezar Tar [Arabic]. Half an hour S.E. from Denneit is the village Gemanas.
In two hours and a half from Sermein we reached the town of Edlip [Arabic], the approach to which is very picturesque; it lies round the foot of a hill, which divides it into two parts; there is a smaller hill on the N. side: the town is surrounded by olive plantations, and the whole landscape put my companion, an English traveller, in mind of Athens and its vicinity. Here again are many wells cut in the rocky soil round the town. This place is called Little Edlip [Arabic]. Of Great Edlip [Arabic], the name only remains: it stood at half an hour's distance from the present town, which is of modern date, or about the middle of the seventeenth century. I reckoned the number of its houses at about one thousand. The inhabitants are for the most part Turks; there are only eighty Greek Christian families, and three of Armenian Greeks. They have a church, and three priests, and are under the immediate jurisdiction of the Greek Patriarch of Damascus.
The principal trade of Edlip is in soap; there are some manufactories of cotton stuffs, and a few dyeing-houses. The Bazars are well built, some of them of stone. In the town are several Khans, two of which are destined for the reception of strangers;
[p.123]but the best edifice is the soap manufactory (El Meszbane), a large building. Edlip has no gardens, because there is no water but from wells and cisterns; there are a few orchards of pomegranate and fig trees, and some vine plantations. The place is supplied with vegetables from Rieha, and from Aere, a village two hours distant, lying between Darkoush and Djissr Shogher. There is a single spring in the town of brackish water, which is never used but in seasons of great drought; a man who had cleansed the bottom of the deep well in which the spring issues, told me that he found two openings in the rock, near each other, from the one of which flows sweet water, while that from the other is brackish. I made the tour of the town in thirty-seven minutes; the rocky ground is full of caverns, wells, and pits.
Edlip is held by the family of Kuperly Zaade of Constantinople; but a part of its revenue is a Wakf to the Harameyn, that is to say, it contributes to defray the expenses of the two holy cities Mekka and Medina. The town pays annually to the above family, twenty purses for themselves, and fifteen for the holy cities; the latter sum was formerly sent to Mekka every year with the pilgrim caravan; but it is now paid into the hands of the Kuperlys. The town of Djissr Shogher [Arabic], distant six hours from Edlip, on the road to Ladikia, belongs to the same family, and is likewise a Wakf attached to the holy cities; it pays fifteen purses to the Kuperlys, and seven to the Harameyn. The revenue arising from thirteen or fourteen villages in the neighbourhood of Djissr Shogher has been assigned to the support of several hospitals which the Kuperlys have built in that town, where a number of poor people are fed daily gratis. Neither Edlip nor Shogher pays any land-tax or Miri, in consequence of their being attached to Mekka; but there is a custom-house at Edlip, where duties are levied on all kinds of provisions, as rice, coffee, oil, raisins, tobacco, &c.
[p.124]the proceeds of which amount to nearly one hundred purses; besides a house tax, which yields twenty purses. The duties levied on provisions at Djissr Shogher amount to twenty purses.
The government of Edlip is in the hands of a Mutsellim, named by the Porte; the real power had been for many years in the rich family of Ayash [Arabic], till the present chief of that family, Mahmoud Ibn Ayash, a man famous for his hospitality and upright character, had the misfortune to lose all his influence. In 1810 his house became involved in a deadly quarrel with that of Djahya, in consequence of a game of Jerid, which took a serious turn, and in which much blood was shed. Djahya left Edlip, and went to Rieha and Djissr Shogher, where he succeeded in engaging in his interest Seyd Aga and Topal Aly, the rebel chiefs of those towns, who only wanted a pretext to fall upon Edlip; they accordingly stirred up the inhabitants against Mahmoud, who was obliged to fly to Aleppo, and having sent the Mutsellim, Moury Aga, back to Constantinople, they put Abou Shah, the brother-in-law of Topal Aly, in his place, and brought Djahya back to Edlip. After some months the two rebels came to a compromise with Mahmoud, who returned to Edlip, and Djahya, in turn, fled to Aleppo; Mahmoud's power, however, was now at an end: the two chiefs are at present masters of the town, and share its spoils; but its wealth has much decreased since these events took place. In eighteen months it has paid upwards of six hundred purses; and on the day before our arrival a new contribution of two hundred had spread despair among the inhabitants. A Kadhi is sent here early from Constantinople. Sermein bears from hence S.E. by E. There are no dependent villages in the territory of Edlip.
February 17th.—We left Edlip after mid-day. Our road lay through a wood of olive trees, in a fertile uneven plain of red argillaceous soil. In one hour we reached Sheikh Hassan, the tomb of
RIEHA.
[p.125]a saint; in an hour and a quarter the insulated hill Tel Stommak [Arabic], with the village Stommak on its west side. The direction from Edlip S. by W.: this hill seems to be an artificial mound of earth. The Wood of olive trees here terminates. In two hours and forty minutes we arrived at Rieha [Arabic], which we did not enter, through fear of the rebel Seyd Aga, who occupies it. It contains about four or five hundred houses, is a much frequented market, and has two large soap manufactories. Rieha is situated on the northern declivity of the Djebel Erbayn [Arabic], or the Mountain of the Forty; and belongs to the government of Aleppo; but since the expulsion of Mohammed Pasha, Seyd Aga has been in the possession of it, and governs also the whole mountain of Rieha, of which Djebel Erbayn forms a part. This man is a chief of that kind of cavalry which the Turks call Dehlys. He has about three hundred of them in his service, together with about one hundred Arnaouts; common interests have closely connected him with Topal Aly, the chief of the Dehlys at Djissr Shogher, who has about six hundred under his command, and with Milly Ismayl, another chief, who commands at Kalaat el Medyk. Unless the Porte finds means to disunite these three rebels, there is little probability of its reducing them. They at present tyrannize over the whole country from Edlip to Hamah.
About two hours to the S.E. of Rieha lies the village of Marszaf [Arabic], and S. of the latter about one hour, the ruined town Benin. We ascended the mountain from Rieha, turned round its eastern corner, and in one hour from Rieha, reached the village of Kefr Lata [Arabic]. We were hospitably received at the house of the Sheikh of Kefr Lata, although his women only were at home. A wondering story-teller amused us in the evening with chanting the Bedouin history of the Beni Helal. Kefr Lata belongs to Ibn Szeyaf, one of the first families of Aleppo.
February 18th.—Kefr Lata is situated upon the mountain of
KEFR LATA.
[p.126]Rieha, on the S. side of a narrow valley watered by a rivulet; it contains forty or fifty houses, all well built of square stones, which have been taken from the buildings of a town of the lower empire, which occupied the same site. The remains deserve notice, on account of the vast quantity of stone coffins and sepulchres. The mountain is a barren calcareous rock, of no great hardness. In some places are a few spots of arable ground, where the inhabitants of the village grow barley and Dhourra. On the side of the rivulet are some fruit trees. We were occupied the whole morning in visiting the neighbourhood of the village, which must have been anciently the burying place of all the great families of this district; the number of tombs being too considerable for so small a town as Kefr Lata appears to have been; no such sepulchres, or at least very few, are met with among the ruins of the large cities which we saw afterwards in the same mountain. Beginning on the west side of the village, I counted sixteen coffins and seven caves; the coffins are all excavated in the rock; the largest