class="smcap">Great Granary of Daras

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THE CRADLE OF MANKIND

CHAPTER I

BEYOND THE PALE OF THE RAILWAY (ALEPPO AND URFA)

THE belated Jinn who emerged out of Suleiman’s Brass Bottle into twentieth-century London found there, amid much that was strange to him, some beings of his own kin. These were the railway locomotives, obviously Jann like himself, but yet more oppressively treated; bound by spells of appalling potency to labours more arduous and wearisome than Suleiman had ever conceived.

And truly his blunder was plausible: for if Jann be extinct nowadays (which one doubts after visiting Asia), then assuredly cylinders and boilers are charged with the might of the Jann. They are set to work regularly now instead of rarely and spasmodically; and though they raise less dust and clamour their net output is considerably more. The slaves of the Lamp and the Ring developed intense explosive energy, but their effective radius was limited. They could rear Aladdin’s palace in a night, or transport him to Africa in a twinkling; but these more domesticated Titans are capable of transmogrifying whole communities, and advancing the clock of progress five hundred years at a span.

And now the modern Magrabis, the busy Western magicians, have let slip these formidable Efrits against the City of Al Raschid himself: and one fine morning his descendants will awake from the slumber of centuries to find themselves environed by a new heaven and a new earth.

The Baghdad railway has started. It has penetrated inland to Aleppo. “That great river, the river Euphrates,” is bitted with its girders and caissons. One more stride{2} will carry it to Mosul across a country so open and even that it needs but the bedding of the sleepers; and a journey which now takes a fortnight will be accomplished in a ten-hour run. What is now a mere stagnant backwater will thus be suddenly scoured out by one of the main channels of the world’s commerce; and who can venture to calculate the changes which will follow? Western reform will not convert the East any more than Alexander’s conquests converted it; but it may evolve unintentionally some new sort of Frankenstein’s Man.

But meanwhile the East waits unconscious. It takes no thought for the morrow. The shadow of coming events is perceived indeed, but not understood. As it was in the days of Noë, so in most things, it still continues: and the traveller of this generation may still find east of Aleppo those manners and customs unaltered, which the next may find clean swept away. Thus it is possible that some interest may attach to a desultory description of life as it is for the moment still enjoyed, or endured, in those regions; and which better ordered communities may perhaps find rather bizarre.

Aleppo, the present railhead, is a large Oriental city, lying pooled in a shallow depression round the great castle which dominates its roofs. It is beginning to show signs of Westernization; and the quarter nearest the railway station is blossoming with boulevards and hotels. But it is the returning, and not the outgoing, traveller who will be most struck by these symptoms. The latter will only be consumed with wonder that such a crude and guileless imitation should be thought to pass muster as the real thing. Outwardly the place is being refurbished, and the new “Frank” houses flaunt themselves as bravely as their compeers around the Soko at Tangier; but within they are full of all Oriental uncleanness and discomfort, for the Turk is quite satisfied as soon as he gets veneered.

The major part of the town consists of narrow crooked and ill-paved streets, overhung on each side by toppling wooden oriels, which almost engage with each other like cogs across the road; and amid this maze of grimy alleys{3} lurk the mosques, the only noteworthy buildings, whose minarets show up prominently from a distance, but afford little guidance near at hand.

The great castle which dominates Aleppo occupies the flat summit of an immense mound, not much smaller than that of Corfe Castle, which is piled conspicuously upon a gentle eminence just within the confines of the city. The core of this mound may be natural, but the bulk of it is artificial; for it was originally one of the great High Places of that Baal worship which flourished pre-eminently in Northern Syria, and which has left us similar monuments of its dominion in the neighbouring mounds at Homs and Baalbek. The base of this mound is encircled by a deep dry moat, and its sloping sides are revetted with masonry; while its crest is crowned by the towers and walls which form the enceinte of the citadel, and access is provided at one end only through a most magnificent gate. The citadel owes its present form to Saladin, who is said to have employed as his workmen the captive Crusaders whom he had taken at the battle of Tiberias. There are some Western features in the building which give colour to this supposition; but the place was a notable stronghold long previous to Saladin’s day.

Aleppo was one of the few fortresses that made a respectable defence against the Moslems at the time of their first irruption. None of the great frontier towns to the eastward,—Edessa, Amida and Dara—so much as stood a real siege. Such was the bitterness of party strife, both civil and religious, within the Byzantine Empire at that period, that the Arab invaders were welcomed rather than resisted in these lands.

The citadel of Aleppo, however, was defended by a certain Youkinna, till even the redoubtable Caled, “the Sword of Allah,” began to despair of success. Only the direct command of the Khalif Omar had induced him to persevere with the leaguer when a valiant slave named Dames volunteered to attempt a coup de main. Caled approved his design; and to favour its