|
| Beirut |
|
Source: Matson Collection. |
Beirut and St.
George's Bay, with Snow Clad Sunnin
|
|
We gallop over the sandy beach to the Nahr Beirūt, entranced by the landscape.
The promontory of Beirūt, crowned with its cream-coloured sandstone houses,
palaces, churches, and mosques, its colleges and schools rising from the water's
edge to the ridge of the cape, the pine-crowned ridges of Lower Lebanon to the
east, form a picture only equalled by the Bay of Naples . . . .We now enter
Beirūt, the metropolis of modern Phœnicia, and its most beautiful and most
enlightened city. Its situation is all that could be desired, on the northern
slope of a promontory which runs west for three miles from the, Nahr Beirūt to
Rās Beirūt . . . .Here where the changes of temperature through the successive
months of the year are so gradual that autumn fades imperceptibly into winter,
and winter itself is a genial spring, and spring warms into summer with hardly a
change of half a degree a day, you have the perfection of climate, and do not
wonder that the Greek poet should call it "the nurse of tranquil life." (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, pp. 33-34.) |
|
|
| |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Beirut, Street Scene |
Source: Matson Collection. |
|
Beirūt is the Berytus of the ancients, and
was probably founded by the Phœnicians . . . .
Strabo first mentions the city in 140 B.C.,
when it was destroyed by Tryphon during the
reign of Demetrius Nicator. The Romans rebuilt
it and colonised it with veterans of the fifth
Macedonian and eighth Augustan legions. It was
here that the two sons of Herod the Great were
tried unheard and in their absence, and
condemned to death by their cruel and
unnatural father. The Elder Agrippa greatly
favoured the city, and adorned it with a
splendid theatre and amphitheatre, besides
baths and porticoes, inaugurating them with
games and spectacles of every kind, including
shows of gladiators. Here, too, after the
destruction of Jerusalem, Titus celebrated the
birthday of his father, Vespasian, by similar
exhibitions in which many of the captive Jews
perished. In the middle of the third century a
celebrated Roman law school was founded here.
Students flocked to it from all countries,
including Gregory Thaumaturgus and Apion, the
martyr . . . .From 250 A.D. to 550 was the
golden age of literature in Beirūt, which
reached its zenith in the reign of Justinian,
who regarded the Beirūt school with special
favour. (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, p. 34.) |
|
|
| |
|
| |
Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, p.
41. |
A Beirut Castle |
|
On the 9th of July, 551, this city was
destroyed by an earthquake, and its learned
men went for a season to Sidon. In the seventh
century Khaled, "the Sword of Mohammed," swept
over the land. Beirūt fell into Muslim hands,
and its decline was rapid and complete. In
1110 Baldwin I., with the Crusading army,
captured Beirūt, and they long held it as a
religious and military centre, the Maronites
of Lebanon acting as a friendly barrier to the
Muslim hordes of the east. Saladin occupied it
for a short period, but the Christians were
not permanently displaced until after the
battle of Hattīn, in 1187. From that time
until the days of the famous Druse prince,
Fakhr ed Dīn, it continued in obscurity. This
energetic man rebuilt the city and planted new
pine groves. In 1840 the English fleet
bombarded the city to expel the Egyptian army
of Ibrahim Pasha. In August, 1860, it was
occupied by six thousand French troops, sent
by Napoleon III., with the consent of the
European powers, to check the tide of massacre
and civil war which had overwhelmed the land.
(Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, pp.
34-35.) |
|
|
| |
American University of Beirut from Sea |
Source: Matson Collection. |
|
This favourite city of Justinian has become
again the literary centre and pride of Syria.
Here are gathered its colleges and seminaries,
and its chief hospitals and churches, journals
and printing presses. The American Mission,
founded in 1820, preceded all other agencies
in the work of education. Thousands of youths
have been taught, and there are now under its
care one hundred and four schools, with more
than four thousand pupils, a college and
medical institution, three female seminaries,
and eight high schools. It has seen Beirūt
rise from a town of eight thousand to a city
of eighty thousand . . . .The native sects
most hostile to education are falling under
the influence of educated young men and women,
and Mohammedans, Greeks, Maronites, Papal
Greeks, and Jews have established schools of
their own. Other foreign societies, as the
British Syrian Schools, the Prussian
Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, and the
Established Church of Scotland, have opened
schools for girls and boys, until there are
to-day in Beirūt three thousand five hundred
children in Protestant schools, and seven
thousand in the schools of the native
societies. (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, p. 35.) |
|
|
| |
Beirut, Vegetable Market |
Source: Matson Collection. |
|
In passing through the crowded streets and
bazaars of this semi-European and
semi-Oriental town it is both interesting and
amusing to notice the number and variety of
the street cries from the bread-sellers, the
candy-sellers and the carriers of water, whose
occupation is one of slavish toil, sometimes
carrying as they do a water bottle made out of
the whole skin of an ox, The shrill cries of
warning uttered, now in front, now behind, now
on this side, now on that, all combine to make
a Babel of discordant sounds; and yet, what a
perfect paradise for the artist, the
relic-hunter or the antiquarian! The
bread-seller cries "Ya karim! Ya karim!" which
is not the name for the bread, but which
implies "Gift of the bountiful one." The
water-carrier, jingling his copper saucer to
attract attention, cries "Ishrub ya 'atshan!
Ishrub ya 'atshan!" the meaning of which is
"Drink, O thirsty." (Source:
Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee, p. 313.) |
|
|
| |
See
Beirut
Coast,
Dog
River,
Sidon,
Tripoli,
or
Tyre |
| |
|
|
