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 "Yes. I made her bread and milk, and she ate a big plateful. The calves are in the pen alright, and I fixed the gate. And I brought a load of wood this morning, father, before mother took bad."

"You should not have done that. I told you not to. I could have done that on Sunday. Now, are you sure you didn't lift a log into the cart that was too heavy for you?"

"Quite sure, father. Oh, I'm plenty strong enough to put a load of wood on the cart."

The father lay on his back on the sofa, with his hands behind his head, for a few minutes.

"Aren't you tired, father?" asked the boy.

"No, sonny, not very tired; you must try 'and go to sleep now," and he reached across the table for the candle, and blew it out.

Presently the baby cried, and in a moment the mother's voice was heard.

"Nils! Nils! Are you there, Nils?"

"Yes, Emma."

"Then for God's sake come and take this child away before she drives me mad! My head's splitting."

The father went in to the child and presently returned for a cup of water.

"She only wanted a drink," the boy heard him say to the mother.

"Well, didn't I tell you she wanted a drink? I've been calling for the last half-hour, with that child screaming, and not a soul to come near me, and me lying here helpless all day, and not a wink of sleep for two nights."


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Portal:Epigraphia Indica

 * Volume I (1892)
 * Volume II (1894)
 * Volume III (1894 - 1895)
 * Volume IV (1896 - 1897)
 * Volume V (1898 - 1899)
 * Volume VI (1900 - 1901)
 * Volume VII (1902 - 1903)
 * Volume VIII (1905 - 1906)
 * Volume IX (1907 - 1908)
 * Volume X (1909 - 1910)
 * Volume XI (1911 - 1912)
 * Volume XII (1913 - 1914)
 * Volume XIII (1915 - 1916)
 * Volume XIV (1917 - 1918)
 * Volume XV (1919 - 1920)
 * Volume XVI (1921 - 1922)
 * Volume XVII (1923 - 1924)
 * Volume XVIII (1925 - 1926)
 * Volume XIX (1927 - 1928)
 * Volume XX (1929 - 1930)
 * Volume XXI (1931 - 1932)
 * Volume XXII (1933 - 1934)
 * Volume XXIII (1935 - 1936)
 * Volume XXIV (1937 - 1938)
 * Volume XXV (1939 - 1940)
 * Volume XXVI (1941 - 1942)
 * Volume XXVII (1947 - 1948)
 * Volume XXVIII (1949 - 1950)
 * Volume XXIX (1951 - 1952)
 * Volume XXX (1953 - 1954)
 * Volume XXXI (1955 - 1956)
 * Volume XXXII (1957 - 1958)
 * Volume XXXIII (1959 - 1960)
 * Volume XXXIV (1960 - 1961)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Including Notes on Colloquialisms and Slang to be Avoided in Conversation

By, Litt.D., LL.D.

A REVISED EDITION

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY


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 PREFACE

fact that this little book has passed through many editions, and now enters on a new one in revised form, is ample answer to its writer's prayer when, with the aid of his Publishers, he launched it on an uncertain voyage over the seas of time—

It is with sincere gratitude to the Publishers that the author acknowledges the results achieved to have been due wholly to their kindly interest and indefatigable efforts. He ventures to hope that this new edition, and such subsequent editions as time may require, will be found to measure fully up to the expectations of the discriminating Public on which it depends for support. F. H. V., January, 1920.


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 wide and correct knowledge of the meanings of words. These can be most readily acquired by noting the meaning of every new word across which one may come in reading, and by constantly consulting a dictionary, preferably one which compares or contrasts words in such a manner as to bring out clearly the finer and nicer distinctions in their meanings—such distinctions as are necessary to the student to put him into possession of the essential differences of the words compared. Learn the meaning of words and your tongue will never slip. As Southey has said, "the greatest wisdom of speech is to know when, and what, and where to speak; the time, matter, and manner."

The best asset in life is knowledge. Knowledge well-grounded may be secured by the systematic study of words. The desirability of exercising great care not only in the selection of words, but in marshaling them in their correct order must be apparent to any one familiar with some of the errors committed by writers who, notwithstanding the blunders they have made, have acquired reputation as authors of good English, Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his "Lives of the Poets," is responsible for the following statement: "Shakespeare has not only shown human nature as it is, but as it would be found in situations to which it cannot be exposed—a statement the absurdity of which can not fail to impress the reader.


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Rh In the King James Version of the Bible, quoted by some authorities as a standard of pure English, one may find the following, which occurs in Isaiah xxxvii. 36: "Then the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses." It can hardly be supposed that the translators meant to imply that the corpses arose early in the morning and found themselves dead. In the second act of "Julius Caesar," Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Ligarius the following: "I will strive with things impossible; yea, get the better of them." For power of perseverance Ligarius is to be commended. Hallam, author of the "Literature of Europe," declared that "No one as yet had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesilius having only examined them in dogs"—a declaration which implies that the dog must have bolted them whole. The London Times has occasionally perpetrated absurdities which equal, if they do not surpass, these. In an obituary announcing the death of Baron Dowse it said, "A great Irishman has passed away. God grant that many as great, and who shall as wisely love their country, may follow him." Here the intended wish is not that many great Irishmen may die but that there may be many to follow him who shall love their country as well as he did. An


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Rh sport of the well-to-do, with bears, antelopes, gazelles and wild boars as the quarry. The combination of gymnasium and hot bath, which emerged under the Seleucids, continued to attract patrons. Syrians soon became noted as entertainers—actors, ballet dancers, flute players, circus performers, buffoons, wrestlers and jockeys. Troupes of these entertainers toured the provinces, and were available for hire for banquets and festal occasions.

Antioch and its suburb Daphne were particularly notorious for luxurious and dissolute living and for the magnificence of their public structures and private villas, as well as for the abundant fresh water so precious in that dry land. Since Seleucid days Daphne had been the scene of the greatest celebration of games in Syria. A wealthy Antiochene senator under Augustus willed his fortune to the establishment of a thirty-day Daphnean festival comprising dances, dramatic performances, chariot races, athletic and gladiatorial contests. Women participated in some of these performances, and the festival—and Daphne itself—became proverbial for licentiousness.

Proud, turbulent and satirical, the Antiochenes were noted for their mastery of the art of ridicule. They evidently could not forget that theirs was once a royal city, and stood ready to side with any pretender whom the Syrian army put up. With the emperors who sojourned in their city they invariably quarrelled. Hadrian withdrew from the city the right of coinage, Marcus Aurelius the right of assembly; Septimius Severus transferred the primacy of Syria to Latakia. Emperors bestowed titles and rights upon a city as a reward for good behaviour; they withdrew these privileges as a punishment for disloyalty. In A.D. 115 the city suffered one of the most violent earthquakes on record, and in 260 it was captured and burned by the Persian shah Shapur I, but it recovered from both catastrophes in short order.

Other prosperous cities of Roman Syria included the 83


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Rh Seleucid colonies of Latakia and Apamea and the cities under native aristocracies such as Horns, Damascus, Edessa and Palmyra. Each of the latter group was the centre of a petty state, among which that of Palmyra became formidable. This caravan city had grown up around a spring in the Syrian Desert, a natural stopping-place for trade between Seleucid and Roman Syria to the west and Parthian Mesopotamia to the east. Its isolated location in the heart of the desert put it beyond the easy reach of Roman legions and of Parthian cavalry, and its Arab politicians shrewdly exploited its strategic situation between the two great rivals, keeping the balance of power and profiting by neutrality. By playing one adversary against the other, they maintained the independence of their city as a buffer state.

Palmyrene chiefs secured safe-conducts for passing caravans from desert sheikhs; guides led those caravans through the barren region; mounted archers protected them against bedouin raids; and the city imposed heavy duty on each article of merchandise as it passed through its gates. The commodities comprised some of the necessities and many of the luxuries of the classical world. They did not differ much from those which had passed through Petra: wool, purple, silk, glassware, perfumes, aromatics, olive oil, dried figs, nuts, cheese and wine. The greater part of the Mediterranean trade with Persia, India and China was then handled by Palmyrenes. Industry and even agriculture flourished alongside commerce. The result was the growth of Palmyra into one of the richest cities of the Near East. Gradually its mud huts were replaced by limestone houses. Wide streets were laid out, with the main one leading to the sanctuary of Bel. The streets were lined with colonnades, and the city assumed the aspect of a prosperous Greco-Roman town. It was not easy for the desert city to preserve full sovereignty in face of the growing ascendancy of the empire on its west. By the start of Rh


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Rh the Christian era Palmyra must have acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome, but it maintained its independence. Trajan incorporated it in the province he created in 106, and its dependent cities such as Dura-Europos also became vassals of Rome. As such Palmyra and its satellites entered upon a fresh period of prosperity lasting for over a century and a half. Roman roads connected Palmyra with Damascus, capital of inland Syria, and with the cities of the Euphrates.

It was not until the late third century that Palmyra began to play a conspicuous part in international affairs. By then a new and energetic Persian dynasty had replaced the old Parthian. This was the Sasanid, which lasted from A.D. 227 to the rise of Islam. In 260 the Sasanid army under Shapur I defeated the Roman legions near Edessa and captured the emperor Valerian. Udaynath of Palmyra rushed to his rescue with a mixed army of Syrians and Arabs, defeated the Persians and pursued them to the walls of Persepolis, but was unable to liberate Valerian, who died in captivity. Udaynath's loyalty to the new emperor Gallienus was rewarded in 262 by recognition as imperial commander over the eastern part of the empire. The empire was then in a feeble and confused state, with the whole barbarian world falling upon it in Europe as well as Asia. In the zenith of his success Udaynath was murdered together with his heir under mysterious circumstances. Of hardy and athletic physique, he had excelled in those pastimes and virtues prized highly by Arabs. His munificence manifested itself in elaborate and spectacular banquets, in patronizing religious festivals and in gifts of oil for public baths.

As a historical figure, however, he was eclipsed by his ambitious and beautiful widow Zenobia. Under her the Palmyrene state attained the proportions of a real empire, extending over Syria, part of Asia Minor, northern Arabia and even lower Egypt, where in 270 her army established a Rh


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Rh garrison at Alexandria. In 271 she declared Palmyra's full independence. Rome's reaction was swift and effective. The emperor Aurelian reduced the Palmyrene garrisons in Asia Minor and then proceeded against Syria. Antioch, which was pro-Roman, offered little opposition; Homs, whose people harboured jealousy because of the primacy claimed by Palmyra, was occupied after some resistance. Zenobia and her outmanœuvred heavy cavalry retired to Palmyra, which Aurelian besieged. Zenobia fled but was overtaken, and Palmyra had no choice but to surrender. The conqueror despoiled it of its rich fabrics and precious ornaments, some of which were taken to embellish the new sun temple at Rome. The populace was punished only to the extent of the imposition of a fine and a Roman governor with a body of archers. As he was returning to Rome, Aurelian heard of a fresh uprising in Palmyra resulting in the murder of his governor and the overpowering of his garrison. He rushed back, took the city by surprise, destroyed it and put its inhabitants to the sword. Zenobia was taken to Rome where, in gold chains, she was made to grace the triumphal entry of Aurelian into his capital (274). Palmyra fell into insignificance and obscurity; as its people relaxed their grip on the desert, the desert overcame them. The remains of its colonnade and triumphal arch stand today as the most imposing sight in the desert, attracting lovers of antiquity from all over the world.

The Palmyrene was a peculiar culture, a blend of Syrian, Greek and Persian elements. The original inhabitants were doubtless Arabian tribes who adopted in their speech and writing the prevalent Aramaic tongue. The bulk of the population remained Arab though mixed with Aramaeans. Native inscriptions do not date earlier than 9 B.C., when the city was on its way to becoming a prosperous caravan centre. The only known Palmyrene of high intellectual calibre was the pagan philosopher Longinus, teacher of Porphyry, adviser of Zenobia and one of Aurelian's victims. Rh


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Rh The frescoes of Palmyra and of Dura are significant in the history of art. They help bridge the gap between the ancient Semitic art of Assyro-Babylonia and Phoenicia and early Christian art. Through them may be traced the beginnings of oriental influences over Greco-Roman paint- ings, thus preparing the way for the advent of Byzantine art. The Palmyrene pantheon comprised an assortment of deities from Syria, Arabia, Babylonia and Persia. Chief among these was Bel, a cosmic god of Babylonian origin who was accompanied by solar and lunar deities.

In addition to such Arab cities as Palmyra and Damascus — less important in Roman times than it had formerly been and would again be — and such Greek cities as Antioch and Latakia, northern Syria had two important Roman cities : Beirut and Baalbek. Of the maritime cities Beirut was the only one important for reasons other than the commercial and industrial activity which characterized and enriched Sidon and Tyre. As a Roman veterans' colony and a garrison town it became an isle of Romanism in a sea of Hellenism. Jewish kings eager to ingratiate themselves with Roman emperors by bestowing gifts on the colonies made it the recipient of many material favours, featuring a sumptu- ous theatre for musical and dramatic performances and a lavish amphitheatre for gladiatorial combats and circus games. The city was more justifiably distinguished, how- ever, as the seat of the most renowned provincial school of Roman law, remaining throughout the Roman period a Mecca for the best legal minds of the eastern provinces.

Baalbek (Heliopolis), like Beirut, was both a veterans' colony and a garrison town, but was less Roman and more Semitic. The fame of this city rested on its great temple, which housed a gold statue of Hadad, a Semitic deity called by the Romans Jupiter Heliopolitanus, and a smaller temple honouring his consort Atargatis. The ruins of these temples, the smaller of which is the best preserved and most richly ornamented ancient building in all Syria, surpass any others Rh


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Rh bequeathed from Roman days, not excluding those at Rome itself. The whole temple complex, still visible at a great distance, rests on an artificial terrace formed by a huge understructure of vaults. Aside from the huge size of the stone blocks in the walls and the colossal magnitude of the pillars, it is the wealth of detail in ornamentation and the figure work in the friezes that constitute the most im- pressive feature of the surviving structures.

Cities of a variety of types were scattered throughout southern Syria. There were the old Philistine cities along the coast — Gaza, Ascalon, Jaffa and Acre —, all of which by this time had become Hellenized. There were Herodian foundations such as Tiberias and Caesarea, a few Roman colonies like Nablus (Neapolis), the league of 'ten cities' (Decapolis) in the interior, and of course Jerusalem; but n<pne of them had the importance at this time that the northern and central cities did.

Still farther south, Petra was flourishing under the early emperors. The most beautiful façade and the impressive theatre belong to this period, as do other picturesque struc- tures of the incredible * rose- red city, half as old as time'. Politically, the Nabataeans promptly accepted the role of ally to Rome. Their kingdom attained its height under the long and prosperous rule of Harithath IV (9 B.C.-A.D. 40), who continued the process of Romanization. His realm included southern Palestine and Transjordan, south-eastern Syria and northern Arabia, where Nabataean caravans utilized well-policed wadi routes to by-pass Decapolis and bring Arabian goods to the markets of Syria. After this king a gradual decline set in, and not much is known of the last rulers of Nabataea. Damascus passed into Roman hands, probably under Nero, and other outlying holdings went the same way. Just what happened in that fateful year 105-106 which resulted in the overthrow of this border Syro-Arab state and its annexation by imperial Rome is not determined. Rome had already absorbed all the petty Rh


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 Romans and Semites kingdoms of Syria and Palestine and was getting ready to cross swords with Parthia. Nabataea was brought into the empire as part of the province of Arabia, trade routes shifted, and Petra was relegated to the limbo of history until re- discovered as a modern tourist attraction.

The cultural remains of Roman Syria, from Baalbek to Petra, are indeed largely architectural ; the other visual arts marked time, while hardly any Syrian contribution to Latin literature is worth mention, save possibly that of the philologist Probus of Beirut (fl. A.D. 60). Probus produced critical versions of Vergil and Horace. The sole noteworthy addition to Greek literature was the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, our principal authority for the history of Syria under the early empire. In the field of geography a significant contribution was made by Marinus of Tyre, the first to substitute maps mathematically drawn according to latitude and longitude for those based merely on itineraries. He thus was the founder of scientific geography and pre- cursor of Ptolemy. A northern Syrian, Lucian of Samosata, composed an important source work on the religion of Roman Syria, The Syrian Goddess, and the first dialogues between the dead, an oft-imitated satirical device.

In the domain of philosophy, particularly of the Neo- Platonic type, Syrian thinkers rendered no mean contribu- tion. This was in line with Seleucid tradition, but now Sidon and Tyre were outstripped by Apamea, where Numenius founded Neo-Platonism (though the credit usually goes to Plotinus). Numenius's fame was surpassed by that of Porphyry, who edited Plotinus's works and was himself the most learned and prolific of the Neo-Platonists. Most of his works, including a treatise against Christians, were publicly burned in 448, long after his death in 305.

As Apamea made its mark in philosophy, Beirut made its in jurisprudence, thanks to the school of Roman civil law which flourished there from the early third to the mid-sixth century. Beirut was a creative intellectual centre, more Rh


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Rh Roman than Greek, successfully attracting a galaxy of brilliant students and professors who made of the academy a university and spread its fame far and wide. Legal training was then a prerequisite for holding a government office. Two names shed lustre on the academy and have been immortalized in the Code of Justinian: Papinian, whose legal erudition guided by intellectual honesty and integrity of character made him a model jurist, and Ulpian, extracts from whose perspicuous writings form about one- third of Justinian's Digest. Through the copious extracts from their writings both jurists exercised abiding influence on the systems of Europe.

Certain pieces of Syrian literature, written in barbarous Greek in the early Roman imperial period, however, have had a more enduring and far-reaching influence than all the Greek and Latin classics put together. These were, of course, the Gospels and other early Christian writings.

With the details of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, a son of a Jewish carpenter, who according to Tacitus 'had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius', this history cannot properly concern itself. That some of his followers took pains to record the teachings and doings of their master, producing the Gospels, is a minor footnote to literary history, though it proved to be of im- measurable import to all subsequent history, political, social and intellectual. No extraordinary event reported of Jesus' life — virgin birth, astral association, miracle performance, crucifixion, descent to the underworld, reappearance, exalta- tion to heaven — lacks its parallel in earlier Near Eastern religious mythology. Hardly a teaching of his was not anticipated by Hebrew prophets or other early Semitic teachers. Even his emphasis on love of God and of man and on the relation between faith and ethical living were not unprecedented, though no precursor expressed himself so memorably, or so wholeheartedly practised what he taught. Rh


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Rh was beginning to inch its way slowly to the front, receiving its stimulation from the living present rather than the dead past. Through their pens the Arabic language, rusty with age and given to the expression of traditional unprogressive thought, received a fresh polish and an injection of new life which started it on its way to becoming a vehicle capable of expressing the finest shades of scientific thought and the most delicate sentiments of the human heart. In this it repeated its experience in Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid and al-Mamun, when it rose to meet the challenge of the new day with its translations from Syriac, Greek and Persian. In both instances it embarked upon a new career of adequate and effective expression for a newly enlightened generation.

The impact of modern ideas — secular, scientific, demo- cratic, naturalistic — played havoc with old traditions, cherished beliefs and venerated institutions. It caused tension and brought about conflicts in the social order. This was indeed a period of transition and, like all such periods, a time of stress and strain. Old ties were loosening ; con- ventional loyalties were changing ; and accepted scales of value were being rearranged. How to reconcile the old with the new became and remained the major problem. Hitherto society had consisted of but two classes: one of landowners, aristocrats, ecclesiastics and the well-to-do and another of farmers, peasants, manual workers and the poor. Any in between were of no consequence. But now a fresh middle class of physicians, teachers, lawyers, writers and other professionals, together with a new variety of business- men, emerged and began to exercise telling influence. With the disruption of the social order the family institution, with its time-honoured loyalties and virtues, began to show cracks in its structure. This was, however, true only in urban settlements. By the early twentieth century women were demanding and receiving a large measure of freedom. Sons were seeking wives of their own choice and when married were moving into domiciles of their own. Rh


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Rh Meantime an economic transformation was going on, less violent but no less radical. In it no deeply rooted emotions were involved as in the case of the social and spiritual transformation. Hitherto agriculture had been largely of the subsistence, rather than the commercial, type. The average farmer concerned himself with the necessary produce for his family. The craftsman likewise operated on a narrow scale, his customers being his neighbours or fellow- townsmen. The typical city merchant was his own buyer, salesman and bookkeeper. Neighbourliness, personal rela- tionship, characterized most economic dealings as it did social ones. But with the improved methods of sea and land transportation and the intrusion of foreign merchants and goods, this pattern yielded to change. Factory-made textiles from Manchester, machine-made articles from Paris and, later, line-produced commodities from New York and Detroit invaded the market. Before such an onslaught the primitive local industry stood helpless. The public developed a new taste for fashionable clothes, alcoholic drinks, soft beverages, cigars and cigarettes, candies and bonbons which the native market was incapable of producing. Village and town handicraft, unable to adjust itself to the new situation, dwindled or vanished. Urban population increased. Beirut, which started the nineteenth century with about 5000 in- habitants, ended it with some 120,000; Damascus ended it with 170,000. He among the city merchants who had the foresight and intelligence to adopt new techniques in his business survived, thrived and achieved membership in the rising influential class. In the old society the discrepancy between the two existing classes, though genuine, was not so apparent as in the new society. Now the nouveaux riches could and did display their riches in the form of shining jewellery bedecking their wives and daughters, Paris-tailored clothes worn on festive occasions, exotic foods and drinks — none of which were available before. As the rich became richer, the poor felt poorer. Rh


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Rh The improved economy called for quicker and better means of communication. In 1863 a highway connecting Beirut with Damascus was opened by a French company. It operated a diligence service. With this highway as the main artery a network of roads finally linked the principal towns of Syria-Lebanon. Horse-drawn carriages began to roll. In 1894 another French company inaugurated a Beirut-Damascus-Hawran railroad. This trunk was later extended into Turkey, Iraq and Hejaz. For the first time remote villagers and desert-dwellers were brought within the range of modern civilization. At the turn of the twentieth century Syria-Lebanon was acknowledged to be the most civilized province of the Ottoman empire. Autonomous Lebanon was admittedly the best governed sanjaq.

Increased knowledge, improved sanitation and the mounting rise in the standard of living resulted in an increased population. In 1840 the estimated population of Syria-Lebanon was a million and a quarter, a fraction of what it was in Roman days. In 1900 it reached four million. Pressure from the increase and the urge to escape from Ottoman oppression found a safety-valve in emigration into Egypt. The bulk of the emigrants were Christian Lebanese who sought a new home in British-occupied Egypt. Before 1890 this was the only land to which migration was officially allowed by the Ottomans, who still considered it a part of their empire. There educated Syrians and Lebanese found a wider and more rewarding field for their activity. The British governments of Egypt and the Sudan welcomed to their employment especially those educated in American and British schools. Other emigrants established them- selves as editors of magazines and newspapers, writers, interpreters and teachers and became known as the founders of the school of journalism and writing still dominant in the Arab East.

As the wave of migration swelled it splashed and reached the Americas, where at present there is hardly a good-sized Rh


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Rh town in the north or south which does not claim at least one Lebanese or Syrian family. In the New World, western Europe and Australia the immigrants engaged in business pursuits. All started from scratch. Many became leaders of trade and industry in their respective communities ; some amassed fortunes considered impressive by world standards. Few returned home for permanent residence. Thus did these descendants of Aramaeans and Phoenicians write a new chapter in the history of international trade worthy of their ancestors. Remittances to the folks back home bolstered the economy of the old homeland. Their Arabic newspapers in Cairo, New York, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and other places, together with their private cor- respondence and return visits, reinforced the principles of secularism, self-determination and nationalism already in operation there.

From time immemorial the outlook on life throughout the Near East was religious and mystical. Everyday happen- ings were given a providential interpretation. An epidemic of smallpox, a plague of locusts, a crop failure was con- sidered literally an act of God. With the advance of science, however, a more critical, more rational view was introduced. Consequently religious sanctions began to lose their hold. Even the canon law of Islam, basically God-given, felt the impact of secularization. Attempts to modernize it began with the sultans before the mid-nineteenth century, but proved to be premature. Before the end of the century new commercial and maritime codes following French models were promulgated and adopted in all provinces.

Of all the secular ideas introduced from the West the most potent were political: self-determination, democracy and nationalism. The three marched side by side. Of the trio nationalism was undoubtedly the most dynamic. Political awakening, with its urge to throw off foreign domination and assert independence, was bound to follow the intellectual awakening. It was Revolutionary French Rh


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Rh thought that contributed the new concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity.

These and cognate ideas found their earliest expression — as was to be expected — in the writings of Syrian and Lebanese residents of Egypt, several of whom were con- demned in absentia to death by the oppressive regime of Abd-al-Hamid (i 876-1 909). One of the first Arabic writers to address himself to the subject of liberty and equality, defining and characterizing them, was a Christian Aleppine, Faransis al-Marrash (1 836-1 873). Another Aleppine, a turbaned Moslem, Abd-al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1846- 1906), authored a most devastating treatise on the 'char- acteristics of dictatorship and the evils of oppression'. In 1870 a Christian Beiruti, Butrus al-Bustani, issued a literary magazine carrying for its motto: 'Love of country an article of faith' — a novel concept in a brand-new expression. Orthodox Islam considered the country of the believer not that delimited by geographical or political lines, but the entire area where Moslems lived. The Moslem's was a religious, not a territorial, homeland. Another writer, Adib Ishaq, a Damascene living in Egypt, was one of the first to use and give currency to a new term watan in the sense of fatherland. The term for nationalism (qawmiyah) did not acquire vogue until the second and third decades of the twentieth century.

Though basically the modern concept of nationalism, in the sense of loyalty to a political unit that transcends all other loyalties including the religious, is in conflict with the theory of Islam as a religious fraternity, the idea developed from faint beginnings to become an all-penetrating element in the life of Moslems from Morocco to Iraq. Its earliest expression took the form of an all - embracing Arab nationalism based on language and culture rather than on religion. Its earliest voice was that of a Christian Lebanese, Ibrahim al-Yaziji who, in a secret session of a Syrian learned society held in Beirut in 1868, recited a fiery original poem Rh


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Rh in which he exhorted: 'Arise, ye Arabs, and awake'. That verse was passed on from mouth to mouth to become the bugle-call for a Pan-Arab movement. The spark im- mediately touched off fire in Egypt. Starting from a wide base the new movement was soon to suffer fragmentation. As the political aspects developed they became diversified and localized. In Egypt, where opposition to British occupa- tion became the chief concern, a provincial — Egyptian — type gradually developed. In Syria, Arab nationalists had to concentrate their efforts first against Ottoman rule and then against the French mandate and to that extent part company with the general movement of Pan-Arabism. An anaemic Syrian nationalism developed. In Syria, as in Egypt, the young generation was thus torn between a grandiose Pan-Arab loyalty and a provincial one called forth by the realities of existing conditions. In all cases a powerful weapon adopted from the Western arsenal was therewith directed against the West. The experience of Egypt and Syria was repeated in Lebanon and Iraq as well.

With the firm establishment of nationalism and the urge for independence as a ruling passion in fife the first chapter in the history of modern Syria was concluded. The half- century beginning in i860 carried it from its medieval slumber to the dawn of an age of enlightenment and self- assertion. But a serious interruption was in store. A dark cloud was looming on the horizon — the cloud of world war. Rh


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Rh wasted public funds and restricted personal liberty. Al-Hinnawi's régime was even shorter than his predecessor's and much less productive. On December 19 a third coup engineered by Colonel Adib al-Shishakli, chief of staff, overthrew the Hinnawi regime because c it plotted against the republican regime in conjunction with foreign elements'. Al-Hinnawi favoured union with Iraq and the 'foreign element', the supposed villain, in this case was Great Britain, Iraq's ally. The seventy-four-year-old Hashim al-Atasi, elected shortly before that as provisional president of the Republic, was retained. In due course al-Shishakli gathered the reins of the executive power into his own hands.

Conditions did not greatly improve under the new regime. The rupture of the Syro-Lebanese customs union (March 1950) severed the last economic link with its closest neighbour. Lebanon pursued its time-honoured policy of free trade and open market, while Syria embarked upon a protective tariff policy. The Lebanese frontier was closed to Syrian exports. Syria was the greater economic sufferer. It planned to improve the port of Latakia and the roads leading from and into it. The asylum given Syrian political refugees in Lebanon was a constant source of friction. On the Syrian-Israeli border clashes were intensified. The main issue was whether Israel had the right to extend its drainage work in the Lake Huleh swamps to the upper reaches of the Jordan, included in the demilitarized zone between the two states. Appeals to the United Nations by both sides were frequent but the results often unsatisfactory. Anti-Western feeling was intensified, especially since Israel was receiving arms and financial support from Great Britain, France and the United States.

The national defence item climbed higher and higher in the Syrian budget. The government refused American aid 'with strings attached to it'. There was no immediate source to tap for bolstering the shaky economy. Long-range projects were headed by the draining of the Ghab swamps Rh


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Rh on the Orontes, which would reclaim and irrigate 200,000 acres at a $280,000,000 cost, provide hydro-electric power for new industry and exterminate disease-bearing insects. Other major drainage and irrigation projects involved the Euphrates, the Khabur and the Yarmuk rivers on a five-year plan adopted in 1955 at an estimated cost of about $200,000,000. By decree some 4,000,000 acres of state domain lands were distributed among a number of agricultural co-operative settlements. Trade agreements with Lebanon ended the deadlock. Water, electricity and communication companies in Damascus and Aleppo were nationalized. In June 1953 al-Shishakli promulgated a draft constitution modelled to a limited extent after that of the United States. It featured an elective president in whose hands lodged executive power, a chamber of deputies with legislative function and a supreme court.

At a time when the Shishakli régime seemed secure, undercurrents swelled to undermine it. Four years were not enough to reconcile or eliminate opposition. The Arab Liberation Party, a Shishakli creation and the only one allowed to operate, proved to be a broken reed. Business strikes, student demonstrations, political disturbances gained more momentum as the year 1954 passed into 1955. The imprisonment of twelve opposition leaders, some of whom had held the highest positions in the government, and the rushing of troops to crush uprisings in Jabal al-Duruz produced the opposite results. At last, when the Aleppo garrison declared its rebellion and threatened to march against the capital, al-Shishakli yielded. He offered his resignation and fled to Saudi Arabia and later to Paris, where he still is. The aged Atasi, ousted by the dictator in 1951, was restored to power by the army. He replaced the Shishakli constitution with that of 1950. On September 6 Shukri al-Quwatli, who had fled to Egypt during the Zaim coup, returned to accept the chamber of deputies' election as president of the Republic. A five-year military rule inscribed a circle which Rh


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Rh took it back to its starting-point. It was tested and proved wanting. Civilian control with constitutional authority was resumed.

Under al-Quwatli Syria pursued the ideal of Arab unity through rapprochement with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Hostile to Israel, unfriendly towards Turkey, alienated from Lebanon and more recently from Iraq, she felt isolated and vulnerable. By history, geography and tradition, Iraq would have been a natural partner of Syria. But the signing by Iraq of the Baghdad pact (February 1955) allied it with Turkey and the West. Both Egypt and Syria then considered the Arab League security pact as no longer effective and the two bound themselves by a new defence treaty. The treaty established unity of command and covered training, equipment and other phases of military organization and activity. On the East-or-West issue Syria and Egypt saw eye to eye. Saudi Arabia was determined in its opposition to dealings with Russia.

The avowed policy of Syria under al-Quwatli was that of 'neutrality': rejection of foreign pacts and readiness to receive arms from any source that offered them 'with no strings'. Russia and her satellites expressed willingness to accommodate. Early in 1956 the Syrian government recalled its delegation seeking a thirty-million-dollar loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It signed a trade and payment agreement with Rumania to export cotton, tobacco, hides, textiles and olive oil for Rumanian timber, dyes, chemicals, medicines, agricultural engines and other machinery. Similar agreements followed with Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Cultural missions were exchanged with Russia and Communist China. The cultural agreement with Russia involved exchange of specialists in science, art, education and scholarships. Eight of the thirty participant countries in the Damascus third international fair (September 1956) belonged to the Communist bloc. In the 1957 fair Great Rh


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Rh Britain, France and the United States were conspicuous by their absence.

Syrian-Israeli tension continued unabated. Border incidents became more serious. An Israeli raid on a Syrian army post at the northern corner of the Sea of Galilee (December 11, 1955) killed thirty-six Syrians against six Israelis and, following a United Nations security council report, elicited from the three great Western powers a censure in 'strong and unequivocal terms'. But in effectiveness this censure was no stronger than an old-time poultice on a cancerous area. The continued aid to Israel from the West—particularly from the United States—the festering wound of the nine hundred thousand Palestinian refugees, the policy of France in North Africa, an increase in border clashes with Turkey intensified hostility to the West as it accelerated rapprochement to the East. All this urged intensified military preparedness. Plans for constructing air-raid shelters, for introducing military training into secondary and trade schools and for strengthening border defences were hastily laid and carried out. On August 12, 1956, a nationwide draft of civilians including women was announced.

Any hope of reconciliation with the West was shattered when on October 30, 1956, Israel's invasion of Egypt was seconded by an Anglo-French one. Syria rallied to the support of her ally. Army officers blew up the Iraq Petroleum Company's pipe-lines in her territory and repairs were allowed only after withdrawal of all foreign forces from Egypt, despite the loss of a major element in the country's national income. The triple attack on Egypt and its failure to achieve its purpose raised the stature of Gamal Abdel Nasser (Jamal Abd-al-Nasir) from that of a national Egyptian hero to an international Arab one; it placed him in a niche by himself, a symbol of resistance to Western aggression and a champion of the Pan-Arab cause. To the Moslem masses throughout south-western Asia the Egyptian president became an idol. Rh


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Rh Russia also threatened to help Egypt with ’volunteers'. Earlier in the summer its foreign minister had paid a visit to Egypt and Syria, and when President al-Quwadi was repaying the visit to Moscow he was assured by President Klimenti Y. Voroshilov at a reception in his honour of Soviet readiness ’to supply Syria with the necessary assistance to overcome as rapidly as possible the vestiges of colonialism', and in doing so c the Soviet Union claims no privileges or advantages for itself. On two following occasions, when Syria accused Turkey of intending aggression, Russia warned of her readiness to support the Syrian side. Thus did the Soviet Union seek and find common ground for identifying her interests with those of Syria and the rest of the Arab world: hostility to the three great Western powers, arms against Israel and sympathy with the Pan-Arab movement. It was its policy that won friends, not its ideology. Officially the Communist party remained banned in Syria, as it was in other Arab states, though one seat in the parliament was held by its leader. As late as the autumn of 1957 al-Quwatli was still declaring: ’Had it not been for Israel, we would not have felt the need for new weapons; and were it not for the unrelenting preferential treatment of Israel by the United States, we would not have been introduced to new Russians.'

On the other hand, the Eisenhower doctrine offering aid and protection to any Near Eastern country that sought it against Communist threat fell flat and was rejected outright by the Syrian government (June 1957). The tripartite agreement of May 1950 among Great Britain, France and the United States to take immediate action against any Arab state or Israel violating the frontier lacked implementation, as did the avowed policy of 'equal friendship to both sides' declared by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on his return from a trip to the troubled area. The downward curve in Syrian-American relations hit bottom when on August 13, 1957, military authorities 'uncovered' in Damascus 'an American plot to overthrow Syria's present regime'. Rh


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Rh Advantage was taken of the announcement to reshuffle, in favour of the leftist side, some high officers in the army. Three American embassy officials were ousted. In retaliation the United States expelled the Syrian ambassador and one of his Washington aides. Shortly after that Syria, backed up by Russia, accused Turkey of massing troops on her Syrian border, and Premier Nikolai Bulganin warned that 'the Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent' to 'the report about Turkish troops' concentration on Syria's border'.

For two years Syrians and Egyptians have been considering the possibility of political union as a first step towards a Pan-Arab one. It was high time to take decisive action and consummate the merging of the two states into one. Exchange of visits and views among high officials, meetings of joint deputies' committees and of ministers' commissions and other relevant measures were now expedited. The groundwork was laid for a draft constitution. On the first of February 1958 the merger of the two into the United Arab Republic, with President Nasser as its head, was proclaimed at Cairo. The new Republic would have one flag, one army and one people. Other Arab states were invited to join. The kingdom of Yemen responded and opened negotiations. Those of Iraq and Jordan, under two young cousin kings, reacted by a merger of their own which was named the Arab Federation. Saudi Arabia stayed on the fence. Lebanon declared that it would neither interfere in its neighbours' internal affairs nor countenance interference on their part in its affairs.

The stage was set for a new act in the drama of Arab history. The signing of the birth certificate of the United Arab Republic inscribed the title of the first scene, in which the rôle to be played by Syria belongs to future history. Rh


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Rh The unique original contribution of primitive Syrian Christianity lay in its message, universal rather than pro- vincial or national, spiritual instead of ritualistic and ceremonial, unselfish and other-worldly as opposed to this- worldly, full of hope for the poor and the weary, the outcast and, above all, the sinful who would repent and seek re- demption. Unlike heathen religions, it touched the inmost springs of conduct and conviction. Thus the new faith, buttressed by the dogmatic certainty and missionary zeal of its early adherents, was evidently able to satisfy spiritual and social demands which enlightened people everywhere must have been making — unsuccessfully — on their tradi- tional religions. Slowly but surely it spread throughout the empire, developing effective institutions and techniques, con- verting Jews and pagans and inevitably attracting official opposition and sporadic persecution.

Through the efforts of Paul and the early Christian Fathers, many of whom — Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Origen and others — had Syrian connections, Christianity was so Hellenized as to make it palatable to Greeks and Romans, and was provided with a plethora of doctrine and a host of martyrs. It outdistanced all its competitors including the state cult of emperor- worship, the ancient mystery religions and their youngest and most popular rival Mithraism, the Gnostic sects and the local fertility deities, which in Syria meant chiefly Hadad and Atargatis. Early in the fourth century under Constantine it was adopted as the official religion of the Roman state. In this development the church at Antioch had been the headquarters from which Paul and other early missionaries had set out and to which they had reported if they returned. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70 it became the capital of Christendom, exercising a limited jurisdiction over other sees, and bishops met there frequently in councils. Antioch also gave its name to a school of theology which flourished in the late Roman and early Byzantine eras, stressing the Rh


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Rh human and historical aspects of Christianity against the emotional and mystical.

From apostolic times both Greek and Aramaic were used in Christian worship. After Antioch's rise to a position of leadership in the Greek-speaking part of Syria, Edessa began to rise to a corresponding position in the Aramaic (Syriac) - speaking world. This city was the earliest seat of Christianity in Mesopotamia and the cradle of Syriac literature, which began there probably late in the second century with Syriac versions of the Bible.

The penetration of Christianity into the farthest parts of the Roman empire and its final triumph over all Greco- Roman cults and oriental rivals was but one phase of the Syrianizing process that was going on, the religious phase. The other phases were economic, social and political. Meanwhile, Romanizing processes were operating in the opposite direction. Romanization decreased as distance from Rome increased. In Syria there were too few Italian residents to act as foci for Latin culture. Those were mostly government officials who collected taxes, decided important lawsuits, attended games and festivals but continued to be treated as outsiders. But from the outset the emperors bestowed on native residents of such colonies as Beirut and Baalbek Roman citizenship, which gave them a favoured position among the provincials. By grant or treaty other cities which were not colonies received citizenship or special privileges. Tarsus was among these, enabling Paul to claim Roman citizenship and 'appeal unto Caesar'. 'Divide and rule' was a standard Roman political technique applied to prevent the different cities or communities from clubbing together against Rome. In 212 Caracalla bestowed full Roman citizenship on practically all free residents of the provinces, Syria included. Rome was thus well on the way to solving the knotty problem of moulding a cluster of different nationalities into a single entity, moderately uni- form in culture, economically prosperous and politically loyal. Rh


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 word "foregoing" or the more legal expression "before-mentioned" would better meet the case. Lamb, always inclined to be humorous, ridicules the expression by referring to "the above boys and the below boys."

above should not be used for "more than."

acceptance, acceptation: Terms sometimes used interchangeably but incorrectly so. "Acceptance" is the state of being accepted; as the acceptance of a position or office; acceptation is the favorable admission of or acquiescence in a matter, or assent to a belief.

accept of: A visitor does not accept of the hospitality of his host, but accepts his hospitality. In this phrase "of" is redundant.

accident, injury: These words are used sometimes incorrectly. An "accident" is that which happens without known or assignable cause or without deliberate intention; an "injury" is a hurt that causes physical or mental pain resulting, as from an accident. An accident may be injurious, and injuries painful; but accidents should never be spoken of as painful.

accord should not be used for give. To accord is "to render or concede as due and proper, as honor or veneration;" to give is "to bestow as appropriate; as to give thanks, praise, or welcome." 3


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Rh Of the numerous Syrian communities the Jewish was the least responsive to Romanizing stimuli. The aristocracy was already Hellenized. The Sadducees, who represented the aristocratic party and monopolized the offices, received sup- port from Rome. The Pharisees, who represented the commonalty, adhered to strict orthodoxy and aimed at liberation. Because of the strict monotheism of their religion the Jews had been treated since Pompey's days as a privileged community. Under the emperors they were exempt from military service and the obligation of the imperial cult. They were not required to participate in the sacrificial worship of the Roman ruler. As they maintained their policy of exclusiveness and isolationism, they nourished their national feeling. This led to clashes which broadened into national rebellion in A.D. 66-70 under Nero and in 132-134 under Hadrian. These two rebellions resulted in the final breach between Jews and Christians and in endur- ing disaster to the Jewish society. It was after the first that Titus destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Temple. More than a million Jews are estimated to have perished then, many of them in the amphitheatre battling one another or wild beasts. Judaea as a political state ceased to exist, and the Jews became a stateless, homeless people. Judaism decayed with its adherents, as its narrow national basis and certain features of its ritual rendered it unacceptable to other peoples. One last spark of life appeared in 132, when the Jewish banner of revolt was unfurled by a mysterious leader, Simon Bar Kokba. But Hadrian crushed the rebel- lion and turned Jerusalem into a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina. More than half a million more Jews reportedly died in this futile uprising.

Syrian influence at Rome penetrated to the throne when the purple fell to Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211), a Punic-speaking African general whose wife was a remarkable Syrian lady named Julia Domna, daughter of a priest of Elagabal at Horns. She is described as having great beauty, Rh


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Rh intellectual power and political and literary ability, and as collaborating with her husband in the conduct of state affairs. After his death in battle she attempted to wield control over her sons Caracalla and Geta, who succeeded their father as co-emperors. But in 212 Caracalla had Geta murdered in his mother's arms in her own apartment; Julia herself received a wound in her hand trying to shield her son. She stood by, helpless, as Caracalla continued his blood-stained career, killing some twenty thousand persons including the jurist Papinian. She was put in charge of his correspondence and the state papers. Her salon included Papinian 5 s successor Ulpian, the Greek physician Galen, the Roman historian Dio Cassius and other notable thinkers. After Caracalla's death in 217 she committed suicide, not from grief but because she could not face retirement to private life.

The Syrian dynasty did not end, however, for the imperial power was soon captured by her younger and abler sister Julia Maesa for her grandsons Elagabalus (21 8-2 2 2) and Alexander Severus (222-235). Elagabalus was a priest of the Baal of Horns, whose sacred black stone accompanied him to Rome, and whose worship became for a few years supreme in the empire. Alexander, at his accession a lad of thirteen under his mother's control, was the last and best of this Syrian dynasty. He sent the black stone back to Horns, forbade the worship of himself while alive, put down court luxury, lightened taxes, raised the standard of the coinage and encouraged art and science. After recovering Meso- potamia from the Persians, he was killed in a mutiny in 235. Another Syrian, called Philip the Arab, was enthroned in 244, presided in 248 at the ceremonies commemorating the thousandth birthday of Rome and fell victim to a mutiny in 249, ending Syrian influence at court. His coins depict the great temple of Heliopolis.

Syrian economic penetration in the Latin provinces was manifested by the number of commercial settlements which, Rh


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Rh under the jurisdiction of their own republics and the right of importing and selling merchandise without paying taxes. Arsuf and Caesarea were taken in 1101 with Genoese aid. Strongly walled Acre capitulated three years later as a result of attacks by Pisan and Genoese ships. In 1110 Beirut was besieged by land and sea for eleven weeks and then stormed. In the same year Sidon was taken with the aid of a Norwegian fleet of sixty ships. Baldwin extended his kingdom southward too, building a formidable fortress, Krak de Montreal, south of the Dead Sea (1115), to threaten the caravan route from Damascus to Egypt and Hejaz. The Latin states to the north were likewise expanding.

Raymond, who had had his eye on Tripoli ever since he passed there, returned after the capture of Jerusalem and commenced a siege which dragged on until 1109, four years after Raymond's death. Tripoli became the capital of a county, fourth and last of the Latin states. Latakia had been added in 1103 by Tancred to his captured uncle's principality of Antioch, and Apamea in 1106. Parts of Cilicia were also included in it from time to time.

During the reign of Baldwin II (1118-1131) the Crusader states reached their approximate maximum, and all three of the northern principalities — Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa — owed nominal allegiance to the king of Jerusalem. Their remarkable success must have inspired the Franks with con- fidence and an optimistic outlook. But in reality the pro- spects were not so bright. Except in the very north and south, the area was limited to the littoral — a narrow Christian territory set against a dark background of Islam. Not a town was more than a day's march from the enemy. Inland cities, such as Aleppo, Hamah, Horns, Baalbek and Damascus, were never conquered though occasionally as- saulted. Tyre was taken in 1124 from the Fatimids. Within their own territories the Franks were spread thin. Even in Jerusalem and other occupied cities they never formed more than a minority. Clearly such exotic states could hold their Rh


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Rh own only as long as they received a constant supply of fresh recruits from home and the forces of opposition were not unified under strong leadership.

Their early good fortune in finding Syria divided among weak and mutually hostile amirs — some eager to appease the Franks and have them as allies — could not last in- definitely, but it did last for several decades. When Duqaq of Damascus died (1104), his young son's regent Tughtigin usurped power and passed it on after his death to his sons, who kept Damascus independent until 1154 by alternately fighting the Franks and making alliances with them. Rid- wan's heirs at Aleppo were incompetent, and in 1117 the town passed into the hands of Il-Ghazi, a Turkoman who ruled Mardin. He was a redoubtable warrior against the Crusaders, but could never secure sufficient Moslem aid to do permanent damage.

In 1128 Aleppo was annexed by another warlike Turk, Imad-al-Din Zengi of Mosul. In subsequent years Zengi added Hamah, Horns and Baalbek to his realm, and in 1144 he wrested Edessa from the Franks. Its fall marks the beginning of the turn of the tide in favour of Islam. On the European side it provoked the so-called second Crusade (1147-1149). The usual classification of the Crusades, how- ever, into a fixed number of campaigns is artificial, as the stream was somewhat continuous and the line of demar- cation not sharply drawn. A more satisfactory division would be into first a period of Latin conquest extending to 1144; second a period of Moslem reaction inaugurated by Zengi and culminating in the brilliant victories of Saladin; and third a period of petty wars, coinciding roughly with the thirteenth century, in which the Ayyubids and the Mamluks figured and which ended in driving all Crusaders out of the land.

At Zengi's death (1146) the task of advancing the Islamic cause passed to his son Nur-al-Din Mahmud. The Crusade, led by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, Rh


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Rh failed miserably. More capable than his father, Nur-al- Din in 1154 wrested Damascus from the grandson of Tughtigin, thereby removing the last buffer between Jeru- salem and Zengid territory, which now stretched from Mosul to Hawran. Realizing the decrepit condition of the Fatimids and the advantage of placing Jerusalem where it could be crushed between an upper and a lower millstone, Nur dispatched an able Kurdish general named Shirkuh to Egypt. Here he succeeded in 1169, through diplomatic and military victories, in persuading the Fatimid caliph al- Adid to appoint him vizir. Two months after his investiture Skirkuh died and his mantle fell on his brother's son Salah- al-Din Yusuf ibn-Ayyub (rectitude of the faith, Joseph son of Job), known to us as Saladin.

Saladin was born in 1138 of Kurdish parents at Takrit on the Tigris. When a year old he moved with the family to Baalbek, over which his father Ayyub had been appointed commander by Zengi. The youth, at first reluctantly, em- barked on a military career devoted to the pursuit of three objectives : replacing Shiite with Sunnite Islam in Egpyt, uniting Egypt and Syria under one sceptre and pressing the holy war against the Franks. The first proved to be the easiest to realize. As al-Adid lay on his deathbed in 1171, Saladin as vizir simply substituted in the Friday prayer the name of the contemporary Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi. Thus came to its end the Fatimid caliphate. Incredible as it may seem, the momentous change was effected without even c the butting of two goats'. Thereby Saladin became the sole ruler of Egypt. The second ambition was realized in 1177 when his Syrian suzerain Nur-al-Din passed away. A few minor engagements snatched Syria from the hands of the eleven-year-old son of Nur-al-Din. With the first two goals attained, the third entered the range of possibility.

As adjuncts of Egypt, Cyrenaica and Hejaz immediately became parts of the newly rising Ayyubid domain. Saladin's elder brother Turan-Shah added Nubia and Yemen. In Rh


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Rh 1175 the Abbasid caliph at Saladin's request granted him a diploma of investiture over all these lands, thereby giving away what in reality was not his to give but what it was flattering to him not to refuse. The incorporation of upper Mesopotamia (except Mosul) rounded out the sultanate. Nur-al-Din's dream of enveloping the Franks and crushing them to death was becoming a reality through the achieve- ments of his more illustrious successor.

At last Saladin was free to concentrate on 'the infidels'. The hour of peril for the Latin kingdom struck when, after a six-day siege, Tiberias fell and the Moslem army moved to cut off the Frankish forces under the stubborn and incom- petent king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, at Hattin, over- looking the Sea of Galilee. There the battle was joined July 3 to 4, 1187. The heat was intense. Exhausted from the long march and crazed with thirst, the heavily armoured Franks were surrounded by lightly armoured Moslems and subjected to an incessant shower of arrows. Of the 20,000 knights and infantry only a few escaped; the rest were slaughtered or captured. Prominent among the captives was Guy of Lusignan, who was received as befitted his rank by the magnanimous and chivalrous sultan.

The destruction on the day of Hattin of the Frankish army, which comprised besides the capital's garrison con- tingents from the other states, sealed the fate of the Latin kingdom. After a week's siege Jerusalem capitulated on October 2. Saladin's treatment of the Frankish populace stood in sharp contrast to the treatment accorded the Moslems eighty-eight years earlier. Those who could ransom themselves individually did so; the poor were allowed forty days to collect a lump sum for ransom and the rest were sold as slaves. The lands of the evacuated Franks were purchased by troops and native Christians. From Jerusalem the tide of conquest continued, engulfing all the Frankish holdings except Tyre, Tripoli, Antioch and a few castles. Rh


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Rh The loss of Jerusalem aroused Europe and inspired the 'third Crusade'. In it participated the three mightiest sovereigns of western Europe, Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Philip Augustus of France and Richard the Lion- Hearted of England. Legend and history have collaborated to make this campaign, with Richard and Saladin as its chief heroes, one of the truly spectacular and romantic episodes in occidental and oriental annals.

Frederick took the land route and was drowned crossing a river in Cilicia. Discouraged, many of his followers returned home. Philip and Richard joined Guy in besieging Acre, which fell in July 1191 after a two-year siege which witnessed spectacular feats of valour on both sides. In- cluded in the conditions of surrender were the restoration of the 'true cross', captured at Hattin, and the release of the garrison on the payment of 200,000 gold pieces. But the money was not paid in a month and the Lion-Hearted ordered the twenty-seven hundred captives slaughtered. After tedious but inconclusive skirmishing, peace was finally con- cluded in November 1192 on the general basis that the coast from Tyre southward belonged to the Latins and the interior to the Moslems and that the Christian pilgrims should not be molested. Palestine was partitioned. Richard bade Syria farewell and started for home, only to be captured and held for ransom by a Christian sovereign. Early in March of the following year Saladin died of fever, aged fifty-five. His tomb, still standing by the Umayyad Mosque, is one of the most revered shrines in Damascus.

More than a warrior and champion of orthodox Islam, Saladin was a builder and a patron of learning. Like his predecessor Nur-al-Din he founded schools, seminaries and mosques in both Egypt and Syria. The vast treasures of the Fatimid court which fell into his hands on the overthrow of the caliphate he distributed among his men, keeping nothing for himself. Nur-al-Din's estate was passed on intact to the deceased ruler's son. The estate Saladin himself Rh


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Rh left amounted to forty-seven dirhems and one gold dinar, but the memory he left is still a priceless treasure in the heritage of the Arab East. The memory of his chivalry is almost equally cherished in Europe, where it has touched the fancy of English minstrels as well as modern novelists.

With the death of the great hero of Islam the third period in Crusading history begins, that of dissension and petty wars covering a century. Throughout the thirteenth century European public sentiment remained indifferent to these campaigns. Most of these were commercially rather than religiously motivated and directed against Con- stantinople, Egypt and Tunisia rather than Syria. The Moslems too had lost the spirit of holy war, the unified leadership and the united domain. Saladin's brother al- Adil before 1200 acquired sovereignty over Egypt and southern Syria, but consistently tried to maintain cordial relations with the Franks in order to promote peace and trade with the Italian cities.

Only in Aleppo did Saladin's lineal descendants retain power. From al-Adil sprang Ayyubid branches which reigned in Egypt, Damascus and Mesopotamia. Other branches arose in Horns, Hamah and Yemen. In the course of the ensuing dynastic turmoils one after another of Saladin's conquests — Beirut, Safad, Tiberias, even Jeru- salem (1229) — reverted to Frankish hands. Jerusalem was turned over by al-Adil's son al-Kamil (1218-1238) to Frederick II, king of Sicily, in accordance with a ten-year treaty in which al-Kamil was guaranteed Frederick's aid against his enemies, most of whom were Ayyubids. In 1244, however, al-Kamil' s nephew al-Salih utilized a contingent of Turks dislodged by Genghis Khan to restore the city to Islam. In any event the Franks were in no position to capitalize on Moslem dissension. They themselves were in as bad a situation, with rivalries between Genoese and Venetians, jealousies between Templars and Hospitallers and quarrels among leaders. In these quarrels it was no Rh


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Rh As the city commanding the southern entrance of the celebrated pass across the Taurus known as the Cilician Gates, Tarsus served as a base for major military campaigns against the territory of the Greeks. In Muawiyah's time and later a major campaign was undertaken every summer and a minor one every winter as a matter of routine. The objective, as in the case of the traditional bedouin raids, was booty, though the dim spectacle of Byzantium may have beckoned from the distance. At no time did Arabs establish a firm foothold in Asia Minor. Their main military energy followed the line of least resistance and was directed eastward and westward. The Taurus and Anti-Taurus blocked their northward expansion permanently. No part of Asia Minor ever became Arabic-speaking, and its basic population was never Semitic.

The recurring raids into Asia Minor did at last reach the capital, in 668, only thirty-six years after Muhammad's death. The army wintered at Chalcedon (the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople), where it suffered severely from want of provisions and from disease'. Muawiyah sent his pleasure-loving son Yazid with reinforcements early in 669, and the capital was besieged, doubtless with naval support. The siege was raised that summer, and the army withdrew with its booty. Again in 674 the Arabs reached the Straits, occupying the peninsula of Cyzicus, which projects from Asia Minor into the Sea of Marmara. For six years this spot served as a naval base for a Moslem fleet, as winter headquarters for the invading army and as a base for spring and summer attacks. The city was reportedly saved by the use of Greek fire, a newly invented highly combustible com- pound which would burn even on or under water. The inventor was a Syrian refugee from Damascus named Cal- linicus. This was perhaps the first time this 'secret weapon 5 was used. The Byzantines kept its formula unrevealed for several centuries, after which the Arabs acquired it; but it has since been lost. Greek accounts dilate on the disastrous Rh


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Rh effects of this fire on enemy ships. What was left of the Arab fleet was wrecked on the return journey, occasioned by the death of Muawiyah in 680.

To this period also belong several naval attacks on islands in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean waters, Cyprus was already securely in the Moslem fold. Rhodes was temporarily occupied in 672 and Crete in 674. Sicily was attacked first about 664 and repeatedly thereafter. The Arab fleet was an imitation of the Byzantine and was manned mostly by Syrians. The galley, with a minimum of twenty-five seats on each of the two lower decks, was the fighting unit. Each seat held two rowers; the hundred or more rowers in each ship were armed. Those who specialized in fighting took up their positions on the upper deck.

These campaigns, colossal as they were, did not make the commander-in-chief neglect domestic affairs. The financial administration of the state was left in capable and experienced Christian hands. All provincial expenses were met from local income, principally tribute from subject peoples ; only the balance went to the caliphal treasury. Such was the revenue that Muawiyah could double the pay of the soldiers, strengthen the Syrian frontier fortresses against the northern enemy, undertake projects of agri- culture and irrigation in Hejaz and appease rival factions through subsidies. In Syria he instituted a bureau of registry, a state chancery charged with preserving a copy of each official document dispatched and a postal service. He maintained a standing army of 60,000 at a yearly cost of 60 million dirhems.

Throughout his undertakings, peaceful or military, he was sustained by the unwavering loyalty of his Syrian subjects, natives and Arabian immigrants. The Syro- Arabs were mostly of South Arabian origin and had been Christianized. His wife, his physician and his court poet were Christians. Maronites and Jacobites brought their religious disputes before him. In Edessa he reportedly re- Rh


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Rh built a Christian church that had been demolished by an earthquake. By such acts of tolerance and magnanimity Muawiyah fastened his hold upon the hearts of the Syrians and firmly established the hegemony of their country in the Moslem empire.

Perhaps his most prominent talent was the political finesse which made him unerring in doing the right thing at the right time. This supreme statesmanship he defined in these words: 'I apply not my sword, where my lash suffices; nor my lash, where my tongue is enough. And even if there be but one hair binding me to my fellow men, I do not let it break. When they pull, I loosen; and if they loosen, I pull.' The letter he sent to al-Hasan inducing him to abdicate further illustrates this trait: 'I admit that because of your blood relationship you are more entitled to this high office than myself. And if I were sure of your greater ability to fulfil the duties involved, I would un- hesitatingly swear allegiance to you. Now, then, ask what you will.' Enclosed was a blank already signed by Muawiyah. This ability made his personal relations with his contemporaries frank and friendly, even when they were Alids or other opponents.

In the autumn of 679, six months before his death at the age of eighty, Muawiyah nominated his son Yazid as his successor, an unprecedented procedure in Islam. Yazid had been brought up by his mother partly in the desert around Palmyra, where her Christian tribe roamed. In the capital he also associated with Christians. In the desert the youth- ful prince became habituated to the chase, rough riding and hard life; in the city, to wine-bibbing and verse-making. The desert from this time on became the open-air school in which the young royal princes of the dynasty acquired manly virtues and pure Arabic — unadulterated with Aramaicisms — and incidentally escaped the recurring city plagues. That the caliph had had the nomination of his son in mind for some time may be inferred from his sending him as early as Rh


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Rh 669 against Constantinople, where Yazid's success served to dispel any doubts that the puritans might have entertained regarding his qualifications. And now Muawiyah, after being sure of the capital, summoned deputations from the provinces and took from them the oath of allegiance to his favourite son. Unsympathetic Iraqis were cajoled, coerced or bribed.

This master-stroke was a landmark in Islamic history. It introduced the hereditary principle, which was followed thereafter by the leading Moslem dynasties. It established a precedent enabling the reigning caliph to proclaim as his successor him among his sons or kinsmen whom he con- sidered competent and to exact for him an anticipatory oath of allegiance. The designation of a crown prince tended to promote stability and continuity and to discourage ambitious aspirants to the throne.

Despite his unparalleled contributions to the cause of Arabism and Islam, Muawiyah was no favourite with the Arab Moslem historians. Nor were his 'tyrannical' lieuten- ants. The explanation is not difficult to find. Most of those writers were Shiites or Iraqis or Medinese and thus anti- Umayyad. As historians they reflected the puritanical attitude which resented the fact that he was the man who secularized Islam and transformed the theocratic caliphate into a temporal sovereignty. He is blamed for several innovations abhorrent to pious conservatives. The fact remains that such was the example of energy, tolerance and astuteness he set before his successors that while many of them tried to emulate it few came near succeeding.

As long as the rule of powerful Muawiyah lasted, no Alids dared dispute his authority in an overt act; but the accession of the frivolous Yazid was an invitation to seces- sion or rebellion. In response to urgent and reiterated appeals from Iraqis, al-Husayn, younger son of Ali and Fatimah, now declared himself the legitimate caliph. At the head of a weak escort of devoted followers and relatives, Rh


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Rh more unusual for one side to secure Moslem aid against the other than it was for Moslems to secure Christian aid against other Moslems.

After the failure of the 'sixth Crusade 3 and his release from captivity in 1250, King Louis IX of France spent four years in Syria, where he fortified Jaffa, Caesarea, Acre and Sidon. Of all Crusading leaders, Louis was the noblest char- acter and was later made a saint. A new and unexpected danger, however, was now threatening : Mongol hordes flooding northern Syria and advancing southward. Con- currently the Ayyubids were being supplanted by Mamluk rulers, to be discussed in the next chapter. The fourth Mamluk, Baybars (1260-1277), checked the first advance of the Mongols in Palestine, virtually destroyed the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, recovered the Mongols' Syrian con- quests, reunited Egypt and Syria and was then able to pursue the holy war. In addition to castles held by the military orders — Templars and Hospitallers — he regained Caesarea, Arsuf, Safad, Jaffa and even (1268) Antioch, where 16,000 people were put to the sword and 100,000 reportedly led into captivity. The city itself, with its ancient citadel and world-renowned churches, was given to the flames, a blow from which it has never recovered.

The fall of Antioch, second of the Latin states to be founded, had a demoralizing effect. A number of minor Latin strongholds were hastily abandoned. In 1271 the strong and strategically located Krak des Chevaliers, principal fortress of the Hospitallers and still the most admirably pre- served of all Crusader castles, surrendered after a short siege. Similar mountain strongholds belonging to the Assassins, allies of the Hospitallers, were now reduced and truces were arranged with the great coastal fortresses, planted to control the maritime road and ports and to defend them against the fleet based on Egypt.

The Assassins were an extremist Ismailite order founded in 1090 and based on the fortress of Alamut in northern Rh


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 that year he issued from the press two supplementary papers on the catholic hierarchy, one of them entitled 'The Roman Documents relating to the New Hierarchy, with an Argument,' and the other (8vo, pp. 44), 'Observations on the Arguments of Dr. Twiss respecting the new Roman Catholic Hierarchy.' In the July of 1852 Bowyer entered parliament for the first time as M.P. for Dundalk, which borough he continued to represent in the House of Commons for sixteen years, down to December 1868. In 1854 he published, in twenty-eight chapters, 8vo, pp. xi, 387, his 'Commentaries on Universal Public Law,' and in 1856 two pamphlets 4 Rome and Sardinia,' and 'The Differences between the Holy See and the Spanish Government' in vindication of the holy see, reprinted from the 'Dublin Review,' September 1855, and March 1856. On 1 July 1860 Bowyer succeeded his father as baronet. In 1864 appeared, in quarto, 'Friends of Ireland in Council,' the interlocutors in which were Bowyer, William Henry Wilberforce, and John Pope Hennessy. In 1868 Bowyer, in the form of a letter to the Earl of Stanhope, published, 8vo, pp. 19, 'The Private History of the Creation of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England.' In 1873 he brought out a reprint from the 'Times' of 'Four Letters on the Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords and the New Court of Appeal.' Bowyer was defeated in his candidature at Dundalk in December 1868, but in December 1874 was returned in the home-rule interest for the county of Wexford, and retained that seat until March 1880. He published, in 1874, 8vo, pp. 72, his 'Introduction to the Study and Use of the Civil Law, and to Commentaries on the Modern Civil Law,' a work inscribed to Earl Cairns. During the last five years of his career in parliament he estranged himself from the liberal party, and was at last expelled, on 23 June 1876, from the Reform Club. Bowyer was conspicuous as a representative catholic. His numerous letters to the 'Times' mainly bore reference to questions of religious or constitutional law. He was a prominent member of the committee convened to farther the agitation against the abolition of the legal duties of the House of Lords. Bowyer was found dead in his bed at his chambers in the Temple, 13 King's Bench Walk, on the morning of 7 June 1883. The funeral service was performed in his own church of St. John of Jerusalem, in Great Ormond Street, Bloomsbury, which had been entirely built by him. Bowyer was a knight of Malta and honorary president of the Maltese nobility. He was knight commander of the order of Pius IX, as well as a chamberlain to that pontiff, knight grand cross of the order of St. Gregory the Great, and grand collar of the Constantinian order of St. George of Naples. He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of Berkshire.

 BOWYER, ROBERT (1758–1834), miniature painter, seems to have been at an early date known to Smart, the miniature painter, and is supposed by Redgrave to have been Smart's pupil. He exhibited miniatures and paintings at the Royal Academy occasionally between 1783 and 1828; was appointed painter in water-colours to the king, and miniature painter to the queen; and received much fashionable patronage. In 1792 he issued a prospectus giving details of a plan for an edition of Hume's 'History of England,' with continuation to date, to be 'superbly embellished.' West, Smirke, Loutherbourg, and other leading artists of the day furnished historical pictures specially to be engraved for this work, which contains besides a number of engravings of portraits, medals, and antiquities. It was issued in parts, and by 1806 five unwieldy folios were published, reaching to the year 1688; the continuation was never issued, as a loss of 30,000l. is asserted to have been already incurred. Bowyer also published 'An Impartial Narrative of Events from 1816 to 1823,' London, 1823. He died at his house at Byfleet, Surrey, 4 June 1834.

 BOWYER, WILLIAM, the elder (1663–1737), printer, son of John Bowyer, citizen and grocer of London, by Mary, daughter of William King, citizen and vintner of London, was born in 1663, apprenticed to Miles Flesher, printer, in 1679, and admitted to the freedom of the Company of Stationers 1686. By his first wife, who died early, he had no issue. By his second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Dawks (a printer who had been employed on Bishop Walton's Polyglot Bible) and widow of Benjamin Allport, bookseller, he was father of the younger, 'the learned printer' [q. v.], and a daughter Dorothy married to Peter Wallis, a London jeweller. In 1699, a few


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Rh Persia. Their name is derived from hashish (marijuana), the intoxicating hemp under the influence of which they sup- posedly committed their murders. The order was a secret organization headed by a grand master below whom stood priors followed by propagandists. Near the bottom were the devotees ready to execute at all cost the grand master's orders. The devotees made free and treacherous use of the dagger against Christians and Moslems alike; they made assassination an art.

About the same time that the Crusaders were entering Syria from the north-west the Assassins were entering it from the north-east. Their first important collaborator was the Seljuk amir Ridwan of Aleppo. Efforts to gain control of cities failed, as had the Druzes'. By 1140 they had acquired several strongholds in mountainous northern Syria, where between 40,000 and 60,000 obeyed the orders of the Syrian grand master at Misyaf. For thirty years, beginning about 1162, this high office was held by Rashid-al-Din Sinan. Assassins made two attempts on the life of Saladin and killed, among others, Raymond II of Tripoli and Conrad of Montferrat, titular king of Jerusalem. In 1172 Sinan sent envoys to the king of Jerusalem to discuss the possibility of conversion on the part of his men to Christianity. This was in line with the practice of dissimulation prescribed by ultra-Shiite tenets. Fearing the loss of tribute which the Assassins were then paying the Templars, these knights murdered the envoys. During his stay at Acre, Louis IX exchanged gifts with the current grand master, but the Assassins' power in the thirteenth century was less than in the twelfth. With Baybars' destruction of their fortresses, which for years had sheltered intrigue and murder, the Syrian Assassin power was for ever crushed.

The work begun by Baybars against the Franks was continued by his equally energetic and zealous successor Qalawun (1279-1290). The Hospitaller fortress al-Marqab yielded in 1285 and its defenders were escorted to Tripoli, Rh


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Rh the largest city still in Frankish hands. In 1289 Tripoli too fell and was levelled to the ground. Amidst preparations against Acre, the only place of military importance left, Qalawun died and was succeeded by his son al-Ashraf, who invested Acre for over a month, using ninety-two catapults, before he stormed it on May 18, 129 1. He slaughtered its Templar defenders in violation of a safe-conduct he had granted them. The capture of Acre sealed the fate of the few remaining coastal towns. Tyre was abandoned on the same day and Sidon on July 14. Beirut capitulated on July 21 and Tortosa on August 3. Athlith, deserted by its Templars, was demolished a few days later. Only on the islet of Arwad off Tortosa were the Templars able to hold out for eleven years more. With Arwad's surrender the curtain fell on the last scene of the most spectacular drama in the history of the conflict between East and West.

Rich in picturesque and romantic incidents, the Crusades were rather disappointing in intellectual and cultural achieve- ment. On the whole they meant much more to the West in terms of civilizing influences than they did to the East. They opened new horizons — industrial, commercial and colonial — before the eyes of Europeans. The states they built in Syria correspond to modern colonial acquisitions. The merchant or pilgrim rather than the returned soldier was the principal culture carrier. In the East they left a legacy of ill will between Moslems and Christians the effects of which are still noticeable.

Islamic culture in the Crusading epoch was already decadent in the East. For some time it had ceased to be a creative force. In science, literature, philosophy all its great lights had been dimmed. Moreover, the Franks them- selves were on a lower cultural level. Nationalistic ani- mosities and religious prejudices thwarted the free play of interactive forces between them and the Moslems and left them in no responsive mood. No wonder, then, that we know of only one major scientific work done from Arabic into Rh


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Rh Latin throughout the whole period, a medical treatise by al- Majusi translated at Antioch in 1 127 by a Pisan. Another work translated in Antioch (1247) was The Secret of Secrets, a pseudo- Aristotelian treatise on occult science which had a wide vogue in the late Middle Ages. Systematic hospitaliza- tion in the Occident probably received a fresh stimulus from the orient, where Nur-al-Din's great hospital in Damascus led the way. A number of hospices and hospitals, chiefly for lepers, began to appear in twelfth-century Europe.

In literature the influence was even slighter and more difficult to detect. Stories, including some of Persian and Indian origin, were transmitted and appear strangely altered in the Gesta Romanorum and other collections. Chaucer's Squieres Tale has an Arabian Nights antecedent; Boccaccio's Decameron contains a number of tales derived orally from oriental sources. The Holy Grail legend preserves elements of undoubted Syrian origin.

In Syria the Franks learned the use of the crossbow, the wearing of heavier mail by knight and horse, the employ- ment of the tabor and naker in military bands, the conveying of military intelligence by carrier pigeons and the use of fire for signalling at night. They also acquired the practice of holding tournaments among knights wearing distinctive heraldic devices. The double-headed eagle, the fleur-de-lis, the rosette and other emblems were borrowed from Moslem foes. Many Mamluks bore names of animals, whose images they blazoned on their shields, as did their Christian imi- tators. 'Azure' and other heraldic terms have an Arabic origin.

The order of Templars, which, with that of the Hospital- lers, was the Crusaders' nearest approach to harmonizing war and religion — an old achievement in Islam — followed in its organization a pattern similar to that of the Assassins. At the bottom of the Christian order stood the lay brothers, esquires and knights, corresponding to the associates, devotees and comrades. The knight wore a white mantle Rh


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Rh with a red cross mark, the Assassin comrade a white mantle with a red cap. There was also an order of Arab chivalry which was reformed and patronized by the Abbasid al-Nasir (1180-1225). The initiate was also called comrade and wore distinctive trousers. Saladin's brother al-Adil and al- AdiPs sons wore these trousers and may have belonged to the active Syrian branch of this order.

Most conspicuous among all Crusading remains in Syria are the many castles still crowning its hills. Then come the churches. In the churches the Franks employed the familiar Romanesque and Gothic styles but added Byzantine and Syrian motifs of decoration. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock were imitated in several ecclesiastical buildings of the 'round temple' type in England, France, Spain and Germany. Many of the Crusader churches have since been converted into mosques. Among these are the great cathedral of Tyre, the church at Sidon erected by the Hospitallers, the cathedral of Beirut and that of Tortosa, the most beautiful and best preserved of all. This structure, which was an object of pilgrimage, was begun in 1130 and housed a picture supposedly painted by Luke and an altar over which Peter allegedly celebrated the first mass.

For many generations before the Crusades pilgrims frequented the Holy Land and traders visited the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The Crusading movement accelerated forces already in operation and popularized in Europe oriental products, some of which must have been previously known. The problem of tracing origins is further complicated by the fact that while the Syrian bridge was open for traffic two other bridges, the Sicilian and the Spanish, were in operation too, thus making it difficult to determine the exact route taken by any particular commodity.

While in Syria the Franks were introduced to or acquired a taste for certain native and tropical products with which Rh


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Rh the marts of Syria were then stocked. Among those products were sesame, millet, rice (arizz), lemons {laymun), melons and apricots, sometimes called plums of Damascus. The Syrian capital specialized in sweet scents and damask rose. Attars and fragrant volatile oils, of Persian origin, incense and other aromatic gums of Arabia, together with other spices, perfumes and sweetmeats became favourites. Cloves and similar aromatics, pepper and other condiments, alum, aloes and several drugs found their way into the European kitchen and shop. In Egypt ginger was added to the Crusader menu. More important than all these articles was sugar (sukkar), with the cane of which the Franks familiarized themselves on the Lebanese maritime plain. Arab traders had introduced sugar cane from India or south-eastern Asia, where it must originally have grown wild. Before the Crusades honey was the ingredient used by Europeans for sweetening foods and medicines. With sugar went a variety of soft drinks, sweetmeats and candy (qandah).

In matters of fashion, clothing and home furnishing new desires were likewise sharpened if not created. The Franks became convinced that not only native foods but native clothes were preferable. Men began to grow beards, wear flowing robes and cover their heads with shawls. Women wore oriental gauze ornamented with sequins and sat on divans, listening to the lute and rebab; they even veiled in public. Warriors, pilgrims, sailors and merchants returned with rugs, carpets and tapestries, which had been a fixture in Near Eastern homes from time immemorial. Fabrics such as damask (of Damascus), muslin (of Mosul), taffeta, velvet, silk and satin came to be appreciated as never before. Oriental luxuries became occidental necessities. Mirrors of glass replaced those of steel. The rosary, of Hindu origin, was used by Syrian Christians and then Sufi Moslems before it got into the hands of Roman Catholics. Pilgrims sent back home reliquaries of native workmanship Rh


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 military man, but changed once more to a quaker shortly before his father's death. He had several estates from his grandfather Prudom, and his father's will dealt very kindly with him. For some time he resided at a secluded village near Darlington, calling himself 'Mr. Thomas,' and died suddenly in 1783, aged 53.

BOXALL, JOHN, D.D. (d. 1571), Queen Mary's secretary of state, a native of Bramshoot in Hampshire, was, after a preliminary training in Winchester School, admitted a perpetual fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1542, where he took his degrees in arts, 'being then accounted one of the subtilest disputants in the university.' He took orders, but, being opposed to the doctrines of the reformers, he abstained from exercising the functions of his ministry during the reign of Edward VI. On Queen Mary's accession he was appointed her majesty's secretary of state, dean of Ely, prebendary of Winchester, and warden of Winchester College (1554) in the place of Dr. John White, who had been promoted to the see of Lincoln. He was one of the divines who were chosen to preach at St. Paul's Cross in support of the catholic religion, and Pits relates that on one occasion, while thus engaged, a bystander hurled a dagger at him (De illustr. Anyliæ Scriptoribus, 870). Other writers assert that this happened to Dr. Pendleton; but Stow (Annales, 1615, p. 614) correctly tells us that [q. v.] occupied the pulpit on the occasion referred to. On 23 Sept. 1556 Boxall was sworn as a member of the privy council; also as one of the masters of requests and a councillor of that court (Lansd. MS. 981, f. 85). In July 1557 he was made dean of Peterborough; on 20 Dec. following he was installed dean of Norwich, and about the same time dean of Windsor. He was elected registrar of the order of the Garter on 6 Feb. 1557-8, and in 1558 was created D.D. and appointed prebendary of York and Salisbury. It should be mentioned that Queen Mary allowed him ten retainers (, Memorials, iii. 480), and that he was one of the overseers of Cardinal Pole's will (ib. 468).

Boxall was removed from the office of secretary of state by Queen Elizabeth, on her accession, to make way for Cecil, and his behaviour on the occasion places his character in a favourable light; for, instead of opposing obstacles to his successor in office, it is clear from a few of his letters to Cecil, dated about this period, that he cherished no sentiment but that of anxiety to give him all the assistance in his power. Having been deprived of his ecclesiastical preferments, he was on 18 June 1560 committed to the Tower by Archbishop Parker and other members of the ecclesiastical commission (, Annals, i. 142, 148, 167;, Diary, 238; Lansd. MS. 981, f. 85 b). Subsequently he was committed to 'free custody' in the primate's palace at Lambeth, with Thirleby, late bishop of Ely, Tunstall, late bishop of Durham, and other divines who adhered to the old doctrines. He was removed at different periods to Bromley and Beaksbourne, remaining still in the archbishop's charge. In the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MSS. No. 114, f. 286) is a letter from Boxall thanking Parker for his kindness to him when confined in his house and for the leave he had obtained of removing to Bromley. On 20 July 1569 Boxall, then in custody at Lambeth, wrote to Sir William Cecil requesting leave to visit his mother. In his letter, which is signed 'Jo. Boxoll,' he says: 'My poore mother beside the comen sicknes of age, beinge of 80 yeares at the lest, ys also dangerously diseased, desyrouse to see me & I likewyse desyrous to do my dewtye vnto her' (Lansd. MS. 12, f. 12). Eventually, being attacked by illness, Boxall was allowed to go to the house of a relative in London, where he died on 3 March 1570-1. His brothers Edmund and Richard were appointed administrators of his property.

He published a Latin sermon preached in a convocation of the clergy in 1555 and printed at London in octavo in the same year. He also wrote an 'Oration in the Praise of the Kinge of Spaine,' MS. Reg. 12 A. xlix. This discourse, which is in Latin, was probably composed in May or June 1555, on the report of the queen having been delivered of a prince.

It is recorded to his honour that he was 'a man who, though he were so great with Queen Mary, yet had the good principle to abstain from the cruel blood-shedding of the protestants, giving neither his hand nor his consent thereunto' (, Life of Parker, i. 47). Lord Burghley (Execution of Justice, 1583, sheet B ii.) describes him as 'a person of great modestie and knowledge,' and Archbishop Parker says: 'Inerat enim ei tanquam à naturâ ingenita modestia comitasque summa, quâ quoscunque notos ad se diligendum astrinxit' (, Mattheus, appended to some copies of De Antiq. Brit. Eccl.)