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 UNDER FATIMIDS AND SELJUKS

Fatimid dynasty was the last of the medieval caliphates and the only major Shiite caliphate. Its name reflects the alleged descent of its founder and his successors from Ali and Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad. We have already noted its establishment in Tunisia in 909 and the conquest of Egypt and much of Syria from the Ikhshidids in 969. For the next few years Syria was rent with warfare, not only between the Hamdanids in the north and the Fatimids in the south, but also involving the Carmathians, the Turks and the Byzantines. Damascus was occupied by Car- mathians with Abbasid encouragement, and later by a Turkish general who used it as a base for a series of raids on the whole country. It was natural for the Turks and Carmathians to combine against their common foe.

In 977 the Fatimid caliph al-Aziz (975-996) took the field in person and inflicted a crushing defeat on the allied forces outside al-Ramlah. Al-Aziz extended his domain in Syria, especially along the coast, but failed to reduce Aleppo, mainly because of intervention by the Byzantines, who had just lost it to Sayf-al-Dawlah and were eager to take advantage of any opportunity to restore their authority in Syria. After this set-back al-Aziz devoted the rest of his reign, in so far as Syria was concerned, to consolidating his power in the south and central parts and imposing his suzerainty on the weakening Hamdanids in the north.

Under his rule there flourished in Fatimid Palestine one of the most original and capable of geographers, al-Maqdisi (946-about 1000). Born in Jerusalem (whence his name) under the Ikhshidids, he started at the age of twenty travels that took him through all Moslem lands except Spain, India Rh


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United Nations General Assembly Resolution 112

Inasmuch as the Korean question which is before the General Assembly is primarily a matter for the Korean People itself and concerns its freedom and independence, and

Recognizing that this question cannot be correctly and fairly resolved without the participation of representatives of the indigenous population,

 * The General Assembly

 * 1. Resolves that elected representatives of the Korean People be invited to take part in the consideration of the question
 * 2. Further resolves that in order to facilitate and expedite such participation and to observe that the Korean representatives are in fact duly elected by the Korean people and not mere appointees by military authorities in Korea, there be forthwith established a United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea, to be present in Korea, with right to travel, observe and consult throughout Korea.

The General Assembly,

Recognizing the urgent and rightful claims to independence of the people of Korea;

Believing that the national independence of Korea should be re-established and all occupying forces then withdrawn at the earliest practicable date;

Recalling its precious conclusion that the freedom and independence of the Korean people cannot be correctly or fairly resolved without the participation of representatives of the Korean people, and its decision to establish a United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (hereinafter called the "Commission") for the purpose of facilitating and expediting such participation by elected representatives of the Korean people,

 * 1. Decides that the Commission shall consist of representatives of Australia, Canada, China, El Salvador, France, India, Philippines, Syria, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic;

 * 2. Recommends that the elections be held not later than 31 March 1948 on the basis of adult suffrage and by secret ballot to choose representatives with whom the Commission may consult regarding the prompt attainment of the freedom and independence of the Korean people and which representatives, constituting a National Assembly, may establish a National Government of Korea. The number of representatives from each voting area or zone should be proportionate to the population, and the elections should be under the observation of the Commission;

 * 3. Further recommends that as soon as possible after the elections, the National Assembly should convene and form a National Government and notify the Commission of its formation;

 * 4. Further recommends that immediately upon the establishment of a National Government, that Government should, in consultation with the commission: (a) constitute its own national security forces and dissolve all military or semi-military formations not included therein: (b) take over the functions of government from the military commands and civilian authorities of north and south Korea, and (c) arrange with the occupying Powers for the complete withdrawal from Korea of armed forces as early as practicable and if possible within ninety days;

 * 5.Resolves that the Commission shall facilitate and expedite the fulfilment of the foregoing programme for the attainment of the national independence of Korea and withdrawal of occupying and consultations in Korea. The Commission shall report, with its conclusions, to the General Assembly and may consult with the Interim Committee (if one be established) with respect to the application of this resolution in the light of developments;

 * 6.Calls upon the Member States concerned to afford every assistance and facility to the fulfilment of its responsibilities;

 * 7.Calls upon all Members of the United Nations to refrain from interfering in the affairs of the Korean people during the interim period preparatory to the establishment of Korean independence, except in pursuance of the decisions of the General Assembly; and thereafter, to refrain completely from any and all acts derogatory to the independence and sovereignty of Korea.

Hundred and twelfth plenary meeting,

14 November 1947

국제 연합 총회 결의 112호

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Rh and Sijistan. In 985 he embodied the information he thus gathered in a book based solidly on his personal observation and experience. Thanks to it and to the works of other geographers who began to flourish in this age, our know- ledge of the economic and social conditions of tenth-century Syria reaches a height never before attained. No Latin or Greek geographer left us material comparable to this Arabic material in quality and quantity. Al-Maqdisi surveys trade, agriculture, industry and general education. He refers, among many other things, to iron ores in the 'mountains of Beirut 5, the abundant trees and hermits in Lebanon, the sugar and glassware products of Tyre, the cheese and cotton goods of Jerusalem and the cereals and honey of Amman. He characterizes Syria as a c blessed region, the home of cheap prices, fruits and righteous people'.

On the whole al-Maqdisi and his contemporaries depict a people with an adequate standard of living and a satisfying, useful way of life, judged by the standards of the authors. Christians and Jews do not seem to have been worse off under the Hamdanids and early Fatimids than under the Abbasids. Most of the scribes and the physicians were still Christians. The Byzantines had been confined to Antioch ; the Carmathians still irrupted occasionally but were not quite the menace they had been; the Turks had been checked for the time being. Steady immigration of bedouins from the Syrian Desert made the countryside turbulent, as they at last reached Lebanon and occupied the mountain slopes and the hidden valleys. But even for the heavily garrisoned cities this calm was brief and deceptive; times of trouble lay ahead.

Al-Aziz was succeeded by his son al-Hakim (996-1021), a blue-eyed boy of eleven whose behaviour was so freakish and irrational that he was deified in his lifetime by some and accused of psychopathic abnormalities by others and by later historians. In the second year of his reign a sailor Rh


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Rh from Tyre named Allaqah had the effrontery to declare his city independent and to strike money in his own name. For a time he defied the Egyptian army and with the aid of a Byzantine flotilla stood against the Egyptian fleet. But at last he had to surrender his besieged city and suffer flaying and crucifixion. His skin was filled with hay and exhibited in Cairo.

Al-Hakim revived the humiliating disabilities imposed by Umar II and al-Mutawakkil on Christians and Jews, who fared well under the other Fatimids. Although his mother and his vizir were Christians, al-Hakim reactivated earlier regulations requiring distinguishing garments and in 1009 added that when Christians were in public baths they should display a five-pound cross dangling from their necks, and Jews an equally weighty frame of wood with jingling bells. In the same year he demolished several Christian churches, including that of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. By way of implementing the koranic prohibition against wine, he ordered all grapevines uprooted. He invited those members of the tolerated sects who were unwilling to abide by his regulations to profess Islam or else emigrate to the Byzantine empire. Apparently in his time, almost four centuries after Muhammad, the Christians in Egypt and Syria were still folly as numerous as the Moslems.

Other edicts of al-Hakim show strange contradictions. He built an academy in Cairo only to destroy it with its professors three years later. He legislated against sexual immorality and went so far as to prohibit the appearance of women in the Cairo streets. He issued edicts against banquets and music and included certain dishes and chess playing. Like several other descendants of Ali, he was considered divine by extreme admirers. The first to offer him public divine veneration was a Persian called al-Darazi (the tailor), from whom the Druze sect took its name. Basic in the Druze system is the doctrine of the incarnation of the deity in human form, the last and most important mani- Rh


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 THE CRUSADES

November 26, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered a fiery speech at Clermont in southern France urging the believers to 'enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre, wrest it from the wicked race and subject it' to themselves. Judged by its results this was perhaps the most effective speech in history. 'Dens vult' (God wills [it]) became the rallying cry and was reiterated throughout Europe, seizing high and low as if by a strange psychological contagion.

The response, however, was not all motivated by piety. Besides the devout there were military leaders intent upon new conquests for themselves; merchants from Genoa and Pisa whose interest was more commercial than spiritual; the romantic, the restless, the adventurers ever ready to join a spectacular movement; the criminals and sinful who sought absolution through pilgrimage to the Holy Land ; and the economically and socially depressed individuals to whom ' taking the cross' was more of a relief than a sacrifice. Other factors were involved: papal aid in pushing back the Moslems had repeatedly been solicited by the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus, whose Asiatic possessions had been overrun by Seljuks almost as far as Constantinople. The pope viewed these importunities as providing an oppor- tunity for healing the schism between Byzantium and Rome and establishing himself as head of Christendom.

By the spring of 1097 some hundred and fifty thousand men, mostly from France and adjacent lands, had re- sponded. They set out overland for Constantinople, wear- ing as a badge the cross which gave them their name. Their route lay across Anatolia, then the domain of the Seljuks of Konya. They restored Nicaea to the Byzantines, defeated Rh


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Rh the Seljuk forces at Dorylaeum and proceeded south-east to the mountain barrier of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus.

Here the leaders started squabbling among themselves and planning local conquests each for himself. The first such ventures in Cilicia collapsed, but then Baldwin of Boulogne swung eastward into a territory occupied by Armenian Christians and early in 1098 set himself up as count of Edessa. Meanwhile the bulk of the Crusading army was pouring into northern Syria, its main objective, held by Seljuk amirs akin to those they had defeated in Anatolia. Antioch was the first Syrian city in their path, notable as the cradle of the first organized Christian church. They settled down confidently to a siege which proved unexpectedly long and arduous (October 2, 1097, to June 3, 1098). Attempts at relief by Ridwan of Aleppo and Duqaq of Damascus were repelled. At last treachery on the part of a disgruntled Armenian commander of one of the towers gave them access to the city.

No sooner, however, had the besiegers made their entry than they found themselves besieged. Karbuqa, a Seljuk adventurer who had wrested Mosul from its Arab rulers, arrived from his capital with reinforcements. The suffering from plague and starvation in the course of the twenty-five days that ensued was perhaps the worst ever experienced by Franks in Syria. Heartened by discovery of the 'holy lance' which pierced Christ's side, the Crusaders made a bold sortie which forced Karbuqa to withdraw. Bohemond, the shrewdest and ablest of all the Christian leaders, remained in charge of the newly acquired principality, Antioch and its territory. The Byzantine emperor expected the re-annexation of Antioch to his empire but was disappointed.

Also disappointed was Bohemond's rival Raymond of Toulouse, who pushed southward up the Orontes valley with his Provencals. After a futile siege of Arqah he was joined by Baldwin's brother Godfrey of Bouillon, who had followed the coastal route south. They struck the coast at Rh


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Rh Tortosa and made contact with the Italian fleet. The re- united Crusaders avoided Latakia, which was being occupied by naval forces of the Byzantines, who had become alienated from the Latins. In Batrun the Crusaders established con- tacts with the Maronites, 'a stalwart race, valiant fighters', who provided greatly needed guides. Following Tripoli's precedent, the amir of Beirut offered money and a bountiful supply of provisions. The gardens of Sidon, where the Crusaders pitched their tents by the running water, pro- vided a welcome resting-place for a few days. Passing Acre, Caesarea and al-Ramlah, on June 7 they sighted their goal — Jerusalem.

The Crusaders then numbered some forty thousand, of whom about half were effective troops. The Egyptian garrison may be estimated at a thousand. At the end of a month's siege conducted by Godfrey, Raymond and Bohemond's nephew Tancred, the city was stormed (July 15) and its population was subjected to an indiscriminate slaughter. A third Latin state was set up under Godfrey, a devout leader and hard fighter. Allegedly reluctant to wear a crown of gold where Jesus had worn a crown of thorns, Godfrey chose the title 'defender of the Holy Sepulchre 9. During his brief reign he defeated the Fatimid army near Ascalon, but this seaport with its Egyptian gar- rison remained a dangerous outpost and naval base. Jaffa and Haifa were occupied with naval aid from the Pisans and Venetians respectively. Tancred carved out a princi- pality in Galilee.

When Godfrey died his brother Baldwin (1 100-1 118) was summoned from Edessa and crowned king. Baldwin was the real founder of the Latin kingdom. His immediate task was to reduce the coast towns and thus ensure sea com- munication with the homeland and forestall hostile action by the Egyptian fleet. In the seamen of the Italian republics he found eager and greedy allies. These men insisted on a share of the booty, special quarters in the captured towns Rh


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JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.

Engraved by I. T. Wedgwood for Ryan’s Worthies of Ireland


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THE IRISH NATION.

IOGRAPHY is of all narratives the most valuable. The revolutions of empires would be but a fairy tale to us, if they were not capable of supplying additional principles for our knowledge of human nature. Biography, like all things else, becomes more important as the influence of its subjects has been more extensive; for the future fates of a nation are made by its character, and its character is made by its celebrated men. But the deepest and holiest interest is thrown round Biography, when it is appealed to as the vindicator of an unhappy people; when the fallen are forced to bring in the dead to plead their cause, and find their only trophies in the tomb.

The History of Ireland is the most calamitous moral document since the beginning of society. A government of barbarism was less succeeded than interrupted by a government of conquest; and the evil of this partial subjugation was reinforced by the subordinate mischiefs of a divided law, a divided language, and a divided religion. The heroic savage of Ireland lost a share of his native virtues, and filled up their place by the arts of a perverted civilization. The arms and laws of England had made a sudden burst into the country, as irresistible as the invasion of the lava into the ocean; but their progress was as


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 suddenly checked, and they only increased the tumult and the dangers of that untamed element into which they had plunged. Ireland was left only a place of desperate rivalry or of desolation, a field of battle, or a grave.

This state of misery continued for a period without example,—longer than the desolation of Egypt, longer than the decay of the Roman empire, longer than the dark ages, longer than any suffering brought upon a people by misfortune or crime, but that of God's malediction against the Jews; it lasted for six hundred years! Its history might have been written, like the roll in the Apocalypse, within and without, with "lamentation, and mourning, and woe." While the knowledge of Right was advancing over the face of Europe, like the sun, from the east, Ireland was still in the darkness, without the quiet of the sepulchre. Every nation, in its turn, made some noble acquisition in freedom, or religion, or science, or dominion. Ireland lay, like the form of the first man, with all the rapid splendours of the new creation rising and glowing round him; but she lay without the "breath in her nostrils."

The cause of these deplorable calamities was not in the English legislature; for the only crime of that legislature was in the slowness and unskilfulness of their cure. The original government of Ireland was, of all others, the most fatal to civilization; it was the government of tribes, the devotedness of clanship without its compensating and patriarchal affections, the haughty violence of the feudal system without its superb munificence and generous achievement. Ireland was torn in pieces by four sovereignties; the people were kept in chains at home, that they might be let loose on their neighbours with the ferocity of


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 AYYUBIDS AND MAMLUKS

Saladin died in 1193, the sultanate built by him, extending from the Nile to the Tigris, was partitioned among his heirs, none of whom inherited his genius. His son al- Afdal succeeded to his father's throne in Damascus, but in 1 196 he was replaced by his uncle al-Adil of Egypt. In 1250 the Damascus branch was incorporated with that of Aleppo, only to be swept away after a decade by the Mongol ava- lanche of Hulagu. Saladin's second son, al-Aziz, followed his father on the Egyptian throne, but al-Aziz' son was sup- planted in 1 198 by the same al-Adil, who in both cases took advantage of the dissension among his nephews. It was these dynastic feuds which afforded the Franks an oppor- tunity to regain some of their lost territory. Saladin's third son, al-Zahir, succeeded his father at Aleppo. Other branches were founded at Hamah, Horns, Baalbek and al- Karak (Krak de Montreal) and in Mesopotamia and Yemen.

Of the many Ayyubid branches the Egyptian was the chief. Several of this line held both Cairo and Damascus. One of them was al-AdiPs grandson al-Salih Najm-al-Din, who died in 1249 leaving a widow Shajar-al-Durr (the tree of pearls). Formerly a Turkish or Armenian slave in the harem of the Abbasid caliph, Shajar had been freed by al- Salih after having borne him a son. For three months she kept the news of her husband's death a secret, pending the return from Mesopotamia of his son Turan-Shah, who soon lost the loyalty of his slaves (mamluks) and was murdered with the connivance of his stepmother. The daring and energetic woman thereupon proclaimed herself queen of the Moslems and for eighty days exercised sole sovereignty over the lands which had produced Zenobia and Cleopatra. Rh


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Rh She even had coins struck in her name and had herself mentioned in the Friday prayer.

Her former master the caliph addressed a scathing note to the amirs of Egypt: 'If you have no man to rule you, let us know and we will send you one'. They chose her Turkish commander-in-chief, Aybak, sultan and she salvaged a remnant of glory by marrying him. Aybak crushed the legitimist Ayyubid party of Syria, who considered themselves entitled to rule Egypt, and concentrated on eliminating potential rivals, but he overlooked Shajar-al-Durr. On hearing that Aybak (i 250-1 257) was contemplating another marriage, the queen had him murdered at his bath after a ball game. Her turn then came. Battered to death with wooden shoes by the slave women of her husband's first wife, her body was cast from a tower in the citadel of Cairo.

Aybak was the first of the Mamluk sultans. This unusual dynasty was drawn from the Ayyubids' slave bodyguard, a military oligarchy in an alien land. When one of them died, often it was not his son who succeeded him but a slave or a mercenary of his who had won distinction and eminence. Thus the bondman of yesterday would become the army commander of today and the sultan of tomorrow. For almost two and three-quarter centuries the slave sultans dominated by the sword one of the most turbulent areas of the world. Generally uncultured and brutal, they nevertheless endowed Cairo with some architectural monuments of which it still rightly boasts. Two other services to the cause of Islam were rendered by them: they cleared Syria of the remnant of the Crusaders and they definitely checked the redoubtable advance of the Mongol hordes of Hulagu and of Timur (Tamerlane). Had they failed to do so, the entire sub- sequent history of south-western Asia and Egypt might have been different.

Originally purchased in the slave markets of Moslem Russia and the Caucasus to form the personal bodyguard of the Ayyubid al-Salih, the first Mamluks started a series Rh


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Rh which is divided into two rather dissimilar dynasties, called Bahri (i 250-1 390) and Burji (1382-15 17). The Bahris received their name from the Nile (Bahr al-Nil), on an islet in which their barracks stood. They were mostly Turks and Mongols; the Burjis were largely Circassians. Their rise was followed a decade later by the advent of the Mongols. Once more Syria became a battlefield of two contending powers.

Fresh from the destruction of the caliphate of Baghdad and the Assassin nest of Alamut, the Mongol horde under Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, made its ominous appearance in northern Syria in 1260. The first victim was Aleppo, where fifty thousand people were put to the sword; Hamah suffered a similar blow. Damascus was besieged. Latin Antioch became a Mongol satellite. Louis IX and the pope thought an alliance with the invaders would help in the struggle against the Moslems. Shamanism was the official religion of the newcomers — as it was of their cousins the Turks — but among them were some Christian descendants of converts by early Syrian missionaries. It was a Christian general, Kitbugha, who overran and devastated most of Syria. The reigning Mamluk was Qutuz (1259- 1260), an ex-slave who had displaced Aybak's son and executed Hulagu's envoys. In a battle at Ayn Jalut (Goliath's spring), near Nazareth, Baybars led the vanguard under Qutuz and administered a crushing defeat to the intruders. Kitbugha fell and the remnant of his army was pursued and chased out of Syria. In recognition of his military service Baybars expected to receive Aleppo as a fief but the sultan disappointed him. On the way home- ward from Syria a fellow-conspirator addressed the sultan and kissed his hand while Baybars stabbed him in the neck. The murderer succeeded his victim.

Fourth in the series, Baybars (1260-1277) was the first great sultan, the real founder of Mamluk power and the victor over both Mongols and Crusaders. He was also a Rh


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 TURKISH PROVINCE

dynasty which in 151 6 so abruptly overran the lands of the Arabs was no upstart. Beginning modestly about 1300 as a petty Turkish state in western Asia Minor, the Ottomans had gradually taken over all Anatolia from the other heirs of the Seljuks, had penetrated into Thrace and made Adrianople their capital and had entirely recovered from Timur's catastrophic incursion. In 1453 they con- quered Constantinople and liquidated the pathetic remnant of the Byzantine empire. Their next conquests drove west- ward into the Balkans and eastward into Transcaucasia, Mesopotamia and Safawid Persia. The sudden stab south- ward into Syria and Egypt was apparently unpremeditated, an opportunist assault which led to an unexpected though not unwelcome accretion of territory, wealth and power for Selim I and his successors, all twenty-seven of whom were his direct descendants.

The Ottoman empire attained its height under Selim 3 s son Sulayman I the Magnificent (al-Qanuni, the lawgiver, 1520-1566). Sulayman added most of Hungary, Rhodes and North Africa — except Morocco — to his realm. For a century the borders remained almost stationary, but then a gradual decay set in. Provinces were detached or achieved autonomy ; the authority of the Sublime Porte crumbled and in 1922 dissolved utterly. Syria was among the last to benefit from this trend, however, remaining firmly under Turkish rule until the first World War, four centuries after it had toppled so unceremoniously into Ottoman hands. Lebanon, as will be indicated, was somewhat more fortunate during these centuries, but still was never able completely to shake off the sultans' authority. Rh


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Rh On his return from the conquest of Egypt, Selim lingered long enough in Syria to consolidate his position and organize the new domain. For purposes of taxation he empowered a commission to draw up a cadastre of the whole land, reserving much of the fertile Biqa plain and the rich valley of the Orontes to the crown. The Mamluk procedure of farming out tax collection to the highest bidder was, of course, retained. The Hanafite rite of jurisprudence, pre- ferred by the Ottomans, was given official status in Syria. After a brief period of turbulence the land was divided into three provinces {vilayets or pashaliks) — Damascus, Aleppo and Tripoli — under Turkish governors or pashas.

Lebanon, however, with its hardy Druze and Maronite mountaineers, deserved a different treatment. Expediency dictated that its native feudal lords be recognized, especially since the real danger came from Egypt and Persia. Selim confirmed Fakhr-al-Din al-Mani of al-Shuf (south-east of Beirut) and the other Lebanese amirs in their fiefs, allowed them the same autonomous privileges enjoyed under the Mamluks and imposed on them a comparatively light tri- bute. Fakhr-al-Din was recognized as the leading chief- tain of the mountain. Thereafter the Ottoman sultans dealt with their Lebanese vassals either directly or through a neighbouring Syrian pasha. As a rule these vassals acted independently, transmitted their fiefs to their descendants, offered no military service to the sultan, exercised the right of life and death over their subjects, exacted taxes and duties and at times even concluded treaties with foreign powers.

The Buhturid amirs, who had remained loyal to the Mamluks, were apprehended and jailed by the virtual viceroy, Jan-Birdi al-Ghazali, who as governor of Damascus had followed his colleague Khair Bey of Aleppo in deserting Qansawh at the critical juncture. Al-Ghazali sent the heads of several Arab chieftains and rebellious bedouins to Con- stantinople, but at Selim's death in 1520 he discarded his Rh


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Rh professed new loyalties and proclaimed himself in the Umayyad Mosque an independent sovereign, struck coins in his own name and tried to induce his former colleague Khair Bey, whom Selim had rewarded with the vice- royalty of Egypt, to follow his example. But Aleppo did not openly support al-Ghazali and Sulayman sent against him an army which, on January 27, 1521, destroyed the Syrian rebels and killed al-Ghazali. The punishment which Damascus and its environs received was even more severe than that meted out earlier by Timur. About a third of the city and its villages was utterly destroyed. Ever since then the name of the Janissaries has been associated in the Syrian mind with destruction and terror.

Ottoman political theory considered the conquered peoples, especially the non-Moslems, human flocks to be shepherded for the benefit of the conquerors, the descendants of Central Asian nomads. As such they were to be milked, fleeced and allowed to live their own lives so long as they gave no trouble. Mostly peasants, artisans and merchants, they could not aspire to military or civil careers. But the herd needs watchdogs. These were recruited mainly from war prisoners, purchased slaves and Christian children levied as a tribute and then trained and brought up as Moslems. All recruits were put through a rigorous system of training in the capital covering many years. They were subjected to keen competition and careful screening ; the mentally bright among them were further prepared for governmental posi- tions and the physically strong for military service. The toughest were drafted into the infantry corps termed Janis- sary. The governing and the military class in the empire came at first almost exclusively from this source. Grand vizirs, vizirs, admirals, generals, provincial governors were once slaves and so remained. Their lives and property were always at the disposal of their sultan master, who never hesitated to exercise his right of ownership. This left the Ottoman house as the only aristocracy in the empire, Rh


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Rh wielding absolute power in the administration of the state and for its defence.

The subject peoples were classified according to religious affiliation* From time immemorial Near Eastern society has been stratified in terms of belief rather than of race and within the religious community the family rather than the territory has been the nucleus of organization. Hence in the people's minds religion and nationality were inextricably interwoven. Each of the religious groups of the Ottoman empire was termed a millet. The two largest millets were those of Islam and the Greek Orthodox. Armenians and Jews were also classified as millets. According to this system all non-Moslem groups were organized into communities under religious heads of their own who also exercised certain civil functions of importance. This amounted to a provision for the government of subject minorities.

The Ottoman governor was no improvement on his Mamluk predecessor, who likewise was recruited from the slave class. Besides, he was farther removed from the central government and therefore freer from its control. But that did not make much difference, as corruption in the capital was as rife as in the provinces. Governors bought their appointments there and entered upon their duties with the main desire of promoting their own interests. Not a few returned to Constantinople to face execution and confisca- tion of property. Exploitation went hand in hand with instability. Turn-over was rapid, so governors had to extort their profits with brutal haste. At times pashas engaged in bldody conflicts against one another with utter disregard of the central government. Occasional visits by Janissaries added to the misery of the people, most of whom, however, were manifestly resigned to their fate. The general attitude seems to have been one of passivity, frustration, distrust of leadership and pessimism as to the result of effort. The old spirit of rebellion which had often flared under Abbasid and Fatimid misrule was by this time apparently dead Rh


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 INTELLECTUAL AND NATIONALIST

STIRRINGS

dawn of the nineteenth century found Syria, like its neighbours, deep in its dark ages. The black-out, though interrupted by a decade of enlightened and tolerant Egyptian occupation ending in 1841, was soon resumed. Egypt under Muhammad Ali (1805-1848) was the first Arabic-speaking land to establish vital cultural contact with western Europe. Not only did the Ottoman Turks deliberately cut themselves off from cultural intercourse with the West, but they denied their subjects that opportunity at the crucial time when Europe was passing through the eighteenth-century en- lightenment and the industrial revolution. They neither joined nor allowed others to join the caravan of progress that Europe was heading. The only major technical element permitted to pierce the Ottoman curtain was the military one, which was of no avail to Syrians and other Arabs.

Down to the mid-nineteenth century Syria had, therefore, remained medieval in all the varied aspects of life. The family followed the old extended patriarchal type, dominated by the grandfather or the oldest male member, in contrast to the small biological type consisting of parents and un- married children. Learning, what there was of it, was almost the monopoly of theologians, mostly of the con- servative obscurantist variety. Industry operated on the low domestic level and was carried on with looms and simple hand tools. The economy was provincial and business partnership was largely confined to members of the same family. Science, in the modern sense, was non-existent. Quacks practised medicine, at best with the aid of yellow- leafed texts of Avicenna (ibn-Sina) and other Arab physicians Rh


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Rh of a thousand years' vintage. Barbers served as dentists and grocers as pharmacists. But by the early twentieth century the whole picture was on the way to a radical change.

The point of departure may be fixed in 1860 when, as a result of the communal wars in Lebanon, which had spread to Damascus, public-spirited Europeans hastened to the aid of the afflicted in the area. Some of the work was intended for immediate relief, some for enduring value. The French military intervention in Lebanon, resulting in the granting of autonomy to the mountain under a Christian governor- general and the aegis of the then six great European powers, made of that land a chief centre for receiving cultural influences and radiating them to the entire adjoining area. Another international development of an entirely different nature, the opening of the Suez Canal to world traffic in 1869, helped to end the physical and intellectual isolation — and with it the stagnation — of the entire region and to restore it to its traditional rôle as the link connecting the three historic continents.

In the newly constituted Lebanon philanthropic and educational agencies could operate in a more congenial atmosphere. They thrived. Catholic missionaries needed no introduction to the area, some of them having been in operation on a limited scale since the benevolent days of Fakhr-al-Din al-Mani. Before the end of the nineteenth century these Capuchins had founded parishes in Antioch and Beirut and maintained houses in Aleppo and three Lebanese villages. Another Catholic mission, the Lazarist, had started work in Damascus as early as 1755 and twenty years later had founded a school for boys that is still in operation. This was the oldest modern school in the city. In the early stages such institutions were, as one would expect, patronized by Christians only.

Protestant activity was not slow to vie with Catholic. Following the war of i860 the German Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth established a centre at Sidon, transferred later Rh


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Rh to Beirut, for orphan training, hospital nursing and higher education. The same year saw the British Syrian Mission enter the field with the establishment of schools for boys and girls in Damascus, Beirut, Baalbek and other towns. Their Training College for girls in the Lebanese capital is still a going concern.

Of far greater importance was the advent of American educators, teachers, preachers and physicians whose work culminated in the founding of the Syrian Protestant College (1866), now the American University of Beirut. The French were quick to follow with their Universite Saint-Joseph (1874), both still leading institutions in the Near East. Through these two institutions Syrian higher education entered upon a new era in its evolution. Through their schools of medicine the art of healing belatedly entered its scientific age. Graduates of these universities became leaders of thought, science and literature not only in Syria- Lebanon but throughout the eastern Arab world. They founded the earliest literary and scientific magazines, organized the first learned societies, established the most modern schools and produced the most up-to-date books* Their influence has not abated. To implement their educational work the Americans had, as early as 1834, established in Beirut a printing-press, one of the first adequately equipped to print in Arabic. Nineteen years later the French, more particularly the Jesuit order, fol- lowed with the Imprimerie Catholique connected with their Beirut university. Both presses are still in operation.

Soon native schools began to deviate from the traditional conventional methods of instruction and follow Western models. French and English were introduced into the cur- riculums. Textbooks, scientific treatises, plays, novels began to be translated first from French and then from English to satisfy the new needs of the knowledge-starved youth. By the early twentieth century a new crop of writers, authors, poets, littèrateurs and scientific workers had been raised and Rh


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 WAR, OPPRESSION AND PESTILENCE

bright July day in 1908 the world was startled by the news that the long tyrannical rule of Abd-al-Hamid was approaching its end. A coup staged by officers in his own army had been successful. It was the work of the Com- mittee of Union and Progress, the striking arm of a secretly organized society, known as the Young Turks, which had had its inception years before at Geneva through the activity of students and youthful reformers and was later moved to Paris. It aimed at a constitution with an elective parliament and the building up of a homogeneous democratic state. Wily Abd-al-Hamid reacted favourably, restored the parlia- ment of 1876, ordered the abolition of espionage and censor- ship and the release of all political prisoners. A wave of jubilation spread over the Arab world. In Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo, Jerusalem and other towns the new measures were hailed with fireworks, bonfires and eloquent orations. It was the dawn of a new day. Ottoman Utopia lurked round the corner. Syria sent delegates to the parliament. Its nationalists founded in Constantinople the Arab-Ottoman fraternity to promote the new cause. But the sultan had no more intention of preserving this democratic paraphernalia of 1908 than that of 1876. The early constitution had been drafted by one of the most liberal-minded Turks of his day, Midhat Pasha, then grand vizir and later governor of Syria. Caught staging with reactionaries a counter-revolution in April 1909, Abd-al-Hamid was replaced by his doddering brother, Muhammad Rashad. Authority lodged in the hands of a military triumvirate of the committee.

With more zeal than experience the new regime em- barked upon a policy of centralization of power, Ottomaniza- Rh


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 hungry and thwarted strength. Her government was a graduated tyranny, in which the sovereign stood at the highest point of licentiousness; and the people were sunk to the bottom of the scale, in chill and deadly depression. But no man who knows the history of Ireland, can compute the influence of England among the elements of her depression. She neglected, but she scarcely smote her. It was the physician disgusted by the waywardness of the patient, leaving disease to take its course, and not the assassin inflicting a fresh wound—where the blow was given, it was almost the result of necessity, England was then fighting for her freedom; the nations of the earth had not yet been awed into wisdom by the noble evidence that a people warring as she warred, cannot be conquered. She was engaged pepetuallyperpetually [sic] on her frontier; she had no time to think of the remote territory behind. She slept upon a rampart, from which she never cast her eyes, but to see the banners of France and Spain moving against her; or, if she turned round to look upon the dissensions of Ireland, it was only with the quick and anxious irritation of a conqueror, who, in the moment of deciding the battle, sees an insurrection of the prisoners in his rear.

But there are in all countries examples of great individuals, summoned up from time to time, as if to retrieve the standard of human nature, and raise all men's eyes from the ground by the simple sight of their glorious and original altitude. The finest purpose of Biography is to draw back the curtain of the temple, and give their images to our wonder, for the vindication of the past, and the lesson of the future. The darkest periods of Ireland have been rich in evidence of such beings—


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Rh tion of the diversified elements of the empire and repression of all non-Turkish nationalism. To this end they prohibited all societies formed by non-Turkish groups. Arab nationalists were driven underground. Impetus was given to the de- centralist and the separatist wings around them. A group of Syro-Palestinian and Lebanese students and emigrants in Paris organized the Young Arab Society aiming at securing Arab independence from Turkish rule. But the Arab Congress which it sponsored there in 1913, and which was attended by twenty-four delegates from Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, including two Lebanese from New York, called simply for home rule and the recognition of Arabic as the official language. It also warned against meddling by European powers. Secret societies mushroomed in Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo. Arab officers in the Turkish army formed their own cells. Lack of communication facilities made it difficult to co-ordinate or integrate the work of the separate organiza- tions. With these developments the Young Turks were unable to cope. Their domestic troubles were complicated by foreign ones of even more serious nature. When war broke out in August 191 4 the Constantinople regime cast its lot with the Central Powers.

Late in that year Jamal Pasha, a member of the trium- virate, arrived at Damascus as governor-general of Syria- Lebanon- Palestine and commander-in-chief of the fourth Ottoman army. The area was considered dangerously anti- Ottoman with strong pro-Arab leanings and with the Christians of Lebanon entertaining pro-French sympathies. Jamal lost no time in abolishing Lebanon's autonomy and launching a policy of intimidation, deportation, torture and suppression of all nationalist activity. He inaugurated a reign of terror before which earlier ones paled and earned the sobriquet al-Saffah (bloodshedder). At Alayh, c bride of Lebanese summer resorts', he instituted the following summer a military court which summarily sentenced, even condemned to death, suspects and nationalist leaders. Those Rh


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Rh sentenced to death were hanged in public squares in Damascus and Beirut. Membership in one of those societies on the black list ; charges proffered by personal enemies or jealous rivals ; sympathy with the French as revealed by the seized archives of the Beirut consulate; and above all, espousal of the Arab cause upheld by al-Sharif Husayn of Mecca — any of these was enough to bring the alleged criminal before the military tribunal. The Sharif in 191 6 unfurled the banner of rebellion against the Young Turks, declared himself 'king of the Arabs' and entered into secret communication with Arab nationalists outside Hejaz. On May 6 of that year Jamal sent fourteen Moslems and Christians in Beirut and seven in Damascus to the gallows. The day is still commemorated as 'martyrs' day' in both cities, and the sites are called 'martyrs' squares'.

By way of preparation for the ill-conceived attack on the Suez Canal Jamal imposed military conscription, requisi- tioned beasts of burden and summoned the populace to provision his troops at a time when they could hardly provision themselves. The Allied blockade by sea and land was becoming tighter and its effects were beginning to tell. The entire area became a paradise for all kinds of disease germs — malaria, typhus, typhoid and dysentery. Con- taminated soldiers spread all sorts of maladies. A plague of locusts in the spring of 19 15 veiled the sun and added its quota to the economic misery. Whatever drugs were avail- able were hardly enough to meet the military demands. Evidence goes to show that in the case of Lebanon a deliberate effort was made to starve and decimate the people. About a hundred thousand are estimated to have been lost out of its four hundred and fifty thousand population. But for remittances and aid from the United States, some of which was side-tracked by local authorities, casualties would have been heavier.

While the people were passing through these agonizing experiences the Allied Powers were planning the parcelling Rh


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Rh out of their lands among themselves. The secret Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916, whose contents were first divulged by the Bolsheviks in Russia, divided the Fertile Crescent between Britain and France. In October of the preceding year Henry McMahon, British high commissioner in Cairo, recognized in the name of Great Britain the independence of the Arabs within certain boundaries defined by the Sharif to include the Fertile Crescent and accepted with certain vague reservations. The Sharif had assumed the leadership of the Pan-Arab movement. On November 2, 191 7, Lord Balfour made his famous declaration that the British Government c views with favour the establishment of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people 5 — whatever that may mean. Seven days later a joint Anglo- French declaration, emanating from the general head- quarters of their expeditionary force at Cairo, assured the people that the goal envisaged by these two powers was 'the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations'. These promises echoed the doctrine of self-determination previously enun- ciated by President Woodrow Wilson and his insistence that the post-war settlement should be based upon 'the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned 5. By Armistice Day, November 11, 19 18, Allied troops under General Allenby, supported by Arab troops under Faysal, son of King Husayn, had occupied Syria- Lebanon- Palestine. In pursuance of their newly enunciated doctrine of self-determination the Allied leaders at the Peace Conference of Versailles in 19 19, where Faysal repre- sented his father in arguing the Arab case, agreed to send a commission to Syria. But only the United States sent its King- Crane Commission, England, France and Italy having failed to act. In its report, which was not made public until Rh


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Rh 1922, the commission declared that the consensus of opinion in Syria insisted on independence, repudiating the mandate form of tutelage but overwhelmingly favouring assistance provided by the United States or, failing that, by Great Britain, but not by France. Lebanon by a majority also favoured independence, called for a Greater Lebanon from Tripoli to Tyre, unrelated to Syria and receiving assistance from France. On Palestine the commission recommended that the Zionist programme be reduced, Jewish immigration limited and the idea of converting Palestine into a Jewish commonwealth abandoned.

By then the San Remo (Italy) conference had partitioned the Ottoman empire (April ig2o), giving France the mandate over Syria and Lebanon and Great Britain the mandate over Palestine and Iraq. The dream of Arab unity was shattered. Four months later Turkey signed the treaty of S&vres (France) renouncing all rights to the man- dated territory. The mandate institution was a novel one in political relations generally ascribed to the initiative of General Smuts of South Africa and President Wilson. All four mandates — Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq — were classified as class A under the League of Nations. The covenant acknowledged these communities as having reached a stage of development where their existence as 'independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone'. Further, the covenant reiterated the Wilsonian doctrine that the wishes of the people concerned were to be a principal consideration. Rh


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 UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE

in June 1920 Faysal, who had become the symbol of Syrian aspirations, returned to Damascus from his second trip to Europe fully convinced that England and France were in no mood to accept a fully independent status for Syria. More than that, he had agreed with Georges Clemen- ceau to accept assistance in administrative, financial and technical affairs. But an over-enthusiastic Syrian congress, convened at Damascus, rejected (March 8) this mild form of mandatory tutelage and proclaimed Faysal king over an expanded Syria c in its natural boundaries' 'from the Taurus to Sinai'. In the congress Syria and Palestine were adequately represented, but not Lebanon. On July 14 the French high commissioner Henri Gouraud, one-armed hero of the Marne, addressed an ultimatum to King Faysal demanding unconditional acceptance of French authority and shortiy afterwards moved his forces upon Damascus. The seasoned troops had no difficulty in scoring a victory at Maysalun against a handful of hastily assembled, poorly trained Syrian soldiers. Faysal left the country and was later installed by the British as king over Iraq, where his grandson, until 1958, ruled. On September 1, 1920, Greater Lebanon was declared by Gouraud.

Syria itself presented well-nigh insurmountable difficulties. It was at perhaps the lowest ebb in its history politically, economically, socially and spiritually. It had no developed institutions for self-rule, no proper implementation for democratic procedure, and its people had no experience in parliamentary affairs or modern civil service. The man- datory was from the outset confronted with the task of literally creating administrative and judiciary organs of Rh


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Rh state, repairing roads, establishing public education on a systematic basis and developing the natural resources.

Slowly the mandatory established comparatively modern administrative machinery, carried on land registration, organized an educational system, encouraged archaeological researches, gave fellowships for study in France especially in such neglected fields as art, set up a department of public health and sanitation and developed public security. Modern codes of law were promulgated. The customs were organized jointly with Lebanon, whose capital Beirut re- mained the chief port of entry for the entire hinterland. Public works, including roads, were not carried out on as large a scale as in Lebanon. But on the whole the govern- ment's energies were directed to political rather than economic problems and the people themselves concentrated on the political struggle.

They felt that mandatory administration differed more in theory than in practice from colonial rule. To them French control was more direct and more hateful than that exercised by the Turks. The first three high commissioners, Henri Gouraud (1919-1923), Maxime Weygand (1923- 1925) and Maurice Sarrail (1925), who were also com- missioners to Lebanon and commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, were military generals who had distinguished themselves in the World War. For aides they drew largely upon the reservoir of officers with colonial experience in Africa. Repeated attempts to reach a compromise between nationalist aspirations and French rule failed. A draft constitution submitted in August 1928 by an elected con- stituent assembly was rejected by the commissioner and the assembly itself was dissolved. Until 1930 the country was governed without a constitution. Even the one then pro- mulgated was drawn up by the commissioner himself but embodied much material, with reservations, from the one submitted by the assembly. Potential separatist movements — regional and religious — were given a chance to be Rh


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Rh actualized and the old-time principle of 'divide and rule 5 was applied. The country was divided into four states : the state of Damascus, the state of Aleppo, that of the Druzes in Hawran and that of the Alawites centring on Latakia.

A larger dose of French culture was administered than the people would tolerate. The French language was em- phasized at the expense of Arabic. Repressive measures were taken against nationalists. Shukri al-Quwatli, future president of the independent Republic, Faris al-Khuri, future prime minister, Salih al-Haffar, also prime minister- to-be, and other leaders of thought and action were, at some time or other, banished or jailed. Restrictions were placed on personal liberties to the exasperation of the population, who started to vent their discontent in strikes and local uprisings culminating in the general revolt of 1925. Sparked by Druzes, the revolt soon spread into Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah and other places and continued until the autumn of 1927, when the capital was subjected to a bombardment by artillery and aircraft which left scars on it for years to come. In face of the outburst of world-wide indignation the French replaced the high commissioner by a civilian, Henri de Jouvenel, whose attempt to negotiate peace terms were unsuccessful. Equally unsuccessful were the efforts of his successors. In January a nationalist congress met at the capital, formally condemned the French policy and issued a Pan-Arab manifesto.

The late 1930's were marked with even greater resent- ment because France, in violation of the terms of the man- date charging it with safeguarding the integrity of the territory entrusted to its care, granted Turkey privileges in the Sanjaq of Alexandre tta and finally ceded it in June 1939 to become incorporated in the Turkish Republic. The Turks had a sizable minority in the Sanjaq. This was the price — paid at Syria's expense — to win Turkey over to the Anglo-French side in the great war which was developing. Rh


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Rh The second World War was infinitely kinder to Syria and the Syrians than the first. German propaganda, though intensive and at times effective, resulted in no overt hostility on the part of Syrians, as it did in the case of Iraqis. Fearing the Axis Powers' penetration and fully appreciating the rebellious condition of Palestine due to Zionist infiltration, the French and British took the necessary preventive measures against intensifying native discontent and distrust. Their increased troops required large supplies of foodstuffs and necessitated building new roads, repairing old ones and undertaking other public enterprises, all of which gave added employment to local workers. Transit trade increased. The Middle East Supply Centre, established at Cairo, planned for the whole extended area, rationed wheat, rice, meat, drugs and other necessities of life, helped to increase local production, dealt effectively with the situation resulting from shipping shortage and on the whole not only succeeded in averting need and epidemics but contributed to a measure of prosperity. Meantime several merchants and industrialists amassed fortunes through hoarding and other means.

On the political side, however, retrogression rather than progression marked the scene. In May 1939 Gabriel Puaux, high commissioner since early 1938, renounced in the name of his government the Franco-Syrian treaty which had been negotiated as early as 1936. He then proceeded to re-establish the mandatory regime on a firmer basis. Martial law was declared. With France's surrender to the Axis he pledged loyalty to the Vichy government and closely collaborated with the German commission sent to Syria-Lebanon. British and Free French troops had then to open hostilities for the recovery of the land. On June 8, 1941, their troops entered Syria from the east and the south and forced the Vichy commander-in-chief in Syria and Lebanon to ask for terms, thus cancelling German attempts to obtain control of these territories. Georges Catroux was appointed by the chief of the Free French, General de Gaulle, as Rh


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Rh commander of the troops of the Levant, delegate general and plenipotentiary. On the day of the invasion of Syria by Allied troops General Catroux had proclaimed to the Syrian people that he was sent 'to put an end to the mandatory regime and to proclaim you free and independent 5’. The United Kingdom government also declared that 'they support and associate themselves with the assurance of independence given by General Catroux on behalf of General de Gaulle to Syria and Lebanon'. On September 16 Catroux formally announced Syria's independence and eleven days later its new government formally proclaimed its status as an independent state. But all this was more nominal than real. There was little change in personnel and less in methods. No constitutional life was established until August 1943 when a newly elected chamber chose the nationalist leader Shukri al-Quwatli as president of the Republic. The national government sought to gain possession of the powers and prerogatives of independent rule. It inaugurated legations in Paris, London, Moscow and Washington and later in other capitals.

But points of dispute soon arose. Chief among them was the disposition of the so-called common interests involving matters of concern (such as customs) to both Syria and Lebanon. Then there were the 'special troops', locally recruited from Syrian, and Lebanese levies, trained and integrated with the army of occupation. France then demanded a new treaty giving her a privileged position in the country, which the Syrians categorically rejected. As late as May 1945, when Syria objected to the admission of new French troops and broke off relations with France, the army of occupation repeated its performance of eighteen years earlier and bombarded Damascus with aircraft and field guns. The day was May 29; delegates from all over the world were holding at San Francisco the charter meeting of the United Nations. No worse day could have been chosen. The shock was universal. The British intervened Rh


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Rh and restored order. By the end of the year France and Britain had agreed to consult about evacuating their troops from both Syria and Lebanon. The admission of both states to the United Nations on April 12, 1945, implied international recognition of the termination of the mandate. Twenty days before that Syria had signed the pact of the newly created Arab League, whose other members were Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and Yemen. Under pressure from the United Nations the evacuation of Syria was at last completed on April 17, 1946; that of Lebanon on December 31, 1946. A public square in Damascus and a national holiday commemorate 'the day of evacuation'. Self-government then became completely established. Rh


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 INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC

embarked upon its career as a fully independent state under its president Shukri al-Quwatli with hope and aspiration but with no rosy path in sight. It soon found itself beset with a multiplicity of thorny problems, both internal and external. There was first its relation with its twin sister Lebanon, with which it shared the common interests of tariff and customs duties, concessionary companies, the administration of antiquities and the guarding of the common frontier. With Turkey it wished to settle the problem of Alexandretta, now the province of Hatay. Vis-à-vis Jordan it faced the question of Greater Syria long and ardently advocated by King Abdullah. In 1946 the king declared that in furthering this project he was motivated not by dynastic interests but rather by the ideal of a Pan- Arab state nucleated around a joint Syria-Palestine unit. An influential Syrian group favoured the plan. Another, the People's Party, advocated the Fertile Crescent project, sponsored by Iraq, which would bring Syria, Iraq and Jordan into one entity as a preliminary step towards the realization of a Pan-Arab union. Iraqis could claim that their king as the son of Faysal was entitled to both thrones; but their treaty relations with Great Britain made Syrians hesitate.

Different from all these groups and distinct by itself was the Syrian Nationalist Party, which preached the doctrine that there was such a thing as a Syrian nationhood independent of and unrelated to Arabism. Syria, in their definition, included Lebanon. The organization was authoritarian in its administration, aggressive and determined in its propaganda, and soon won converts mainly from among the educated youth. Its founder, a Lebanese Christian who had Rh


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Rh lived in Brazil, was condemned to death by the Lebanese government on the ground of conspiring against its security. The party then went underground. Last but not least was the Zionist problem, which had grown out of its narrow dimensions and assumed international importance. Syria could not tolerate the thought of an intrusive Zionist state created at the expense of a territory not only contiguous to it but considered part of it. Within Syria's own boundaries there were those who favoured one or the other of the proposed projects, but against Zionism the feeling was intense and unanimous.

Of all these problems the Zionist was the most pressing. The situation in Palestine was gradually getting out of hand. A state of terrorism bordering on anarchy began to prevail as the Jewish Agency absorbed authority from the British mandatory and flooded the land with new recruits from abroad, mostly young and potential fighters for Zionism. When the general assembly of the United Nations on November 29, 1947, approved the partition plan for Palestine guerrilla warfare broke out. The majority vote for partition was secured at the last minute by manoeuvring and intensive lobbying by United States agents at Lake Success and by wire-pulling from Washington—all in response to Jewish pressure. Arab anti-Western feeling now began to include the United States. As the United Nations had no means of enforcing the partition or establishing security and as the British troops withdrew, the Zionists achieved military superiority over the Palestine Arab 'liberation army 5 and on May 14, 1948, proclaimed the state of Israel. It was immediately recognized by the United States and Russia. Members of the Arab League, including Syria, moved against the new state but their disorganized, inadequately equipped and poorly trained troops, with the exception of Jordan's Arab Legion, made such a poor showing that they had in February 1949 to sign an armistice with Israel. Rh


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Rh Throughout, the domestic situation in Syria was moving from bad to worse. As under the mandate, the people's thought and energy continued to be canalized in political and military channels to the neglect or detriment of other aspects of life. Finances passed into a disastrous condition. Currency, still tied to the French franc, remained unstable. As prices soared, sales dipped. The military performance in Palestine was humiliating. An expansionist Israel posed a threat to the safety of Syria. The mirage of an Arab union was dimmed beyond recognition. The time was ripe for a change in government.

In the silent night of March 30, 1949, a coup d'état was hatched by an army group headed by Colonel Husni al-Zaim. Al-Quwatli and some of his ministers were held under detention until they signed their resignations. Therewith was effected the first in a series of three military coups which punctuated the remaining nine months of the year. Al-Zaim introduced progressive, even radical reforms. He gave women of elementary education electoral rights and brought the privately endowed charitable institutions (waqfs) under state control. He ordered a curfew, enforced censorship of the press and closed the frontiers. A 15 per cent tax was ordered on all industrial concerns and made retroactive to 1940. The Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) was granted wayleave for its proposed Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (Tapline). A modern commercial law was adopted. The Syrian dictator took Kemal Atatürk for model. The colonel promoted himself to field-marshal and ordered a richly ornamented baton from Paris. Suspicion spread that he had French leanings. His fall was as abrupt and dramatic as his rise.

On August 14 another group of officers, led by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, forced their way into al-Zaim's residence and that of his prime minister, apprehended and summarily shot them, to save the country, in the words of the communique, from the tyrant who had abused his authority, Rh


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 INDEX

NAMES AND PLACES

Abbas, abu-al-, 149, see al-Saffah

Abbasid Syria, 151

Abbasids, 148, 150, 152, 156, 169, 204

Abd-al-Hamid, 235, 237

Abd-al- Malik, 125 ff., 146

Abd-al-Nasir, 256, see Nasser

Abd-al-Rahman I, 149

Abdullah, general, 151

Abdullah, king, 250

Acre, 35, 56, 63, 88, in, 128, 161, 175, 178, 185, 187, 189, 193, 218, 223 ff.

Actium, 76

Adid, al-, 183, 186, 190, 200, 205

Adonis, 38

Adrianople, 213

Aegean, 35, 40, 122

Afdal, al-, 200

Afghanistan, 130

Africa, 2, 3, 36, 67, 132, 243

Ahmose I, 39

Akkadians, 32

Alamut, 187, 202

Alawites, 172, 244 Alayh, 238

Aleppo, 14, 33, 40, 56, 105, 110, 111, 153, 160, 164, 166, 168, 173 ff., 181, 182, 186, 200, 203, 205, 209 ff., 214, 215, 218, 220 ff., 225, 229, 237, 244, 254

Alexander, 3, 43, 45, 54, 56, 65, 111

Alexander Jannaeus, 60

Alexander Severus, 94

Alexandretta, 6, 9, 54, 218, 244, 250

Alexandria, 54, 58, 70, 86, 105, 116

Alexius Comnenus, 176

Algeria, 120

Ali, 116, 117, 124, 125, 133, 145, 168, 170, 172

Alids, 123, 124, 148, 152, 164

Allaqah, 170

Allat, 62

Allenby, 240

Allied Powers, 239

Alp Arslan, 174

Amanus, 9, 128

America, 19, 233

American University of Beirut, 230

Amin, al-, 153

Ammon, 47

Amorites, 32, 33, 38, 43, 46

Amorium, 154, 158

Amos, 51

Amurru, 32

Anatolia, 39, 40, 130, 154, 174 ff., 213

Ankara, 211

Antarah, 198

Antigonus, 55, 60

Anti-Lebanon, 12, 14, 19, 45, 78, 156

Antioch, 5, 6, 9, 13, 55 ff., 63, 64, 67, 72, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 91, 92, 97, 99 ff., 105, 110, 111, 160, 166, 175, 177, 181, 184, 190, 197, 202, 205, 229

Antiochus III, 57, 67

Antiochus IV, 58, 59

Antipater, 55

Anti-Taurus, 120, 121, 177

Apamea, 56, 67, 84, 89, 97, 105

Apocrypha, 64

Apollinaris, 99

Apollo, 63, 136, 146

Aqabah, al-, 12

Arab, 141

Arab Academy, 203

Arab East, 186, 217

Arab Federation, 5, 258

Arab India, 130

Arab League, 249, 251, 255

Arab Legion, 251

Arab Moslems, 142, 143

Arabi, ibn-, 209

Arabia, 20, 21, 32, 43, 61, 62, 78, 79, 82, 85, 87, 89, 97, 104, 106, 107, 114, 126, 127, 217, 225

Arabian American Oil Company, 252

Arabian Desert, 15


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Rh has never been feudal. It is really a class of enriched citizens who have retired and become landholders, so that their power is in wealth. They have, therefore, with few exceptions, come up from the lower, and in the great majority of cases from the lowest, classes, as would be seen if the ancestral stream were followed far enough back. Having once passed the barrier, they are counted and count themselves amongst the nobles; and since the noble class, as a class, has continued, the movement of emancipation, enfranchisement, and enrichment, which has been acting on the labor class through its most efficient families, is lost sight of. There has been a counter-movement which is also almost universally unknown or ignored—that of impoverished families and persons of the nobility down into the ranks of trade and labor. In the enumeration of the great forces of class change which operated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I have reserved one for more special attention. The adventurous voyagers who began to explore the outlying parts of the earth in the fifteenth century thought little and cared less about the peasants and artisans at home; but it was they more than any others who were fighting for the fortunes of those classes in the future. The very greatest, but, so far as I have seen, least noticed significance of the discovery of America was the winning of a new continent for the labor class. This effect was not distinctly visible until the nineteenth century, because this new patrimony of the labor class was not available until the arts of transportation were improved up to the requisite point at which the movement of men and products could be easily accomplished. Then, as we have seen in our time, the movement of men one way and food the other developed to great proportions. Is it not true,


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Rh Walid I, al-, 130, 131, 133, 136, 146, 147

Walid II, al-, 135, 148

Washington, 248, 251, 258

Wasit, 127

Wathiq, al-, 154

West, the, 3, 228, 255, 256

West Goths, 132, see Visigoths

Weygand, 243

William of Tripoli, 199

Wilson, Woodrow, 240, 241

World War, 5, 10, 19, 213, 217, 243, 247

Xerxes, 52

Yaghi-Siyan, 175

Yahweh, 47, 49 ff.

Yaman, 153

Yarmuk, 111, 254

Yazid I, 115, 121, 123 ff., 135, 145

Yazid II, 134, 135

Yazid III, 141, 144, 148

Yaziji, al-, 235

Yemen, 126, 139, 156, 183, 186, 200, 249 Young Arab Society, 238

Young Turks, 237 ff.

Zahir, al-, Ayyubid, 200

Zahir, al-Umar, 223

Zaim, al-, 252, 254

Zedekiah, 50

Zengi, 182, 183

Zenobia, 85, 86, 200

Zeus Olympus, 63

Zionism, 251

Zoroastrianism, 99

Zoroastrians, 139

Zubayr, al-, 116

Zubayr, ibn-al-, 125, 128

THE END


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42 then, that this is the great significance of the discovery of America, and that we have as yet barely come to the point where we can see its significance? It is only later that the colonization of Australia has become important, and it is only at this moment that the colonization of Africa is beginning to intensify the same effect. What is that effect? It is that when the pressure of population on land in western Europe was becoming great, the later improvements in the arts—above all the use of steam and the opening of the outlying continents—have, in two ways at the same time, relieved that pressure. This combination has produced an industrial revolution, which is bringing in its train revolutions in philosophy, ethics, religion, politics, and all other relations of human society; for whenever you touch economic and industrial causes, you touch those which underlie all the others and whose consequences will inevitably ramify through all the others. The philosophers and all the resolution-makers of every grade come running together and shouting pæans of victory to the rising power and the coming glory; and, therefore, they claim that they have made it all. It is totally false. They are themselves but the product of the forces, and all their philosophies and resolutions are as idle as the waving of banners on the breezes. Democracy itself, the pet superstition of the age, is only a phase of the all-compelling movement. If you have abundance of land and few men to share it, the men will all be equal. Each landholder will be his own tenant and his own laborer. Social classes disappear. Wages are high. The mass of men, apart from laziness, folly, and vice, are well off. No philosophy of politics or ethics makes them prosperous. Their prosperity makes their political philosophy and all their other creeds. It also makes all their vices, and imposes on them a set of fallacies produced


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Rh Back—unless you've managed to hang on to the editorial chair of the Boomerang. I think of old Come-by-Chance sometimes; I suppose things are just as dull as ever in that dead-and-alive township.

I'll tell you all about the voyage some other time. We had fog, thick, heavy and wet as one of old "Curry-and- Rice's" dampers, from Spain, past Plymouth, and nearly to Dover. Syren going the whole time, and other syrens all round through the night. All the officers on the bridge and the lookout men for'ard. "Light on the port bow, sir!" "Light on the starboard bow, sir!" "Vessel on the port bow, sir!" all the time. Somewhere coming out of the Bay of Biscay we just shaved a big four-masted sailing ship that suddenly developed out of a smudge in the fog. That's nothing in these waters. The ship's people kept winding up mud and seaweed from the bottom to see where we were—prospecting the bottom of the Channel. It wasn't what we'd call "payable dirt" on the goldfields; this submarine prospecting delayed us considerably, but it probably saved our lives. We saw Dover on a fine, bright morning. You remember a picture in a glass case at home, half picture, half modelled, with a cliff like a piece of scraped chalk painted a bright green on top, and little Noah's ark houses with dabs of colour for windows and doors, and trees—like those in a cheap box of toys—stuck about the top of the cliff. Cliff too white, we thought, and trees and grass altogether too green for anything of the kind on earth—outside a picture. Well, Dover from the distance


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106 would surprise a Sydneysider to see how many respectable working women go into pubs as a matter of course; but you soon get used to these things. There was the drunk who hooked his elbow on to the back of a seat and half hung, half sat, and talked to himself, until he felt able to get up and stagger to the pub.

There was one man, or the shadow of a man, who drifted on to that space with a human eddy from the street, and rested on a seat for a while. He wore a white shirt and a high collar, and his boots were pathetically well polished; his clothes seemed decent and whole, though the cloth rather dull and the linen cloudy; his face was white and worn sharp—a dead white, with something bluish about it, I fancied. He drew in his shoulders, as if he were cold, and, as he sat down he bent forward and hitched up the knee of his trousers. The "dicky," or false shirt-front, worked up and buckled outwards, and I could see through between it and his bare bony breast. And when he got up and moved away I saw that he was walking on his bare feet. Things hadn't changed much since Dickens' time. I had seen something like this in Sydney, and I felt that I would live to see the same scene from a Sydney or Melbourne window. I began to feel pretty dismal.

On Sunday morning the Buster's Dad and a couple of friends took me round to show me the city, and point out places which were as familiar to me as the face of the old Boomerang cashier—or as mine should be to him—because I had seen those places, from as


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94 At Suez we heard that the Karlshruhe had lost a blade on a sandbank, and we'd probably catch up to her on the voyage. And Bob aboard. What would it be—fight or silent handshake?


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 In accordance with the spirit of his ‘Triumph of Isis,’ Warton encouraged at Oxford—largely by his genial example—all manner of literary effort among resident members of the university. He was for two successive years poet-laureate to the common-room of his college. He contributed poetry to ‘The Student,’ an Oxford monthly miscellany of literature, of which nineteen numbers appeared between 31 Jan. 1750 and 3 July 1751. For the ‘Encænia’ of July 1751 he wrote and published an ode which Dr. William Hayes [q. v.] set to music. The Oxford collections of poems of 1751, 1761, and 1762 contain verse by him. In 1760 he brought out anonymously a good-humoured satire on the conventional guide-books to Oxford in ‘A Companion to the Guide, and a Guide to the Companion, being a Complete Supplement to all the Accounts of Oxford hitherto published. … The whole interspersed with Original Anecdotes and Interesting Discoveries, occasionally resulting from the subject, and embellished with perspective Views and Elevations neatly engraved’ (2nd ed. corrected and enlarged, London, n.d. [1762?], 8vo; another ed. 1806). But Warton's most amusing contribution to academic literature was his anthology of Oxford wit, which he edited anonymously under the ugly title of ‘The Oxford Sausage; or Select Poetical Pieces written by the most celebrated Wits of the University of Oxford’ (London, 1764, 8vo; 1772, 8vo; 1814, 8vo; 1815, 12mo; and 1822, 12mo); some pieces by Cambridge men were included. In a more serious spirit he devoted himself to the history of his own college, and published learned biographies of two distinguished members of the foundation. ‘The Life and Literary Remains of Ralph Bathurst … President of Trinity College in Oxford,’ was published in London in 1761, 8vo, and an article originally contributed to the ‘Biographia Britannica’ in 1760 reappeared subsequently as a substantial volume called ‘The Life of Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, Oxford, chiefly compiled from Original Evidences, with an Appendix of Papers never before printed’ (1st edit. London, 1772, 8vo; 2nd edit., corrected and enlarged, London, 1780, 8vo). This exhaustive biography of Sir Thomas Pope ‘resuscitated,’ in the opinion of Horace Walpole, ‘more nothings and more nobodies than Birch's “Life of Tillotson.”’ It comprised numerous extracts from valuable historical manuscripts at the British Museum and the Bodleian Libraries, several of which were forwarded to Warton by Francis Wise [q. v.], but there is unhappily reason to believe that some of the documents alleged to date from the sixteenth century were forgeries of recent years. Although a strong case has been made against Warton in the matter, his general character renders it improbable that he was himself the author of the fabrications. He was more probably the dupe of a less principled antiquary (cf. Engl. Hist. Review, xi. pp. 282 et seq., art. ‘Thomas Warton and Machyn's Diary,’ by the Rev. H. E. D. Blakiston).

Meanwhile Warton pursued his study of early English literature, and in 1754 he published ‘Observations on the Faery Queen of Spenser,’ which established his reputation as a critic of exceptional learning. A second edition in two volumes, corrected and enlarged, appeared in 1762. The work abounded in illustrative parallels from other poets, and embodied the results of much reading in mediæval romance and archæological research. The book won immediately the warm approval of Dr. Johnson. ‘You have shown,’ Johnson wrote to Warton on 16 July 1754, ‘to all who shall hereafter attempt the study of our ancient authors the way to success by directing them to the perusal of the books those authors had read.’ The correspondence thus opened led to a long friendship, which, although interrupted by dissimilarity of literary taste, was only finally dissolved by death. Warton entertained Johnson on his visit to Oxford in the summer of 1754, and obtained for him the degree of M.A. in February 1755. Warburton was as enthusiastic an admirer as Johnson of Warton's ‘Observations,’ but Warton's work was acutely, if savagely, criticised by William Huggins in ‘The Observer Observed.’ With characteristic versatility Warton then turned from English literature to the classics, and set about a translation of Apollonius Rhodius. Johnson encouraged him to persevere in this and other literary labours, and not to fritter away his time on college tuition, saunters in the parks, and long sittings in hall and the coffee-houses. But the Apollonius Rhodius was never completed. He amiably abandoned it to devote his leisure to finding subscribers for Johnson's ‘Shakespeare,’ to which he contributed a few notes, and he wrote at Johnson's request numbers 33, 93, and 96 of Johnson's ‘Idler’ (1758–9). He is also said to have sent occasional papers to ‘The Connoisseur’ ‘The World,’ and ‘The Adventurer,’ but these have not been identified (, Essays, ii. 194).

In 1757 Warton was elected professor of poetry at Oxford. He held the post for two successive terms of five years each. His lectures, which were delivered in Latin, were


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 confined to classical topics. Only one of them was printed. It was entitled ‘De Poesi Græcorum Bucolica,’ and was included in Warton's edition of Theocritus. While holding the professorship he seems to have almost abandoned his study of English literature for the Latin and Greek classics. In 1758 he published a selection of Latin metrical inscriptions (‘Inscriptionum Romanarum Metricarum Delectus’); and eight years later he reprinted, with an original Latin preface, a similar collection of Greek inscriptions, known as Cephalas' ‘Anthologiæ Græcæ.’ In 1770 appeared from the Clarendon Press Warton's elegant edition of Theocritus, with some notes by Jonathan Toup [q. v.] The book met with approbation at home, but its scholarship was deemed by continental scholars to be defective; in England it was superseded by the editions of Thomas Gaisford in his ‘Poetæ Græci Minores’ (1814–20), and of Christopher Wordsworth (1844).

On 7 Dec. 1767 Warton took his degree of B.D., in 1771 he was elected a fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries, and on 22 Oct. of that year he was appointed to the small living of Kiddington in Oxfordshire.

Meanwhile Warton had embarked on his great venture of a history of English poetry. Pope had contemplated such a work, and prepared an elaborate plan, which his biographer, Owen Ruffhead, printed. Gray, about 1761, also sketched out a history of English poetry, but he likewise never got beyond a preliminary sketch. In 1768 Gray wrote that he had long since dropped his design, ‘especially after he heard that it was already in the hands of a person [i.e. Warton] well qualified to do it justice, both by his taste and his researches into antiquity.’ Warton sent his first volume to press in 1769. Many months later, on 15 April 1770, Gray, acting on the suggestion of Hurd, sent Warton his skeleton plan, in which the poets were dealt with not chronologically, but in groups according to their critical affinities (, Works, i. 53, iii. 365). Warton's work was then far advanced on more or less strictly chronological lines, and he made no change in his scheme after reading Gray's notes. Warton's history owes nothing to Gray.

In 1774 the first volume of Warton's history of English poetry appeared under the title of ‘History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century; to which are prefixed Two Dissertations: 1. On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe; 2. On the Introduction of Learning into England.’ The second volume appeared in 1778; and the third in 1781, preceded by an additional dissertation on the ‘Gesta Romanorum.’ This volume brought the history down to the end of Queen Elizabeth's age. The fourth volume, which would have carried the topic as far as Pope, though repeatedly promised, never appeared. Another edition, edited by Richard Price (1790–1833) [q. v.], appeared in 1824, with numerous notes from the writings of Ritson, Douce, Ashby, Park, and others, and the work was re-edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in 1874, when Warton's text was ruthlessly abbreviated or extended in an ill-advised attempt to bring its information up to the latest level of philological research.

At the outset Warton's great undertaking was cautiously received. In so massive a collection of facts and dates errors were inevitable. Warton's arrangement of his material was not flawless. Digressions were very numerous. His translation of old French and English was often faulty. In 1782 Ritson attacked him on the last score with a good deal of bitterness, and Warton, while contemptuously refusing to notice the censures of the ‘black-letter dog,’ was conscious that much of the attack was justified. Horace Walpole found the work unentertaining, and Mason echoed that opinion. Subsequently Sir Walter Scott, impressed by its deficiencies of plan, viewed it as ‘an immense commonplace book of memoirs to serve for’ a history; and Hallam deprecated enthusiastic eulogy. On the other hand, Gibbon described it as illustrating ‘the taste of a poet and the minute diligence of an antiquarian,’ while Christopher North wrote appreciatively of the volumes as ‘a mine.’ But, however critics have differed in the past, the whole work is now seen to be impregnated by an intellectual vigour which reconciles the educated reader to almost all its irregularities and defects. Even the mediæval expert of the present day, who finds that much of Warton's information is superannuated and that many of his generalisations have been disproved by later discoveries, realises that nowhere else has he at his command so well furnished an armoury of facts and dates about obscure writers; while for the student of sixteenth-century literature, Warton's results have been at many points developed, but have not as a whole been superseded. His style is unaffected and invariably clear. He never forgot that he was the historian and not the critic of the literature of which he treated. He handled with due precision the bibliographical side of his subject, and extended equal thoroughness of investigation


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Rh all, though I was never class enough for any on 'em. Me own sisternlaw took care on the child in Lunnen; it died er the measles. Summon Billy's wadges wenter pay, I guess. But Lizzie hadden' done nawthin' with Bob Cleaves that night not yit. I seed 'em meet at the Four Lanes—'e comin' from the bricks an' she from Shepperton. He gin 'er a start, an' then when he stooped t' speak she up an' kissed 'im like it warn't nothing in particular. Then he grabbed 'er an' seemed to lose 'is 'ed. But they 'addin' done nawthin' yit; I heered all the talk. Then she seemed a bit scared o' 'im, but kep' 'er 'ed. She allers kep' it. An' she pulled in towards Chawlton, an' pulled 'im on with 'er, tellin' 'im to be sensible like a good feller. Oh, but 'e was warm, 'e was. Nattrel; bin away from women a long time, I believe. An' then Billy outs o' his ditch an' at 'em. . . . But wot d'ye want to bother about either on 'em for. 'E was a 'ot 'un, an' she no good, an' Billy a fool—as bigger fool as Coxgrave. Why, I seed 'er—Mrs. Coxgrave an' Bob Cleaves—but I could 'a talked, I could. We as 'as to 'ide in ditches sees rum things sometimes. But wot d'ye wanter bother about the like 'er them? I could give yer boggins t' write on, ony day in the week, if that's wot yer want. We as 'ide in ditches—Why, I could tell y'r——"

Some one got up from the other side of the stanchion, and went down on deck. It was Billy, who had come up from cards feeling squeamish, and sat there.


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 Churchill, M.P., 2 vols. 1889; T. H. S. Escott's Randolph Spencer Churchill, 1895; Memorials, Personal and Political, of Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne, 1898; The Life, Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote, first Earl of Iddesleigh, edited by Andrew Lang, 2 vols. 1890; H. W. Lucy's Diary of Two Parliaments, and a Diary of the Salisbury Parliament, 1892; Justin McCarthy's History of our own Times from 1880 to the Diamond Jubilee, 1899. No authoritative biography of Lord Randolph Churchill has yet appeared, and his correspondence and private papers still (1901) remain unpublished. A severely critical study of him was published by John Beattie Crozier under the title of Lord Randolph Churchill: a Study of English Democracy, 1887.]

CLARENCE and AVONDALE,. [See, 1864–1892.]

CLARK, ANDREW, M.D. (1826–1893), first baronet, physician, born at Aberdeen on 28 Oct. 1826, was son of Andrew Clark, 'a medical man residing at Ednie in the parish of St. Fergus, Aberdeenshire' (Journal of Pathology, ii. 255). His mother died at his birth, and his father when he was seven years old. He was educated at the Tay Square academy in Dundee, and became a serving-boy to Dr. Matthew Nimmo, a practitioner of that town, and afterwards an apprentice to a Dr. Webster. Soon after 1839 he began to study as an extra academical student in Edinburgh, and on 31 May 1844 took the diploma of member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He then returned to Edinburgh and worked at medical studies, especially pathology, and on 1 Sept. 1846 joined the medical service of the royal navy. He never served afloat, but was employed at Haslar till 1853, when he retired from the navy, and was appointed curator of the museum of the London Hospital, and in 1854 assistant physician to that hospital. In the same year he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and graduated M.D. at the university of Aberdeen, a proceeding which then required no residence and little examination. He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians in 1858, was Croonian lecturer in 1868, and Lumleian in 1885. He soon attained reputation as a teacher of medicine, and on 14 Aug. 1866 became physician to the London Hospital, and continued in office till 1886.

In 1866 Clark became acquainted with Mrs. Gladstone, who used to visit the hospital, and through this introduction came to have medical charge of her husband, the distinguished statesman. Clark soon had many other celebrated patients, and acquired a larger practice than any other physician of his time. He began practice in Montague Street, Bloomsbury, but in 1867 moved to a large house at the north-west corner of Cavendish Square, where the rest of his life was spent. In 1883 he was created a baronet, and on 4 June 1885 he was made F.R.S. On 26 March 1888 he was elected president of the Royal College of Physicians, and held office till his death. He was most regular in attendance on the onerous duties of the office, and, in spite of his large practice, sat on numerous committees. He presented to the college a solid and handsome revolving bookcase, containing all the works likely to be useful to the censors in conducting their examinations. He took part in every debate, and on one occasion in a committee of fourteen, over which he presided, made thirty-eight distinct speeches, having at the beginning declared that it was desirable that no one should speak more than once. He was, however, rather eager to seize every point than prolix in discussing it, and he was always just to his adversaries. His manner was natural and sympathetic, and every patient felt that Clark was anxious for his well-being. He wrote more elaborate directions as to regimen than had been the fashion since the time of Mayerne. They were marked by good sense, and, though copied by his inferiors in medicine, and sometimes laughed at by his equals, were generally useful to the patient and contributive to his cure. It was an accident of his kind intention and minute care that most of the hypochondriacs of the time spoke of him as their dearest friend. When he became president of the College of Physicians those fellows who had criticised him before were constrained to admit that he was a high-souled man, devoted to medicine, jealous of the honour of physicians, and careless of pecuniary gain. His generosity to persons in distress was universal and extraordinary. Moral science, metaphysics, and theology were his favourite reading, and he was ready on all occasions to talk on these subjects. He was elected president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1892, and presided over that body as well as the College of Physicians at the time of his death. He was attacked by cerebral hæmorrhage while talking with a friend in the morning of 19 Oct. 1893, and died on 6 Nov. at his house in Cavendish Square. Shortly before his death he had bought a country house near Hatfield in Hertfordshire, and was buried near it at Essenden.

Clark was twice married: first, in 1851, to Seton Mary Percy, daughter of Captain