Bayrut during the disturbances he describes, he speaks elsewhere of occurrences in Damascus as one who wishes to make it understood that he played his neat little part in them. But, after all, such hints may merely be the result of his unmistakable tendency to enter into the minutest particulars-so minute in many cases that the narrator at second hand seems to assume the air of an eye-witness. His impartiality is above suspicion, at any rate we cannot doubt his earnest endeavor to hold the balance of judgment evenly between Muhammadans and Druzes on the one hand and the many sects' of which Christianity in Syria is compounded, on the other. If he does not always succeed, who will refuse to make some allowance for sectarian prejudice occasionally getting the best of his honest discrimination when he casts the account of mutual hatred and brutal ferocity in that sect-ridden country? And who will smile at his imperfectly grasped western ideas, transmitted to him in vague figures of speech, strangely wedded to Arabic terseness and precision by this son of the land which, since the days of mythological heroes and sages, of fabulous master mariners and traders, has been a clearing-house for the commercial and intellectual commodities of three continents?

We should honor him, on the contrary, for attempting that task in his zeal for public discussion of public affairs, stimulated, no doubt, by local tradition. If especially the translator has a fault to find, it regards rather the technical performance than the matter. Iskander Ibn Ya'qub Abkāriūs's handwriting is in places hard to decipher, owing to the liberties he takes with up-strokes and down-strokes; to the close resemblance that exists between his scrawls meant to denote widely different characters; to his arbitrary and varying methods of connecting letters even where no connection is called for; to his loose use of the few diacritical signs which he seemingly delights in strewing round at haphazard; to his contempt for a right marking of case-endings if he marks them at all. Furthermore we meet often a plural where we might expect a singular and vice versa; adjectives assert a proud but ungrammatical independence of the nouns they

'No less than twenty-nine are officially recognised. Cf A. BERNARD, La Syrie et les Syriens, Annales de Géographie, January 15, 1919, and RENÉ PINON, La Réorganisation de la Turquie d'Asie, Revue des Deux Mondes, August 15, 1913: "La Syrie est un musée de religions et les anthropologistes perdraient leur science à mesurer les crânes pour supputer les croisements d'où la population actuelle est sortie."

qualify; the employment of verbs in their various forms, followed by prepositions foreign to their régime, continually disagrees with the meanings commonly attached to those forms.

5

It is but natural that our author's style has a thoroughly Syrian flavor, that he is partial to Syrian modes of expression and avails himself of Arabic and exotic terms in the Syrian sense they have acquired. This, however, cannot make us overlook the fact that his language is scarcely classical; that his sentences are at times too terribly involved to establish with certainty who is who and what is what. Nevertheless he aims at stylistic niceties; he dabbles in rimed prose, apparently of one opinion with al-Ḥarīry and al-Hamadhany that there is no better medium for narration and oratory of the highest order; not satisfied with historical achievement, he enters the literary arena as an aspirant to poetic fame in metrical composition too. In jingling measures he strings his flowery phrases together to heighten the effect of high-flown periods, even if that effect should miscarry in an anti-climax-du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas! Yet, notwithstanding this hyper-florid sing-song, several of his descriptions are admirably vivid and powerful. His narrative is enlivened by touches of sarcasm and irony, varied with observations in a moralising strain. The inevitable anecdotes show his open eye for the humorous incidents in the tragic struggle he depicts."

Besides being involved and consequently obscure in his diction, he has an aggravating habit of dismissing with a single word episodes momentous enough in the light of subsequent events for a more circumstantial treatment. Striving to arrive at the inner truth of the troubles of 1860, after careful examination of their causes and the antagonistic forces at work in the Lebanon that led up to them, his mind is pre-eminently fixed not on the main issue but on accessory detail. This attitude determines while it narrows the historical value of his production. He adds nothing to our knowledge of the condition of his country in its broader aspects at the time of his writing and

"Called "cooing" by the Arabian literati from a fancied resemblance between its rhythm and the murmuring note of pigeons and doves.

See f. i. his description of the battle of the Druzes and the ambushed Christians, p. 44 ff.; of the slaughter at Ḥāṣbayyā, p. 80 ff.; of the pillage at Dayr al-Qamar, p. 143 ff.; of the happenings at Damascus, p. 176 ff.

See f. i. the story of Colonel Aḥmad Bey's discomfiture at the hands of the priest Jabrā'il Kassab, p. 68 ff.

before and after, except for the curious light unconsciously thrown on the evil results of foreign meddling. But apart from this, the particulars he furnishes have a significance of their own and are of the more weight the more a repeated perusal confirms our belief in his good faith as he relates his impressions and observations, perhaps his personal experiences; in his sincerity, handicapped though it may be with racial and religious prejudices already referred to. In this connection it deserves mention that many of our author's minutiae are not chronicled in previously published records so far as our acquaintance with the literature on the subject goes, and that his inferences differ frequently from those given by other native and European writers. 8

To sum up, Iskander Ibn Ya'qūb Abkāriūs's Book may be defined as a contribution of great subsidiary importance directly to the history of the Lebanon and the whole of Syria, indirectly to the history of the Christian Churches in the Semitic Orient, not only by reason of what it explicitly states and the thus far unknown details it furnishes, but also on account of what it implies to whoever knows how to read between the lines. He will become convinced of the underlying verity that the calamity which in 1860 befell the Christians of Mount Lebanon and in particular the Maronites, was largely, if not wholly, of their own making. Instigated by European Powers who, to further secret designs, gave a new impetus to the centrifugal forces at work in the Mount, they considered themselves above the law of the land which they, that is to say their clergy, desired to possess as their exclusive domain, exterminating or exiling those who refused to submit to their extravagant pretensions. When the adherents to other creeds, notably the Druzes, became alarmed at the intentions of the Maronites and of the Christians in general,' and repaid them in their own coin, a tremor of indignation went

8 Cf f. i. The Unveiling of the Trouble of Syria, part of which, treating of the massacre at Damascus, is appended in translation to Professor D. S. MARGOLIOUTH's excellent description of that ancient town, Cairo and Jerusalem.

.but there can be no doubt that it is the alarm which has lately been spread among the Mahometans as to the intentions of the Christians, I do not say the native Christians especially, but of the Christians generally, which has been the principal cause of the fanatical zeal latterly displayed,. . . . . . . . Letter, dated Therapia, August 8, 1860, from Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, British Ambassador to the Porte, to Lord Russell, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

through Europe, a thrill of horror and wrath, diligently exploited for the sake of predatory intrigue. The facts, as usually in cases like this, were distorted beyond recognition and it requires a good deal of sifting and comparing to disentangle them from the mass of conflicting evidence that supplied contemporary partisans of the contending governments with the kind of data they wanted for their concoction of the fable convenue, rather a conspiracy against the truth, which they dignified with the name of history.

Leaving the historic for the philosophic standpoint, it is just possible that the bloodshed which "would have been spared had the jurisdiction of the Turks been unlimited,"10 i. e. unencumbered with European intervention, was one of Nature's contrivances to provide against overpopulation by opening one of her safety-valves, as in the world's course we see her do with machine-like regularity when growing unrest marks a new period of our earth getting crowded, and wars or social upheavals or epidemic diseases step in to kill the human surplus. Anyhow the prolificity of the Syrians" coincides with the circumstance of their country having been from the oldest times a battle-ground as well as a market-place for the exchange between East and West of merchandise and religious thought. Other congruities, for instance the one that the land which was the cradle of Christianity, should continue age after age to be the scene of the fiercest encounters between Christians and Christians, can perhaps be explained on corresponding lines, but may not detain us here, save to note that the West, bestowing its Greek gifts on the East, conferring boons with usury, is always prone to depict the alleged beneficiary's ingratitude and contrariness in the darkest colors. 12 International rivalry, which pushes political and financial schemes in the name of humanity and civilisation, cannot afford to be just. Uninterrupted by the lessons of the latest great war, it goes on dis10 An opinion of Lord Dufferin, expressed in a letter, dated January 1, 1861, to Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer.

11

Especially of the Lebanonians. Three years before the war we find it stated: "To-day, as always, Lebanon is on the verge of overpopulation and her people are pushing westward. In England, and far more in America, the Syrian is a familiar figure." E. HUNTINGTON, Palestine in Transformation. A. BERNARD, op. cit., estimates the number of Syrians outside of Syria, at 500.000.

12 DAVID URQUHART, The Lebanon, I, 180, remarks: “The perusal of Gibbon leads to the conclusion that the year 1860 was not the first in which the freest scope was opened for misrepresentation with respect to the Lebanon." Nor was it the last!

maying us, under those same threadbare slogans, with grimly significant acts of encroachment in the Near and Far East as in Europe. With the best will to cherish the hope which thrives on looking forward as the rose on sunshine, we must confess that these manifestations of unregenerate cupidity tend rather to promote a gloomy view of the wonders of peace and good-will to be achieved by the Allied Powers and their Associates reaping their harvest of victory.

Returning to our manuscript, we have to apologise for not utilising some documents which the war kept out of our reach. Yet, such as it is, our work of inquiry in many fields of research, nearly or remotely related to our subject, will haply serve less to throw a stronger light upon than to put in the proper light a special phase of the everlasting Eastern Question which geographically may shift its focus, but even by that continual transition evades all attempts at a solution. Whenever it was possible to sift the mass of material on hand with any chance of discerning the motives behind the deeds recorded, the reasons for adopting or rejecting our author's surmises have been. stated. Our translation is not a rigidly literal one though we have tried to preserve the distinctive qualities of the Arabic text at the risk of straining English phraseology. This may explain, if not excuse, some irregularities and oddities forced upon us by the original, int. al. the profusion of "ands" which to leave out would, in our opinion, have spoiled a certain artless simplicity in an otherwise, we fear, stylistically too highly adorned tale. With respect to its annotation we are under obligations to the officials of the Yale University Library and the Public Library of New York, whose unfailing courtesy materially aided us in our consultation of books, newspapers, maps, official and semi-official publications needed for that purpose. Lastly, what should have come first, we have to express our thanks to Professor C. C. Torrey of Yale University for his kind interest in our effort and much appreciated assistance in carrying it through.