Monks and Monasteries of the Near East 9781463209698

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Monks and Monasteries of the Near East

Monks and Monasteries of the Near East JULES LEROY

Translated by PETER COLLIN

1 G o r g i a s Press

2004

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2004. The special contents of this edition are copyright 2004 by Gorgias Press LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the original edition published by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, 1963.

ISBN 1-59333-276-9

GORGIAS PRESS

46 Orris Ave., Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Preface

HIS book is the result of two years of travelling in the Near and Middle East, during which I toured almost every country in that area with the exception of Armenia, which, joined as it is to the Soviet Union, is difficult to visit. The book was jotted down —you might almost say it wrote itself—day by day, and bit by bit, following the pattern of the pilgrimages and excursions which I had to make as I carried out my assignment of locating whatever examples of the once-flourishing Christian art in the Arabo-Turkish world are still in existence to-day. If the reader feels that monks make for rather austere companions my excuse is that the choice was not mine: it was forced on me by circumstances and by the nature of the research I had undertaken. I have no intention of boring the reader with a more or less romanticized story of my adventures, because, like my illustrious predecessor Volney, I feel that "travel books come into the category of history, not fiction." In any case, story-book adventures do not happen any more in the East; you can drive anywhere you like in complete safety and comfort. The most that can take place is the occasional hold-up, and when some one is actually held up every one knows about it in an incredibly short space of time. Thanks to the vigilance of the police the crime is rarely repeated. As for the means of travel,

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they have changed beyond all recognition. If you should want to visit the monasteries of Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, or even the Lebanon, all you really need is patience, a good digestion, and boundless energy. But such things are hardly worth recording for posterity. The first essential for an enjoyable visit to the Near East is that one should forget completely that bugbear of European civilization, the fixed timetable. Even in the Mediterranean coastal areas where fabulous American cars jam the main roads Eastern clocks refuse to keep European time. And the farther east you go, whether it be into the deserts of Syria or the mountains of Kurdistan, where ramshackle old jalopies rattle along on their quasi-miraculous existence, the difference becomes still more pronounced. Your bus will never leave at the time you have been given. Before it can go it must be full, and full is a word which has lost all meaning here in the West. There, even the ordinary little ten-seater bus will not set off until fifteen or twenty passengers, not counting chickens, goats, and sheep, have crammed themselves on board. (The smallest animals take up no room at all: they're the ones you carry around with you.) As human beings are capable of being squashed together ad infinitum, your little bus will then stop at intervals along the road and pick up Bedouin men and women who have been squatting for hours by the roadside in the hope that some vehicle will come past. Sometimes a madman gets on, chained to a couple of armed policemen ; or it may be a young man who has killed his sister. If he is a Christian it means she had been having an affair with a Moslem; if he is Moslem she was seeing too much of a certain Christian. In either case the prisoner is bound to have the sympathy of at least some of the passengers, since his only crime has been to avenge his family's and his religion's honour. There is not much for him to worry about anyway. The punishment scale is the same for every one: two years' hard labour, with a chance of early release if an amnesty is declared. In the monasteries you are always given a warm welcome, thanks both to Christian charity and traditional Oriental hospitality. The

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plain mat of the ordinary monk is taken away, and the traveller is given a little mattress to rest the bruises he has acquired from the bumpy roads. Not having to observe the various fasts which occur at frequent intervals during the Church's year, he is allowed some supplementary rations, which improve, though not very much, the normal monastic diet. But then, when one is reduced to rice, raw onions and water melons, even a couple of eggs or some fruit are a welcome sight on the table in front of you. Those poor dear monks of Der es Zapharan! We picked wild raspberries together on the mountains and then ate them, spearing them one by one on nails . . . they were as welcome to the heart as they were to the palate! I understood then exactly what Cassian felt describing old Serenus' kindness in Egypt fifteen hundred years ago. " I n addition to our ordinary diet," he writes in his book about his pilgrimage to the monks, "the holy man gave us three little fried olives in salt and a basket of cooked peas, which are what the hermits have for cakes. We only took five, with two plums and a fig, because it seemed wicked to take more." I must admit I did not have the same scruples, but then Cassian was a monk himself, and sometimes he exaggerates. . . . It is little touches like these, with their simple natural courtesy, that make a visit to the monasteries of the Arab world so memorable. J.L.

Contents

1. Religion in the Arabo-Turkish World

page 15

2. The Coptic Monasteries of Upper and Lower Egypt

30

3. A Visit to the Tekke of the Bektashis in Cairo

56

4. The Greek Monasteries of Palestine

70

5. The Lebanon—Land of Maronite Hermitages and Greek Monasteries

98

6. Stylites' Country

124

7. On the Borders of Kurdistan

152

8. Sheik 'Adi—Sanctuary of the Devil-worshippers

189

Conclusion

202

Index

205

Illustrations

The majority of the photographs in this book were taken by the author. Some of his friends have, however, been kind enough to allow him to use some of their material, for which he is extremely grateful. He would like to thank M. J. Doresse (Paris) for Nos. 1, 5, and 8; M. Murad Khamil (Cairo) for No. 13; M. G. Lesneau (Beirut) for No. 19; Father van den Ploeg, O.P. (Nijmegen) for No. 20; Father M. Talion, S.J. (Beirut), for No. 31 ; M. Sami Abbud (Beirut) for No. SO; M. P. Nautin (Paris) for Nos. 37 and 45. Nos. S and 4 come from the Archives photographiques; No. 41 comes from the collection of the Institut Français d'Archéologie at Beirut. The ground-plan of St Simeon's on p. 142 comes from Early Churches in Syria ( 1930), by H. C. Butler. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

General View of St Paul's in the Desert Apa Biktor in his Hermitage at St Antony's The White Monastery near Sohag (Egypt) Coptic Sculpture from Bawit, now in the Louvre Coptic Cloth (Third-Fourth Century) from Akhmin Interior of St Antony's in the Desert Fresco from St Antony's

ILLUSTRATIONS

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Apa Biktor Coptic Monk from St Antony's Coptic Monk from St Antony's The Monastery of Der es Suriani in the Wadi el Natrun The Cupolas of the Church of Der es Suriani Fresco from Der es Suriani—the Annunciation Coptic Manuscript from St Antony's Bektashi Tombs in the Old Town, Cairo The Baba of the Bektashis, Serri Dede Dervishery at Damascus (Syria) Dervishery at Tripoli (Lebanon) Whirling Dervishes in Action Monastery of Qoziba (Jordan) Monastery of Mount Quarantania, near Jericho (Jordan) Monastery of Mar Saba (Jordan) The Founder's Palm-tree at Mar Saba Monastery of St Catherine of Sinai (Egypt) Monastery of St Catherine—the Monks' Garden Young Jebeli at Sinai Icons of Moses and the Burial of St Catherine Page from the Codex Sinaiticus Maronite Village of Kesruan (Lebanon) Monastery of Quziya (Lebanon) Maronite Monks Monastery of Anaya (Lebanon) Damaged Fresco at Der Salib in the Qadisiya (Lebanon) Little Greek Monastery in the Lebanon Balamend (Lebanon)—the Inner Courtyard Cistercian Church of Balamend The Stone Belfry at Balamend Balamend—the Loggia Balamend—the Icon of the Stylites View over Harissa (Lebanon) Our Lady of Saidnaya (Syria)

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42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

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Kefr Derian (Syria)—Fallen Stylite's Column South Basilica of St Simeon's (Syria) Porch of the Basilica of St Simeon Porch of the Basilica of St Simeon The Codex Rabulensis—Miniature Portraits of Ammonios and Eusebius Chaldean Christians from the Mosul Area (Iraq) The Monasteries of Rabban Hormuzd and Our Lady of the Seed-time (Iraq) Chaldean Monks from Rabban Hormuzd Interior and Exterior Views of Mar Mattai (Iraq) Mar Mattai Manuscript (1220)—the Transfiguration Mar Mattai Manuscript—the Forty Martyrs Church at Mar Behnam (Iraq) Sculptures at Mar Behnam—a Doorway and a Niche View of Der es Zapharan from the Tur 'Abdin (Turkey) Der es Zapharan Manuscript—the Annunciation Der es Zapharan Manuscript—the Raising of Lazarus The Plain of Mosul Yezidi Landscape near 'Ain Sifni (Iraq) Yezidi Tomb Sheik 'Adi—the Sanctuary of the Devil-worshippers Sheik 'Adi—the Entrance to the Temple Yezidi 'Monk' The Guardian of the Temple at Sheik 'Adi

1 Religion in the Arabo-Turkish World

W;

-HEN you consider the Latin and Graeco-Slavonic worlds, which we lump together for convenience sake under the headings Catholic and Orthodox, the picture you get is one of unity. But when you turn to look at Christianity in the Middle and Near East, or, if you prefer it, in the territory of the old Ottoman Empire, you find a disconcertingly wide variety of sects and denominations—Maronites, Orthodox Syrians or Jacobites, Catholic Syrians, Nestorians and Chaldeans, Arabio-speaking Melkites, Gregorian and Catholic Armenians, and so on. It is a jigsaw puzzle which can be fitted together only with years of experience; but there is still worse to come. In itself the puzzle would not be so very complicated if each separate Church occupied its own more or less well-defined territory. Unfortunately, apart from a few relatively self-contained groups, such as the Copts in Upper Egypt or the mixture of Assyrians, Jacobites, and Syrians which covers the north of Iraq, these religious communities are all spread over the whole Middle and Near East, mixed up with one another, perpetually changing, thanks to the recurrent political upheavals and movements of population which carry groups far from their place of origin, and thus radically alter the whole religious map of the area. The most striking thing about these Christian sects is that they are

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ethnic as much as religious groups. Each is a nation in itself, with its own hierarchic system, its own rituals, language, laws, and all the paraphernalia of compromise and rivalry, of seeking an equilibrium and of defending one's rights, which make up modern nationhood. The head of each religion is also the leader of his people. His function is not confined to safeguarding the salvation of his flock by maintaining their faith. Not only does he protect their souls, he defends their rights in politics and society. This explains the large part played by the Christian communities in the affairs of the various Arab nations which are growing up in the East. Each community has the right to proportional representation in Parliament. The following figures, taken from a Beirut newspaper of 1955, show this more clearly than any detailed explanation could. They form a plan for drawing up new electoral lists for the Lebanon, with a larger Parliament of 88 members, each representing 16,000 inhabitants. Geographical Distribution. Beirut, 15; Mount Lebanon, 26; North Lebanon, 19; South Lebanon, 16; Beqa', 12. Religious Distribution, (a) Christian and minority members: Beirut, 9; Mount Lebanon, 18; North Lebanon, 11; South Lebanon, 5; Beqa', 5. (b) Moslem members: Beirut, 6; Mount Lebanon, 8; North Lebanon, 8; South Lebanon, 11; Beqa', 7.

The Lebanon, being half Moslem and half Christian, is an extreme example, but the same principle is followed, more or less liberally, in all the countries of the Arabo-Turkish world. Syria has 19 Christian members of Parliament out of a total of 82; Iraq, 6 out of 79; Jordan (for Jerusalem), 2 out of 5. In Turkey, where the law makes no difference between Moslems and Christians, and in Egypt, where this clause has been removed from the constitution, Christians as such have no representation in Parliament, though they are taken into account in the forming of governments. Such a state of affairs may well shock those who prefer unity and feel that Church and State should be kept strictly apart; it probably seems to them a scandal that it should continue to exist. But the East accepts it without, so it seems, much difficulty. To understand how it

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came about, however, one must trace back the history of the Christian peoples under Arab rule. The situation then becomes clearer. After its foundation in Palestine, Christianity first began to expand into the eastern parts of the Roman Empire. It spread rapidly right through the whole of the Empire, but at the very beginning it infiltrated into the life of the cities of the Levant, making converts among the most diverse Eastern races. At the close of the fourth century, when the persecutions were coming to an end, the Christian world of the Orient covered all the territory held by the Romans. It had even expanded beyond the imperial frontiers, for well-organized churches, with their own hierarchies, rituals, and customs, existed in Upper Mesopotamia, Armenia, Arabia, and even in Sassanian Persia, where the fire-cult was the established religion, protected by the kings and the powerful magi. The peace which Constantine made with the Church in 313 accelerated the process of expansion; it was even encouraged by the Emperor himself, for Constantine felt that his double secular-cum-religious status justified his unwarranted interference in any theological matter. It seemed to him that protecting the orthodoxy of the faithful was another way of ensuring the unity of the motley collection of races under his rule. It was a difficult task, and one which was continually having to be started afresh, for, as M. Puaux, the former Resident-General, wrote in his memoirs: " T h e Orient secretes sects." Not only among Christians, but even among Moslems, schisms and factions began to appear, fomented by the proverbial subtleties of the Oriental mind, by a tendency to mysticism, by an individuality which is perhaps a subconscious legacy of tribal life in the desert, and, undeniably, by material interests and power-politics far removed from any religious ideal. Even in Constantine's time the Christians in the East had been thrown into a state of confusion by the elucubrations of a certain Alexandrian priest called Arius, whose teaching was a direct challenge to the doctrine of the Trinity, since he considered the Son inferior to the Father. The Council of Nicea put a stop to this heresy in B

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325, but less than a hundred years later theological controversy broke out again. This time the contestants armed themselves with the Aristotelian doctrines of 'nature' and 'person' and fought around the figure of Christ on Earth, the Word Incarnate. This was the start of the two famous christological heresies—the Nestorian and the Monophysite—which have left their mark on Eastern Christianity right up to the present time. It is impossible to examine here in detail the purely theological aspect of these problems, which were due for the most part to the vagueness of religious terminology; it was clarified by the various councils called to deal with the crisis and imposed by them as the orthodox expression of faith. Up till then the ordinary Christian had lived, as most do to-day, with the primitive idea of a Man-God— "Jesus Christ is God; He is also Man"—without worrying too much about the relationship between the two natures united in one person. Though certain theologians had dared to investigate these mysteries more closely the opinions they put forward had not caused widespread alarm and had not compromised the unity of either Eastern or Western Church. The whole scene changed radically, however, when in 428 Nestorius, a monk who had become Bishop of Constantinople, stated in no uncertain terms and in undeniably eloquent language that the word Theotokos ( " M o t h e r of G o d " ) should be abandoned. It was the term by which theology and liturgy alike had hitherto referred to the Virgin, meaning simply that Mary was the mother of some one who was God: she was his mother because he took his human nature from her, not his divinity. This expression shocked Nestorius, who preferred the term Christotokos ( " M o t h e r of Christ"); he felt there was less risk of ambiguity. If he had foreseen the storm which this word was going to let loose on the Church, Nestorius would probably have preferred to have left it unsaid, all the more so, as, according to modern research, his doctrine was not as heretical as at first appeared to be the case, and consequently it was not essential to create a new term. Anyhow, this

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substitution of one word for another more traditional set the whole Eastern Church ablaze with controversy, and inaugurated a dramatic period in the history of Christianity. It is useless attempting to describe the tragic, often bloody, events which followed. It is enough here to enumerate the consequences of Nestorius' action as far as dogma was concerned and the changes it brought to the religious scene in the East. The Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria soon discovered lurking behind this term Christotokos so rashly circulated by Nestorius some traces of previously condemned heresies, such as Arianism, Adoptionism, and especially the peculiar theory of Diodore of Tarsus (died 396) and Theodorus of Mopsuestia (died c. 428) of the Two Sons—that is, of two persons in Jesus Christ. In 431 the Council of Ephesus decided against Nestorius, and stated categorically that Mary was the Mother of God (Theotokos). Almost immediately yet another heresy appeared on the scene, that of Eutyches, a monk from Constantinople, who, the better to refute Nestorius' diphysism, went even further in the opposite direction than Cyril's doctrine of a single nature of Christ, or, as it was formulated at Ephesus, "the incarnation of the Divine Word is single." Eutyches felt that the unity in Christ's person was such that it implied a complete fusion of both divine and human elements. He therefore disputed the theory that Christ's humanity was like ours, or, in technical terms, that he was consubstantial with other men. If Nestorius thought that Mary was only the mother of a man, Eutyches went to the other extreme and said she was solely the mother of a God. Monophysitism was in its turn condemned, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where a formula drawn up by the Pope, St Leo, was adopted. This year 451, when all problems seemed solved—as, indeed, they were from a doctrinal point of view—in fact marks the turning-point in the history of the Eastern Church, the beginning of the gradual fragmentation which has gone on until the present day. The happy choice of a formula which would mark exactly the half-way point between Nestorius and Eutyches proved a difficult one. Some of

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those present at the Council felt that it savoured too much of Nestorianism, while other delegates thought that it did not take sufficient account of the Cyrillian formula, which had until then been the mainstay of dogma in the Eastern Church. Hence the resistance of the bishops who followed the teaching of the Patriarch of Alexandria. In Egypt and Syria the result was the setting up of the Monophysite Church, while the followers of Orthodox doctrine upheld by the Emperor proclaimed themselves Melkites, from the Semitic word melk, meaning " k i n g " or "sovereign," as if to show their allegiance to imperial doctrine. These were the positions taken up at the beginning of the sixth century, and they were to remain thus for many years. Henceforth there was to be a Melkite Church with its Patriarch at Antioch, a Monophysite Church (in Syria shortly to be called the Jacobite) with its Patriarch also at Antioch, a Coptic Monophysite Church centred on Alexandria, while Sassanian Persia, following Nestorius' doctrine, or, rather, that of his spiritual teachers Diodore of Tarsus and Theodorus of Mopsuestia, set up the Nestorian Church of Persia, with its leader, the Catholicos, ruling from Seleuchia-Ctesiphon, on the river Tigris. Later on the appearance of the Maronites further complicated the scene, while in the sixteenth century some members of each of these Churches returned their allegiance to Rome, thus creating in each a second hierarchy shadowing the original sixth-century one. The most important fact about these schismatic and heretical movements, and one which certainly cannot be over-emphasized, is that behind the varying standpoints taken up by different countries with regard to christological dogma lay political trends which were in fact nothing more than forms of rebellion against Byzantium. In this sense they were the first signs of nationalism, as is shown by the dropping of Greek as the liturgical language in favour of various national tongues such as Syriac, Coptic, and later Arabic. These separationist trends came to the fore more decisively in the following century, when Mohammed's armies appeared on the scene,

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for Islam found its firmest allies in precisely those communities which had developed from the heresies of the fifth century. The speed of the Moslem conquest, which at first sight seems well-nigh miraculous, is less so when one takes into account the prevailing religious and political conditions. The explanation lies not so much in the weakness of the Byzantine defence system as in the apathy of the local Christian communities. This was brought about, as Rondot says in his book Christian Communities in the East, by the same factors which produced, not so very many years before, the great schismatic and heretical controversies, and it can be explained by the state of mind induced in the Eastern Christians by these secessions; from the Nile to the Euphrates the Christian communities were tired of their Byzantine overlords and longed to free themselves from them, even if in the long run it only meant changing masters. The Monophysite hierarchy, subjected as it was by the Caesaro-Papacy of Byzantium to continual attacks in the name of true doctrine and discipline, had everything to gain and nothing to lose from passing under the rule of non-Christians who would allow them their autonomy and would not pretend to be the supreme authority in matters of faith. "Rather the Turkish fez than the Roman tiara," as the inhabitants of Constantinople said in 1453, when their city was besieged. "Rather the Arab than the hated Greek," said, rather unwisely, the Christians of Egypt and Syria seven centuries earlier. At first things did not go too badly; as a reward for their collaboration the Christians were allowed to practise their religion freely and were even granted certain privileges. For, like the Jews, they were recipients of the Scriptures, the expression of divine revelation which had been brought to its final perfection by Mohammed himself, and so the Moslems regarded them as Ahl el Kitab, or "People of the Book." Therefore under Islam's protective wing they were allowed to retain and practise their religion within limits set down by their powerful protectors. The principle upon which their new status was based was "coexistence without integration." The Moslem was

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formally forbidden to number either Jews or Christians among his friends. To a certain extent, however, this rule was relaxed, in that a Moslem was allowed to eat food prepared by his Christian servant, and even to marry a Christian woman (though the marriage of male Christians with Moslem girls was not allowed). This permitted close contacts between the two peoples, though the Christians never reached a state of equality with the Moslems. The condition of the Christians was, in fact, that of a people tolerated and humiliated at the same time. Apart from certain obligatory duties, such as providing food for the Moslem armies, their humiliation mainly took the form of a twofold taxation—a poll-tax (jizya) on all adult males, which was in practice the price of their continued existence and freedom, and the kharaj, which restricted possession of land to the Moslem community, leaving the Christians only usury as a means of earning their living. On the other hand, they had some compensations, for, as they were allowed to retain their own laws and a separate civil and religious organization, they enjoyed a real autonomy within the Moslem state, and their rulers had an authority which they had lacked under Byzantine rule, when they had been kept in check by the power of the basileus. These terms which were at the very outset granted to the protected Christian communities determined the whole course of their subsequent history, both political and sociological. At first the regime was fairly lenient in its dealings with them, but as time went on its attitude hardened. It never went as far as total intolerance, except on certain occasions when disputes resulted in bitter persecutions, more often than not instigated independently of the government by the ordinary people, who were provoked by petty differences arising from jealousy, ambition, or simply from close contact between two opposing religions. The period in their history from the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in 1454 until its disappearance after the First World War saw the Eastern Churches take on the form in which we know them to-day, and which needs to be explained more fully as it is the reli-

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gious, social, and political background of the monasteries we are to visit. It is, in a word, a patriarchal system. When he set it up the Sultan was only applying the traditional Islamic principles of tolerance and coexistence, and, by giving the system a legal basis, he regularized the Christians' rights and duties: henceforth they were considered as the Sultan's subjects (raya). They were not in fact directly subject to him, for, following the example adopted by the Arab caliphs, the Sultan allowed the various religious leaders chosen by each sect according to its own rules a certain amount of authority, delegating as it were part of his sovereignty to them. He entrusted them with the government of their own community, which thus acquired the status of millet, or nation. This explains the part played by these communities in the running of the state. Slowly but surely they became separate entities, not only from the religious but also from the civil point of view. The dignitaries of the Church enjoyed various privileges which put them outside the law of the land, and the raya were for their part subject to the laws of their own religion as regards their civilian status, marriage, legal inheritors, etc. The patriarch was their leader in the full sense of the word, as his authority was religious, civil, and judicial at one and the same time. Each Church therefore became a sort of state within a state, with all the compromises, rivalries, struggles, and resistance which such a situation implies. One side was eager to try to impose restrictions on the concessions it had already granted, while the other demanded more concessions, or an extension of those it had already obtained, and was even prepared to call in foreign aid to back its claims. In this way, from the seventeenth century onward, the English, French, and Russians gradually extended their spheres of influence into the East, putting themselves forward as the protectors {de facto if not de jure) of the Catholic and Orthodox Christians. This last chapter in the history of Eastern Christianity under the Ottoman Empire needs to be examined more closely, as it concerns the coming into being of Eastern Catholic communities linked to the Church of Rome.

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At the beginning of the Ottomans' rule the firman or herat of investiture, a ceremony granting recognition to the authority of the religious leaders over the Christians, was given only to the Greek Orthodox patriarch, whose seat was at Istanbul; he thus became, or was made, the sole civil head of all the Christians in the East, whatever their denomination. Shortly afterwards, however, the Sultan realized that it was a mistake to allow the Greeks too much authority and the same investiture was granted in 1461 to the Armenian patriarch, who thereupon installed himself at Istanbul along with a great many of his followers. The Maronite, Nestorian, and Jacobite patriarchs, away in their mountain retreats in the Lebanon, Kurdistan, or Tur 'Abdin, disdainfully disregarded the Sultan's investiture and went on ruling their respective Churches as before. But from the sixteenth century onward in each community there grew up a movement advocating union with Rome, providing the Churches with a thorny problem which was only finally solved in the nineteenth century. Roman Catholic Churches were set up, and hierarchies created under patriarchs nominated or recognized by the Pope (Chaldean in 1551, Catholic Syrian, 1662, Melkite, 1 7 0 7 , Armenian, 1 7 4 0 , Coptic, 1 8 9 9 ) , thus doubling the number of religious communities in the East. For a long time, however, these new communities were not recognized by the State, which meant that they were still under the civil jurisdiction of religious leaders who had no connexion with Rome, and this peculiar situation lasted for almost two hundred years. It was finally brought to an end by an official recognition of the Catholic patriarchs as civil heads of their communities. This recognition was to a large extent due to the efforts of the French Government on their behalf. Since their reunion with Rome the Catholic communities instinctively turned to France for assistance, for by tradition from the time of the Crusades, and later by treaty, she was the protector of the Maronites, the oldest Catholic Church in the East, whose members had helped the Crusaders and earned for themselves the distinction of being considered by the French king, St

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Louis, as part of France. The Capitulations which were first drawn up between Sulaiman the Magnificent and François I in 1534 were originally designed to protect the French representatives and merchants, and thence all Roman Catholics. Little by little this agreement came to include the local Christians who gave allegiance to Rome. Ties between the two countries were strengthened, and subsequently international treaties acknowledged France's vested interests in the East. This disturbed Britain and Russia. From 1774 (the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainarji) until the Revolution Russia claimed to be the protector of Orthodox Christians of Greek origin, who were close to the Russian Church in doctrine and ritual. As for the British, they took under their wing the Syriac-speaking Orthodox Christians, the Nestorians, and the Copts, the latter being easily accessible thanks to British control of Egypt. This threefold Western influence on the Christian communities in the East is still apparent to-day. It is a fact that if you know no Arabic you will always be able to converse in French with the Catholics and in English with the Orthodox Syrians and Nestorians. As for the Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox Christians, their older bishops speak only Russian, learnt at seminaries in Russia, which they brush up from time to time by a journey to Moscow. This short historical survey is really necessary to the understanding of the Christian communities of the Near East. It brings out something which normally escapes the attention of the Westerner, who is accustomed to grouping together under the term "the Arab World" all the different countries and nationalities which occupy the territory ruled by Islam. It is a misleading label, since it gives an impression of unity where in fact there is complete religious and ethnic diversity. Thanks to the original commands of the Moslem conquerors, the Christian communities are in effect the direct descendants of the original population which was overrun by the Arabs without being absorbed or contaminated in the process; although Moslem men could marry Christian girls, the reverse was not

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allowed. The broad sweep of Islam which stretches from Mecca to the Nile has left little pockets of people who are in fact aborigines; it is quite likely that the Copt from Aswan is a descendant of the Egyptians of the Pharaohs, and that one of Sennacherib's soldiers was the ancestor of the modern Chaldean from the plains of Mosul. Like all other Churches, those of the East have connexions with monachism; in fact, monachism in its original form was a peculiarly Eastern product. The first monks appeared in Egypt and Palestine, and then gradually spread through the rest of the Christian world. They became so numerous and active that they took part in every event of ecclesiastical history in the first centuries of the Christian era. From their ranks came the staunchest and often the most turbulent supporters of the theological theses which split the Church asunder in the fifth century, and which, as we have seen, produced the Christian communities in the East. Nestorius was a monk, and so was Eutyches. Severus of Antioch and Jacob al-Baradai, the real founders of the Monophysite Church in Syria, were monks, and so were the supporters of Dioscorus of Alexandria, the first patriarch of the Coptic Monophysite Church. Thus, in the East, religious and monastic history are inextricably intermingled. The process is going on still, for even to this day bishops have to be monks, since they must be celibate, and the Eastern Church allows its secular priests to marry. (This is no longer the case with the Eastern Catholic Churches, where, although the marriage of priests is both recognized and authorized, the secular clergy, especially in towns, are more and more inclined towards celibacy.) Christendom in the East is the product of monachism, more so perhaps than was Europe in the Middle Ages. Here, as in the West, and as at Mount Athos, the centre of Greek Orthodox monachism, the admiration of the faithful has over the centuries accumulated vast properties and riches in the hands of the monks. It would be extremely interesting from the point of view of a better understanding of medieval economics in the Arab countries if it were possible to describe the methods of administration and cultivation used by the

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monasteries. This is unfortunately impossible, for here there are none of the account-books, the treatises on rural economy, and the cadastral registers which have survived in such large numbers in our Western monasteries. Even to-day, though, one can still grasp the extent of the wealth of the ancient monks from the vast monasteries which they scattered all over the Near East, on sites which, though often inaccessible, are ideal for the contemplation of nature and the Creator. The more's the pity that these monasteries, built to house armies of monks, are now almost deserted. The monastic ideal which was born in the East seems now to have forsaken these countries which once—arbitrarily, as it now appears—were thought so much better fitted than ours to the peaceful life of contemplation. With very few exceptions, there are no longer in the East any of those vast colonies of hermits such as one can still see at Mount Athos. A handful of anchorites live lost in these immense buildings, their lives taken up with the administration of their apparently undiminished revenues. To-day the divine office for which they were built is celebrated in very few of the monasteries. Only their history is left to touch the heart and fire the imagination of the visitor; stones are more eloquent now than men. Each monastery has its own story, linked to the history of the Church as a whole, often to that of civilization itself; some, those which have suffered least at the hands of Western collectors, still have something to show of the part they played in the artistic and literary activity of the East. We will visit, then, some of the monasteries of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the Lebanon and recall their history, but before starting on our tour it might be as well to remember briefly what monachism is. From the outside, if one looks at the great Benedictine, Trappist, or Carthusian monasteries which still flourish in the West, monachism would seem to be the way of life of people who have lost contact with the world, living without wife or husband in monasteries and convents, ruled by a head of house. This definition is, of course,

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true, but it does not convey the real significance of the life led by monks and nuns; it does not show what driving force is behind them or what aim lies before them. Monastic life is inseparable from asceticism: they are twin religious phenomena. Asceticism is a constant purification of the soul in which the flesh is pulled aside like a heavy curtain to allow man's gaze to go straight to God. The aim of the ascetic is day by day to wear away this curtain in a continual struggle against the physical and psychological impulses of the ordinary mortal, and so, gradually, to come nearer to the divine presence. It is the spontaneous aspiration of religious conscience. Monachism is its channel, but it can sometimes turn out to be a backwater, for there is a danger that the individual urge towards asceticism may get bogged down in the universal formulas and methods of institutionalized monastic discipline. Asceticism is, in fact, a personal approach, whereas monachism is a social institution. Asceticism as it is practised to-day in the West, either individually by hermits or in groups by coenobites, is a purely Christian phenomenon ; what singles it out is its aim—the search for God through the imitation of Christ. In itself, though, the practice of asceticism is not restricted to any one religion or belief, not even to those which are most purely philosophical. It has found, and is still finding, new fields of activity. In Asia there are immense Buddhist monasteries where ascetics give themselves up entirely to the purification of their souls as a means of union with God. In classical times philosophers and teachers formed associations which forbade marriage and all worldly wealth the better to satisfy their mystical yearnings. Even to-day Islam, though its founder was not particularly well disposed towards abstinence and monastic mortification of the flesh, has its mystical sects like the Sufis, whose aim, as L. Massignon has said, is " t o tear the soul away from the tyranny of the passions, to rescue it from its own wicked tendencies and instincts, so that when the heart is finally purified there is room in it for nothing but God and the invocation of his Holy Name." They find their communal life helps them in their

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search for the divine presence. Finally, one of the most surprising discoveries of this century has been the revelation of the existence of Jewish ascetics, the mysterious Essenes, whose scrolls from the shores of the Dead Sea have allowed us to recreate their daily life and aspirations.

2 The Coptic Monasteries of Upper and Lower Egypt

N c E upon a time the Egyptians flattered themselves that theirs was the most ancient civilization in the world. Nowadays this would be disputed by the historians of the Chaldees, for from the evidence of the excavations carried out at Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, Sumerian tombs and ruins have been shown to be considerably older than the buildings of the Pharaohs. Leaving the two sides to decide the point between themselves, one can perhaps point out that the Nile Valley has at least one title which no one can dispute—that of being the cradle of Christian monachism. That there can be no doubt of this is shown by various writings which are contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the beginnings of monachism—the Greek Life of St Antony, the Coptic Life and Rule of Pachomius, the Latin Life of Paul of Thebes—though the latter, it is true, was touched up by St Jerome. It is also agreed among historians that the founder of the still flourishing ascetic way of life was St Antony the Hermit. His portrait has been popularized by hagiography; all the great painters of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Classical Period painted him. One can recognize him straight away: an emaciated face, long, untidy hair, a thick beard down to his chest, his stance a stooping stagger leaning heavily on a stick, his patched clothes which pro-

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vide insufficient covering for his nakedness, reveal his disdain for even the most rudimentary rules of hygiene; and, of course, he is always followed by his pig, who represents, so they used to say, the baser instincts which the saint overcame in his mortification of the flesh. (The real explanation is rather more prosaic: a medieval epidemic of swine-fever was cured after Antony's help was invoked, and hence he is always shown with a pig beside him.) His widespread popularity shows how deep was the impression which he made on the minds of Christians. He was born in 250 at Coma, a small village in Upper E g y p t near Heraclius, between the Nile and Lake Moeris. W h e n his parents died he heard read in church the passage f r o m the Gospels: " I f thou wilt be perfect, g o and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow m e . "

He sent his sister away into a retreat, sold all his property, and installed himself first in front of his former house, then in the outskirts of Coma, and finally in a tomb. He spent fifteen years as an ascetic in or around his native village before he felt himself called to a life of still greater solitude. He crossed the Nile and discovered a ruined castle in the mountains on the right bank. At that time it was called Pispir; now it is Der al-Mnemonn, between Atfih and Beni Suef. He spent almost all the rest of his life there in mortifications which soon brought him many disciples. Towards the end of his life, however, he felt his followers were too numerous, and so joined a caravan which was making its way to the Red Sea. After a few days' journey he found a spot in the mountains by the sea which suited him. There was water, and soil which could be tilled. He built himself a new hermitage, and died there in 356 at the age of 105. Apart from the collection of writings which tell us about these beginnings of monachism, another proof of the primary role played by Egypt can be found in the sort of travel-mania which even as early as the fourth century brought organized parties of tourists to the Nile Valley from all over the Christian world, from Palestine, Rome, Gaul, Asia Minor, Persia, and Mesopotamia. Sometimes it was out of sheer

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curiosity, especially if they were literary people on the look-out for a theme for their next book or a subject for a sensational best-seller. But more often than not what brought these travellers to Egypt was piety: their journeys were not excursions but pilgrimages. In the imagination as well as the devotion of people of that time Egypt took second place only to Jerusalem and the places associated with the life of Christ. As one fifth-century writer put it, " E g y p t was a second Holy Land." W h a t attracted the visitors was not the overwhelming buildings of the Pharaohs, for the pyramids, the hypostyle hall at Karnak, and the temples at Luxor did not have then the significance and attraction which they have for us. The pilgrims hardly bothered to look at them at all, or if they did it was because some hermit had taken up residence there, after having daubed over the weird figures which decorated their walls—bird- and jackal-headed gods and colossal statues sitting in the twilight. ( T o him they were demons, whose haunting shapes obsessed his nightly prayers and hours of meditation.) In fact, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had of late begun to take on a new look. Occupation by the Greeks and Romans who had imposed their alien civilizations on the land, had yet failed to detach the ancient race from its traditional myths and rites. Where the Greeks and Romans had failed, Christianity, from the third century on, succeeded. It first took hold in Alexandria, and then spread rapidly. Without suggesting that the entire population was converted, one can at least say that from that time onwards there were Christian communities in all the urban centres along the Nile Valley. It has often been said of Egyptian, or, as it is more usually called, Coptic, Christianity that it was merely the old religion in disguise. There is some truth in this; wherever Christianity has penetrated it has been able to adapt itself to the existing beliefs of the country. No one is surprised any more to hear that in Gaul, for example, a great many rural deities were given haloes or that many of the miracleworking springs where crowds of country people now jostle in procession are simply carrying on the cults of the ancient Celts. It was

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this very adaptability which enabled Christianity to take root so rapidly in an essentially rural world. One trait of ancient Egyptian character has left its mark on the Coptic Church. The Ancient Egyptian, an eminently practical man in many ways, seems to have been more preoccupied with his fate after death than any other person of his own times or since. He was oppressed, almost hallucinated, by a continual uneasiness about the beyond. His country shows just how strong this feeling was. Hardly a trace remains of his private houses and palaces, but what have survived the centuries are his tombs, his "houses of eternity," where ivory, gold, precious stones, and objects from his daily life were piled together, carefully selected to accompany him into the next world, as if it were only the next world which mattered. The first Egyptian Christians yearned for eternal life no less fervently than did their pagan ancestors, but, following the example and doctrine of the founder of their faith, they modified their ideas on immortality and the way of attaining it. Having learnt that the flesh must vanish in order that the spirit may live, the worldly possessions which the Ancient Egyptians so carefully hoarded were despised by their Christian descendants as a burden to be got rid of as soon as possible, as a hindrance to their progress towards the liberation of the soul, the first stage of eternal life in and through God. Such, then, if one examines it thoroughly, was the basic reason which forced the ascetics to leave the world, to go out into the desert places and to bring a paradoxical new life to the underground burial chambers of the pagans by turning them into monastic cells. This is what the pilgrims and travellers of the 4th century were going to see when they set off for Egypt. Apart from the mysterious lady from Gaul who went to Sinai and then on to the Nile Valley at the end of the fourth century, none of them left what one could call a description of his journey. Still, by collecting together the sayings and deeds of the holy men they met they produced a vast body of spiritual and hagiological literature which permeated medieval thought both in the West and the East. Of course, the Lausiac History of Palladius (died c

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the Church History of Theodoret (died c. 4 5 8 ) , and the charming Pratum Spiritvale of Johannes Moschus (died 619) are not history as we mean it to-day. There are too many miracles and acts of the devil in them, but we should not let that worry us unduly: the place now occupied in the minds of readers of to-day by romance was then held by the miraculous. But if you take these works, together with the Conferences of John Cassian (died 430), which record in all their extraordinary exuberance the conversations he had with the holy fathers of Nitria and Scetis, and add to them the Apophthegmata Patrum—that curious muddle of bons mots, pious dicta, and riddles attributed to the most famous hermits and strung together like a necklace—these works taken as a whole lead us on one of the most enthralling of human spiritual adventures.

419-20),

Two areas were particular favourites of the early tourists. The first, and easiest to reach, was in Lower Egypt in the desert alongside the Western branch of the Nile delta, to the west of a line from Alexandria to Cairo. It is an enormous stretch of sand-dunes, firm in some places, treacherous in others, scattered with lumps of nitrous silicate which glint and glitter in the implacable sunshine, jabbing at your eyes and making walking difficult. No vegetation, except for patches of stiff grass and reeds along the edges of the numerous swamps from which they extract nitre. There is almost no sign of life at all; it would be impossible to live by hunting here. Luckily, in one or two places freshwater springs allowed the monks to build their settlements. Today this huge desert region is called the Wadi el Natrun, because of the nitre in its swamps. Until the sixteenth century the Arab name for it was Wadi Habib, after one of the Prophet's companions who is said to have conquered it. Previous to that, according to historians of monachism, it was divided into three parts. About thirty-five miles south-east of Alexandria, near what is now the village of El-Barnagi, rose the hillock called in Greek manuscripts Mount Nitria. The imposing name meant very little in fact, for the

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Greek word horos used to translate the Arabic jebel merely referred to a slight rise in the ground. A little farther south, perhaps ten or twelve miles from the 'mount,' was the second region, which the ancients distinguished not by any physical feature, but by its little group of buildings which earned it the name of " T h e Cells" ( T a Kellia), an important piece of evidence, for it tells us something of what the place must have looked like. Apart from a few stone houses, the cells must certainly have been similar to the temporary huts one still sees used everywhere in the East—four posts rammed into the ground, with a roof of palm-leaves and two or three mats hanging down as protection against the wind and sun. They provide enough shelter for a season or two, and then, once they are abandoned by their owners, they vanish completely. It is hardly surprising in the circumstances that no trace is left, either here or at Mount Nitria, of any of the dwellings mentioned by the early travellers. Two days' march south, and the more persevering traveller would reach the desert of Scetis, some forty miles from Mount Nitria at the westernmost point of the Wadi. Monastic colonies were clustered together all along this area as far as Memphis. These colonies of monks owed their existence to two men, Amun and Macarius, who, although strictly speaking neither was a disciple of St Antony, brought his ideal to Nitria and Scetis at the beginning of the fourth century. They lived a semi-hermitical existence in these colonies—that is to say, the ascetics lived alone in cells and came together only at the week-end to celebrate the Sunday offices in some central place, rather as do the hermits in the skits on Mount Athos. Most early tourists went no farther than the Wadi el Natrun. A few of the more venturesome, however, pushed on to the spot where the Nile makes a bend just south of Thebes. There they found more hermits whose way of life, though equally austere, was very different from that they had seen at Nitria and Scetis. Instead of spending each week alone, each left to choose his own type of mortification, these monks were gathered into huge monasteries whose organization

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testifies to the genius of their founder. It was an old soldier called Pachomius who gave monachism its coenobitic form, first at Tabennisi and then in other monasteries grouped around it. Each monastery consisted of a walled enclosure containing several buildings, each housing about forty monks under the supervision of a head monk and an assistant. These two remind one of the Pharaonic foremen with their sticks, for each house grouped together monks practising the same craft—weavers, mat- and basket-makers, carpenters, cobblers, bakers, etc. Manual work played an important part in Pachomius' rule. It alternated with communal prayers and conventual exercises. The monasteries of the Thebaid were the pattern for all the coenobitic groups we know to-day. This pattern of monastic life laid down by Pachomius and continued by Shenudi and other disciples was so successful that bit by bit it supplanted the hermitical and semi-hermitical forms of monachism. By the time of the Arab invasion it had spread in all directions, forming a network of Coptic monasteries from Alexandria to Asyut, some 450 miles up the Nile, covering both banks of the river. The greater proportion of these monasteries are known only from the lists drawn up in the fifteenth century by the Arab historian A1 Maqrisi, or from occasional references made to them in manuscripts. Many of them were built of perishable materials and have vanished completely into the sands. Often it is difficult to determine even their site with any degree of accuracy. Among those which remain, several, like the White and Red Monasteries near Sohag, no longer carry out their monastic functions and are only the refuge of a few Coptic priests; others have attracted the curiosity of archaeologists, and excavations on their sites have thrown much new light on the dayto-day existence of their former inhabitants. Among those brought to light by the archaeologist's spade, two are particularly important—Bawit and Saqqara. The first, situated about two hundred miles south of Cairo between the present Shmun (Hermopolis) and Qus (Aphroditopolis), was founded by one of Antony's disciples, Apa Apollo, who died in 315. The other, close to

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the famous necropolis of Saqqara, owes, if not its foundation, at least its prosperity to Apa Jeremy, who lived in the second half of the fifth century. As excavations have shown, both monasteries flourished for several hundred years, but declined and fell into disuse in the tenth or eleventh century. Once they were abandoned by the monks they were swallowed up by the sand, which has preserved a mass of rich carvings and paintings. Were it not for these finds we should know next to nothing of native Coptic art, the successor of the Egyptian art of the Pharaonic period. It was a hybrid, this art of the ancient Copts, ill-defined in its form and in the influences it showed. It had nothing of the wonderful unity of ancient Egyptian art, and describing its specific features is difficult. It can best be understood if it is compared with Roman or Byzantine art of the same period. In recent years Coptic art, especially the fabrics, has attracted numerous artists by its fresh colours, its disdain for academic art, and the chaotic, sometimes primitive, look of its lines which makes it extremely modern in appearance. Even if there is no need to analyse the essential characteristics of Coptic art here, one thing at least must be pointed out—the immensely important part played in its creation by the Egyptian monasteries. It is not too much to say that the Egyptian monks here played a role identical to that which their Western counterparts were later to play in the formation of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Why, one may ask, were the Egyptian monks, like ours, preoccupied with problems of construction and sculpture at the expense of literature and scholarship? The reason is that both groups saw their lives directed towards utilitarian and ritual ends. Buildings and their ornamentation were not for them a theoretical pastime, a sort of aesthetic research programme; they were a necessary part of their monastic life, much of which was spent in church in solemn offices and splendid ritual. Therefore the churches and their decoration had to be in keeping with their holy purpose, worthy of the God worshipped inside them, and at the same time useful and instructive to men. The

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primary role of sculpture and painting in Christianity is in fact this: they are to remind man of the great events of religious history and the principle dogmas of his faith. So, in the fifth century, the first great churches of Egyptian coenobitism were built near Sohag—the Red and White monasteries; those at Bawit and Saqqara came in the century that followed. The application of a basilican plan, hellenistic in origin, to buildings which from the outside look like ancient temples, with prismatic lines and gently inward-sloping walls topped with a projecting quirk, reveals the new mental attitude which produced Coptic architecture. Yet it is not perhaps particularly Coptic. What is so is the decoration. Here the genius of the Coptic designers ran riot, with capitals, scrolls, niches and pediments burgeoning everywhere in total disregard for any connexion with the architecture they were decorating. Coptic sculpture retained a large assortment of ancient motifs, but did not make use of the human figure, repeating instead endless mazes of lines which are forerunners of the inextricably intertwined tracery which is generally supposed to have been the invention of the Moslems. The Coptic tracery has less fineness of detail; it is heavily, sometimes even coarsely worked, and relies on the effects of light and shade produced by stylized floral designs and geometric patterns. These motifs were, of course, also used by the fresco-painters whose most flourishing period was from the fourth to the sixth century. Here, though, human figures appear, foreshadowing the great groups of saints which decorate the walls of Greek monasteries everywhere. The richest collections of Coptic paintings are at Bawit and Saqqara; from them one can discover not only the painting technique used, but also the particular sources of the artists' inspiration. Like those at Mount Athos, where the themes and layout were obviously selected by a single man, the paintings in Coptic monasteries of the best period seem to have been painted with no intention of illustrating any particular theological theme, but rather as it were at random, following the inspiration of the artist's piety. The style is overwhelmingly monumental, and one can already see, though in a less elongated

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farm, the precursors of the long-bearded ascetics who stand, scarcely seeming to belong to this world, in vivid, rigid, staring ranks along the walls of the refectories of Vatopedi or laura. Coptic art, inspired by the Roman portraits at Faiyum, laid great stress on objective realism, and its faces are indelibly fixed in the memory of those who have seen them. That, for example, of Apa Jeremy, emaciated, sparkling with life, and yet of a man already old, with hollow cheeks from the loss of his teeth, completely white hair, and a strange unforgettable look in his large, clear, blue eyes. Every possible theme from both Old and New Testaments was used by the Coptic artists, but most of all they seem to have been attracted by the Virgin. They were the first to create the image of the Virgin suckling the Child which was later so popular with the Italian primitives. One can study Coptic art quite easily without going to Egypt, since remarkably fine pieces of sculpture and painting can be found in museums. But they are all archaeologists' finds, and as such are dead. Egyptian monachism is happily still alive. To see it as it is to-day one must go to what the guide-books call the "Monasteries of the Red Sea and the Wadi el Natrun." The monasteries in the first group, those of St Antony and St Paul, take us right back to the origins of Egyptian asceticism. Although today they are not particularly inaccessible, they were so until quite recently. This explains the paradoxical situation by which these two monasteries are known only to us through the stories of seventeenthand eighteenth-century travellers whose descriptions are not very reliable and no longer tally with the facts. A complete photographical, historical, and archaeological survey is being carried out by M. Jean Doresse, a French scholar who has stayed at the monasteries several times. My brief note here cannot possibly take the place of the definitive study he is preparing, but it is based on a fairly long stay which I made there in 1956. The big foreign cars which Egypt now possesses in such large numbers enable one to reach St Antony's monastery in less than four

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hours from Suez, which was in former times Clysma, the startingpoint for fourth- and fifth-century travellers. Since, for reasons known only to the Egyptian High Command, the whole area is closed to the general public, one can enter it only after having procured a permit, which is quite easily, and sometimes even quickly, obtainable. With its help you pass through the various road-blocks set up at intervals along the road. As for entering the monasteries themselves, you can do that only if you have a written introduction from the Patriarch of the Coptic Church. The monks have learnt caution from the series of attacks which they have suffered at the hands of brigands over the ages. An example of their caution occurred during my stay: two American cars lost their way in the desert and finally arrived at the monastery at eleven o'clock at night. Their occupants were allowed in only after a whole hour's palaver at the gates. It was a case of charity versus the rules, and in the end charity won. But if these travellers had been bandits they would have had to fight for it. The whole monastery was alerted, and from what I have read of Coptic history I know that these monks are anything but slow on the draw. Nothing came of the incident, and the Americans were let in peacefully and shared the guest-room with us. The next day they learnt how they had thrown the monastery into a state of siege by coming at such an untoward hour without any letter of introduction from the Patriarch. The road through the desert winds about, with on the right-hand side ochre-coloured rocks, and on the left the Red Sea, whose deep blue-green waters belie its name. Seventy-five miles from Bur Taufik you come to the lighthouse of Zafaran, then, forking left, the car leaves the made-up road and takes to a track. It is quite easy to follow and leads straight to St Antony's, about an hour's drive away across a sandy desert, almost level, but with occasional small ridges which completely hide the monastery until you are right on top of it. It is twenty-five miles from the sea. When you first see it it is an enormous square of blank walls with one little door, which is always shut. It is opened with a huge complicated wooden key kept by the Father Superior. Above the door is a large niche, and above that an

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open balcony which used to communicate with the hoist, now out of order. As soon as a visitor rings, a monk appears on the balcony, and it is from there that the preliminary conversations are held before the door is finally opened on production of the all-important letter from the Patriarch. All these precautions, which nowadays seem a little old-fashioned, date back to the time when there was no desert police. This is why St Antony's looks like a vast military camp surrounded by stone walls-—a feature which it shares with all other Egyptian monasteries. Its walls are particularly imposing; they are thirty feet high, with a parapet-walk on which you can walk right round the inside of the monastery, passing turrets and watch-towers on your way. The monks used to mount guard there. The wall is more than a mile round, and the walk takes about an hour in all. It is an interesting way of getting a first impression of the monastery and an overall picture of the buildings inside its walls—the monastery proper, with monks' lodgings and the conventual buildings, churches, refectories, shops, and assembly halls. For the Westerner who is used to Romanesque and Gothic monasteries built on a definite traditional plan—a cloister surrounded by conventual buildings and cells—the first sight of a Coptic monastery is something of a shock. It looks like a town, or, rather, a large country village, with brick houses and wooden balconies, winding streets, several churches with low cupolas, vegetable plots scattered everywhere higgledy-piggledy, palm-trees, water-channels running all over the place bringing life to every corner of the little oasis, and all of it, the whole monastery, in such a state of poverty and decrepitude that though it may seem picturesque in the brilliant sunshine, it goes against every sense of order, cleanliness, and hygiene. Faced with this collection of ramshackle constructions and modern buildings side by side (an example of the latter is the church with its two bell-towers at the west end; it is completely out of place here, and is still unfinished), it is quite impossible to find any regular plan. Trying to sort out the history of the monastery from the evidence afforded by its buildings is even more of a hopeless task.

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St Antony's backs on to the northern flank of a mountain—traditionally the place where the saint passed his last years—and is said to have been built by him himself. It is not impossible that he had disciples here, and he may even have grouped them together into some sort of community, but the actual foundation of the monastery unfortunately cannot be attributed to him. The information one can glean from manuscripts shows that the foundation could not have taken place before the fifth century, and, what is more important, that its first occupants were not Monophysite monks, but Greek Melkites. They stayed here right through the seventh and eighth centuries in spite of occasional attacks by the Copts, who were not always well disposed towards them. Thus one manuscript tells how in 790 a group of Coptic monks disguised as Bedouin tribesmen raided the monastery and stole the remains of a certain John the Small, a monk from the Wadi el Natrun, who had fled to the monastery in the fifth century and died there. Thefts of this sort were quite common at the time, and not only among Egyptians. A similar case resulted in the foundation of the great monastery of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, built to house the relics of the founder of the Benedictine order which had been removed surreptitiously from Monte Cassino. Hence the story of the raid by the Coptic monks is perfectly plausible. By that time all the buildings necessary to the life of a large religious community must have been constructed. M. Doresse's excavations have shown that in the eleventh century St Antony's had essentially the same appearance it has to-day; since then the only additions to be made have been utilitarian, and additional walls have been built to surround them. As time went on the monastery became more important; it was mentioned more and more frequently in manuscripts, and it finally passed into the hands of the Copts, though for some time it was dependent on the great monastery of Wadi el Natrun, which was in the hands of the Syrian monks. This dependency came to an end about 1200, though for what

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reason is unknown. Then began a period of great prosperity for St Antony's which lasted until the fifteenth century; the monastery flourished in every sphere—religious, literary, and artistic. As far as its buildings go, the first description we have of them is by Abu Sali, an Armenian who wrote in the fourteenth century. He mentions the surrounding wall, the gardens, cells and keep, and the church, whose paintings, then being redone or renovated, were beginning to look much as they do to-day. At the same time the number of manuscripts in the monastery's collection was increasing. The long list of works which were sent out from the monastery between 1231 and 1306 and are now kept in Cairo shows that St Antony's had an excellent copying workshop as well as a large library. The size of the library enabled the monastery to lead the revival of Copto-Arabic scholarship which took place in the thirteenth century and made famous the Ibn al-Assal family; in their philological research they frequently consulted manuscripts kept at St Antony's, and they mention the vast work of translation and research which was then being carried on at the monastery. It was there too that the first works of the medieval renaissance of Abyssinian literature appeared; and it was there that in the fourteenth century the monk Simeon translated into Ethiopian, from either Coptic or Arabic originals, a number of religious texts, notably the Synaxarion, or collection of the lives of the saints of Alexandria—the Ethiopian Church being linked to the Alexandrian, as its leader was consecrated by the Patriarch of Alexandria. This remarkable intellectual activity brought the monastery to the notice of the Coptic ecclesiastical authorities. In 1209-10 a monk from St Antony's called Isaac was sent out to be Metropolitan of Ethiopia; in 1433 the abbot of the monastery, John, took part in the Council of Florence; in 1466 one of his successors became Patriarch with the title of Gabriel VI. The Roman Catholic world too gradually became aware of the monastery's existence. Baron d'Anglure visited it in 1395, Guillebert de Lannoy in 1421. They paved the way for various travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Ludolf of

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Suchem, Agathange de Vendome in 1637, Vansleb in 1672, Jean Coppin in 1686, all of them humanists and men of learning attracted by the vast store of unpublished Coptic manuscripts. The golden age in the monastery's history came to an unfortunate end towards the close of the fifteenth century. One night (either in 1484 or 149S—the date is not sure) Moslems killed all the monks and sacked the monastery. It remained in ruins for sixty years, until the Patriarch Gabriel VII ( 1 5 2 5 - 7 0 ) rebuilt it and gave it a new community of monks. The monks one meets at the monastery to-day are their successors, for since then monastic life has continued there uninterrupted. There is enough room in St Antony's for several hundred monks, but there are only about forty there to-day; it is difficult to distinguish them from the laymen, for there seems to be no hard-andfast rule about wearing the monastic costume of a blue or grey cassock and white hood. The life they lead is a simple one. They get up at three for the Morning Offices, which last until six. They spend most of the day in comparative idleness, understandably considering the tropical heat, but slightly at variance with the usual idea of monks tirelessly devoting themselves to study or agriculture. Their day ends with another three-hour office, sung to old Coptic chants, accompanied on the cymbals and surrounded by dense clouds of incense. The offices are the only times when all the monks come together. The rest of their time is spent in their own houses, where they pray, work, or do their cooking. It really is difficult to tell what the ideal is these ascetics are following, or to what extent they can be said to represent Coptic monachism on the lines laid down by Antony and Pachomius. And yet the conversations I had with Apa Biktor (Father Victor), the priest at the monastery, revealed him to be a man who could easily have stepped from the pages of the Lausiac History or been one of the Desert Fathers. The first time I saw him was in the evening. Squatting facing the setting sun, he had spread out on a small mat in front of him several saucers of dry grain which he slowly took out, totally uncon-

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cerned by the people standing round him. It all took place in complete silence, in a quiet spot away from the centre of the monastery village where he had built himself a little house whose whiteness and air of cleanliness contrasted sharply with the bare brick of the other buildings which were crumbling under the effect of torrid daytime heat and night frosts. The house was just one square room; a mat on the ground for the Apa to sleep on, quotations from the Scriptures on the walls, some of them in Arabic telling of God's love and the life hereafter, some icons, among them those of the Sacred Heart and St Theresa of Lisieux in the worst tradition of cheap French religious art. Father Victor scarcely spent any time there. All day long he would wander about the streets of the monastery, leaning on his T-shaped stick, the sign of his rank, with a kind word for every one he met; or else he would sit on one of the benches outside the door of his house, reading the Gospels or intoning a chant accompanying himself on cymbals. This little, peaceful world was sufficient for a simple soul such as his; for seven years or more he had not set foot outside the gate, and had refused to see his family; even when they made the long journey across the desert they were told that he was away from the monastery. The great St Macarius would have been pleased by such austere virtue. I can quote no other examples of men like Father Victor, but this is probably because I did not talk to any of the other monks; they were saintly men, all of them, but one could criticize (though the Lord defend us from doing so!) their lack of aesthetic judgment. The picturesque is certainly present everywhere in the monastery, in the little fields, in the dark, shady streets and in those brilliantly lit by the sun, in the refectory with its long table of stone worn concave, and in its many-domed churches; but there is no real beauty, except in the main church, that "remarkable archaeological monument," as M. Doresse calls it, "whose paintings, happily in a good state of preservation, are the finest example of medieval Coptic art in the world." They cover the walls and vaulting in bands about six feet wide, and reach right up into the cupola of the sanctuary, completely

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covering the little apse in the south chapel. They range in date from the tenth to the thirteenth century. In the narthex one is met by six figures of saints on horseback (originally there were nine), among them St Claud the Martyr on a white horse, running his lance through the body of the Emperor Diocletian, the persecutor of the Christians, St Menas with his two camels, Theodore the General, and two more besides who are unidentifiable. The Coptic Church was particularly fond of saints on horseback; there are some at Bawit which date from the seventh century. The walls of the inside of the church are covered with a long series of twenty figures shown as if in niches, standing motionless, staring straight ahead, intentionally painted in sombre colours which contrast with the bright, almost gaudy colouring of the narthex. These are the worthies of the Egyptian monastic world, Antony and Paul, Arsenius and Toma, Samuel, the abbot of the monastery of el Qalamun, south of Faiyum, Apa Moses, a monk with an angel, Barsaum the Syrian, and so on. All of them are in monastic dress with hoods and long, flowing beards, just as they had been painted before at Saqqara and were to be shown later at Mount Athos. You follow this row of ascetics right up to the sanctuary, whose main entrance is through an arch. The intrados of this arch is decorated with two figures, the most beautiful as well as the oldest in the church. They are the archangels Michael and Gabriel, dressed in the Imperial robes which they always wear in Byzantine art. The paintings themselves are Byzantine work, and have no connexion with the Coptic work in the rest of the church. As for the decoration of the sanctuary itself, it is almost impossible to see it. One can just make out St George and St Marcus, both on horseback, with some scenes from their legends painted round them. There are two scenes of the Resurrection, and a Christ in Triumph with the Sacrifice of Abraham on one side and the meeting with Melchizedek on the other. Finally, in the north and south chapels leading off the main sanctuary there are figures of the Patriarchs of Alexandria.

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One of the best of the paintings, and one which gives a good idea of this type of fresco, is that in the apse of the little chapel attached to the south side of the narthex. It shows a Christ Pantocrator, seated on a richly decorated throne against a bright green background, dressed in a pale grey tunic and red cloak. Around him are the four signs of the Evangelists, while on either side the figures of the Virgin and St John illustrate the Byzantine conception of the deity. Unfortunately this remarkable series of paintings is not looked after properly, and it is often difficult to make them out because of the grime from smoky candles and incense. Only their wonderful hospitality can make one forgive the Coptic monks their neglect of works of art. Hospitality is a particularly monastic virtue, but here it is more in evidence than elsewhere. The monks of St Antony's practise it to the full. Not only do they come to meet you at the monastery gate, in a little group headed by the abbot himself, but they even give you a whole house of your own. It is simply furnished, of course—a rather wobbly iron or wooden bedstead, chairs, tables, and an oven. That is all. But once you have settled in, it is your own to arrange as you please with the help of the monk who has been detailed off to serve you. As you can hardly ask the monastery to feed as well as house you, you bring your own food and drink and prepare it as you like: you are completely free. Women visitors are welcome too (a change from our monasteries!), for where else would they find shelter in the desert ? No visit to St Antony's would be complete without seeing the neighbouring monastery of St Paul, which is on the other side of the mountain. To get there you must go back along the road to the lighthouse at Zafaran. You drive along beside the sea for some miles and then turn west, through a wadi whose wild and grandiose scenery makes a vivid contrast to the desert you have just left behind. Another hour's driving through a landscape of bare black rock, and you suddenly come out in front of the monastery. Its history is almost the same as that of St Antony's, since originally it was dependent on the older monastery, and priests of St Antony's came out to St Paul's

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to celebrate the offices. It is neither as large nor as richly endowed as its mother-monastery, but its general lay-out is much the same—a conglomeration of houses, streets, churches, and gardens, behind walls even more impressive than those of St Antony's, because here the monks have let their imagination run wild, covering them with fantastic superstructures. Life in this monastery goes on in the same way, and the number of monks in the monasteries must be about the same. But St Paul's is more intimate and better-looked-after. You feel less lost there, and the ground-plan is less of a jumble. Some of the buildings are worthy of note, especially the square block of a keep with, below it, half-underground, part of an early church cut out of the rock. There, so they say, St Paul of Thebes lived. There is, though, little artistic wealth in the monastery. The paintings scattered all over the walls of the entrance staircase or the chapels were redone in the eighteenth century by a monk who prided himself on being self-taught—a fact which is painfully obvious. All one can say in his favour is that he did at least keep to the traditional subjects, figures of anchorites, the Virgin enthroned between two cherubim, the Three Children in the Furnace, saints on horseback. In many places graffiiti in gothic script show how St Paul of Thebes' monastery attracted the pious pilgrims who went to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. In its sun-scorched wilderness it still has this magical attraction. Reluctantly you tear yourself away and move north to visit the Coptic monasteries of the Wadi el Natrun. By the fifteenth century, according to the Arab historian al Maqrisi, there were only seven Coptic monasteries left out of the hundred or so which once covered this wilderness. There were still seven when Napoleon on his Egyptian campaign sent General Andressy to make an accurate survey of the Wadi el Natrun and its mineral deposits. To-day there are only four left, and their combined populations cannot come to more than a hundred and fifty monks, if that. Yet although they are thus reduced to the state of being mere relics of a past

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era, Der Makarios, Der Amba Pshoi, DeresSuriani, and Der Baramus are among the most attractive examples of Coptic monasteries. Not that they are particularly picturesque; if anything, they are less so than the monasteries of St Antony and St Paul. They stand on the flat, desolate plain of the desert in the familiar form of squat fortresses. Compared with the other monasteries they are more compact, more tightly packed inside their walls; they look better kept, cleaner, and better organized. With their vegetable gardens and their palm-trees, which the monks manage to keep alive with the water from the wells, they have a look of life and greenness about them which it is pleasant to find in the middle of the desert. Nowadays they are much more accessible than they were, thanks to the military road built by the British during the Second World W a r to link Cairo and Alexandria, and also thanks to the jeeps which can cope easily with difficult tracks across patches of alternating soft and hard sand. To-day these monasteries are well-known: the archaeological expedition of 1 9 2 0 - 2 1 organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Evelyn White's three large books containing the results of the expedition's two years of study and field-work have revealed most of their secrets. The history of these monasteries is now known, at any rate in broad outline, and we know that it is possible to find the buildings of the first monasteries beneath the various pieces of reconstruction which were carried out from time to time after attacks by the Arabs or occasional periods when the monasteries were abandoned. Their foundation dates back to the fourth or fifth centuries. The oldest buildings extant go back only as far as the ninth century, when it was felt advisable to build surrounding walls and gather inside them all the monks who were still living in lauras round about—that is to say, those who were living according to the semi-hermitical way of life. This relatively late date of construction does not mean that the buildings are any the less important; but it does mean that the main interest of the visitor or the historian is not in the buildings themselves, but in the fine examples of CoptoArabic art which they contain, dating from its first appearance right D

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until the end of the Middle Ages. The sculpture, stucco mouldings, marquetry work, and paintings from these monasteries are further pieces of evidence which, taken together with all the other examples of Copto-Byzantine art, may encourage a fuller study of medieval Coptic art than has hitherto been attempted. From this point of view the monasteries are not all of equal importance. Der Baramus, which is the largest, has also been the most rebuilt in recent times, and is therefore, together with Amba Pshoi, the least interesting. On the other hand, Der Makarios and Der es Suriani are places of supreme importance for the study of cultural life in Christian Egypt under the Arabs. Der Makarios, or, as it is also called, Abu Makar, is the oldest of the four. I was unfortunately unable to visit it myself, so what I can say about it is only second-hand knowledge. The paintings which cover the walls of its chapels are the work of Abd'el Massih, an Ethiopian priest who lived in the fourteenth century. Their subjects are the Fathers of Egyptian monachism or the Saint-Horsemen so favoured by the Coptic Church; the colours and technique are extremely simple, but the vigour of the drawing and the hieratic treatment of the figures make them very impressive. They are, however, still relatively unimportant in comparison with the paintings in the large church of the monastery which depict scenes from the life of Christ. These date from the ninth to the eleventh centuries; Evelyn White has pointed out that they are extremely rare, if not unique, among mural decorations in Coptic church interiors, for the elements of Fatimid art which run through all these paintings show the fusion of the two civilizations and the interchange of ideas which took place between them all the time in countries where the conquering power of Islam did not suppress Christian minorities. Der es Suriani is very differently placed as far as its historical significance goes. It is, of course, important in the history of Christian art in Egypt for its main church, that dedicated to the Virgin (El Hadra), with its splendid marquetry doors and especially its frescoes (the Annunciation, Nativity, Ascension, and Dormition), which are

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probably the only Syrian frescoes which have survived in a good state of preservation. But the monastery's main activity was concentrated on literature. The curious thing about it is that it was not the Copts but the Syrian monks who were responsible for this literary activity. The Syrians held the monastery almost continuously from the seventh to the sixteenth century, and they gave it its name: Der es Suriani means "the Monastery of the Syrians." Founded in 535, its original name was the Monastery of the Theotokos of Amba Pshoi, presumably because at first it was dependent on the older monastery. T h e y are only a few hundred yards apart. T h e Syrians arrived in the sixth century, supported by a colony of rich merchants from Takrit, in Mesopotamia, who were established at Fustat—that is, Old Cairo. Evidently these merchants provided the monks with manuscripts written in their own language. T h e principal benefactor of the library was Abbot Moses of Nisibis, a man of taste and culture, who was a passionate lover of literature. He was sent to Baghdad in 927 to obtain f r o m the Caliph A l ' M o q tadir a remission of the taxes imposed on the monastery, and he took the opportunity of making a tour of Mesopotamia and Syria at the same time. He spent three years touring, and brought back with him more than two hundred and fifty Syriac manuscripts, which he had either bought or been given. Back in D e r es Suriani, he went on adding to the library by having copies made of books which he borrowed f r o m other libraries. Other benefactors followed in his footsteps: about 927 also, the Patriarch Abraham of Alexandria gave several manuscripts which are still in the monastery's possession.

From the twelfth century onward the bibliomania seems to have died away. From time to time, in the notes jotted down in the margins of manuscripts (a practice very common in the East, and a very useful one for the historian too), one can catch glimpses of decadence. In the sixteenth century Abbot Severus tried to bring back the greatness of the library by having the books which were in bad condition repaired. They were mended again in 1624, for the last time before

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they were dispersed and the West realized what wealth lay hidden in this monastery. W . Wright, the great Syrian scholar, once said that it was this dispersion of books which set off the revival of Syrian studies at the end of the last century. The manuscripts from Der es Suriani are some of the oldest books which have come down to us from the East. It once possessed the oldest dated book in the world, a manuscript written at Edessa in 411. Then there are the fragments of a Bible written in Syriac at Dyarbakir in 464, and a manuscript of the works of Aphraates, the "Persian sage," made at Damascus ten years later. Very few libraries indeed can boast so many ancient manuscripts. The following centuries were no less prolific: twenty-seven in the sixth century, fourteen in the seventh, seven in the eighth, and these are only the remnants of an enormous collection whose exact number has never been known, and which at times must have exceeded several thousands. It was a curious stroke of fate that for centuries this monastery, lost in the middle of the Egyptian desert, should have been the sole repository of all the knowledge and thought of the Mesopotamian monks. All that they could possibly require to satisfy their spiritual needs these hermits had here at Der es Suriani—the Bible, the writings of the Fathers of the Church, the works of the controversialists, those of the leaders of asceticism. They had books of secular learning too, and these were probably the most significant contribution which Der es Suriani made to universal thought. The Christians of Mesopotamia had soon become interested in the scientific works of Classical Greece, and the Syrian Monophysite Church gave rise to a veritable school of translators, of whom the greatest were Sergius of Rash'ain (died c. 586) and James of Edessa (died c. 708). Under their guidance, and often by them themselves, the whole corpus of treatises on philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and grammar by Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemaeus, Hippocrates, and Galen was translated into Syriac and subsequently into Arabic, and then, later still, in the thirteenth century, into Latin. In

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his monumental work on medieval philosophy E. Gilson analyses the universal importance of this work, and rightly points out that "the Syrian schools were the intermediaries through whom Greek thought was passed to the Arabs, and from them to the Jews and the philosophers of Western Christendom." Der es Suriani was therefore a key point in the long roundabout route by which in the Middle Ages the knowledge of the Greeks reached the philosophical and scientific schools of Cordoba, Salerno, and Montpellier. It was this single monastery which preserved, alas, more often than not in fragments, the greatest number of translations of the most representative works of Greek antiquity. Its position could not fail to impress Western scholars, who, from the eighteenth century onward, became interested in the manuscripts preserved there. One by one these books left the deserts of Egypt and went into European libraries. The Ambrosian Library at Milan and the Royal Library in Paris had already acquired some at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the capuchin monk Gilles de Losche told Peiresc of the existence of the vast collection of manuscripts at Der es Suriani, news which naturally aroused that scholar's interest. From then onward there was a mass exodus. I have no room here to tell the complete story of the removal of these manuscripts from Egypt to Europe. It is a long story, which in places reads rather like a detective novel, what with the underhand methods of the dealers, the tricks of the middlemen, the bargains, and the crooks. But the end justified the means. In the main it was the Vatican Library and the British Museum which benefited most from the deals. In 1707 Elias Assemani, a Maronite in the service of Pope Clement XI, arrived at Der es Suriani with orders to buy up as many manuscripts as he could lay hands on. The monks were frightened by the threat of anathemas which, according to Eastern custom, fall on anyone guilty of removing a manuscript from its rightful owner, and so turned a deaf ear to the suggestions of the Pope's Lebanese envoy. They parted with only thirty-four manuscripts, thirty-three in Syriac

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and one in Arabic. The curse they feared seems to have had some effect, for going along the Nile to Cairo the boat sank, the manuscripts went to the bottom, and Assemani was drowned. A few of the books were fished out of the river and brought to Rome very much the worse for their immersion. Eight years later Joseph-Simon Assemani, a cousin of the unfortunate victim of this accident, made a journey to Der es Suriani, and there found over two hundred manuscripts; he examined about a hundred of them, but his hopes of taking them all back to the Vatican were in vain: the monks were stubborn, and out of the hundred he had seen, he was allowed to take only one or two, and they were at an exorbitant price. In the following century the British were more successful. The younger Lord Curzon discovered a collection of books which the Assemanis and those who had come after them had missed, and the directors of the British Museum began to take an interest in the matter. Thanks to their perseverance and a large sum of money put at their disposal by the Treasury, they brought the greater part of the manuscripts left at Der es Suriani back to London. How successful they were is shown by the fact that while in 1838 the British Museum had only 78 Syriac manuscripts, most of them acquired in Mosul, by 1864 it had 581, for many years the richest collection of Syriac manuscripts in the West. Der es Suriani had provided the greater part of them. To-day, apart from a few Coptic books of no great importance (though there is an illuminated Coptic Gospel), the monastery library possesses, as far as manuscripts go, only a few recently discovered Syriac works, which are being studied by M. Murad Khamil, the eminent Professor of Ethiopian and Syriac at the Coptic Institute in Cairo. But if Der es Suriani had lost the intellectual brilliance which once put it in the forefront of Egyptian monachism, it is still a place of special importance in another way. Some of the leaders of the Coptic Church have decided to try to reinstate monachism in its rightful place in their Church, and the old monastery of the Theotokos has been selected for the experiment. There are about forty monks there

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now, most of them quite young, and they are trying to recreate Coptic monachism as it was established by their great predecessors. Almost all of them are cultivated people, from middle-class families or from liberal-minded circles of Coptic society, and it is probable that they will set aside part of their life of traditional asceticism for study. Time alone can tell what will come of this experiment. At the moment all one can do is wish it luck, as one would any institution which tries to renovate itself by returning to its original sources.

3 A Visit to the Tekke of the Bektashis in Cairo

ROM the desolate arid desert, our next move takes us to a rather more inviting countryside. Desert places act as an incentive to a life of introspection and contemplation, but are not absolutely essential to it. In medieval France the Carthusians, whom we now associate only with mountain fastnesses in the Alps, had flourishing monasteries in Paris and just outside Lyons. The life led there was no less fervent than that at La Grande Chartreuse. The monks found peace within themselves, in the "cell of their hearts." This seems to have been a view shared by the Bektashis, who built their monastery or, in Turkish, tekke, in the eastern part of the Old Town of Cairo, just in front of the Citadel whose mosque with its slender minarets brings an air of the Ottoman Empire to the former capital city of the Fatimids. The tekke is a delightful place. With all its palms, vines, flowers, terraces, and arbours, it makes a pleasant change from the bare, arid Muqattam, the limestone hill which rises on the western bank of the Nile to a height of over six hundred feet. For Egypt, it qualifies as a mountain, and at one time, about A.D. 1000, the Christian monastery

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of Der el Kusair stood on its southern flank. Now the monastery has vanished, but thanks to the Bektashis monastic life has not died out completely in Cairo. Even from the outside their monastery looks attractive. W o r n stone steps, with a wrought-iron handrail covered with bougainvilleas, lead up to the main entrance. Passing through the gate, you come straight into the middle of a network of courtyards, well-kept kitchen gardens, flower-beds with ditches of running water cutting through them, ponds that mirror the blue sky, Turkish-style summerhouses buried deep in foliage. Coming straight from the monasteries of the Wadi el Natrun to this brilliant oasis of colour, you cannot help feeling the sudden change of atmosphere. Everything is restful, orderly, and clean. The same air of peace envelopes the tekke and the other monasteries we have visited, but here it is almost Franciscan, so earnestly do the Bektashis love nature, just as did the little friar of Assisi. This is the first thing that strikes you; you see it in the wellcared-for look of the trees and animals. There are only about a dozen monks here now guarding the tomb of Sheik Abdullah el Maghaouri and the tombs of his followers who wished to be buried beside him. The little community lives under the benevolent rule of its leader, the Baba Ahmed Serri Dede; they spend their time gardening or looking after the farm animals—the hens, turkeys, tame gazelles, clean oxen, the large-uddered cows which although they belong to the monks still follow the Oriental custom and wear round their necks or over their foreheads a string of blue pearls to ward off the Evil Eye. The Baba, who was elected some years ago, is a fine old man; his natural dignity is enhanced by his magnificent costume, a striped green-and-white robe with the white cloak of the Bektashis. Round his waist he has a broad brown cummerbund with the stone amulet called teslim tash attached to it, though it should normally be worn round the neck. He has also a staff with a small double-bladed axe on the top of it. His headdress is the white, usually twelve-sided bonnet which is the uniform of the order, and round it he has a green turban

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to indicate his rank of Baba. His heavy silver ear-rings shaped like the crescent moon show that he has taken the vow of celibacy. The Baba is a very easy man to talk to. When he is not taking a siesta he wanders about his fairy gardens and is very willing to talk about the history of the Bektashis. They were founded, so he says, seven hundred years ago, and follow the doctrine of Islam, though they lay more emphasis on prayer and meditation; their doctrines and principles of introspection are preserved in manuscripts which have never been published or translated, "because foreigners would not understand what it was all about." They number to-day about six million members. All this information is most readily and graciously given, but with the particularly Eastern imprecision and indifference to reliable statistics and accurate historical data which must warn the unwary against taking it at its face-value. If one had only the Baba's information to go on one would still be very much in the dark about the Bektashis and the place they occupy in the Moslem world. Either through ignorance or a desire not to explain too fully the nature of a sect which is reputed to be heretical, the head of the tekke prefers to remain diplomatically silent and let the visitor try to find out for himself. The order of the Bektashis takes its name from Hadji Bektash Khorasani. His life story is told in the Menaqib el 'Arijin ("Biographies of the Mystics"), by Shams ad-Din Mohammed, a fifteenthcentury collection of stories which is to the Moslems what the Golden Legend is to the Christians. This book tells that Hadji Bektash was a brilliant teacher, who did not adhere too strictly to the rules laid down by the Prophet. He was born at Nishapur, and was brought up in a community where Sufic mysticism had already appeared. He then went to Anatolia, attracted by the fame of the holy Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the founder of the Dancing Dervishes. His exemplary life, together with the miracles he performed, attracted disciples to him in turn, and they dared openly to call him the Baba Razul Allah, " t h e Father sent from God." The story tells how,

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as soon as he arrived in Anatolia, Bektash visited the Sultan Orkhan and gave him his blessing. Later, when the Sultan founded the regiment of the Janissaries as the mainstay and defence of the Ottoman dynasty, he made Bektash their almoner. It was even due to him that the regiment got its name, for it was he who called them the "new regiment," Teni Cheri, from which we get the word janissary. He lived on into the reign of Murad I (reigned 1359-90), and was buried in his adopted country at Qir Shebri, now called Hadji Bektash, near Kayseri, the old Caesarea, in Cappadocia. His tomb became a favourite place of pilgrimage for the faithful, who thought of him as their Pir, or spiritual father. Even if the whole of this story is not a fabrication it has to be taken with a pinch of salt, for it now seems as though it all may have been concocted later as a justification of the policy of the Bektashis towards the Janissaries, and through them towards the Sublime Porte, the Turkish imperial government. The real founder of the order, the man who gave it its rules and doctrine, was Balim Baba, who died in 1516. Although the religious movement they represent was older than this, it was only in the sixteenth century that the Bektashis actually appeared, and only from then onward are we able to find accurate information about their beliefs or activities. Their doctrines show many signs of the Sufic ideas of the equality of all religions and the uselessness of external rites. They profess to be Sunnites—that is, orthodox Moslems whose faith is based on the Koran which God gave to Mohammed, and on the Sunna, the written gospel which contains the utterances of the Prophet and his early companions. In reality though they are Shiites, and believe that the caliphate cannot be elective, but that it is reserved solely for the descendants of Fatima. They are followers, practically worshippers, of Ali, and only grant Mohammed and his earliest successors a small place in their worship. They lavish particular devotion on the tombs of saints to the point that prayers addressed to them have taken the place of those required by the ritual. This is why the Bektashis so often built their monasteries near cemeteries, which are popular

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pilgrim centres. This is the case with the tekke on the Jebel Muqattam. There, not only are there tombs grouped together in grottoes, but also more elaborate sepulchres scattered about the gardens, often with cupolas, so large that one could easily mistake them for mosques. Bektashis, being generally ready wits as well as of a liberal turn of mind, like to poke fun, albeit gently, at this exaggerated cult of the dead, and some of the irreverent stories which are in circulation among them might put some devout people off if they were not simply expressions of that caustic humour which is to be found in all religions. Take, for example, the story of the donkey and his son who founded two great Anatolian monasteries and became venerated as saints. . . . A Bektashi Baba who was worried by the increasing poverty of his monastery one day sent out a young monk to ask for alms. With many a solemn injunction to be careful he entrusted him with the monastery donkey. Unfortunately on the way the animal died, and after burying it the Bektashi monk sat by its tomb and wept because he did not know what was to become of him. At that moment the governor of the province passed by, having been summoned by the Sultan to account for his exactions and maladministration. He saw the Bektashi and without listening for any explanation told him to pray to the saint whose tomb it was to intercede for him with the Sultan. A short while later the governor came back from Constantinople far more satisfied with the outcome of his trip than he had ever expected, and promised to repay the saint who had thus helped him in his hour of need. He therefore built a rich monastery round the tomb, miracles began to take place, and crowds flocked to the holy place, while the old monastery fell further and further into decay. Its Baba decided to pay a visit to the monastery of the younger and luckier monk; they greeted each other effusively, wept on each other's necks, and the old Baba was shown the wonder-working tomb. Here the young Bektashi was a little embarrassed, not wanting to deceive his former superior, and started in a roundabout way to explain what had happened. "Oh, I shouldn't worry about that," said the old Baba; "your saint is the grandson of the holy protector of our monastery."

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Some elements in the doctrine and rites of the Bektashis suggest that originally they may have been Christians who only took on the exterior forms of Islamic belief. They believe in a Trinity, in which Ali takes the place of Jesus, and in their meetings, which are held in the main hall ( M a idan Odasi) of their monastery, they celebrate a sort of communion where they share bread, wine, and cheese. They also confess their sins to their superiors and receive absolution from them. They are not strict as regards adherence to the Koran. The ritual use of wine is a direct infringement of its prohibition among strict Moslems. Bektashi women do not wear the veil, and some Bektashis are celibate. All this suggests a non-Moslem origin, as do their mystical numbers and belief in the transmigration of souls. Their past organization shows clearly the 'monastic' nature of their origin. At the time when the Ottoman dynasty was at the height of its power all the Bektashis were under the command of a Grand Master who lived in the parent-house at Hadji Bektash. This office, though not originally hereditary, was in the end handed down from father to son. Each community of Bektashis sent a representative to the Grand Master and was also under the supervision of a Baba, who was resident among them. In this way the monarchic organization of the order was established. After the revolution of Kemal Atatiirk all this changed. There are now no longer any Bektashis in the former Ottoman Empire, nor even in their original country of Anatolia. All were expelled, and if, as Baba Serri Dede says, there are a great many of them left in Albania they are certainly not monks. Bektashism has become just another of the many Islamic sects. Apart from the tekke at Cairo and maybe another in Jerusalem (though one no longer hears it mentioned), the order has no monasteries. The ostracism shown the Bektashis even in our own time is not solely due to Atatiirk's policy of secularization; it can equally be attributed to the bad reputation the order acquired from their intrusion into the government of the Sultans. Their official position in the regiment of Janissaries enabled them to take part in several

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palace revolutions which the soldiers organized. So the fate of the Bektashis was to some extent linked to that of the Janissaries, and when the latter were exterminated in 1826 by Mahmud II all the Bektashi monasteries in Constantinople were destroyed and several of their superiors were executed. Since that date the order has never regained its former power, though it did manage to get back, bit by bit, its property in the capital. The charge of meddling in politics still stuck to them, and even nowadays they are reputed not to confine their actions merely to spiritual matters, which renders them suspect to the Egyptian Government. If they really do still have political aims they cannot be very revolutionary ones; it is somehow difficult to imagine plots against the state being hatched in the calm of their enchanting monastery-oasis, which no one who goes to see the Ottoman Citadel across the road should fail to visit. The presence of the Bektashis in Cairo is a reminder that monachism is not purely a Christian phenomenon, and that Islam has produced forms of religious life analogous to those developed by the hermits who followed the Christian Gospels. Love of God is not reserved to any one religion, nor is holiness. Both assume different forms and nuances according to differences of time, place, and community, but basically they are the same everywhere. As human nature has relatively few ways of expressing its feelings, it is quite normal for men who seem poles apart as far as living conditions, education, and culture are concerned to invent identical gestures and to use identical words in their approach to God without having received any reciprocal influence from outside. Similarities and resemblances which fifty years ago were taken by religious historians as incontrovertible proof of borrowing are now thought of as nothing more than the expression of similar religious feeling. Mohammed was no mystic. His role as the founder of Islam was, as M . Dermenghem says in his introduction to the Lives of the Moslem Saints, " n o t to cultivate his own spirituality or to take upon himself the sufferings of others, but to make an objective message heard, to

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promulgate a new order and to organize a community." He was above all a prophet (nabi) and a messenger ( r a z u l ) . However, he did not eliminate mystics from the Islamic community. Modern critics have recognized that the famous hadith " N o Monachism in Islam" is apocryphal; it was not a saying of the prophet himself, but a later invention of orthodox Moslems who were afraid of the inevitable conflicts which are aroused in any religious community by those who take up a mystical standpoint. " T h e mystical calling," writes the head of Islamic studies in France, M . L. Massignon, " i s usually born of the internal revolt of conscience against social injustice, not only of others, but primarily against one's own faults; there is a yearning towards inner purification as a means of finding God at any price." The revolt becomes more violent as soon as the mystical conscience attracts disciples and emulators, and so becomes the moving spirit of a whole group. The process, frequently met with in Christian monachism, whereby a spiritual leader would become the nucleus of a group of people of similar ideals also took place in Islam. The yearning for mystical life is always present in man, and it appeared right at the very beginning of Mohammedanism. During the first hundred and fifty years though, when the new religion was being spread by conquest which threw into prominence the warlike and organizing capabilities of the Moslems, mysticism escaped the notice of chroniclers. They do not mention a single mystic by name. In the second century of the hegira a great change took place: the first Sufic communities made their appearance. This name, from the Arabic suf ( " w o o l " ) , at first referred only to the white robe (then considered foreign and reprehensible because of its Christian origins) which was worn by the members of a Moslem mystical school set up at Kufa about 760 by Abu Hakim. Fifty years later the word was applied to all the mystics of Iraq, reacting against the luxury of the newly rich civilization and against the aridity of the legal formalism which sufficed the majority of Moslems, who made sure of their salvation by following strictly the requirements set down in the Koran.

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It is difficult to determine exactly the essential basic principles of Sufism, as much because of the proliferation of definitions given by the mystics themselves as because of the varied forms of communal life in which it was expressed. Massignon says that originally it was based on a double postulation: first that fervent practice of religion gives birth in the soul to "graces" which, though immaterial, still have a real, intelligible existence; secondly, that "knowledge of hearts" must give the soul an experimental wisdom which implies that the will has accepted the "graces" it has received. This knowledge gives the Sufis the plan of their route towards God, passing through a series of stages which progressively detach them from their earthly bonds and enable them to reach their goal, Reality itself—that is to say, God. All the Moslem religious leaders had this same basic concept, and the members of each order were subjected to it by their founders. At the time of the First World War, which wrought so many changes on the map of religions in the Near East, and on the organization of Islam itself by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the creation in its place of independent Arab states, there were thirty-two different Moslem orders, most of them even then virtually extinct. Their members were called indiscriminately Sufis or fakirs—that is, "poor men"—or, especially, dervishes, from the Persian word for a doorstep, a reference to their humility. Generally speaking they mostly lived in monasteries, but there were also mendicant orders and orders whose members did not retire from worldly life, but were vowed to perform certain devotional practices, rather like Roman Catholic brotherhoods or third orders. Even those living in monasteries were not obliged to spend all their time there. Only the superior or sheik and the unmarried members were required to live in. The others came only for the services. The welcome given to visitors to the monasteries was legendary, and Christians were often admitted to their services. Most of the members of these orders accepted alms, but only the Bektashis could be regarded as a purely mendicant order, as their

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members took a vow to live only on the donations they received. Even so, some Bektashis earned their living by manual work. This must be the case with those in Cairo at the present time ; begging for alms is hardly possible in Egypt now. Members of these orders had no legal ties to hold them down ; they could change monasteries without any difficulty and even leave the order for good. All they had to do was to stop wearing the robe. Admission to an order was not, as in the West, subject to a code of rules and regulations which governed the conditions of entry. The candidate for entrance had to become a novice and learn the life of the order from an older member. He had to undergo tests of varying degrees of difficulty and weirdness imposed at the whim of the superior. The surest way of discovering the aptitude and progress of the murid, or novice, was to examine his dreams. These orders which have no vows or promises are obviously a far remove from what Christians think of as monastic life, whose basis is the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Yet communal life, the practice of religion, and the selfless quest for God following a pattern originally devised by the great mystics of the past, all make these men seem to us like real monks, and we can hardly refuse to call them by this name, though the limits of their monasticism must be clearly defined. In the Middle Ages there were even Moslem convents. Among the various methods used by mystics to reach a state of ecstasy which is a foretaste of ultimate union with God, the best known are music and religious dances, and the latter are so striking that many writers have described them. Every one will be familiar with the descriptions of the dancing dervishes in Gautier's story of his journey to Constantinople and they reappear in Barrés' Enquête aux Pays du Levant. They are a religious curiosity which attracts both the tourist and the expert interested in the material agents used to provoke the soul into a state of ecstasy. Religious dancing has never been practised by all dervishes. It is mainly the speciality of the Mehlevis, a religious sect which, like the E

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Bektashis, is widespread throughout Asia Minor and the Turkish world. The order of Mehlevis was lucky enough to be founded by a poet, Jalal ad-Din Rumi. He was born at Balkh, in Central Asia, not far from the river Oxus, on September SO, 1207. Legend has it that at the age of five he was already fasting four or five days on end. Brought up by his father, the saintly Beha ad-Din, the infant ascetic went on a pilgrimage to Mecca at the age of fourteen, and as soon as he returned set off for Konya and became a disciple of Shams ad-Din at Tabriz. He soon equalled his master in mystical phenomena, and surpassed him in the lyricism of his verse, the two collections of which, the Mesnevi and the Diwan, make him, in the opinion of M. H. Massé, the greatest of Iraq's mystical poets. They sum up in poetry and not as a doctrinal thesis all the gnosis of the Sufis, expressing it in the language of imagination and emotion. Jalal died at Konya in 1273/74. His remains lie in a mausoleum around which was built the parent-monastery of the Mehlevis, the seat of the Chelebi, or Grand Master, of the order. There, before the War and the Atatiirk revolution, twice-weekly dancing displays were held where the dervishes sought to find divine inspiration in the giddiness produced by continually spinning round and round to the accompaniment of tambourines. This extraordinary method of communicating with God could have been thought up only by a musician, and the first words of the Mesnevi are devoted to the sadness of a soul which has been cut off from Reality—that is, God: "Listen to the song of the reed-pipe lamenting its separation. Since I was cut, it says, in the reedbeds of the marsh, men and women weep at my voice. My heart is torn by abandonment; yet this is in order that I might express the sorrows caused by desire. Every one who is far from his Maker longs for the time when he will be reunited to him. My plaintive song calls for a reunion ; I am the companion of the happy and the unhappy. . . . This flute has a voice of fire not wind: he who does not possess such fire, would he did not exist!" Dancing dervishes are above all musicians. Their meetings (zihr) are often called sama (music).

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There are still some dervisheries left in the Near East to remind us of the order founded by Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Any traveller who has visited the modern museum in Damascus will remember the majestic tekke in front of it built by Sulaiman the Magnificent. It is one of the most beautiful examples of Turkish architecture, with a vast dome, pointed minarets, black-and-white chequered stone walls, cloisters, and gardens. It is closed now, but the silence which envelops it is conducive to meditation and study, and Syrian students take advantage of it; they bring their books here to study along the shady, flower-strewn paths. Also closed, or practically so, is the little dervishery at Tripoli, which is hidden by olive-trees planted along the banks of the Abu Ali, a miserable stream given to sudden floods, which some years ago in a couple of hours almost swept away the suks of the town. Deserted and uncared-for, it is nevertheless still ready for dancing with its large square hall looking out on to the valley, its wooden parquet floors, and above the white arcades the balconies for the guests. But there is no dancing there now. Or, rather, the dervishes from the town and the villages scattered round about rarely start whirling nowadays, and when they do it is only for money. The last time the hall was used was on the occasion of the UNESCO conference in Beirut in 1948. Sir Julian Huxley described the scene in From an Antique Land. After a time the dozen or so dervishes walked in slowly with folded hands, and sat down cross-legged on carpets. They were wearing tall khaki fezzes protruding from small turbans, and brown abbas—sleeved robes like heavy dressing-gowns, but without a belt, and made of camel's hair. The musicians began chanting chants full of semitones, and prayers were intoned. The dancers rose and began to walk slowly round and round in a heavy ritualized step, with a solemn pause at each forward pace, and a turn and a bow each time they passed one corner of the hall. A flute and drums struck up, and after some twenty minutes the dervishes took off their abbas, disclosing full white skirts with weighted hems, reaching from waist to feet. Then, each in his appointed spot, they began their turning. Turning consists essentially in pivoting on the left foot, with two or

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three steps of the right foot to each full turn. As the speed of turning increases, the white skirt flares out into a great rotating cone. One handsome young dervish elaborated the movement by making a graceful dip during each turn, and by varying the position of head and arms. His most beautiful pose was one with arms and hands fully extended in line, one diagonally upward, the other downward, with head inclined against the upward arm, and a serene, absorbed, prayer-like expression on his face. Then there was a stoutish middle-aged little turner, who spun round with head thrown back. He lacked the effortless grace of the young man, but achieved the same look of rapt serenity, He was a policeman by profession. The turning went on for an hour or more, its monotony remaining strangely beautiful and fascinating instead of becoming boring. Most of the dancers stopped at intervals for a short rest, but the policeman and the graceful young dervish never broke their turning. The Sheikh later told us that the policeman had a weak heart, and that his deepest desire was that he might die while dancing.

This mystical desire has not yet been fulfilled, for I too have had the privilege of watching him dance. When the director of the Muzaev ballet company in Moscow paid a visit to Beirut, some Lebanese friends who wanted to show the ballet-master the local product invited several dervishes from Tripoli to show him what they could do. The ceremony started with a prayer said by the Sheik, and took place in a drawing-room, not perhaps the most suitable place for a religious dance; however, none of the religious atmosphere was lost. Although I cannot tell what effect the spinning has on the dancers, I can at least vouch for the fascination which it has for the spectator, and also for the spiritual vacuum which it produces. Devised to induce a feeling of liberation and to lead to a state of ecstasy, these rotating movements have an extraordinary effect on those who are merely spectators, and give them a miraculous sensation of serenity. There is nothing in the dances of the dancing dervishes to remind one of the violence and disorder of the howling dervishes, nor has it anything in common with some of the convulsive frothing-at-the-mouth dances of the Africans. Such a peaceful and pacifying dance as this could only have been invented by a poet. The existence of Islamic monachism, although to-day it has almost

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vanished, poses problems regarding its origins. Syrian specialists have seen it as an imitation of Christian monachism, particularly of that of the Persian Nestorians. On the other hand, scholars of Arabic literature feel it to be purely a product of the Islamic temperament, brooding over the Koran and the hadiths. Given these two extreme views, where does the true position lie? Probably exactly in the middle. In any case, the endeavours of the Moslem mystics and ascetics, just as much as their actual achievements, serve to remind us once again that the spirit bloweth whither it listeth, and often in directions which disconcert our mere human logic.

4 The Greek Monasteries of Palestine

o R some years now a great fuss has been caused by the Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts which accidentally came to light after being buried for almost two thousand years in caves by the Dead Sea. Thanks to the publicity given them by the newspapers, it is rare nowadays to come across anyone who does not know all the details of the story of the discovery of the manuscripts, of their sale to dealers, and of the intensive study by scholars, who have managed to interpret the texts written on them. Certainly the last word has not yet been said about them, for their story is only slowly being uncovered, but, apart from one or two dissentient voices, the specialists who have been poring over the manuscripts for so long are more or less agreed on what they contain. The discovery of ruins on the terrace of marly soil which lies between the caves in the cliffs and the Dead Sea has shown that these manuscripts were the library of a religious sect which can reliably be identified as the Essenes, a mysterious group whose very existence was long in doubt because of the silence of the Evangelists about them, though this was in spite of contemporary evidence like that of the historian Flavius Josephus (37/38—c. 100), the philosopher Philo (like Josephus a Jew), and of the Roman historian Pliny. The latter mentions in his Natural History, " a solitary people, stranger than

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any other, living without womenfolk, without love, without money, their only companions being the palm-trees, their only means of survival the daily arrival of new converts." This society had, according to Pliny, elected to live on the west shore of the Dead Sea, north of the oasis of Ein Geddi, which is a little island of life and vegetation in the middle of this sun-baked region lying more than a thousand feet below sea-level. Such precise information makes it hard to doubt that it was indeed these hermits who built the group of buildings whose foundations have been brought to light by the excavations of Father R. de Vaux, the Director of the Biblical School at Jerusalem, and M r Harding, the Director of the Jordanian Service of Ancient Monuments at Amman. Using the works of the ancient writers, the recently deciphered manuscripts, and the plan of the ruins themselves, it is now possible to reconstruct the life of the Essenes and place them in their historical context. This is not the place to give yet another description of their everyday life, nor even to outline their ideals, which in many ways were like those of monachism, but it can at least be stated that for a great many reasons the Essenes can be considered as "pre-Christian monks." One aspect of their organization must be emphasized. N o living-rooms or cells have been found in the ruins as they are at the moment. The natural supposition that the ascetics slept in huts made of branches (which would not have left any trace) is an unlikely one, since there is not enough space on the terrace to house a large number of people. It is more than likely that these Jewish 'monks' spent their time, when not engaged in communal activities or working in groups, in solitary meditation in the caves which riddle the cliffs in large numbers for a distance of about three miles on either side of the ruins. The latter are doubtless the remains of the administrative and religious centre of a community of men who had taken a vow of celibacy, poverty, and solitude, and who were scattered all over the Wadi Qumran area. The analogies which this arrangement shows with the system

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implanted by the first Egyptian anchorites on the hermits of Mount Nitria and Scetis is striking. The resemblance is even more marked when one recalls the life led by the first Christian monks in Palestine. It is indeed strange to think that at the end of the third century, when several groups of men felt called to lead a solitary life, they went, like the Essenes before them, to the Dead Sea and chose to live in the desert of Judea. It is one of the most desolate and outcast areas of the world. Locus horrendi et vastae solitudinis, as the Bible says, " a place of horror and immense solitude," which covers an area of eight hundred square miles to the east of Jerusalem, dropping down to the plain of Jordan and the Dead Sea. Sandy, windswept, covered with hummocks of land, and dominated by one, slightly larger, hill (the Muntar, 1500 feet), there are no roads across it except those from Jerusalem to Jericho and Bethlehem. Everywhere you see wadis, deep, narrow ravines between almost vertical cliffs, more often than not with a dry watercourse at the bottom: in the north the Wadi Fara, Wadi el Qilt, and Wadi Daber running down to the plain of Jordan; in the centre the Wadi-en-Nahr or Cedron, coming out into the Dead Sea near ' Ain Fashka by the cave where the scrolls were found; and in the south the Wadi el Qaryatein. It was in these wadis that the Christian hermits preferred to live. One day, when the Patriarch of Jerusalem wanted to find out the address of a certain monk, he asked him, "Which ravine do you live i n ? " The ravines had plenty of natural caves which served as living quarters. Small grottoes were the cells; a bigger one would be the church. Up on the plateau, in shallower, wider depressions like small plains, a bigger community would be grouped together round large conventual buildings. This was the way in which, from the fourth century onward, the Christian desert of Judea began to take on its monastic appearance. Counting only the Greek monasteries, there were over a hundred and thirty in this part of Palestine alone at the most flourishing period

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of Christian asceticism—that is, from the fourth century up to the arrival of the Arabs. Every type of monastery made its appearance here. First there was the primitive type, the cell of a solitary monk; then, as disciples gathered round him, the cell became a mother-cell. Next came the laura, a collection of cells or caves round a central monastery. The inhabitants were called celliots. Just as much hermits as their teachers, they had a certain amount of autonomy, and were dependent on the mother-cell only in spiritual matters, for, apart from his submission to ascetic direction, the celliot lived his life as he thought fit, except, of course, on Sundays. During the week the laura was completely quiet, but on Saturdays and Sundays, the days set aside for communal worship, it rang with songs and chants. All the celliots left their cells and converged on the church for the celebration of Mass and the vigils. The laura church in this way became the prototype for the monastery as we know it today—that is to say, an establishment where the monks lead a communal life all the time. There were also in Palestine great groups of monks in walled monasteries, but the laura still remained active and influential. In the eyes of the great anchorites the communal monastery was an inferior type of ascetic life. For them it was the "house of the imperfect," or, as they said, the "house for children," a sort of noviciate where celliots could be instructed. Only when they had become "athletes in the palaestra," to use their own term, could they put themselves forward as candidates for the real life of a hermit, and live in cells, though they ran the risk of being sent back to the monastery if their new teachers felt they were not sufficiently mature to face the rigours of a solitary existence, as, for example, the monk who one day went from Jericho to Jerusalem in company with St Saba. They passed on the way a group of well-to-do people, among whom was a very pretty girl. " W h a t is that girl like? Is she one-eyed?" said Saba, to test his companion. "No, Father," said the young monk, "she has two eyes all right." "You must have made a mistake, my son, because she is one-eyed; I am sure of it." But the young monk was adamant: "No,

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Father, I tell you she has two eyes, and they are very beautiful eyes too." "How can you be so sure?" "Because, Father, I took a good look at her and saw that she had two eyes." "Aha!" said Saba, pleased that his little plan had worked. "So that's how you follow the commandment ' Look not on her, for fear you shall be caught in her eyelids.' Since you cannot keep your eyes to yourself, you cannot stay in a cell with me." And the monk was sent back to his monastery to reflect on the consequences of not keeping his eyes—or his mouth— shut. At the end of the third century several anchorites had established themselves in the wilderness of Judea "in the midst of the reeds not far from the Dead Sea," as it says in the Life of St Chariton, the founder of organized monastic life there. This hermit, whose life-story is mainly legendary, is reputed to have founded the laura of Faran, the model for all subsequent foundations, in the Wadi Fara, a few miles from Jerusalem. After a while Chariton, who was bothered by the hordes of visitors his fame brought him, fled to a spot near Jericho on the mountain where tradition has it that Christ fasted at the beginning of his ministry. Later he moved on again, and founded a new laura in a wild gorge in the Wadi el Qaryatein which is now named after him. But if Chariton was the initiator of hermit life in Palestine he was not its most fervent propagator. This role was played by a group of anchorites who, in the fifth and sixth centuries, covered the Judean deserts with lauras and monasteries. The most famous of them have left their names in the records, attached for ever to the communities they founded: Gerasimo at el Qalamun, John the Qozibite at Wadi el Qilt, Theodorus the Coenobiarch at Der Dosy, etc. The most eminent of them all were Euthymius (died 457) and Saba (died 532), both Cappadocians, who, while achieving in the end the same result, played very different roles in the history of monachism. Euthymius was the missionary of eremitism, while Saba was its organizing genius. After two centuries of work carried out by groups or individuals,

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monastic life in Palestine became more settled; it even had its effect on the geography of the country, for the vast numbers of hermits scattered about the countryside in their hermitages, lauras, and monasteries brought life and colour back to the desert landscape with their little gardens, their trees and wells. To-day the desert has returned to its original form. Conditions of life during the long years of Arab domination made these little groups of men disappear one by one, so that now all that remains of the former hundreds of monasteries are those at Qoziba, a monks' eyrie in the mountains of the Wadi el Qilt, the monastery of Quarantania, which looks out over the desert of Jericho, and, the most important of all, the monastery of Mar Saba (mar is a title of honour meaning my lord). All of them are of the Graeco-Byzantine rite. Ten miles south of Jerusalem, the monastery of Mar Saba towers above the almost perpetually dry bed of the Cedron, a vast mass of ochre walls topped with the blue cupola of the church. When you see it from the south, from the far side of the river, it is one of the most fantastic sights one can imagine both because of the startling austereness of its appearance and the brilliant audacity of its construction. The whole structure rests on narrow ledges of horizontal strata which are characteristic of the rock-formations of the area. The monks built up a great conglomeration of monastic buildings by sticking them on to the sheer face of the cliff, and surrounded them with high walls pierced by a few low, narrow doorways protected by machicoulis. What most strikes the eye from the exterior are the powerful stepped buttresses which appear to be the only thing stopping the monastery from falling down, and yet, for all their massiveness, seem incredibly delicate. Because of the narrowness of the terrace on which it is built the monastery has had to grow upward. This is characteristic of all Greek monasteries, and comes as no surprise to anyone who has seen the monasteries on Mount Athos; you get a preview of it when you visit the patriarchal palace in Jerusalem to get the letter of introduction which allows you to enter Mar Saba. The monastery is a jumble

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of one tiny courtyard after another, of open staircases, of hidden staircases, of terraces and platforms where the cells and domestic offices are crowded together without any particular plan being apparent. The centre of the monastery, physically as well as spiritually, is the church. The church at Mar Saba, beautifully kept, is a basilica with a single nave about ninety feet long by forty wide; it is completely empty except for the usual Byzantine liturgical furniture and for the stalls which run right round the walls. The walls and the vaulting are covered with icons and frescoes which seem to have been painted at a fairly recent date. At the east end the iconostasis cuts the church off from the sanctuary, which has no windows, the only light permitted being that of candles or oil-lamps. In front of the church is an immense narthex, again with stalls, which communicates with the church by means of double doors, the Royal Doors. On the left side is a second narthex with modern paintings of dubious quality and a stone bench running round its walls. These are both places of silence where the monks prepare themselves for the offices. The church is dedicated to the Annunciation. In addition to the main church, which is the heart of the monastery, there are two other smaller chapels. On the left side of the main courtyard there is one dedicated to St Nicholas, a very popular saint in the Byzantine world. This is the chapel which Saba built himself in a large cave in the rock. In a hollow which makes a sort of cellar the monks revere the skulls of their predecessors massacred by Bedouin tribesmen during the many raids which the monastery has suffered— a macabre exhibition very much in the Greek monastic tradition! A third, tiny church is in the cell where St John of Damascus (died c. 749) lived and was buried. His body is no longer there; it was moved to Constantinople in the thirteenth century. The remains of Saba himself are no longer here either: they were taken to Venice. All that is left to-day is the empty little church, facing the Church of the Annunciation, hexagonal in plan, surmounted by an elegant cupola; at the time of the Crusades the relics could still be seen there. Grouped around the three sanctuaries are the cells, the refectory

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with its modern paintings, and the guest-room, where you are offered the traditional little cup of coffee. Women are not allowed there: they are lodged in Eudoxia's Tower, an enormous Byzantine keep built a hundred yards from the main wall as a means of defence. It is not difficult to see why it was built when you think of the bones piled up in the little cellar. There is not a scrap of foliage in the whole monastery, except one miserable, sickly palm-tree growing in between the stones, which is very carefully tended, as it is reputed to have been planted by the founder himself. The monastery was founded in 478 by Saba, the favourite disciple of Euthymius, but it is obvious that the majority of the buildings do not date as far back as that. To judge from their architecture they cannot be earlier than the main wall which surrounds them and which was built to withstand the many raids of the pagans. As there are no trustworthy manuscripts to go by, only excavation could determine with anything like accuracy the respective ages of the various buildings. The result would in any case only give the age of the general ground-plan, since most of the buildings have been rebuilt or touched up at some time according to the usual Eastern practice. The supporting walls seem to be quite recent. There are about thirty monks living in this impressive solitude, most of them old men, or at any rate elderly, cheerfully submitting to a rule of life even more austere than that of the Trappists, and made all the more debilitating by the extreme rigours of the climate— torrid heat in summer and excessive cold in winter. Rising at midnight on Sundays and feast-days, and at one in the morning on the other days of the week, the monks spend the latter part of each night at the Office, followed by the Liturgy (Mass), which ends about half-past six. At ten o'clock, in the communal refectory, there is lunch—but no supper, except on Sundays and feast-days. The menu is plain—bread (made each Saturday for the next week), soup, boiled vegetables, with an oil dressing on high days. In the middle of the afternoon all the monks come together in the Church to sing vespers. The rest of their time they spend alone in their cells, which are more

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often than not natural caves closed by walls with doors and little windows; the furniture is very much in keeping with the life they lead—a mat and a solid-looking pillow on the floor, a chair, a chest for a change of clothes, a niche in the wall or a shelf for books, and finally a water-cooler, an indispensable piece of equipment for any Eastern monastic cell. The monk may not have any books, but he will always have a water-cooler. When not at church or refectory the monk stays in his cell, meditating, reading, or praying. The liturgical formulae of the Office form the greater part of his private prayer, and some monks habitually recite the whole psalter every day, with a great many signs of the cross and bowings, which they call metanies. This is the way in which the Sabaite monk of to-day carries on the tradition of austerity of the earliest Palestinian monks, but this purely ascetic standpoint has forced him to abandon what gave his monastery its unique place in the history of civilization and assured its everlasting fame. For centuries the laxara of Mar Saba, the Great Laura, as it was called, played the role of master first in the religious life of the country—which is why almost all Byzantine monasteries follow its rule or typikon—and secondly in its intellectual life. The monastery's rich library, now housed in the Patriarchal Palace in Jerusalem, bears witness by the size of its collection and especially by its quality, to the activity of its copyists and readers; more important still, Mar Saba was in the eighth century the centre of literary production which put it at the forefront of Byzantine literature, a literature which is essentially religious in character. In the sixth century, under Cyril of Scythopolis, the monastery produced a special form of hagiography which, because it is based on a critical approach to the subject, is akin to modern historical research. With his biographies of Euthymius, Saba, John the Silent, Abraham, and others, Cyril created a genre which was much imitated by his successors. Vassiliev, the Russian historian, has said of these works, that "the careful recounting of events and the precise knowledge which the author had of ascetic life, as well as the simplicity of his

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style, make them invaluable sources for the history of civilization at the great era of the Byzantine Empire." In the two centuries which followed, the literary activity at Mar Saba took on a different form. In Byzantine poetry religious hymnography is, according to the great Byzantine scholar Brehier, "the most original manifestation of the poetic genius of the medieval Greeks." Based on the quantity of syllables and observing a tonic stress—a popular form shorn of any classical erudition—it was inspired by the canonical offices of which it was one of the main elements, since it aims to put into sung verse the Biblical or ecclesiastical themes which form the subjects of the liturgical festivals. A brilliant priest, Romanus the Melodist, if not responsible for actually creating the genre, at any rate produced the most famous examples of it in the Kontakia, a few of which, written in dialogue on epic themes, already contain the seed of medieval liturgical drama. The genre was cultivated at Mar Saba with great success, and the Greek Church still uses the works of Steven the Melodist, Cosmas the Singer, Bishop of Maiuma near Gaza, and his half-brother, St John of Damascus, all of them Sabaite monks. John of Damascus was the most famous and most prolific of all Mar Saba's authors. He was born into one of the Christian groups which, through hatred of Byzantium, facilitated the establishment of the Moslems in Syria and brought power and glory to the 'Omayyad dynasty by supplying it with its ablest administrators. His grandfather, Mansur Ibn Sargun, was appointed controller of finances in Lebanese Syria by the Basileus, and negotiated the handing over of Damascus to the Arabs in September 635. Some authors say that he actually gave them the town. Be that as it may, he made sure that the Christians retained their freedom of religion, and that he and his family retained the position as nobles which they had hitherto occupied. His son succeeded him in his capacity as financial adviser to the various Arab princes, and it was in this world, straddling two completely different political and cultural backgrounds that John of Damascus was brought up. His date of birth is not certain, but can be put

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at about the middle of the seventh century. He was the schoolfellow and companion of Yazid, the son of the great Mo'awiya I, and later joined the administrative corps. His work came to an abrupt halt when Omar II (717-20) passed a decree making it illegal for Christians to reach high rank in the government without renouncing their faith. John decided to resign, and, attracted by the desert, went first to Jerusalem, then to the Great Laura of Mar Saba together with his half-brother, Cosmos. The Melkite monk Mikhail, who wrote an Arabic biography of him in the eleventh century, quotes the little speech made to John by the old monk under whose charge he was put. Whether authentic or not, this speech gives a reasonably accurate impression of the monastic ideal followed by the monks of Mar Saba. " My spiritual son," he said, " I would ask you to put aside all earthly thoughts and actions; do what you have to do. Do not pride yourself on your superior knowledge; monastic and ascetic knowledge is in no way inferior to it; on the contrary, it is on a higher philosophical plane. Be careful to mortify your inclinations and to act against your desires. Do nothing without my consent or without asking my advice. Do not write to anyone. Forget all the human knowledge which you have learnt and never speak of it." From this speech one might well imagine that Mar Saba was hostile to any form of learning, but this is contradicted by its whole history. What John's spiritual director, like all other hermits, was attacking was, in fact, profane learning, which turns the soul from God and infatuates the mind. John of Damascus did follow the old man's advice, and later, when the ecclesiastical authorities, or, rather, circumstances, forced him to write he devoted himself entirely to religious literature. It is said that he was the master and initiator of scholastic theology. By the clarity and precision of his style, by his love of distinctions and argument, and by taking as his evidence the writings of the Fathers of the Church and the Gospels, he did, in fact, create a method of working which was to dominate the teaching of theology and philo-

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sophy throughout the Middle Ages. Through Thomas Aquinas, who read a few pages of John of Damascus' books every day, he became one of the most influential masters of Western thought. A large part of his work is linked to the iconoclastic crisis which twice swept the Byzantine world, from 726 to 783 and from 813 to 842. The term iconoclastic does not simply mean an upsurge of purified religion reacting against the excessive, often superstitious, cult of saints and icons. In reality what was at stake during these two centuries of struggles, disputes, and persecutions was the fate of what constitutes for us the charm of Byzantine civilization—that is to say, its art. If the opponents of the Holy Icons had triumphed part of the beauty of the world to-day would have been lost, for we would have been left to bewail the disappearance of the mosaics inSancta Sophia's, at Daphni, Karie Cami, the frescoes of Mistra, Mount Athos, and of everything in the West which imitates them. Opposition to the iconoclasts, or opponents of the cult of icons, came from two quarters—the monastery of Studion in Constantinople and the laura of Mar Saba. In fact, the movement started at Mar Saba, for it was only in the second phase of the crisis that Theodore the Studite came into the picture. Between 726 and 730, at the request of John V, Patriarch of Jerusalem, John of Damascus wrote three treatises on religious paintings. Using all the resources of his vast theological knowledge, he legitimized their cult by proving that iconography was based on reason, that it was theologically permissible, and that it offered a great many practical advantages. " Paintings," he said, " a r e the books of the illiterate, and the heralds of the honour of the Saints; they instruct those who look at them with a silent voice and sanctify life. . . . If I have no books I go to church, pricked as if by spines by my thoughts; the flower of painting makes me look, charms my eyes as does a flowering meadow and softly distils the glory of God in my soul." All the statuary of our Gothic cathedrals, all the brilliant colours of our stained glass, show similar ideas in the minds of the artists of the Middle Ages. They owed their ideas to John of Damascus and his F

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followers at the Great Laura, especially the brothers Theodoras and Theophanus Grapti. This fact alone should justify a visit to Mar Saba, and is the reason for the few pages which I have devoted to it. Unfortunately in so short a space I have been unable to do justice to this monastery so renowned for its piety and learning. Politically speaking, the Sinai peninsula belongs to Egypt. The best proof of this, for traveller or pilgrim, is that you cannot go there without a special permit obtainable from the Government offices in Cairo. However, at the risk of provoking an official protest at the United Nations, one must distinguish between the monasteries on Sinai and the other Egyptian monasteries. Neither in their conception nor in their organization do they have anything in common with the Coptic foundations of the Wadi el Natrun and the Red Sea. Here the monks are Greeks, Greek is their official language, and their institutions are Byzantine. In the middle of the Egyptian Sinai desert, St Catherine's monastery is a replica of the Greek Mar Saba. To begin with, the whole history of the peninsula was re-oriented towards Palestine after the Exodus, twelve or fifteen centuries before the Christian era. In the great revelation made to Moses, Sinai was definitively attached to Israel, and this gives it an importance which it would never have acquired, even in a world dominated by economics, from the copper deposits and turquoise-mines which, from the fourth millenary onward, were exploited by the Egyptians. Had it not been for this initial manifestation of divine will which made the Jewish people the sole repository of monotheistic religion, Sinai would have stayed as nothing more or less than just another Near Eastern desert attracting the greedy glances of the West, just another battlefield in the pitiless and hypocritical oil war. Ever since it came into being Judaism has looked towards Sinai. It occupies an important place in Jewish literature. It forms the centre of the main part of the Pentateuch, traditionally ascribed to Moses, and is mentioned and revered as a place of special holiness by the Biblical poets and prophets.

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Far from slackening with the arrival of Christianity, the attraction exercised by Sinai over the minds of religious people became still stronger. As soon as the habit took hold in Constantinian times of making pilgrimages to places in Palestine where Christ had lived, the idea arose to complete the visit by a journey to the Sinai peninsula, where Judaism, the ancestor of Christianity, was born. From the fourth century onward, hermits crowded into Sinai. In all its valleys and wadis, anywhere where a spring of fresh water made life possible under the blazing sun, there sprang up little monasteries and hermitages, whose occupants led a life not much different from that of the Palestinian anchorites, for their way of living was dictated by similar conditions and the same ideals. Some groups became larger and took on the form of monasteries, in the modem sense of the word. Some of them, in spite of thirteen centuries of Islamic rule, have remained there to the present time, often still occupied, like Der el Bustan, Der el Ribua, and Der el Arbain, in the Jebel Katherina, but none of them ever attained the fame of the monastery of St Catherine in the Jebel Musa. One of this monastery's icons, a large painting of fairly recent date and good design, which hangs at present in the Chapel of the Burning Bush, is reproduced here as Plate 27; it sums up pictorially the real or legendary events which brought the monastery its fame and which explain how it has managed to survive for fifteen hundred years in the middle of a desert of inhuman desolation which is enlivened only by the presence of the monks, by the visits of pilgrims, and by a few clumps of vegetation provoked into growth by the labours of the coenobites and their Bedouin servants. The icon is in two parts. In the top half Moses is shown at the two most important moments of the Mosaic Revelation upon which the entire history of the Jewish race is based—in front of the Burning Bush and receiving the Tablets of the Law on Sinai. Beneath this the artist has painted a scene which has absolutely no connexion with it. A crowned princess, dressed in the rich imperial robes of the Byzantine Court, is being laid in a tomb on the top of a mountain by two

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angels. This is the story of St Catherine, an Alexandrian woman martyred under Decius, whom angels are said to have buried on the top of the Jebel Katherina. Her body is supposed to have remained hidden there until it was discovered in the eighth or ninth century by monks from a near-by monastery, who took it back to their basilica. These two parts of the icon show two different series of events, separated by an interval of many centuries, one of which at least is completely legendary, but which are together the justification for the existence of the monastery of St Catherine on Sinai. At first the function of the monastery was to perpetuate the memory of the Mosaic Revelation which is traditionally said to have taken place on top of the Jebel Musa, whose peak towers some fifteen hundred feet above the monastery, which is itself over four thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. At that time it was called the monastery of St Mary, or of the Transfiguration, or sometimes of the Colloquy—that is, the mysterious conversation between God and Moses. An Arabic inscription built into the wall above the main entrance states: " T h e pious king Justinian, of the Greek Church, in the expectation of divine assistance and in the hope of divine promises, built the monastery of Mount Sinai and the Church of the Colloquy to his eternal memory and that of his wife, Theodora, so that the earth and all its inhabitants should become the heritage of God; for the Lord is the best of Masters. The building was finished in the thirtieth year of his reign, and he gave the monastery a superior named Dukhas. This took place in the 6021st year after Adam, the 527th of the era of Christ our Saviour." Although of a later date than the foundation, this inscription records accurately the origins of the monastery. Before 527 there was no monastic community at Sinai, only a throng of small hermitages. This period is recalled in the myriads of little chapels which are scattered all over the mountain, marking sites previously hallowed by anchorites. What decided the Emperor to build a monastery was the insecurity in which the hermits lived. Although the peninsula had been Chris-

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tianized and was under the jurisdiction of a bishop who lived at the oasis of Faran, the native population of Saracens were still unruly and frequently vented their rage or envy on the anchorites. History records many such massacres, some of them of an indescribable barbarity, like that witnessed in 400 by St Nilus, one of the most famous of all Sinai ascetics. T o protect the hermits against this butchery, the usual procedure was to build large towers near where they were grouped so that they could take refuge if attacked. These towers, however, proved insufficient protection; the monks then sent a deputation to Constantinople to inform Justinian of the situation, which was prejudicial to the spread of monasticism in Sinai. The Basileus passed them on to the architect Stephen. Around the chapel built by the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, which had until then formed the centre for the groups of hermits on the Jebel Musa, the architect built a large basilica, which was in turn surrounded by a strong wall inside which the monks could gather for their communal activities. In addition, the Emperor installed a few miles away from the monastery two hundred families, half from Pontus and half from Egypt, whose duty was to guard and serve the monastery and the monks. These were the ancestors of the present monastery vassals, the Jebeli ( " m e n of the mountains"), whom the other Bedouin derisively call the monastery slaves. They are divided up into four families, each led by a sheik nominated by the monastery. Ecclesiastically the monastery was dependent on the bishopric of Faran, which was part of the province of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Later the seat of the bishopric was transferred to the monastery itself. The two centuries which followed its building by Justinian were the monastery's Golden Age. The Arab invasion did not hit it very hard. It did not worry the monks at all because it was rumoured that the monastery possessed a manuscript work of Abu Talib, signed by his nephew Mohammed, with the marks of the Prophet's fingers still on it. It was said that Mohammed had granted the monastery this edict of protection in recognition of the hospitality he had received there on one of his journeys.

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In the eleventh century the monastery of the Colloquy changed its name and became the Monastery of St Catherine. This brought it further fame and proved an even greater attraction, for what the travellers of that and later centuries came to honour was less the memory of the Sinaitic Revelation than that of the Alexandrian martyr. It is from this time that one can date St Catherine's popularity in the West. Her story, brought back by the Crusaders, provoked such enthusiasm that many girls were called Catherine after her, a custom still common in Russia up to the time of the Revolution. Pilgrims came to St Catherine's from all over the world. It was only a short step for the Crusaders to come there from their newfound kingdoms in the East. In 1177 Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, went there with his companions, shortly afterwards followed by Renaud de Chatillon ; King Baldwin wanted to follow their example, but the monks persuaded him not to, fearing that the visit of a Catholic king might offend the Moslems. Other pilgrims came from farther afield, from overseas, following different routes, all leading to Sinai. There were crowned heads among them—Henry II of Brunswick, Philip of Artois, Albert IV of Austria. The most interesting travellers were those who left behind them an account of their travels—Dietmar in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth the monk Jacopo da Verona, the German von Baldensel, the Italian Nicola de Martoni, the Englishman Thomas of Swynnburne. Towards the close of the Middle Ages a statement of revenues from Mount Sinai now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris shows Louis XI of France sending 2000 ducats to the Church of St Catherine " a t the wish of Charles the Dauphin." The old king, ending amid bigotry and superstition at Plessis-les-Tours a life not altogether free of crime, did not want to take with him into the beyond a debt to St Catherine. This pilgrim or devotional movement was to a certain extent aroused, or at any rate encouraged, by Sinaitic monks who came to Europe in the eleventh century to beg alms for their monastery. It was maintained by the fact that the monastery was independent of Constantinople and did not become separated from Rome until the

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Council of Florence in 1439. Right in the middle of Orthodox and Moslem territory, it was therefore one of the very few monasteries of Byzantine rite where Roman Catholics could feel at home. This attachment to Rome, doubtless due much more to geographic and political reasons than any definite choice, ensured the monastery the special attentions of the Papacy. Pope Gregory sent a legate called Simplicius, who was charged to take some furniture for the monastery guesthouse; Honorius III confirmed the Archbishop Simon in the possession of the monastery and all its dependencies; John XXII affirmed the rule of the Sinai tic coenobites. The long history of the monastery was not, however, completely cloudless. If the Moslem chiefs in general respected Mohammed's edict the inhabitants of Sinai did not always feel themselves bound by it, and, theft and brigandry being their main occupations, the monks were often their victims. Stephen's church was destroyed two or three times. The monastery allotments and pilgrim caravans were often the target for raids. But the monks never lost the support of those in authority; their library possesses a good number of firmans which attest to this. Among these, one of the most curious is that of Bonaparte "Member of the National Institute, Commander-in-Chief," promulgated in the year VII of the Republic (1800): " o u t of respect for the law of Moses and the Jewish people whose cosmogony retraces for us the most distant ages of history, and because the monastery of Mount Sinai is inhabited by learned and well-disciplined men, in the middle of the desert where they live." The provisions laid down by the Commander-in-Chief in nine articles were confirmed some years later by General Kleber at Damascus in a more military style: " Commander-in-Chief Kleber, wishing to preserve for the monks of Mount Sinai the protection granted them by Bonaparte, authorizes them to arrest and imprison any Arab who dares to insult them in their monastery or to steal their fruit or to rebel against them, provided that they inform the General of such arrests when made, stating the name of the tribe to which the prisoners belong."

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These two documents are posted up on the walls of the library for visitors to see. After travelling for six hours with only a short stop at the palmgrove of Faran the car which left Suez at six o'clock in the morning finally arrives at St Catherine's, and your first sight of the monastery is the cluster of trees waving their heads above the walls of the garden and cemetery. A spring of water and the care lavished by the monks have combined to work this miracle of making a fresh and fragrant grove of cypresses and almond-trees grow in the midst of a desert of rocks and gravel. Immediately afterwards the monastery itself comes into sight. It is an irregular square block, two hundred and forty feet long by two hundred wide. The huge walls with their towers are in several places bolstered up by sloping buttresses of great blocks of pink granite, built without any mortar. The loopholes on the tops of the walls and the sentry-boxes jutting out at angles give it an appearance of a strong, medieval fortress. Externally it cannot have changed much since Justinian's time, for he is supposed to have built the present walls. Changes have been made inside, however. The best view of the monastery can be got from the new gallery built for guests and to house the library. The general arrangement hardly differs from what we have already seen at the Patriarchal Palace in Jerusalem and at Mar Saba. It is the same maze of tiny, narrow, winding streets, of cul-de-sacs, of covered alleys, of little asymmetrical squares, of staircases and terraces placed one on top of the other. The monks' lodgings, the shops, and the communal buildings are all built higgledypiggledy. Often the buildings are covered with a clay wash and are in a state of decrepitude verging on dilapidation. One building catches the eye immediately because of its being so completely out of place in a Christian monastery; it is a little mosque, whose square, solid, lime-washed, cupola-topped minaret stands next to the church belfry. Tradition has it that it was built in the eighteenth century by monks

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who wanted to curry favour with Sultan Selim I the Fierce, who had threatened to raze the monastery to the ground. This is only a legend, because the mosque is mentioned in an Arab chronicle of the fourteenth century. To-day no one worships there any more; it is used as a shop. But if some Bedouin took it into his head to want to make his devotions in this little mosque I am fairly sure that the liberal-minded monks would not stop him. The only interesting building in this agglomeration of new and old is the Justinian basilica, the Katholikon, the community's liturgical centre. From the outside it is spoilt by an Italianate campanile built by a Russian benefactor in the last century, and by its corrugated-iron roof. But this conspicuous lack of taste which is so frequent among peoples of the East does not detract from the unique character of the interior of the sanctuary, unique because its situation in the middle of the desert has sheltered it, not from pillage—it was frequently raided—but from the rebuilding which has in so many places hidden the original Byzantine constructions. Few old churches in the East give the historian and artist so much food for thought. It is a basilica with three naves, a narthex, a semicircular apse, and, behind it, three little sanctuaries with apsidioles. The naves and aisles were never vaulted, but had timber roofs, formerly uncovered, but now hidden by a flat ceiling of painted wood. It is supported by two rows of fourteen columns of Sinai granite, each carved from one solid piece of stone, topped by acanthus-leaved capitals with corbels and godroons based on Classical work, but with variations which show the degeneration of Classical architectural style. This all makes the Katholikon nearer in style to the old Latin basilicas than to the Byzantine churches whose cupolas, later borrowed by the Moslems for their mosques, and cruciform plan were their most characteristic features. But where Byzantium comes to the fore here is in the decoration, and it is no exaggeration to say that not simply the basilica but the whole monastery of St Catherine's is one of the greatest storehouses of Byzantine art that there is. There comes a time when you must resign yourself to the inevitable:

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if you want to find the best examples of Byzantine painting, do not go to Constantinople, but to the countries under Byzantine domination. Of course, the few fragments of mosaic which have been uncovered at Sancta Sophia or the graceful mosque of Karie Cami should not be neglected, but they are only lightweight compared to what is to be found in Christian Greece, in the lands of the Empire, in Ravenna, Cappadocia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the southern provinces of Italy. In this galaxy of form and colour Sinai plays its own extremely important part. In the Katholikon, at the end of the choir, the semi-domed apse is covered with a mosaic which is the monastery's most treasured possession. The subject is the Metamorphosis—that is to say, the Transfiguration—a particularly fitting choice for this sanctuary designed to preserve the memory of divine manifestations; it allows the artist to combine in one picture both Old and New Testaments, and to show, besides Christ, Moses, and Elijah, the two heroes of the old order which was based on Sinai. Christ is bearded; with his right hand brought towards his chest he makes the sign of blessing. On either side of him, beyond his halo from which five rays of light shine forth, stand the two prophets, while the three apostles who witnessed the scene, Peter, John, and James, prostrate themselves or cover their faces, unable to stand the blinding vision. A series of thirty medallions with busts of Old Testament prophets complete the picture, the first iconographic expression of a theme which remained almost unchanged throughout the whole history of Byzantine painting. Even if, like some scholars, one cannot with any certainty attribute this mosaic to the sixth century it must still be one of the oldest mosaics Christian art has produced. With its complementary scenes, Moses receiving the Tablets, and Moses before the Burning Bush, which are on either side of the triumphal arch, it is the first time that a mosaic decoration of an historical character appeared, one which allows the clearest understanding of the rules of composition in Byzantine art before the iconoclastic period. At much the same time the same subject was being treated at S. Apollinare-in-Classe at Ravenna, but

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treated in a completely different way. There the figure of Christ is replaced by a large gemmé cross, surmounted by the word Ichthys (fish), 1 with the face of the Saviour in the centre; Moses and Elijah retain their human forms, but the three apostles are changed into sheep. Where the artist at Ravenna saw a symbol, at Sinai he saw an historical event. Two mentalities are revealed, and even in the mosaics of the apse of St Catherine's basilica there are traces of that which later guided the icon-painters, whose aim, as we know, was not primarily to recall to the minds of the faithful a certain event or a certain person in religious history, but to make the event or character come to life again, to make it, mystically but nevertheless concretely, part of the present to those who saw it. In St Catherine's icons seem to be hanging everywhere, and they have come from all over the world. On the side-walls of the basilica, on the walls of the little chapel of the Burning Bush behind the apse, where you have to take off your shoes before entering, in the museum and sacristies, everywhere, there are masses of pictures of all shapes and sizes, hung without any sense of geographical or chronological order. A thorough methodical classification will have to be undertaken before this vast collection can be studied, its riches brought to light, and our knowledge of Byzantine painting thereby immeasurably increased. M. and Mme Sotiriou have started this work with the publication of a hundred or so icons hitherto completely inaccessible to historians. Even now you can follow the main lines of this minor but nevertheless exceedingly important part of Byzantine art, from the encaustic pictures of the fifth century—so similar in technique and in the appearance of the sitters to the Roman portraits from Faiyum—right up to those of later periods, where a decline in taste, due no doubt to Western influence, is noticeable. This collection of icons cannot in all honesty be called Sinaitic, for although some were painted locally, the vast majority were given by 1 An early Christian emblem, made up of the first letters of the Greek words, 'Iïjooûç XpicTàç ©sou YE6ç ZtoTTip (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour)—Translator.

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pilgrims and are typical of the art of the various parts of the Empire from which they came—Mount Athos, Salonika, Venice. Some are products of the Macedonian school ; some are from Crete. They are, as it were, a résumé of the whole history of Byzantine religious art. The same is true of the sixty illuminated manuscripts kept in the monastery library, one of the richest and most famous libraries in the world. In all there are about 3300 manuscripts there—Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Slavonic, Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopian, even some in Latin. The variety of languages shows how universally famous was the monastery of St Catherine. It was only about a hundred years ago that scholars began to be interested in these treasures. In 1830 Alexandre Dumas visited the monastery with two English travellers, and wrote in his book Quinze jours au Sinai, "The library contains a mass of manuscripts which the monks never look at, and whose importance and value will only be known after some young European scholar has shut himself up with them for a couple of years." Ten years later this call was answered by a famous German philologist, Tischendorf. His name will always be remembered in connexion with the discovery of the oldest complete Greek manuscript of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the fourth century. It is now in London, but to get there and stand in a place of honour in the British Museum it had a long journey, and its history subsequent to its discovery is an amusing comment on the struggle between Russia and England in the East. Tsarist Russia won the first round, but the Revolution gave the second to the British. In 1844 Tischendorf saw in a waste-paper basket a bundle of a hundred and twenty-nine leaves of parchment which were going to be burnt. It did not take him long to recognize their value and rescue them. In 1859, on another visit to the monastery, he unearthed the rest of the manuscript, whose existence he had suspected, though without having any definite proof. He immediately started negotiations with the monks to remove the book to some place where it would be safe from their ignorance which had already once almost

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destroyed it. An Englishman appeared on the scene at the same time and also offered to buy it. The monks told Teschendorf that they would prefer to give it to the Tsar as a present than to sell it to the British. This, incidentally, shows the marked sympathy which the Orthodox Church has always shown towards Moscow, the Third Rome. At Sinai this sympathy was further strengthened by the monks' gratitude to Catherine the Great, who had given the monastery two reliquaries, still kept in the Katholikon, one for the remains of the patron saint of the monastery, the other for those of her own patron. Tischendorf realized which way the wind was blowing, and offered himself as the intermediary between the Tsarist Court and the monks, and he had the great satisfaction of bringing the precious manuscript, which had been "offered as a gift to the Tsar," to Russia himself. 'Offer' here should be taken in its Oriental sense, as something which requires a present in return. Unfortunately the Tsar was in no particular hurry to return the compliment. In 1869, ten years after the manuscript left the monastery, the Archbishop of Sinai wrote to Tischendorf complaining that he had still received "no decoration, no present from the Emperor." A few months later they both arrived—nine thousand roubles, seven for the library and two for the monastery of Mount Tabor, a dependency of St Catherine's. Decorations were enclosed with the money. The Codex Sinaiticus remained in the Imperial Library until 1933. In that year the Soviet Government ran short of money and agreed to sell it to the British Museum for ¿£100,000. More than half the sum was produced by public subscription. Although deprived of this unique manuscript, the Sinai library is still rich enough to stand comparison with the largest European and American libraries. Apart from the illuminated manuscripts, decorated with the most prodigious Byzantine miniatures dating mostly from the ninth and tenth centuries, it has several books which are to be found nowhere else, such as the Syriac Codex of the Gospels, called the Sinaitic, the oldest known translation of the Bible, probably translated from the Greek in the second century. There is also the

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famous travel-book of a sixth-century Alexandrian tourist, who went to Ethiopia, India, and Ceylon and covered his manuscript with little drawings which show the curious ideas current in medieval Christian circles about cosmogony and geography. Some of the manuscripts, at least some of those in Greek, were actually written on Mount Sinai. Like all large monasteries, it had a scriptorium, but it cannot have been a very active one, for manuscripts of Sinaitic origin are relatively rare. In fact, the monks of St Catherine's do not seem to have had any great inclination for study at all. In complete contrast with Mar Saba, at Sinai writers were the exception rather than the rule. Doubtless their remoteness kept them outside the religious struggles and persecutions of the Byzantine world. Only two monks became famous for their literary activities, though in different ways. In the seventh century Anastasius the Sinaite wrote a series of stories about monks on the peninsula, but they have none of the critical qualities of the biographies by Cyril of Scythopolis. Their purely hagiographic character makes them nearer to the charming little tales of Johannes Moschus, who actually spent ten years at the monastery. The work of St John Climacus, a contemporary of Anastasius, is completely different. Apart from writing several other books, he was the author of The Ladder, the thirty degrees of rungs by which the soul ascends to moral perfection. This book had a tremendous success in monastic circles and, through Latin translations, influenced moralizing literature in the West. It even created a new theme in Byzantine art. In certain monasteries on Mount Athos, in Macedonia, and in Rumania you can still see immense frescoes covering the walls whose subject seems strangely disconcerting to the modern eye. In front of a monastery door a crowd of monks both young and old, surround a ladder which reaches up into the sky. There are monks standing on various rungs, and some are clutching the bottom of the ladder so as to be able to climb higher more quickly. Angels flying all around seem to be helping them. At the top of the ladder in a segment of sky, Christ grasps with one hand an old monk dressed in priest's vestments who has just

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completed the climb, and with the other holds out to him a crown of flowers with the words, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." At the same time under the ladder winged devils are pulling monks by their habits, tugging at some without making them fall off, but dragging others as far away from the ladder as they can. They grab them round their waists and lug them off to an enormous dragon's mouth which has just swallowed one victim: his feet are left sticking out between its teeth. An inscription says, more or less, " Look at the ladder leant against the sky and reflect on the foundation of virtue. How quickly our fragile life passes! Come up close to the ladder and climb it bravely. You will have choirs of angels to defend you; you will pass the traps of the wicked demons unscathed. When you reach the gates of heaven you will receive the crown from the Lord's hand." This remarkable vision is not an ordinary Last Judgment: it is John Climacus' Ladder transformed into paint. To-day the monastery at Sinai has at its head a man of culture and taste, Mgr Porphyrios III, who lives in the Archbishop's Palace at Cairo. The world of scholarship has taken full advantage of his being in this position, and thanks to his help, not only have scientists and art historians free access to the books and icons, but the treasures of the monastery are, as it were, brought to them. In 1950 the American Foundation Mount Sinai Expedition managed in several weeks' work, to microfilm more than two million pages of manuscripts in the collection, at a rate of over sixty thousand pages per day. When one thinks that the only previous expedition which took photographs, that led by the German Carl Schmidt in 1914, was able to take only 8500 pictures, most of which were destroyed in the War or subsequently disappeared, one realizes the importance of the Americans' achievement, which would in its turn have been impossible without the good offices of Mgr Porphyrios. The money "offered as a present" by the Americans was used to build a new wing where the guest rooms are located, and a new library worthy of the books kept in it.

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Contrary to what has sometimes been said, not all the manuscripts at Sinai were microfilmed. They had to be selected, and 1083 of the 2291 Greek manuscripts, 306 out of 652 in Arabic, 159 out of 237 in Syriac, and 89 Georgian, 40 Slavonic, six Ethiopian, two Armenian, one Latin, and one Coptic were recorded in this way. These remarkable figures, which, for the Americans, were perhaps enough in themselves, still do not give a complete picture of the expedition's achievement. It was a practical venture, whose only aim was to search for unpublished works. The page-by-page examination of so many unknown manuscripts could not fail to reveal some works of great merit which were passed on to experts for further examination. A particularly interesting discovery was that of two Arabic palimpsest manuscripts, on which modern writing covers extremely ancient texts. One of the manuscripts was used four times over, and under the present writing Syriac, Greek, and Kufic texts of the Bible, all very ancient, can be made out, though with difficulty. This Codex Arabicus ranks in importance with the Syriac Bible discovered in the last century. Even to-day the monks of Sinai could not really care less about all these riches and their significance to Western scholars, and in their mental outlook they are still as shut off as they were at the time of Alexandre Dumas. There are now not more than twenty of them, most of them extremely old, if one can go by their long white beards. Before the War there were fifty. The monastery suffers from an acute shortage of recruits, due particularly to the violent nationalism of the Egyptians, for all the monks are Greek. Under the perpetually scorching desert sun, they lead a life passed down to them by their predecessors. In their strange little world dedicated to God they find it sufficient to repeat the actions, the mortifications, the prayers, which thousands of monks have repeated before them, and in this way they have recaptured that peace and childlike simplicity which to us often seems like paradise on earth. When, a few years ago, the oldest monk decided to go and visit his family in Alexandria it was the first time he had left the monastery in fifty years. He almost did not get

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away at all, for, just as he was on the point of setting off, they realized that he had no Egyptian identity-card. The monks left the whole affair in the capable hands of Pericles. Every one from Suez to the southernmost tip of the Sinai peninsula knows Pericles, and he knows every one. This compatriot of Ulysses, is in fact, the monastery's general factotum, the organizer of caravans and pilgrimages for many years past, with a ready answer to any problem. For the old monk's journey he chose the time of Ramadan, and drove carefully so as to arrive at the frontier post just at the moment when the gun was fired to signal the end of the fast, sending all the sentries and customs officers scurrying to the dining-rooms. Pericles simply accelerated, and with his passenger beside him flew past the soldiers, who were by then more interested in their mess-tins than in smugglers. Today the old monk is back at his post as monastery elder, welcoming to St Catherine's still larger and larger caravans of pilgrims and travellers. Sinai is on the way to losing its solitude and peace. In a few years tourism will have claimed it. They are already talking of building a macadam road from Suez, and even of putting an aerodrome near by. It would be a sad victory indeed for the forces of sightseeing and high finance over the spirit of silence and austerity, the profanation of a holy place where every condition was favourable for men to find their God.

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5 The Lebanon—Land of Maronite Hermitages and Greek Monasteries

ITH the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean lapping its western shores, with the deserts hemming it in in the north and east, and the Mountains of Galilee in the south, the Lebanon is a man-made country. When General Gouraud fixed the limits of Greater Lebanon in 1920, and six years later proclaimed it a republic according to the terms of the 1919 treaties, he was only realizing the long-felt desire of the people for independence which they had so often before expressed in bloodshed. But this little republic with no natural frontiers, after Israel the smallest state in the Near East, has a definite personality of its own which is even expressed in the landscape, for, from whatever direction you approach the Lebanon and whatever means you use—boat, plane, or car—the country seems to have been laid out like a garden in front of you beneath vast, fantastic sailing white clouds. It is easy to find reasons for the attraction the Lebanon has for the inhabitants of the neighbouring countries. The Lebanese mountains have become a favourite holiday resort, and in the summer months people come there from Egypt, Jordan, Baghdad, Mosul, and even from as far as Arabia—millionaire sheiks, merchants, lawyers, professors, all with their families; they invade Aley, Souk el-Gharb,

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Bhamdun, and Sofar, mushroom towns which have sprung up in the last few years in the hills overlooking Beirut. The tourists install themselves in the hotels in Brummana, Beit Miry, and Bikfaya, climb the slopes of Sannin, and hold parties at Zahle, on the banks of the Nahr el-Barduni. For the sun-scorched Eastern world the Lebanon has fresh hills, streams, shady pine-forests, sycamores, wild figs, and umbrella firs. The famous cedars, the holy cedars, are nothing like what one is led to believe, but, by choosing them as its emblem, the republic has done more than establish a legendary tree—it has taken a symbol which really does symbolize reality. There is a second factor which makes the Lebanon unique among the countries of the East and gives it a privileged position in the eyes of its inhabitants: like its neighbour Palestine, though to a lesser degree, the Lebanon is Holy Land. It is impossible to argue with this when you know its history. Even if you are just passing through and know nothing about its background at all, the holiness of the Lebanon is what first catches your eye in a countryside scattered with chapels, churches, hermitages, and monasteries, which come into view one after the other at every bend in the road, perched on the sides of hills or the tops of ridges. Their red roofs, their pale blue doors and windows, their openwork bell-towers through which you see one of the most brilliant skies in the world, they all bring to the land a touch of gaiety which is unmistakably Lebanese. Except in the south, where there is a predominance of Moslems, the tiniest villages in the Lebanon each have one or maybe several churches, and perhaps a community of monks or nuns all of different orders. There are even some Roman Catholics. There is probably no other place on earth where the Baals and Astartes of the high-places have been so frequently turned out of their shrines by saints and celestial beings. This struck Renan a hundred years ago. "Nowhere more than here," he wrote in Mission in Phoenicia, " i s it possible to say that man has prayed in the same spots from time immemorial." The Lebanon owes this characteristic of its countryside to its having always been a place of refuge. But it would be quite wrong to

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suppose, as many have done, that Lebanese hospitality is reserved only for Christians. Many others enjoy it too. The sound of church bells does not cover up that of the muezzins, and mosques stand side by side with churches. This is how the Lebanon has acquired its modern religious, social, and political appearance. In a country with an area of less than four thousand square miles, you can find Christians of a dozen different communities (Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Armenians—both Gregorian and Catholic—Jacobites, Nestorians, Catholic Syrians, and Chaldeans) and Moslem sects (Sunnites, Druses, Metualis, Kurds, and Alawites): it is a microcosm of the East. The surprising thing is that they all live together peaceably—though that does not exclude occasional fights and exchanges of gunfire which sometimes have fatal results—and that they all take part in the constitution and government of the state. It is the only country in the world where the principle of religious representation is applied with mathematical strictness not only at the top of the ladder in the Government and Ministries, but even in the smallest governmental posts. In the eyes of the peasants the office of local surveyor or village policeman is as important as that of Member of Parliament or Cabinet Minister and requires just as much interest on their part and of course just as much wrangling and as many manoeuvres. To understand this unique state of affairs to the full you must delve back into the past history of the country. History, here, perhaps, more than elsewhere, is linked to geography. It does not really start until the Islamic conquest. Up till then it was the Mediterranean ports— Byblus, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Tripoli—that made all the running. The ancestors of the modern Lebanese, the Phoenicians, people of unrivalled commercial ability, sent out their ocean-going ships across the Mediterranean, past the Pillars of Hercules, and right round to England; they studded the sea-shores with counting-houses and cashboxes, founding the first great thessalocracy the world has known. All that Phoenicia required of terra Jirma was a strip of land wide enough to build its trading posts and shipyards. The ideal Phoenician settlements were on islands, like Ruad and Tyre, which did away with

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the necessity of having to defend the landward side, as was the case with cities built on peninsulas. In fact, although the Phoenician towns were part of the East, they turned their backs on it. The Lebanon was scarcely altered by its occupation by the great Empires, first the Persians, then the Romans, who contented themselves with reducing the Phoenician ports to lethargy by founding rival harbours at Antioch and Alexandria. Then the situation suddenly changed with the arrival of the Moslem Arabs in the eighth century. Until then the hinterland, cut off from the Beqa' by the mountain massifs of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, had played no part in the history of the area. The sparsely populated mountains do not figure in the ancient chronicles; if they are mentioned at all it is because of their forests, whose wood was sent in all directions across the Mediterranean in Phoenician ships. Henceforth everything was to change. Though it never ceased to look first to the West for aid, as one sees in the Crusades, the Lebanon gradually opened itself to the East by offering the safety of its mountains to all who rightly or wrongly felt themselves persecuted or who rebelled against the established order—the mysterious Mardaites who rose against Byzantium, the Maronites, who quarrelled with the Jacobites, the dissident Shiites and Druses. "All of them settled here," said P. Rondot, "with a fine display of tribal independence soon refashioned rather than disciplined by rising feudalism. This 'conglomeration of sects,' as it has been called by the Belgian Orientalist Father Lammens, defeats the historian by its perpetually changing complexities, just as in the end it wore out its conquerors, both Mamelukes and Turks, by its unconquerable resistance and the barbarous disorder of its freedom." Lebanese history was now woven in the struggles of these minority groups set one against each other, or in the alliances which they made with their stronger neighbours who themselves were fighting for the hegemony of the East. While the Maronites took the side of the Crusaders, the Druses favoured the Mamelukes. But this was not absolutely true, for mutual opposition was not

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strong enough to make these people forget the integrity of their mountains. Faced by an alien—and their nominal ruler whether Byzantine or Arab was always an alien—enemies joined forces and temporarily forgot their domestic quarrels. When, in 1305, the Mamelukes decided to attack the Lebanon they found in front of them barring their way not only the Maronites, but also the Druses and the other heterodox Christian and Moslem communities. Thus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Lebanese were able to sink their differences and create their own state. The Mamelukes, and later the Turks, very wisely kept clear of this hornets' nest where the tribes of Qaisi and Yemeni fought together; they contented themselves with granting the favour of the ruling house to whichever side in turn seemed the more likely to ensure payment of taxes. In the sixteenth century they upheld the Druse Maadanites, little thinking that they were contributing to the formation of the first independent Lebanese state. For in 1585 the Emir Fakhr ad-Din II (died 1635), one of the most intelligent and diplomatic members of the ruling clan, succeeded in grouping under his command both mountain and coastal regions, a territory roughly equal in size to the present republic and in some places even going beyond the present frontiers. Inside this country he acted as a completely independent prince; in his capacity as Grand Emir of the Mountains he raised militia, rebuilt towns, ensured security, developed agriculture by transferring sections of the population, and, most important, exterminated the local strongholds of feudalism. His success naturally disturbed the Sultan, but nothing could be done to prevent it. However, Fakhr ad-Din's last years were full of those difficulties which invariably attend the latter part of a long reign. The vassals, and especially the Yemeni, broke the unity of the country, though they were unable to break its autonomy. The Lebanon went on governing itself, first in the period of anarchy which followed the death of the Emir, then from 1697 onward under the Sunnite dynasty (later converted to Christianity) of the Shebabs, whose rule France, having by then become a force to be reckoned with

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in the East because of the Capitulations, made the Sultan recognize. The first representative of the new dynasty, Bashir I ( 1697-1707), and his successors had some difficulty in making themselves recognized by their subjects. The feudal reactionaries, first led by the Yemeni and then by the Jumblatti, did not favour a return to a unified government. In fact, it was not until Bashir II came to power in 1788 that the Lebanon regained the prestige and prosperity it had enjoyed a century before. In the sumptuous and elegant palace which he built at Beit et Din, the finest example of Lebanese architecture, Bashir II was like a second Fakhr ad-Din. Like his predecessor, he reunited under one government the mountains and the coastal plain ; he reorganized the country and gave it a considerable lead over the neighbouring states, thanks mainly to the good relations which he kept up with the West. This lasted almost fifty years, until the Emir, who had antagonized the Druse princes by his overweening pride, and the ordinary people by his taxes, was forced by the Western powers to leave his country and take refuge in Constantinople in 1840, where he died ten years later. One of the great merits of these emirs, and perhaps the determining factor in their success, was that they voluntarily maintained the balance of religion even when it went against their own personal faith, and never pronounced any discriminatory measures against their subjects. A Lebanese legend has a story about the Emir Bashir which was noted down by Gérard de Narval: " A Druse and a Maronite were on a journey together and asked each other the question 'What is our sovereign's religion?' ' H e is a Druse,' said the first. ' H e is a Christian,' said the second. They chose a Metuali (Moslem sectarian) who happened to be passing to judge between them, and without any hesitation he replied 'He is a Turk.' Not knowing which of them was right, they all went to the Emir in person and asked him to settle the matter once and for all. Emir Bashir received them very politely, and after he had heard what they were arguing about turned to his vizir and said, 'These people ask too many questions. Have their heads cut off! ' "

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Whether authentic or not, the story could easily have been told about Fakhr ad-Din, who was greeted at Florence with the words "Most Christian prince." It is enlightening because it shows the rulers' attitude towards religious quarrels and the sects which grew up from them. To them the fact that anyone belonged to such-and-such a sect was no reason for his not taking part in the running of the state. So the first traits of Lebanese character began to show themselves —autonomy, a generally peaceful coexistence between the various religious communities, and a strong pre-Western trend. From 1840 until 1914 events did little to change this state of affairs, even when the Turks took the Lebanon back under their wing and set the Moslems against the Christians. Sometimes the opposition was bitter, as in 1860, when in massacres which lasted twenty-two days a total of 7771 people were killed, 560 churches were destroyed, and 42 monasteries burnt. Once the crisis was over, the country returned to its previous state of calm, and under the new statutes (1864) necessitated by this bloodshed a period of social concord between the different elements in the population was again established. The people found this a great comfort against the harsh regime which Turkey, supported by Germany, imposed on the whole country, Moslems and Christians alike, in 1914. This last piece of information demonstrates how the Lebanon attained its unity and independence only through conflict. It was the Maronite community which played the leading part in the struggle to set the country on its own feet. In the last analysis it was the activities of the Maronites which produced modern Lebanon. At the time of the Peace Conference of 1919 the whole population, both Christians and Moslems, agreed to entrust the Maronite Patriarch, Mgr Hoyek, with the task of demanding in person recognition of the autonomy of Greater Lebanon and of its geographical frontiers. Although he was then an extremely old man, the Patriarch went to Paris, and his requests received sympathetic attention. Thus the "Maronite nation" has a place of honour in the Lebanon to-day.

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s

The word 'nation' is used here, of course, in the meaning it used to have in the days of the Ottoman Empire, yet the term was never more truly applicable than here, for in addition to all the constituent parts of the millet the Maronites possess a geographical unity which was lacking in the other communities under Turkish rule. This was a strong influence on the efficacy of their activities. Although in the Middle Ages there were vigorous Maronite communities at Aleppo and on Cyprus, and although in our own times there has been a strong tendency for members of the community to emigrate, maybe only temporarily, thus dispersing all over the globe—to Africa and South America in particular—almost as many Maronites as there are left in the Lebanon, in spite of these factors, it would be wrong to speak of a diaspora. Under the leadership of their patriarch, whose seat is either at Bkerke, overlooking the magnificent Juniye Bay, or at Diman, whence one can see the whole of the Qadisiya, the Maronites are always centred on this corner of the globe, which they have made their home and to which they return in their old age when they have made their fortunes abroad. In many ways they remind one of the Basques. They are the most powerful Christian community in the country. In the religious balance of power they are the largest group, either Moslem or Christian, with 29 per cent, of the population, or 306,048 out of a population of 1,267,579 (1950 census).

The Maronite people owe their origin as well as their name to St Marun, a Syrian ascetic whose life of mortification is traditionally supposed to have taken place in the fourth or fifth century. Nothing now remains of the monastery which he founded on the banks of the Orontes at Apamaea, the modern Qal'at el Mudiq, for it was abandoned by its occupants—the nucleus of the original Maronite Church—within a short space of time. This abandonment was certainly due to the disturbances which rocked the Syrian area of the Eastern World after the christological controversies. Among the various groups of Christians who obeyed the ruling of the Council of Chalcedon and professed two natures to exist in Christ, some tried to find a means of reconciliation with the

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Jacobites, who were partisans of the single nature theory (Monophysitism) by adopting the thesis which the Emperor Heraclius favoured—that there are two natures in Christ, but only one will. This was Monothelism. Did the monks of Mar Marun share this belief? Modern Maronites deny the suggestion, and say they have always been orthodox. However this may be, reputable historians tend to think that this was not the case at first, and that the Maronites became fully orthodox only at a later stage in their history, when, in the tenth century, they returned to the allegiance of Rome, by whom Monothelism was condemned as a heresy. The references cited by both sides are not, one must admit, very conclusive, but one can at least say that adhesion to the Monothelite sect—a temporary adhesion, since the Maronites relinquished it as soon as they realized its heterodoxy—is the best explanation of the founding of their nation. " I n the seventh century," writes Jean Grenier in his charming study of Maronite Hermitages, "their position in Apamaea became intolerable: the Moslems had invaded the country and favoured the Jacobites. The Maronites were therefore faced with either changing their beliefs or being persecuted. They chose a third solution, and left the country. Their migration was a religious one, as so many migrations have been, like those of the Jews, the Dukhobors, the Quakers, or the Mormons. Facts such as these make it difficult for one to believe that societies are always governed by economics." So they left their native Syria almost entirely in the hands of the Jacobites and sought refuge in the northern mountains of the Lebanon, later moving on to Kesruan and even to the Shufa, in the Druse country. Even at this early date in their history the Maronites already showed their two characteristic traits—that of being a lay society led by monks and that of being so firmly attached to their religious beliefs that they would prefer persecution to recantation. They were persecuted from all sides. First, as we have seen, it was the Monophysites, who were inclined to see the Maronites as treacherous brothers, and then later it was the Moslems and the

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Greek Orthodox. Apart from the time of the Crusades, which has been well documented by Western historians, the evolution of the Maronites is up to the arrival of the Ottomans too little known for one to be able to describe all the difficulties which the Turks created for them. From the seventeenth century onward, though, manuscripts and reports of journeys give time and again instances of the harsh treatment which they suffered at the hands of the local pashas or of their neighbours the Greeks. As the Observantine Father Boucher wrote in 1735, "When the Greeks have done with skinning them alive the Turks come from Tripoli and eat them or suck their bones, so that these poor people are always at the mercy either of their false friends or of their real enemies." This sort of agreement to attack the Maronites was repeated between the schismatic Christian communities and the Turks in 1655, 1659, and 1696. This last persecution was the most violent. The pashas of Tripoli acted like savages, impaling the men, hanging the women up by their breasts, ruining villages, and selling the inhabitants off as slaves. When the persecutions became too severe the Maronites did what their ancestors had done before them and sought refuge in the mountain regions, especially in the Wadi Qadisiya, where they had probably first been established. On a level with the cedars of Bsharri there is a deep gash in the mountain, clean-cut as if by a razor, slicing it right down as far as Tripoli. Six hundred feet down in the bottom of the valley is the river Qadisiya—i.e., the holy river—which has given its name to the wadi. It is difficult to get to. You go down steep stony paths covered with loose stones which roll off down into the gorge beneath your feet. The paths are simply the beds of watercourses which rush down in the spring when the snow—always thick in this area—melts. The journey can be made only in the hot season, which makes it all the more tiring. But when you finally reach the river, how your efforts are rewarded! Everything is green and fresh, surrounded by olives, nut-trees, and even vines, hemmed in by the sheer sides of the gorge. Hidden away in this natural redoubt, the Maronites were able to

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resist persecution. There they found not only natural defences, but also leaders who strengthened their sorely tried faith. For the Qadisiya has always been the centre of monastic life in the Lebanon. Numerous caves, named after their former occupants, still exist and tell their own story—Mar Elias, Mar Lisha, Mar Seluan, Mar Shallita, etc. Sometimes a larger ruin reveals a monastery built for a larger group of anchorites, like Der Salib with its church frescoes, interesting, though in a poor state of preservation. They show figures of saints with long faces and tapering fingers, whose hieratic pose shows the influence of Byzantium, but whose inscriptions in estranghelo Syriac show their Maronite origin. To-day it is all abandoned, and only the monastery of Qannubin once a year awakens from its sleep for its patronal festival on the 15th of August. For the rest of the year its only function is to be an ancient monument, piously preserved, but always shut. To relate the history of Qannubin in detail would mean telling that of the Maronites themselves in recent times—that is to say, from the time when the patriarchate was moved there after the fire of Maiphuk in 1439 until Diman was built at the end of the last century. During the whole of this period it was at Qannubin that the Patriarch reigned, surrounded by his bishops, living a simple life scarcely different from that of the ordinary monks. The custom grew up for all pilgrims to the Holy Land to call at Qannubin. Several have left descriptions of it which enable us to follow step by step the life of the monastery and its inhabitants. In 1688, for example, the Chevalier de la Roque wrote in his Voyage de Syrie et du Mont Liban: Canubin is a largish building, but very irregular in shape, almost completely built in the rock itself, The church is dedicated to the Virgin, under the title of St Mary of Canubin; it is only about twenty-five paces long by ten or twelve wide; it is very clean and well-looked-after, but rather dark due to the difficulty of putting windows through the rock. The other buildings are the patriarchs' lodgings, which have nothing remarkable about them, several cells, and a great many offices, all quite poor and badly laid out. The monks of Canubin, who number about forty, follow the rule of St

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Basil. They profess a great austerity towards themselves and a great hospitality towards every one else. Above all, one can admire in them a remarkable simplicity which takes the place of other, higher qualities which are but rarely to be found in the midst of ignorance and solitude. We were received in the monastery with all possible cordiality. The patriarch, who normally lives there, together with a number of his bishops, had been absent for some time because of the tyrannous behaviour of one of the rulers of the country, who, not content with the thousand crowns the monastery pays him each year, harasses it still in a thousand different ways, even setting fire to it when his demands are not met. The majority of the monks were absent, busying themselves with the harvest, and we were asked to dine by the older monks, who placed us at the side of a venerable old man who held the position of superior. This good man talked to us most agreeably throughout the meal, which consisted of several egg dishes and a few olives; it would, however, be difficult to find anywhere a wine better than that with which we were served: this gave us to think that the reputation of the wines of the Lebanon which are mentioned in the works of the Prophet is not without foundation. After the meal we conversed more seriously and questioned the anchorites at length about the subject of our journey. W e learnt from them that among the various monasteries which once existed in the country three were accounted the most important, one of these being Canubin, which then contained upward of three hundred monks. The name of Canubin was given it from the latinized Greek coenobium, as if to imply that it were the major monastery of all. Lucky Chevalier de la Roque, who was repaid for his arduous journey by the pious conversation of the monks, not counting the excellent wine! To-day the traveller has no such luck. No wine, no monks. On the other hand, the monastery is still more or less as the Chevalier saw it, save for its air of abandonment, which makes such a contrast with the vast Maronite monasteries which are now spreading out their solid buildings of local stone at Quziya, the seat of the Baladites; at D e r el Qala, built on the site of an ancient Roman temple dedicated to Baal; at Marchaya, overlooking Beirut; at Tamish, hidden away in the mountains; at Luzieh, famous for the council held there in 1736, which settled the constitution of the modern Maronite Church; at Kasselik, dazzling white in its newness; and

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especially at Anaya, famous throughout the whole world, since the body of the hermit Sharbel Makhluf miraculously preserved since his death in 1898 has begun to work miracles on Moslems and Christians alike. In the East, after all, saints belong to every one. It is in these immense monasteries that the descendants of the monks and hermits of the Qadisiya now live. For, in contrast with what has happened in many Eastern countries, monastic life is still very vigorous and well-thought-of in the Lebanon. The close links which the Maronite Church has maintained with the Papacy since the early Middle Ages have brought, especially since the end of the seventeenth century, new life to the monastic institutions which in many ways helped in the nation's expansion. From the time of Fakhr ad-Din the nation began to swarm into Kesruan, where the Emir had settled a large number of Maronites whose agricultural knowledge he admired. The arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, of Capuchins, Jesuits, Lazarists, Carmelites, the sending of young priests to Rome for further instruction in the Catholic faith, brought about from that time onward a transformation of Maronite monastic ideas. Until then each monastery had formed a unit, complete and autonomous, without any written constitution, but with a rule based on a sort of traditional law. The monks did not take any explicit vows; it was assumed that wearing the habit and entering religious life in a special ceremony were a tacit profession of vows. In many places there were even mixed monasteries. In 1695 the Patriarch Duaihi, who had got to know the Western monastic orders during his years of study in Rome, saw the advantages as well as the strength which would result from the union of all the monasteries under one superior. He decided to change Lebanese monachism by reforming it on Roman Catholic lines. Thus the three great orders of modern Maronite monachism—the Baladites, the Alepine monks, and the Antonines of Marchaya—came into existence. Under them the great tradition of monasticism in the East is carried on to-day, with the difference that now the monks in addition to their contemplative life lead an active life outside the walls of the monastery, running parishes

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and schools and preaching. To-day, as before, the monks are divided into three categories—lay brothers, priests, and hermits. The latter, though catered for in the constitutions of the orders, are fast disappearing. From time to time a hermit is mentioned, and he then receives numerous visitors. Each order has a great many houses. If you add to them the enclosed convents of nuns it is hardly surprising that in the Lebanon one cannot go very far without seeing a belfry. The fight for their very existence which the Maronite monks and people have for centuries had to put up against hostile neighbours in hostile surroundings has not been conducive to mental activity. Of necessity they are first and foremost peasants. By years of hard work they have transformed the appearance of the Lebanese mountains, whose terraced slopes—painstakingly built up and tilled by the Maronites—are one of the most striking features of the country. This is why manual labour plays such a large part in the day-to-day life of the Maronite monastery; it is not simply mortification of the flesh, it is a vital necessity. Obviously, the arts and learning have suffered as a result. There is no great name among the Maronite writers in Syriac and Arabic who could stand comparison with those of Jacobite and Nestorian literature. As regards their aesthetic sense, we have very little to go by: a few miserable remains in grottoes and churches in the Qadisiya or the rather better-preserved paintings in the monastery of Qannubin. But the influence of Italy is too strong for one to be able to consider these works as expressions of Maronite art. It all gives a poor idea of their culture. Yet their contribution to civilization has not been negligible. It is, however, of fairly recent date, for it followed the intellectual revival produced by the frequent and prolonged contacts which Maronite monks have had with the West. There were two sources of Western influence: first Rome, where the young Maronite deacons went to college to be trained along Roman Catholic lines, and secondly France, whose political and cultural activity never abated after the first Capitulations were signed between François I and Sulaman the Magnificent. The story of these Western contacts is one of the most

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interesting parts of Lebanese history. The part dealing with Rome has been told in Mgr Dib's History of the Maronite Church, and that of France by R. Ristelhueber in Les Traditions françaises au Liban. If these contacts are mentioned again here it is because they illustrate a trait of character which is perhaps unusual in present-day international politics—fidelity. Quite recent events show how much the Lebanese cling to their old ties with the West: in 1956 Rome, going against the privilege accorded to the Maronite bishops of electing their own leader, nominated the next patriarch, but if anyone had thought or hoped that a break would then have taken place between the two Churches they were sadly mistaken. As for France, the Lebanon is about the only country in the East where the friendship of France is not something to be put up with, but instead is appreciated and actively courted. It is impossible here to go into all the consequences which these contacts with the West have had on Eastern thought, nor the effects they have had on the modern world; by the interplay of cause and effect it is in the last resort due to ideas taken from the West that the East exists in the form we know it to-day. But here we enter the realm of politics. It would be unfair to make the monks responsible for everything. One can at least say that it is thanks to their efforts that the West is now conscious of the East. After the period of the Crusades silence descended on the West on the subject of the countries of the East. Their existence, their languages, their history, had to be relearnt, and the Maronites were the West's teachers. The first professorial chair of Syriac and Arabic, that founded in 1614 at the Collège Royal (the Collège de France) by Louis XIII, was entrusted to a Maronite, Gabriel Sionita, who had previously taught at the Collège de Sapience at Rome. His successor as Professor at Paris was his compatriot Abraham d'Eckel, or Eschellensis. But no Maronite scholar could possibly rival in activity the Assemani family, who have already been mentioned in connexion with Joseph-Simon Assemani's research in the library of Der es Suriani. The family, which originated from Hasrun, a little village above the Cedars, was

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a band of investigators to whom any specialist in the subject of Eastern churches owes much of what he knows. Settling at Rome, they spent much of their time bringing to Europe the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts which were most important for the study of the ancient Christian communities in the East and in cataloguing the treasures of the monasteries. As the great Orientalist Rubens Duval wrote, " I t is to the Assemani family that the honour is due for having initiated the scholars of Europe into the literary riches hidden in Syriac manuscripts." Their work has amply repaid the West for the help it gave the Maronite people. As regards the religious population of the Lebanon, the Greek Orthodox community is second in size to the Maronites, but some way behind them, with only 10 per cent, of the total. With 126,084 members in the 1950 census, they are, in fact, a minority group, but an extremely influential one nevertheless, because of the social position of its members. Apart from the rank-and-file, who are tradition-bound and under the thumb of the clergy, there is a little group of Greek Orthodox élite, very cultured, very French, dealing mainly in banking and trade, from which they extract the huge fortunes which make them the ruling clique not only in their own community, but in the state as well. The well-known aptitude of the Greeks for commerce and finance has given them a geographic distribution which is totally different from that of the Maronites. Unlike them, the Greeks have no connexion through their past history with the mountain regions; they have spread out over the whole country, except the south, with a preference for the urban centres, where their business houses are. In Beirut, where the influential families are all grouped together in opulent mansions in the Quartier, the Mayfair of the Lebanese capital, they total 11 per cent, of the population, three per cent, more than the Maronites. They are as numerous in the towns which surround the capital, and also in the south of the Beqa'. In the western part of the country they have a particular liking for the cities on the shores H

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of the Mediterranean, Batrun and Tripoli, where the rich plain of the Khura, always green with its plantations of olive-trees, meets the sea. Around Amiun, which rises above the plain like an acropolis, there is a large Greek enclave in this predominantly Maronite country. It is difficult to say exactly how this came about. It is certain that the colony dates back many centuries, and that Greek roots in this area are very deep. Here the Greek Orthodox community in the Lebanon has its largest monastery, at Balamend, south-east of Tripoli. From the sea-shore you see it rising on its hill six hundred feet above the village of Kalmun. Its name is the Arabic form of the medieval monastery of Belmont, or, as a Crusading Chronicle says, "of Beaumont, of the Cistercian order, before Triple" (the Crusaders' name for Tripoli). It is a patriarchal monastery, dependent on the Patriarch of Damascus. There is a superior who rules over about thirty young monks, seminarists with long hair and no beards who are taught the ceremonies and the liturgical chants by a master sent out from Athens. This shows how attached these Arabic-speaking Greeks still are to the Church of Constantinople, from which they were split during the Moslem invasion. Balamend has recently celebrated the eight hundredth anniversary of its foundation. It was founded in 1157 by Cistercian monks from the Abbey of Morimond, in Champagne. Its story is known only in rough detail. The foundation charter shows that the monastery buildings were next to some property with good arable land, holmoak woods, and olive plantations which provided the monks with ample work: these, we must remember, were St Bernard's monks, who have earned their place in history for the introduction of new methods of exploiting and organizing large farming estates. Only one abbot is known by name, Pierre l'Aleman, who governed the monastery in 1262, seven years before the fall of Tripoli. There is nothing to suggest that the Cistercians abandoned their monastery immediately the town and Tripolitania were reoccupied by the Moslems. It is very likely though that if the occupants did not evacuate it and return to

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France the monastery must at any rate have gradually become empty through the absence of new recruits from the West. Thus it passed into the hands of the Orthodox monks, but the date and the conditions of this transfer of property are unknown. The structural alterations necessitated by the change to the Byzantine rite date only from the seventeenth century. The monastery of Balamend, which has retained its original dedication to the Virgin, gives the lie to the medieval saying that the Benedictines took the mountains, the Cistercians the valleys, and the Dominicans and Franciscans the towns and suburbs. Perhaps its site can be explained by the necessity of providing protection against attack; maybe it was chosen for strategic purposes. It stands on a rock, "surrounded by deep ravines, far from any road and difficult of access." At least this is what the archaeologist Enlart wrote in 1923 in the only good book written about the monastery so far. To-day this description is no longer true. Belmont is only halfan-hour's drive from Tripoli, on the Sheka-Beshmezzin-Fih' road through the olive-groves. The made-up road takes you right to the main gate, and through the entrance passage you come straight into the main courtyard. It is through its architecture much more than its literary activity that Balamend is part of the Lebanon's cultural heritage. Like any monastery in the East, it was continually being altered and enlarged, especially being raised in height by the addition of terraces which lead on to further terraces above; as it stands it is difficult to recognize beneath its modifications any of the original plan, which, like all Cistercian foundations, followed a strict set of rules. Its present form dates back to the seventeenth century, when it was completely altered: the cloister was rebuilt, using some of the old materials, the Salle Capitulaire was made into a chapel, that of St George, blocks of cells were built on to the western and eastern façades, the main gate was constructed, and the vaulted corridor, which is none other than the old refectory, was opened out; above the old chapter-house a charming loggia was laid out with an arcade of twin pillars, using

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thirteenth-century columns. It is from here that one can get a wonderfully serene view of the sea and Tripoli, whose port of El Mina juts out to the north. At Balamend it is the church which first attracts attention. Built on a north-east/south-west orientation, it is composed of a single nave ending in a large apse flanked by two chambers. The chevet is square. This plan, which was used elsewhere at the time of the Crusades—for example, in the Cathedral of Tartus—is also the plan of many Byzantine churches. It is very probable that the Cistercian monks built it on the foundations of an earlier church. This would explain certain anomalous details which make the Balamend church so different from the normal run of Cistercian churches. According to a tradition which is very current in the Orthodox community, the monastery was in fact restored to the Greeks when the French monks left, the Cistercian buildings having replaced an earlier Byzantine monastery. The church interior, which is completely bare, with whitewashed walls, has been fitted out for the Byzantine rite by the addition, on the east side, of an episcopal throne in carved wood, and stalls running right round the walls. A fine iconostasis separates the nave from the sanctuary, which is decorated with Persian faience ware, and the altar is under a ciborium with columns and trefoil arches. These embellishments cannot hide the basic austerity of the building, which is one of the features of Cistercian work—a reaction against the luxury of the Benedictine churches at the time of St Bernard. This austerity is shown more forcibly in the exterior, where the architect has sought to preserve the harmony of the construction by the large, bare surfaces of the walls, by his exquisite handling of materials, and by his rejection of any additional decoration in the form of moulding or sculpture. Faced with the flat façade of the church of Balamend, its only decoration a small rose window, perfect in its simplicity, with its thick wall of finely dressed local limestone—no buttresses or wide apertures here—what the visitor feels more than anything is an impression of solidity and gravity.

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The most interesting element in the exterior of the church is the belfry. Not that it is particularly tall or particularly beautiful—one could hardly compare it with a cathedral spire—but because it is now the only stone belfry remaining standing in the whole Eastern world. It is therefore a curiosity. Those Belmont Cistercians, who went against traditional usage by building their monastery on a hill, and whose church is not quite right according to the normal Cistercian plan, seem to have taken a peculiar pleasure in flouting the statutes of their order. These forbid the use in churches of a whole collection of things such as silk cloth, gold or silver crucifixes, sculpture, paintings, illuminated manuscripts . . . and belfries. Then again, the Belmont belfry is also original architecturally speaking. It was built in the thirteenth century, about a hundred years after the completion of the church, and is quite small. It is only twenty feet high, but its mass, squat and yet elegant, standing out against the blue sky, completes that feeling of solidity which is the general overall impression one gets from the building. The monastery does not seem to have played any important role in literary history. Its library, even if it were once rich, is now much reduced in size, and has nothing of special interest in it except for some Arabic illuminated manuscripts which show how. the medieval methods and techniques of writing and illustrating manuscripts were still being faithfully copied in this area relatively recently. A fine Arabic Gospels, dating from the sixteenth century, has a portrait of the author at the beginning of each of the books of the Testament. The drawing, the ornamentation, the drapery, and the posing of the subjects—in short, the whole style of the painting—shows the work to be influenced by Byzantium, hardly surprising in this monastery. But the work cannot be taken as a specimen of Lebanese art; an inscription in Georgian at the end of the manuscript suggests that it was written far from the Mediterranean shores. For its inspiration one must look at late Byzantine works such as were spread in large numbers throughout the countries under the domination or influence of Christian Constantinople.

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The fact that Balamend possesses such a book which travelled such a great distance to get there confirms the monastery's celebrity, due doubtless to the fame of the miraculous icon of the Virgin which it still possesses. M. Millet, who has actually seen this icon, dates it to the tenth century, and one must perforce accept his opinion, since it is quite impossible to judge for oneself. The painting is kept on the left of the iconostasis under a glass panel dimmed by the smoke of the candles, and the features on the portrait are completely buried under a mass of jewels, which hide both its colour and shape. This is all the more to be regretted, as it is probably the best of the whole series of icons which decorate the walls of the basilica and St George's Chapel. None of them is particularly old; they all date from the time when the Orthodox monks settled in the monastery. Some of them are not of local workmanship, but were brought either from Greece or from Jerusalem, both well-known centres of workshops providing pilgrims with icons. Some are also from Russia. Only a few are of definite Lebanese origin. The icon of the two great heroes of Stylitism, Simeon Stylites and Simeon the Younger, on the iconostasis of St George's chapel, is definitely Lebanese. Dated and signed, it would make an excellent starting-point for a study (still to be made) of religious painting in the Lebanon at the end of the seventeenth century. The painter, Na'me, who painted it in 1699 for the church of Our Lady at Balamend, was evidently influenced by the traditional iconography of the Byzantine Church. The features and pose of the two saints can be traced through a long series of paintings right back to an iconographic formula which was first created in the fifth century. But our Lebanese artist has completely rejuvenated it. The influence of Russian painting is straight away apparent in the manner in which the mountains are painted; the artist's complete independence of Byzantine hieraticism is shown by the way he fills the space round the two columns with figures taken from contemporary life. All these turbaned horsemen gesticulating or calling the stylites to witness, these are the bourgeois of Lebanese society. Thus a baroque element, whose origin

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one might perhaps find in the pictures brought to the East by Catholic missionaries, creeps into the stereotyped Byzantine religious painting. The fusion of the various elements is here a particularly happy one, but to appreciate its originality to the full one needs to compare it with other Lebanese work, and unfortunately nothing has so far been done to find and classify such examples of it as still exist. In its architecture and its origins the monastery of Balamend has close links with the Crusades, the period of the longest and most dramatic contact which has existed so far between East and West. The place is filled with the poetry of those charming Greek monasteries whose white silhouettes dot the slopes of Athos or the islands of the Aegean; yet, to tell the truth, it is no more than a lifeless shadow, and would no doubt attract the attention of historians less, were it not that it has, as one might say, survived in the monasteries which it founded at the time when the Eastern Churches became united with Rome. The Greek, or Melkite, Catholic community which came into being at that time is the double of the Greek Orthodox one to which Balamend belongs. It started in the Lebanon and is still strong there, with 76,000 faithful under the leadership of the patriarch living either at Damascus or at Cairo. It accounts for only 6 per cent of the total population of the Lebanon, It is particularly strong in the coastal towns of the south of the country, Tyre, Sidon, on the foothills which join the mountain regions to the sea between the river Damur and Qasmie, and in the southernmost point of the country above the gorges of the Litani near Jezzin. In the north of the Lebanon Greek Catholics are almost non-existent. In spite of their small numbers and their rural rather than urban character, the community plays an important role in Lebanese life because, as M. de Vaumas said, "their clergy are among the best educated in the East, and, although they exert a certain influence in temporal affairs, they tend to commit themselves much less than is

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usual for Eastern priests." As well as this kind of spiritual primacy, they have a strong sympathy with all the religious problems which concern theologians in the West. This double attitude is undoubtedly due to the instruction given to the Melkite Catholic priests by the White Fathers of St Anne's in Jerusalem to whom Cardinal Lavigerie entrusted a work which they are not normally associated with, but which they have carried out with astonishing success. It is even more the result of the factors which caused the setting up of the Greek Catholic community and which have influenced it ever since its foundation. The monastic element is still very active, with its three great orders, the Shuerites, the Salvatorians, the Alepins, and now, since 1903, the Paulists, whose mother monastery at Harissa stands with a cupola copied from that of Sancta Sophia above the unforgettable bay of Juniye. Balamend was the birthplace of them all, rather unwillingly. Towards the end of the seventeenth century violent arguments took place there about the different trends in the Eastern Church—the desire to be united to Rome and the attachment to "things as they always used to be." Among the forty monks who were then living in the monastery there were two novices from Aleppo, the headquarters of the Western missionaries, in particular the Jesuits. Well briefed by them with theological arguments, Brothers Gerasimos and Soleiman won the day for the Catholic party, and somewhat disturbed the traditional routine of the monastery which had by then virtually become sacrosanct. Tired of living in an atmosphere of constant bickering which was far from the usual cloistral calm, the reformers made a bold decision. In 1697, on the advice of Father Nasrullah, an elder, later to be Bishop of Sidon, Brothers Gerasimos and Soleiman, who had in the meantime been made priests, left Balamend with seven of their like-minded brethren and founded a monastery between Shueir and Qonshara near the church of St John. This was the first establishment of the Basilican order of the Shuerites. A schism took place in the order in the eighteenth century, and produced the Alepins, who are neither as prosperous nor as numerous as their

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parent order. Their mother-church is at Der esh-Shir, overlooking Beirut, near Souk el-Gharb. At the same time the metropolitan of Tyre and Sidon, Mgr Euthymois Saifi, was collecting about him a group of young men. He began to instruct them in the religious life himself, aiming to send them out through his diocese as missionaries of Union with Rome. The new society grew, and he built them a monastery dedicated to the Holy Saviour at Der Mukhalles. The building was completed in 1711. It became the centre of the Salvatorian Basilians. Der Mukhalles is built on a peak overlooking Sidon, in the midst of pine-trees and olives. The traveller sees it for the first time from the little Moslem village of Jun, where the memory of Lady Hestor Stanhope, who braved the Emir and Napoleon at the same time, still lingers on. Visitors normally go no farther than the tomb of this modern Amazon. It is a pity so few of them go on to see the monastery. The headquarters of St Saviour's, though badly shaken by the earthquake of 1956, is as large as a good-sized village. With its theological college, its school, its workshops, its printing works, its model farm, it is the best example of what a Greek Catholic monastery in the Lebanon can be like. When they established the centres of their orders at Qonshara, Der esh-Shir, and Der Mukhalles, the Shuerites, Alepins, and Salvatorians chose their sites well and showed a love of nature and magnificent views which the Maronite monks, accustomed to living in hiding and perpetually on the defensive, could not possess. The earliest buildings on the sites are generally still in existence. Their austerity gives one an idea of the difficulties these orders met with at their foundation, but they are almost completely concealed by the other buildings which are constantly being renovated, a sign both of their present prosperity and of their desire to adapt themselves to a changing world. In fact, these Basilian monks are completely different from the contemplative orders as we understand them in Europe. Naturally their religious observance is strict; the exactitude of the celebration of the divine offices is rigorously maintained; these

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monasteries are, in fact, the only places where one can attend every day the ceremonies of the Byzantine rite in its full opulence and mystery. But the liturgical life does not take up all their time. These orders devote a great part of each day to various outside activities, and it is easy to understand why they have taken as their rule that of St Basil, who so warmly recommended social activity. This is one of the most striking things about the Shuerite, Alepin, and Salvatorian monasteries: most of them have, either within their walls or just outside them, large well-attended schools. The children, who are just as rowdy as schoolchildren are anywhere, bring a vital, animated life to these places of silence. The monks put up with it very well. It is the way in which they keep in touch with the outside world. Their work is strongest in the intellectual and spiritual spheres. Although they own extensive property, agriculture is not their strong point. On the other hand, they have devoted, right from their foundation, a large amount of their time to study. Their libraries are rich in Arabic manuscripts—a proof of their diligence. These books are usually recent works on theological controversy or Catholic doctrine. Many of them are simply translations of books produced in the West. There is not much chance of finding any valuable work there, and all these books, which to-day are almost unreadable, except for the specialist in religious history, are hardly likely to give these monasteries a lasting place in history. Their importance undoubtedly stems from their influence on young people and the impetus they were the first to give to printing. Today the presses in most Basilian monasteries are rarely idle. The monks realize the importance of books and newspapers: printing, one might say, is their traditional occupation, almost their heritage. In 1731 they introduced and promoted the first printing-press in the Lebanon to use Arabic characters. It was set up at St John of Shueir by Abdallah Zakher (1680-1748), an extraordinary man who could turn his hand to anything from jewellery to engraving, painting, clockmaking, and writing. The Maronites had already made an attempt at printing with Syriac

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characters at Quziya about 1610, and the Melkite Patriarch Athanasius Dabbas (1647-1724) installed a press with Arabic characters at Aleppo. But neither of these was long-lived. You can still see Zakher's little press at St John's. So as not to disturb the monks too much he set it up at a short distance from the monastery, cutting a hole in the rock large enough to take his house and workshops. The press itself is extremely simple—two plates, one fixed on which the type was set, and the sheet of paper placed on top of it, the other hinged so that it could be lowered with a handle and pressed on to the first. It is somehow moving to look at it. You cannot help sharing Volney's admiration for Zakher, who, as he said, knew the advantages of printing and "had the courage to go through with the triple process of writing, type-founding, and printing." Although the same author later looks down his nose, quite understandably for some one so attached to cult of Reason, at the books Zakher printed—instead of translating works of a practical nature, which would have awakened the Arabs' love of fine art, he produced only mystical books which were of no interest to nonChristians—even so, the press at Shueir is the ancestor of all the printing-presses which have been built in the Lebanon since the beginning of the eighteenth century, and which have made the country the 'brains of the East.' In the revival of Arab literature, and in the resulting upsurge of Arab nationalism which the West has had to follow without understanding much of what it was after, the press played a decisive role. Doubtless Zakher could not have foreseen it, but the historian two centuries later cannot fail to take it into account.

6 Stylites' Country

N comparison with the Lebanon, where one can hardly stir a foot without coming across some monastery, hermitage, or chapel, Syria is extremely poor in churches and religious establishments in general. This is only one of the differences between the countries which are emphasized by Syria's arid, barren landscape. Syria is basically a Moslem state, both by its constitution and by its social set-up. This is immediately noticeable even to the most dim-witted traveller as soon as he crosses the border from the Lebanon. The atmosphere changes perceptibly. Yet Christianity, which after all got its name here—it was at Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians—is not totally absent. At Damascus, where the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch lives, the Christian quarter is huddled up on the edge of the Moslem town near Bab Tuma and Baba Sharki, yet as you walk through its tiny odd alleyways you will come across a Syrian Catholic archbishop's palace, an Armenian archbishop's palace, and the palace of the Melkite Catholic patriarch, who divides his time between the Syrian capital and Cairo. The same mixture can be seen in Aleppo, where the Maronites have an archbishop and the Chaldeans a bishop, and again at Homs, which, since the 1914-18 War, has been the seat of the patriarch of the Syrian Jacobites; his previous residence was at Mardin, in Turkish territory.

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These charming Christian quarters of Syrian towns are like oases of calm where the hurly-burly of the modern world stays safely outside the gates, where you can daydream as you wander without any risk of being run over by a large American car whose driver is too busy admiring his vehicle to concentrate on the road in front of him; they are places which always welcome the European with open arms because they think of him as a friend, places where faith and tradition seem always so much alive. Nothing can better show how Christians have lived in the East since it was subjugated by Islam. Once these quarters were surrounded by walls and criss-crossed with a labyrinth of tiny streets where only the initiated would dare to venture, while each night saw the shutting of the great gates to protect the inhabitants against the violence of fanatics. If to-day these outward signs of fortification have vanished the little city on the edge of the big town still looks as it did in the past, for each house has its securely padlocked iron doors, its zigzag entrances, its barred windows. All this reveals an age-old fear of neighbours whose misdeeds and sudden outbursts of rage are not forgotten and still, even to-day, possible. Outside the main towns some small communities have succeeded in remaining Christian, with or without mixing with the Moslems. Every tourist knows the picturesque village of Ma'alula, built in a vast and superbly grandiose crevice in the rocks of the Qalamun, whose inhabitants, all Greek Catholics, are supposed still to speak the Aramaic spoken by Christ. But who, apart from those interested in religious ethnology, ever dreams of visiting Sadad, with its six or seven Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic churches, which the Moslem invasion seems to have left forgotten in the middle of the Syrian Desert ? A Christian population of under 550,000, even including the Nestorian and Chaldean communities which recent political changes have brought in as part of the Jezireh, is a miserable figure for a country which was one of the most brilliant and most active when Christianity was in its infancy. The situation of the monasteries is no better. Here

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and there some large buildings, more or less well preserved and looked-after, like Mar Musa Habashi (St Moses the Egyptian) near Nebek, Mar Yakub at Qara on the Horns-Aleppo road, and Mar Jirgi (St George) beneath the Krak des Chevaliers, show that once there existed large communities of monks who were powerful and prosperous, but the state of these places now, the funereal atmosphere which envelops their empty walls, might make anyone think that Christianity is now extinguished, were it not for the existence of a community of Greek Orthodox nuns which keeps the flame burning at the old convent of Saidnaya near Damascus. This is the famous Our Lady of Sardenaye, of the crusading chronicles, where in the Middle Ages Catholic and Saracen alike came to worship the miraculous picture of the Virgin which the nuns still keep hidden in a little underground chapel filled with icons; the place is so holy that before entering you have to remove your shoes. The group of buildings, dominated by a cupola in pure Byzantine style, stands 4 2 0 0 feet above sea-level, overlooking a large township whose inhabitants are for the most part Christian. One can only stand amazed that such a state of affairs could come about, for it was from Syria that the monastic institution spread out into all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. It was even a Syrian who took it to the Lebanon, where to-day it is still so prosperous, even though it is virtually dead in the country where it first appeared. Theodoret, the fifth-century Bishop of Cyrus, is a reliable guide to the beginnings and physiognomy of asceticism and coenobitism in Syria, for it was round his own episcopal seat that the first ascetics appeared. They took the Antiochene as the stage for their exploits, spreading out over the desert wastes of Chalcis, the plain of Apamaea, and the mountain massif of the Amanus. In this Syria of old, whose towns were hellenized, though in the country districts it was still Syrian in language and culture (if this is not too ambitious a word), hermitages and monasteries sprang up rapidly and became the bases of Monophysite nationalism. Religious history was being written in the monasteries of Northern Syria; some, like Teleda,

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Eusebonas, and Kinnesrin, became in the seventh and eighth centuries prolific centres of Syriac literature of Jacobite tendencies. But towards the middle of the fifth century another phenomenon which had no connexion with theologico-political struggles began to attract attention to this corner of Christendom. An astonishing piece of news spread abroad, with repercussions in the West as well as in the East; pilgrimages were organized, and there was a rush to the Antiochene to be present at the miraculous acts of a new thaumaturge, the hermit Simeon, who preached and worked miracles perched on the top of a column from which he never came down. Simeon Stylites the Elder, as he is traditionally called by the Church, was born about 389 at Sis, on the borders of Syria and Cilicia. His family, though Christian, was uneducated and did not bother much about their son's education. His childhood was spent in looking after the sheep. One day, when he heard the Beatitudes read in church, he was moved to inquire about man's destiny. They told him that the life of a monk was the surest means of accomplishing it. He was a man who could make his mind up quickly, and immediately submitted himself to some ascetics for instruction. He left them after being with them for about two years, and asked to be admitted to the monastery of Teleda, about twenty-five miles north-east of Aleppo. His ten years there were spent in such austerity that, like the great St Macarius in Egypt, he became very unpopular with the other monks. The superior, feeling his mortifications to be excessive, asked him to go and carry on with them elsewhere. Simeon, who was probably glad to be able to continue his maceration in peace, left the community and went into the mountains, where he took up residence in a dry cistern. But the monastery had second thoughts, and began to regret having lost such a model ascetic. They sent out people to look for him, and as soon as he was found asked him to join the community at Teleda again. Simeon allowed himself to be persuaded and went back. But it was only for a short time. He was not called to communal

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life. So he went off again by himself towards Antioch and installed himself in a cell, where he was able to continue his penitence undisturbed. At the beginning of Lent he asked a neighbouring ascetic called Bassus to wall him up in his cell without food for the Forty Days. Bassus felt this was tantamount to helping him to commit suicide and refused. Simeon suggested a compromise: if Bassus would do as he asked he would take in with him ten loaves of bread and a jug of water to be used if necessary. The terms were agreed, and Simeon was walled up. At the end of Lent the cell was opened: Simeon was stretched out unconscious with the ten loaves and the jug of water untouched beside him. Xhey brought him round, and the next year he did the same again. This was the way he fasted for Lent for the next twenty-eight years. Three years later he began to feel the cell was too luxurious and chose himself another at Telanissos, the modern Der Seman. He had himself made a round enclosure in which he could walk about with his foot clamped to a chain twenty cubits long attached to a large stone. Presumably the voluntary convict was still not sure of his own strength of mind. However, the remonstrances of the chorepiscopus of Antioch, Meletus, made him abandon the stone and chain. It took a blacksmith to remove the iron band from his ankle: he found twenty large lice living happily underneath it. Such virtue as this could not remain hidden for long. His fame spread, and Simeon had to put up with a constant stream of visitors who descended on him, carrying the sick and cripples, asking for good health or fertility for their wives. Some who were less awestruck than others tried to touch his body or his clothes and fought to cut bits off as lucky charms and talismans. To escape these importunate people Simeon climbed on top of a pillar. Without meaning to, he had created a new form of asceticism—stylitism. It was to be extremely popular. During the remaining thirty-seven years of his life Simeon did not once leave his column, except when he changed it for a taller one, all the time trying to put a greater distance between himself and the

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crowds beneath. First it was six cubits high, then twelve, then twenty-two, and finally thirty-six. It was at this height (approximately sixty feet) that he lived for thirty years, standing upright without any shelter from the bitter climate, dressed with no thought for changes of season or temperature; his head was covered in a monastic cowl, and the only time he moved his body at all was when he carried out the bowing—the metanies—which accompanied his prayers. A visitor with a mathematical turn of mind once tried to count the number of times Simeon bowed in a single day. He counted up to 1244, and then gave up from exhaustion. A superhuman existence such as this is beyond all comprehension, for semi-immobility would produce painful wounds in the legs and purulent ulcers; continued exposure to the sun would bring on periodic attacks of ophthalmia and neuralgia which must sometimes have made him completely blind. But Simeon stayed there in his hermitage in the clouds. He harangued crowds of people who came from Spain, Gaul, and Brittany, mingling with Arabs and Persians; in his homely, simple way of speaking, he would remind his audience of the disdain they should feel for the perishable things of the world, and warned them against the novelties of dogma which were then puzzling the East. Virtue had its effect. Simeon, who was not even a priest, became a spiritual director. From his high perch he dispensed justice; with the help of a ladder he allowed certain visitors to come right up to him; he heard their secrets and gave them advice and settled their disputes; he even intervened in politics and the affairs of Church administration. In the middle of his heroic mortification, which apparently had no effect on his life-span, he dlied, aged about seventy, on July 24, 459. This perhaps rather ostentatious virtue was not to the taste of all Simeon's contemporaries, but it could not but impress them with its aura of authentic saintliness. The chorepiscopus of Antioch, who was sympathetic towards him, one day brought to the pillar the heads of neighbouring monasteries and other monks who had talked of forcing Simeon to come down. They all came to see him, some of them i

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sceptical, perhaps even ready to laugh at him, but when they saw his heroic sufferings and felt the charm of his speech, his charity, and his submissive spirit, the desire to put an end to this unrivalled asceticism vanished completely from their hearts. W e must, of course, admit that it was a little extravagant. But in the long run it was no more shocking than some of the feats of the fakirs which we marvel at unreservedly because they are Indian. None the less it does seem a little scandalous to present-day minds, for an urge to self-torment stems from a kind of warping of the mind; it is almost a blasphemy against divine creation. Does the Author of Life really insist that in order to be saved man must mortify his flesh to the point that he is almost at death's door? To understand this mentality one must set it against the background of Christian philosophy, which is entirely based upon the antithesis of Good and Evil, on the dualism of body and soul which are continually at war with each other. In order to lighten the spirit, to give it impetus and reduce the opacity of the body which stands in the way of union with God, the body must be subjugated and held in check by mortifications, because there is no better means of overcoming wicked instincts. There is much that resembles Manicheism in this belittling of the body which is considered as the principle and instrument of Evil. But there was no need for Simeon to base his practices on Mani, for right at the very beginning of Christianity St Paul had expounded the basis of the ascetic ideal in his exhortation to Christians to "crucify their flesh with all its covetousness." Of course, there is nothing Franciscan about the stylites' asceticism. It is a far cry from the poverello of Assisi, who so often pleaded for " o u r poor brother, the body." But the proof that this drastic behaviour did not scandalize Simeon's contemporaries lies in the fact that he had many imitators. As the Bollandist H. Delehaye says, far from scaring them off, "the heroic extravagance of Simeon the Elder held a veritable fascination for Eastern ascetics, and in spite of the material difficulties which were entailed by a prolonged sojourn in a hermitage far above the ground, the number of stylites named in

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ecclesiastical history is altogether remarkable. Furthermore, there are several texts in which stylites are quoted as forming a category apart; they were, in fact, a relatively large and well-thought-of élite of monks." Even in his own lifetime Simeon's example was followed by his compatriot Daniel. The latter was one of the group of monks brought by the chorepiscopus of Antioch to the stylite's column. When Simeon saw them coming he guessed what they were planning and had a ladder set up against the column. He then asked them to come up to speak to him ; they all refused, some because they were too old, others because they were too weak; others could not stand heights. Only Daniel dared to climb up, and was so impressed by his conversation with the saint that he went away immediately to look for a column for himself. The Emperor gave him one on the shores of the Bosphorus. Unfortunately it gave him some trouble, because it was not well built and almost collapsed. He therefore had to move. The second pillar had a little iron hut at the top as a protection against the weather. Daniel lived there for thirty-three years, and died in 493. Another stylite who was no less famous than the originator of the system was Simeon the Younger, whose ascetic life was centred on the Antioch region where he was born. He installed himself on Mons Admirabilis, at the mouth of the Orontes, looking over Seleuchia Pieria, which the Crusaders later called Port St Simeon after him. His biography is not as authoritative as that of Simeon the Elder, who was lucky enough to have as his biographer his friend and contemporary Theodoret of Cyrus. The biography of the younger Simeon is a panegyric which has to be taken with a pinch of salt, the anonymous author having scattered the saint's life—which was quite remarkable in itself—with numerous supernatural occurrences and miracles. But the reputation of the second Simeon, who died in 592, shows how popular this form of asceticism still was, though it had been in existence then for some time. There were many other stylites beside these, some famous, some unknown; there were even stylitesses! Almost all of them lived in Syria or Upper Mesopotamia.

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Elsewhere, except in Asia Minor, the form had less success, and in the Catholic world it had none at all. Gregory of Tours, in his Historia Francorum, tells how, in the middle of the sixth century, a monk from Lombardy tried to introduce stylitism to Carignan, in the Ardennes. The local bishops were soon up in arms against a practice which they claimed was unsuitable for the northern climate. The would-be stylite had the sense to come down from his column. Afterwards he said, " I n the winter I was so frozen by the freezing wind that my toe-nails fell out and icicles hung from my beard." It is not hard to believe him. The fact that stylitism became institutionalized is not the least curious aspect of its history. Asceticism on this scale could not possibly be imitated by the public at large, and stylites come into the category of saints who are more to be admired than emulated. Yet their weird, inhuman tortured existence was neither fatal nor even unbearable: many stylites after Simeon lived on to a ripe old age. One thing though is still puzzling: how was such an existence materially possible ? It would be easier to answer this question if we still had an example of a column left intact, with all the paraphernalia necessary to make it habitable. Those which were actually used by stylites have all unfortunately fallen down since and are on the ground in pieces. Still, using the mass of small but eloquent details which are scattered throughout the biographies of stylites, and with the help of the pictures made of them even back in the time of Simeon the Elder, it is possible to give some idea of how they lived. When stylitism first made its appearance there was no shortage of pillars, for the Classical Empires had left them scattered all over the East. After the Peace of the Church, with the destruction or abandonment of the temples, they had as it were increased in number through the loss of the frontons and entablatures. For those people who were fanatically inclined towards mortification of the flesh there were only too many columns to choose from, and if they could not

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find a suitable one, either because they were all too high or too low or in the wrong places, they could always build one for themselves, using the parts of fallen columns which they had found elsewhere. In the middle of a little fenced enclosure, the mandra, stood the stylite's column, made up of the usual basic parts—the pedestal, base, shaft, capital, balustrade, and cell or hut. The most important part of the whole construction was the capital, which had to be large enough for a man to be able not only to stand up but also to lie down. Simeon's column has lost its capital, but if you calculate it in proportion to what remains of the column it must have had an area of about six feet square. T o protect the stylite from vertigo the capital was surrounded by an open grille. That of Simeon the Younger was of walnut wood, with a sort of skin tent draped over it with a window in one side. In other cases—that of Daniel, for example—the capital was scooped out into a kind of basin, the bute, from which only the top half of the ascetic was visible. As for the hut, an addition intended to keep off the worst of the weather, there was no fixed pattern for it. Simeon the Elder never had one at all; Alypius had one which was so small that he could get into it only on his stomach. Lazarus of Galisote had his column built against the wall of a church, with an opening at the top of it into the choir, so that he could follow the services. There was practically no furniture on the top of the column. Apart from the post which Simeon the Elder had fixed to the top of his, and to which he was chained during Lent, apart from Alypius' cross and Luke Stylites' five crosses (one at each corner and one in the middle), the biographies and legends do not mention any furniture at all, and this apparent bareness is a little disturbing. After all even a body emaciated and spiritualized by mortification has some basic requirements. Food, though their rations were reduced almost to nothing, was provided by some disciple or some well-wisher, and hoisted up on a rope in a bucket or basket. For these men who were accustomed to despise the body, personal hygiene did not count for much. Lazarus the Stylite had some notions of cleanliness, for he installed a pipe through which he could remove his refuse, forgetting

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that it would provide an excellent passage for mice, which invaded his platform and added another, this time unplanned, mortification to his penitences. One must, of course, mention the ladder as well. Although the column stood on a stepped pedestal, it was impossible to climb right to the stylite, and so a ladder had to be used; it was probably kept near by and brought and set up or taken down by a disciple on the orders of the anchorite. It was not left in place permanently, in case some importunate person should climb up uninvited and trouble the stylite's solitude. The ladders were not all of the same height. Some had only ten rungs, and one had to shout to make oneself heard. That of Simeon the Elder reached right up to the balustrade, and if you wanted to take a closer look at the stylite you could step over on to the capital itself. In general there were no set rules for the organization of the various stylites. Each could follow his own fantasy, for the system was after all first and foremost an expression of individuality. A life such as this, spent in the open at the mercy of every wind that blew, in a perpetual round of prayers, penitence, and advice to crowds or individuals, was hardly conducive to the production of spiritual works which require calm and continuous study. So one must not expect to find writers among the stylites, nor around their columns centres of learning such as one finds at Mar Saba, Der es Suriani, and the Mesopotamian monasteries which we shall visit later. Nor can you really expect these aerial hermits to be preoccupied with aesthetic considerations which would have been a flat contradiction of that simplicity of life which they sought to excess. And yet it was through just this that they have found a place in history. It is one of those paradoxes which one so often comes across in the history of Christianity that stylitism, without actually being in itself creative, produced works of architecture which are among the most beautiful buildings ever created. When you go from Aleppo towards Antioch, which to-day is in

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Turkey, taking the macadam road which cuts across the old Roman Antioch to Chalcis road, whose wide foundations still exist, you soon reach the broad plain of Dana, overlooked by Mount Koriphe ("the summit"), the centre of monachism in North Syria, so magnificently described by Theodoret. During the brief Syrian spring when the ground is covered with green and starred with flowers you stare at it as if in a trance, not only because Nature has awoken, but because everywhere you look there is bustle and activity: labourers turn over the red soil, women dressed in bright colours dot the fields, birds fly in flocks, hawks hover. But as soon as you leave the cultivated land the countryside changes. After the arable land come mountain massifs, deserts of rocks and small stones, scarcely able to support even a few herds of goats, while here and there you see a curious conical house of baked mud, a shelter for man and his flock, and a provision-store at the same time. The most striking thing about all this desolate landscape is that everywhere you find ruins rising from the ground; not simple, isolated ruins, steles or tombs, such as you can see anywhere in the East, but imposing groups, whole towns, or at any rate large villages, whose ground-plans can easily be made out under the detritus, with watch-towers opening on to streets, villas with colonnades, houses of well-to-do landowners, inns, markets and, of course, churches, often so well preserved that all one need do to make them ready for worship again is put on a new roof, remove the rubbish which has accumulated inside them, and install some simple fittings. All these ruins are mortar-built of sturdy building-stone, which shows up the poverty of the modern dwellings. They call this desert region the Land of the Dead Cities. The number and size of these towns show how in the past this region enjoyed a period of extraordinary prosperity, and its decline poses a problem for the historian. G. Chalenko has recently provided the answer after examination of the economic conditions prevailing in the first centuries of our era, and by relating the abandonment of these townships to the cessation of commerce with the West which

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followed the Arab invasion. The fact that it was impossible to send olives (the only crop grown in the mountains) long distances brought the inhabitants down to the plains from the high country, where they had settled during the commercially active Byzantine period. The exodus took place gradually, and the buildings were abandoned to the mercy of the elements, which, little by little, brought them to the state they were in when they were first discovered by explorers in the last century. That fine architect Father Mattern, who visited them in 1928, felt especially strongly the artistic lesson to be got from these ruins. To him they were the remains of a truly national art, for the other ancient monuments of Syria, either those of the Pharaonic period or those of the Seleucids or Romans, were the work of foreign artists. Local influence was practically negligible in them, and not one can be taken as the product of a really autochthonous artistic development. But the man who best understood the originality of these ruins, and the lesson to be derived from them, was their 'inventor,' the Marquis Melchior de Vogue, who made his first contact with this desolate part of Syria in 1862. In this extract from the two large volumes of Syrie Centrale: Architecture Civile et Religieuse du Ier au Vlttme siecle he puts down on paper in his own enthusiastic style the emotion which these columns and standing walls and almost intact churches produced in him and the importance he assigned to them in the history of art: Here one stumbles unawares on the life led in a Christian society, not the secretive life of the catacombs, not the humiliated, timid suffering existence which is how early Christian life is generally represented, but a broad, opulent, artistic life led in great houses built of large blocks of stone, perfectly furnished, . . . in magnificent columned churches, flanked with towers and surrounded by splendid tombs. Crosses and the Christian monograms are carved in relief above almost every door; the inscriptions on the tombs can still clearly be read; out of a feeling of Christian humility they hardly ever give any proper names, but only pious sayings, quotations from the scriptures and symbols; everywhere you find a note of victory being struck which shows up all the more strongly the humility of each individual, and which animates every sentence, from the verse of

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the psalmist cut in beautiful red letters on a lintel covered with sculptures to the graffito of an obscure painter, who when decorating a tomb tried out his paintbrush by painting monograms of Christ on the rock-face and wrote, paraphrasing the Labarum, Touto Nika, "this triumphs." This atmosphere of Christianity which so impressed the Marquis de Vogue, had struck many other visitors before him, and it was undoubtedly because of it that this part of Northern Syria was the adopted home of the stylites. Many traces of them are left there. Kefr Derian, in the Jebel Barisha, south of the Aleppo-Antioch road, is an ideal place to try to imagine what the life of a stylite was like. It is a fairly large village, set amid fig-trees, olives, and almonds, built on an enormous expanse of ruins which covers two low hills. The top of the easternmost of these hills was levelled in Christian times, and on it is a site which is still known by the significant name of El Der ( " t h e monastery"). The freestone wall has long since disappeared, but one can easily follow its line on the ground; originally it formed a rectangle about fifty yards long by forty wide. This enclosed courtyard, which entered through a gateway, still contains a small building in dressed stone, so solidly built that the weather and the passing of time have hardly had any effect on it. All that has gone is its wooden roof. The building is twenty-five feet high, thirty long, and twenty wide, two-storeyed, with square columns in front which are all that remains of a porch. The ground floor was a chapel, and there is still a little square altar at the east end. Above was a living-room and meeting-hall, while underneath it all is a huge water-cistern covered with large paving-stones which form the floor of the chapel. What is particularly interesting in this sacred enclosure is that a few yards from this building the shaft of a large column is lying on the ground, split into three parts. The longest is twelve feet five inches long; the others are five feet and three feet eight respectively. One can presume from this that the stylite was at least twenty or twentyfive feet above the crowd of pilgrims beneath him; they must have

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been fairly numerous, since several cisterns had to be dug on the relatively small piece of ground. The capital of the column has unfortunately disappeared completely, and there is nothing left which might help us to reconstruct the way in which the stylite organized his hermitage. With or without a hut? In a bate or behind a balustrade? On the other hand, the base of the column is still in situ-, it could not be moved, being carved out of the mountain rock. It is about nine feet square and one foot four inches high, and is surrounded by a sort of ditch or low path six feet wide which separates it on three sides from the rest of the rock, probably to afford the stylite more isolation. Quite near it, slightly to the north, is a tomb, whose stone lid has been carried a little way off by treasure-seekers. It is certainly the tomb of the ascetic whose life here caused him to be venerated. No church history tells his story as for the great stylites, and we would not even know his name were it not for a Syriac manuscript in the British Museum which mentions a certain Abbot Jonas "who is living high on a pillar in the small town of KFR DRN." There is no doubt about the identity of this town: it is Kefr Derian, where we are standing. Jonas was not perhaps the only person to live here, for it is quite likely that once a column was set up it rarely lacked candidates when left vacant by the death of its occupant. Here at Kefr Derian one can easily imagine the stylite receiving pilgrims in the enclosure, taking part with them in the services celebrated in the chapel, looked after by a small group of disciples who lived on the upper floor of the building and brought him his food, set up or took down the ladder, and followed whatever advice he might give them. From the top of the column to the upper room was only a matter of fifty feet, and the stylite's voice could easily carry that far. This is not an unsubstantiated hypothesis. There is a text which describes a stylite living in Palestine with a community of recluses under him whom he instructed "through the window." It must have happened elsewhere too. After all, the inhabitants of the upper room at Kefr Derian may well have been not monks but nuns.

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Other stylites' columns are mentioned in texts or shown on monuments in this northern region of Syria, at Erhab, Toqad, Kefr Yahmul, and at Kimar, but at none of them is any visible trace left—none, that is, except at that of the first stylite, Simeon the Elder, the most important of all the sites. It was such a holy spot that there was built, under the beautiful Syrian sky, the most extraordinary group of buildings in the whole of the Near East, and until the construction of Sancta Sophia's at Constantinople probably the most extraordinary building in the whole of Christendom. Simeon spent the last years of his life on top of a column practically seventy feet high, which was itself on the top of a hill in the Jebel Sheik Barakat, now called Jebel Seman; from this perch he must have had a wonderful view running from the coastal chain of the Amanus with the plain of Antioch at his feet, right to the foothills of the Taurus and the green stretches of the Kurd Dag and the valley of the Afrin. When his life of mortifications and miracles came to an end on July 24, 459, a famous dispute started as to the ownership of his body. The patriarch Martyrius of Antioch felt that the remains of such a great saint should be kept in his cathedral church, but the monks of the shrine, supported by the local population, decided to keep their miracle-worker with them. Martyrius won, but only because the Emperor sent six hundred soldiers to help him under the command of the magister militum Ardabur. Antioch's victory was, however, short-lived. Some twelve years later, about 471, the Emperor Leo had the sacred remains transferred from Syria to Constantinople, where he built them a sanctuary. This did not put an end to the great crowds of pilgrims who had become used to going to Antioch to worship the remains of St Simeon. Nor did it stop the pilgrimages to the Jebel Sheik Barakat. These had begun even in Simeon's lifetime, and after his death the influx of visitors increased enormously. For although there was no body, the mountain still possessed his column, the proof and instrument of his miraculously ascetic life. It was to honour this remarkable relic that at the end of that century the Emperor Zeno built the Basilica of St

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Simeon, whose grandiose ruins astonish and enchant the modern visitor by their daring and beauty. The anonymous architects who planned this immense reliquary must have seen everything larger than life. They were the spiritual descendants of the men who built the temple of Baalbek. The architectural group does not consist only of the basilica, for around it there are grouped all the buildings necessary for the maintenance of worship, for the reception of immense crowds of pilgrims, and for the exercise of their cultural life. Thus it is a complete holy city spread out on the highest point of the Jebel Seman, with its church, its baptistry, its monastery and hostelries, its courtyards and outbuildings. It covers an area of about half a square mile, yet this enormous undertaking (which necessitated a considerable levelling of the ground) took less than twenty years to complete. It was begun about 476 and finished by 490. Even to-day one can only gasp in amazement at such a speed: it means that armies of workmen of every possible craft and trade—masons, carpenters, stone-cutters, etc.— worked day in day out on the construction of what Father Mattern called "the synthesis of all that Syrian art had produced up till then, evidence of the skill and creative genius of the Syrian architects, as well as of the strength of Christian faith in the East." However, the very short time taken to realize this vast project suggests that it must not have been done without the active support of the Court at Constantinople. Probably the workmen employed were not all local men. The pride of the whole group is, of course, the Basilica. The architect was faced with a double task, for a basilica had to be designed not only as a church for the celebration of divine offices, but also as a memorial, a 'martyrion' to the column which was exposed to the veneration of the pilgrims. A glance at the plan shows how skilfully this was achieved. The architect made the stylite's column the focal point of the whole basilica. The base and lowest part of the shaft are still visible to-day, though badly damaged by the fervour of indiscreet pilgrims who like

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to chip off pieces as souvenirs or charms. It stands in the middle of an octagonal courtyard ninety feet in diameter. The octagon is formed by eight large arches, of which four, those at the four cardinal points, lead into four three-aisled basilicas, while the other four arches open on to little apses which link together the side-aisles of the basilicas. This is the most modern, the most daring, and aesthetically the most satisfying element in an architectural group which is crammed with experimental detail. In its present state, with its great arches open to the sky, with its columns standing free of the corner pillars, its mouldings, the little columns of the interior angles lying on the ground, and its sculptured cornice, it provides raw material enough for the imagination to recreate the setting which the Syrian architect constructed for the venerated relic of St Simeon. It is a work completely without parallel in the whole history of architecture. The four basilicas are thus like the four branches of a cross; they have each basically the same structure as other churches of the locality built at the end of the fifth century. Their dimensions, though, are exceptionally large. Each has three naves, divided off by two rows of pillars. The easternmost basilica, which is two bays longer than the others, ends in three apses which project on the outside and are flanked by two sacristies. This is the church proper; the others were designed for the free movement of the faithful, facilitated by twentyseven doors which gave access to every part of the sanctuary. By placing the basilica-church on the east side the architect conformed to the primitive Christian tradition which orientated churches towards the rising sun, the image of the risen Christ. But he had to deviate from the usual plan by putting the main entrance on the south side, and not at the west. On the western side the site has an almost sheer drop down the hillside, and this made the construction of a porch impossible. The west wall is built up on stone foundations to counteract the slope of the ground. This is the least well preserved of the four basilicas, because its weaker foundations made it more sensitive to earthquakes. Planned in this way, the sanctuary of St Simeon offered pilgrims

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Plan of St Simeon's

a setting which was expressly designed for their needs. Housed at the foot of the hill in monasteries and hostelries whose ruins now form the village of Der Seman, the pilgrims would take the sacred way which brought them through a portico and a propylaeum beside the baptistry and out on to the basilica platform. They then would go through one or other of the four wide entrance doors in the south porch, would walk the whole length of the south basilica and right round the octagon to venerate the relic, and finally enter the eastern basilica for Mass or one of the offices. Their visit finished, they went out again on to the platform.

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Even more so than to its highly original ground-plan, St Simeon's sanctuary owes its importance as a work of Syrian art to various elements in its architecture and decoration; a monument of this kind is not a plan on the ground, but a block of building standing out against the brilliant blue sky, making a focal point for the country round about. If one looks at it in this light St Simeon's (together with Sancta Sophia's) is the most ambitious Christian building constructed before the eleventh- and twelfth-century masterpieces of Western ecclesiastical architecture. With its triple porch, surmounted by triangular frontons raised on fluted columns, with the wall of its south entrance (now minus its pignon) still pierced by four windows framed in the rolls of the moulding, with its semicircular apses and the great round arches of the octagon, with all these elements, St Simeon's may well be said to contain the seed of romanesque art; indeed, may one not imagine that it was in this far-distant sanctuary that Western architects at the time of the Crusades found the inspiration for their Romanesque basilicas which lie along the great pilgrim-routes to Rome, Jerusalem and St James of Compostella? For this reason the eye of the Westerner accustomed to Vezelay, St Benoit-sur-Loire, and Moissac is much more at home in St Simeon's than in any of the Byzantine cathedrals or churches. Again and again it lights upon familiar shapes. Fill St Simeon's porch with statues, and it would be the perfect Romanesque church! Modern Syria recognizes the basilica's importance, and the Syrian Ancient Monuments Office looks after this wonderful building jealously, and struggles to keep it as it has been left by the centuries, and by the French restorers who rescued it during the time of the French mandate. Under the direction of Selim Bey Abdullak the Department started on clearing the aisles of the rubbish which had accumulated in them, so that in 1959, on the fifteen hundredth anniversary of St Simeon's death, masses and commemorative services were held there, bringing life back once more, though only for a short time, to this desert of stones. Christians of every denomination and Moslems of all sects were gathered together there with no difference

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of belief, for one of the most attractive features of the Eastern world is that saints belong to every one, and no distinction is made by them in the favours which they grant! Such an intelligent official approach to this ancient monument does not only reveal the liberalism of the Syrian Government; it is also a tacit, maybe reluctant, acknowledgment of the work carried out by Western archaeologists in the years since the Marquis de Vogue revealed St Simeon's to the world. Stylitism was the most obvious form of asceticism in this part of Northern Syria, but it was not the only one. Besides the remains left by the stylites, there is plenty of proof of the existence of monasteries. In many places, such as Breij, Turmanin, Me'ez, Kinnesrin, Tell'Ade and Der Seman, the most imposing ruins are those of the monasteries built to house large numbers of monks. Here monachism played the same cultural and economic rôle which it played everywhere else. Most of these monasteries are situated between the Jebel Seman and the Jebel Barisha, in the plain of Dana, which, from the fourth century until the Arab conquest, was the real centre of monastic life in Upper Syria. At the end of the sixth century there were no fewer than eighty monasteries, of varying size and importance, all more or less following the characteristic plan of Syrian monasteries in that area. Usually they were built away from big towns, but near main roads, and their chapels opened directly on to the roadside for the convenience of passers-by. The monastic buildings had no surrounding walls. In principle each had a church, a collective tomb, a dwellinghouse, and one or two buildings of an original design. These were either single- or two-storeyed, consisted of a vast rectangular room, and were surrounded on three or sometimes all four sides by a portico. The whole building formed a square. Monasteries without outside walls, without battlement walks and watch-towers and keeps . . . this is something new, something which tells us of monastic surroundings vastly different from those of the Coptic or Palestinian monasteries. It presupposes conditions of security which could have existed only in a thoroughly christianized

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community which was sufficiently strong to prevent the Bedouin of the adjoining deserts from pillaging and ransacking. It also suggests that there was a trustful amity between the monasteries and villages, brought about perhaps by the daily contact necessitated by the predominantly agricultural character of these communities of monks. To confirm this aspect of Syrian monachism we are at present reduced to purely archaeological evidence. Aerial photography has revealed the lines of rubble walls which marked the limits of a property and its interior divisions for working. A monastery was therefore not simply a religious foundation, but a large agricultural enterprise, autonomous and well organized. This is scarcely surprising ; it follows directly from the fact that monastic life at the time of its great expansion—that is to say, during the fifth and sixth centuries—could no longer be dependent upon charity, except, of course, in the case of the great pilgrim centres such as St Simeon's. Unfortunately, with the parcelling out of the land which has subsequently taken place, it is in the majority of cases impossible to determine the full extent of the conventual property or to discover what methods of cultivation were used by the monks. At all events it does not seem that the monks of Upper Syria ever had the same influence over the theory of agriculture as was wielded in Europe in carolingian times by the Benedictines, who amassed large lands often miles away from the monasteries themselves, or later by the Cistercians, who introduced new methods of tilling. Most probably the Syrian monks fell into an agricultural and economic system which had existed before them and which has been analysed by M. G. Chalenko in his fascinating study of the ancient villages of Northern Syria. From the second century onward their inhabitants developed a double system of cultivation—cereals in the plain, and in the narrow strips of cultivatable land in the mountains, olive-trees, the olive-oil taking the road to the west through the ports of Antioch and Laodicea, (Latakia). The labour force was exploited by a few large landowners and the important monasteries followed suit. The Syrian monk was not, therefore, a tiller of the soil. On the K

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contrary, he showed such an active interest in things spiritual that he played an important part in the doctrinal struggles of the time, and produced the best examples of Syriac Monophysite literature during its golden age, that is, from the sixth to the eighth centuries. In particular it was in these monasteries that the artists were recruited for the hellenizing movement already mentioned in connexion with Der es Suriani. The most active centres of translating Greek authors, whose effect was finally felt in the West seven centuries later, were the two neighbouring monasteries of Burdj es-Saba and Tell'Ade, whose ruins stand out in the north-east of the plain of Dana, five thousand feet up on the slopes of the Jebel Sheik Barakat. Their ruins, fragments of wall surrounded by pillared porticoes, give little idea of the two monasteries which wielded such a powerful influence over the formation of monachism in Northern Syria. Luckily, where archaeological evidence is lacking, literary sources are so abundant that we can follow their history for at least six hundred years, from their foundation in the fourth century to their abandonment in the tenth. This relatively late date shows that the Dead Cities were not all deserted at once, and that Christianity continued in this region well after the Islamic invasion. The stories of the two monasteries are so closely linked that it is impossible to separate them. According to Theodoret, who used information provided by the monks of Tell'Ade in his history of the origins of monachism in North Syria, the Ecclesiastical History, Tell'Ade owes its existence to a certain Amianos who, in the middle of the fourth century, founded near Teleda (the Greek version of the name) " a retreat for meditation on philosophy." By this he meant Christian philosophy, or, if you prefer it, ascetic life. Another cloister of anchorites was already in existence in the neighbourhood under the direction of Marianos, whose nephew, the recluse Eusebius, showed such virtue that Amianos asked him to take charge of the new monastery. A man of action as well as of meditation, Eusebius built monastery after monastery, both Greek and Syrian, in the vicinity of Jebel Sheik Barakat, attracting monks from Northern

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Mesopotamia there. Towards 370 he entrusted to two of his disciples Eusebonas and Abibion, the monastery founded some distance to the west of Tell'Ade. This is the place Chalenko identifies with the ruins of Burdj es-Saba. It was there that St Simeon Stylites passed the first ten years of his monastic career. Very little is known of Tell'Ade in the fifth century, but in the sixth, at a time when Syrian monachism knew a period of sudden expansion due to the Monophysite movement, documents become more numerous. About 500 the monks received a theological letter from the Bishop of Hierapolis-Mabbug (nowadays Membiji), Philoxemus, one of the most representative teachers of the new doctrine. In 567 and 569 the monastery headed lists of Syrian monasteries that had correspondence with the Monophysites in Constantinople. In 572 Abbot Simeon added a tower to the monastery. Thirty years later, in 601, it was further enlarged by the addition of a porch built by Abbot John (Yohanan). In the following century it produced a patriarch of the Jacobite Church, who reigned from 631 to 640. This last reference shows that the arrival of the Moslems did not cut short the life of these monasteries. They continued for a few hundred years more. In 858 Mathieu of Tell'Ade rebuilt Burdj es-Saba; in 907 the gate in the outside wall of Tell'Ade was restored, and a new tower was built in 941. Political conditions had changed, the country was less safe than in the good old days, and the monasteries began to look more like fortresses. But Tell'Ade lost none of its religious importance. Four Patriarchs were consecrated there in the tenth century, the last, Abraham, being consecrated in 962. After this date silence falls on the monastery. "For two hundred years," wrote Chalenko, "the mountain became border country, a battleground bristling with castles, fought for by the Byzantine army, then by the Franks, then by the Moslems. It was during this period, at what exact date we cannot say, that the Jacobite community of Tell'Ade came to an end." What permitted these two monasteries to reach their place of importance in the intellectual and hellenizing movement was the

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foundation near them of the monastery of Kinnesrin. It owed its existence to John bar Aphtonius, abbot of the monastery of St Thomas in Seleucia of Orontes, who was expelled from his post by the Emperor Justinian in 521. He then moved to a spot on the left bank of the Euphrates, Kinnesrin, where he founded a monastery in 537. Its site has not been discovered, but its name, which means "eagle's nest," suggests that it was built in an impregnable spot in the mountains. John bar Aphtonius made Kinnesrin a centre of syrio-hellenic culture which was not simply religious, for not only did it enrich the theological thought of the Monophysites with translations of the works of the great Greek teachers, but it also provided translations of books of profane Greek literature, and thus the Jacobite Church was furnished with a culture in the widest sense of the term. This was what monks like Severus Sebokht and Athanasius of Balad worked on: they translated the works of Aristotle and Porphyrius from Greek into Syriac and also composed treatises on mathematics or science. But out of all the writers of this group none played so important a part as James of Edessa, who died at Tell'Ade in 708. He might well be said to occupy in the Monophysite Church a place similar to that which St Jerome (the patron saint of translators) holds in the Roman Catholic one. He was born near Antioch about the year 640, and when still very young came under the influence of Severus Sebokht at Kinnesrin. Then he moved on to Alexandria, where he learnt the secrets of textual criticism which had been developed by the Alexandrian scholars three centuries before Christ for the study of classical Greek literature. In 684 he was made Bishop of Edessa, but stayed there only a short time. His ideas about the observance of the laws and rules of the Church did not fit in with those held by his clergy, who were rather too lax. There were arguments, and James resigned. The monks of Eusebonas asked him to stay with them, and this he did, living in peace for the next eleven years, teaching novices, making them learn the psalms and the scriptures in the original Greek, restoring Greek studies, then fallen into disuse, to the important place they had held

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in his youth. His task was not an easy one, for he ran up against the opposition of those members of the community "who did not like the Greeks," as Michael the Syrian puts it. They were the group of antiintellectual monks such as one finds in any monastery. James then moved again, this time to Tell'Ade where he spent nine years, mainly devoted to writing a Syriac version of the Old Testament, as Thomas of Harkel, one of his predecessors at Kinnesrin, had done for the New Testament. He was recalled to the see of Edessa, but did not enjoy it for long; four months after his appointment he returned to Tell'Ade to supervise the moving of his cherished library, and suddenly died there on June 5, 708. James was as much of a humanist as was possible at that period. He was a philologist, a scientist, and just as interested in questions of philosophy as in linguistic or historical research. He was also an excellent calligrapher, as several manuscripts written by him and now in London or Paris show. These Monophysite monasteries were, in fact, great centres of book production. In this they resembled Greek and Roman monasteries of the later Middle Ages, through whose offices all the works of classical or Christian antiquity have been passed down to us, works which, had it not been for these monks, would almost all have been lost for ever. But the Monophysites did differ from the others on the question of miniature illumination, which is very common in Byzantine and Roman Catholic manuscripts, but extremely rare in the works of the Syrian monasteries. This is surprising. Was it, one wonders, that the monks of Northern Syria refrained from illustrating their books out of economy or poverty even ? This is hardly likely when one considers the vast sums which must have been spent in building St Simeon's basilica and the artistic research which must have been the basis for its design. Should one perhaps attribute this absence of religious imagery to the iconoclastic spirit only too frequently referred to as a characteristic of the Arab world? This is an explanation just as unacceptable as the first, for while they did not show the passion which the Greek Orthodox have

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for icons, the Jacobites never pronounced any decrees against them. The small number of illuminated manuscripts of Syrian origin must only, therefore, have been brought about by wanton destruction. In this light an illuminated Gospels which was saved from destruction by the Maronites and has since 1476 been in the Laurentian Library in Florence is particularly impressive. It was written and decorated in 586 (exactly one hundred years after the building of St Simeon's) in the monastery of St John of Zagba. No trace now remains of this monastery, but there can be no doubt that it was situated in the Aleppo region, and that it belonged to the northern Syrian group of monasteries. This magnificent manuscript was written by the monk Rabula—hence its name among scholars of Codex Rabulensis—and is one of the most precious examples of pictorial art from the half-century preceding the arrival of the Moslems. All its ornamentation, collected into the first fourteen pages of the book, is a wonderful specimen of the asiatico-oriental art practised in these monasteries. The events of the Gospels are portrayed vividly and picturesquely in an historical style which has touches of the monumental about it. There are architectural designs obviously inspired by classical art, though full of extraneous elements taken from the world of flowers and plants ; beneath these are full-length figures, sometimes stiff and hieratic, sometimes gesturing in a way which reveals the artist's desire to convey an impression of reality. The same could be said of the portraits of the evangelists, who are shown in very similar style to the pictures of classical authors one comes across in manuscripts of classical antiquity. So, too, are the great pictures of the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension which are believed to be reproductions of some of the mosaics in the Constantinian buildings in Jerusalem. It is the first expression of an iconography which through time became traditional. This manuscript has been claimed by the Byzantinists: certainly the illuminator was influenced by Greek, or, rather, Mediterranean, art. But its origin is undoubtedly Syrian. What makes it so important is first its great age: it is the first dated illuminated manuscript. Then

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again it also provides important evidence of the themes which were particularly discussed by the monks of Northern Syria. In the rapid sketch I have given above of the churches in the Dead Cities, and particularly of St Simeon's basilica, the reader will have noticed the relative poverty of the decoration. It is reduced to a few sculptured capitals, a few geometric or floral motifs, and the volutes which emphasize the shapes of the doorways and windows, and which in their simplicity of form lighten the flat massive surfaces of the walls. There is nothing at all which represents the human figure. And yet it was not always like this. Every archaeologist who has studied the Christian churches of Northern Syria agrees that the interior walls of these buildings were once covered with paintings and frescoes, just as, later on, were the Byzantine churches. In its way Rabula's manuscript helps one to see in the mind's eye the world of shapes, colours, and images in which the Syrian monks lived. Apparently completely cut offfrom the material comforts of life, they nevertheless sought, as these pictures show, plastic beauty as a necessary adornment of their private world and spiritual life. Now this area which has for so long been deserted, abandoned, given up to the poverty and solitude of the desert, is on the point of coming back to life again. Through a long-term economic plan the fertile land in the mountains is little by little being reclaimed; once it made the country rich through its olive-trees; now these are being replaced by cotton, and the land can once more look ahead. But you cannot say the same for the monasteries. Once they gave Syria a leading place in art and culture, and now they are dead, irremediably dead, and it is high time that we who have overstayed our welcome among the graves should go out and find the living.

7 On the Borders of Kurdistan

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H E north of Iraq, the right bank of the Tigris, rushing past with its muddy waters: here, since the Moslem invasion, Mosul has occupied the place left empty by the collapse of Nineveh, whose tell can still be seen on the opposite bank. It is a rich and bustling town, set in the middle of agricultural country, for which it serves as market. In spite of modern town-planning and a spate of new buildings it has still kept its Oriental aspect which so attracted travellers in the past. The showpiece is the bazaar quarter—houses with superimposed terraces of all sizes and heights; narrow alleyways with gutters running down the middle for waste water; small, low shops; ancient stalls like wine-racks, where brass-workers, cobblers, potters, jewellers, men selling fruit, melons, watermelons, and flycovered meat ply their trade; cafés with latticework fronts where the customers sit cross-legged on wickerwork benches, smoking chibouks and narghiles as they drink their coffee or chi (tea) to the click of the backgammon board. The market crowd is full of colour and variety, and it needs a practised eye to be able to pick out from the magma of beings indistinguishable by their costume specimens of the different ethnic types which have over the years collected here— desert Bedouin, Turks who have stayed behind after the signing of the treaty, Kurds, Yezedis, Armenians, and so on. The streets are jammed with a perpetually moving crowd, and blocked here and there

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by camel-caravans or the innumerable little horse-drawn carriages which are the only vehicles allowed in these streets—a very praiseworthy piece of legislation, for it means that the decrepit buses and large American cars which take you anywhere into the Iraqi countryside must stop in the outer khans of the town. Huddling beneath the minaret of the Jami el-Khebir or el-Arbain, the former Church of the Forty Martyrs, which has stayed leaning at an angle ever since the day when, so they say, it bowed in deference to Mohammed, the town of Mosul is, after Baghdad, the second capital of Iraq. This important position is due as much to its glorious history as to its political and religious standing during the Ottoman period. The Turks made it the capital of Kurdistan, although, in fact, it has always been only on the edge of the area of Kurdish influence. It is now a well-established fact that the Kurds, the unconquered people, proud and barbarous, poetic and nature-loving, of whom there are at the moment some seven millions, never spread as far as the plain of Mosul. Never in all their dramatic history did they once cross the Tigris. A predominantly mountain people, they have always lived in the mountain massifs of Armenia and the Persian Sagros, where towering peaks and high plateaux alternate with deep ravines and laughing valleys; always they have been under the sway of different political masters who each in turn have suppressed their resurgent independence demanded by rebellions and armed uprisings without number. As their latest historian, Nikitin, has written: "Generally one can say that the Kurds and mountains are inseparable; where the plain begins the Kurds give way to the Arab, the Turk, and the Persian, and on the banks of Lake Van they even retreated before the Armenians." The Kurds' political situation was unchanged after the treaties which followed the ending of the 1914-18 W a r , and Kurdistan is still a geographical rather than a political entity, since there are Kurds in Iraq, Persia, Turkey, the Soviet Union, and even in Syria, where they have a few colonies. In Damascus they have a whole quarter to themselves.

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Christians are quite numerous both in Kurdistan and the plain which borders it; the Christian quarter in Mosul is like a microcosm of them all. Within its streets and fortified houses are Nestorians and Chaldeans, Orthodox Syrians and Catholic Syrians, each grouped round their respective cathedrals and chapels. The Arab-speaking Melkite element, so common in Egypt and the rest of the Near East, is represented by only small isolated groups which have no communal life. This almost total absence of Byzantine-derived Christianity is in itself a sign that we are in a new world, that of the Syrian Christians, a few of whom we have already met among the Monophysite monks of Northern Syria. Their main centres are in the large villages around Mosul (Tell, Kef, Qaramles, Alqosh, Qarakosh, Bartelli), where Christians of every shade and variety live mingled together in the mountain region of the Tur 'Abdin to the east of Mardin, in Turkey, and in the Syrian Jezireh on the borders of Khabur, where compact groups of Assyrian tribesmen (Nestorians) have settled, having been driven from their previous homes in the impenetrable massif of the Hakkiari, south of Lake Van, by the Great War. The sociological study of these groups whose tribal customs are still flourishing cannot be set out here. P. Rondot did it for the Assyrian tribes of the Hakkiari, and before him Sir Harry Luke dealt with the Christians in the plain of Mosul in his book Mosul and its Minorities. Their most striking feature is undoubtedly the closed groups in which they live. In contrast to what has happened in other places where communities are crumbling in a way typical of any diaspora, here Christians live completely self-contained lives in a sort of autarchy which cuts them off from the surrounding Moslem world. Their isolation is further increased by their use of dialects, the Surete and Turanian, vulgar forms of the Classical Syriac still used in church services. Many Christians have no knowledge at all of the language of the country they live in—like the old Jacobite Bishop of Midyat in the Tur 'Abdin, who knew as little Turkish as I did. When I went to visit him in June 1955, to make myself understood I had to say what I wanted in French to my guide, who translated it into

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Turkish to the local priest, who translated it into Turanian for the benefit of the Bishop. In spite of this roundabout way of communication, what I said seemed to get across, for the venerable bishop gave me all the information I wanted. As this shows, although in Turkey there is less material separation of Christians than in Iraq, spiritually they are just as isolated. In these areas where Christianity is still alive, monachism took root early, perhaps even before it appeared in Egypt, and it was influenced by Egypt only much later. Hermits first appeared in the steppe and the mountains round Edessa (the modern Urfa) at the beginning of the fourth century. The first little group, gathered round the Bishop of Harran, lived in cells built in the fertile Aram countryside. They seem to have had missionary aims towards the pagan communities round about, and hence they cannot be called monks in the strict sense of the word. But at the same time another group had a hermitic organization with no other aim than that of personal sanctification. They were under the direction of Julian Sabas, sometimes called Julian the Old or the Venerable, who in 317 chose himself a cave in the desert north-north-east of the capital of the Osroene. Hidden away in his cave, the hermit led a life of frightening penitence, allowing himself only one meal a week, and that only of bran or millet bread, with a little salt, dried figs, and spring-water. He spent his time singing psalms and in contemplation. As always happened in such cases, his austerity did not long go unnoticed, and disciples flocked to him. First ten, then twenty, then a hundred; in the end they needed some organization. It was quite simple: the ascetics, who were scattered all over the desert, came together morning and evening for communal prayers. During the day they went off in pairs into the desert; one on his knees offered God atonement for his sins, while the other sang fifty psalms. They took turns at this until nightfall; they rested a little before sunset, and then came together from all different directions for their communal prayers. After Julian Sabas's death a small monastery was built near his

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cave by the Nahr Oshullat (a tributary of the Belik) and named after him. It was already in existence in the fifth century, and according to the Syriac manuscripts which mention it, it then had all the features which were later to characterize Mesopotamian monasteries—a central cœnobium, built, not on the top of a hill, but half-way up it, flanked by a larger building which served as a church. Several very old monks lived in the cœnobium, and the novices also during their probation, while on the mountain itself at various distances from the central building were caves or stone cells where the experienced monks lived as hermits, and came to join the monks in the cœnobium only for the services on Sundays and festivals. Julian Sabas's monastery was therefore a colony of caves and cells grouped around a cœnobium and a chapel; in fact, it looked something like the lauras in Palestine. Both groups of men seem to have been ruled by similar laws. This first experiment in monachism was the source of all the countless monasteries which filled the Edessa neighbourhood and the north of Syria, spreading finally into Cilicia and Upper Mesopotamia. They flourished there for a long time. Even at the time of the Crusades—a renaissance for the Jacobite Church—fifty of them were still in existence, proof of their continued vitality. It was from them that the Church recruited its most active and influential members, its teachers and bishops, often its patriarchs also; the most representative of them certainly came from the monasteries. Michael the Great ( 1166-99) was abbot of the great monastery of Mar Barsuma, whose site has recently been discovered at Borsum Kalesi, in Turkey. For this reason, too, the seat of the patriarchate was frequently a monastery. Their rôle was not purely ecclesiastic; many of them had hospitals or almshouses attached which they could run on their large revenues. Parallel to these Monophysite monasteries and no less numerous or active were the Nestorian monasteries of the same region, though rather more to the east. Nestorianism, a rival both to the Jacobite and the Byzantine Church, flourished in the Mesopotamian territories which were ruled by the Sassanian kings, and in the end it became the

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only officially recognized Church in the country. Its real name was therefore the Persian Nestorian Church; this emphasizes its real nature and the causes which brought about its appearance. For, as in the case of Syrian Monophysitism, the most important fact about Nestorianism was that it was used by the Persian monarchy as an instrument for consolidating its independence of the Byzantine Empire, with which it was always at loggerheads. Were it not for the fact that the King of Kings, together with the local clergy, felt it imperative to contradict everything done by Byzantium, that stronghold of Orthodoxy and Monophysitism, it is likely that the name of the Nestorian Church would never have become synonymous with that of the Persian Church, and Nestorianism would have remained an erroneous doctrine, one of the many heresies which plagued the early Christian Church, and which have vanished without leaving any trace of their existence, save in treatises on ecclesiastical history and theology. Having become the established Church of the Sassanian princes, and then being recognized by the Caliph of Baghdad, the Persian Nestorian Church played a rôle in the history of Eastern Christianity which it is difficult to imagine to-day, when one sees it, once so influential and widespread, reduced to a mere shadow. Numerically it is the smallest of the Eastern Christian Churches, even including those members who went over to Rome in the fifteenth century and became the Chaldean Church, whose hierarchy, ritual, and organization are the same as those of the old Nestorian Church, though now free of doctrinal error. And yet at one stage in its career it was one of the greatest Christian communities in Asia, rivalling in the extent of its territory and the activity of its missionaries the Byzantine or even the Roman Church, its head, the Katholikos, wielding from SeleuciaCtesiphon on the Tigris a jurisdiction at least as wide as that wielded by the Pope in Rome. In the Middle Ages—that is, from the eighth century until the arrival of the Mongols—the Nestorian Church had an extraordinary period of expansion. As its historian M. J. Dauvillier, has said:

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It spread the Gospel to Central Asia, Tibet, India, and China; it extended from Cyprus to Manchuria, and even to the islands of Java and Sumatra. After learning from the Arab conquerors the elements of civilization—letters, philosophy, astronomy, physics, and medicine—it brought them, together with Christianity, to the nomads of Central Asia. Before they were islamized and became the terror of the Catholic West, great numbers of Turks were Christians of the Chaldean (=Nestorian) rite, and the Mongols, whose khans made themselves masters of the Asian world, became Christians also for a short while. But, at the same time, the second half of the thirteenth century, the Chaldean (=Nestorian) Patriarch Yahbhallah III re-established union with the Roman Church. If this movement for conversion had continued the whole history of the world would have been changed.

This remarkable piece of Nestorian history was in the main the work of the monks, and this by itself shows the importance of monastic institutions in Persia. At the same time it shows its essential characteristics, education and proselytism; both in general and in its particular actions the Nestorian Church recalls the Benedictine monasticism of the later Middle Ages which brought the legacy of classical literature to Europe, and by its conversion of Britain and Germany added the barbaric peoples of the continent to the Christian and Roman Catholic fold. As everywhere else, monachism in Persia began with isolated hermits and ascetics who easily found themselves hideouts in the mountains of the Iranian massif. But, beside them, even in the early stages, there existed large groups of the faithful who devoted themselves to the service of God, living in celibacy, giving themselves up to prayer, reading, study, and mortification. They formed what the earliest Christian writer in Persia, Aphraates, called "the sons and daughters of the pact," a phrase which sounds odd nowadays, since it has been found applied to the members of the sect of the Wadi Qumran, which was revealed by the famous Dead Sea scrolls. But this is all nothing more than the prehistory of real Nestorian monachism, whose theatre of action was the mountainous massif which stretches from the left bank of the Tigris to the Lake of

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Urmiah, and from Hakkiari to the Great Zab, thus forming the boundary of Kurdistan. In the tenth century the monks told the story of their founder Mar Awgin (St Eugene), a pearl fisher from the island of Clysma by Suez, who came from Pachomius's monastery to Mount Izla, in the south of Nisibis, with seventy-two disciples. The latter, like Christ's disciples, spread out through the East, and founded monasteries in their turn. This nice little story (a complete fabrication on the part of these holy men who wanted to give themselves as it were letters of nobility by connecting themselves with the Egyptian hermits) has at least the merit of revealing the enormous spread of Nestorianism and its vitality even after the conversion of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan to Islam. In reality Nestorian monachism had no such distant and glorious origins. It started in the sixth century, through a reform carried out by Abraham of Kashkar, the founder of the great monastery on Mount Izla. During the previous century monastic life had gradually spread through Armenia and Persia up to the shores of the Persian Gulf. But as it spread it deteriorated, and a certain laxity towards the primitive ideals had grown up, and, in fact, became so widespread that a synod at Seleucia in 485 passed a decree, which was renewed again in 499, allowing "the Katholikos, priests and monks to take wives and have children according to the Scriptures." This decision was only legalizing an existing state of affairs, and was, of course, in direct contradiction with monastic principles, of which celibacy was one of the most important. The Patriarch Abha, who ruled the Persian Church from 536 to 552, did not wish to take advantage of this decree, and refused to marry, hoping to induce other monks to follow his example. Abraham was one of the monks who did. Baptized in 502, he studied first at the famous school of Nisibis, and then went to Scetis to learn the doctrine of strict asceticism from the monks there. Then he moved to Sinai, and returned to his native Mesopotamia by way of Jerusalem. He installed himself in a cave on Mount Izla, and, as with so many hermits before him, his fame attracted disciples, whom he

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grouped together in a monastic community and to whom he gave a rule. Luckily this has come down to us. Rather than a rule in the modern sense of the word, it is more of a code for ideal Persian monasticism, which, based on the Scriptures, summarizes the essential elements of the anchoritic life. It is a life of solitude, passed in constant reading and prayer, manual labour and meditation, in frequent and prolonged fasts, in the recitation day and night of the divine offices. Coming down to details, Abraham reminds us that a man who is the friend of silence must not take part in any conversation, or, if forced to do so, must speak in a pleasant voice without any shouting or indignation. Solitude must be strictly observed during Lent; no authorization can be given for a monk to leave his cell during this period, except on urgent business authorized by the community. These restrictions are not limited to staying in a cell during Lent: " a brother," says the rule, "cannot move about in neighbouring monasteries or in towns and villages, except for reasons of health or by the authority of the community; he cannot go into any house, or eat with laymen—in short, he must not leave his cell and go elsewhere without first obtaining the authorization of the head of the monastery." Charity is recommended: "no one must grumble against his brother, or scandalize him in front of the other monks, or, in fact, in front of any one. . . ." " B e vigilant against scandal, lest you should become followers of the Evil One." Sunday is par excellence the day for spiritual reading and meditation. " O n the first day of the week, when the brothers come together, the first to arrive in the Church will take the Holy Scriptures and sit in a place apart to read and meditate until all the brothers are present, so that all can raise their spirits by hearing the reading, and so will not be interested in matters which are foreign to that day, in stories of battles and wars, in profane conversations, in vain stories which harm the soul, in anything which is foreign to the life of perfection." A chapter is devoted to the arrival of young recruits, whose noviciate lasts three years before they are finally admitted to the monastery. Another deals with one's attitude towards disobedient monks who

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fail to follow the rule. If anyone discovers a case of disobedience he must not speak of the matter in front of the whole community, nor even to the head of the monastery, but should take the guilty brother aside and talk to him about it. If he continues in his error he should be taxed with it two or three times more; only if he then continues to be obstinate should he be admonished before the whole community. If even then he does not reform he is to be expelled. This rule, with its evangelical simplicity, was taken up and completed by Dadisho, Abraham's successor. By reading his orders one can see the important restrictions brought to bear upon any reformers and the hold Nestorianism had over monastic groups which sprang from the great monastery of Mount Izla. Every monk must profess the doctrines of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodorus of Mopsuestia, and, of course, Nestorius himself; if not, he must leave the monastery. Anyone who in any way disturbs the peace of the monastery or who talks about private monastery affairs to people outside or who disobeys or strikes a brother monk must be expelled. Before entering a monastery a man must prove he can read. Coenobites must on no account have any dealings with hermits living in cells or caves. No changes can be made in the timetable of services without the approval of the "head of the house," who is himself under the "head of the monastery." A monk cannot take communion if he has not kept the vigils. W o r k is forbidden on Sundays, feast-days, or on their eves, lest tiredness should make the attention of the monks wander during the divine offices—offence punishable by expulsion. The only valid excuses for absence from an office are sickness or fatigue brought on by a journey, and even then authorization must be obtained from the superior. Visits to the faithful outside the monastery are not recommended. Any monk making more than three visits outside is expelled from the community. The rule makes no mention of clothing or diet, but doubtless this was similar to that of the poor of the time. The many Nestorian monasteries which were more or less closely affiliated to the great monastery of Abraham of Kashkar were all based on these two rules. Their history can be followed in the Book L

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of Chastity or the Book of the Founders of the Monasteries, by Isho'denan of Bassorah (c. 910), and especially in the Book of the Superiors or the Monastic History, where Thomas of Marga (840) tells the story of the events that took place in the monastery of Beth'Abeh (the Monastery of the Forest) since its foundation on a site south of Herpa, some hundred miles north-east of Mosul. Of all the ancient monasteries of Kurdistan this is one of the most famous, both because of the social position of the majority of its monks, most of them rich Persians or Arabs, and because of its proselytizing activities. No other book gives a better opportunity of entering the day-to-day life of the Nestorian monks and of seeing how they live according to Abraham's principles. '* Constant reading and prayer, manual labour and meditation, are," said the rule, " t h e guardians of the hermit's peace." This golden rule, which was further enforced by Dadisho's decision to let only monks who could read enter a monastery, shows that the recruitment for Nestorian monasteries, in contrast to that of the Pachomian groups in Egypt, was not from illiterates and the simple-minded, but rather from men who were capable of devoting their minds to the study of urgent and difficult problems. This does not mean to say that simple folk had the door shut in their faces, for one always needs some one smaller than oneself, and even in the most intellectual monasteries there is room for lay brothers without whom the brilliant men would be unable to survive. This arrangement meant that by the Middle Ages the Nestorian monks had a passion for anything written. The libraries of the coenobia were always well stocked, not only with books of the scriptures or of the liturgy, generally in rich bindings, but also in ascetic and even profane literature. Of course, the numbers varied from library to library, depending on the monastery, its importance, site, the generosity of the faithful, and the diligence of its copyists. No catalogue of a complete monastery library has been preserved, but E. W . Budge, by collecting the quotations made by Thomas de Marga in his Monastic History, has been able to prove that at that

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time the library of Beth 'Abeh must have had between 700 and 1000 manuscripts. This huge figure is proof of an extraordinary intellectual curiosity, and confirms what has been said earlier about the teaching mission both in Persia and in the evangelized countries of Nestorian monachism. In referring to this recently J. Dauvillier was thinking of the work of translating profane Greek works which was carried on by the Nestorians as well as by the Monophysites. But the work of the Persian monks was not limited to this, for they were also creators in their own right. The most original contribution which they made to thinking was in their treatises on ascetics and mysticism. Isaac of Nineveh (seventh century), Babai the Great (628), Abraham of Nashpar (end of the sixth century), Dadisho of Beit Qatraye (end of the sixth century), Johannan bar Penkaji (end of the seventh century), together with Joseph Hazzaya (seventh century), the most prolific and disturbing of all by his extravagant visions, between them founded a Nestorian school of mysticism whose rules of conduct one can only dimly perceive because of the rarity of their work accessible in translation. What has been found out about them shows that the Nestorian spirituality of these sixth- and seventh-century writers was totally different from the practical spirituality of Ephrem and Aphraates' primitive monachism. It had become intellectualism. Its sources and roots are to be found in Christian hellenism, whose most important representatives were Clement of Alexandria and Origen, who gave Knowledge or Gnosis as man's highest aim. It was through Evagrius (345-99)—though it was, as M. Guillaumont has proved, an edulcorated Evagrius, an Evagrius rethought and cleared of all taint of Origenism—that this doctrine made its way into Nestorian monastic circles. The monks pursued this doctrine to such extremes that they felt the gnostic should have knowledge which even went as far as ecstatic visions, as far as intuition, where all barriers between subject and object vanish and where discursive thought fades to give way to an immediate contact between the knower and the known. No more

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pictures or images: it becomes "silent repose" in which every perceptible movement is stilled. Through it the soul is able to see its own splendour transfigured into God. Some more daring writers than Evagrius stated that mystical experience at its highest degree even reached the point where divinity was tangibly visible: the ecstatic has to a certain degree the feelings of the "pneumatic bodies," of supraterrestrial beings, of the angels. Other writers, it is true, did not dare to profess this mystical materialism, and spoke in a more restrained manner of what they saw in their visions. Specialists in Moslem mysticism suspect, though without having any decisive proof of it, that Nestorian doctrines influenced certain forms of Arab religiosity such as Sufism. To-day Nestorian monachism, once so vigorous, no longer exists ; it was swept away in the flood-waters of the Mongol invasion. Some monasteries, either in ruins or greatly reduced in extent, still exist in Iraq, mixed up with Monophysite monasteries. T o visit them is particularly instructive. T o be perfectly exact, there is only one Nestorian monastery still in use to-day, that of Rabban Hormuzd (or Hormizd), but it does not in fact show any evidence of Nestorian monachism, because it is now occupied by monks of the Chaldean Church, the part of the Nestorian Church which seceded in the sixteenth century to Rome. It stands to the north-east of Mosul, about half a mile from Alqosh, a large Christian village which has the honour both of possessing the tomb of the prophet Nahum and of being the " R o m e of the Chaldees," because of the important part it played in the reunion with the Roman Catholics. Rabban Hormuzd is built half-way up the massif which terminates the plain of Mosul in the north, and stands in a sort of amphitheatre, as if it were hooked up on the mountain wall. You reach it after an hour's climb up a stepped track cut out of the rock and built up with blocks of stone brought and fitted together by generations of monks. An enormous amount of energy must have been spent in constructing this path, which makes access to the monas-

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tery much easier. When you reach the monastery you come out by the rose-pink church, from which it gets the name of Der es-Saur, the Red Monastery, given it by the Kurds. The whole structure is balanced on a rock. The masonry rests on the rock surface without any foundations. Surrounding the monastic buildings and the sanctuary, which is covered with Syriac inscriptions, from which one can make out its whole history, stretches the mountainside, literally riddled with caves piercing the rock. They are the oldest dwellings of the anchorites. They have no doors, or any method of shutting out the cold and the torrential winter rains, and just to look at them from the outside gives an idea of the austerity of the life lived there. Some have niches shaped like benches cut into the rocks: these were the anchorites' beds. The cells were linked by narrow paths where often there is only enough room for one foot. At any moment you are likely to break your neck; presumably the monks did not often visit one another. There are even some little cells which are completely inaccessible to-day. Perhaps they were places of retreat for ascetics who were most far advanced in hermitic life; perhaps the paths which once led to them have simply disappeared. Some of the caves still have traces of fires in them. The whole place makes one shudder, but one could not hope for a more magnificent view than that which is to be got from the monastery itself, especially from the Great Divan rebuilt in 1931, looking out over the Mesopotamian plain, so desolate and arid, except in springtime, crossed in the west by the Tigris, whose waters glitter under the beating sun. It is there that the visitor, whose approach has been followed from the monastery walls ever since he started the climb from the plain, arrives at the monastery and is most graciously welcomed by the few occupants that remain in it. These are now reduced to a superior, Father Elisha, whose fine white beard makes him look more venerable than he really is—he is only just sixty—and two lay brothers, together with two or three Yezidis who spend the best part of their time smoking their chibouks. These devil-worshippers do not seem to mind in the least living in the sanctuary of the Christian God.

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All this large mass of buildings, this eyrie overlooking the plain, owes its origin to the man from whom it took its name, Rabban Hormuzd, the son of a rich Christian family, who was bom about the end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century. At the age of twelve he was sent to school, and at eighteen he knew the psaltery and all the New Testament by heart. Then he decided to visit Jerusalem and the Holy Places, and to retire to Scetis to share the life of the Egyptian hermits. However, a divine call made him change his mind; he met three Nestorian monks, who brought him to the monastery of Rabban Bar Idta, a dependant of the great monastery of Mount Izla. At that time it had two hundred and sixty monks. After seven years in the coenobium Hormuzd left it to start living the life of a hermit there. He stayed for thirty-nine years, after which he decided to change his hermitage. He left Bar Idta with a companion and went to the monastery of Abba Abraham of Risha, near Marga, but left after seven years to go on to Beth Edrai. By gradual stages he reached Alqosh, whose inhabitants were very glad to have a saint come to live with them, and asked him to build a monastery there. This is the one which now bears his name. The date of his death is unknown, but it must have taken place in the second half of the seventh century. Apart from the tombs of several Nestorian patriarchs dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the present church has in it the remains of the founder, who was buried under the east altar. By creeping through narrow passages one can get down to the cave where Rabban Hormuzd lived and the chapel where he made his devotions. Hormuzd was a man of mortifications. His disciple Simeon wrote a biography of him which is so packed with miracles that it is quite impossible to attach any historical value to it. Under all the prodigies, though, it is possible to unearth at least one real fact—that the monastery was founded in opposition to the Monophysite Church, which was then powerful in the region, and that in this it had the support of the inhabitants of Alqosh, who were Nestorians even then. Rabban Hormuzd always remained one of the most active centres

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of Persian monachism, one where the traditional techniques of Nestorian mysticism appear to have been maintained longest and most successfully. It was there in the tenth century that Yussef Busnaya began his life of asceticism and acquired so great a fame that he became the confessor of the monks who were his contemporaries. His biography, like those of several of his colleagues, was written by John Bar Khaldun—no connexion with the Arab Ibn Khaldun, the author of the Prolegomena. It is no mere recitement of a list of prodigies taking place in an atmosphere of intense religiosity favouring the development of supernatural powers such as stupefy our Western minds; no, it is a treatise, in the narrowest sense of the word, both pragmatical and didactical, on Nestorian mysticism, by which one can get to understand the excessively abstract teaching of the seventh- and eighth-century writers. Theory and biography are here mingled in a methodical expose of the ascetic formulas which were in use in the tenth century, which shows at the same time a picture of the day-today life of Nestorian monks as lived at Rabban Hormuzd. There is nothing to show that the present monastery buildings date back to the time of the founder, or even that they keep to the original plan. Frequent rebuildings were made necessary by the attacks of the Kurds. In order to escape from them the monks to all intents and purposes abandoned the old monastery and moved down to the plain, to the monastery of Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time (or ofthe-Harvest), leaving only a few monks behind to guard the mountain monastery. Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time, built in 1869 on a plan which recalls that of Western monasteries, has about fifty Chaldean monks in its buildings. They belong to the congregation of St Hormisdas, a Persian martyr whose name reminds one of that of Hormuzd, who was, of course, tainted with Nestorianism. The congregation dates back to 1808. In that year, on Palm Sunday, the monastery of Rabban Hormuzd, which had for a long time been abandoned, was reoccupied by three monks, under the leadership of a Chaldean subdeacon from Mardin, Gabriel Dembo or Danbo, who, though he

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had never been initiated into the monastic life by anyone, restored the ascetic life of the old monks. The beginnings of the new foundation were made difficult by misunderstandings, by disputes with interested neighbouring bishops, by the distance from Rome, and by the persecutions of other Christians, as well as those of the Kurds, who murdered Dembo in 1832. All this is told in the Syriac history of the monastery kept in the library. It has been translated by M. M. Brière. It served as a basis for that written in French, just before the last War, by the present abbot of Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time Stephan Bello: La Congregation de Saint-Hormisdas et l'Eglise Chaldéenne dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Rome, 1939). Here one can see the role which the new founder had from the start wanted his monastery to play, and one can read of the help he received from the French consul, E. Boré ; this is still a guarantee of a great welcome for any French visitor. Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time is, together with the Maronite monasteries and the Greek-Catholic ones of the Lebanon, the only place in the East where monastic life is still carried on by a large community of monks. The Chaldean ideal is not so very different from that of the Lebanese monasteries. Because he wanted monks who were capable of sustaining the faith of the Nestorians who were attached to Rome and of converting those who had remained heretical, Gabriel Dembo imposed a mixed life on his disciples, mingling communal prayers with the work of an apostolate. Many Chaldean parishes are, in fact, served by monks from Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time. The life led there still follows the pattern laid down by the founder. "Our father Gabriel," says the history of the monastery, "wore sackcloth: he was very strict with himself, and he kept a cell for himself where he could sometimes be alone in his life of austerity, giving himself up entirely to spiritual exercise. He came out at meal-times, talked to the brothers, and then returned to his cell." Hermiticism seems now to have been abandoned here. As for the sackcloth, if any monks wear it under their black Benedictine-like habits it does not show ; unless you happen to be Tartuffe this sort of

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thing is not usually mentioned. In any case the use of these outmoded methods of penitence is not absolutely necessary for the Chaldean monks if they wish to follow the example of the Trappists. The frequency and length of their fasts is quite enough. They never eat any meat, except at Christmas and Easter; they have two meals a day, but during Lent and the lesser nine-day Advent fast before Christmas, they only have one, that at midday. The same rule is observed for the other fast-days, which the founder proliferated everywhere— three days before Corpus Christi, five before the Exaltation of the Cross, five before the Assumption, and every Wednesday and Friday, as well as the eve of any major festival. Milk drinks are forbidden on these days, and also wine. As for the food, it is very difficult to get an idea of what it is like, since guests are not allowed into the refectory. In Gabriel Dembo's time the diet consisted of bread, dates, raisins, and sometimes boiled vegetables. It cannot have changed much since. The most important place in the monks' day is devoted to the celebration of the divine offices. The founder re-established the night office, in his time celebrated at midnight, but now brought forward nearer to sunrise, the midday office, and the evening office. Several times each day all the monks of St Hormisdas come together in their church, and perhaps this is the only place in the world where one can still attend offices according to the old Persian rite celebrated with all the splendour inherent in Eastern ceremonies. A signal is given, and every one immediately leaves their work and makes their way to the church. The first gesture of a monk on entering the church is not, as in the West, to cross himself with holy water, but to remove his shoes and put them in a corner of the entrance corridor. To him a church is no less holy than a mosque, and therefore the same respect should be shown it. It is a curious sight to see monks carrying out actions which I had always associated with the Moslems, though, in fact, they are in the oldest Christian tradition. The church has no choir or stalls, and once inside the monks arrange themselves in parallel rows facing the sanctuary, exactly as Moslems do in mosques. Like them, too, they squat on their heels during the readings from the scriptures.

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Save for the difference in surroundings and prayers, they might both be taken for the same religion. The Chaldean office is composed of readings, psalms, and hymns sung by two choirs. To Western ears it is an absolute cacophony. The monks refuse to restrain their voices: each sings as loud as possible and pays no attention to his neighbours. The barbarity of the music is further increased by a group of small children who sing falsetto. Luckily there is a strongly marked rhythm, which makes it more bearable. The tunes are masculine and go with a terrific swing. From time to time the voice of one of the children rises above the others and sings three or four notes in a shout: this is the chorist, whose job it is to indicate the first words and first bars of a new chant or verse. Everything is chanted by heart, for, apart from the Abbot and the lector, none of the monks have books; therefore from time to time their memory has to be jogged to keep them on the right lines. The main service is the Mass celebrated each morning after the night office: the night office begins at half-past four and does not end till after eight. The most impressive moment is the consecration accompanied by the clashing of cymbals, the beating of drums, and wild cries from the monks. Perhaps they hope in this way to underline the horror inspired by such a great mystery. If this is the desired effect, then one can only say that it succeeds, especially when the din is compared to the solemn silence which follows it, and harmonizes so perfectly with the adoration felt by the congregation. For the rest of their time the monks do not seem particularly intensely active. There are, of course, plenty of manual tasks to be done, for the monastery is self-supporting. It has vast lands, with villages and herds of black-and-white sheep generally entrusted to the care of Yezidi shepherds. The monks' life is an agricultural one— as one normally thinks of it in the East. Only part of their time is given over to intellectual pursuits, although the charter of foundation set aside a definite period each day for study. This was not always the case, for the library is proof of the hard work of the copyists and calligraphers of the last century. To-day we can make only vague

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guesses at the treasures which Rabban Hormuzd once possessed, for the first collection which was remodelled and added to by the monks of St Hormisdas has now suffered the fate of all ancient libraries. It was ransacked for the first time in 1828; fourteen years later another visit from the Kurds destroyed one hundred and forty-seven manuscripts or printed books in Syriac, Arabic, and Latin. Later, legends grew up about these attacks, and it is said that in 1850 more than a thousand manuscripts were swept away when the little house in which they were kept was flooded. This fabulous figure is certainly an exaggeration. The present library does at least possess more than three hundred manuscripts, almost all of them, apart from a few ^ i i j l d

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Specimen of the Chaldean Writing of the Copyists of Seed-time

Our-Lady-of-the-

works saved from the old monastery of Rabban Hormuzd, the work of nineteenth-century copyists. Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time still has some excellent calligraphers who even in the middle of the twentieth century still use the techniques developed in the later Middle Ages. They squat Turkish-fashion on the floor, armed with a calamus, and cover with black characters the white page held sloping in their left

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hands. It is all done with remarkable speed and astonishing skill. Thanks to the work of these modern copyists, the Vatican library some twenty years ago was enriched by several dozen Syriac manuscripts, and so some of the best works of Nestorian literature became available to Western scholars. South of Alqosh in the Jebel Maklub ("upturned mountain"), in the olden times called Mountain of the 'Alfef because of the thousands of monks who lived there, stands the monastery of Sheik Matti, formerly Mar Mattai, proof of the mixture of Nestorian and Jacobite monasteries which is to be found in this frontier region between Monophysite Syria and Nestorian Persia. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Monophysite monastery in Mesopotamia, and has always been regarded as a holy place by both Christians and Moslems. Both make pilgrimages to it, and bring back as a sort of talisman a pinch of the soil taken from the tomb of the founder of the monastery, who also gave it his name. He is believed to have come from the neighbourhood of Amida, the modern Dyarbakir. Nothing is, in fact, certain about his life story, except what we know from the legend of St Behnam and his sister Sarah, which says that their conversion took place during the reign of Julian the Apostate (died 363). What is certain is that the monastery was already in existence when Rabban Hormuzd was founded, and that it is anterior to the time of the break between the Jacobite and Nestorian Churches. Impressive though the monastery of Rabban Hormuzd might seem, that of Sheik Matti is even more so, perched almost on the summit of a mountain towering above the village of Mallah, from which you set out on the climb to the monastery. You climb up a mule-track for an hour, and finally come out on the terrace the monastery is built on, and you see the long, flat façade pierced with windows. It is a veritable fortress, impregnable if you come at it from the valley, but possible to attack from the rear. For this reason on that side it is protected by a stout defence wall with wall-walks and towers. The

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present buildings date from the end of the eighteenth century, when the Maphrian George II of Mosul (died 1760) undertook the restoration of the monastery. These precautionary measures were wise, for the history of the monastery is one long series of attacks, of regular sieges, of destruction, interspersed with periods of calm spent in rebuilding and repairing the damage. But the story of Mar Mattai cannot be condensed into a chain of war-like operations whose victims were always the monks. Its great riches, which its neighbours coveted, show how important it was in the religious and cultural development of Monophysitism. At the beginning of the seventh century, when the organization of the Jacobite Christian communities in Persian territory necessitated the nomination of a representative of the Patriarch of Antioch, the Maphrian, who established his seat at Tagrit, the head of the monastery became the head of the diocese, and the monastery acquired an autonomy which seems to have gone to the monks' heads. In 869 a synod demanded that both monks and abbot should recognize the authority of the Maphrian. They must already have been interfering with him. The destruction of Tagrit at the end of the tenth century settled matters though, for the Maphrian chose Mar Mattai as his new seat, and thereby made it more or less equal in rank to the great monastery of Mar Barsuma, near Melitene, which was the seat of the Patriarch. This new promotion does not seem to have had a good effect on the monastery. The spirit of insubordination now set the monks at loggerheads with the abbot, and serious disorders took place, as Bar Hebraeus mentions in his ecclesiastical history. One day, when the Maphrian Denys Moses (died 1142) was consecrating in the monastery church a bishop whom the monks disliked, they rushed in upon him and almost set about him in front of the altar. He managed to escape in time. A similar thing happened to the Maphrian Ignatius Lazarus, who died in 1164. The Kurds were obviously not the sole target for the monks' martial prowess.

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It is this glorious, heroic, turbulent past which one can to-day evoke within the monastery walls, and especially inside the church. The monastery church leads off a large, sunny inner courtyard. It is a curious building, which does not seem to follow the traditional rules of Eastern church construction. It may date from the twelfth or thirteenth century. What makes it particularly attractive is its Martyrion, or Beth Qadisheh, where several of the monastery superiors lie buried. The most moving tomb is that of the Maphrian Abulfraj, better known by his pseudonym of Bar Hebraeus or Bar Ebraya ("son of the Hebrew"), the Pico Delia Mirandola of the Syrian Church. He knew everything—grammar, physics, history, natural sciences, philosophy, theology. He was a scholar and a man of action at the same time, an able politician, a revered prelate, and at the end of his life a fervent mystic. His vast opus codifies all the teaching and learning of the East as he knew it in the first half of the thirteenth century. His literary works, written both in Syriac and in Arabic, take the place of a whole library, and in fact do away with the necessity of reading his predecessors. He was born at Melitene in 1226, became a bishop at twenty, and was elected Patriarch of the Jacobite Church in 1258. His tireless energy enabled him to administer his community and carry out spiritual research at the same time. He must have written his works very rapidly; we know, for example, that he took less than a month to write his History of the Dynasties, the revised Arabic version of his vast Syriac Chronicle, which, together with that by Michael the Great, is the surest and fullest source of all we know about the Eastern churches in the Middle Ages. His prodigious speed and prolificity remind one of Avicenna, who found time in a relatively eventful life to write more than a hundred books, and who finished in less than twenty days the greater part of the physics section and all the metaphysics section of the Shifa—that is to say, the equivalent of some two thousand pages in translation. In the Beth Qadisheh there is a Syriac inscription in beautiful estranghelo characters describing this remarkably fecund career

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which came to an end at Mar Mattai in 1284. The fact that the monastery has the mortal remains of Bar Hebraeus within its walls would of itself be sufficient to mark it as a historic place in the Jacobite Church. In the distant past the monastery had a library. Two letters written by the Katholikos Timothy (died 823) reveal that any research worker was welcomed there. Although he was a Nestorian, Timothy, the erudite organizer of the Persian Church and its missions in Central Asia, did not disdain to call on the library of Sheik Matti when he wanted to complete his own library. One of his letters is particularly interesting because it shows the methods used at that time for copying manuscripts. " W e have had," writes Timothy, " a copy sent us on paper of Nisibis format of the volume of Hexaples. We have employed six copyists, and two readers to dictate the text to them. The whole of the Old Testament has been transcribed in three copies, one for us, another for Gabriel, and the third for Beit Laphat (a monastery in Elam). The book was finished in six months, and not without much fatigue and worry. We had the misfortune to come across a set of greedy, rude copyists: eight of them here for six months!" It seems that this reproach was directed at the Nestorian readers and copyists, and not at the Mar Mattai monks. The latter were the source of a great number of books now scattered through European libraries, among them one which deserves special mention on account of its artistic merits. It is a magnificent Gospels, which has been in the Vatican Library now for about twenty years. It was written in 1220 on paper at the monastery itself by the copyist monk Mubarak, who actually signed it; it was destined for use at the altar of the monastery patron. The importance of this manuscript lies in the fifty-two miniatures with which an anonymous painter—unless, of course, it was Mubarak himself—decorated and enriched it. For each of the great festivals of the Church's year, and for each of the main Sundays, pictures on coloured backgrounds—blue, red, and green— depict the events of Christ's life according to the iconographic themes created and diffused throughout the entire Christian world by the

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Byzantine Church. Illustrated Gospels such as this are rare in Syrian churches, but what gives the manuscripts from Mar Mattai its particular value is its style. Its pictures are undeniably influenced by Byzantine work, but their Eastern origin is just as strongly apparent. It comes out in the violently contrasted bright colours, and especially in the frames with their tracery and geometric designs. You can see it also in the manner in which the artist treats faces. Strong ethnic characteristics, brocaded vestments, furniture taken straight from the civilization in which the artist himself moved, ornamental fantasy in the treatment of nature, everything, except the themes, takes one back to the magnificent illustrations of the illuminated Arabic manuscripts of the School of Baghdad or Mosul. Among several pictures one in particular shows the world of colour and form into which the artist has introduced the iconographic details. It is the picture of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, whose cult is spread everywhere in the East. To avoid monotony—only too likely in a motif repeated so many times—the artist has tried, and succeeded in doing so, to show variety in pose as well as in physical form. The result is a fine page of illustration which brings to a Christian book decoration of a purely Islamic character such as one might find, minus the portraits, in a great many Korans, serving either as an endpaper or as a binding. Was there in fact at Mar Mattai a workshop of artists trained in the painting techniques in use in Arab circles ? It is most probable, for the British Museum possesses another Gospels which is virtually a twin of the Vatican copy. It has no date or signature, and it is therefore impossible to state for a fact that it was written at Mar Mattai, though this seems a reasonable supposition. The famous monastery has an important place in the history of Middle Eastern religious painting. To-day it is no more than a shadow of its former self; while it has retained its medieval appearance and its vast lands, it is almost empty of monks. Four priests live there and help in the administration of the diocese of the Bishop-Superior, Mar Timothy Yakub, a venerable old man who prides himself on having practised every trade, from

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cabinet-making and tailoring even to dentistry. He guards jealously the few Syriac manuscripts which he has managed to save, but none of them is of any particular interest. In the summer, however, this solitary place becomes populated again. Mar Mattai becomes a hotel, where holidaymakers can hire the rooms and cells of the monks whom the monastery lacks. Rich merchants from Mosul or Persia come there with all their families— there is no difference of religion or race—and with all the equipment necessary for their stay (as at St Antony's in Egypt), and stay there for as long as they please. It is a fate which Mar Mattai shares with most of the other Eastern monasteries. These temporary guests of the monastery are much to be envied, for it is a peaceful place where the eye can find satisfaction at any hour of the day. Through the great crack in the mountain you can see as far as Mosul, and out over the whole slightly undulating plain where the Tigris winds, with, in the foreground, the two large villages of mud-walled houses which form practically the whole of Mar Timothy Yakub's diocese. But if you want to find a panorama of unforgettable splendour you must climb right to the top of the Jebel Maklub. The path is tricky, especially under the midday sun—even in December. But once you reach the top, what splendours open out in front of you! To the west the same view as from the monastery terrace, but infinitely wider and farther, and in the east the immense plain which stretches between the Mount 'Alfef and the borders of Persia, whose snow-capped peaks stand out above a cloudless horizon from which you can scarcely dare to take your eyes. There is another monastery in the Mosul area which should be visited by the tourist or by anyone interested in Eastern Christian antiquity. It is the monastery of Mar Behnam-the-Martyr, on the Kirkup road, five miles from Nimrod and twenty from Nineveh. It is the main edifice in a scattered country agglomeration of half Syrian Catholics and half Moslems, called El Kidr or El Kodr—that is, "the Holy." This name is also frequently applied to St Eligius and M

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St George because of their thaumaturgic nature: they are wonderworking saints, like Behnam. This poor village is quite close to Qarakosh, and is, I should think, the most miserable of all the villages in the plain of Mosul. With its houses of mud-bricks, roofed with bundles of faggots covered with dried mud, El Kodr shows just how easy it must have been for whole cities to vanish completely in the course of the centuries, leaving behind them only the tells, those artificial mounds under which the almost infallible eye of the archaeologist discovers buried towns. The monastery of Mar Behnam has a place of some importance in the history of the Eastern Church. The present monastery superior, the Chorepiscopus Ephrem Abdal, has told its story in a book which he has written in Arabic, and of which he was kind enough to give me a résumé. At first the monastery was inhabited by monks from Mar Mattai, and seems to have served only as a centre d'accueil or hostelry for pilgrims who came to have their illnesses—especially epilepsy— cured there. For some time it became the property of the Nestorians, but from the beginning of the sixth century onward it was in Jacobite hands again, and remained in their possession until it passed under the jurisdiction of the Syrian Catholic Patriarch in 1767, when its superior, Mar Hindi Zora, was converted to Catholicism. In all its long history, interspersed as is usual with periods of abandonment and ruin followed by periods of reinhabitation and restoration, one date stands out as supremely important, 1164. This was the year when the monastery church was so richly restored that it is now unique among all the Christian buildings in the Near and Middle East. The reason for this outburst of artistic effort was no doubt the celebrity of the monastery, and the miracles worked there by the saint. "So many miracles took place," wrote John of Mardin, who died in the following year, "that one would have imagined oneself back in the time of the Apostles." This was confirmed a century later by the Arab writer Yakut. In his Geographic History he wrote: " T h e monastery of the Cistern is a celebrated place where many

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people go because of their epilepsy, and where many are cured." The process used was one which is still known to-day: the patient was tied up and left for a night in the church, alone in the dark. The result was much the same as an electric shock. In spite of the raids, attacks, and pillage which the monastery suffered, first from the Mongols in the thirteenth century and then more recently from the Turks and the Bedouin, the church has not changed at all. When you come towards the monastery along the Mosul-Kirkup road the church is hardly visible: what you do see is the great façade with its crenellated walls, like that of a stoutly built fortress. Most of the present buildings are fairly recent. The monastery is formed of two courtyards around which the living rooms are built on superposed terraces, one above the other, which tends to accentuate the citadel-like appearance. As in all Mesopotamian buildings, even modern ones, an air of decrepitude hangs over the place due to the bad quality of the building materials and the speed with which it was built. The church is in the first courtyard, that which formed part of the original ground-plan, and is about four hundred square metres in area. Oriented towards the east, with a narthex on the west side, it has the peculiarity of being unlike other Mesopotamian churches in that it is square, and not rectangular. Inside, its whitewashed walls are pierced by tiny windows which spread a mysterious light through the arches. Two enormous pillars support the pointed vault and cut the building into two naves oriented north-south. It is austere and poor, in complete contrast to the wealth and ornamental luxuriance of the doorways both on the inside and out. There alone the imagination of the artists was concentrated, making Mar Behnam the most representative monument of Christian art in Mesopotamia at the time of the Atabeks of Mosul. Doors have a symbolic, one might almost say mystic, attraction for the peoples of the East, which we in the "'West find difficult to understand in spite of the magnificent tympanums of our Romanesque basilicas and the superb porches of our Gothic cathedrals. It was due

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to the part played by doors in the ordinary life of the people from the earliest times on: great meetings were always held at the gate of the town or city, there judgments were passed, there the affairs of the community were discussed, and there is no doubt that it was for this reason that in ancient Turkey the Sultan's government went by the name of the Sublime Porte. In everyday language "enterings and leavings" takes the place of what we call "comings and goings." The expression covers all the actions of human life. The Eastern Christian was therefore likely to appreciate the parable of the good shepherd, where Christ compares himself to a door: " I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." When you see the numerous inscriptions which accompany the decorations at Mar Behnam there can be no doubt that the master of works there was influenced by this symbolism when he drew up the plans for work on the doors. "Lord," you read, "do not shut the door of Your mercy before us who confess our sins." And again, "This door is the door of mercy, and he who enters by it shall find mercy." In contrast to what is usual in the West, here it is rare that one comes across human figures carved in the decorations, and where they do appear one can hardly call it sculpture, for it is more like a very low bas-relief, almost as if the artist was afraid to introduce them into a scheme of decoration which otherwise is purely Islamic. One can make out the two apostles, Peter and Paul, Mar Behnam and his sister, St George and St Behnam, over certain of the doors. Nothing else merits a longer examination. But the general poverty makes one more appreciative of the beautiful inner porch on the south side which leads into a chapel dedicated to St Sara. It is extremely impressive. Up the uprights and across the lintel are twenty-one shields, formed by the interlacing bodies of two snakes which are joined together at the top, and serve as frames for portraits of notable figures in the history of monachism, Antony, Pachomius, Daniel, and others, while at the top there are

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scenes of Behnam on horseback and Sarah being baptized by Mar Mattai. The imagination is immediately seized by this page of monastic history in stone, where the artist has shown the anchorites with their hoods pulled down over their heads, each holding a cross in attitudes which evoke the silence of contemplation. Compared with this pure iconography, the two fifteenth-century stuccos placed in the nave showing Mar Behnam prancing on a richly caparisoned horse and his sister Sarah dressed as a Syrian princess have a baroque touch about them which makes them seem insipid. What is so attractive about the doorway of the anchorites is its extreme simplicity. There is no grandiloquence about it. The language it speaks is direct and to the point; it shows the onlooker pictures of the great men of Eastern monachism and invites the monks of Mar Behnam to follow their example. It is a silent exhortation, which is underlined by the text running along the jambs and above the lintel: "Lord, You have made Your sanctuary a place for Your throne and have strengthened it with Your hands: let the king live there for ever. Open unto me the gates of justice: I will enter to give thanks to the eternal God. Here, here is the Gate of God; through it pass the just." This inscription is not there to fix in the minds of those who knew how to read the idea which guided the sculptor's hand. It forms part of the decoration, and like the inscriptions on the other doorways it is in estranghelo script, so beautiful that it was then used only for sacred texts. It is characteristic of the decoration at Mar Behnam that everywhere the texts from the scriptures and the liturgy surround openings and are so intimately linked to the carvings of the decoration that one might easily take the letters for festoons or keypatterns if one did not look carefully. Of necessity this epigraphic decoration recalls the Arabic buildings where the beautiful Kufic characters are often used solely for their aesthetic beauty, with no regard for their meaning. There is no possible doubt that the art of Mar Behnam is linked to the Islamic aniconic decoration, and this becomes startlingly apparent in the

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Other elements of the decoration—the arabesques, the intertwinings, the geometric festoons which wrap their stone lacework round the lintels and jambs in such a profusion of garlands that the eye, being continually attracted by the play of shape on shape, is reluctant to fix itself upon one single point and allows itself to be carried away at the whim of the waving lines which wrap round themselves, reflect each other, and twist back on their tracks in perpetual motion. If one could remove all Christian symbols, especially the cross which comes again and again, the decoration of Mar Behnam could be moved bodily without profanity to any mosque or palace in Mosul. The two German scholars, Sarre and Herzfeld, were quite correct when they likened this sculpture to that which covers the buildings of the Atabek Badr ed Din Lulu ( 1 2 3 3 - 5 9 ) . There is an inscription round the exterior of the north door which says that the doors were built by "Abu Salem and Ibrahim his brother," without giving any further details about their origin. The brothers must certainly have been Christians, for Moslems would not have agreed to work for Christians, though the reverse often took place. Mgr Abdal, going on artistic evidence, suggests that they probably came from Tagrit, a place famous for its stone-cutters and masons. They were masters of the art of sculpture as it was at that time, and their work can be compared to that of the monk Mubarak at Mar Mattai and his manuscript. Mar Behnam is yet another proof of the state of peaceful coexistence which then existed between the Christian and Moslem civilizations which permitted the interchange of artists. To-day the monastery of Mar Behnam has lost none of its fame. It was restored in 1901 by Mgr Rahmani, the Syrian-Catholic Patriarch, and became a college for priests where some thirty boys and young men are prepared for the priesthood. Pilgrims, either alone or in parties, never stop coming to visit the place, especially after the festival of the martyr in December. Christians, Moslems, and Yezidi ("devil-worshippers"), all mixed together, they are certainly not lacking in picturesqueness. Now the reputation of the monastery has

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spread even further, and few tourists to the Middle East miss the opportunity of visiting it by means of the ramshackle bus which several times each week goes the round of the villages surrounding Mosul. For this reason Mar Behnam is better known than Mar Mattai or Rabban Hormuzd. In the visitors' book, kept scrupulously up to date, you can find the names of many of the most famous archaeologists and Eastern scholars, alongside the names of humble folk. A few lines catch one's eye by what they imply of recent history —the entry, for example, written by a lieutenant-colonel of the Austro-Hungarian army who "spent the night in the monastery on January 6, 1918, after escaping from Russia." What drama in those few words! But nothing is more moving than the name of the German soldier D. Liebold, K. K. 501, who, on May 23, 1917, wrote his most cordial thanks "fur frischen kuhlen Trunk." Dragged from his native Germany to the East torn by the machinations of Lawrence of Arabia, this stout private may have admired, as present-day visitors do, the beauties of Mar Behnam; if he did so he doesn't mention it. The memory he will always keep will be of the good cup of fresh water which helped him to withstand the rigours of the burning sun. In this simple sentence he has gone right to the heart of what has always been one of the charms of all Arabian monasteries, and Mar Behnam in particular—the warmth of the greeting to every visitor, whatever their race or religion. North of Mosul the plain of Mesopotamia stretches out almost without a single inhabited village right up to the mountain massif of the Tur 'Abdin, dominated by the town of Mardin built on an impressive rock-pinnacle. The city itself is extremely picturesque, and stands under the shadow of an Arab fortress which can shelter six hundred families in times of danger. The Tur 'Abdin, to-day called Jebel Tur in Arabic, is a plateau stretching from Mardin in the west to Jezireh in the east, averaging about three thousand feet above sea-level, without any particularly high peaks. Almost everywhere it looks like a rolling plain crossed

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by deep, wide wadis. Agriculture, though still very primitive, is sufficiently developed to support a population of which Christians form quite an important part. They were decimated some years ago in the massacres provoked by the Turkish Government during the First World War, and after that they suffered at the hands of the Kurds. Now this Christian population is in the process of gathering its strength again. Over the past thirty years births have taken the place of death by martyrdom—for the resistance of these Christians under these persecutions was quite worthy of this name—and to-day according to the figures given me by the Jacobite Bishop of Mardin, there are thirty-five Christian villages, most of them Syrian Orthodox or Chaldean, totalling about four thousand families in all. Like all figures quoted in the East, which vary considerably according to different sources, this one is perhaps a little generous and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Midyat is the civil and ecclesiastical capital of the Jebel Tur. Its bishop, a venerable old man, with really apostolic simplicity and poverty, gives one an idea of what a bishop was like fifteen hundred years ago. He knows neither Turkish nor Arabic, and speaks only the Turanian of his flock, from whom he can be distinguished only by his impressive white beard and his red cassock. For more than a century, ever since the Englishman Shiel first penetrated to the heart of the country in 1836, the Tur 'Abdin has always had an attraction for visitors. M. Streck, in his long article on the area in the Encyclopedia of Islam (IV, pp. 870-75), published in 1934, mentions at least twenty people who either investigated the plateau thoroughly from end to end, or else just touched upon it on its southern side by following the roads from Dyarbakir to Mosul by way of Mardin and Nisibis, or crossed it by using the Tigris. What particularly attracted these travellers was that for the whole of the Middle Ages the Tur 'Abdin was the most populous centre of Syrian monachism, both Monophysite and Nestorian, so that it could be called the Mount Athos of the East. Paul Kruger, its latest historian, counted forty-six monasteries, but it is clear that he selected

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the names of only those which left some trace in history. There were many others. In the eighteenth century Niebuhr, without having been there himself, and therefore relying on hearsay, wrote that there were more than eighty ruined monasteries in this mountainous area. These must have been, of course, houses built for a few monks only or for hermits, but even to-day from Der es Zapharan, the only monastery still in use, one can see three others in the mountains which are not in Kriiger's list, but which have been there for centuries, inhabited from time to time by groups of monks. It was this large number of Christian monasteries which gave the region its name. T u r 'Abdin means "Mountain of the Servants"—i.e., of the Servants of the Lord. Being at the same time the centre of Eastern monachism and, since the Middle Ages, the seat of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate (established either at Hah or at Qartamin or Der es Zapharan), the T u r 'Abdin is a happy hunting-ground for Eastern historians searching for manuscripts or studying the ancient Christian art of Mesopotamia. Archaeological research proper was the aim of travellers such as Gertrude Bell, Preusser, Viollet, and Guyer, who made detailed examinations of the ancient churches, some of which went back to pre-Constantinian days. Pognon found twenty-eight inscriptions during two journeys which he made there in 1891 and 1905. They are among the most interesting in his collection. Access to the Tur 'Abdin is not difficult. The Aleppo-Baghdad railway-line drops the traveller at Derbisye or at Nisibis—that is, just below Mardin itself, which he can reach easily in an hour by car. The most practicable and most advisable route is to come at the mountain massif from the opposite side—that is, from Mosul. This way one gets a clearer view of the history of the area, if not of the geography of the Jebel Tur. In fact, although the plain of Mesopotamia and the T u r 'Abdin are distinct physically, they in fact belong to the same world spiritually, and relations between the monasteries of the two regions have always been very close. I was greeted at Der es Zapharan by a monk whom I had seen six months

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earlier at Mar Mattai. In spite of the frontier which separates the two countries, the monks all feel themselves brothers. It is this frontier—a purely imaginary line now marked by the railway—that makes access to the Jebel Tur more complicated. The Turkish Government has closed the whole area, and only very few visitors are allowed inside, and that only with the permission of the Ministry of the Interior and the intelligence service. The reason for these precautions is that there are large troop concentrations in the area, guarding against possible attacks from Iraq, Syria, or the Soviet Union, of which Armenia now forms a part. If this is not the reason one need think only of the traditionally suspicious nature of the Turkish Government. Whatever the reason, you must not expect to get to Mardin straight away, even though it is close to the border and you have your permit from Derbisye. No, you must first go right to Ankara to obtain the necessary papers. Once you have these you may finally step on to this time-honoured monastic soil. It must be noted that the events which accompanied the 1914-18 War were not favourable to the upkeep of the Christian buildings in the area. Many churches mentioned by earlier travellers are now in ruins, and there is little hope that they will ever be rebuilt. Out of all the monasteries, only one is still in use, Der es Zapharan, or the Saffron Monastery, a popular name given it because of the colour of the walls. Its real name, that by which it goes in the old manuscripts, is the Monastery of Hananaia, or of St Eugene, or sometimes of the Twelve Thousand Saints. It is not known who the twelve thousand were, but their tomb is in the church. There is only scanty information about the origins and the vicissitudes of the monastery. It is believed to have been founded by Hananaia, a monk from Mar Mattai, who became Bishop of Mardin in 793. Later on it was the seat of the patriarchate on several occasions. It was this that gave it its importance. To-day it is a vast square block, surrounded by high walls and standing in the middle of its olive-trees and almonds high above the surrounding countryside. The

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buildings are all one-storeyed, and are set out round a central courtyard, which gives it a Western appearance. However, the upper gallery running round above the courtyard, the cupola of the church, and a certain air of abandon about the place soon make the visitor remember he is in the East. The most interesting building is the church, which Preusser dates to the fourth century, but which was certainly further embellished and rebuilt under the Emperor Anastasius (491-518), whose interest in the monks and monasteries of the Tur 'Abdin is mentioned in manuscripts. The library of Der es Zapharan is said once to have been extremely rich, and in 1840 Southgate said that it formed the greatest collection of books belonging to the Jacobites, and that it possessed works in a dozen languages. One cannot say the same of it to-day. The whole library as it was at the time of the First World War went to Homs when the Jacobite patriarch made his seat there. It is still the most important collection of ancient Syriac manuscripts in the East to-day, and the only library where it is still possible to unearth interesting unknown manuscripts. Der es Zapharan has, however, still kept two manuscripts of which it is justly proud, two priceless thirteenth-century Gospels. One of them is particularly interesting. It is an enormous parchment book, 484 pages long, in an excellent state of preservation. What makes it so interesting are the twenty large miniatures, almost full-page in size, which are painted on the parchment, framed in interlacing borders whose variety shows the range of the artist's imagination. Each scene shows an episode in the life of Christ and illustrates one or other of the great festivals of the Jacobite Church, which are incidentally the same as those in the Byzantine. Written and illuminated by the scribe Dioscorus Theodorus (1222-73), the Der es Zapharan manuscript is virtually contemporaneous with that of the monk Mubarak from the near-by monastery of Mar Mattai. Yet, while the latter is almost purely Islamic in character, the manuscript in Der es Zapharan is strikingly Byzantine. The bright colours chosen by the artist, the complicated frames which

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surround the pictures, even certain ethnic characteristics in some of the figures—none of these can hide the fact that this is provincial art trying to imitate the finest reproductions of the capital city of the Empire. For this reason the manuscript is as important as the Sheik Matti Gospels. Together they show the two forces which have always influenced the life of the Eastern churches—the local Islamic surroundings and the subconscious nostalgia for the unity offered by Byzantium in days gone by.

8 Sheik 'Adi—Sanctuary of the Devilworshippers

HE traveller who is tired of the monotony of the plain of Mesopotamia and the lover of monasteries are both well advised, if they want a change, some fresh air, and the sight of green grass, to take the road to Sheik 'Adi, the sanctuary of the Yezidis, the "devil-worshippers." It is not really so very far from Mosul. It used to be nine hours' journey on horseback, but to-day you can get there in under two hours, provided you possess a good, strong, high-sprung car and a good stomach for bumps, and also provided you plan your journey out of the rainy season. Through not paying enough attention to these slight details, the intending visitor risks arriving in rather less good form than he set off, or even of not arriving at all, and the splendid ride becomes something of an expedition, with all the bother and inconvenience that this involves. You get no warning before you leave. As soon as you cross the bridge over the Tigris, you turn north-east and pass the city of Nineveh, still buried under its tell on your left. The made-up road soon comes to an end, and the car turns off along a track which is barely distinguishable from the surrounding countryside, scattered with stones, rocks, and puddles. No European driver would ever dare to take a car along a road such as this, but the Iraqi drivers actually

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enjoy it; they plunge ahead, swing sharply to left or right to avoid large obstacles, change down to jump the mud-holes, and suddenly, without any warning, jam the brakes full on and toss their passengers about in a way which might easily do them some permanent injury. Fortune favours the bold, and most travellers get through this part of the journey without serious difficulty. You get back on to a madeup road, and the relative peace and quiet of the wheels on the metalled surface allow you to look at the dark line of the mountains of Sheikan, above which, in the far distance, rise the snow-capped peaks of Kurdistan beyond those splendid English-made summer resorts, Ravanduz and Amadiya. Being on a real road again, the car picks up speed. It rapidly passes Khorsabad, the birthplace of Assyrian archaeology, for there, in 1840, the French consul Botta first started excavating in Assyrian soil. To-day the soil has reclaimed its own, and the palace of Sargon, which was for a time laid bare, is now again becoming a tell where the Bedouin pitch their tents. Pressing on, the car plunges into the chain of mountains of Kurdistan. The countryside changes; it becomes a succession of ups and downs, of little hills and imperceptible slopes; after the rains and in the springtime the ground is covered with a sparse carpet of green which contrasts with the reddish appearance of the plain you have just left. Ain Sifni, the last village on the plain of Mosul, is a real frontierpost between the Christian-Moslem world and that of the Yezidis. Like any frontier-town, though both sides are really in Iraq, this is a place where you get out of the car to greet the Chief of Police, the commanding officer of the recruiting office (a Jacobite), and shake hands with the leader of the Chaldean community and visit the local school where a brother from Our-Lady-of-the-Seed-time teaches religion to a population which is almost entirely Nestorian. All this takes a long time, but it is a polite formula which must be put up with, since it is not entirely useless. By this means you can find another car, you can ascertain the condition of the road ahead—only six miles of it—and also you can take the important precaution of hiring an

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interpreter, for the Yezidis speak neither Arabic, nor Surete, nor Turanian. Ain Sifni is not only the ethnic frontier between two races, but also the beginning of a new geographical region. This strikes you as soon as you leave the village. On the right is a pond shaded by a large group of trees covered with green or golden leaves according to the season. Here the women do their washing and the men bring their donkeys and mules to drink. Were it not for the Yezidi tomb, standing brilliant white a little way off on a hillock, you could easily imagine yourself in France. Here water means life. You notice this as soon as you enter the gorge which leads to Sheik 'Adi and its sanctuary. A stream runs down on the right of the road, and on its banks golden fields of ricestubble or plantations of green tobacco show the abundance which its water brings. The countryside is shut in, and without the blue of the sky overhead might easily seem sinister. You are in Kurdistan, the land of warriors and brigands. From time to time caravans of Kurds pass by with mules laden with wood. They always travel in groups, with their large black turbans decorated with fringes hanging down over their eyes, and knives in their belts and guns slung over their shoulders, always on the look-out for possible attack. Their faces, though not actually threatening, are hardly welcoming, and they wait for the stranger to salute them before making a move to do so themselves. They are about the only human beings one finds here, except for the naiads whose laughter from time to time filters through the branches of the trees to the road. They are the womenfolk, who come down to the stream to wash their one and only dress and dry it in the sun. While waiting for it to dry they stand in full view in naked simplicity, like nude studies, though their faces are veiled and there is nothing Greek about them. If, as the song goes, the really happy man has only one shirt these women must have reached the peak of happiness. The last few hundred yards before reaching Sheik 'Adi are enchanting; everywhere there are trees, water, and blue sky; it is a

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paradise on earth, and it seems horrible that man could have made it the country of Satan. On both sides of the road, shining in the sunlight and half hidden in fronds, are white pyramids topped with golden balls, the tombs of pious Yezidis who are buried close to the sanctuary of their saint. At the boundary of the holy precinct the visitor is greeted by a strange-looking person, with a bloated complexion, a scraggy beard, and long plaited hair which falls on either side of his face and coils itself about like snakes. He is barefoot, but wears a dazzling white tunic and cloak and his head is swathed in a red-and-white turban. This extraordinary apparition is the guide who takes the visitor or pilgrim to the guardian of the sanctuary, the Fakir Hadji, called in Kurdish Qarabast. From the latter the visitor discovers the identity of the fantastic person who greeted him. He is a Yezidi 'monk' who, to avoid tales and suspicions, castrated himself with his own hands away in the mountains. It is no doubt this which gives him that timeless air, that striking contrast to the other Yezidis, whose masculinity is their most notable feature. Fakir Hadji wears Kurdish costume, but with a black turban and a large black cloak decorated on the back with an inverted red-velvet triangle. He looks dignified and magnificent. Led by him, the visitor goes into the temple courtyard after passing through a first courtyard surrounded by arcades which are there to shelter the large numbers of pilgrims who come for the annual festival. Before you enter the second courtyard you must remove your shoes. An enormous tree with a low wall round it shades the yard almost completely. This is a sign of the Yezidi cult of trees; out in the country each tomb is flanked by one or more trees, and when you see a group of them you can be sure that a Yezidi lived or is still living at the spot. Sir Harry Luke, who visited it after Layard, Badger, Oppenheim, Sachau, and various other travellers, wrote a fine description of it, in which he contrasted the spring-like, woodland charm of the gardens round the sanctuary with the diabolic impression which he got from

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the front of the temple of Sheik 'Adi. There is, of course, some romanticism in this confession, and one needs a good deal of imagination to feel the sinister feeling Luke would have us share. Neither the sculptures of peacocks facing each other in grey Mosul marble on the tympanum, nor the cabalistic signs cut in the yellow limestone of the wall—signs of unascertainable age and obscure meaning (if, that is, they have a meaning at all), nor even the black serpent which meanders up the side of the door, none of them seems really diabolical. The puerile symbolism has no effect—it is all sham. The same could be said when you step over the threshold and enter the temple itself. It is a two-naved building with stout pillars which remind one of Mar Behnam, but it has an air of dilapidation and squalor which is almost more than you can stand. There is a smell of burnt oil which catches at the back of your throat, and the bad lighting from the narrow windows, the smoke-marks on the pillars and arches, all give the impression that one is in a cave, and yet it is not at all frightening. The only fresh note about the place is the large basin of water on the right of the door where the Yezidi children are baptized. The water comes, or so the Yezidis say, from the well of Zemzem at Mecca. The tomb of the saint, the Sheik 'Adi, is on the left, behind a curtain. To reach it you must go a little farther up the church, through a door leading into a room with a cupola, and thence into another similar chapel where the tomb, veiled like that of the prophet Nahum at Alqosh, is hidden under a wooden framework covered with geometric designs painted in red lead. There are two other mysterious rooms, those where earthenware jars are piled up on top of one another containing the hundreds of litres of oil which have been presented by the faithful over the years. The oil is used for the upkeep of the lamps and the countless nightlights which the temple guardians light at dusk on all the tombs scattered over the sacred area. The atmosphere in all the buildings here is suffocating. You race round them to get out all the more quickly into the bright sunlight N

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and the fresh air, to hear the singing of the water as it runs and plays and splashes out of the fountains. Sheik 'Adi is a mass of tunnels and ruined buildings which seem to have no plan at all. For most of the year they are almost empty, except for the guardians of the temple and their families. They come back into use at the time of the pilgrimages, especially for the great festival of the 15th to the 20th of September. The saint's festival brings Yezidis from all over the surrounding region to Sheik 'Adi. It is the most concrete expression of the national and religious cohesion of this mysterious people. There are dances and chants, whose languorous, ecstatic nature has already been noted by Layard; there are flutes, drums, and tambourines, and thousands of Yezidis fill this Eden-like place of peace with an atmosphere of intense religiosity and bring it life with scenes of collective over-excitement. This is no secret. Many reliable witnesses have watched the ceremonies, though no one is allowed to see what goes on at the same time in the temple itself. There the reading of sacred texts seems to play an important part. The great annual festivity includes the sacrifice of an animal. In one of the courtyards you are shown the spot where the chosen bull is killed. Each of the people present hits it with a stick, and so the poor beast dies. Then they cook it in an enormous cauldron, and the first Yezidi who manages to grab a piece of meat from the boiling liquid is sure of a place in heaven. How can they carry out such a butchery in such a peaceful spot? What things men do in the name of religion! Sheik 'Adi is the Mecca of the Yezidis. By turning its thoughts exclusively to it the population, which fifty years ago numbered more than one hundred and fifty thousand and to-day is reduced to some sixty or seventy thousand, maintains its ethnic and religious unity. Persecutions, epidemics, internal divisions, and the results of several wars have caused the fall in population. The Yezidis are a dying race. They are mostly to be found in the Mosul area, in the Sheikan where Sheik 'Adi is situated and in the Jebel Sindjar, a hundred miles to the west; there are also small groups in the neighbourhood of

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Aleppo, in the Jebel Seman and the valley of the Afrin, and even in Soviet Armenia round Tiflis. Several features stand out as racial characteristics; not their physical appearance, for there are two types of Yezidi, one Assyrosemitic with long hair and beards, the other Indo-European, but rather their language, a Kurdish dialect, and their social structure based on theocratic principles dividing the people into numerous closed castes on a religious basis. It is their religion more than anything else which attracts attention, because of the air of mystery which surrounds it, and which hangs like an ominous cloud over the whole population. It can be summed up in one phrase: the Yezidis are devil-worshippers. And yet one has reservations. You have, in fact, to reduce this supposed adoration of Satan to reasonable size, and you find that an expression which may be picturesque is not necessarily correct. It is extremely difficult to get any precise information about their beliefs from the Yezidis themselves. The supreme head of their church, the Baba Sheik or Great Sheik, does not seem to be very well up in the doctrines which he is supposed to represent. He is very hospitable to any visitor to his house at Ain Sifni, where he lives when he is visiting Sheik 'Adi. His thick black beard, his height, his immaculate robe and turban, all give him an air of authority, but his mind is not a theologian's, and it takes all the intelligence of the local postman, also a Yezidi, to enlighten the inquisitive foreigner. The fact that he has only recently been elected to his office by the Mir, the headman of Ba Idri, partly explains his ignorance. At any rate, he knows his duties all right: he has to visit the faithful, to solve difficult religious problems, to fast, and to make the community as a whole observe the fast, even if this necessitates the use of sanctions. In default of any information from the leaders of the sect (perhaps they withhold it on purpose) it should be possible to consult the sacred books of the Yezidis. There are two of them, but the people are unwilling to show them to outsiders. They have, however, been translated. They are the Kitab al-Jahuah, or Book of the Revelation, and

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the Kitab al Assuad, or Black Book, 'black' in this case apparently implying "worthy of veneration." The first is a sort of proclamation to the faithful by Satan, an affirmation of his power over the world, while the second is a fantastic description of the origins of the world and of the Yezidis themselves. Both are written in Arabic, not the Yezidi dialect, a fact which makes their authority more dubious. The language of the services in the churches is, of course, Kurdish, and for this reason some historians feel that the books are of a fairly recent date. But all this casts little light on their religion, which is a baffling type of syncretism. According to certain authors, the Yezidis regard the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) and the Koran as divinely inspired. They believe in Christ and recognize his divinity, but at the same time claim that his reign will not come before that of Satan. In their private prayers they use Arabic, though they do not understand a word of it, and they are convinced that the water in the sanctuary spring is miraculously connected to the well of Zemzem at Mecca. As Luke wrote, "They circumcise like the Moslems, they baptise like Christians, they have prohibited foods like the Jews and they hate the colour blue like the Mandeans." Interdicts play an important part in the Yezidi religion. They are forbidden to eat chicken, lettuce, beans, fish (because of Jonas), gazelles (because their eyes are like those of the Saint 'Adi), and so on. But all these taboos, though quite interesting, are no more so than any others one finds in Asiatic countries. Among all these interdicts, however, there are some which must be disproved. Almost every book about them states that they have a marked aversion for Arabic words which have any analogy with the word Sheitan (Satan), and that they avoid using even Kurdish words which have sh- in them, for fear of offending their god. This is ridiculous, because it takes no account of the fact that they do not speak Arabic at all. Statements such as this are generally erroneous, as is almost everything written about the Yezidis. The fact is that the authors who have written about them have

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hardly spent any time among the Yezidis, but have met them only on rapid visits to their villages or Sheik 'Adi. Lescot is one person who cannot be attacked on this score, for he spent two long periods among the Yezidi tribes and had long conversations with their sheiks. As he knew their dialect, and was accepted as a friend in Yezidi families, he can speak of them with the authority of an ethnologist, and his long article on them is the last word on their beliefs, customs, and society. What he says does not apply to all the Yezidis, for his experience was limited to the tribes living in the Jebel Sindjar and in Syria, where the people are more sedentary than the tribes who live in the neighbourhood of Sheik 'Adi, for there they are still essentially nomadic mountain-dwellers. Nevertheless, Lescot's book has much more reliable evidence on the Yezidi religion than any other about them. It is particularly useful for finding out about the Yezidi pantheon and the curious place the devil occupies in it. The Yezidis recognize and worship one single god, a being of infinite goodness, but who is more than a little indifferent to human affairs. More mundane matters he leaves in the hands of the angels who help him. Periodically, to be exact every thousand years, the angels come down to earth to give the world new laws. Once this is done, they go back up to heaven once more, but not without sometimes leaving some human offspring behind them. The family of the sheiks is descended in this way, but none is the product of intercourse between an angel and a woman: the angelic inheritance is created either by the angels among themselves or by Sheik 'Adi or by god. The angels are seven in number. Their names vary, but all the different traditions agree that the head of the seven is Tauseh Melek, the Peacock Angel, whom both Easterners and Westerners identify with the Satan of Christianity and Islam. In actual fact, the Peacock Angel is nothing of the sort. For the Yezidis he is nothing more than the most powerful and best of the angels, the one to whom they address their prayers. Adoration of the devil is far from being the main feature of their religion; in fact, it is based on the negation of

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his existence. It was first the Moslems, then the Christians, who identified Tauseh Melek with Satan. Once this was done, as Lescot so rightly says, the Peacock Angel "became the evil genius of the Yezidis, for their worship of him was the cause for the contempt with which they have been regarded and the persecutions they have suffered." The cult of the Peacock Angel finds its material expression in the homage paid to the sinjaq (banners). These are bronze peacocks, which play the rôle not of idols, but of relics or symbols, for they are reputed to be the work of Tauseh Melek himself, fashioned in his own likeness. Like the angels, they are seven in number, and are kept either by some of the sheiks or at Sheik 'Adi. They are hardly ever shown to outsiders. Lescot managed to see two of them and gave this description of them: "Both are collapsible, and consist of a leg of yellow bronze like a very tall candlestick made in three pieces. At the top there is an attachment for fixing a statuette, also made of bronze, roughly in the form of a bird. The animal is supposed to be a peacock, but in fact is more like a pigeon or duck. The reason for this is no doubt the clumsiness of the artist, for the magnificent tavus in the British Museum, which is used as a frontispiece for Empson's book The Cult of the Peacock Angel (1928), leaves one in no doubt as to which bird it is supposed to represent: it is definitely a peacock." Every year the sinjaq are taken into different Yezidi communities by the Qeual (reciters). These latter are, in fact, missionaries, for their rôle is to revive the faith of the believers by their sermons. These visits are the occasion for ceremonies of veneration of the Peacock Angel; collections are taken—they are usually very good ones—which are divided up between the owner-guardians of the sinjaq and the sanctuary. What rôle, then, does Sheik 'Adi play? His tomb attracts Yezidis from all over the East, and has now become their national sanctuary. No dead Yezidi can leave this earth for the Beyond until a pinch of soil taken from this sanctuary is placed in his mouth. It is not easy

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to decide what rôle the saint plays, since historians do not agree as to whose remains are in fact in the tomb. An historical note contained in a Syriac manuscript of 1452, published some time ago by the orientalist François Nau, states categorically that 'Adi was a Kurd who served in a Nestorian monastery. Having married a Mongol woman, and after his sons married Mongols too, the whole family rose against their masters and forced them to work for them. Soon, however, not content with making the monks look after the herds while they themselves took the revenues, they killed the Nestorians, and took over the monastery lock, stock, and barrel. It is there that 'Adi is buried. It would be nice to believe this story, because it would clear away any doubts concerning the identity of the Yezidi saint. Of course, monachism did have internal revolutions, and there is nothing to prove that the monastery 'Adi worked in did not suffer one; yet this story, which after all was written by a monk, seems to have been composed with the intention of establishing his order's rights to the monastery property. If you look at the site of the sanctuary, the plan of its buildings, the caves in the mountains round about, and especially the shape of the church, built according to the same plan as other churches in the region, and the Syriac inscriptions discovered on its walls, now obliterated or covered by whitewash, one cannot doubt for a moment that this was an old Nestorian monastery which passed, like so many others, into the hands of the infidel. The historians of Yezidism, following the Italian I. Guidi, an expert in the political and religious movements which swept Islam in the Middle Ages, favour another 'Adi as the founder of the sect, 'Adi ben Musafir, a Sufi who lived in the sixth century of the Hegira. A native of Beqa' in the Lebanon, he was born between 1073 and 1077 and spent the early part of his life at Baghdad, where his teachers were the famous mystics Abu Nadjib 'Abd el Qadir el Suhrawadi, the Ghazali brothers, and 'Abd el Qadir el Jilani, who first studied with 'Adi and then in 1133 accompanied him on his pilgrimage to Mecca. Other teachers helped him to become a teacher in his turn: Hammad ed Dabbas, a thaumaturgist ; 'Oqeil el Manjibi, who is said to

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have had the secret of levitation; and Hamid el Andalusis. Later Abd el Qadir el Jilani was to bear witness to the young 'Adi's fervour, and attributed the devotion he showed to a particular manifestation of grace: " I witness in favour of my brother 'Adi ben Musafir that the signs of his sovereignty over the other saints of his time were erected while he was still in his mother's womb." Trained by the Sufis in Baghdad, 'Adi left the capital when he was about forty and retired to the wilderness of Hakkiari, where he made his hermitage in the ruins of the Nestorian monastery at Lalesh. There, following the process common to all Eastern hermits, whether Christian or Moslem, his mortifications, fasts, and teaching brought him a group of disciples, whom he formed into a new Sufi group, the Adauiyya, of which the Yezidi fakirs are the last remaining vestige. As with any founder of a sect or religion, legends flourished round him. Hagiographic tradition could not fail to attribute to him the most astounding of prodigies. 'Adi had power over serpents, he could read the innermost thoughts of those around him, he could make lifegiving streams spout from the arid desert soil, he could make his disciples see visions and could make people disappear in mirrors. Once he brought a Kurd back to life, and on another occasion he gave a blind man back his sight. He talked with the dead, and travelled through the air in a fiery chariot. He had a certificate from God to protect him and his disciples from hell-fire. But it is his own writings rather than these legends which make him best known to us. Four treatises are attributed to him, though none of them is published yet. What little one can gather about their contents shows that he was gifted with a special originality of doctrine: it follows the main mystical trend of the Sufis in seeking the love of God through the annihilation of the personality. He once said to a disciple, " Y o u must know that the saints did not become saints through eating, drinking, sleeping, striking, or beating, but raised themselves to sainthood by their religious zeal and their austerity. Only he who dies shall live. He who perishes for the love of God becomes the glorious garment of God, and he who approaches

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God by making his life as nothing shall find his life returned to him by God." The emphasis on austerity is one of the special features of this doctrine. As soon as he entered the Adauiyya the novice had instruction in austerity and learnt the price of renunciation which had to be paid before he could aspire to sanctity. "The murid [novice] is not a real murid until his will is entirely submitted to that of his sheik, and until he becomes in his hands like a corpse in the hands of the washer of corpses who can do whatever he pleases with him." This shows that the perinde a cadaver with which St Ignatius Loyola has been either honoured or reproached is not a purely Western invention. This then was the 'Adi, who now lies in the Eden-like Sheikan. It suits him better than it does his namesake, the cut-throat and brigand. If historical proof is not decisive, and there is still room for doubt, at least justice seems to have been done.

Conclusion

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H E picture drawn here shows only one aspect of Near-Eastern monachism. The intention was to include only properly Oriental monasteries, and so has resulted in the exclusion of all imported forms of monachism, especially the religious establishments set up by various missions. There would, of course, be a great deal to say about the work, which started over a century ago and is still flourishing, of groups such as the Dominicans at Mosul, Jerusalem, or Cairo, the Jesuits in Syria, the Lebanon, and Iraq, the White Fathers of St Anne in Jerusalem, not counting the innumerable communities of religious men and women scattered over the whole of the East who devote their time to teaching the children. Nothing has even been said about the indigenous religious congregations founded by the Dominicans in Iraq and the Jesuits in the Lebanon, who, many years before the papal decision to create an autochthonous clergy, went some way to solving the problem of evangelizing by using missionaries taken from the local people. The mark of the West is too heavily imprinted on them for them to be considered as manifestations of Arabic monachism which was the sole object of this investigation. The picture, it must be admitted, is rather misleading. The total number of monasteries in use at the present time is only a minute

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proportion of the enormous total revealed by manuscripts and historical research. For centuries the deserts of Egypt and Palestine, the mountains of Mesopotamia and Turkey, the plains of Syria and Anatolia, were covered with Christian and Moslem monasteries. To-day you have to make a long journey to get from one monastery to the next. What is more serious, many now play no other role than that of signposts to the past. The walls are as firm as ever, but there is no one inside them. The philosopher-historian would find much to ponder over in this deterioration of an institution which once was so attractive not only to Christians, but also to the higher souls of Islam. This is not the place to search for the causes or analyse the conditions of this decline, but at the end of this tour of the monasteries in the Levant it is impossible to hide a fact of which the reader has probably by now become well aware. It is that, apart from the Greek monasteries in Sinai and Palestine, which are, of course, very reduced in size, monachism is only kept alive in the East in those monasteries which have maintained close links with the West. It is among the Greek Catholics, the Maronites, and the Chaldeans that one can still find great colonies of anchorites which, though all more or less 'romanized,' nevertheless still preserve their essentially Eastern character. Is this not yet another proof that the Arab world and the West need each other's help, and were made in order to understand each other? Within the framework of the legitimate desire for national independence shown to-day by all the states which came into being through the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, surely there must be some ground for agreement? But when and where will it be found ? W e still cannot even glimpse it, and our reply must be, as the Arab says, " P u t your trust in Allah (praise be to him!), who is wiser than any of us." The author of this book, who has so often been taken into the confidence of monks of all creeds and tongues, from Turkey to Sinai, is convinced that they all have a part to play in bringing together these two worlds which are drifting farther and farther apart. More detached than the ordinary people from the frequently

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sordid interests which influence politicians, monks are also more capable of finding the point where, notwithstanding the differences of race, tongue, and religion, kindred spirits can communicate in union which is not necessarily unity.

Index

ABD'EL MASSIH, 5 0

Abibion, 147 Abraham of Kashkar, 159-161 Abu Makar, 50 Abu Sali, 43 'Adi ben Musafir, 199 Ahl el Kitab, 21 Ahmed Serri Dede, Baba of the Bektashis, 57, plate 16 'Ain Fashka, 72 al Maqrisi, 36, 48 Alqosh, 164-166 Alypius, 133 Amianos, 146 Amiun, 114 Amun, 35 Anaya, monastery of, 110, plate 32 Apa Biktor, 44, plates 2 and 8 Apamaea, 105 Apophthegmata Patrum, 34 Arianism, 17-18 Aristotelian doctrines, 18 Arius, 17 Armenian Church (Catholic), 24 asceticism, 28 Assemani, Elias, 53 Assemani, Joseph-Simon, 54 Atfih, 31 Athanasius of Balad, 148 B A L A M E N D , 114-120, plates 35-39 Bar Ebraya, 174 Bar Hebraeus, 174 Bashir II, 103

Bawit, 36, 38, plate 4 Beit et Din, 103 Bektashis, 56-62 Beni Suef, 31 berat, 24 Beth 'Abeh, 162-163 Black Book, 196 Book of Chastity (Isho'denan of Bassorah), 162 Book of the Founders of the Monasteries (Isho'denan of Bassorah), 162 Book of the Revelation, 195 Book of the Superiors (Thomas of Marga), 162 Breij, 144 British Museum, 54 Burdj es-Saba, 146-147 Capitulations, 25 Cassian, John, 34 celibacy, 26 Chalcedon, Council of, 19 Chaldean Church, 24 Chariton, 74 Christianity, early spread of, 17 Christians under Islamic rule, 21-26 Christological heresies, 17-20 Christotokos, 18 Church History (Theodoret), 34 Codex Arabicus, 96 Codex Rabulensis (Rabula), 150, plate 46 Codex Sinaiticus, 92-93, plate 28 Coma, 31 Conferences (John Cassian), 34

206

MONKS

AND

MONASTERIES

OF T H E

NEAR

EAST

Constantine, Emperor, 17 Coptic art, 37-39 Coptic Church, 32-33 Coptic Church (Catholic), 24 Coptic monasteries, 30-55 Cosmos the Singer, 79-80 Cyril of Scythopolis, 78 Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, 19

GERASIMO,

DADISHO,

iconoclasm, 81 Isho'denan of Bassorah, 162 Islam, spread of, 21 Izla, Mount, 159-161

74

Grapti, Theodorus and Theophanus, 82 Great Laura, 78 Greek Catholics, 119-123 Greek Orthodox, 113-119 H A D J I BEKTASH KHORASANI, 5 8 IBN A L - A S S A L , 4 3

161

Daniel the Stylite, 131, 133 Dead Cities, the land of, 135-137 Dead Sea Scrolls, 70 Dembo, Gabriel (Danbo) 167-168 Der al-Mnemonn, 31 Der Amba Pshoi, 49 Der Baramus, 49 Der Dosy, 74 Der el Arbain, 83 Der el Bustan, 83 Der el Kusair, 57 Der el Qala, 109 Der el Ribua, 83 Der esh-Shir, 121 Der es-Saur, 165 Der es Suriani, 49-54, plates 11-13 Der es Zapharan, 185-188, plates 55-57 Der Makarios, 49, 50 Der Mukhalles, 121 Der Salib, 108, plate 33 Der Seman, 128 dervishes, 64-69, plate 19 Diodore of Tarsus, 19 Dioscorus of Alexandria, 26 Dioscorus Theodorus, 187 diphysism, 19 Diwan (Jalal ad-Din Rumi), 66 Druses, 101-102 Ecclesiastical History (Theodoret), 146 Egypt, Christianization of, 32 Ein Geddi, 71 el Qalamun, 74 Ephesus, Council of, 19 Essenes, 70 Eusebius, 146 Eusobonas, 147 Euthymius, 74 Eutyches, 19, 26 FAKHR AD-DIN I I ,

102

Faran, 74 firman, 24, 87 Florence, Council of, 87 Francois I, 25

JACOB A L - B A R A D A I , 26'

Jacobite Church, 20 Jalal ad-Din Rumi, 58, 66 James of Edessa, 52, 148-149 Janissaries, 59 Jebeli, 85, plate 28 Jebel Katherina, 83 Jebel Musa, 83 Jebel Seman, 139 Jebel Sheik Barakat, 139 Jebel Tur, 183-188 jizya, 22 John V, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 81 John bar Aphtonius, 148 John the Qozibite, 74 Julian Sabas, 155 Justinian, 84-85 KASSELIK,

109

Kefr Derian, 137-138, plate 42 Kellia, Ta, 35 Khaldun, Ibn, 167 Khaldun, John Bar, 167 kharaj, 22 Kinnesrin, 127, 148 Kontakia (Romanus the Melodist), 79 Kurds, 152-155 Ladder, The (St John Climacus), 94 Lausiac History (Palladius), 33 Lazarus the Stylite, 133 Lebanon, 98-123 Leo, Emperor, 139 Life and Rule of Pachomius, 30 Life of Paul of Thebes, 30 Life of St Anthony, 30 Luke Stylites, 133 Luzieh, 109 MAADANITES,

Ma'alula, 125

102

207

INDEX Macarius, 35 Manicheism, 130 M a r Barsuma, monastery of, 156 M a r Behnam-the-Martyr, monastery of, 177-183, plates 53 and 54 Marchaya, 109 Mardaites, 101 M a r Jirgi, 126 M a r M a r u n , monastery of, 105-106 M a r M a t t a i , monastery of, 172-177, plates 5 0 - 5 2 M a r M u s a Habashi, 126 M a r o n i t e s , 20, 24, 1 0 4 - 1 1 3 M a r Saba, monastery of, 7 5 - 8 2 , plates 22 and 23 M a r t y r i u s , Patriarch of Antioch, 139 M a r Yakub, 126 M e ' e z , 144 Mehlevis, 66 M e l k i t e Church (Catholic), 24 Melkites, 20, 1 1 9 - 1 2 3 Menaqib el 'Arifin (Shams ad-Din M o h a m m e d ) , 58 Mesnevi (Jalal ad-Din R u m i ) , 6 6 Michael the G r e a t , 156 M o h a m m e d , 20, 6 2 monachism, 2 6 - 2 8 , 3 0 Monastic History ( T h o m a s of M a r g a ) , 162 Monophysite Church, 20 Monophysitism, 18, 19 Monothelism, 106 M o n s Admirabilis, 131 Moschus, Johannes, 34, 94 M o s l e m mystics, 62-69 M o s u l , 152-153 M o u n t Athos, 27 M u b a r a k , 175 NAHUM, 1 6 4

N a ' m e , 118 Nestorian Church, 157-158 Nestorian Church of Persia, 20 Nestorianism, 18 Nestorius, 18, 26 Nicea, Council of, 17 Nitria ( M o u n t ) , 34 OUR-LADY-OF-THE-SEED-TIME,

Persian monasteries, 152-188 Phoenicia, 100-101 pilgrimages, early, 32 Pispir, 31 Pratum Spirituale (Johannes M o s c h u s ) , 34 Prolegomena ( I b n Khaldun), 167 QANNUBIN,

108-109

Qoziba, 75, plate 20 Quarantania, monastery of, IS, plate 21 Qus, 3 6 Quziya, monastery of, 109, plate 3 0 RABBAN BAR IDTA, 1 6 6

Rabban H o r m u z d , monastery of, 164-167, plates 48 and 4 9 raya, 23 Red M o n a s t e r y , 36 Roman Catholic Churches, 24 Romanus the Melodist, 79 Rome, return to, 20 Roque, Chevalier de la, 1 0 8 - 1 0 9 SADAD, 1 2 5

Saidnaya, convent of, 126, plate 41 St Antony the H e r m i t , 3 0 - 3 1 St Antony, monastery of, 3 9 - 4 7 , plates

S. Apollinare-in-Classe, 9 0 St Catherine, monastery of on Sinai, 8 2 - 9 7 , plates 24, 25, 27 St John Climacus, 9 4 - 9 5 St John of Damascus, 76, 7 9 - 8 2 St John of Shueir, monastery of, 1 2 2 - 1 2 3 St John of Z a g b a , monastery of, 150 St M a r u n , 105 St Paul of T h e b e s , 48 St Paul, monastery of, 39, 4 7 - 4 8 , plate 1 St Saba 73—74 St Simeon Stylites the Elder, 127-131 St Simeon Stylites the Y o u n g e r , 131 St Simeon, Basilica of, 139-144, plates 43-45

MONASTERY

OF, 167-172, plate 48 PACHOMIUS, 3 6

Palestine, monasteries in, 7 0 - 9 7 Palladius, 3 3 Peace of the Church, 17 Peacock Angel, 197-198

2,

6 - 8 , 9 , 10, 1 4

Saqqara, 36, 38 Sassanian Persia, 20, 156-157 Scetis, 35 Seleuchia-Ctesiphon, 20, 157 Sergius of Rash'ain, 52 Severus of Antioch, 26 Severus Sebokht, 148 Shams ad-Din M o h a m m e d , 58 Shebabs, 102 Sheik Abdullah el M a g h a o u r i , 57 Sheik 'Adi, 189-201, plates 6 1 - 6 4 Sheik M a t t i , monastery of, 172-177 Shenudi, 3 6

208

MONKS

AND

MONASTERIES

Shiites, 59, 101 Shmun, 36 sinjaq, 198 Sohag, 36, plate 8 Studion, monastery of, 81 stylitism, 127-144 Sufis, 28 sufism, 6 3 - 6 4 Sulaiman the Magnificent, 25 Sunnites, 59 Synaxarion, 4 3 Syria, 124-151 Syrian Church (Catholic), 24 TABENNISI, 3 6

Tarnish, 109 Tauseh Melek, 197-198 tekke, 56-62, plates 15 and 16 Teleda, 126, 127 Tell 'Ade, 146 Thebaid, 3 5 - 3 6 Theodora, 84 Theodoret, 34, 146 Theodore the Studite, 81 Theodoret of Cyrus, 131 Theodorus of Mopsuestia, 19

OF

THE

NEAR

EAST

Theodoras the Ccenobiarch, 74 Theoto/cos, 18 Thomas of Harkel, 149 Thomas of Marga, 162 Tischendorf, 92-93 travel-mania, early, 31 Tripoli, dervishery of, 67 T u r 'Abdin, 183-188

Turmanin, 144

W A D I DABER, 7 2

W a d i el Natrun, 34 W a d i el Qaryatein, 72, 74 W a d i el Qilt, 72, 74 Wadi-en-Nahr, 72 Wadi Fara, 72, 74 W a d i Habib, 34 W a d i Qadisiya, 107 W a d i Qumran, 71 W h i t e Monastery, 36 YEZIDIS,

189-201

Yussef Busnaya, 167 ZAKHER, ABDULLAH, 1 2 2 - 1 2 3

Zeno, Emperor, 139

i. General View of St Paul's in the Desert

2. A p a Biktor in his Hermitage at St Antony's

3- T h e White Monastery near Sohag ( Egypt)

4. Coptic Sculpture from Bawit, now in the Louvre

5- Coptic Cloth (Third-Fourth Century) from Akhmin

6. I n t e r i o r of St A n t o n y ' s in t h e D e s e r t

8. Apa Biktor

g. Coptic Monk from St Antony's

io. Coptic Monk f r o m St Antony's

i i. T h e Monastery of Der es Suriani in the W a d i el N a t r u n

12. T h e Cupolas of the Church of Der es Suriani

13. Fresco from Der es Suriani—the Annunciation

14- Coptic Manuscript from St Antony's

i -,. Bektashi T o m b s in the Old T o w n , Cairo

i6. T h e Baba of the Bcktashis, Serri Dede

17. Dervishery at Damascus (Syria)

18. Dervishery at Tripoli (Lebanon)

20. Monastery of Qoziba (Jordan)

21. Monastery of Mount Quarantania, near Jericho (Jordan)

22. Monastery of Mar Saba (Jordan)

23. The Founder's Palm-tree at Mar Saba

24. Monastery of St Catherine of Sinai (Egypt)

25- Monastery of St Catherine—-the Monks' Garden

Overleaf: 27. Icons of Moses and the Burial of St Catherine

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29. Maronite Village of Kesruan (Lebanon)

30. Monastery of Quziya (Lebanon)

3'2. Monastery of Anaya (Lebanon)

33- D a m a g e d Fresco at Der Salib in the Qadisiya (Lebanon)

34- Little Greek Monastery in the Lebanon

35- Balamend (Lebanon ) —the Inner Courtyard

36. Cistercian Church of Balamend

37- T h e S t o n e Belfry a t Baiamene!

38. B a l a m e n d — t h e L o g g i a

39- Balamend—the Icon of the Stylites

41. O u r Lady of Saidnaya

Syria)

42. Kefr Derian (Syria)—Fallen Stylite's Column

43- South Basilica of St Simeon's (Syria)

44- Porch of the Basilica of St Simeon

45- Förch o f t h e Basilica of St Simeon

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*** > * '» 46. The CWe.v Rabulensis—Miniature

"

49- Chaldean Monks from Rabban Hormuzd

50. Interior and Exterior Views of M a r M a t t a i (Iraq)

52. M a r Mattai Manuscript—the Forty Martyrs

53- C h u r c h at M a r Behnam (Iraq)

56. Der es Z a p h a r a n Manuscript—the Annunciation

57- Der es Z a p h a r a n Manuscript—the Raising of Lazarus

58. The Plain of Mosul

59- Yezidi Landscape near 'Ain Sifni (Iraq)

6o. Yezidi T o m b

6 i . Sheik 'Adi—Sanctuary of the Devil-worshippers

1 S h e i k 'Adi -the Entrance 10 the Temple

63. Y e z i d i ' M o n k '

64. The Guardian of the Temple at Sheik 'Adi

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