The Syrian Desert

Christina Phelps Grant

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136192791
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First Published in 2007, This historical survey written by a scholar and traveller gives the reader a well informed and readable account of an area of the world which has held and still holds a most significant geographical location in the Middle East - both culturally and commercially. Topics covered include - the bedouin trouble in the area, their origins and organization, ancient and medieval trade, early travellers, accounts of the important Altar of Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Al Wasera, the caravan, state, the 'hajj', and much more.

THE SYRIAN DESERT

CHAPTER I

THE SYRIAN DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS

I

PROLOGUE

IN recent years the cartographical face of the Syrian Desert has become increasingly familiar to the general reader. The press, post-War writers of near-eastern reminiscences, and various students of the mandate system (as it has been applied in Syria, Palestine and Irak) have all contributed to arouse interest in this relatively small and arid plateau.

Certain deserts divide countries and their civilizations, inexorably; others unite them. The Syrian Desert is one of those which unites adjacent lands; and during the last twenty years, the uniting of those lands has acquired a new importance. Since the Great War, the desert regions have been the scene of a mechanical revolution; medieval methods of transport have suddenly, almost magically, given place to the most advanced exponents of modern transport. For more than three thousand years the trade routes of this desert have linked the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean with Mesopotamia; they have fostered cultural and religious, as well as commercial exchanges between the Near and the Middle East. Furthermore, until the opening of the Suez Canal, the Syrian Desert was almost universally recognized as a short-cut between the Occident and the Orient. For a brief period after 1869, however, the desert highways were first neglected, and then forgotten. Camel caravans could have no place in the development of modern transport systems. Trans-desert railways were visualized, but all plans for such were vetoed. The desert was not considered a potentially modern link for the purpose of connecting the West with the East. Instead, the building of a “Berlin to Baghdad” railway was undertaken; but before its completion the Great War intervened. During and after the War, armoured cars were used in certain parts of the Syrian Desert, and its arid plains were found to be suitable for motor transport. Also, Royal Air Force machines flew from Cairo to Baghdad, after the beginning of 1921, thus inducing a new awareness of this ancient short-cut to the East.

During 1923–24 popular interest was stimulated by the opening of a trans-desert motor route between Damascus and Baghdad. The exploits of the Nairn Transport Company, the development of a desert mail and of various passenger motor services, the alarms and excursions of the Druze rebellion (in 1925–26) increasingly focused attention upon the new motor highways. Thereafter, the public imagination was further stirred by the opening of imperial air routes. First Imperial Airways, next the French Air Orient, then the Dutch “K.L.M.” flew the desert from Gaza, Galilee and Damascus to Baghdad and Basra. Most recently of all, two great pipe-lines have been laid across this desert, through which oil is pumped from Kirkuk to Tripoli and to Haifa. Sketch-maps in the daily papers have made us familiar with the course of motor tracks and pipe-lines, and with the outlines of the great space which they all traverse: an expanse long empty of any permanent human habitation except the ancient city of Palmyra and its neighbouring mud villages. Today, in the emptiness, there stands the rest-house and fort at Rutba Wells, and nine pumping-stations of the Iraq Petroleum Company.

So rapid and many-sided a development of transport services does more than stir the imagination; it stirs the curiosity as well. One becomes intrigued by the story of desert travel as a whole, and by the experiences of previous desert travellers. There grows a desire to learn something about the ancient and medieval methods of transport which have been so completely transformed within the past thirteen years. Former conditions of desert travel, its peculiarities, the nature of its hardships and all related problems have acquired an especial and comparative significance of their own. Hurried voyagers who cross the modern desert track between Damascus and Baghdad are tempted to compare previous varieties of caravans with their own convoys; and to wonder how merchants used to go about their business: how they conducted their affairs and carried on their trading ventures under more primitive conditions. Similarly, a modern traveller who looks upon the ruins of Palmyra, Jerash or any other caravan city, feels inclined to ask questions about its origin and place in caravan life, and its role in desert history. It is hoped that this book, which is a condensed summary of caravan life and desert travellers, may give a partial answer to the unvoiced questions of the historically curious. There is no chapter included in this survey which could not be indefinitely expanded and elaborated; each one is in itself a potential book; so that the sum of these chapters is, obviously, no more than an outline of the methods and conditions of travel in the desert regions, from Roman times to the present day.

This book has another, a secondary purpose. It is intended as an introduction to the classics of desert travel—those to come, as well as those already written and appreciated. Taken collectively, the following chapters are meant to serve as a background for the adventures and experiences of all who, for whatever reason, have travelled in and across the waste spaces which intervene between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. Some desert travellers have been men, and even women, of great reputation, such as Ibn Battuta, Pietro della Valle, Huber, the Blunts, Colonel Chesney and Gertrude Bell. Others, like Burckhardt, Doughty and T. E. Lawrence, never crossed the Syrian Desert; but they made an intimate study of its south-western territory. Still others, less famous, have voyaged thither for various reasons; and these have become known, indirectly, through the writings of fellow travellers, or else their own meagre writings have been found scattered among the greater travel collections (such as Hakluyt and Purchas), or the lesser compilations (such as Ray and Murray). The vast majority of travellers, however, have been individually unknown; nameless because of their numbers. Merchants, Mohammedan pilgrims, soldiers and civil servants, couriers and dispatch-bearers have all played their part, as well as explorers and men of science. Their private concerns are no longer—if they ever were—of general interest; but the manner of their voyaging will always stir the curiosity of those who are interested in desert travel. In order to create a common setting for travellers of the Syrian Desert, down the ages, their various narratives have been taken into account and welded into a single story. Many of these men lived or travelled in the desert during different epochs of its history, so the elements of contrast, as well as those of similarity in their respective periods, have necessarily been noted. Moreover, with the exception of Alois Musil, no one of them ever attempted to traverse the whole of this arid region; so that it has been possible to paint only a collective picture of the desert as seen through their eyes.

Geographically speaking, the Syrian Desert is the shortest highway between the Orient and the Occident. This means that Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia have automatically become intellectual and commercial middlemen between these two geographical extremes. Immemorially, also, it has served as a bridge between the successive civilizations which have centred in the Near and Middle East. Of course, the highway is collective in its meaning. It must be understood to include each and every one of the numerous caravan tracks that cross the desert, by all of which the contacts between east and west have been maintained.

In modern times the desert has become a subject of interest in itself, over and above its use as a highway. Before the nineteenth century, Europeans journeyed across it from necessity; since then, many have travelled in it from curiosity, and to advance some one of the branches of human knowledge. Various geographers, geologists, zoologists, botanists, archaeologists and ethnologists have found food for thought therein, and material for study. Greece, Rome and Byzantium have left their traces in this desert: temples and caravan cities as well as route-markings. Ruined palaces, castles and the remains of ancient fortifications in mid-desert testify, similarly, to the occupation of early Arab princes, Lakhmid and Ghassanid, and to the rule of medieval Saracens. Primitive Safaitic inscriptions furnish clues to the later Arabic scripts; and modern Arab nomads preserve ancient customs in their age-old surroundings. Thus the Syrian Desert has an inherent interest of its own, apart from the travel to which it has perennially given rise.

Before embarking upon a description of any one of the various phases of desert life and travel, some preliminary remarks must be made. A few words are needed concerning the nature—geological and otherwise—of the Syrian Desert; concerning its history also, and its boundaries in successive historical periods. Something must likewise be said on the subject of the migratory inhabitants of these waste spaces; the principal Beduin tribes; the general characteristics of both the settled Arab and the nomad; and their beasts of burden. The reader who desires to know what sources of information are at his disposal, concerning trade, travel and transportation across the Syrian Desert, will find a selected bibliography at the end of the book. Lastly, a special appendix (No. 1) is devoted to an explanation of the writer’s personal system of Arabic transliteration, and to a discussion of the phonetic rendering of certain words and place-names. This note on transliteration is of peculiar importance, because of the unique character of the Arabic language and its many dialects. It needs more than a paragraph to make clear the difficulties which confront anyone who tries to follow or establish a consistent phonetic system, amidst the chaos of existing and conflicting systems. Nevertheless, some understanding of the problem is an essential and prerequisite part of any discussion of the various regions where Arabic is spoken. For the greater convenience of the reader, this note on transliteration is followed (on pp. 302–315) by a short glossary of the Arabic words which occur in the text; and by a separate glossary of geographical names.

2

GEOGRAPHY OF THE SYRIAN DESERT

The aspect of the Syrian Desert is a great surprise to many travellers; because the word desert is apt to conjure up a picture of golden sands blown into dunes, only less mobile than the sea. Whereas the traversible part of this particular desert is flat in appearance, like a vast undulating plain; and the warmth of its colours astonishes even those who have become accustomed to their variety. The plain is in part gravel-strewn; in part sand-covered; and in part hard caked with whitish, glittering dried mud. Then, after first getting used to the sight of a plain, the traveller is again surprised to find any number of green plants scattered thinly over most of its surface. These plants are small and aromatic; gray-green, tinged with red; and they grow on all the desert lowlands. On the north and west desert hills are etched along the sky-line; to the east and south deeply-cut wadis, or dry water-courses, indent the plain’s surface. The rocky hills of sand and limestone give changing colours to the desert plain. At mid-day, these are fused into a yellow-tinted gray by the sun’s glare; but early in the morning, and late in the afternoon, they run the gamut of a rainbow in which lustrous reds and violets predominate.

In order to understand the peculiar significance of the Syrian Desert routes, and the reason why they have always made so convenient a short-cut to the east, one must consider the geological nature of the desert: its divisions and limitations, as well as its points of vantage. To do this one is also forced to take into account Arabia, which intervenes between Africa and Asia. The southern fringes of this great peninsula, famed as the “incense lands”, are Oman, Mahra, Hadramaut and Yemen. The principal town of Oman is Muscat, so well known in the seventeenth century; and the fleetest dromedaries, or riding-camels, of all Arabia are bred by the Beduin of Mahra. The interior of the peninsula, which stretches across more than ten degrees of latitude, is divided into three parts. There is a southern desert of reddish sand, the “Empty Quarter” (el-Rub el-Khali) formerly held to be impassable; a central plateau, the great highland called Nejd, which is a relatively healthful and fertile country (especially in the Kasim district, which is traversed by the Wadi er-Rumma); and a northern mountainous area, the Jebel Shammar region, which forms the southern rampart of another vast sand-wilderness. This northern desert, similar to that south of Nejd, is called the Nefud, an Arabic word signifying high sand dunes; its dune crests vary in height from 150 feet on the north and north-east to 600 feet on the south-west. East of the Nefud are long fingers of ridged sands, called the Dahana, which taper off (toward the Persian Gulf) into desert country of the smooth, stony type. The northern limits of Arabia may be said to coincide, roughly, with the thirtieth degree of latitude.¹

Until the nineteenth century, the interior of Arabia was never penetrated by Europeans. But a few westerners had made tentative excursions through some of Arabia’s coastal lands, especially those which border the Red Sea, from Sinai in the north to Aden at the southern tip of the peninsula; and the Hejaz, which contains the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, had been frequented by Moslems of every sect and nationality. On the eastern, or Persian Gulf side, Oman is divided from Kuwait (in southern Irak) by the Hasa, with its ancient port of Gerrha and the pearl fisheries of the Bahrein Islands. The best known towns of central Arabia are Riyadh, the capital of southern Nejd; Hayil, the capital of northern Nejd; and Tayma, near the south-western border of the Nefud.

Geologically speaking, the Syrian Desert is a continuation of the Arabian plateau. It may be thought of as a triangle whose base rests on the thirtieth parallel of latitude, and whose apex projects itself north-westward towards Asia Minor—to where the fertile lands of Syria and Mesopotamia converge (see map, p. xvi). The shortest side of this desert triangle is on the west, where it is bounded by the Sinai Peninsula, the Dead Sea and Jordan valleys, and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains of Syria. In the north, the city of Aleppo is—to all intents and purposes—at the apex of the triangle, because the plain which extends from this city to the Taurus Mountains is now under cultivation. The third side of the triangle stretches south-east from Aleppo, and is bounded by the river Euphrates. Near its mouth, at the south-eastern angle of the triangle, the Euphrates is joined by the Tigris, and the two great rivers—known in their conjunction as the Shatt el-Arab—empty into the Persian Gulf.

These rivers have not always joined as they do today. Between the seventh and the fifteenth centuries, the main stream of the Euphrates (called el-Frat by the Arabs) held to a more westerly course, from just above Babylon; and just below Kufa (or Meshed Ali) it discharged its waters into what was called the “Great Swamp”. Some time after the eighteenth century, the “Great Swamp” (the lower part of which is now a lake) drained into an estuary that passed the site of Medieval Basra, and emptied into the Persian Gulf at Abadan. At some unknown time between the middle of the fifteenth and the middle of the seventeenth centuries the Tigris changed to its present eastern bed; and the head-waters of the Persian Gulf gradually receded. Abadan now lies some twenty miles up the estuary. Since the eighteenth century, the Euphrates has flowed through a more easterly bed to the ancient lagoons of the Tigris, in what used to be the “Great Swamp”. Today, the Frat joins the Tigris at Kurna, and their joint stream becomes the Shatt el-Arab. The records describing the changes of these two great rivers are not altogether satisfactory, and leave considerable gaps of time to the imagination; but at least the original changes appear to have been caused by a great flood that occurred in A.D. 629. It is interesting to note that the modern course of the Tigris, since the seventeenth century, is apparently the same as the channel which the Tigris followed in pre-Islamic days.

The Syrian Desert plateau is between two and three thousand feet above sea-level. In the south, the highlands of Jebel Aneza rise to an altitude of 3300 feet; in the west, Jebel Druze does the same; and in the north, a chain of sand and limestone hills, 3000 feet above sea-level, stretch diagonally north-east across the desert, from Damascus to Palmyra and thence to the Euphrates (north of Deir ez-Zor). There is also a range of low hills, the Jebel Melossa, which run south-east from the salt marshes of Palmyra. These are the only important exceptions to the general flatness of the plateau, although the occasional isolated mountain, called jebel by the Arabs, or hill, called tell, raise their heads above the plains. Jebel Tenf, a landmark near the modern Damascus motor route, is one of these. On the limestone plateau east of Jebel Aneza, sinter cones have been found which suggest extinct geysers. From the vicinity of Palmyra a volcanic zone extends southwards into Arabia, as far as Mecca. Even in historical times there have been eruptions, the most recent of which was recorded in 1256. Naturally enough, earthquakes have also occurred; and to this cause must be attributed the ruins of the caravan cities and walled towns, those in the desert (like Palmyra and Resafa) as well as those on its edge (like Jerash and Umm el-Jemal). In the neighbourhood of Aleppo there are patches of low-lying waste land, with an altitude of only 1000 feet, much of which is composed of crystallized salt marshes, known as sebkha. Eastwards from Palmyra there lies a broad belt of similar low-lying land, also containing a wide sebkha. East of Rutba Wells the hard surface of the desert is dotted wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter I The Syrian Desert and its Inhabitants
• Chapter II Channels of Ancient and Medieval Trade
• Chapter III Travellers and Explorers of the Syrian Desert
• Chapter IV The Merchant Caravans
• Chapter V Eighteenth-Century Travel Across the Desert
• Chapter VI Private Caravans of the Great Desert Route
• Chapter VII The Great “Hajj” Caravans
• Chapter VIII Eleven Centuries of Postal Service
• Chapter IX The Era of Mechanical Transport
• Appendices
• Index