Charles Bucke - Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2)

It is rather remarkable, that there is no monument in memory of, nor any inscription in honour of Zenobia; for which Dr. Halley accounts on the supposition, that the Romans were so much irritated and ashamed, that they destroyed and defaced everything that might be erected in honour of her.

The decay of Palmyra has been accounted for from its peculiar situation. A country without land, if the expression may be allowed, could only exist by commerce: their industry had no other channel to operate in; and when loss of their liberty was followed by that of trade, they were reduced to live idly on as much of their capital as had been spared by Aurelian. When that was spent, necessity compelled them to desert the town.

Time has partially preserved the peristyles, the intercolumniations, and entablatures; the elegance of the designs of which equal throughout the richness of the materials. These being, in many respects, the greatest and most entire, is attributed to there having been, for so long a time, few inhabitants to deface them, to a dry climate, and their distance from any city which might apply the materials to other uses. These ruins present a sad contrast with the hovels of the wild Arabs, now the only inhabitants of a city which, in former times, emulated Rome. “Of all the contrasts of past magnificence with present meanness,” says Mr. Addison, “of the wealth and genius of by-gone times with the poverty and ignorance of the present day, no more striking instance, perhaps, can be found than is presented in the present poor Arab village of Tadmor. You there see a few poverty-stricken inhabitants living in square hovels of mud mixed with chopped straw, roofed with earth, leaves, and dry sticks, congregated round the magnificent Temple of the Sun of yore; despoiled of its ornaments by one of the haughtiest and most powerful of the Roman emperors, who came with his victorious troops from the distant provinces of Gaul and of Britain, to rend asunder the dominion of which this spot, in the midst of desert solitudes, had rendered itself the head.” Mr. Addison then goes on to state that the “ village of Tadmor consists, altogether, of about a dozen or fifteen families, and there can be hardly more than twenty able-bodied males in the whole place. This little community possesses a few herds of goats and dromedaries, which, together with the poultry, form the chief wealth of the villagers. These poor people are not, however, sufficiently advanced in the desert to be without the reach of the Syrian government; they all pay a capitation tax to Ibrahim Pasha. The portion of cultivated land on this spot is very small; there are merely a few scanty gardens, which produce roots, vegetables, and a miserable supply of corn. There are one or two palm-trees along the banks of the stream, and a few shrubs of the thorny acacia.”

These ruins were, some years ago, visited by a lady who has made a great noise in Syria – Lady Hester Stanhope. During her residence there she gave a kind of fête to the Bedouins. “The great sheikh,” says Mr. Carne, in his letters from the East, “and some of his officers constantly reside at the ruins. Their habitations are fixed near the great temple; they are all well-disposed and civil in their manners, and their young women are remarkable above all the other tribes for their beauty. It was a lovely day, and the youth of both sexes, dressed in their gayest habiliments, were seated in rows on the fragments of the pillars, friezes, and other ruins with which the ground was covered. Her ladyship, in her Eastern dress, walked among them, addressed them with the utmost affability, and ordered a dollar to be given to each. As she stood with all that Arab array amidst the columns of the great Temple of the Sun, the sight was picturesque and imposing, and the Bedouins hailed her with the utmost enthusiasm ‘queen of Palmyra,’ ‘queen of the desert;’ and, in their enthusiasm, would have proceeded to confer more decided marks of sovereignty; but they were declined.”

This fête was afterwards described to Mr. Buckingham by an Arab, who had been present, in the following hyperbolical style: – “As soon as it was known in the desert that the princess intended to journey to Tadmor, all the tribes were in motion; war was changed to universal peace, and every sheik, or chief, was eager to have the honour of leading the escort. Councils and assemblies were held at Horis and at Hamak, at Sham, and at Thaleb, Damascus, and Aleppo; messengers were sent in every direction, and nothing was neglected that might serve to make the way full of pleasure. When money was talked of, every one rejected it with indignation, and exclaimed, ‘Shall we not serve the princess for honour?’ Every thing being settled, the party set out, preceded by horsemen in front, dromedaries of observation on the right and the left, and camels laden with provisions in the rear. As they passed along, the parched sands of the desert became verdant plains; the burning wells became crystal streams; rich carpets of grass welcomed them at every place where they stopped for repose, and the trees under which they pitched their tents, expanded to twice their size to cover them with shade. When they reached the broken city (the ruins), the princess was taken to the greatest of all the palaces (the Temple of the Sun), and there gold and jewels were bound round her temples, and all the people did homage to her as a queen, by bowing their heads to the dust. On that day Tadmor was richer than Damascus, and more peopled than Constantinople; and if the princess had only remained, it would soon have become the greatest of all the cities of the earth: for men were pouring into it from all quarters; horsemen and chiefs, merchants and munugemein (astrologers and learned men who consult the stars); the fame of her beauty and benevolence having reached to Bagdad and Isfahan, to Bokhara and Samarcand; the greatest men of the East being desirous of beholding it for themselves.” The Arab, who firmly believed all this, narrated the return from Palmyra in the same romantic strains; and ended by repeating his regret at the misfortune of not having been one of the happy multitude, assembled on that occasion; he having been then on some business with another tribe to the south of the Dead Sea 72 72 Buckingham. .

Lady Hester is now dead. The following account is taken from a paper published originally at Smyrna: “We announced in our last number the death of Lady Hester Stanhope. Our readers will no doubt be glad to have a brief sketch of the principal circumstances of that extraordinary woman’s life. It was at Djouni, in Syria, that Lady Hester died, after a long illness, at the age of sixty-four. That reader must be indifferent, who reverts not with interest to his recollections of a woman, who has expired on the borders of the desert, amidst the Druses and Turkomans, over whom that noble daughter of the Infidels once exercised so strange and so marvellous a sway. The destiny of Lady Stanhope presents one of those features of which not another instance could, perhaps, be found in the annals of the East. Only imagine forty thousand Arabs suddenly assembled upon the ruins of Palmyra, and these wandering, savage, and indomitable tribes surrounding, in silent astonishment and admiration, a foreign woman, and proclaiming her Sovereign of the Desert and Queen of Palmyra! Convey yourself in thought to the scene of this incredible triumph, and you will then conceive what woman that must have been, who imposed silence on Mussulman fanaticism, and created for herself, as it were, by magic, a sovereignty in the domains of Mohammed. ‘Lady Hester Stanhope,’ says M. de Lamartine, in his admirable work, ‘was a niece of Mr. Pitt. On the death of her uncle, she left England, and visited various parts of Europe. Young, handsome, and rich, she was everywhere received with the attention and interest due to her rank, fortune, mind, and beauty; but she constantly refused to unite her fate to that of her worthiest admirers; and, after spending some years in the principal capitals of Europe, embarked with a numerous suite for Constantinople. The real cause of this expatriation has never been known. Some have ascribed it to the death of a young English officer, who was killed at that period in Spain, and whom an eternal regret rendered for ever present in Lady Hester’s heart: others have imputed her voluntary banishment to a mere love of adventure in a young person of an enterprising and courageous character. However this might be, she departed, spent some years at Constantinople, and then sailed for Syria in an English vessel, which carried also the larger part of her fortune, as well as jewellery, trinkets, and presents of all sorts, of very considerable value.’ The vessel encountered a storm in the gulf of Macri, on the road to Caramania; the ship was wrecked, Lady Hester Stanhope’s property was all lost, and it was as much as she could do to save her own life. Nothing, however, could shake her resolution. She returned to England, gathered the remainder of her fortune, sailed again for Syria, and landed at Latakia, the ancient Laodicea. She had at first thought of fixing her abode at Broussa, at the foot of the Olympus; but Broussa is a commercial city, situate on the avenues to the Ottoman capital, and reckoning not less than sixty thousand inhabitants; and Lady Hester sought the independence and solitude of the desert. She therefore selected the wilderness of Mount Lebanon, whose extreme ramifications lose themselves in the sands. Ruined Palmyra – Zenobia’s ancient capital – suited her fancy. The noble exile took up her residence at Djouni, prepared for every vicissitude. ‘Europe,’ said she, ‘is a monotonous residence; its nations are unworthy of freedom, and endless revolution are their only prospects.’ She applied herself to the study of the Arabic language, and strove to obtain a thorough acquaintance with the character and manners of the Syrian people. One day, dressed in the costume of the Osmanlis, she set out for Jerusalem, Damascus, Aleppo, and the desert; she advanced amidst a caravan loaded with wealth, tents, and presents for the Scheiks, and was soon surrounded by all the tribes, who knelt to her, and submitted to her supremacy. It was not solely by her magnificence, that Lady Hester had excited the admiration of the Arabs: her courage had been proved on more than one occasion; and she had always faced peril with a boldness and energy which the tribes well remembered. Lady Hester Stanhope knew also how to flatter the Mahomedan prejudices. She held no intercourse with Christians and Jews; she spent whole days in the grotto of a santon, who explained the Koran to her; and never appeared in public without that mien of majestic and grave inspiration, which was always unto oriental nations the characteristic of prophets. With her, however, this conduct was not so much the result of design, as of a decided proneness to every species of excitement and originality. Lady Hester Stanhope’s first abode was but a monastery. It was soon transformed into an oriental palace, with pavilions, orange-gardens and myrtles, over which spread the foliage of the cedar, such as it grows in the mountains of Lebanon. The traveller, to whom Lady Hester opened this sanctuary, would behold her clad in oriental garments. Her head was covered with a turban made of red and white cashmere. She wore a long tunic, with open loose sleeves; large Turkish trousers, the folds of which hung over yellow morocco boots, embroidered with silk. Her shoulders were covered with a sort of burnous, and a yataghan hung to her waist. Lady Hester Stanhope had a serious and imposing countenance; her noble and mild features had a majestic expression, which her high stature and the dignity of her movements enhanced. The day came when all this préstige , so expensively kept up, suddenly vanished. Lady Hester’s fortune rapidly declined; her income yearly decreased; in short, the substantial resources, which had, at one time, sustained the magic of her extraordinary domination, were daily forsaking her. The Queen of Palmyra then fell back into the rank of mere mortals, and she who had signed absolute firmans, enabling the traveller to visit in security the regions of Palmyra – she, whose authority the Sublime Porte had tacitly acknowledged – soon saw her people disown her omnipotency. She was left the title of queen, but it was but an empty name, a mere recollection; and again the monastery’s silence ruled over the solitude of Djouni. A queen, stripped of her glory of a day, Lady Hester Stanhope has expired, the sport of fate, at the moment the East is convulsed. She has expired in obscurity and loneliness, without even mingling her name with the great events of which it is now the theatre.”