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PHOENICIA AND LEBANON. 43
the commerce of Solomon between Ophir and his ports of Elath and Ezion Geber was carried
on by Tyrian sailors, the descendants of the old Sidonian navigators. But alas ! Great Sidon
is now only little Saida, " the place of fishing." Its seamen are mere coasting sailors running
their little feluccas and shakhturs along the Syrian shores, while its contracted harbour can
hardly shelter its tiny craft (see page 45).
The ancient city, so often built, destroyed, and re-built, is now a town of nine thousand
inhabitants, and in it? want of business life and enterprise, a typical oriental city. The
Israelites never conquered it, but the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians subdued it, and it
opened its gates to the two-horned Alexander in 332 b.c. Under the Romans it was a
wealthy city, and it continued such during the New Testament times, when our Lord visited the
borders of Tyre and Sidon. St. Paul found Christian friends here on his voyage to Rome.
Its Bishop Theodorus was present at the Council of Nice, 325 a.d. During the crusades Sidon
was alternately in the hands of the Franks and the Muslims, and suffered terribly from capture
and re-capture by the hostile armies. The town is situated on the north-western slope of a
low promontory extending down to the sea. In front of the sea wall a chain of island rocks
runs from north to south, formerly enclosing a harbour large enough to hold fifty galleys ; but
the Druse prince, Fakhr ed Din, filled it up with stones and earth to prevent the entrance
of Turkish ships, and now only the little shakhturs of Kozta Jiz and his fellow sailors can
find anchorage in the shallow waters. Sidon is a walled town, and, unlike Beirut, which has
overleaped its walls and spread for miles around, it keeps closely pent up within its narrow
limits. A more compact city could hardly be imagined, for not only are the streets too
narrow to allow loaded camels to pass each other with facility, but the houses are to a great
extent built on arches over the streets, so that one can ride or walk from one end of the
town to the other under dark, gloomy tunnels. Within the town are six great khans,
called by the people wakkaleh, or agencies. They are quadrangular, built around a large
paved courtyard, two stories high, with numerous rooms for travellers and storehouses for
merchandise. But Beirut has destroyed the commerce of Sidon, and the caravans, bringing
the wheat and butter of the Hauran to Beirut and carrying back the wares of Europe, pass by
Sidon, outside the walls. About seven hundred of the people are Muslims, five hundred
Jews, and the rest Catholics, Maronites, and Protestants. There is a female seminary under
the care of the American Mission, with forty-five boarders and ninety day scholars, and a
boys' high school. The French Sceurs de Charite have also a girls' school, the Jesuits a
school for boys, and the Muslim Benevolent Society a boys' school.
The fruit gardens and orchards of Sidon, extending half a mile from the walls, are the
pride of its people, and abound in oranges, lemons, sweet lemons, figs, apricots, pomegranates,
almonds, plums, apples, peaches, pears, citrons, and bananas, which are exported by sea to
Beirut and Alexandria, and by land to all the towns of Lebanon and to Damascus. The view
of the plain and town from the Neby Yahia, or Tomb of John the Baptist, a mile to the east,
in the month of April is extremely beautiful. A more verdant glade than that south of the |
