ANSYREER ANI) ISBEABLEBEL + an of a Syrian journey between Beyrout
and Aleppo, Mr. Lyde has produced a fresh,. informing, and graphic volume, by dint of having an object in view and sticking to it ; that object being to convert the Ansyreeh. This people, who must not be confounded with the Druses' or the Ismaeleeh or Assassins, are a secret sect, whose religion has borrowed something from all the various creeds that have at different ages found acceptance from the Syrians. Judaism, Christianity, Mahomedanism, have furnished the Ansy- reeh with practices or dogmas ; they seem to have drawn some- thing from the ancient Magi ; they believe in the transmigration of souls ; and, like their probable ancestors the Canaanites of old, " have groves and high places, in and on which they build the tombs of their Sheikhs, which are places of pilgrimage and wor- ship." Whether all this is held as a popular belief, would seem doubtful ; though, by taking the superstitions of different persons and bringing them all together, the theory might be supported. Little, however, is really known about their tenets. Mr. Lyde thinks they have not very strong convictions ; their belief, such as it is, being maintained through the mystery in which it is shroud- ed, the faithful recognizing each other by masonic signs.
Individuals may be found as far as Cairo or Constantinople, but outwardly professing Mahomedanism. The residence of the tribes is in Northern Syria ; in fact, within the district traversed by Mr. Lyde. They are governed, like the Druses, by Sheikhs of their own • and though our author found many of them intelli- gent enough, and those who leave home to seek their fortunes dis- play no lack of ability, the mass are despised by the townsmen as stupid louts.
"They are too much oppressed by the inhabitants of towns to have any great love for them ; not to speak of the contempt in which they are held, and the practical jokes that are played upon them. To these they are particularly subjected in Tripoli, the Mussulmans of which are more bigoted than those of Tad'ikeeh. In the neighbourhood there is a large number of Fellaheen, and occasionally they are obliged to enter the town on errands. On such oc- casions, the facetious shopkeepers suspend hooks in the shop-windows, which they cause to dangle till they become entangled with the turban of an Ansy- reeh, and then, by a sudden twitch, raise it into the air, to the astonishment of the wearer. At other times they put a match within the ample folds of the white cotton liffeh, or turban-wrapper, and set it in a blaze. A respect- able Mussulman informed me that he was one day sitting with a shopkeeper, when an Ansyreeh presented himself and asked change for a piece of money worth about 3s. 6d. The shopkeeper took it, put it secretly in a bag, and re- turned a piece of false coin like that he had received, saying, ' This piece is a bad one, I cannot change it.' I remonstrated with him afterwards, said my informant, "But all this is better treatment than that which this poor people ex- perienced some thirty years ago, when whole batches were impaled by the then governor of the town, the notorious Pacha Berbera."
Delicate health having compelled Mr. Lyde to seek a milder cli- mate, he made the usual tour of Egypt and Syria during the winter of 1850-'51. Having heard of the Ansyreeh from Mr. Moore, our Consul at Beyrout, who also expressed an opinion that there was a favourable opening for missionary enterprise among them, Mr. Lyde undertook the journey which he narrates in this volume, in order to feel his way. Among a despised yet stiffneoked people, surrounded by intolerant Mussulmans and equally intolerant Greeks, he knew it would not do to start with an avowal of his a The AnaYreeh and larnaeleeh.: a Visit to the Secret Sects of Northern Syria. Wier* view to the Establishment of Schools. By the Reverend Samuel Lyde, B A fellow of cunt College, Cambridge, late Chaplain (pro tem.) of the Anglican Church at Beyront. Published by Buret and Blackett. object. He appeared as a visitor, come to inquire if the.re would be any objection to the establishment of a school by Englishmen among them. This was all but universally responded to with a glad affirmative. Whether merely for the prospect of learning, or with an eye to the greater protection which Frank residents fur. nish from Mahomedan oppression, or with even ulterior ideas, may be doubted. The people wish for the advent of the English; and some of them persisted in taking the reverend traveller for, a po- litical agent, notwithstanding his disclaimers. However, there is no doubt but that a school might be readily established to covertly inculcate Christianity among the young, provided the means be forthcoming. It is partly in furtherance of this,object that Air. Lyde has returned to England and published his book.
Aleppo, Antioch, Ladikeeh, Beyrout, and other places of Mi. gious or historical celebrity, were visited by our traveller ; but of them he judiciously gives little account. His narrative is con. fined to the incidents of his jemmies and his pictures of the people. These are numerous, characteristic, and interesting ; giving a closer view of Eastern manners and character than a traveller can furnish who merely observes the natives, sophisticated, and pro. bably corrupted, by European travellers along the beaten tracks. Mr. Lyde lived among the people during the whole period of his journey : he spoke Arabic, he had business with most of them, and when he had not he could understand them.
Spite of oppression, which is still great, though originating, the people think, with local rulers rather than the Sultan, the Syrians seem a jocular race. The pantomimic tricks played on the Ansy- reeh are little consonant to the ideas of Turkish gravity : the Arab of the desert exhibits a counterpart of cab-stand wit.
"Being at length driven by the heat from my tent, I took a volume of Thomas-d-Kempis, and sat under the shade of a wall hard by. Near me was a group of Arabs of the desert, who in the summer resort much to Hanish and its environs. I had an opportunity of listening to the wit of these children of the desert ; and found that although it was attended with a vast amount of chattering and laughter, it was of a very meagre description. They passed the time in pelting one another with pebbles, smoking, and sleeping ; the most amusing piece of practical wit being the hailing, in the gravest manner possible, an Arab who was passing on a raw-boned charger, begging him to stop, as the Consul, meaning me, was struck at the noble appearance of the animal, and wished to treat for its purchase. "Their festivities seemed to be of an equally poor description. There was a marriage procession, the principal part of which was a man mounted on a camel, who gave a dancing motion to two cross sticks, on which was hung a woman's dress, the appearance of which from a distance, when moved about, was ludicrous enough. Their tribe roam over the deserts as far as Bagdad; and if 1 had wished to have gone to Palmyra, they would have taken me there, as they are accustomed to spend some part of the year there, and gave a description of it which lost nothing for want of exaggeration. Their name I cannot supply ; for when I asked it of them, they facetiously but irreve- rently replied, "Djar Allah,' (` neighbour of Allah.') After sitting by moon- light on a courteous Mussulman's pretty balcony, overlooking the bridge, river, and water-wheels' and walking through the bazaar and listening to the tale of Antar, read by a man mounted on a platform, to an audience smoking pipes and drinking coffee, I returned to my tent, and closed my last day in Hamah."
Notwithstanding this cheerfulness, (which, however, is found among slaves,) and various good qualities, there seems a background too black to be painted. These darker vices are not confined to the Turks, though they are preeminent, and as regards tyranny seem worse in Asia than in Europe.
" It may not be out of place here to speak of the Turks, their pride and oppression. Never, I suppose, was a governing race more corrupt than the present generation of Turks, from Egypt to Constantinople. If report gene- rally, and what I heard in Egypt of the three sons of Ibrahim Pacha, be true, even an European education serves only to teach European vices, and not, generally speaking, to implant an aversion to vice and oppression. Their condifct, at the time when their empire is tottering to its foundation, is a fresh illustration of the old saying, • Quern volt Deus perdere prism demen- tat.' The extent to which they are addicted to the worst vices is scarcely to be credited ; I should not have believed it, had I not been assured by one who I am persuaded has had opportunities of knowing the truth. Drunken- ness, for the sake of getting drunk, is one of the least of them; and every traveller in Egypt knows how much it prevails. " To give an instance. A Pacha, who began to take the conscription among the Ansyreeh just before my going among them, and who was sent to the right-about by them, was invited to a consular party in Ladikeeh. Our Consul excused himself from drinking glass for glass by saying that his chest was weak ; but his brother used the old trick of getting the servants to bring lemonade and suchlike disinebriating liquors, so that he was enabled to keep up to the end. The Turk drank deeply of arrack, at first apparently without any inconvenience; but at length his eyes began to twinkle, and he ended by becoming intoxicated,—a climax which from the beginning he had no doubt contemplated and intended to ensue. " One of the best scholars and most able lawyers in the country, a judge, and an intelligent man into the bargain, often gave me a striking picture of the oppression of the Turks, and the almost impossibility of one of the Arab race getting justice if insulted by them. So vicious are they, that he says he could scarce bring himself to receive a son of his into the house who should have served for a few years in the army. He says that he has no security against their entering his house and injuring him in the worst pos- sible way, but their fear of his own personal indignation. If an Arab makes a complaint of a Turkish soldier, who jostles him or knocks him.down_or does worse, he is answered, How dare you make such a complaint against a soldier of the Sultan ? It is impossible that he could have acted as you have described.' "
The spiritual condition of the Greeks, whether laity or priests, i is not painted in bright colours. Among the whole tribe n Syria, there are but three or four who possess anything like learning or intelligence. It was our author's luck to fall in with one of those, with whom he had sonic friendly discussion. On the worship of saints, as Gerasimus limited it, we are not quite sure but that the Greek priest had the best of the argument.
" He spoke of transubstantiation, and said that he found the dogmas of the Protestants and of the Papists with regard to it equally hard fo be tie- lieved. He could not, he said, bring himself to believe that after the pre er of consecration there was present under every crumb of bread perfect God and perfect man ; and that he contented himself with the literal acceptsttice
our Savio words, This is my body,: without attempting nicely to ex-
4m,r yhge sport and operation. He said that he had been, on the other h‘,0, shook at' the saying of a Protestant, whom he had met at Salad, (I believe sent by some society in England,) who had declared, that after par taking of the bread and wine he should not care if they were cast out of the church and eaten by dogs. I told him that such words were indeed shock- jag, and said that the Anglican Church had no such irreverence for the con- secrated elements, and referred to her rubric respecting them. He said that he was aware of it, and that he knew of but two Protestant Churches, the Epiaeopal'and the Presbyterian, and that he and others had much respect for the-former, hoping that hereafter they might receive benefit from her. He said that there were only two or three of the priests who knew much, Or could give reasons for their faith, the others contenting themselves with reading two or three books; and that he was considered by them as half a protestant, and could not have spoken to them as he had done to me. He gave an amusing instance of ignorance and prejudice in illustration of this. The evening before he bad dined at the Consuls garden with the Patriarch and the bishops and priests of Ladikeeh. They spoke of astronomy ; and he declared it to be his belief that the sun was stationary and that the earth moved round it. The Bishop immediately said that such a belief was no- thing more than infidelity, being contradictory to what was said in Joshua, of the motion of the sun being arrested for a whole day. With respect to himself, he declared that for two years in his sermons he had made s point of alluding to our Saviour only, in preference to the actions of the saints. He spoke with sorrow of the want of education in his own church, but said that he hoped that in towns the deficiency would now be somewhat supplied ; and, indeed, from what I heard in Antioch, the Pa- triarch seems to be alive to the deficiency, and anxious to remedy it. At the same time he declared it to be his conviction, and in this I think he is right, that the minds of Christians in Syria, when they become somewhat enlight- ened, have a strong tendency to infidelity, and that it would increase on the increase of schools and learning. He did not, perhaps, perceive that this is the natural consequence of ages of ignorance and superstition, as has lately so strikingly appeared in Italy. From one thing he had great hopes, name- ly, the circulation of a book translated from the Russian, in which much that bad been introduced into the Greek Church, to the corruption of her essential doctrines, had been removed. He asserted that by it, within these few years, many who had been ready to desert the Greek Church, to join that of Rome, 'had been dissuaded from doing so. On the whole, he showed himself to be both an enlightened and a gentlemanly man, and it would be well if it could be added with well-grounded hope a spiritually-minded one. A few such men, prepared to leave everything for the sake of truth, might yet infuse life into a body, which, whatever may be said by the prejudiced and the half-informed, is almost lifeless. I speak of the Greeks of Syria."
As regards Mr. Lyde's own services in the proposed mission to the Ansyreeh, no expense would be incurred. A schoolmaster and the other necessary expenses would not be very great, from the cheapness of living. These are prices at Antioch, where the traveller resided some time and as a householder. •
"Another circumstance favourable to the establishment of a school, and the residence of a missionary, is the great cheapness of the place. I will content myself.with mentioning the prices of two or three articles,—such as meat, about 6(1. for 61 pounds ; eggs, from 10 to 15 for a penny ; fowls, 4d. or 5d. a piece, and everything else in proportion. Fruit and vegetables there are in abundance ; the only drawback, as far as provisions are con- cerned, being that the rich Turks get the best of everything, and at the time of the fast of Ramadan, the Mussulmans leave little for others. It is, with- out controversy, the cheapest place in Syria ; and a married man might live and keep a horse there for 1001. a year, provided he was moderate in his ex- penditure and wants as regards articles coming from Europe. Thus the whole expense of a. missionary and school need not exceed 1501. a year."
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