DAR-UL-ISLAM.*

BOOKS of travel are of three kinds. There are the learned books, and the ignorant books, and the books written by Captain Mark Sykes. These last it is impossible to describe except in French ; they are etourdissants. But they are also (as those who know the East will realise from the first page onwards), they are also the East. This is high praise, and a boundary-line must be drawn round it. Captain Mark Sykes writes of the East of to-day, of the surface of the East. It is not that he is indifferent to the great roots of tradition and history which lie below that which he sees from the back of his horse ; he lets fall an occasional allusion to Roman strategic roads, to racial similarities and racial differences, to distinctions of creed and kinship of faiths, but his knowledge is not very profound. He passes through countries than which there can be few of more vital interest to the scholar and the historian, countries which have heard the shock of the oldest civilisations ; he crosses and recrosses, metaphorically speak- ing, the frontier of the Aryan and the Semitic races, where the border people live in a strange jumble of mutually exclusive codes, and hold, in the solution of faith, ideas which are fundamentally antagonistic, but he does not trouble his readers with considerations upon these matters. After all, it would be unreasonable to expect it of him ; he makes no pre- tence to the position either of scholar or of historian. He is an excellent photographic camera, reproducing scenes from the life with a power of selection and a sense of humour that cameras do not, alas ! commonly possess ; and we take what he gives us gratefully, and with inextinguishable laughter offer up a fervent thanksgiving to his admirable lens. Except, indeed, when, as occasionally happens, he wanders into regions which are not suited to photography. Our good humour wears somewhat thin, for instance, when he visits the grave of Abu'l'Ala, and with easy indifference dismisses that acute thinker and brilliant poet, to whom Omar Khayyam, beloved of the English, owed so much of his philosophy, as a " bilious gentleman." On a later page there is an apprecia- tion of Islam which must be quoted : " The simplicity of the creed, the canting formality of the prayers, the low ideals, the force with which belief in Islam or nothing is driven home from early youth, make it impossible for a Muhammadan to become anything but an agnostic or remain as he is." Many learned books have been written on the spirit of Islam, but exactly this terse description of it we have been waiting for Captain Mark Sykes to supply. When, however, he pauses to contemplate what would have happened if the West had been converted to Mahommedanism and the East to Christianity, though he admits that his supposition is absurd, his reflections strike us as just. "The Jingoes [of Europe] might occasionally preach Jehad when it suited, but otherwise things would be just as they • Hama-Islam: a Record of a Journey through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey. By Mark Sykes. With Appendix by John Hugh Smith. and Intro- duction by Professor E. U. Browne. London : Bickers and Sons. L15s.]

pimp?'

are, while in the East things would stand at that everlasting dead full stop which they reached soon after the architectural

failure at Babel." The turn of the phrases is delicately humorous, and they indicate a consideration which goes deep into the heart of the East.

Captain Sykes is not one of those who are pursued when they travel with a desire to stamp the seal of their own customs upon the fluid wax of alien peoples. He knows very well that the wax is not really fluid, but moulded into shapes of its own, and inevitably so moulded. For that product of

misapplied European ideals which he calls the Gosmobaleet he has a hearty and a not unmerited contempt, and his mastery of the English language enables him to express it to the full. He has a keen eye for that which Orientals can accomplish if they be left to work out their own salvation. The wonder, as " Odysseus " pointed out in his book on European Turkey, is not that the Turkish Empire should be the home of so much disorder, but that a Government ruling over so many races and creeds should be able to preserve even an out- ward appearance of authority. But the wonder goes further, for, as Captain Sykes accurately observes, the authority of the Turk is stronger to-day in the Asiatic provinces than it was twenty years ago. He reviews in an early chapter the con- dition of Syria, and notes that whereas from Aleppo to Petra there was formerly not a road in which the traveller or the merchant might walk with security, there is now scarcely one in which they are likely to suffer any in- convenience. With a ragged army and unpaid officials, many of whom do not speak the language of the people they govern, in spite of corruption and malpractices of every kind, the Turk has succeeded in establishing a rough- and-ready order, even on the edge of the desert, which has presumably known no sort of order since it lay under the strong hand of Rome. Circassian soldiers seem to be as good watchmen as Roman legionaries ; and if the Turk is no great road-maker, he has conceived, and is putting through at the expense of the whole Mahommedan world, the project of uniting his temporal capital at Constantinople with his spiritual capital at Mecca. Captain Sykes speaks in terms of praise of Pashas who have reduced to order parts of the wild highlands of the Upper Euphrates and the Upper Tigris ; but by what processes has their success been accomplished? We can only answer : by European processes, by firmness, by justice, by a certain amount of elementary road-making. Out of his own pages we convict him of proving to us that these have been more efficacious than purely Oriental methods, such as the enrolling and arming of licit freebooters like the Hamadieh. The Oriental has something to learn from us which he may learn with profit. Let him by all means learn it in his own way, but let him hasten, for otherwise he will have to be taught it in ours.

We have waited till the last to quote one of the inimitable scenes from Oriental life which are the cream of the book. There are so many, and all are so excellent, that choice is painful, but perhaps the description of a Syrian khan is one of the best:— "It was our fortune to pitch our camp near khan En-Nuri,

attached to which is a coffee house of the lower kind. In the days of Ramadan the perpetual din which arises between a coffee house and a khan is more easily imagined than described. At dawn every fellah from the surrounding country bringing in his market stuff, considers it a point of etiquette to smite upon the door of the khan, bawling for the Khanji in a raucous voice. The Khanji is the heaviest sleeper in the district, and conse- quently the last man to be awakened. When he is aroused a long discussion ensues, through the crack in the khan door, between the fellah and the Khanji.

0 Khanji ! '

Khanji: 'Eh?'

Fatah : 0 Khanji !'

Khanji: Yes.'

Fellah: Are you Khanji Muhammad or Khanji Abdullah '

Khanji: 'Eh?' Fellah (Aside): A curse on the deaf one ! '

Khanji: Am I deaf to be cursed or do I hear the voice of a Fella,: 'Where is Khanji Abdullah ?'

Khanji : 'Who?' Fellah: Khanji—i A—b —d—u—l—l—a—h— ha --ha — ! ! ! '

Khanji: 'Why do you wake the folk, dog of a dog-son ' Fellah: wake folk ?—I wake folk? Have I a voice like an old camel? Have I a—'

Voices: 'Silence, blight!' ' Be quiet, dog ! " Pig, be still !'

'A curse on the religion of loud-voiced bellowers !'

affairs, and the khan and its Khanji, and may his wife '—etc., etc., etc., until the indignant fellah's voice dies down in the distance and the Khanji, being now aroused, commences rattling the key in the wooden lock that he may open the door. Khanji Blast the key and its maker— (rattle, rattle, rattle) the tooth is broken—(rattle, rattle). Eh, to the right ! Oak ! (rattle, rattle, rattle). Now it is nigh—Yallah—Eh ! Blast this key and its religion, and may Allah (rattle, rattle) blast (rattle, rattle) its (rattle) belief and—Alhamdollilah—Laud to the Lord—'

(Enter three Cameleers.) First Cameleer : 'That's my corn.'

Second Cameleer : Yon lie !'

Third Cameleer : `Silence! It is mine, you thieves twain ! ' A Traveller : Ya'oeb ! For goodness' sake tell the Zaptieh to keep those men quiet !'" And so on. This is the East : oh, fellow-travellers, do you not recognise it ?

Professor Browne writes a short but excellent introduction to the book, in which he calls attention to his scheme for encouraging the study of Arabic at Cambridge. May his labours be crowned with the success they so well deserve. There is also an appendix by Mr. John Hugh Smith, who made, to the south of Captain Sykes's route, an expedition of which we would gladly hear more.

When Palmyra is invaded by Cook's tourists, as Captain Sykes predicts it will be, every one of them, we fear, will carry the Dar-ul-Islam under his arm, for the book is destined to enjoy a wide popularity with the class of traveller to which its author is so bitterly hostile.