DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10357#0198
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
have been polluted by the images of idols. It may excite surprise that the buildings of the
Christian period should be so numerous and so noble as are these monasteries. But this is
explained when we remember how in the period that succeeded their foundation by Jerome
and his immediate followers Palestine enjoyed an epoch of exceptional quiet amid the ravages
of the northern barbarians in the rest of the Roman empire. Nor was the calm broken till
the storm of Chosroes and his exterminating Persians burst upon the hapless East at the end
of the sixth century. Then all these monasteries were sacked and fired, and their inmates
butchered. Ere the country could recover itself, within fifty years, a yet more fatal though
less cruel war of conquest swept over Palestine in the Caliph Omar and his Moslem Arabs.
The Moslem did not exterminate the Christian or forbid his rites. Some of the monasteries
were permitted to be repaired and reoccupied, but the cost was great and the Christian popu-
lation utterly impoverished. Then came a transient burst of spasmodic prosperity, when the
Crusaders erected their sugar-mills and cultivated this rich Jordan valley. When the
Mohammedan sway was re-established the monasteries soon, as above stated, became useless.
As we pass across the narrow belt of open plain which intervenes between the Monastery
of St. John and the oasis of Jericho, we step back from mediaeval remains to the mounds of
primaeval history. Jericho, " the City of Palm-trees," was the contemporary of the doomed
Cities of the Plain, and whatever doubt may hang over their exact position, there is none
whatever on the Jericho of the prophets. In speaking of Jericho we must bear in mind that
the name is claimed by three distinct cities of different ages, succeeding one another. First,
there is the old Canaanitish city, destroyed by Joshua and rebuilt by Hiel, the resort of Elijah
and Elisha ; secondly, the Jericho of the Herods and of the New Testament; and thirdly,
Er Riha, the crusading and modern representative, the name, strangely different as it sounds
in its English rendering, being the Arabic equivalent of the old Hebrew Jericho.
The first of these, and by far the most interesting, is that to which we will direct our
steps on our return from the fords of Jordan at Helu. From the ruined monastery by the
river, Kasr-el-Yehud (see page 163), where the great cistern on which the colony depended
for its water supply is still nearly perfect, we may trace the utterly ruined aqueduct by which
it was supplied from the famous Prophet's Fountain. Of the seven monasteries recorded in
history in the plain the ruins of five are known, but of these only three are identified. They
are all a little to the south of our course. Looking at this barren plain, with its occasional
copses of thorn-tree (zukktim) and Spina Christi, we may wonder how a considerable
population could ever have existed until we notice the remains of their aqueducts, no less than
twelve of which have been traced and mapped by Lieut. Conder. When we leave the upper
channel of the river not a tree or blade of grass, only a few shrubs with microscopic foliage,
are visible till we reach the oasis of old Jericho, Ain-es-Sultan. Yet the plain is not level.
It is studded with desert islands—flat-topped mounds of salt-encumbered marl without a
particle of vegetation, and the crumbling sides of which are yearly being washed by the floods
back into the Jordan, which once deposited them. At length we come upon a few scattered
have been polluted by the images of idols. It may excite surprise that the buildings of the
Christian period should be so numerous and so noble as are these monasteries. But this is
explained when we remember how in the period that succeeded their foundation by Jerome
and his immediate followers Palestine enjoyed an epoch of exceptional quiet amid the ravages
of the northern barbarians in the rest of the Roman empire. Nor was the calm broken till
the storm of Chosroes and his exterminating Persians burst upon the hapless East at the end
of the sixth century. Then all these monasteries were sacked and fired, and their inmates
butchered. Ere the country could recover itself, within fifty years, a yet more fatal though
less cruel war of conquest swept over Palestine in the Caliph Omar and his Moslem Arabs.
The Moslem did not exterminate the Christian or forbid his rites. Some of the monasteries
were permitted to be repaired and reoccupied, but the cost was great and the Christian popu-
lation utterly impoverished. Then came a transient burst of spasmodic prosperity, when the
Crusaders erected their sugar-mills and cultivated this rich Jordan valley. When the
Mohammedan sway was re-established the monasteries soon, as above stated, became useless.
As we pass across the narrow belt of open plain which intervenes between the Monastery
of St. John and the oasis of Jericho, we step back from mediaeval remains to the mounds of
primaeval history. Jericho, " the City of Palm-trees," was the contemporary of the doomed
Cities of the Plain, and whatever doubt may hang over their exact position, there is none
whatever on the Jericho of the prophets. In speaking of Jericho we must bear in mind that
the name is claimed by three distinct cities of different ages, succeeding one another. First,
there is the old Canaanitish city, destroyed by Joshua and rebuilt by Hiel, the resort of Elijah
and Elisha ; secondly, the Jericho of the Herods and of the New Testament; and thirdly,
Er Riha, the crusading and modern representative, the name, strangely different as it sounds
in its English rendering, being the Arabic equivalent of the old Hebrew Jericho.
The first of these, and by far the most interesting, is that to which we will direct our
steps on our return from the fords of Jordan at Helu. From the ruined monastery by the
river, Kasr-el-Yehud (see page 163), where the great cistern on which the colony depended
for its water supply is still nearly perfect, we may trace the utterly ruined aqueduct by which
it was supplied from the famous Prophet's Fountain. Of the seven monasteries recorded in
history in the plain the ruins of five are known, but of these only three are identified. They
are all a little to the south of our course. Looking at this barren plain, with its occasional
copses of thorn-tree (zukktim) and Spina Christi, we may wonder how a considerable
population could ever have existed until we notice the remains of their aqueducts, no less than
twelve of which have been traced and mapped by Lieut. Conder. When we leave the upper
channel of the river not a tree or blade of grass, only a few shrubs with microscopic foliage,
are visible till we reach the oasis of old Jericho, Ain-es-Sultan. Yet the plain is not level.
It is studded with desert islands—flat-topped mounds of salt-encumbered marl without a
particle of vegetation, and the crumbling sides of which are yearly being washed by the floods
back into the Jordan, which once deposited them. At length we come upon a few scattered