An earlier issue of the same magazine relates that violence wasn’t only to be expected from local marauders near Jericho, because ‘an enterprising German society is making extensive excavations under special firman, and hundreds of native women are employed to uncover the secrets of forty centuries. The zeal of these scientific Germans would be more admirable if it were tempered with a little more courtesy. Not since spies first came to Jericho has the stranger been regarded with such suspicion. The overseers resent the presence of a camera within a hundred yards. One unhappy tourist, ignorant of these restrictions, was suddenly accosted last season, his Kodak wrenched from his grasp and dashed upon the ground.’
Anyone wanting to lodge in Jericho would be faced with an inn described by Baedeker as ‘a dirty mud-hut surrounded by hedges. The beds are bad, the rooms small and close, and vermin abundant. The inhabitants of Jericho appear to be a degenerate race, as the hot and unhealthy climate has an enervating effect. The traveller should be on his guard against thieves.’
In 1876 Baedeker relates that an unusual system of accommodation prevailed in the area south of Damascus, because ‘every village possesses its public inn, where every traveller is entertained gratuitously, and the Hauranians deem it honourable to impoverish themselves by contributing to the support of this establishment. As soon as a stranger arrives he is greeted with shouts of welcome, and is conducted to the inn. A servant or slave roasts coffee for him, and then pounds it in a wooden mortar, accompanying his task with a peculiar melody. Meanwhile the whole village assembles, and after the guest has been served, each person present partakes of the coffee. Even at an early hour in the morning we have been pressed to spend the whole day and the following night at one of these hospitable village inns. Now, however, that travellers have become more numerous, the villagers generally expect a trifling bakshish from Europeans. A sum of 10–20 piastres, according to the refreshment obtained, may therefore by given to the servant who holds the stirrup at starting. The food consists of fresh bread, eggs, sour milk, raisin-syrup, and in the evening a dish of wheat boiled with a little leaven and dried in the sun, with mutton.’ This is reprinted verbatim in the 1912 edition.
Hotel accommodation in the main cities was often of an indifferent nature, as well as being expensive. In Damascus the Hotel Dmitri was said by Baedeker to be tolerable, but ‘the management is chiefly in the hands of an insolent set of waiters’. The city was not known for its tolerance of Christians, 6000 of whom had been massacred in 1860, only sixteen years before. There were booksellers in the bazaar, ‘whose fanaticism is so great that they despise even the money of the “unbeliever”, and often will not deign to answer when addressed by him’.
A. & C. Black’s guidebook of 1911 tells us that in Damascus ‘a European stranger cannot, even at the present day, wander about the streets alone without risk of insult, especially in the neighbourhood of a mosque’. In a Saharan town of Algeria, not so many years ago, stones began landing around me when I got to within a hundred yards of one such temple.
The traveller can’t even console himself in another direction, when in the afternoon he may ‘encounter a crowd of women enveloped in their white sheets and closely veiled, waddling from shop to shop, carefully examining numberless articles which they do not mean to buy … but in this jealous and fanatical city it is imprudent and even dangerous to be too observant of the fair sex’.
Women, Christian though they might be, were not wanted at the Monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem, which seems just as well, since: ‘The divans are generally infested with vermin. The accommodation is very poor, but bread and wine are to be had, and there are kitchens for the use of travellers who bring their dragoman and cook.’ At Hebron, the accommodation at several Jewish houses was said to be tolerable, but the Muslims in that place ‘are notorious for their fanaticism, and the traveller should therefore avoid coming into collision with them. The children shout a well-known curse after “Franks”, of which of course no notice should be taken.’ The Baedeker of 1912 gives the same warning, to which is added: ‘Travellers are earnestly warned against that arrant beggar, the son of the deceased old sheikh Hamza’, though why is not stated.
Black’s guide recommends a day’s excursion to the town: ‘The unique historical associations of Hebron, its striking topography, and the intense jealousy with which the shrine of the great Jewish patriarch is guarded from Jews and Christians alike, make this excursion one of peculiar interest, and it should not be omitted by those who can only devote a week to Jerusalem.’ King Edward VII (then Prince of Wales) had been a visitor there in 1862, furnished with a special permit from the Sultan, though ‘in the face of the bitterest opposition from the inhabitants’. Since then, ‘nearly a score of distinguished travellers have been permitted to visit this sacro-sanct spot’. Baedeker says that a dragoman is unnecessary, but Black’s guide disagrees: ‘Travellers who value their comfort should take one, in view of the unfriendly attitude of the inhabitants.’
At Nablus there was for a long time only the camping ground for accommodation, though by 1912 one of the two hotels had been established by the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line. The camping ground still existed, however, and Baedeker recommends: ‘The commandant should be requested to furnish one or two soldiers as a guard for the tents, as the inhabitants are fanatical and quarrelsome.’
Cook’s guide tells us: ‘The people have a bad reputation for their discourteous treatment of strangers, and even today Christian visitors are sometimes greeted with cries of Nazarene! accompanied by pelting of stones.’ Henry S. Lunn, in his How to Visit the Mediterranean, 1896, gives a more final verdict: ‘The Moslems, noted for their fanatical and turbulent character, offer no inviting prospect for residents alien in race and creed.’
One also had to endure the ‘plaintive cry of the lepers. Unhappily, these poor creatures intrude their misfortunes before the gaze of the stranger, who is often sorely tried at witnessing the distorted faces and wasting limbs, and to hear the horrible and husky wail peculiar to themselves.’
And so to Jerusalem, the star of all places for Jewish and Christian pilgrims, first and foremost the City of David, and nearer to God than any other. Baedeker’s guidebook provides a magnificent fold-out panorama, fit for framing, which shows the main sights and almost every building. We are reminded that ‘Jerusalem’ comes from the Hebrew, meaning ‘Vision of Peace’, and that to most travellers it is ‘a place of overwhelming interest, but at first many will be sadly disappointed in the Holy City, the venerable type of the heavenly. Zion. It would seem at first as though little were left of the ancient city of Zion and Moriah, the far-famed capital of the Jewish empire; and little of it indeed is to be discovered in the narrow, crooked, ill-paved, and dirty streets of the modern town. It is only by patiently penetrating beneath the modern crust of rubbish and rottenness which shrouds the sacred places from view that the traveller will at length realise to himself a picture of the Jerusalem of antiquity, and this will be the more vivid in proportion to the amount of previously acquired historical and topographical information which he is able to bring to bear upon his researches.’
Baedeker suggests at least a week to see the main sights, while Black’s, perhaps in consideration of the Sabbath, thinks six days should be enough. Murray makes no comment on the matter, assuming that the intelligent reader can decide for himself.