Accommodation was possible at the Mediterranean Hotel, where the landlord was Moses Hornstein, said to have a Scottish wife; and at the Damascus Hotel, owned by his brother: ‘Food generally good; rooms small, but sufficiently large for ordinary travellers who are seldom in-doors.’ Murray’s earlier edition also recommends the Hornstein hotels, the first being ‘a large and commodious house. The reports are favourable of the landlord’s civility and attention to the comforts of his guests.’
By 1912 there were more hotels, and Black’s guide commends an English pension run by a Mr Hensman, said to be a ‘favourite resort of the clergy’, where English cooking was the rule. Thomas Cook used the Grand New Hotel for his clients.
Several hospices catered for Roman Catholic travellers, though: ‘In the height of summer many of the inhabitants camp outside the gates for the sake of the purer air, but the traveller should not attempt this in the spring, as the weather is then often bitterly cold, unless he is compelled to do so from want of accommodation within the city.’
Regarding bankers: ‘Valero, in David Street, is a good Jewish house … Small change, with which the traveller should always be well supplied, may be obtained at the bazaar, but as reckoning in piastres is puzzling at first, he should be on his guard against imposition.’
Among medical men, Dr Chaplin, of the Jewish Mission, is recommended, followed by ‘Dr. Sandreszki, a skilful operator, physician of the German institutions’.
In 1912 Baedeker gives the population of Jerusalem as 70,000, including 45,000 Jews and 15,000 Christians. Of the Jews, the number ‘has greatly risen in the last few decades, in spite of the fact that they are forbidden to immigrate or to possess landed property. The majority subsist on the charity of their European brethren, from whom they receive their regular khaluka, or allowance, and for whom they pray at the holy places.’
In order to visit the Moslem Haram esh-Sherif, ‘the permission of the Turkish authorities and the escort of a soldier is necessary, but on Friday and during the time of festivals, entrance is entirely prohibited to strangers’. Access to Jewish and Christian sites was unimpeded.
Cook’s handbook, forty years after the above, tells us: ‘It is only recently that Christians have been at liberty to enter any of the Mosques. The restrictions have now, however, been removed, and some of the principal Mosques, which bold travellers of an earlier date risked their lives to enter, may be visited by any one who makes the proper application to the consul, and pays the proper fees.’
Cook reminds the visitor that ‘although he may not believe in the religion of the Moslems, he should respect their institutions so far as to adopt those customs which are deemed by them to be due to their religion. It will be well to observe these things, not only as a matter of good taste, but also from prudential motives, as there is still a strong feeling against this invasion of holy places by infidels — as the Christians are called — and Mohammedan fanaticism is a passion which it is unsafe to arouse.’
One ought not to leave Jerusalem, however, without an example of Christian fanaticism, and I quote from Murray’s handbook of 1868: ‘A description of the Church of the Sepulchre could hardly be considered complete without some account of the scenes enacted at the time of the miracle (imposture?) of the Holy Fire. On the Easter-eve of each returning year it is affirmed that a miraculous flame descends from heaven into the Holy Sepulchre, kindling all the lamps and candles there, as it did of yore Elijah’s sacrifice on Carmel. The Greek patriarch or his representative alone enters the tomb at the prescribed time; and the fire soon appearing is given out to the expectant and excited multitude through a hole in the northern wall. The origin of this extraordinary scene is involved in mystery. It is singular, too, and worthy of notice, that at a few of the Moslem saints’ tombs a supernatural fire is said to blaze on every Friday, superseding all necessity for lamps.’
Murray continues: ‘The imposture of the Holy Fire is unquestionably one of the most degrading rites performed within the walls of Jerusalem. It is not too much to say that it brings disgrace on the Christian name. It makes our boasted Christian enlightenment a subject of scorn and contempt to both Jews and Mohammedans. Its effects upon those who sanction or take part in it are most melancholy. It makes their clergy, high and low, deliberate imposters; it rouses the worst passions of the poor ignorant pilgrims who assemble here from the ends of the earth: and it tends more than aught else to convert the pure, spiritual, elevating faith of the Lord Jesus into a system of fraud and degrading superstition.
‘The fostering of fanaticism, superstition, and imposture is not the only evil result of the Holy Fire. Scarcely a year passes in which some accident does not occur at the exhibition — an unfortunate woman is crushed to death, or an old man is trampled over by the crowd; or oftener still one or two are stabbed in the quarrels of rival sects. In the year 1834 a fearful tragedy occurred …’
The description of it is given over to Lord Curzon, from his Monasteries of the Levant:
The guards outside, frightened at the rush from within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, and the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers with their bayonets killed numbers of fainting wretches, and the walls were spattered with blood and brains of men who had been felled, like oxen, with the butt-ends of the soldiers’ muskets. Every one struggled to defend himself, and in the mêlée all who fell were immediately trampled to death by the rest. So desperate and savage did the fight become, that even the panic-struck and frightened pilgrims appeared at last to have been more intent upon the destruction of each other than desirous to save themselves.
For my part, as soon as I had perceived the danger I had cried out to my companions to turn back, which they had done; but I myself was carried on by the press till I came near the door where all were fighting for their lives. Here, seeing certain destruction before me, I made every endeavour to get back. An officer of the Pasha’s, equally alarmed with myself, was also trying to return; he caught hold of my cloak, and pulled me down on the body of an old man who was breathing out his last sigh. As the officer was pressing me to the ground, we wrestled together among the dying and the dead with the energy of despair. I struggled with this man till I pulled him down, and happily got again upon my legs — (I afterwards found that he never rose again) — and scrambling over a pile of corpses, I made my way back into the body of the church … The dead were lying in heaps, even upon the Stone of Unction; and I saw 400 wretched people, dead and living, heaped promiscuously one upon another, in some places above 5 ft. high.
A final comment from Murray wonders whether or not it isn’t ‘high time for enlightened Russia to step in, and put an end, by the high hand of her authority, to this most disgraceful and degrading imposture’.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TURKEY
We will begin our section on travel in the Turkish Empire by quoting from an article in Blackwood’s Magazine of 1847, which describes a party of English travellers disembarking on the coast near Smyrna. ‘When I landed at that nest of pirates, Valona,’ the anonymous author says, ‘was I to look upon that wretched rabble as Turks? Men dressed in every variety of shabby frock-coat and trousers; and above all, men who were undisguised in the exhibition of vulgar curiosity. When, then, I saw these people flocking together on their jetty to meet us, I at once recognised them as mongrel and degenerated. The whole community are piratical; the youth practically, the seniors by counsel. They manage their evil deeds with a singleness of purpose that neglects no feasible opportunity, and with a caution that restrains from doubtful attempts, and almost secures them from capture. Incontinent they launch their boats, — terrible vessels that hold twenty or thirty armed men besides the rowers, and cleave their irresistible course towards the motionless and defenceless victim. On such occasions it is only by rare hap that any individual survives to tell the tale and cry for vengeance. The bloody work is no sooner over than its traces are obliterated and the community restored to the appearance of inoffensiveness: the boats are pulled up on shore, the crews dispersed.’