Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Pierre Loti on Hebron circa 1895



Pierre Loti on Hebron circa 1895


Pierre Loti, the famous French writer, came to Israel near the end of the 19th century. We have already quoted and translated part of his description of Jerusalem here and here. He also visited Hebron, one of the four holy cities of the Jews according to Jewish tradition. A sizable Jewish population lived there [sizable in proportion to the town's total population] until 1929, when Arabs made a pogrom and massacre against the Jews there. This pogrom was conducted with British acquiescence, if not British approval and encouragement, even instigation.

Here we quote from a published translation into English of Loti's book:
. . . Hebron is still without hotels; it remains indeed one of the most fanatical Mussulman towns of Palestine and will scarcely consent to lodge a Christian under its roofs [Pierre Loti, Jerusalem (trans. W P Baines; London: T. Werner Laurie, n.d.), p10]
Arabs and Jews move in a crowd about the streets . . . Hebron is one of those towns that are not marred by a building of modern or foreign appearance.[p 12]
In regard to the Cave of Machpelah [Makhpelah] or Tomb of the Patriarchs, he writes:
. . . To Christians and Jews the mosque itself[Muslims call the tomb Masjid Ibrahimi = Mosque of Abraham] is proscribed [= forbidden]; influence, stratagem, gold, are powerless to gain them admittance to it -- and when, some twenty years ago, it was opened for the Prince of Wales on a formal order from the Sultan, the population of Hebron was on the point of armed revolt [p 14]
Almost on a level with the ground, there is a fissure through which Christians and Jews are allowed to pass their heads so that, crawling, they may kiss the holy stones. And this evening some poor Israelite pilgrims are there, prostrate, stretching out their necks like foxes running to earth, in an effort to touch with their lips the tomb of their ancestor; while Arab children, charming and mocking, who are allowed within the enclosure, watch them with a smile of high disdain.
This place is one of the most ancient venerated by mankind and there has never been a time when men have ceased to come and pray here. [p15]
And this surely is a thing unique in the annals of the dead: the sepulchre, originally so single, which reunited them all [= the Patriarchs and Matriarchs], has never ceased to be venerated -- while the most sumptuous tombs of Egypt and Greece have long since been profaned and empty. [p16]
Loti recognizes that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is a Jewish tomb taken over by Muslims, by Arabs. The tomb in its present form was built by King Herod in the late Second Temple period, although there are some Crusader and Muslim additions that mar the structure's simple beauty. The attribution to Herod is because he was a great builder of monumental buildings, including the Temple destroyed by the Romans and their auxiliary troops, including Arabs [see here]. Certain similarities of construction with the remnants of Herod's Second Temple are also evident. Jews were allowed by Muslim rulers to enter the Tomb and pray inside until Baybars the Mamluk forbid Jewish entry --as Loti describes-- in the year 1263, approx. After the Six Day War, Jews were again allowed to enter and pray in the Tomb, after the passage of slightly more than 700 years!!
The pogrom/massacre of 1929 has been described in many publications in Hebrew and other languages. Those who want a non-Jewish perspective could consult the reports of the famous journalists [at that time], Pierre van Paassen and Albert Londres. For Van Paassen, seeForgotten Ally, Days of Our Years, and other works. For Londres, see --in French-- Le Juif errant est arrive'. Note that the Arab-Muslim children show disdain towards the humiliated Jews, no doubt this is what they were taught. Jews and other non-Muslims in Muslim states [Dar al-Islam] were kept in a state of humiliation according to Islamic law [for instance, see Qur'an 9:29 (verse numbers vary in some editions)] and called dhimmis[See previous posts on this blog on dhimmis].

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Coming: more on peace and its follies, carter/baker and their follies, Jews in Jerusalem, etc.
posted by Eliyahu m'Tsiyon at 6:31 AM

2 Comments:

  • Eliyahu shalom,
    Thank you for this post. Where is there a translated version of Loti's book? Would be very interested to be in contact with you.
    B'vracha from Hebron,
    David Wilder
    hebron@hebron.org.il
    dwilder@gmail.com
    By Blogger David Wilder, at 10:22 AM
  • David, Shalom,
    I found this book some years ago in the open stacks in the Judaica section of the National Library on Giv`at Ram in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, forgot to copy down the year of publication. I believe that the French original came out in 1896, so the English version probably came out later. Look under Pierre Loti. You could also check the online catalogue of the HU university library.
    Best Wishes, Shabbat Shalom
    By Blogger Eliyahu m'Tsiyon, at 1:00 PM

Pierre Loti's Observations of Jerusalem & the Jews There, 1894 -- Part One

Forty-four years after Flaubert visited Jerusalem [1850], another French writer, Pierre Loti, visited the holy city.


Tuesday 3 April 1894
. . . tunnels seem to lead to the Haram esh-Sherif, to the Temple enclosure. . .
It is at sunrise of one of the cloudy spring days in Judea. . . [Aziza, pp 1296-1297]
Note that Loti calls the country Judea and that the Muslim sanctuary built on the Temple Mount is identified with the place of the ancient Jewish Temple and is important precisely for that reason.
Friday 6 April 1894
. . . Turning the southern corner of the walls [the southeastern corner facing the Mount of Olives], we come back into Jerusalem through the ancient Mughrabi Gate [also called Dung Gate, on the south of the Old City]. No one any longer within the ramparts; one might think one had entered a dead city. In front of us, gullies of cactus and stones that separate Mount Moriah from the inhabited quarters [neighborhoods]on Mount Zion -- waste land where we walk alongside the the enclosure of that other desert, the Haram esh-Sherif, which formerly was the Temple.

It is Friday evening, the traditional moment when --every week-- the Jews come to weep in a special place granted by the Turks, on the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, which "will never be rebuilt." And we want to pass, before nightfall, through this place of Lamentations. After the empty ground, we now reach narrow alleys, strewn with rubbish, and finally, a sort of enclosure, full of the stirrings of a strange crowd which moans together in a low, cadenced voice. The dim twilight is already beginning. The background of this place, surrounded by somber walls, is closed, crushed by a formidable Solomonic construction [actually Herodian], a fragment of the Temple enclosure, all in huge, identical blocks [actually the stones are massive and similar but of various sizes]. And men in long velvet robes, agitated by a kind of general rocking back and forth, like caged bears, appear to us seen from their backs, facing this immense ruin, tapping their foreheads on these stones and murmuring a kind of slightly quavering chant.
. . .

The robes are magnificent, black velvets, blue velvets, violet or crimson velvets, lined with precious furs. The skullcaps are all in black velvet, edged with long-haired furs, which put in the shade the sharp nose and the hostile glance. The faces, which make a half-turn to examine us, are almost all of a special ugliness, of an ugliness to make one shiver: so thin, so slender, so sly, with such small eyes, sly and tearful, under the fall of dead eyelids! White and pink hues of unwholesome wax and, on all ears, corkscrews of hair which hang in the "English" fashion of 1830, completing disturbing resemblances to bearded old ladies. . .
[quoted in Claude Aziza, Jerusalem: le reve a` l'ombre du Temple("Collection Omnibus"; Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1994), pp 1298-1299]
Notes
--The Mughrabi Gate is so named after Arabs from North Africa settled nearby since the Middle Ages. In fact, the Jewish prayer place at the Western Wall was enclosed on the western side, facing the Temple Mount, by houses of the Mughrabi Quarter.
--Mount Moriah is a late name for the Temple Mount, originally called Mount Zion.
--The Mount Zion of today is roughly speaking, the areas of the Jewish and Armenian Quarters, incorrectly named Mount Zion on account of the Byzantine Nea Sion church once there, now a ruin.
--The New Testament claims --perhaps in words written after the fact-- that the Temple will be destroyed [Matt 24:2; Mk 13:2; Lk 21:6]. The claim that the Temple "will never be rebuilt" seems part of a later Christian tradition building on these NT verses.

Pierre Loti [1850-1923] was a French naval officer and widely traveled on that account. Less famous than Flaubert, he was elected to the Académie Française. His novels emphasized the exotic, the sensual, and love [real name: Louis-Marie Julien Viaud]. He disparages the Jews he sees in Jerusalem, but recognizes the ancient, vanished Jewish Temple as giving importance to the present Muslim sanctuary built in its place.
[Photos from Focus East, Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum 1988)]
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Coming: more from Pierre Loti on Jerusalem and Hebron, Jews in Muslim lands, etc.

Pierre Loti's Observations of Jerusalem and the Jews There [1894] -- Part Two



Continuing Pierre Loti's description of Jerusalem, particularly of proceedings at the Western Wall Jewish prayer place --often offensively called the "Wailing Wall." This is just a section of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount built by the Jewish priestly caste, the Kohanim, during the reign of King Herod of Judea, although not finished in his time. On the lower levels, the original Herodian stone wall is still in place to this day. It could not have been removed, of course, without destroying the Temple Mount itself, which subsequent conquerors [Arab-Muslims and Crusaders] wanted for their own use.

Loti continues his description of Jewish prayer at the Western Wall prayer place:
Against the wall of the Temple, against the last wreckage of their past splendor, it is the Lamentations of Jeremiah that they all recite over and over, with voices that chant quaveringly in cadence, with the quick rocking of the body:
-- Because of the Temple which is destroyed, the rabbi cries out.
-- We are seated solitary and we weep! the crowd answers.
-- Because of our walls that have been brought down.
-- We are seated solitary and we weep!
-- Because of our majesty which has past, because of our great men who have perished.
-- We are seated solitary and we weep!
And there are two or three of them, of these old men, who shed real tears, who have placed their Bibles in the holes of the stones, in order to have their hands free and shake them above their heads in a cursing gesture.
If the shaking skulls and their white beards are in the majority at the foot of the Wall of Tears, it is that --from all corners of the world where Israel is dispersed-- his sons come back here when they feel their end approaching, in order to be buried in the holy valley of Jehoshaphat. And Jerusalem is more and more congested with old men who have come there in order to die.

In itself, it is unique, touching and sublime: after so many unparalleled misfortunes, after so many centuries of exile and dispersion, the unshakable attachment of this people to a lost homeland! For a little one might weep with them -- if they were not Jews, and if one did not feel one's heart strangely icy on account of all their abject forms.
But, before this wall of Tears, the mystery of the prophecies appears more unexplained and more striking. The mind meditates, confused over these destinies of Israel, without precedent, without parallel in the history of mankind, impossible to foresee, and yet, foretold, at the very time of the splendor of Zion, with disquieting accuracy of details. [quoted in Claude Aziza, Jerusalem. . . p 1299]
[Photos from Focus East, Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum 1988)]
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Coming: more on Jews in Jerusalem, Gerry Adams--liar and hypocrite, more follies of peace in the Middle East, etc.

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