Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/257

HAMATH THE GREAT were crowded close together at the foot of the fortress-hill. Some few were surmounted by stone canopies; but most of them were simple Moslem graves, ranged in long ranks looking toward the sacred city of Mecca, with one stone at the head and another at the foot, for the two angels to rest upon as they weigh the good and evil deeds of the dead. As one approaches nearly every great Syrian city, this is the order of interest and impressiveness; first the ruins of former power and grandeur, then the graves of those who trusted in that power and gloried in that grandeur, last the modern town with its poverty and squalor and ignorance.

In Greek times "Emesa," as it was then called, was a place of no little size and importance, and during the Roman era one of its sons wore the imperial purple and one of its daughters became empress. The modern city contains some sixty thousand inhabitants, the large majority of whom are Moslems. The Christians are nearly all Orthodox "Greeks," but there is also a tiny Protestant community. We were guests of the native pastor, and later it lent a new impressiveness to our memories of Homs when we learned that our host was stabbed the very week after our visit. Fortunately, however, the wound was not a mortal one. The city is the market-place of Ard Homs, "the Land of Homs," and its bazaars are [ 207 ]