EVERYDAY LIFE By JAMES NEIL, M.A. Formerly Incumbent of Christ Church, Jerusalem, and Acting Chaplain and WITH THIRTY-TWO PICTURES CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED THE Introduction HE pictures of everyday life in the Holy Land given in this work purport to show that life at all points. with minute and perfect accuracy. The great importance of such a portrayal of Palestine life, its manners. and customs and natural features, may be briefly gathered from the five following facts: First, everything in that life is strange to us. Every feature of it is foreign to our experience in the modern life of the North-West. As Volney says in his Travels in Syria, it is a wonderful thing that men of like passions with ourselves and of the same Indo-European stock should do all things differently from the way in which we do them, and live among surroundings which present a countless number of total contrasts to ours. Secondly, the life is unchanged from the earliest ages. "Immutability is the most striking law of Eastern life." Not only is change of any kind thought inexpedient, but more, it is held to be morally wrong. Everything is bound to conform to a'adeh, custom. A'adeh is inexorable; it binds their life with an adamantine chain. They must not, cannot, dare not, do anything differently from the way their ancestors have done it. Thus all we see in Syria to-dayapart from European influence-is of hoary antiquity, a life five thousand years old! |