[p.48]and near the village Sahnaya, lies the Megarat Mar Polous, or St. Paul's cavern, where the Apostle is related to have hidden himself from the pursuit of his enemies at Damascus. The monks of Terra Santa, who have a convent at Damascus, had formerly a chapel at Sahnaya, where one of their fraternity resided; but the Roman Catholic Christians of the village having become followers of the Greek church, the former abandoned their establishment. To the N.E. of Djedeide, and half an hour from it, is the village Maddharnie.
Katana is one of the chief villages in the neighbourhood of Damascus; it contains about one hundred and eighty Turkish families, and four or five of Christians. The Sheikh, to whom the village belongs, is of a very rich Damascus family, a descendant of a Santon, whose tomb is shewn in the mosque of the village. Adjoining to the tomb is a hole in the rocky ground, over which an apartment has been built for the reception of maniacs; they are put down into the hole, and a stone is placed over its mouth; here they remain for three or four days, after which, as the Turks pretend, they regain their senses. The Christians say that the Santon was a Patriarch of Damascus, who left his flock, and turned hermit, and that he gained great reputation amongst the Turks, because whenever he prostrated himself before the Deity, his sheep imitated his example. Katana has a bath, and near it the Sheikh has a good house. The villagers cultivate mulberry trees to feed their silk worms, and some cotton, besides corn. The day after my arrival I engaged two men to shew me the way to the ruins. We began to cross the lower branches of the Djebel Essheikh, at the foot of which Katana is situated, and after an hour and a quarter came to Bir Karme, likewise called El Redhouan, a spring in a narrow valley. We rode over mountainous ground in the road to Rasheya, passed another well of
[p.49]spring water, and at the end of four hours reached Rahle, a miserable Druse village, half an hour to the right of the road from Katana to Rasheia. The ruins are to the north of the village, in the narrow valley of Rahle, and consist principally of a ruined temple, built of large square stones, of the same calcareous rock used in the buildings of Baalbec: little else remains than the foundations, which are twenty paces in breadth, and thirty in length; within the area of the temple are the foundations of a circular building. Many fragments of columns are lying about, and a few extremely well formed capitals of the Ionic order. Upon two larger stones lying near the gate, which probably formed the architrave, is the figure of a bird with expanded wings, not inferior in execution to the bird over the architrave of the great temple at Baalbec; its head is broken off; in its claws is something of the annexed form, bearing no resemblance to the usual figure of the thunderbolt. On the exterior, wall, on the south side of the temple, is a large head, apparently of a female, three feet and a half high, and two feet and a half broad, sculptured upon one of the large square stones which form the wall: its features are perfectly regular, and are enclosed by locks of hair, terminating in thin tresses under the chin. This head seems never to have belonged to a whole length figure, as the stone on which it is sculptured touches the ground. Near the ruins is a deep well. A few hundred paces to the south, upon an eminence, are the ruins of another edifice, of which there remain the foundations of the walls, and a great quantity of broken columns of small size. Around these edifices are the remains of numerous private habitations; a short column is found standing in most of them, in the centre of the foundations of the building. In the neighbouring rocks about a dozen small cells are excavated, in some of which are cavities for bodies. I found no inscriptions.