The Hauran is a great plateau stretching east to the isolated Jebel Kuleib, which lies on the borders of the Syrian desert. This plateau presents the chief cornfield of Palestine, and the wheat is thence brought down for export to Acre. The population is in great measure Druze, mixed with Arab and Circassian elements. The water supply is chiefly from wells and cisterns, and for this reason Bashan has always presented great difficulties to military expeditions, and the Crusaders never effected its conquest.
The Greek texts, pagan and Christian, here collected by Waddington, De Vogüé, and others, are very numerous, but less interesting as a rule than are the early Arab inscriptions copied by the same explorers. The Nabathean or North Arab texts of the Hauran range from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., and are of great epigraphic importance, showing a population of the same stock then also existing in Petra. Yet further east Mr. Cyril Graham discovered inscriptions and rude sketches executed by another Arab stock which advanced from Yemen about the same period. Some seven hundred of these South Arab texts are now known, and in 1877 their relation to the alphabet of South Arabia was demonstrated by Halévy. It was this rising tide of northward migration which a few centuries later broke down the Roman power in Syria at the famous battle of the Yermuk (south-east of the Sea of Galilee), when Islam triumphed over the degenerate Byzantines.
Palestine proper--from Dan to Beersheba--extends only over the southern half of the Syrian coast which runs northwards to the Bay of Alexandretta, distant 370 miles from Gaza. Yet there is no true geographical division which separates Palestine from Syria, and it is only because the Land of Israel attracts our interest chiefly, that the northern region of Lebanon and the Land of the Hittites is less generally visited. The scenery is perhaps finer than that of Palestine, the antiquities are more important, and the ancient history of the region is equally interesting, though mainly traced through the fragmentary notices of monumental records. Mention has already been made of the ride in Northern Syria which led to our discovery of Kadesh on Orontes, and which extended over half the length of the region. In the following year I twice followed the coast by sea to Alexandretta, but found no opportunity of visiting Antioch and Aleppo. The travels of Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake in this region are published in Captain Burton’s “Unexplored Syria,” and among other modern explorers De Vogüé and Rey have perhaps done most to recover all that is of greatest interest, while valuable discoveries have been made by members of the American Missionary Society. On the coast also the excavations of Renan at Byblos produced important Phœnician discoveries, and the magnificent collection of the late M. Peretié, which he kindly showed to me at Beirut, was mainly gathered in Northern Syria. It is probable, however, that much still awaits the explorer in this region, hidden in the great mounds of the Buka’a, and in the truly Oriental towns on both sides of the Lebanon.