From the terrace outside the mudir's house we had already taken in the general effect—all the more striking and wonderful that the old town has not been defaced by a single modern building, and hence is far more easily reconstructed by the imagination than Madaba, or even Ammân—a fact for which the history of the settlement, rather than any æsthetic perception, accounts. When the followers of the Emir Nūh Bey arrived at Jerash he took possession of the east side of the valley for the use of his immediate family and attendants, reserving the opposite bank for relatives who were to follow. For various reasons—possibly the accounts of discord with the Bedu, possibly even some diplomacy on the part of the family here—they have not, so far, arrived, and some two hundred immigrants who came in 1895 were passed on southward. There seems to be some difference of opinion as to the extent of the population, Baedeker giving it at three hundred; Schumacher, whose very interesting monograph is the only other available source of information, at between fifteen and sixteen hundred souls, including some score of fellahin, who serve as labourers and ploughmen, and a few Moslem shopkeepers, Here, as in Ammân, we saw not a single woman in the streets.
The ruins are so extensive, and stand out so clear against the hillside, that, with the Professor's help in identifying the buildings, it was easy, from the east side of the valley, to reconstruct in imagination a town which imagination only can picture, so utterly different is it from the banalities and vulgarities of modern utilitarianism.
Owing to the harder qualities of the stone the ruins are better preserved than those at Ammân, have lost less of their original sharpness, and have the freshness so remarkable at Pompeii. And yet an Arabic writer of the thirteenth century, Yakut, describes it even then "as a great city now a ruin." In the ninth century it was mentioned with admiration by the earlier writer, Yakubi, although its decline probably began with the expulsion of the Byzantines.
The most striking features of the scene before us are its highest point, the Temple of the Sun; its most southern point, the triumphal arch leading towards the Roman road to Ammân; and the great colonnade, of which over a hundred pillars are still standing, running from one end to the other of the city. There are two large theatres, two temples, a great oval forum, four bridges, and at each of the two points at which the main street, with its propylæa, is intersected by side streets, there is a tetrapylon, a rotunda, square on the exterior and once decorated with statues. The town was pear-shaped, and enclosed by walls 3552 metres long, having at least three, probably six or seven, gates.