6. CHAPTER VI.
THE JOPPA GATE.
IN an aperture of the western wall of Jerusalem hang the "oaken
valves" called the Bethlehem or Joppa Gate. The area outside of them
is one of the notable places of the city. Long before David coveted
Zion, there was a citadel there. When at last the son of Jesse
ousted the Jebusite, and began to build, the site of the citadel
became the northwest corner of his new wall, defended by a tower
much more imposing than the old one. The location of the gate,
however, was not disturbed, for the reasons, most likely, that the
roads which met and merged in front of it could not well be
transferred to any other point, while the area outside had become a
recognized market-place. In Solomon's day there was great traffic at
the locality, shared in by traders from Egypt, and the rich dealers
from Tyre and Sidon. Nearly three thousand years have passed, and
yet a kind of commerce clings to the spot. A pilgrim wanting a pin
or a pistol, a cucumber or a camel, a house or a horse, a loan or a
lentil, a date or a dragoman, a melon or a man, a dove or a donkey,
has only to inquire for the article at the Joppa Gate. Sometimes the
scene is quite animated, and then it suggests, What a place the old
market must have been in the days of Herod the Builder! And to that
period and that market the reader is now to be transferred.
Following the Hebrew system, the meeting of the wise men described
in the preceding chapters took place in the afternoon of the
twenty-fifth day of the third month of the year; that is to say, on
the twenty-fifth day of December. The year was the second of the 193rd
Olympiad, or the 747th of Rome; the sixty-seventh of Herod the
Great, and the thirty-fifth of his reign; the fourth before the
beginning of the Christian era. The hours of the day, by Judean
custom, begin with the sun, the first hour being the first after
sunrise; so, to be precise, the market at the Joppa Gate during the
first hour of the day stated was in full session, and very lively. The
massive walls had been wide open since dawn. Business, always
aggressive, had pushed, through the arched entrance into a narrow lane
and court, which, passing by the walls of the great tower, conducted
on into the city. As Jerusalem is in the hill country, the morning air
on this occasion was not a little crisp. The rays of the sun, with
their promise of warmth, lingered provokingly far up on the
battlements and turrets of the great piles about, down from which fell
the crooning of pigeons, and the whir of the flocks coming and going.
As a passing acquaintance with the people of the Holy City,
strangers as well as residents, will be necessary to an
understanding of some of the pages which follow, it will be well to
stop at the gate and pass the scene in review. Better opportunity will
not offer to get sight of the populace who will afterwhile go
forward in a mood very different from that which now possesses them.
The scene is at first one of utter confusion-confusion of action,
sounds, colours, and things. It is especially so in the lane and
court. The ground there is paved with broad unshaped flags, from which
each cry and jar and hoof-stamp arises to swell the medley that
rings and roars up between the solid impending walls. A little
mixing with the throng; however, a little familiarity with the
business going on, will make analysis possible.
Here stands a donkey, dozing under panniers full of lentils,
beans, onions, and cucumbers, brought fresh from the gardens and
terraces of Galilee. When not engaged in serving customers, the
master, in a voice which only the initiated can understand, cries
his stock. Nothing can be simpler than his costume-sandals, and an
unbleached, undyed blanket, crossed over one shoulder and girt round
the waist. Near-by, and far more imposing and grotesque, though
scarcely as patient as the donkey, kneels a camel, rawboned, rough,
and grey, with long shaggy tufts of fox-coloured hair under its
throat, neck, and body, and a load of boxes and baskets curiously
arranged upon an enormous saddle. The owner is an Egyptian, small,
lithe, and of a complexion which has borrowed a good deal from the
dust of the roads and the sands of the desert. He wears a faded
tarbooshe, a loose gown, sleeveless, unbelted, and dropping from the
neck to the knee. His feet are bare. The camel, restless under the
load, groans and occasionally shows his teeth; but the man paces
indifferently to and fro, holding the driving-strap, and all the
time advertising his fruits fresh from the orchards of the Kedron-grapes, dates, figs, apples, and pomegranates.
At the corner where the lane opens out into the court, some women
sit with their backs against the grey stones of the wall. Their
dress is that common to the humbler class of the country-a linen
frock extending the full length of the person, loosely gathered at the
waist; and a veil or wimple broad enough, after covering the head,
to wrap the shoulders. Their merchandise is contained in a number of
earthen jars, such as are still used in the East for bringing water
from the wells, and some leathern bottles. Among the jars and bottles,
rolling upon the stony floor, regardless of the crowd and cold,
often in danger but never hurt, play half-a-dozen half-naked children;
their brown bodies, jetty eyes, and thick blade hair attesting the
blood of Israel. Sometimes, from under the wimples, the mothers look
up, and in the vernacular modestly bespeak their trade: in the bottles
"honey of grapes," in the jars "strong drink." Their entreaties are
generally lost in the general uproar, and they fare illy against the
many competitors: brawny fellows with bare legs, dirty tunics, and
long beards, going about with bottles lashed to their backs, and
shouting, "Honey of wine! Grapes of En-Gedi!" When a customer halts
one of them, round comes the bottle, and, upon lifting the thumb
from the nozzle, out into the ready cup gushes the deep-red blood of
the luscious berry.
Scarcely less blatant are the dealers in birds-doves, ducks, and
frequently the singing bulbul, or nightingale, most frequently
pigeons; and buyers, receiving them from the nets, seldom fail to
think of the perilous life of the catchers, bold climbers of the
cliffs; now hanging with hand and foot to the face of the crag, now
swinging in a basket far down the mountain fissure.
Blent with peddlers of jewellery-sharp men cloaked in scarlet and
blue, top-heavy under prodigious white turbans, and fully conscious of
the power there is in the lustre of a ribbon and the incisive gleam of
gold, whether in bracelet or necklace, or in rings for the finger or
the nose-and with peddlers of household utensils, and with dealers in
wearing-apparel, and with retailers of unguents for anointing the
person, and with hucksters of all articles, fanciful as well as of
need, hither and thither, tugging at halters and ropes, now screaming,
now coaxing, toil the vendors of animals-donkeys, horses, calves,
sheep, bleating kids, and awkward camels; animals of every kind except
the outlawed swine. All these are there; not singly, as described, but
many times repeated; not in one place, but everywhere in the market.
Turning from this scene in the lane and court, this glance at the
sellers and their commodities, the reader has need to give
attention, in the next place, to visitors and buyers, for which the
best studies will be found outside the gates, where the spectacle is
quite as varied and animated; indeed, it may be more so, for there are
superadded the effects of tent, booth, and sook, greater space, larger
crowd, more unqualified freedom, and the glory of the Eastern
sunshine.