XXXII. ORIENTAL HOUSES. 358. Houses.-In Syria houses are usually built of stone or sun-dried brick. Timber is too scarce and costly there, and has been so for ages. Houses in the villages are usually partitioned into two or three apartments. The front room, in which is the door, is the common family room. To the family it is sitting-room, bed-room, dining-room, and reception-room, unless they have an upper room, which can be used as a reception-room. A doorway leads from this to the second room, which may be used to store supplies before winter sets in. People do not there have access to shops daily for purchases. Farm produce is stored in this second room. In the third room, in the rear, there may be kept cut straw and other fodder for the cattle. Here will also be found wood and charcoal and farming implements. Sometimes one of these rooms is used for domestic animals, horses, donkeys, or cattle. Thieves usually try to enter one of the rear rooms, by digging or breaking through the wall of the house when the people are asleep. Householders keep watch-dogs, which are let loose at night, and in case of special danger some one of the family is on watch all night.1 359. Peasants' Houses.-Many peasants' houses and some in the towns have only a single room. Such a room is often large in size, as Dr. Post tells us; the roof is supported by pillars, made of blocks of stone, one above another. Sometimes these are plastered, and often there is a little shelf-like projection in the plastering, on which a lamp is placed. Bits of colored pottery are pressed into the plaster as ornaments. The plaster is also ornamented by lines and figures and bits of scalloped edging, pinched out while the plaster is in a plastic state. 1 This illustrates the parable in Matt. 24: 43; Luke 12: 39. These single-roomed houses have but one door and often no windows. The smoke from the fire finds its way out through the door, and through sundry holes left in the wall for this purpose. 360. Building Material.-In Egypt the village houses are still built of sun-dried bricks, made of wet earth, rarely clay, mixed with straw and chopped hay. The mixing is often done, as of old, by treading upon the earth and straw with the feet. When well mixed it is put into molds, and set out to dry in the sun. Farmers and country people build their houses out of these sun-dried bricks. The work of making the bricks is still counted a bitter service.1 In Syria and Western Asia the ordinary houses are also built of stone or sun-dried bricks. Sometimes the stone may be hewn, or put in the wall in a rough state, and cemented with mud or mortar. Van Lennep tells that almost every house in the country in Western Asia is made of crude or sundried bricks. Occasionally one meets with a bridge, a khan, a church, or a mosque built of hewn stone, to which may be added some half-dilapidated structures, and crumbling walls, and battlements of citadels. The blocks of stone have been brought from some more ancient ruin. The traveler becomes used to this patchwork of old inscriptions turned upside down, and of carved stones arranged haphazard in the walls, columns of various materials and dimensions belonging to different orders of architecture, standing in a row, and forming the portico or the building. Other dwellings are made of mud bricks, and this was as much the case in ancient times as now. Where porous limestone is found, it is cut into regular blocks with a saw, and used in the erection of buildings.2 361. Rooms of House.-Houses of poor and rich in Syria are usually mixed together. There are no quarters for the wealthy, and separate quarters for the poor, says Mr. Haddad. You may find a fine palace, beautiful outside and inside, and close to it a little cottage of a very poor family. Even a poor invalid may sometimes have a booth or hut in front or beside the door of a wealthy man's house. He may live on gifts of passers-by, or of visitors to the rich man's house; nobody objects. 362. The Roof.-The most important and most frequented portion of the house next to the reception-room is the roof. The roof is made in various ways. Mr. Haddad speaks of a common way in Syria, to lay beams across from one side to the other of the walls, then a mat of reeds on the top of these beams, then some bushes of a thorn, and finally, a coating of clay or earth, and scatter sand and pebbles on the top of the earth, then they roll it with a roller of stone, to make it compact, so that the rain will not run through. Sometimes a little space three or four feet square is cut in the roof, with separate pieces, made like the rest of the roof, or covered with mat or tiling, which can be taken up when desired. It might have been such a place in the roof that was used in letting down the paralytic on his rug or quilt, which would be the only bed an Oriental in such condition would be likely to have.1 These roofs are flat, and the terraces or parapets around them are low, and made of dried bricks, or stone, just like the wall. If a higher terrace is required, it is made of latticework to screen the women of the household. In summer the people of Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia usually sleep upon the housetops. The servants sleep on bedding or the ground in the court below. The very poor people often sleep in the streets, the open squares, the market-places, and courts, rolling themselves in a coverlet, a rug, or their outer garments, and screening their faces. Many occupations are carried on upon the roof. Here the wheat is washed and spread to dry, the flax is prepared, and vegetables and fruits to be stored in winter; wool and cotton when washed is spread out upon the roof, clothes are hung there to be dried; as now, so has it been of old. Rahab hid the spies sent by Joshua under the stalks of flax, which she Matt. 9:2; Mark 2:3; Luke 5: 18. had laid upon the roof to dry.1 Luke tells us that the paralytic was let down through the tiling or tiles. This might mean that the center portion of the roof over the court was covered with a mat or matting or tiles.2 363. The Court.-The court in the better class of Eastern houses is often a pavement of stone, marble, or pebbles, tastefully designed. There may be a fountain or well in the court, a little garden with flowers, shaded by orange, lemon, or citron trees. This court would be shut off from the street; the house being built around the court, the windows of the house would be opened upon this court, and not upon the street. But the windows are without glass, closed at night with a single shutter of wood, and fastened inside with a hook. Sometimes the door or space for a window would be closed by a heavy rug or piece of carpet, hung from the top of the opening with a heavy slat of wood fastened to the bottom, to keep it stretched in its place like a door. When one is to enter, this screen or curtain, called perdeh, would be lifted, perhaps on each side.* 364. Entrance.-The door is the entrance way to the house. It is usually made of some solid material. In the giant cities of Bashan-land, or modern Hauran, the door is often a single block or slab of basalt-stone, nine or ten feet long. Similar stone doors are found in the gardens of Urumiah, in Persia, as Dr. Perkins tells us. The hinges of these doors are simply a projection, above and below, fitting into holes in the stone threshhold, and highly polished, so that they can be opened by a simple push with the finger. Outside doors have simple locks of iron or wood, usually the latter. The key of the lock is a piece of wood several inches long, with pegs at one end. It is not put in a keyhole, but there is an opening at the side of the door large enough to admit one's hand. The key is applied to the wooden bolt within, its pegs fitting into corresponding holes, and by displacing another set of pegs allows one to draw the bolt aside and unfasten the door. This key is fastened to 1 Josh. 2: 6. 2 Matt. 10:27; Luke 5: 19; 12: 3. 32 Sam. 17: 18. 4 See reference to this in Ps. 24: 7; compare also Ex. 39: 38. See Lane, Modern Egypt., vol. i, p. 24. a string or cord, and carried over the shoulder or attached to the girdle.1 365. Gates.-Oriental gates and large doors are provided with small doors, through which a man can pass by stooping, as Dr. Post tells us. These small doors are like a panel in a gate. The little door is used on ordinary occasions, the large door or gate is opened on extraordinary occasions. Similar arrangements are found at the gates of walled cities and towns for night service. Doors are not opened without a previous parley between the porter and the visitor. If the visitor cannot give a satisfactory account of himself, he is viewed through a window overlooking the gate. Thus, when the disciples were gathered in the house of Mary at Jerusalem for fear of the rulers, Rhoda took just such precautions as a servant in an Oriental house would take to-day.2 Dr. Post tells of his experience in being challenged, as Peter was, by a Moslem servant and being compelled to wait outside the gate while the servant ran in to tell some one of the household, and to get an order to let the doctor in. 366. Sleeping Rooms.-In the one-roomed house all the family, says Dr. Thomson, parents, children, and servants, sleep in the same room. As they make very slight changes in their long loose clothing, and often none at all at night, the impropriety of the custom as it would appear to us, is lessened, but the practice does not tend to promote the highest social purity. Sometimes under the same roof may be father, sons, and grandsons, for the sake of economy, but it leads to confusion and lack of independence in family discipline. This custom of all the family sleeping in one apartment is alluded to in the parable of the friend at midnight. When asked to lend three loaves, the friend replies, "Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee."3 Out of this custom grew also the law requiring that a garment taken for debt should be restored to the owner before sundown.* 1 See an allusion to this carrying the keys upon the shoulder in Isa. 22 : z2. Luke 11: 7 |