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Through the gardens and orchards that enamel the banks of the Orontes, I journeyed to Emesa, Damascus, Bostra, and Philadelphia; thence hither. And so, O brethren, you have my story. Let me now listen to you." The Egyptian and the Hindoo looked at each other; the former waved his hand; the latter bowed, and began: "Our brother has spoken well. May my words be as wise."
She was willing to reward him far more generously than most merchants. Mahomet, anxious to requite his uncle in some way, and with his young imagination kindled at the prospect of new scenes and ideas, prepared eagerly for the journey. With one other man-servant, Meisara, he set out with the merchandise to Bostra, traversing as a young man the same desert path he had journeyed along in boyhood.
The same year Mahomet, having sent a letter to the governor of Bostra in Syria, as he had to others, and his messenger being slain there, sent Zaid, son of Hareth, with three thousand men to Muta in Syria, against the Roman army, which, with their allies, made a body of nearly one hundred thousand men.
With the single slave he reached Bostra in safety with the merchandise, and having concluded his barter very successfully, and retaining in his mind many impressions of that crowded city, returned to Mecca by the same desert route.
Lust for plunder, too, added its weight to Mahomet's reprisals against Mecca; even if that city was content to leave him in peace, still the Kureischite caravans to Bostra and Syria, passing so near to Medina, were too tempting to be ignored.
Another instance may be found still further east, in the land beyond Jordan, at the capital of the Haurân, Bosrâ, anciently Bostra. Little has been achieved in the way of exploration of this site beyond studies of the stately ruins of theatres, palaces, temples, triumphal arches, aqueducts. Little can therefore be said as to the date of its ground-plan.
Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah.
Again the evidence proves rectangular town-planning in broad outline; excavation alone can tell the rest. Zeitschrift des deutschen Palãstina-Vereins, xxv , plate 6; Bãdeker, Palestine and Syria , p. 140. For the neighbouring Bostra, see p. 136. In the towns just described a distinctive feature is the 'chess-board' pattern of streets and rectangular house-blocks.
Abu Talib could not resist his pleading, and so Mahomet accompanied him on that magical journey through the desert, so glorious yet awesome to an imaginative child, Bostra was the principal city of exchange for merchandise circulating between Yemen, Northern Arabia, and the cities of Upper Palestine, and Mahomet must thus have travelled on the caravan route through the heart of Syria, past Jerash, Ammon, and the site of the fated Cities of the Plain.
The governors of Damascus, of Aleppo, of Emesa, of Bostra, of Kinnisrin, all proved traitors. The root of this evil lay, probably, in the disorders following the Persian invasion, which had made it the perilous interest of the emperor to appoint great officers from amongst those who had a local influence.
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