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Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in
the Eastern Mediterranean

Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean explores

the influence of geography on religion and highlights a largely unknown story of
religious history in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In the Levant, agricultural communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims
jointly venerated and largely shared three important saints or holy figures: Jewish
Elijah, Christian St. George, and Muslim al-Khiḍr. These figures share ‘peculiar’
characteristics, such as associations with rain, greenness, fertility, and storms. Only
in the Eastern Mediterranean are Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr shared between
religious communities, or characterized by these same agricultural attributes –
attributes that also were shared by regional religious figures from earlier time
periods, such as the ancient Near Eastern Storm-god Baal-Hadad, and Levantine
Zeus. This book tells the story of how that came to be, and suggests that the figures
share specific characteristics, over a very long period of time, because these motifs
were shaped by the geography of the region. Ultimately, this book suggests that
regional geography has influenced regional religion; that Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam are not, historically or textually speaking, separate religious traditions (even if
Jews, Christians, and Muslims are members of distinct religious communities); and
that shared religious practices between members of these and other local religious
communities are not unusual. Instead, shared practices arose out of a common
geographical environment and an interconnected religious heritage, and are a
natural historical feature of religion in the Eastern Mediterranean.
This volume will be of interest to students of ancient Near Eastern religions,
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, sainthood, agricultural communities in the ancient
Near East, Middle Eastern religious and cultural history, and the relationships
between geography and religion.

Erica Ferg is an assistant professor in the Liberal Arts department at Regis

University in Denver, Colorado, where she teaches courses on Islam, Christianity,
Judaism, world religions, and religious studies theories and methods. Her doctorate
is in the Study of Religion, and her area of specialization is Eastern Mediterranean
comparative religious history. Her research focuses on Mediterranean comparative
religion, comparative linguistics, and archaeology. Prior to academia, Erica was
a Persian linguist in the United States Air Force. Erica is at work on her second
book, entitled Starry Nights: A Celestial History of Religion in the Mediterranean.
Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East
Series editor: Greg Fisher, University of California Santa
Barbara, USA
Advisory Board of Associate Editors

Ra’anan Boustan, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; Zeba Crook,

Carleton University, Canada; Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, University of California
at Santa Barbara, USA; Matthew Gibbs, University of Winnipeg, Canada; John
Lee, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA; Harry Munt, University
of York, UK; Richard Payne, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, USA;
Lucy Wadeson, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; Philip Wood, Aga Khan
University, London, UK; Alan Lenzi, University of the Pacific, USA.
Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East provides a global forum for
works addressing the history and culture of the Ancient Near East, spanning a
broad period from the foundation of civilization in the region until the end of the
Abbasid period. The series includes research monographs, edited works, collec
tions developed from conferences and workshops, and volumes suitable for the
university classroom.
On the Edge of Empires
North Mesopotamia During the Roman Period (2nd–4th c. ce)
Rocco Palermo
Children in the Bible and the Ancient World
Comparative and Historical Methods in Reading Ancient Children
Edited by Shawn W. Flynn
Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad
Walter D. Ward
A Story of YHWH
Cultural Translation and Subversive Reception in Israelite History
Shawn W. Flynn
Migration and Colonialism in Late Second Millennium bce Levant and Its
Environs
The Making of a New World
Pekka Pitkänen
Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean
Erica Ferg

https://www.routledge.com/classicalstudies/series/HISTANE
Geography, Religion,
Gods, and Saints in the
Eastern Mediterranean

Erica Ferg
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Erica Ferg
The right of Erica Ferg to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ferg, Erica, author.
Title: Geography, religion, and sainthood in Eastern Mediterranean /
Erica Ferg.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019034540 (print) | LCCN 2019034541 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367182175 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429060151 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Religion and geography. | Middle East–Religion.
Classification: LCC BL65.G4 F47 2019 (print) | LCC BL65.G4 (ebook) |
DDC 202/.13–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034540
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034541
ISBN: 9780367182175 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780429060151 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For my Grandfather, John Ferg (1928–2014), and my
Grandmother, Gurli Ferg (1929–2007).
Contents

List of figures viii

Acknowledgments ix

1 Geography and religion in the Eastern Mediterranean 1

2 Levantine geography, history, and agrarian religion 24

3 Ancient Near Eastern religion and the storm-god Baal-Hadad 55

4 The Hebrew Bible and Elijah 96

5 Early Christianity and Saint George 135

6 The emergence of Islam and Al-Khiḍr 187

7 Eastern Mediterranean shared religious history 240

Bibliography 263
Index 280
Figures

2.1 Map of the Levant 25

3.1 Baal Stele 78
3.2 Narmer Palette 79
3.3 Map of Baalbek 82
4.1 Failure of the Sacrifice to Baal – Dura Europos Synagogue 125
4.2 Map of the Mount Carmel region 127
5.1 St. George and the rescue of the youth of Mytilene 177
6.1 Map of Near Eastern trade routes 191
6.2 Moses and Elijah together at the Transfiguration 220
6.3 Al-Khiḍr and Elijah praying together 224
7.1 Relationships between these figures as suggested
by this book 247
7.2 Muslim woman and child light candles at the church of
St. George in Lod, in front of a St. George icon 258
Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to thank the people who have helped to create this book. First, I would
like to thank Dr. Andrea Stanton, Dr. Nader Hashemi, Dr. Scott Montgomery,
and Dr. Albert Hernandez for their invaluable intellectual contributions and kind
mentoring during my doctoral work at the University Denver and Iliff School of
Theology. Dr. Greg Robbins and Dr. Mark George as well were generous in their
own mentoring, and erudite in their assistance with specific chapters. I would like
also to thank Dr. Amy Balogh, for whose insightful comments and camaraderie I
am grateful, as well as Dr. Eric C. Smith, Dr. Catherine Orsborn, and Dr. Micah
Saxton for their many and varied contributions to all stages of this project.
At Regis University, I would like to thank my wonderful colleagues for their
kind and consistent support throughout the final writing phases of this book.
Dr. Bryan Hall, Dr. Janet Rumfelt, Dr. April Samaras, Dr. Anna Floyd, Denise
Walton, Emma Thompson, and Mary Jo Coe were extraordinarily helpful. I sin
cerely appreciate the support I received in this project from all of my colleagues in
the College, as well as from the wider University.
Dr. Beverly Chico, Marilyn Kopelman, and Dr. Lori Willard read and com
mented upon an entire draft of this book, and on short notice, for which I am
grateful. I would like as well to thank all anonymous readers at Routledge and
at Brill who read and commented on this project. Your comments and criticisms
made this a better project – thank you.
I would like to thank the many people in Colorado, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine,
and Syria who assisted me in 2004 and in 2013 during fieldwork relating to this
book. Your generous help made all the difference for my research. Several indi
viduals at the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver, at Saint Elias Antiochian
Orthodox Church, and at Balamand University in Lebanon were invaluable in
assisting me with field research. Thank you as well to the Institute for American
Universities and to the IAU College of the Mediterranean for graciously hosting
me as a resident fellow during summer, 2018, and for generously sharing IAU
library reserves during my research and writing.
Dr. Greg Fisher, Elizabeth Risch, Ella Halstead, Lisa Sharp, and Lisa Keating,
as well as all of the copy editors associated with Taylor & Francis, were extremely
professional and courteous. I could not have asked for better people with whom
to work.
x Acknowledgments
Thank you to Dr. Kara Taczak, who was an unflagging marvel of editing assis
tance and positivity.
To the scores of people who are not mentioned here by name, but who helped
with all stages of this book, in ways large and small, you know who you are.
Thank you.
Most of all, I would like sincerely to thank my family and friends – most espe
cially, my Mom and my Dad – for their loving support and encouragement. Thank
you in particular to Wadi Muhaisen, who supported this book from beginning to
end. I hope you will be happy with the roles you have played in the creation of this
book – it would not have been the same without you.
Finally, I dedicate this book to my grandfather, John Ferg, and to my grand
mother, Gurli Ferg. Thank you for being my greatest supporters, and my closest
confidants. Your support of my academic work, your encouragement of my ideas,
and your belief in me as a person have shaped who I have become. I am so grate
ful to have had you as my grandparents. I hope that a part of you also will live on
through this book.
1 Geography and religion in the
Eastern Mediterranean

This book recounts a largely unknown story of religious history in the Eastern
Mediterranean.1 Not only is the story itself little known and often misunderstood,
but retelling it also offers us an unexpected glimpse into the obscured view of the
religious histories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Eastern Mediterranean,
as well as of the agrarian bent of pre-modern religion. Geography, Religion, Gods,
and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean examines the influence of geography
upon the development of religious ideas and motifs in the Eastern Mediterranean
– motifs that remained popular in the region for millennia.
By examining these motifs, this book also opens a window onto the emergence
and gradual development of regional religious communities in the Levant – in
particular, the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and of their
relationships to one another. Ultimately, this book suggests that although Jews,
Christians, and Muslims in the Eastern Mediterranean are members of distinct
religious communities, the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
are not, historically or textually speaking, separate. Thus, this study argues for an
understanding of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other regional religious groups
as distinct but not separate in their local Eastern Mediterranean context. Shared
religious practices between members of these faiths – a hallmark of the histori-
cal and textual continuities between these communities – today can be viewed as
aberrant, problematic, or even religiously inauthentic. Instead, shared religious
practices are a natural feature of this geographical region and of the close devel-
opment therein of its religious communities. As strange as these shared practices
first may appear to outside observers, this book demonstrates that shared religious
practices are entirely in keeping with the authentic religious history and geograph-
ical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Part One: St. George and al-Khiḍr among

Christians and Muslims in the Levant
In a quiet church in Palestine dedicated to Saint George,2 candles flicker as a
small party of vow-fulfilling Muslims passes through the vestibule and makes its
way down the central aisle of the church. The members of this party have come
to see an icon, and to say prayers of thanks to God. They have come to the church
2 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
to venerate and to fulfill their vows to a specific figure: St. George, to whom
Muslims refer as al-Khiḍr, (Ar. ‘the Green [One]’).3 At a monastery in Ras el-
Metn, on Mount Lebanon, Muslims and Druze from the surrounding area come
to see the renowned 14th-century icon of St. George/al-Khiḍr, and to make sup-
plications and give thanks to this powerful figure. Elsewhere, Christians visiting
St. George at shrines dotted throughout the Levantine mountains refer to him as
al-Khiḍr – a title that most people agree refers as well to the Muslim figure.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, the Muslim figure of al-Khiḍr is in many ways
identical to the Christian saint, George. Many believe that St. George and al-Khiḍr
come to the aid of anyone who calls upon their assistance, and people often claim
to see or to interact with these figures in dreams and in waking life. St. George
and al-Khiḍr popularly are considered among the most powerful and important
religious figures for Christians and Muslims in the region. In terms of popularity,
they are perhaps second only to the regionally beloved figure of Mary.4
Over the course of the past 1,400 years, the largest religious communities in
the region have been Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Alawite, and Druze.5 All told,
within the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, there are today around 190
million Muslims, 15 million Christians, and 6.5 million Jews.6 Within just the
Levantine coastal countries of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine (and includ-
ing Cyprus and portions of southern and southwestern Turkey and of Egypt’s
Sinai Peninsula), there are around 22 million Muslims, 6 million Jews, 5.7 million
Christians, 2.5 million Alawites, and 1.5 million Druze.7
Back inside the church in Palestine, the Muslims who venerate or engage in
veneration practices around al-Khiḍr and St. George do not consider their behav-
ior abnormal or contradictory to their identity as Muslims. Nor is that the judg-
ment about these Muslims by Christians who might simultaneously engage in
similar veneration practices (although the parish priest might complain that more
Muslims than Christians seem to come).8 Indeed, St. George and al-Khiḍr – or,
St. George-al-Khiḍr/al-Khiḍr-St. George – is understood much more as a regional
figure of power and assistance, accessible to and respected by all, rather than as a
figure belonging to any specific religious tradition.9
This Muslim and Christian veneration of St. George and al-Khiḍr is not new;
since at least 1200 ce, St. George and al-Khiḍr have shared similar iconography
and, oftentimes, they are conflated in popular imagination.10 Furthermore, St.
George and al-Khiḍr also have a regional Jewish counterpart, in the figure of
Elijah.11 Until the mid-20th century ce, Eastern Mediterranean communities of
Arabic-speaking Jews and Muslims jointly venerated Elijah (Ar., ‫ ‘ الياس‬Ilyās’,
‘Ilyā’, or ‘Elias’) and al-Khiḍr, often at common sites.12
Al-Khiḍr is therefore popularly identified in the Eastern Mediterranean with
both St. George and with Elijah. Because Elijah and St. George both are widely
known for their actions in defense of ‘true’ faith,13 linkage also is popularly
imputed between St. George and Elijah. However, linkages between St. George
and Elijah lie in the realm of similarity rather than that of convergence, as has
been the case between al-Khiḍr-St. George and al-Khiḍr-Elijah. As a result of
these conjunctions, up through the 20th century ce, joint regional communities
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 3
of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Alawites, and Druze came to venerate Elijah, St.
George, and al-Khiḍr at ‘common sites’ throughout the region.14 Among regional
religious communities, these figures popularly are considered to be something
akin to a shared regional inheritance.15
It is this shared, regional phenomenon that underlies the impetus for this book.
In 2010, as I encountered this scenario, I was immediately struck by the appar-
ent strangeness of it. How is it, I wondered, that Muslims could come to visit a
Christian saint? How could Christians in the region refer to their saint, St. George,
as ‘al-Khiḍr’, whom most people agreed was a Muslim figure? How could Elijah
and al-Khiḍr be shared as the same figure between communities of Jews and
Muslims? How had it come to be that, for at least the past 800 years, communities
of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Levant – both peasant agricultural fallāḥīn
communities, and ‘city’ people from the larger towns – largely had shared and
jointly venerated the figures of Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr – together?
This phenomenon surprised me, because it contradicted what I thought I knew
about religion and religious communities in the region.16 After all, both ‘common
wisdom’ and my own religious studies training suggested that Muslims, Christians,
and Jews were very different and quite separate, particularly in the politically and
religiously contentious Levant. And that was a perspective perhaps to be expected.
Most religious history texts – indeed, most textual histories of the Eastern
Mediterranean region in general – are broken into discrete periods and subjects,
investigating religions in an artificially sterile manner, as though they were not inti-
mately connected to multiple strands of both past and contemporaneous influences.
In contrast, this book investigates those influences and associations in order to
illuminate a single thread of interconnection in Eastern Mediterranean religious
history. Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean
tells the story of how it is that Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr came to be related
in religious texts, iconography, and practices in the region. In so doing, it sheds
light on a largely unacknowledged aspect of religious history in the Eastern
Mediterranean: interconnection.

Textual narratives and traditional stories of these figures

Outside of the Levant, Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr each are very important
within their textual and lived traditions as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim figures,
respectively. Outside of the Levant, however, Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr are
not shared in exactly the same way between communities of Jews, Christians, and
Muslims, nor do these figures regularly demonstrate the peculiar characteristics
mentioned below. Outside of the Levant, and thus shorn of its geographical, his-
torical, and religious influences, these figures generally are known only by the
content of their textual narratives.
The biblical Prophet Elijah is a powerful figure in the Hebrew Bible (1 Kings
17–19, 21, and 2 Kings 1–2) whose prophetic role was to ensure correct commu-
nity worship of the god YHWH, or Yahweh. By virtue of his traditional inclusion
at important Jewish rituals, such as circumcision ceremonies and the Passover
4 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
Seder, Elijah continues to fulfill this role. Because of his colorful narratives in the
Hebrew Bible, Elijah became for millennia an enormously popular figure among
multiple religious communities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
St. George is believed by many Christian communities to have been an influ-
ential, early-fourth-century ce Christian martyr. Communities within and beyond
the Mediterranean revere St. George as a helper to those in need, and, by virtue of
his legendary battle with a dragon, as a martial saint. He eventually was named the
patron saint of more than 30 cities and countries throughout the Christian-majority
world, from England to Moscow. The earliest textual narrative of St. George, and
that from which all other narratives of St. George’s life were drawn, is the Acts of
St. George, an originally fifth-century ce Greek text whose most complete form is
found in a Syriac-language version from ca. 600 ce.
Al-Khiḍr is a highly popular Muslim religious figure believed to have been an
Islamic saint (or ‘walī’), prophet, or holy person. Al-Khiḍr is referenced in tafsīr/
commentary to the Qur’ān as a teacher of Moses (18:60–82), is believed to come
to the aid of those in need, and is revered by Muslim communities throughout the
Muslim-majority world, particularly from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia.
However, in the Levant – and only in the Levant – where these figures origi-
nated,17 they are not only shared and sometimes conflated, they also exhibit ‘pecu-
liar’ additional traits. These figures long have been associated with rain, storms,
thunder, lightning, greenness, fertility, and fecundity; with the ability to appear
and disappear; with mountains and high places; with local feast or celebration
days of April 23;18 and with a particular pictorial presentation: mounted upon a
white horse (or standing on foot), arm raised and brandishing a weapon, poised
to slay a dragon through the mouth, or to strike the death-blow upon a human foe
underfoot.
In keeping with the ‘peculiar’ characteristics listed above, Elijah, St. George,
and al-Khiḍr in the modern period each have been well studied and analyzed
within their respective religious traditions. Interpreters often are uncomfortable
about the figures’ peculiar characteristics, which for centuries have remained the
subjects of internal discussion and debate regarding the figures’ religious statuses
and significances.19 The fact that the figures share these unique characteristics
and convergences only in the Levant, where the texts and legends about Elijah,
St. George, and al-Khiḍr originated, calls for the study of these figures within
their original context.

A traditional religious studies perspective

From a traditional religious studies standpoint – often known as a ‘World Religions’
perspective – this phenomenon represents at least two paradoxes. First, there is
the paradox of the figures’ peculiar and shared aspects in the region of the Eastern
Mediterranean: why do the figures display those peculiar aspects only there, and
why are those aspects sometimes shared between the figures? Second, there is
the paradox of communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the region, for
at least the past 800 years, jointly venerating these figures. Traditional religious
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 5
studies discourse suggests that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are distinct and
separate religious traditions, and particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean. How
is it then that these figures could be venerated in common by communities of
Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and especially over such a long period of time?
The traditional World Religions perspective remains prevalent within Religious
Studies textbooks and theoretical approaches.20 This manner of organization and
study focuses on discrete, comprehensive traditions, and normative beliefs and
practices.21 This is also the theoretical framework from within which most of the
investigations involving Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr have been undertaken.
Because of that, these figures usually have been studied from within their individ-
ual religious traditions. Such an approach has tended to miss the figures’ associa-
tions with one another, and it also has tended to misunderstand as accretive and/
or anomalous the figures’ ‘peculiar’ aspects.22
Most of all, what this traditional World Religions approach lacks is an aware-
ness of the ways in which locality informs religion. That is, it does not account
for the intersections of time and place that always are evident in the manifesta-
tion of a specific religious tradition. Take, for example, the religious tradition
of Christianity. The texts, doctrines, theologies, and lived customs that constituted
Christianity in third-century Syria are very different from those that constituted
Christianity in the 20th-century American South. A traditional theory of World
Religions cannot easily account for this complexity, because that particular theo-
retical perspective tends to view the elements that constitute a religion as part of a
comprehensive, unchanging whole.

A Geography of Religion Perspective

Theories associated with the field of Geography of Religion represent a more
promising approach – one which considers the ways in which locality informs
religion. The field of Geography of Religion has evolved since the 1960s in vari-
ous ways, but one of its more important contributions is the “contextualization
of religion” that is evident in local, geographically oriented studies of religion.23
These local studies of religion account for the intersections of time and place in
analyses of specific religious traditions. That is, according to a Geography of
Religion theoretical perspective, religions are inherently geographically contextu-
alized: prevailing political, social, religious, and physical-geographical conditions
evident within a particular locality are understood to influence the development
and manifestation of that locality’s religious traditions at any given point in time.
Returning to the case of third-century Syria, a World Religions approach might
suggest that we understand the manifestation of Christianity as reflected in period-
specific thinkers and texts. Within this approach, thinkers and texts often are con-
textualized, but those texts and thinkers tend also to be viewed tautologically, as
signposts along the road of a comprehensive tradition whose final outcome already
is known. Furthermore, analysis of a religious tradition within the World Religions
theoretical framework, especially of that tradition in earlier time periods, has tended
to be restricted to the analysis of foundational religious texts. The larger logical
6 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
problem with the World Religions emphasis on texts is that often it is unjustifiably
reasoned that if one understands the foundational texts of a tradition, one can thus
claim to understand the tradition as a whole in all times and places, which simply
is not the case.
A Geography of Religion approach, on the other hand, suggests that in examin-
ing Christianity in third-century Syria, one should consider the prevailing third-
century political, social, religious, and physical-geographical conditions which
combined to influence the tradition. That is, in which ways did those influences
combine to affect that manifestation of Christianity in that time and place? In
which ways were this tradition’s customs, doctrines, and practices lived out in
ways that were informed by the geographical locality of third-century Syria?
Moreover, how were this tradition’s texts, narratives, symbols, and figures influ-
enced by those of neighboring religious and cultural forces?

Using a geographical lens

When we view Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr through the lens of geography – a
lens that is not restricted to inquiry from within a single religious tradition – sev-
eral advantages emerge. First, use of a geographical lens allows us to view the
figures in comparative perspective, both with respect to one another, and with
respect to the individual figures themselves, over time. Second, using the lens
of geography allows us to investigate the figures’ regional influences, be they
political, social, religious, or geographical. Third, a geographical investigation
is not limited to a single time period. In different eras, the influences upon these
figures have changed, as have the figures, themselves. Limiting this project by
geography rather than by time allows us to see the fluidity of the influences at
work behind the figures, as well as behind the figures’ contextual alignments to
one another. Finally, the use of a geographical lens helps to resolve the apparent
paradoxes regarding the figures’ regional ‘peculiarities’, as well as those involv-
ing joint Jewish-Christian-Muslim veneration of the figures. Ultimately, a geo-
graphical view of this phenomenon helps to illuminate why, outside of this region
and shorn of its influences, these figures are not conflated, nor are they shared in
the same way between communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Past studies
Past studies of these figures, on the whole, generally have been performed by reli-
giously committed insiders, whose work has tended to reinforce doctrinal tenets, and
to downplay, dismiss, or ignore the figures’ shared aspects and origins. Secular schol-
arship on these figures, individually and collectively, began in the late 19th century,
largely in the vein of a World Religions theoretical framework. Notable academic
studies of the specific figure of Elijah are generally broken into categories: biblical,
Talmudic, and folkloric; there are individual studies of St. George and of al-Khiḍr,
studies of two or more of the figures in comparison, and, in a few instances, studies
of all three figures.24
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 7
In 1969, Hassan S. Haddad argued that the similarities and linkages between
Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr deserved to be considered on a wider scale.25 Haddad
wrote a brief article entitled “‘Georgic’ Cults and Saints of the Levant,” wherein he
noted the similarities of Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr among agricultural com-
munities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Levant. Haddad was the first to
make the provocative but unsubstantiated claim that “the cults of these ‘georgic’
saints is a continuation, with variations, of the cults of the Baals of ancient Syria,”26
referring to the millennia-long regionally dominant figure of the Syro-Canaanite
storm-god, Baal-Hadad, as well as to Baal’s regional syncretic manifestations.27
Haddad made this claim on several grounds: not only do Elijah, St. George,
and al-Khiḍr often share elements of iconographical representation with the
storm-god Baal-Hadad – ‘vanquishing’ posture, for instance – they also popularly
are associated with the qualities for which Baal-Hadad long had been known: rain,
greenness, fertility, fecundity, storms, lightning, thunder, as well as the ability to
appear and disappear, and a commemoration day of April 23. Furthermore, as
a native of the Levant, Haddad was uniquely positioned to have been aware, as
well, of the common practices surrounding these figures between local communi-
ties of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others.

Geography, religion, Gods, and Saints

in the Eastern Mediterranean
Geographical setting of the region
As we begin this investigation, a few definitions and clarifications are in order.
Although the Levant is a part of the agricultural zone known as the Fertile Crescent,
throughout large sections, it is both arid and rocky. These climatic conditions are
a result of the region’s unique geography and geology. As we will see in Chapter
Two, the Mediterranean Basin is comprised in the main of a bedrock of limestone.
This type of bedrock produces in thin, rocky soils that weather quickly to form
exposed rocks and caves. Furthermore, owing to the geographical position of the
Levant at the meeting point of three continental plates – the African, Arabian, and
Eurasian – large sections of the Levant are mountainous where the plates collide,
and gradually descend to the east to form a rocky plain. This geographical diver-
sity largely has shaped the region: historically, the multiformity of geographical
conditions impeded political consolidation between regions, affected the course
and character of local rivers, and helped to create a zone of fertile land for rain-fed
farming on the lee sides of the mountains, with steeply declining amounts of mois-
ture in the desert lands to the east. Levantine geography, as this book demonstrates,
has profoundly shaped the religious notions of the people who have lived there.

How we usually think of religious history in the Levant

Scholars and laypersons in religious studies often think anachronistically of reli-
gious history in the Levant, and in the wider Eastern Mediterranean, as a region
8 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
peopled with individuals who share our modern notions of religious identities.
They often envision discrete, theologically mature communities. Such a view
reflects a modern religious perspective that is both historically inaccurate, and
was, until relatively recently, impossible to create.
Discrete, theologically oriented religious communities largely are a product of
modern, literate cultures. Only modern, literate cultures are associated with the
religious and political infrastructure necessary to produce mass literacy, to create
and maintain numerous buildings for worship, and to produce, equip, and support
trained religious personnel who could mold and police religious identities. Before
the 20th century in the region, such conditions were impossible to meet.28
Text-based religious perspectives, which are characterized by a focus on the text
and especially on the exclusivity of theological messages, require mass literacy. Pre-
modern cultures lacked the capacity for mass literacy, and in the absence of such
text-based religious perspectives, people neither wanted nor needed to conceive of
their religious identities as theologically ‘pure’, and distinct from others’ religious
identities.29 Indeed, in the ancient world, and even up through the early modern
periods in history, people conceived of their religious identities less in terms of
‘religions’ or ‘beliefs’, and more in terms of which gods they followed, and which
rituals they practiced.30 Furthermore, allegiances to gods largely were not exclusive.
Despite the admonitions of canonical texts and the decrees of religious councils,
which we will encounter in this book, most people in the region, throughout most of
history, were religiously opportunistic and pluralist: one could and did follow those
gods who were powerful, and one could and did engage in those ‘magical’, sacrifi-
cial, and amulet-driven practices and other rituals that were considered effective –
irrespective of, in lieu of, and-or in concert with – a ‘primary’ religious orientation.31
Furthermore, most cultures of the Near East were both interconnected and
mutually dependent. These “cultures interacted with each other and were inter-
related. This means that acculturation not only took place between ‘Greek’,
‘Roman’, and multiple ‘Near Eastern’ cultures, but also within Near Eastern cul-
tures and religions.”32 To be sure, religious identities were “dynamic,” “multifac-
eted,” and “continuously developing,” and “there is never one ‘religious identity’
that is transmitted across periods.”33 But the degree of interaction, overlap, and
interrelation between religious cultures of the Near East was far greater than is
often presented in most religious history texts about the Eastern Mediterranean.
Discrete, insular, theologically exclusive religious communities in the Eastern
Mediterranean largely are a product of modern political and religious influences,
in that they are based upon literate communities and involve the consequent
ascendency of textual religion. Such are modern religious perspectives, however,
and should not anachronistically be projected upon earlier time periods.

Popular religion
Our modern perspectives about religious identities – in particular, the predomi-
nance of textual religion – occlude an accurate understanding of religious history
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 9
in the Eastern Mediterranean. In a modern sense of the definition, we tend to think
of ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ religion as those religious practices and notions that diverge
from the core theological teachings of a religious tradition. Furthermore, we tend
to think of the core teachings of a religious tradition as synonymous with textual,
canonical religion. Oftentimes, these categories are termed ‘high’ and ‘low’ reli-
gion, with high religion equating to textual, orthodox religion, and low religion
referring to all other or ‘folk’ religious practices and notions that deviate from the
textual perspective.
The problem with this notion of popular religion is two-fold: first, it is inac-
curate, as it is only makes sense from a modern perspective. That is, when we
try to apply this framework to historical analyses, it collapses. The notion of
‘popular religion’ commits the error of imputing the extensive, inherited cor-
pora of developed theologies back upon earlier times. Indeed, when we set
out to examine the ways in which ‘popular’, non-canonical, and non-orthodox
practices and notions deviate from canonical texts, we forget that, in earlier
times, these orthodoxies and canonical texts were in the process of being cre-
ated alongside – and out of – the popular religious cultures of the day. This error
relates to a second flaw regarding the conceptual category of ‘popular religion’:
it presumes that the development of canonical, orthodox religion was the earlier,
original act.
Canons and orthodoxies develop out of the popular religious cultures of
their day – irrespective of which religious tradition or culture is being exam-
ined. Popular or ‘low’ religious practices and notions do not diverge or devolve
from ‘high’ canonical religion at some point in history. Indeed, it is the other
way around. That which comes to be deemed by its community as ‘canonical’ or
‘orthodox’ originally developed out of contemporaneous, as-yet non-canonical
religious practices and notions.
‘Popular’ or non-canonical, contemporaneous religion always exists alongside
and in simultaneity with the development of ‘canonical’, orthodox religion. Both
phenomena, naturally, continue to develop independently of one another. Insofar
as canonical religion becomes associated with political power, as we shall see
below, canonical religion has tended to have a greater influence upon most of the
population.

Agrarian religion
Notions of popular religion are flawed because of the conceptual limitations of
language, and because of the errors in reasoning often committed around those
notions. Instead, a far more effective way to conceive of what is meant by the
term ‘popular religious practice’, particularly in the Levant, is through the cat-
egory of ‘agrarian religion’. As James Grehan points out in Twilight of the Saints:
Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine, agrarian religion is a notion
which cuts across the limitations of categories such as popular, high/low, and
urban/rural to highlight a “fine attunement to the essentially agrarian conditions of
10 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
everyday existence.”34 “As much urban as it was rural, it was the expression of an
entire social and economic order whose rhythms were tied to the slow turnings of
the seasons, and finely attuned to the vagaries of earth, sky, and environment.”35
This was an experience actually shared by all, regardless of distinctions in social
class, location, age, and gender.
Agrarian religion in the Levant, in Grehan’s formulation, is driven by geo-
graphical influences, and is characterized by sacred sites, essential agricultural
needs, shared religious culture, and saints and holy figures. Sacred sites are inti-
mately related to geography, and are often hulled from the rocky landscape or
simply created around natural wonders. In the Levant, sacred sites consist of holy
mountains, noteworthy rock formations, and caves – especially caves with access
to subterranean water.
Agricultural concerns, foremost among them water, droughts, and crop yields,
shape the contours of agrarian religion. Another hallmark of agrarian religion
is diminished sectarianism. Lacking the mass literacy and religious infrastruc-
ture necessary for rigid or distinct religious identities, people in the agrarian, pre-
modern religious culture of the Levant shared linguistic and cultural traditions, as
well as the same agrarian needs for survival. Furthermore, people shared not only
the same spaces, but the same religious history. This is particularly noteworthy
among Levantine communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the past two
millennia, whose shared religious history involved common biblical religious fig-
ures, narratives, and texts.
Among the more prominent features of agrarian religion in the Levant is a
prevalence of saints and holy figures. The saint is the most identifiable figure
in agrarian culture.36 This phenomenon is related both to the agrarian needs
of everyday existence, which the saint or holy figure helps to meet, and to the
prevalence of a common pool of legendary and heroic figures in the Near East.
The relatively small size of the Levant, as well as the development therein of
related religious communities, contributed to the existence of a common pool
of legendary and heroic figures, popular narratives, and powerful motifs in the
region.
In addition, the saint or holy figure helped to provide for medical needs in
agrarian cultures that lacked basic health care and medical knowledge. People
long believed that demons caused illness, physical deformity, and especially the
psychological and mental problems they deemed ‘madness’. Accordingly, saints,
who had the power to expel demons, were considered a ready source of miracu-
lous medical cures.
Saints in agrarian religion were associated with tombs, pilgrimages, and vows
for favor and fame in exchange for supplications met. Related to the cult of saints
were efficacious remedies, cures, and protections that could be found in powerful
images, icons, magic, amulets – pictorial and written – as well as in the act of the
blood sacrifice, a ritual long practiced throughout the Near East.
Agrarian religion, in attending to the harsh conditions of life, and in being
shaped by the geographical environment, dominated pre-modern, pre-literate
religion in the region. Scholars of religious studies tend to think of historical
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 11
religious peoples in the region as being theologically distinct from one another.
However, before the ascendency of mass literacy, textual religion, and a con-
comitant rise in exclusive sectarian religious identities, religious communities
in the Levant were marked more sharply by a shared agrarian religious culture
than they were differentiated by distinct doctrinal characteristics.37 Geographical
and geological conditions, which change very slowly, underlie agrarian religion
in the Levant. Agrarian religious culture is therefore naturally slow to change,38
and associated with a longue-durée perspective. These phenomena and char-
acteristics associated with agrarian religion endured in the region for a very
long time, and only began to be eclipsed during the course of the twentieth
century, ce.39

Canonical religion
‘Canonical religion’ or ‘institutional religion’ as used in the book are terms
closely associated with two concepts: a canon of authoritative religious texts,40
and notions of religious orthodoxy. Both concepts, canonicity and orthodoxy,
usually require sufficient political power to enforce particular doctrines, promote
specific texts, and establish categories of orthodoxy and heresy.41 Canonical reli-
gion, as mentioned above, takes several centuries to develop. It is also not uni-
form, as competing communities within a given religious tradition differ with
respect to authoritative texts and theological notions.
A major difference between canonical religion and agrarian religion is the reli-
ance of the former on written texts.42 What we think of today as a ‘canonical’ text
often began as an oral story or series of oral traditions, and was at various points in
time written down and circulated among specific communities, in different textual
renditions. As the political or internal power of a religious tradition reached suf-
ficient implementation levels, one or more of those textual renditions was selected
by religious officials for inclusion in a ‘canon’ of authoritative, ‘authentic’ texts.
When selected texts take on the revered and often divine statuses associated with
canonicity, they tend to change very slowly over time.43 In that way, written texts
tend to anchor, stabilize and shape the contours of orthodoxies.44
Moreover, early religious texts often represent polemical arguments about how
things ought to be – that is, early or foundational religious texts are texts largely
in evidence of a contemporaneous religious culture (or of the ‘previous’ religious
culture, from a later temporal perspective) – rather than reflecting the precepts
of their own majority-religious environment. For that reason, in this project, we
will examine the Baal Cycle as a document in evidence of ancient Near Eastern
religious groups; the Hebrew Bible as a document in evidence of Canaanite,
Egyptian, and other ancient Near Eastern religious groups; the New Testament as
a document in evidence of Second-Temple Jewish groups, among others, of the
first century, ce; the Acts of St. George as a document in evidence of fifth-century
ce Roman, Hellenistic, Christian, and Jewish religious groups; and the Qur’ān as
a document in evidence of the late antique religious world, and in particular of the
various Christian, Jewish, and Arabian polytheistic groups of the day.
12 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
Historiographical method
With regard to historiographic method, this book will take as its guide the longue-
durée geographical model of historical time mentioned above and proposed by
Fernand Braudel in 1949.45 In examining this historical phenomenon within the
Eastern Mediterranean, this book will suggest that geological time and linguis-
tic time are two of the deepest and slowest-changing elements of time affecting
human history in the Eastern Mediterranean.
At the lowest level, geography and geology affect the climatological realities
of life and agricultural production in the region. Although climate in the Eastern
Mediterranean occasionally has changed since 7000 or 6000 bce, in this book,
climate in the region will be considered generally characterizable by three dry
years out of every ten.46 Furthermore, the stable general pattern of climate will be
described herein as a significant and determinative element of influence upon the
region, as well as of its long-lived geographical motifs.47
I suggest linguistic history as a slightly faster-moving layer of time in this
model. Historically, the Levant has been a region dominated by the Eastern,
Central and Northwest branches of the Semitic language family, save for the
late-fourth-century bce introduction of Greek, and the introduction of Latin in
the early centuries of the Common Era.48 Finally, I suggest religious history as a
faster-changing level of history in this regional model, and political history as the
fastest-changing level of history in the Eastern Mediterranean.

What this book examines and why

Texts, images, and sites function like artifacts that can tell us a great deal about
the societies in which they were produced. They represent moments-in-time; each
text, image, or site functions like a small window into history. In order to geo-
graphically contextualize each of the figures under examination, so that we may
understand them each as a product of time and place, this book investigates the
figures’ important texts, images, and sites.
Each text, image, or site is examined for evidence of contemporaneous reli-
gious, political, and geographical influences. In so doing, we see in each text,
image, or site, wider evidence of time and place, as well as reflections of specific
religious traditions. We also see in each text, image, or site evidence of agrarian
religion and of the influence of geography in phenomena such as sacred moun-
tains, rocks, and caves; in agricultural concerns, involving crops, water, drought,
and harvests; in shared religious cultures, where sectarian identity is diminished;
and in the prevalence of saints and holy figures, tombs, demons, images, icons,
magic, and sacrifice. We see as well in each text, image, and site evidence of
developing orthodoxies in religion. Through a common pool of compelling Near
Eastern figures, narratives, and motifs, we see evidence of the ways in which older
ancient Near Eastern religious traditions in the Levant are related to Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. Finally, we see as well in this examination a view into
the interconnected histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Levant, and
into their particular conceptions of monotheism.
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 13
It should also be noted that despite the equal focus in this project on the fig-
ures of Baal-Hadad, Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr, in practice today, the most
commonly venerated of these figures are St. George and al-Khiḍr, among lim-
ited communities of Muslims and Christians in the Levant. This reflects regional
demographics over the past 800 years, and, in particular, turbulent 20th-century
political history.49 Most notably, these effects include the institution of political
borders between countries created after World War I, as well as the establishment
of the state of Israel. Both of these political events had the effect of creating exclu-
sive access for specific persons to formerly open-access sites. Despite the fact that
shared regional practices involving Jewish communities and the figure of Elijah
are no longer as prevalent as they once were, both the figure of Elijah and the
popular practices of Jewish communities are crucial for an accurate understanding
of this historical phenomenon.
A third 20th-century political event that has diminished these practices, as well
as the size of the modern Muslim and Christian communities who engage in them,
is a rise in exclusivist theological interpretations. These exclusivist theological
orientations largely can be correlated to the ascendency of textual religion, with
the growth of political Islamist movements, and with an increase in general sectar-
ianism as a consequence of 20th- and 21st-century political events.50 From a per-
spective of exclusivist theology, shared religious practices often are condemned
as ‘folk, ‘inauthentic’, ‘confused’, or ‘improper’.

Why does this matter?

Influence of geography on religion
Religious beliefs, ideas, symbols, and practices naturally are informed by the
social and geographical conditions in which their theologies are elaborated.51
Geography does not drive religious belief, but it has a distinct shaping influence.
This influence exists in a religious culture for as long as geography can be said
to be the most influential factor on human life. In the case of the need for rainfall
for survival in the arid Levant, geographical motifs associated early on with the
figure of the storm-god remained powerful and efficacious in Levantine culture
and gradually became associated with related and successive figures from among
regional religious traditions.

Continuity of motif
This book suggests that the figures’ ‘peculiarities’ – relating to rain, storms, thun-
der, lightning, greenness, fertility, and fecundity, as well as the ability to appear
and disappear and associations with mountains and high places, local feast or cel-
ebration days of April 23, and the vanquishing of a serpent or dragon – are in fact
simply a continuation of powerful and efficacious motifs related to regional geo-
graphical needs. Hasan Haddad first suggested that the figures Elijah, St. George,
and al-Khiḍr were each “a continuation of the cult of the Baals of Syria.”52 This
book suggests, in conclusion, that although the figures chronologically are related
14 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
in various ways to one another, each of the figures – including that of the storm-
god – became associated with powerful and efficacious geographical motifs in
Levantine and wider Near Eastern culture. These motifs originated in geographi-
cal needs that emerged in simultaneity with – and in some cases predated – the
figure of the storm-god Baal-Hadad.
There is a notion in the field of archaeology that is known as ‘continuity of
cult’. From this perspective, archaeologists note that oftentimes the same sacred
site (if not the same outright structure, or portions of the same structure located at
that site) can be reused as a sacred site by successive dominant groups. That is,
as archaeologists dig, they notice that underneath important religious structures
or cult sites, there often lie even earlier important religious structures or cult sites,
and so on. The meaning, significance, rituals, and belief structure associated with
the site changes under successive groups, but the site itself retains a kind of sacred
power and continuity as a ‘cult’ location.53
This notion of ‘continuity of cult’ is a helpful analogy for understanding the
continuity of important regional geographical motifs that this book highlights. In
this sense, the phenomenon takes place in a religious rather than in an archaeo-
logical sense. The motifs themselves remain powerful and efficacious in agrarian
religious culture, first, because people living in successive generations continue to
feel the same acute need for rain and crop growth. Second, because these motifs
are cultural phenomena, the motifs themselves pre-exist successive generations,
who are taught to recognize the motifs as efficacious and powerful.54
In a manner very similar to the functioning of ‘continuity of cult’, in ‘continuity
of motif’, the motifs come to be associated with related and successive important
regional religious figures. Thus, powerful, efficacious, geographically influenced
motifs that we could identify as having appeared in very early eras continue to be
employed over long periods of time, but become associated with religious figures
whose religious significances vary, even though the figures themselves insepara-
bly are related to one another. This book documents how this process takes place
for each of the figures under examination, and in so doing also helps us to see
the relationships between the figures, as well as the relationships between their
respective religious traditions. Ultimately, Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints
in the Eastern Mediterranean suggests that these geographical motifs are shared
by these figures, over a very long period of time in the region, because they share
the region.

The gradual emergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Despite commonly held beliefs, religions are not born fully formed, nor do they
begin wholesale with founding figures. Religions arise out of their own contem-
poraneous religious, political, and geographical environments – often as a reaction
to another contemporaneous religious tradition – with the emergence of a small
early community. Eventually, this community begins to record essential ideas in
texts, often to employ images, and to frequent sites (and sometimes to re-employ
already-extant images and sites, as in the ‘continuity of motif’ notion highlighted
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 15
in this project). Naturally, these are not linear processes, but can take place simul-
taneously. Gradually, larger religious communities grow out of these early groups,
and religious ‘traditions’ – with their attendant theologies, rituals, practices, and
beliefs – form and develop over the course of centuries.55
Likewise, this book demonstrates that religious traditions in the Levant emerged
in a gradual process of formation and contradistinction from one another. Because
of that, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be said to be distinct religious tradi-
tions, but not religious traditions that historically are separate.

Significance and implications

In challenging a traditional narrative of separation between these religious tradi-
tions, in challenging an understanding of premodern, preliterate, agrarian religion
in the region as primarily theologically oriented, and in highlighting the shared
religious practices of the region, this book offers an innovative departure from the
traditional literature on regional religious history. It has implications for the study
of religion in the Eastern Mediterranean, and it asks us to rethink our general per-
ceptions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as human history in the region.
This book also illuminates a common pool of legendary and heroic figures,
popular narratives, and powerful geographical motifs specific to the Near East. It
argues as well for monotheism as a specific strand of religious thought that char-
acterized Jews, Christians, and Muslims in contradistinction to one another, and
in contradistinction to a Near Eastern religious environment that was dominated
by polytheistic religious traditions.
The relationships and continuities between Baal-Hadad (and, subsequently, as
we will see, Levantine Zeus and Jupiter), Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr in the
Levant that are uncovered by this book provide a critical case study for help-
ing us to understand a broader phenomenon involving geography and religion.
In the field of religious studies, this phenomenon, and the arguments derived
thereby, still are largely unspoken: the need to recognize regional specificity even
for global religions, and the need to recognize regionally specific relationships
between religious traditions.
In a modern sense, this book also has contemporary political implications. It
helps us to remember that there are elements of cultural commonality that long
have connected people in the Levant to one another, to the land, and even across
time. Furthermore, there are elements of cultural commonality, such as can be
seen in the modern associations between St. George and al-Khiḍr among com-
munities of Christians, Muslims, Alawites, Druze, and other local religious com-
munities, which also bind religious groups in the Middle East.
Finally, in demonstrating that the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam are not – historically or textually speaking – separate, this book contra-
dicts the claims of modern austere and exclusivist religious groups who accentuate
difference and divergence between these religious traditions and their local com-
munities. Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean
reveals the shared phenomenon involving St. George, al-Khiḍr, and Elijah as
16 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
authentic both to the historical heritage of the Eastern Mediterranean, and to the
region’s shared religious practices. In so doing, it recovers an interconnected reli-
gious history of the Eastern Mediterranean that today remains largely unknown.

Summary
Chapter Two of this book, “Levantine geography, history, and agrarian religion”
surveys the region of the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole: geography, climate,
and weather. This chapter gives an impression of the region sans modern politi-
cal borders and discrete historical periodization, and surveys regional geography,
geology, and climate. Part Two of this chapter provides summaries of political,
religious, and linguistic history in the region, beginning in the Bronze Age. Part
Three of this chapter contrasts the vicissitudes of changing political history with
long-lived elements of agrarian religious culture, giving an impression of the
Levantine agrarian religious experience as a whole, and over time.
Chapter Three, “Canaanite religion and the storm-god Baal-Hadad,” focuses
on the figure of the storm-god Baal-Hadad, situating the analysis by discussing
the ancient Near Eastern storm-gods among whom Baal-Hadad emerged, and then
focusing on Baal-Hadad, the Western Syrian and Coastal Canaanite storm-god.
This chapter examines Baal-Hadad’s most important text, the Baal Cycle; his
iconographical representation, the Baal Stele; and two sites associated with Baal-
Hadad – Baalbek and Mt. Sapan. It suggests that the influential motif of the storm-
god defeating a serpent or dragon may originate in meteorological phenomena,
and examines, as well, the ways in which the figure Baal-Hadad influenced the
Greek-Levantine cults of Zeus (e.g., Zeus-Baal) and the Roman-Levantine cults
of Jupiter (e.g., Jupiter Dolichenus), in the Levant. Over the course of about 1,000
years, cults dedicated to Zeus (and then to Jupiter) gradually came to supplant
Baal worship in the region. This chapter highlights those narratives and motifs
associated with Baal-Hadad that resonated in the subsequent figures of Elijah, St.
George, and al-Khiḍr: associations with the defeat of a serpent or snake – a narra-
tive shown to have a long life, indeed, throughout the region – stormy theophanic
imagery, such as rain and storms and lightning; associations with Mt. Sapan and
other high places; associations with fertility and fecundity and the seasonal cycle;
and recurrent disappearance and return.
Chapter Four, “The Hebrew Bible and Elijah,” focuses on the figure of Elijah,
situating the ancient Israelites and the biblical tradition as it emerged in the ancient
Near East. In particular, special attention is paid to the ways in which the biblical
tradition emerged from within an ancient Near Eastern and ‘Canaanite’ religious
environment that was dominated by Baal (Baal-Hadad) worship. This chapter
focuses on the biblical narrative of the prophet Elijah, whose narratives in 1 and 2
Kings involve the eradication of Baal worship in defense of the true god, Yahweh.
This chapter then examines the ways in which Elijah remained an enormously
popular and influential figure throughout the wider Near East, from the second
half of the first millennium bce, and well into the first and second millennia ce,
known for his defense of the ‘true’ god. Late-antique-period Elijah is of particular
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 17
importance for this study, both in terms of his biblical-narrative relationship to
the figure of St. George, and in terms of popular late antique stories that involve
Elijah and Moses, and which connect Elijah to the figure of al-Khiḍr, as well.
Chapter Five, “Early Christianity and St. George,” focuses on the figure of
St. George by contextualizing the first-century ce emergence of Christianity from
among communities of Jews and against the backdrop of Roman state polytheism
and the mixed religious milieu of the first centuries of the Common Era. This chap-
ter examines the etymological origins of the name ‘George’, and suggests that ety-
mology might link the early Christian cult of ‘saint’ George to contemporaneous
local cults to Zeus-Georgos. This chapter also analyzes the earliest hagiography
of St. George, the Syriac-language Acts of St. George, demonstrating the contem-
poraneous religious and political forces of influence in the text; among them, the
narratives and motifs of Elijah, wherein St. George was presented as a defender
of the true god, in the exact manner as Elijah’s narrative in 1 and 2 Kings. The
chapter also examines material evidence for the cult of St. George in the Eastern
Mediterranean, focusing on the changing iconography of St. George. Particular
attention is paid to the ways in which the changing iconography of St. George is
related to contemporaneous Roman polytheism, developing Christianity, to the
figure of the storm-god, and to Levantine agrarian religious influences.
Chapter Six, “The emergence of Islam and al-Khiḍr,” situates the emergence
of the Qur’ān (and later Islam) within its late antique political and religious con-
texts, dominated by the contemporary Melkite, Jacobite, and Nestorian sects of
Christianity, by rabbinic Jewish traditions and the Talmudic texts produced in the
academies at Babylonia, and by Arabian polytheistic traditions. This chapter then
contextualizes the al-Khiḍr narrative (Q. 18:60–82), a pericope known as ‘Moses
and the Servant’, which is a wisdom literature story about the nature of God’s
mysterious justice. It investigates as well the earliest exegetical (tafsīr) identifica-
tion/naming of the ‘servant’ in the narrative as ‘al-Khiḍr’, and suggests that the
tafsīr reference to ‘al-Khiḍr’ likely was an epithet for the figure of late antique
Elijah. This chapter examines the figure of al-Khiḍr in the Eastern Mediterranean,
through al-Khiḍr’s linkages in text and in popular belief with the figure of Elijah,
as well as through his characteristics of greenness and fertility, which were similar
in the region to those of Elijah, and, in the wider Levant, to those of St. George.
Finally, this chapter begins to characterize shared practices around these figures
in the Eastern Mediterranean, as communities of Christians, Jews, and Muslims
there grew and evolved together from the eighth-ninth century ce onward.
Chapter Seven, “Eastern Mediterranean Shared Religious History,” re-
focuses the discussion on the shared practices between communities of Muslims,
Christians, and Jews in the modern Eastern Mediterranean. It suggests implica-
tions about the relationships between these figures as revealed by this study, and
surveys conclusions about the gradual emergence and development of Canaanite
religion, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; about the pervasiveness and durability
of agrarian religion; about gradualism and continuity in regional religious his-
tory in general; and in particular about the theological distinctiveness of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. Chapter Seven concludes with thoughts on the influence
18 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
of geography upon the development of geographical motifs – such as that of the
vanquishing of a serpent or snake – that remained popular in the region for mil-
lennia, on the shared religious culture of the Eastern Mediterranean, and on the
historical and religious authenticity of regional shared religious practices.

Notes
1 I consider the Eastern Mediterranean to be those countries that line the Eastern border
of the Mediterranean Sea from Southern Anatolia to Egypt. The terms ‘Eastern
Mediterranean’ and ‘Levant’ will be used interchangeably in this book. While the term
‘Eastern Mediterranean’ can sometimes include Greece or even Italy and Libya, it will
not here. Instead, ‘Eastern Mediterranean’ will be used interchangeably with ‘Levant’,
but both terms will be limited to the region of the Levant: those modern countries
which comprise or are near the Eastern border of the Mediterranean Sea basin: Southern
and Southwestern Turkey, Syria, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt (espe-
cially the Sinai Peninsula). ‘Levant’ can also include the modern country of Jordan, and
it does so here. ‘Levant’ is etymologically French (derived from Middle French and
ultimately from the Latin term ‘Levāre’, meaning ‘to raise’), but it generally corre-
sponds with the term (and with the countries referenced in) ‫ ‘ المشرق‬al-mashriq’. In
Arabic, as in French and Latin, ‘al-mashriq’ – similar to ‘Levāre’ – refers to ‘the place
of (sun)rise’, or ‘the ‘East’.
2 St. George is believed to have been martyred in c. 303 ce, and is commonly depicted
atop a white horse, poised to vanquish a dragon or serpent. See Chapter Five.
3 ‫‘ الخضر‬al-khiḍr’ (alt. ‘al-khaḍir’, i.a.) is referenced in tafsīr/commentary to Q. 18:60–
82. See Chapter Six.
4 This statistic is drawn by the author, and is based upon the total number of regional
Christian churches, as recorded by the ARPOA project at the University of Balamand,
which are dedicated to the figure of Mary, and which outnumber regional Christian
churches dedicated to any other figure or saint. The second-most-common church des-
ignation is to St. George. http://home.balamand.edu.lb/ARPOA.asp?id=12737. See
also Victor Sauma, Sur Les Pas des Saints au Liban, 2 vols. (Beirut: FMA, 1994),
appendices, for statistics on the marked prevalence of St. George churches in Lebanon.
This statistic is further informally drawn from ethnographic research in the region,
and also is based upon the prevalence of Mary icons, pictures, and souvenirs, which
also outnumber those available for any other regional figure or saint. Icons, pictures,
and souvenirs of St. George also are highly common. Because this data is drawn from
informal observation, it is difficult to be precise about the relative prevalence between
regional figures and saints of icons, pictures, and souvenirs for sale, although St.
George images and souvenirs abound.
5 It should be noted that many Alawite and Druze communities consider themselves a
part of the Muslim tradition – of the Ithnā ‘Asherī (‘Twelver’) and Ismā‘īlī (‘Sevener’)
Shi‘i branches, respectively. However, most larger Sunni and Twelver-Shi‘i communi-
ties dispute Alawite and Druze wholesale inclusion into mainstream Islam. Furthermore,
Alawites and Druze arguably are distinct religious traditions, with their own places of
worship (sometimes), communities, and histories. Therefore, the Alawite and Druze
communities are addressed in this project individually. Druze prefer to call themselves
‘Ahl al-Tawḥīd’, ‘The People of Unity’. ‘Druze’ will be used in this project because of
the prevalence of this name in Western scholarship. Alawites are believed to have been
founded as a sect during the ninth century ce by Ibn Nuṣayr, and are sometimes known as
al-Nuṣayrīyyah. Although ‘Alawite’ (Arabic) and related ‘Alevi’ (Turkish) communities
share a linguistic root in and reverence for the Muslim figure of ‘Ali, as well as asso-
ciations with the Twelver-Shi‘i branches of Islam, these communities have significant
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 19
religious, historical, linguistic, and political differences between them. Thus, Turkish-
speaking Alevis and Arabic-speaking Alawites, while in some ways religiously similar
and jointly considered in this project, are, in reality, distinct communities.
6 Counting communities in Turkey, Syria, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and
Egypt. Unless otherwise noted, population statistics herein (general and religious) are
drawn from the Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project: http://www.pewforum.
org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/ and from the CIA World Factbook:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. These sources are
imperfect, but are used here because they contain recent and continually updated demo-
graphic data. Islam is the largest religious tradition in Eastern Mediterranean countries.
Muslims make up around 54% of the population in Lebanon, 87% in Syria, and 97.8%,
in Turkey. Within Muslim-majority populations, Sunni Islam predominates, although,
in Lebanon, 27% of the population is Shi‘i, 15–30% of the population in Turkey is
Alevi, and, in Syria, around 12% of the population is Alawite. Christians make up 2%
or fewer of the population in Turkey; to 2–3%, in Israel and in Palestine; 3%, in Jordan;
10%, in Syria; 10%, in Egypt; 40.5%, in Lebanon; and 78%, in Cyprus. According
to Laura Robson, “Recent Perspectives on Christianity in the Modern Arab World,”
the “major Christian branches in the Middle East are the Eastern Orthodox churches,
which are especially prominent in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; the
Maronite church, located primarily in Lebanon; and the Coptic Church, in Egypt.
Smaller Catholic, Assyrian and Protestant communities are scattered throughout the
Levant, Iraq, and North Africa.” Laura Robson, History Compass, vol. 9 (April 2011):
p. 313. Judaism can be found in small communities (less than 1% of the population)
in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt; at around 14%, in Palestine, and at 75% of the
population in Israel. After Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, the most sizeable religious
communities in the region are the Alawites and the Druze. In Palestine, the Druze
constitute less than 1% of the population; in Israel, they make up about 1.6% of the
population. In Syria, Druze amount to about 3% of the population, and Lebanon, where
their community is largest, the Druze community comprises about 5.6% of the total
population.
7 All figures for Syria are ca. 2014 ce, and do not account for the population-disruption
effects of the Syrian war.
8 William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the
Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997). On the subject of modern
Christian-Muslim veneration of al-Khiḍr and St. George, see also Chapter Seven.
9 The designation ‘all’ is specific to the particular demographic makeup of the space
under examination. In general, veneration of al-Khiḍr among the Alawites and the
Druze is just as prevalent as it is among mainstream Muslim communities (although
sometimes al-Khiḍr is understood in slightly different ways or associated with different
figures among Alawite and Druze communities than he is among mainstream Muslim
communities).
10 See Suad Slim; Al-Khiḍr being referred to as ‘Abu Ḥarba’, the ‘father of war/“the
lance”’, Hassan S. Haddad, “‘Georgic’ Cults and Saints of the Levant.” Numen 16, no.
1 (1969): 21–39. See also Josef Meri, The Cult of Saints Among Muslims and Jews in
Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4.
11 Elijah is referenced in the Hebrew Bible at 1 Kings 17–19, 21, and 2 Kings 1–2.
12 See Josef Meri, The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford:
University Press, 2002). See also Josef Meri, “Re-Appropriating Sacred Space:
Medieval Jews and Muslims Seeking Elijah and al-Khadir.” Medieval Encounters, 5, 3
(1999): 237–264.
13 Many ethnographic interviews, including with a Greek Orthodox church official in
Balamand, Lebanon relayed that people who live in the region view St. George and
Elijah both as victorious defenders of ‘true’ faith. Also, iconography in churches dedi-
cated to St. George and to Elijah reinforces that narrative, as well as other narratives from
20 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
the Acts of St. George, and from the Hebrew Bible passages related to Elijah (1 Kings
17–19, 21, and 2 Kings 1–2). The Hebrew Bible narrative of Elijah depicts Elijah as the
defender of the ‘true’ God, YHWH, in the face of predominant Baal worship; see Chapter
Four. In the Acts of St. George, St. George intentionally was depicted employing similar
motifs to that of Elijah in the Hebrew Bible account; most prominently, St. George was
depicted as a defender of the ‘true’ God, Jesus Christ; see Chapter Five, 163–167.
14 ‘Common sites’ can refer to sites that are or were jointly visited by multiple religious
communities, and/or to sites specific to one of the religious figures that previously had
been dedicated to another of the figures. Political influences during the 20th century
have affected the joint veneration of these figures, especially the figure Elijah.
15 This was an overwhelmingly common response to my field research questions about
joint or shared practices around these figures.
16 Meredith McGuire describes this experience as researchers encountering “assump-
tions, embedded in their field’s basic definitions,” that “get in the way of understanding
the phenomenon they are observing. The realization comes as a jolt, because it means
that the way we have learned to think about a phenomenon is now hindering our ability
to understand what we are observing.” Meredith B. McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith
and Practice in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 19.
17 By ‘originated’, I mean where they first appeared in written texts and in lived religious
traditions. Also, these figures have been known by the characteristics and shared in the
manner described herein in the region of the Levant (see the definitions of ‘Levant’, and
of ‘Eastern Mediterranean’, above). Such can also be the case in surrounding regions,
for instance, into Southeastern Europe and Central and Southeastern Asia. However,
in some surrounding areas, the figures’ characteristics and relationships differ, and are
specific to their own geographical and cultural environments.
18 Only in Turkey is this the feast date for the figure Elijah, where he is known as a con-
flation of both Khiḍr and Elijah in the name Khizrilyas (also spelled ‘Chidrelles’ in the
17th-century travel account of Antoine de Busque). Oya Pancaroglu, “The Itinerant
Dragon-Slayer: Forging Paths of Image and Identity in Medieval Anatolia.” Gesta, 43,
2 (2004): 151–164. Most Christian calendars designate Elijah’s feast day as July 20.
The general feast or celebration day for both St. George and al-Khiḍr in the Eastern
Mediterranean is April 23, except in the Orthodox churches, where the feast day of St.
George is moved to May 6 if the calendar date of Easter falls on or after April 23.
19 For instance, in the case of al-Khiḍr, there has been significant internal debate over
his spectacular disappearance and peculiar status as an immortal, and in the case of St.
George, there has been significant internal debate over the historicity of St. George,
to the extent that, in 1969, Pope Paul VI demoted the official feast day of St. George
(already of waning official status) to an optional memorial.
20 This perspective has been challenged, but remains the predominant approach. See for
instance Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2005). See also Talal Asad, “The Construction of Religion as an
Anthropological Category,” in Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of
Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1993), 27–54.
21 Kim Knott, “Geography of Religion,” in The Routledge Companion to the Study of
Religion, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010): 478. This perspective refers to ‘sepa-
rate silos’ of religions.
22 See, for instance, Samantha Riches, St. George: Hero, Martyr and Myth (Gloucestershire,
UK: Sutton Publishing, 2000). Riches claims that St. George’s association with the
dragon is a ‘late-medieval accretion’ to his narrative, rather than associating it with a
prevalent motif in the Eastern Mediterranean. Riches’ perspective reflects a majority
of opinion among modern St. George scholars, which I challenge as a major premise
of this book. See in particular Chapter Two, 65–70; Chapter Three, 161 and 178; and
Chapter Seven, 245–248.
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 21
23 Richard W. Stump, The Geography of Religion: Faith, Place and Space (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2008): 177. See also Knott, 476–491.
24 Biblical: Cogan 1964, Bronner 1968; Talmudic: Lindbeck 2010; and folkloric: Segal
1935, Schram 1997. Notable academic studies of St. George include Budge 1930,
Riches 2000, and Goode 2009. Academic studies of al-Khiḍr include Ocak 1985,
Franke 2000, Ghanami 2000, and Halman 2013. Academic studies of two or more
of the figures have generally focused on two of the figures in comparison, such as
St. George and Khiḍr in Hasluck 1929; Laird 1998, 2011; Dalrymple 1997; Bowman
2007; Wolper 2003, 2011; Elijah and al-Khiḍr in Augustinovic 1972; Meri 1999, 2002,
or, in two instances, all three figures, in Canaan 1927; Ḥaddad 1969). In 1927, Taufik
Canaan’s study, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine, recorded and
described the shrines that existed at that time in Palestine, and noted that, in many
instances, shrines to Elijah, St. George, or Khiḍr were frequented by Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim visitors at each, and that the names used for the ‘saints’ by visitors at each
site were relatively interchangeable, i.e., Elijah/‘Ilyās’/‘Ilyā’ and St. George being also
called Khiḍr, and vice-versa.
25 Haddad, H.S. “‘Georgic’ Cults and Saints of the Levant,” Numen, 16, Fasc. 1 (April
1969), 21–39.
26 Haddad, 22.
27 Also note that there is an inconvenient overlapping of names at work here. Hassan
Haddad (spelled in Arabic with an aspirated Ḥ and two Ds) is the author of a work
concerning the Syro-Canaanite storm-god, Baal-Hadad (spelled with a non-aspirated
H and a single D). Haddad, from the ḥdd root, in Arabic, means to sharpen/delimit/
demarcate, and ḥadad means ‘blacksmith’ (i.e., one who sharpens; see Hans Wehr,
187–188), and is today a common surname among Christians in Syria, Lebanon,
and Palestine. Etymologically, as we will see, the earliest meaning of Hadad (hdd
root) was onomatopoeically related to thunder (see Chapter Three). While potential
aural relations between ḥdd and hdd, as well as the cultural trails suggested by this
etymology, are interesting, the name similarity here is simply a coincidence. For
more on the dragon-slaying myth with which the storm-god Baal-Hadad is associ-
ated, see Robert D. Miller II, The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations: An Old
Testament Myth, Its Origins, and Its Afterlives (Explorations in ANE Civilizations 6.
Eisenbrauns 2018).
28 James Grehan, Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). This perspective is adopted, as well, in this
book.
29 Grehan, 190–192.
30 Shaye J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd ed. Library of Early
Christianity Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 50–52.
31 Evidence of porous, pluralist, and opportunist religious practices abounds, in religious
texts and in other historical writings, in the examples found in this project, and in several
recent works on the subject. Among them, see Michael Blömer, Achim Lichtenberger,
and Rubina Raja, eds. Religious Identities in the Levant from Alexander to Muhammad:
Continuity and Change. Contextualizing the Sacred 4 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols
Publishers, 2015). See also Grehan, 150–156. See also Chapter Two, 37–50.
32 Blömer, introduction to Religious Identities in the Levant from Alexander to Muhammad,
ed. by Blömer, Lichtenberger, and Raja, 3–4, emphasis added.
33 Blömer, 3–4.
34 Grehan, 140. See also Virginia Burrus and Rebecca Lyman, who argue that the notion
of a realm of ‘popular’ religion, that is distinct from or even opposed to the religion
of the elite, is untenable. Virginia Burrus and Rebecca Lyman, “Shifting the Focus of
Christianity,” in A People’s History of Christianity, vol. 2, Late Ancient Christianity,
ed. Virginia Burrus (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), 14.
35 Grehan, 16.
22 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean
36 Grehan, 62–70.
37 Sectarian differentiation in agrarian religious settings seemed to have been most pro-
nounced in the realms of birth, marriage, death, and burial. See Chapter Two.
38 See Grehan, 16. “To reconstruct these patterns fully would require research encompass-
ing many long centuries. The history of the long term – the only proper yardstick for
agrarian religion – is beyond the scope of the present study.”
39 See Chapter Two. See also the work of Fernand Baudel, who argues that the deepest
levels of historical influence, such as geological, tend to be the slowest-changing. The
Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. 2 vols. Translated
by Siân Reynolds. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), original 1949.
See also Grehan, Twilight of the Saints.
40 ‘Canon’ in this project will refer to a set of texts that have met a standard established
by a community that sets them apart from other texts. Canon is conceptual – it exists
in the mind of a person or group making a judgment about whether a text meets a cer-
tain standard. Communities also often imply by the term canon a ‘whole,’ or ‘closed’
set of texts, although the canon is only ‘whole’ or ‘closed’ from the specific perspec-
tive of that community. ‘Scripture’ as will be used herein: scripture functions in certain
ways or does certain things or is used by a community in certain ways. As Wilfred
Cantwell Smith argues, “people make a text into scripture, or keep it scripture: by treat-
ing it in a certain way.” Smith, Wilfred C. What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach
(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Books, 2000), 18. The concept of ‘scripture’ in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam is a highly debated topic. What constitutes scripture is as varied
as the communities making the judgment. For the purposes of this study, I will classify
scriptures loosely, so as to be inclusive of many variations while still treating this sub-
ject (not indefensibly) in the aggregate: those texts which constitute for their community
a ‘divine’ message, as well as (often) lower-status texts which are related (commentary,
exegesis) to the higher-status divine-message texts. ‘Canons’ in Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, as will be used herein: a compendium (which of course varies by sect) of reli-
gious texts (often scriptural in nature) that have met a standard established by the com-
munity that sets them apart from other texts. For the purposes of this project: in the case
of Judaism: the canon of the Hebrew Bible as commonly attested by the mid-second
century CE, as well as Rabbinic and Talmudic writings associated with the Oral Torah.
In the case of Christianity: the canon of the New Testament and the Old Testament as of
Bishop Athanasius’ 367 ce Easter Festal Letter, as well as hagiographical accounts of
saints’ lives. In the case of Islam: the canon of the Qur’ān as of the 650 ce “Uthmanic
Codex,” as well as the major collections of Sunni and Shi‘i tafsīr and ḥadīth.
41 Part of the development of canonical religion takes place through the work of tradition-
specific commentators and exegetes, who “participated in each religion’s develop-
ment of its own distinctiveness in belief, worship, and thought, and, at the same time,
contributed strongly to the differentiation and distance between the three faith com-
munities [of the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam].” See Robert
C. Gregg, Shared Stories, Rival Tellings: Early Encounters of Jews, Christians, and
Muslims (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), xiv. Additionally, Gregg argues
that exegetically ‘competitive’ scripture interpretation, of shared narratives, between
religious commentators, functioned as a “singularly powerful force in the early diver-
gence between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and in their separation into discrete,
independent religious cultures,” Gregg, 598.
42 People in agrarian religious cultures, of course, did revere the written word – in particu-
lar, that of scriptural texts – as itself divine and imbued with supernatural power. See
Grehan, Twilight of the Saints, 153.
43 All texts change over time, as a result of human scribal, redactive, or translational error
or intention. ‘Canonical’ texts, however, tend to change more slowly because of the
prohibitions and divine status often implied in being deemed ‘scripture’ and ‘canon’.
 Geography, religion, Eastern Mediterranean 23
44 Of course, through the continual work of commentators and exegetes, orthodoxies are
not unchanging. “Scriptures and their meanings were not fixed or static, but always
unfolding – vital and current precisely because they were creatively renewed and
refreshed.” Gregg, Shared Stories, Rival Tellings, 598.
45 Braudel, The Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
(Paris: Colin, 1949).
46 Frick, Frank S. “Palestine, Climate of” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 5 (New
York: Doubleday, 1992), 126. See also Eric Cline, 1177 BC: The Year Civilization
Collapsed (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014), 123 and 126. See
also Chapter Two, 24–35.
47 Frick, 126, quoting Amiran, D.H.K. “Land Use in Israel,” in Land Use in Semi-Arid
Mediterranean Climates. UNESCO International Geographic Union. Paris, 1964.
48 Although the Romans politically dominated the Levant beginning in the mid-first-
century bce, and the Latin language came gradually into some use thereafter, it is not
possible to give a simple date for the introduction of Latin in the region. Additionally,
a majority of people continued to speak Greek and Aramaic even when Latin was in
administrative use.
49 See Chapter Seven, 256–258.
50 See also Chapter Two, 48–50.
51 John Hinnels, ed. Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, 2nd ed. (New York:
Routledge, 2010), 13.
52 Haddad, 22.
53 An interesting recent example of ‘continuity of cult’ exists in the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul, at the ‘Nabi Yunus’ Islamic shrine and mosque there dedicated to the ‘Prophet
Jonah’. The Nabi Yunus shrine in Mosul is located on the edge of what was the his-
torical city of Nineveh, capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 911 to 609 bce (see
also Chapter Two, Part Two: Summary: Levantine political history). According to nar-
ratives from both the Qur’ān and the Hebrew Bible, Yunus/Jonah reportedly trave-
led to Nineveh to warn its citizens that they would be destroyed unless they repented
their sins (Jonah 1:1–4:11; Q. 37:139–148). Many Muslims believe that the Prophet
Yunus’ bones were buried at the site, and that the remains at the site also included a
tooth from the whale in whose belly for three days Jonah had swam when first he had
attempted to avoid his commission from God to Nineveh. Prior to the site becom-
ing an Islamic shrine and mosque, the site itself had earlier been the location of a
monastery, during the Christian period. Most likely, the bones that were located at the
Nabi Yunus shrine were interred there in 701 ce, upon the death of Christian patriarch
Henanisho I, of the denomination that is today known as the Church of the East. These
Christian origins of the site were reportedly what spurred members of the Islamic State
to declare that, according to their narrow interpretation of the Qur’ān and of legiti-
mate Islamic practice, the site itself was idolatrous rather than holy, and should be
destroyed. On July 24, 2014, militants placed explosives on the inner and outer walls
of the mosque and destroyed it. This was an enormous cultural loss, but it did serve the
inadvertent purpose of having revealed underneath a 3,000-year-old Assyrian palace,
complete with limestone slabs that bore the names of neo-Assyrian kings, rock reliefs
of hitherto-unknown depictions of neo-Assyrian women, and a rock engraving of a
Lamassu, mythical stone creatures who guarded the entrances of Assyrian palaces. See
Khoshnaw, Namak, Adeane, Ant, and El Gibaly, Lara. “Explore the IS Tunnels: How
the Islamic State Group Destroyed a Mosque but Revealed a 3,000-Year-Old Palace.”
BBC News: Nov. 22, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/
idt-sh/isis_tunnels
54 For more on this process, see also Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans.
Richard Nice (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).
55 This development process continues for as long as the religious tradition exists.
2 Levantine geography, history,
and agrarian religion

Part One: Levantine geography

The collision of the African, Arabian, and Eurasian continental plates millions of
years ago formed the area for the Mediterranean, and in the process forced upward
the complex of mountain ranges that line it. Gradually, the eastern and western
ends of the Mediterranean joined, trapping the prehistoric Tethys Ocean for eons
until it eventually evaporated, leaving behind a basin of limestone bedrock. Then
suddenly, at some point nearly five million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean crashed
through the Strait of Gibraltar in a spectacular waterfall that lasted 100 years,
creating the modern Mediterranean Sea.1
Unique as a geographical region in being defined by a sea rather than by a
continent, the only connections of the Mediterranean to the larger oceans of the
world are through the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Africa and Europe by
just nine miles at its narrowest point, and through the Suez Canal, a manmade
waterway that since 1869 ce has linked the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. The
Mediterranean Sea and the mountainous continents that rise around it thus form
a self-focused unit, which share not only weather patterns and climatic zones, but
also a common geological and human history.
That shared history is the focus of this chapter, which examines the geological,
climatological, and agricultural history of the Levant (Figure 2.1). It provides an
overview of the political, religious, and linguistic history of the region, as well
as detailing the long-term phenomenon known as ‘agrarian religion’, which is
itself largely related to and shaped by the region’s geography. The historical back-
grounds presented in this chapter undergird the remainder of the book, and high-
light, as well, the elements of continuity in history, culture, and lived experience
that have been shared by peoples in the region over the past several thousand years.
Indeed, a fundamental argument of this book is that there have been far fewer
breaks than commonly believed between compelling religious concepts among
changing communities living in the Levant over time.2 To that end, this book is
conceived of as a counterpoint to the notion that the Eastern Mediterranean region
in which this phenomenon plays out, and its history and religious traditions, can
be divided into discrete units, with distinct borders. Such borders in cognition –
political, temporal, and religious – have limited a thorough understanding of the
region, and its longer-term continuities.
 Levantine geography and agrarian religion 25

The Levant
Black Sea Caspian
Sea

TURKEY
Anatolian Plateau Ra
urus
Ta

icia
Cil Jazira

Tig
ant IRAN

ns
Eu
ph

R
ra
Lev
te
sR
Syrian
Mediterranean Sea
desert
The

IRAQ

Sinai Persiar
Nile R

EGYPT desert Gulf

SAUDI ARABIA
0 400 km Arabian Peninsula

Mountains of the Historical invasion corridors

Anatolian margin from the North and the East

200 mm (8”) rainfall line Modern state boundaries

Desert margins of the Levant

Figure 2.1 Map of the Levant

Geology
From its widest stretch, spanning from Gibraltar to Lebanon, the Mediterranean
Sea extends 2,300 miles. Its north-south dimensions vary greatly, although a max-
imum length of 680 miles stretches between modern-day Venice and the north
African country of Libya. The landlocked nature of the Mediterranean Sea effec-
tively isolates it from the tides of the great oceans of the world, so that its own
tides are primarily the result of the effects of the moon and the sun on the sea
itself.
Because of the narrow entry and exit points through the Strait of Gibraltar of
incoming Atlantic Ocean water and outgoing Mediterranean Sea water, the water
temperature in the Mediterranean is warmer than in most seas. The Mediterranean
also is saltier than most seas, and thus it can support fewer species of marine
life than can the larger oceans. The generally warm and arid climate of the
26 Levantine geography and agrarian religion
Mediterranean, along with the effects of regularly unimpeded sunshine, combine
to evaporate the sea at a rate of about 57 inches annually. This process further
salinizes the Mediterranean, although annual rainfall, watershed from the Black
Sea and the Nile River, and incoming colder water from the Atlantic Ocean gener-
ally replenish the lost water. Regional climate and agriculture are affected by the
Mediterranean Sea, and so the fortunes of those who live around it are intertwined
with the fortunes of the sea itself.

Climate
About 12,000 years ago, the climate of the Mediterranean approached its current
conditions.3 The Mediterranean is temperate and tropical, with two seasons: cool
and wet in the winter from October to April, and hot and dry in the summer, from
May to September. During all seasons, temperatures are moderated by proximity
to the sea. The pattern of winds fluctuates from season to season and within dif-
ferent parts of the Mediterranean. During the winter, the jet stream, which guides
areas of low pressure, shifts into the Mediterranean. A series of low-pressure
centers form over the relatively warm Mediterranean Sea and move eastward;
depressions also can move in from the Atlantic and become strengthened over the
warmer Mediterranean Sea. As these air masses absorb the moisture of the sea,
they pour rain onto the sea and nearby continents, and thus the preponderance
of rainfall comes to the Mediterranean during the winter season. Winter, in fact,
can be very stormy, dangerously raising the sea levels and threatening trade and
transport.
Summer around the Mediterranean is hot and dry, and because most of the rain
falls during the winter, during the summer season, streams can be intermittent.
Areas near the sea can be humid and very hot, although the coastal mountains are
often much cooler. Waterspouts, intense rotating columns of water and spray that
are formed by a whirlwind occurring over the sea – essentially, tornadoes that
appear to rise out of the sea – are a climatological feature of the Mediterranean
Sea region. That is the case as well in the Eastern Mediterranean, about which we
will see in Chapter Three.4
The rainy season begins again in the Eastern Mediterranean in October or
November, in the form of heavy thunderstorms. Winter storms move eastward
across the Mediterranean Sea, reach the landmass at the northern part of the
Eastern littoral (southern Anatolia around Antioch, near modern-day Antayka,
Turkey), and turn and move in a southeasterly direction across the inland areas.5
Moisture-laden winds move up the coastal mountains of the Levant, where they
condense and precipitate before crossing, leaving a dry area on the lee side of
the mountains. Thus, the western coastal mountains of the Levant attract most of
the regional rainfall, creating an area of rain-shadow to the east. As in all areas
of the Mediterranean, variation in precipitation from year to year in the Eastern
Mediterranean can be great. One year may bring twice the yearly average; the next
year, only half, and variation in precipitation between zones of the Mediterranean
is often substantial.6
 Levantine geography and agrarian religion 27
About 70 percent of the average rain in the Levant falls between November
and March. Influenced by altitude, latitude, and proximity to the Mediterranean,
rainfall is unevenly distributed, decreasing sharply to the south and to the east. In
the extreme south, average yearly rainfall is less than 100 mm (4 inches); in the
extreme north, it can be as much as 1100 mm (43 inches).7 Rainfall varies from sea-
son to season and year to year, and precipitation often is concentrated in destruc-
tive storms. In the Near East, a rainfall line (isohyet, on maps of the region) of at
least 200 mm (8 inches) per year demarcates areas of arable land. Areas certain to
be cultivable must fall within the 400 mm (12 inches) isohyet (see Figure 2.1). In
the southern Levantine area of modern-day Israel and Palestine, for instance, only
about one third is cultivable.8 Droughts are frequent in the Levant, and in general,
its climate can be characterized by three dry years out of every ten.9 The combined
realities of aridity and frequent drought have had an enormous influence on the
kinds of religious motifs that developed in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Geography of the Levant: Regions, mountain

ranges, rivers and water sources, and flora
The Levant is demarcated by several geological barrier zones. To the north are
the Taurus Mountain ranges, which transition to the different climatic and cultural
zone of the Anatolian plateau. To the northeast, the Levant descends into the
steppe grasslands of the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, known his-
torically as Mesopotamia. To the east and to the south are the Syrian and Arabian
deserts, distinguishing the Levant from the lower Tigris-Euphrates river system,
as well as from the vast arid expanses of the Arabian Peninsula. To the southwest,
the largely empty Sinai Peninsula separates the Levant from Egypt and the lower
Nile. To the west is the Mediterranean Sea. These limits enclose an area about
the size of Italy, which today is roughly coincident with the modern states of
Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.10 The entire region extends some
400 miles from north to south, and between 70 to 100 miles from west to east.
The Levant itself consists of three distinct geographical zones that run parallel
from north to south. In the far west is a narrow strip of land known as the coastal
Levant, with many seaports and agricultural areas. The center of the Levant con-
sists of a zone of coastal mountain ranges, and in the east, descending eastward
toward the Syrian and Arabian deserts, is an interior zone of plateaus and plains.
One of the reasons why the Levant never coalesced into a single political unit is
because of the geographical compartmentalization between these zones: coast-
lands, mountains, and interior plains, all of which have no natural center. Travel
between or across the zones, and even within them, always has been difficult.
The coast, in the west, and the interior plains, in the east, are open both from the
north and from the south, which made these areas regular invasion points from
Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, as well as from Egypt and from outsiders to
the west. Moreover, the mountains, as a barrier to travel, hinder communication
between the coast and the interior plains, and thus exacerbate cultural differentia-
tion between the Mediterranean ports and the inland cities.11
28 Levantine geography and agrarian religion
The mountains separating the coast from the interior are the principal physical
feature of the Levant, comprising a north-south line of hills and mountains paral-
lel to and immediately inland from the Mediterranean shoreline. These mountain
ranges begin with the high Amanus Range (Nur Dağlari) of Cilicia, in the north,
followed by the al-Nuṣayrīyyah Mountains that line the Syrian coastline. One
mountain in particular from the Nur Dağlari range, located just north of the mod-
ern Syrian city of Latakia, is very important to this book: known to modern-day
inhabitants as Kılıç Dağı in Turkish, and as ‫ جبل األقرع‬jebl al-āqra’ in Arabic, it
has been known as Mount Hazzi to the ancient Near Eastern Hurrians and Hittites,
as Mount Saphon/Sapan to ancient Canaanite inhabitants, as Mount Zaphon in the
Hebrew Bible, as Mount Kasios, in Greek, and as Mount Casius in Latin. In this
book, most frequently it will be referenced as Mount Sapan, as Mount Kasios, or
as jebl al-āqra’. The location of this mountain is coincident with the land mass of
the northernmost part of the Eastern Littoral of the Mediterranean basin; as such,
it is exactly the area where winter storms from the Mediterranean turn and move
overland to the south and the west.12 As a geographical feature long related to
climatic patterns, to navigational practices, and especially to regional religious
history, this mountain figures prominently throughout the book.
South of the Nur Dağlari range, the extensive Mount Lebanon range parallels
the Lebanese coastline. A southern area of the Mount Lebanon range juts to the
northeast to form the Anti-Lebanon mountains, creating between them what is
known as the Beka’a valley and the agricultural zone. Farther south is the Carmel
Mountain range, dotting the Israeli coastline south of the city of Haifa. Southeast
of the Carmel Mountains lies the Palestinian or Judean highlands or “hill coun-
try,” which extend southerly and grade slowly into the Negev Desert. To the east,
and parallel to the Palestinian highlands, lie the Transjordan Hills, which extend
all the way south to the Gulf of Aqaba, in the Red Sea. Between the Palestinian
Highlands and the Transjordan Hills lies the Jordan Rift Valley. Forced below sea
level by the collision of the African and the Arabian continental plates, the Jordan
Valley and the Dead Sea created there by runoff constitutes the lowest physical
place on the earth, at about 1,300 feet below sea level.
Mount Lebanon is located at the geographical center of the Mediterranean
mountain ranges, and only two gaps punctuate these ranges of coastal mountains.
The northernmost gap is named the Homs Gap, located at the political border
between modern-day Lebanon and Syria along the Mediterranean coast, and
extending eastward to the Syrian city of Homs. The southernmost gap is called
the Galilee Gap, and it extends from the Mediterranean Sea just north of the city
of Haifa eastward to Lake Tiberius (the Sea of Galilee). These gaps in the cen-
tral mountain ranges that line the Levant are significant not only as geographical
features, but also because they function as the Levant’s only zones of west-east
access between the Mediterranean Sea and the interior plains.
Being located exactly at the convergence of three continental plates – the
African, Arabian, and Eurasian – thus has formed the topography of the Levant,
creating its three topographical zones: coastal plains in the west, a central band
of mountain ranges, and plains and plateaus in the east. This continental-plate
 Levantine geography and agrarian religion 29
convergence also accounts for another very important geographical feature of the
Levant: frequent earthquakes.13

Rivers and water sources

There are three primary rivers in the Levant. The Orontes River, in the north,
originates near Baalbek in the Beka’a Valley, and flows for 355 miles northeast
through Lebanon and Syria, then west and southwest into Turkey, exiting into the
Mediterranean near Antakya (ancient Antioch). The Orontes River also is called
locally in Turkish and in Arabic the ‘Asi, ‘Rebel’ River, because, unlike any other
regional river, it flows to the north rather than to the south. The Litani River also
originates near Baalbek and flows 87 miles southwest through the Beka’a valley,
turning due west and flowing sharply out of the Lebanese Mountains into the
coastal plains and Mediterranean Sea at a location north of the city of Tyre.
Historically, the Orontes River also has been known as Τυφῶν ‘Typhon’, by
the Greeks, etymologically related to the Greek word for ‘smoke’, or ‘storm’, and
named after the fearsome, serpent-headed storm monster defeated by Zeus.14 In
Latin, and likely in earlier local languages, the Orontes River was known as the
Draco, or the ‘dragon’ river.15 The name of the Litani River is derived etymologi-
cally from the Semitic root ltn, corresponding, according to many sources, to the
mythical sea creature Lotan (‘Leviathan’), in the Hebrew Bible, whom Yahweh
defeated. Historically, the Greek demon Typhon also was associated with the
Hebrew Bible figure of Lotan. These associations highlight the interconnected
nature of regional myths and point out historical linkages between these specific
myths and regional rivers, which will be discussed in coming chapters; especially
in Chapter Three. Most importantly for this study, the Orontes (Typhon/Draco,
‘dragon’) river long has been associated, because of proximity, with Mount
Sapan/Mount Kasios/ jebl al-āqra’, the prominent mountain located just north of
the modern coastal Syrian city of Latakia on the Mediterranean, which long was
considered the home of Baal-Hadad, the Storm-God.16
The Jordan River originates in tributaries in the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon
mountain ranges and also in tributaries from the Golan of Syria and Israel. These
tributaries join in the Huma Valley, forming both the Jordan River and filling the
Sea of Galilee. The Jordan River flows 156 miles south from the Sea of Galilee
through the Jordan valley and along the Jordan rift, descending finally into the
Dead Sea. Hundreds of smaller – and often seasonal – rivers and tributaries
flow westward from the coastal mountain ranges along the folds of the coastal
mountains.
People living in the more-arid interior plains are watered by a few surface
lakes, as well as smaller rivers such as the 43-mile-long Yarmouk, an eastward-
flowing tributary of the Jordan River that comprises part of the modern border
between Israel, Jordan, and Syria, and drains into the Hauran Plateau in northern
Jordan. In addition to direct rainfall, peoples in the Levant are watered by under-
ground aquifers. Aquifer fields in the Levant, used for drinking water and for agri-
culture, primarily are shallow – close to the surface of the land – and are recharged
30 Levantine geography and agrarian religion
by area streams, rivers, and lakes, which are, themselves, naturally affected by
rainfall levels.17
In the Levant, Syria’s main water sources are the Euphrates and the Orontes
Rivers; Jordan depends upon the Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers; Iraq depends upon
the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers; Lebanon’s sources are the Litani and Orontes
Rivers, as well as several smaller rivers which flow westward from the coastal
mountains; Israel depends upon water from the Sea of Galilee and the Coastal and
Mountain Aquifers; Palestine depends on the Mountain Aquifer, which mainly is
located underneath the West Bank, and Gaza depends upon the Coastal Aquifer.
In the West Bank and Gaza, access to water is limited by the Israeli government,
which motivates many people to sink unofficial wells into local aquifers and fur-
ther destabilizes the continued viability of these resources.

Historical water preservation and transportation

methods: Cisterns and qanats
In the arid climate of the Levant, where precipitation is concentrated during the
winter months from November to March, and the summers are hot and dry, it has
been essential to capture the winter rainfall for use later during the year. The his-
torical use of cisterns throughout many parts of the Levant and the wider Middle
East has served as a ready water source during the summer, as well as a crop-
yield-extender in areas where rain-fed farming is employed. Deep, plaster-lined
cisterns cut into the limestone bedrock at a depth of 5 to 25 meters and positioned
to capture a maximum quantity of winter rain can store water for as long as two
or three years.18
Because of the uneven distribution of land that falls within the rain-fed farm-
ing zone, historically throughout the Levant and the wider Middle East it also has
been important to employ creative water transportation methods. This could be
achieved by two types of hydraulic systems: open canals, or underground chan-
nels, known as qanats. Open canals were suitable where it was possible directly to
tap into the waters of a river, but qanats, of Iranian origin, consisted of an under-
ground channel dug along a precise shallow gradient and connected to the surface
by a series of vertical shafts. The underground tunnels collected their water as
it drained through the soil – usually commencing at the base of a mountain or
alongside a river – and ran gradually downhill at 50–60 km toward its destina-
tion. Qanats often collected water in large cisterns from which the water could be
transferred to nearby fields via open channels, and, properly constructed, could
have an operational life of a century or more.19

Flora
The flora of the Mediterranean is remarkably similar around the east and west of
the sea, as it was in most of North Africa, as well, before processes of desertifica-
tion crept up to the sea.20 Most plant life around the Mediterranean coastal and
mountain areas is comprised of maquis, a dense scrub vegetation that is hardy
 Levantine geography and agrarian religion 31
and drought-resistant. Maquis is made up of evergreen shrubs and trees, such as
oak, pine, olive, and laurel, as well as garigue, a low, soft-leaved cover of bushes,
bunchgrasses, and aromatic herbs like juniper, lavender, and sage, all of which
grow well in the dry soil of the Mediterranean, and which produce the region’s
characteristic scent.

Agriculture
The history of agriculture is inextricably related to the history of soil. An ideal
type of agricultural soil, called loam, is made up of a mixture of clay, silt, and
sand, and allows for free air circulation, good drainage, and easy access to plant
nutrients, such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.21 The character of a soil
reflects topography, climate, and biology, as well as the local geology underneath
the soil, which provides the raw materials from which soil is derived. The geol-
ogy of a region controls the kind of soil produced, because as rocks break down,
they crumble into particular types of soils. Granite disintegrates into rocky soils,
whereas basalt produces clay-rich soils. Limestone, the bedrock of most of the
Mediterranean basin, mainly dissolves away, leaving behind rocky landscapes
with thin soils and caves.22
The history of agriculture also is inextricably related to humans. Communities
of humans spread out from East Africa to Western Asia, reaching the Levant
around 100,000 years ago, and arriving at the Western end of the Mediterranean
in Spain approximately 40,000 years ago. Paleolithic humans in the then-abundant
ecosystems gathered plants, caught fish and crustaceans, and hunted mammals.
As humans adapted to the natural environment, the technology they cre-
ated to do so became more complex and powerful through time. After the most
recent Ice Age and during a time of warming climate, broadly speaking, from
about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, communities of humans in the Mediterranean
basin began to adopt new methods of living within the natural environment.
These methods involved the seasonal cultivation of food plants, like grain-bear-
ing grasses, as well as bringing herd animals and their migrations under human
direction. Groups of people in fertile areas along the Syrian hills and near the
annually flooded lakes in the Nile Valley began to harvest wild grains between
14,500 and 13,000 years ago, and eventually to save and plant seeds from one
season to the next.23
Once it was taken, that step of saving and planting seeds enabled the feeding of
more people in the community, as well as the survival of larger, more sedentary
populations in limited areas. Domestication of plants improved the dependability
of the food supply and enabled larger populations, but it also required a settled
community to care for crops. Along with agriculture came weaving, pottery mak-
ing, and the fashioning of lighter, more sophisticated stone tools and weapons, a
well-attested characteristic of the Neolithic period. The major early crops in the
region were barley, wheat, oats, rye, legumes, and flax. Farmers selected seeds
from the best plants after the harvest for planting in the following year, enabling
the growth of new varieties of crops.24
32 Levantine geography and agrarian religion
As important as was the domestication of plants to Neolithic people was the
domestication of animals. Sedentary farmers also began to keep tamed species,
but the early work of domestication was undertaken by migrant peoples who,
rather than following herds of grazing animals in order to hunt them, began gradu-
ally to protect herds from predators and to control their annual movements. Most
herders were not nomadic wanderers, but practiced transhumance, the movement
of herds to higher mountains in summer, and lower areas in winter. Pastoralism
developed first in the Near East with goats and sheep, and later with cattle, pigs,
and donkeys, because these animals were adapted to land where grassland, brush,
and forest interpenetrate.25
The Levantine regional population began to grow rapidly as the domestica-
tion of wheat and legumes increased food production. By about 7,000 bce small
farming villages were scattered throughout the Levant. The first farmers relied on
rainfall to water their crops. They were so successful that, by about 5,000 bce, the
human population occupied virtually the entire area of the Middle East suitable
for dryland farming. This, in turn, increased pressure to extract more food from
the land, and led to a major revolution in agricultural methods: irrigation.26

Irrigation
The early, river-based irrigation civilizations, such as those in Mesopotamia and
Egypt, became history’s first great empires. Water was vitally important and
life-giving: during those periods in history when the water flow was interrupted,
either naturally or through human causes, crop production fell, surpluses dissi-
pated, dynasties toppled, and starvation and anarchy threatened the entire social
system.27
In fact, the way water resources presented themselves seems to have exerted a
strong influence on the nature of a society’s political system. Historically, irriga-
tion cultures have been accompanied by centralized states with large bureaucra-
cies. However, rain-fed farming could not produce the food surpluses, population
densities, and grand civilizations that were enabled by irrigation.28 It seems, there-
fore, that physical geography has impacted the Eastern Mediterranean region in
yet another way: the Levant’s lack of large, annually flooding rivers that could
be harnessed for irrigation – and its extreme reliance on rainfall for agricultural
needs – may also have impeded the political consolidation of the region.29

Changes over time to land and agricultural practice

Changes in climate often resulted in changes to agriculture, but sometimes
changes in agricultural practices also changed the natural environment. Erosion, a
natural process essential to soil formation, also can be sped up dangerously – and
sometimes swept away altogether – by human practices such as deforestation,
irrigation, and plowing.30
From antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern periods, agri-
culture was the basic economic activity of the Levant. In antiquity and the Middle
 Levantine geography and agrarian religion 33
Ages, agricultural production was dominated by the Mediterranean staple crops
of grains, olives, and grapevines.31 During the Middle Ages, over nine-tenths of
all peoples in the Mediterranean lived on the land in an agricultural, rural setting,
and new crops such as sugar cane, citrus fruits, melons, and strawberries were
introduced.32 Grazing animals – cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs – were important as
food and clothing sources, and horses, mules, and donkeys were used for trans-
portation and drafting. These animals grazed on fallow fields and enriched them
with manure.
The most important raw material for the textile industry in the pre-modern
era was wool, and sheep were among the greatest number of grazing animals.
Demands for wool increased the sizes of flocks, increasing their impacts on forests
and grasslands and contributing to soil depletion and erosion, because sheep are
notoriously destructive of vegetative cover.33 Timber always was in great demand
for shipbuilding and other construction, heating, metallurgy, ceramic manufac-
ture, and sugar refining. Because the shores and hills of the eastern Mediterranean
largely had been exhausted of their timber resources by the older civilizations
of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, until the modern era wood had to be sought
from northern areas of costal Anatolia.34 Indeed, a landscape barren of trees is a
characteristic of the modern Eastern Mediterranean. For instance, jebel al-āqra’,
the Arabic name for Mt. Kasios/Mt. Sapan, the consequential mountain along the
northern Levantine coast, mentioned above and located at the border between
modern-day Turkey and Syria, means in Arabic the “’bald’ or ‘stark’ mountain,”
and refers to the deforested state of the mountain.35
In the Early Modern Period, beginning in the 17th century ce, agriculture con-
tinued to consist of the Mediterranean staples, but it also was supplemented by
green vegetables, and root crops. New plants from the Americas also appeared,
including maize, potatoes, and tomatoes, and crops from the east, including rice
and cotton, began to be raised in the Ottoman Empire (1453–1923 ce) and in
Egypt. In the Ottoman Empire, agricultural production beyond the level of sub-
sistence was taxed by the state to finance military and bureaucratic endeavors,
and wood, as a source of fuel for warmth, cooking, and smelting, remained the
dominant source of energy.36
During the Modern Period, beginning in the 19th century ce, changes to mate-
rials and processes spurred by the industrial revolution resulted in unprecedented
impacts upon the natural environment. Mechanization – the use of metal machines
driven by power generated from a heat source – of both trains and agricultural
practices was a challenge throughout the Mediterranean, because of its soils and
diverse topography. However, changes to long-distance travel and trade brought
by the steam engine began rapidly to transform Eastern Mediterranean trade and
travel during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.37 Agricultural mechanization
in the eastern Mediterranean made only minor inroads until the mid-20th century,
until which time at least 80 percent of the population had remained agrarian, pro-
ducing crops such as grains, tobacco, rice, cotton, grapes, cereals, olive oil, sugar,
oranges, and dates.38 Today, less than 10 percent of the population, on average, in
the Eastern Mediterranean is engaged in agricultural work.39
34 Levantine geography and agrarian religion
Over the course of the 20th century ce, changes to production methods and
tools were extensive, and the effects of those changes upon local populations and
civic infrastructure were tremendous. In 1800 ce, the population of Istanbul, the
Levant’s most populous city, was approximately 750,000, and had grown to 1.4
million by 1924 ce. In Beirut, the population in 1860 ce was 10,000, and by 1914
ce it ballooned to 150,000. Between 1917 and 1937 ce, Cairo grew from 800,000
to 1.3 million. Infrastructural resources also grew during the 20th century, but
improvements often kept poor pace with population growth. Water and sewage
systems, gas, electricity and telephone services, buses, tramways, and motor traf-
fic increased in the Eastern Mediterranean during the 1920s and 1930s ce.40
Large-scale mass production of agriculture began in the eastern Mediterranean
after World War II, further speeding population growth, and raising the levels of
animal waste and pesticides in regional rivers and seas. Enormous human-driven
changes to the land of the Levant during the 20th century ce have caused the emer-
gence of several environmental problems, particularly during the past 50 years.
Among those environmental problems are water pollution and low reserve, air
pollution, detrimental mass agricultural practices, desertification of arable land,
loss of biodiversity among plant and animal species, as well as potential food
shortages.41 Human-driven damage to natural systems during the relatively brief
Modern Period thus has been greater than that of all previous times combined.42

Conclusion
Geological history in the Eastern Mediterranean is one of change: changes to land
and to climate that have been the results both of natural and human processes.
However, until very recently – the mid-20th century ce – among the most stable
and continuous human economic and sustenance activities in this region has been
agriculture and farming. One of the more fundamental changes to patterns of lived
human experience, therefore, to have taken place in the Levant during the past few
thousand years was that of 20th-century ce mechanization and mass agriculture,
which have enabled most inhabitants no longer primarily to be engaged in agricul-
tural work. This diminution in the prevalence of agricultural work seems to have
gone hand-in-hand with other modernizing changes – such as the advent of mass
literacy – that have affected regional religious practices (even if those changes seem
to have had somewhat less effect on long-lived regional geographical motifs).
Another continuity evident in this analysis is that of the long-term regional
dependence upon rainfall for agricultural needs. Because the Levant is arid and
lacks the kind of major irrigational rivers that predictably flood and deposit soil-
enriching silt, agricultural peoples in this region for most of its inhabited history
primarily have relied upon rainfall, which also feeds rivers, aquifers, and water
storage and preservation technologies, for their farming needs. Still today, agri-
cultural use accounts for some 70% of regional water usage.43 Of course, all early
human agricultural communities needed rain and water to survive, but in the arid
environment of the Levant – a region frequently in drought – the essential need
for rain long has been acute. The pervasiveness of this regional need for rain
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hand. A sword dance ensues, the four going round and round in a
circle. The gentleman with a sword contorts himself, prods viciously
at imaginary foes, and every now and then makes a playful attempt
to smite off one of the drummers’ legs. This performance being
terminated—accompanied the while by incessant shouting on the
part of every one in general—the actors retire, and the Emir holds up
his thin aristocratic hand.
Instantly a silence falls. The change is singularly impressive. The
Emir begins to speak in a low voice to a herald mounted on a raised
platform at his side. The herald, the perspiration pouring down his
face, shouts out each sentence as it falls from the Emir’s lips. As the
speech proceeds the Emir becomes more animated. He waves his
arm with a gesture full of dignity and command. And now the silence
is occasionally broken with sounds of approval. Finally he stops, and
it is the turn of the Resident who smilingly delivers himself of a much
shorter oration which, as in the previous case, is shouted to the
assemblage by the herald. I was able to obtain, through the courtesy
of the Resident, from the Emir’s Waziri a rendering of the speech of
which the following is a translation—

“The Emir greets you all with thanks to God. He thanks

God’s messenger (Mohammed). He gives thanks for the
blessings of his parents and his ancestors. He gives thanks to
the Europeans who are the gates of his town. He thanks all
White men. Next—you must attend to the orders which the
Emir gives you every year. I say unto you leave off double
dealing. Remove your hand from the people. Let them follow
their own courses. Separate yourselves from injustice. Why
do I say ‘Give up injustice’? You know how we were in former
days and you see how we are now. Are we not better off than
formerly? Next—I thank my headmen who assist me in my
work. I thank my servants who are fellow workers. I thank my
young chiefs who are fellow workers. I thank the men of my
town who are fellow workers. I thank my followers in the town.
I thank the village heads. I thank all the people of the land of
Zaria who are helping me in my work. Next—I wish you to pay
 attention to the commands of the English. And I say unto you
that all who see them should pay them respect. He who is
careless of the orders of the White man does not show them
respect. Though nothing happens to him he cries on his own
account (i.e. his stupidity is his punishment), for it is his
ignorance that moves him. Next—every one who farms let
him pay his tax. Every one who says this man is my slave, or
this woman is my slave, or these people are my slaves, and
uses force against them, let judgment fall upon him. What I
say is this—may God reward us! May God give us peace in
our land! May God give us the abundance of the earth! Amen.
Those who feel joyful can say—‘This is our desire! this is our
desire!’”

After a vain attempt to shake hands with the Emir, our respective
mounts altogether declining to assist, we ride out of the town
escorted by a couple of hundred horsemen. A little way past the
gates we halt while they, riding forward a hundred yards or so,
wheel, and charge down upon us with a shout, reining their horses
with a sudden jerk, so near to us that the ensanguined foam from the
cruel bits bespatters us.
As we ride home to the Residency two miles out of the town,
uppermost in the mind at least of one of us is the fascination of this
strange land, with its blending of Africa and the East, its barbaric
displays, its industrial life, its wonderful agricultural development—
above all, perhaps, the tour de force of governing it with a handful of
White officials and a handful of native troops.
 PART II
SOUTHERN NIGERIA

MAP OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA SHOWING THE THREE PROVINCES.

 CHAPTER I
NIGERIA’S CLAIM UPON PUBLIC ATTENTION

Nigeria is a geographical expression applied to a territory in West

Africa which by successive stages, covering a period of more than
one hundred years, under circumstances widely differing in character
and incentive, and almost wholly as the result of the initial enterprise
of British explorers and merchants, has passed under the protection
of Britain. With the discovery of Nigeria are associated exploits which
for romantic interest and personal achievements hold a prominent
place in British exploring records. The angry swirl of the Bussa
rapids must ever recall the well-nigh superhuman achievements of
Mungo Park, as the marvellous creeks and channels of the Niger
Delta evoke the memory of Richard Lander[2] and John Beecroft.
You cannot visit the Court of the Emir of Kano without
remembering Clapperton’s account of the awkward religious
conundrums with which the gallant sailor, the first European to enter
that fascinating African city, was amazed and confounded by one of
the present Emir’s predecessors; nor ride over the wide and dusty
road into the heart of Hausaland without thinking that but for Joseph
Thomson’s diplomatic tact in negotiating the early treaties with its
potentates, which were to pave the way for the statesmanship of a
Taubman-Goldie and the organising genius of a Lugard, Nigeria
would to-day be the brightest jewel in the West African Empire of the
French. The spirit of MacGregor Laird, the hardy pioneer who laid
the first foundations of British commerce in this country seems to
hover over the broad bosom of the Niger. The marvellous panorama
that unfolds itself before your eyes at Lokoja (the confluence of the
Niger with its tributary the Benue) conjures up the heroism and
tragedy of the Allan-Trotter expedition; while to negotiate in a dug-
out the currents that eddy round the famous ju-ju rock—still termed
Baikie’s Seat—is a reminder that somewhere in the blue depths
below lie the remains of Dr. Baikie’s ill-fated Day-spring.
 This land is, indeed, a land rich in heroic memories to men of
British blood. It is the more astonishing that so little appears to be
known by the general public either of its past or, what is much more
important, of the many complex problems connected with its
administration.

Nigeria is, at present, arbitrarily divided into two units, “Southern”

and “Northern;” the division corresponds with the historical events
which have distinguished the assumption of British control, and is to
that extent inevitable. But to-day, with internal communications and
administrative control rapidly extending, this situation presents many
drawbacks. In the absence of any considered scheme of general
constructive policy laid down at home, the existence of two separate
Governments with ideals necessarily influenced by the personal
idiosyncrasies of frequently changing heads in a territory
geographically united, through which the channels of a singularly
intensive internal trade have flowed for centuries, must of necessity
tend to promote divergencies in the treatment of public questions,
and, therefore, create numerous difficulties for the future. I propose
to deal with this subject in greater detail later on.
JU-JU ISLAND NEAR JEBBA.

(Photo by Mr. E. Firmin.)

 SHIPPING PALM-OIL ON THE NIGER AT HIGH WATER.

Meantime it would seem necessary at the outset to emphasize two

facts which the public mind does not appear to have realized. The
first is that Nigeria, both in size and in population, is not only the
most considerable of our tropical dependencies in Africa, but is the
most considerable and the wealthiest of all our tropical
dependencies (India, of course, excepted). Embracing an area of
332,960 square miles, Nigeria is thus equal in size to the German
Empire, Italy and Holland, while its population, though not yet
ascertained with accuracy, can hardly amount to less than fifteen
millions, being double that of British East Africa and Uganda with
Nyassaland thrown in, and nearly three times as numerous as the
native population comprised in the South African Union. The second
is that nowhere else in tropical or sub-tropical Africa is the British
administrator faced, at least on a large scale, with a Mohammedan
population, already to be counted in millions and increasing year by
year with significant rapidity. Until a few years ago the work of Great
Britain in West Africa, apart from a few trifling exceptions, was
confined to the administration of the Pagan Negro. The position is
very different now. In the southern regions of the Protectorate, where
its progression is a modern phenomenon, Islam is, from the
administrative point of view, a purely social factor. But in the northern
regions, where Mohammedan rule has been established for
centuries, under the Hausas, and in more recent times under the
Fulani, Islam has brought its laws, its taxation, its schools and its
learning. It is there a political as well as a religious and social force,
solidly entrenched. This fact which, administratively speaking, need
not alarm us—unless the Administration is goaded into adopting a
hostile attitude towards its Mohammedan subjects—does, however,
invest Nigeria with an additional interest of its own and does supply a
further reason why the affairs of this greatest of our African
protectorates should receive more intelligent consideration and study
at the hands of the public than it has enjoyed hitherto.
 CHAPTER II
THE NIGER DELTA

What is now known as Southern Nigeria comprises 77,200 square

miles, and includes the whole seaboard of the Nigerian Protectorate,
some 450 miles long, and the marvellous delta region whose
network of waterways and surpassing wealth in economic products
must be seen to be realized. Pursuing its southward course, the
Niger, after its journey of 2,550 miles across the continent from west
to east, bifurcates just below Abo into the Forcados and the Nun.
This is the apex of the delta, and here the Niger is, indeed, majestic.
From each of these main channels of discharge spring countless
others, turning and twisting in fantastic contours until the whole
country is honeycombed to such an extent as to become converted
into an interminable series of islands. The vastness of the horizon,
the maze of interlacing streams and creeks, winding away into
infinity, the sombre-coloured waters, the still more sombre
unpenetrable mangrove forests—here and there relieved by taller
growth—impress one with a sense of awe. There is something
mysterious, unfathomable, almost terrifying in the boundless
prospect, the dead uniformity of colour, the silence of it all. It is the
primeval world, and man seems to have no place therein.
Small wonder that amidst such natural phenomena, where in the
tornado season which presages the rains the sky is rent with flashes
only less terrific than the echoing peals of thunder, where the rushing
wind hurls forest giants to earth and lashes the waters into fury,
where for months on end torrential downpours fall until man has no
dry spot upon which he can place his foot; where nature in its most
savage mood wages one long relentless war with man, racking his
body with fevers and with ague, now invading his farms with furious
spreading plant life, now swamping his dwelling-place—small
wonder the inhabitants of this country have not kept pace with the
progression of more favoured sections of the human race. It is, on
the contrary, astonishing, his circumstances being what they are,
that the native of the Niger delta should have developed as keen a
commercial instinct as can be met with anywhere on the globe, and
that through his voluntary labours, inspired by the necessities and
luxuries of barter, he should be contributing so largely to supply the
oils, fats, and other tropical products which Western industrialism
requires. Trade with the outer world which the merchant—himself
working under conditions of supreme discomfort, and in constant ill-
health—has brought; improved means of communication through the
clearing and mapping of creeks and channels, thereby giving
accessibility to new markets which the Administration is yearly
creating—these are the civilizing agents of the Niger delta, the only
media whereby its inhabitants can hope to attain to a greater degree
of ease and a wider outlook.
The outer fringe of the delta is composed entirely of mangrove
swamps, whose skeleton-like roots rise up from the mud as the tide
recedes, and from whose bark the natives obtain, by burning, a
substitute for salt. For untold centuries the mangrove would appear
to have been encroaching upon the sea, the advance guard of more
substantial vegetation springing up behind it with the gradual
increase of deposits affording root-depth. Apart from the deltaic
system proper, produced by the bifurcation of the Niger and its
subsequent efforts to reach the ocean, the seaboard is pierced by
several rivers, of which the Cross, navigable for stern wheelers of
light draught in the wet season for 240 miles and in the dry for forty,
is the most important. The Benin River links up with the deltaic
system on the east, and on the west with the lagoon system of
Lagos, into which several rivers of no great volume, such as the
Ogun and Oshun, discharge themselves. So continuous and
extensive are these interior waterways that communication by
canoe, and even by light-draught launches, is possible from one end
of the seaboard to the other—i.e., from Lagos to Old Calabar.
The mangrove region is sparsely populated by fishing and trading
tribes. It is curious to come across signs of human life when you
would hardly suspect its possible presence. A gap in the whitened,
spreading roots, a tunnelled passage beyond, a canoe or two at the
opening; or, resting upon sticks and carefully roofed, a miniature hut
open on all sides, in which reposes some votive offering, such are
the only indications that somewhere in the vicinity a village lies
hidden. A visit to some such village holds much to surprise. Diligent
search has revealed to the intending settler that the particular spot
selected contains, it may be a hundred yards or so from the water, a
patch of firm land where, doubtless with much difficulty, a crop of
foodstuffs can be raised, and here he and his family will lead their
primitive existence isolated from the outer world, except when they
choose to enter it on some trading expedition. Further inland
somewhat, as for instance, near the opening of the Warri creek
(whose upper reaches, bordered with cocoanut palms, oil palms, and
ferns, are a dream of beauty), one of the many off-shoots of the
Forcados, where behind the fringe of mangroves the forest has
begun to secure a steady grip, neatly kept and prosperous villages
are more numerous. Their denizens are busy traders and there are
plentiful signs of surface civilization. An expedition in canoes to the
chief of one of these Jekri villages led us from a little landing stage
cut out of the mangroves and cleverly timbered along a beaten path
through smelling mud, alive with tiny crabs and insect life of strange
and repulsive form, into a clearing scrupulously clean, bordered with
paw-paw trees and containing some twenty well-built huts. A large
dug-out was in process of completion beneath a shed; fishing-nets
were hanging out to dry; a small ju-ju house with votive offerings
ornamented the centre of the village green, as one might say; a few
goats wandered aimlessly about, and a score of naked tubby
children gazed open-eyed or clung round their mothers’ knees in
affected panic. Beyond the ju-ju house a one-storeyed bungalow
with corrugated iron roof and verandah unexpectedly reared its ugly
proportions, and before long we were discussing the much vexed
question of the liquor traffic over a bottle of ginger ale across a table
covered by a European cloth, with an intelligent Jekri host, whose
glistening muscular body, naked to the waist, contrasted oddly with
the surroundings. These included a coloured print of the late King
Edward hanging upon the walls in company with sundry illustrated
advertisements all rejoicing in gorgeous frames. The walls of the
vestibule below were similarly adorned, and through a half-open
door one perceived a ponderous wooden bed with mattress, sheets,
pillows, and gaudy quilt (in such a climate!) complete.
 The deltaic region is the real home of the oil palm with its
numerous and still unclassified varieties, although it extends some
distance beyond in proportionately lessening quantities as you push
north. No other tree in the world can compare with the oil palm in the
manifold benefits it confers upon masses of men. Occurring in tens
of millions, reproducing itself so freely that the natives often find it
necessary to thin out the youngest trees, it is a source of
inexhaustible wealth to the people, to the country, to commerce, and
to the Administration. The collection, preparation, transport, and sale
of its fruit, both oil and kernels for the export trade is the paramount
national industry of Southern Nigeria, in which men, women, and
children play their allotted parts. Beautiful to look upon, hoary with
antiquity (its sap was used in ancient Egypt for cleansing the body
before embalment), the oil palm is put to endless uses by the natives
—its leaves and branches as roofing material, for clothing, for the
manufacture of nets, mats, and baskets; its fruit and covering fibre in
various forms for food (not disdained by the resident European in the
famous palm oil chop), for light, for fuel. To the Southern Nigerian
native inhabiting the oil-palm area the tree is, indeed, domestically
indispensable, while its product represents something like 90 per
cent. of his purchasing capacity in trade. How entirely wrong would
be any attempt at restricting his free enjoyment of its bounties needs
no emphasizing. The importance of the export trade in the products
of the oil palm may be gauged by the returns for 1910, which show
that Southern Nigeria exported 172,998 tons of kernels and 76,850
tons of oil, of a total value of no less than £4,193,049; and yet the
capacities of the trade, especially in kernels, are only in their infancy.
[3] Many districts, rich in oil palms are unproductive owing to
inaccessibility of markets or lack of transport; in others which supply
oil, the kernels, for sundry reasons, among which insufficiency of
labour to spare from farming operations no doubt predominates, are
not collected, although it is commonly reckoned that three tons of
kernels should be available for every ton of oil. In considering these
figures, realizing the future potentialities of the trade, and realizing,
too, the truly enormous sum of African labour which it represents
(every nut is cracked by hand to extract the kernel), one cannot but
reflect upon the foolish generalities which ascribe “idleness” to the
West African negro, whose free labour in this trade alone gives
employment directly and indirectly to tens of thousands in England
and in Europe, from the merchant and his clerks, from the steamship
owner and his employés on land and sea, to the manufacturer of
soap and candles and their allied trades; from the coopers who turn
out the casks sent out from England in staves for the conveyance of
the oil, to the Irish peasants who collect the stems of the common
sedge shipped out to Nigeria from Liverpool for caulking these
casks.
The bulk of the oil is exported to England (£1,191,000 value in
1909), but nearly the entire kernel crop goes to Germany, where it is
treated by the big crushing mills. It is possible that this state of affairs
may undergo considerable change within the next decade, and the
reason for it is, incidentally, of considerable economic interest, as it
is of moment to Nigeria. Up to within three or four years ago palm
kernels were crushed and the oil almost entirely used by the soap
trade, but chemistry has now found a process of refining and making
palm-kernel oil edible, as it may, perhaps, do some day for palm oil
itself, as a base for margarine, for which coprah and ground-nut oil
were formerly employed. This has had as a consequence an
enormous widening of the home market, and the soap trade has now
to contend with keen competition for the supply of one of its staples.
The resultant effect is the initiative of Lever Brothers (Limited), who,
finding the need of enlarging and giving increased security to their
supplies of the raw material, are, with commendable enterprise,
erecting three large crushing mills in Southern Nigeria, the one at
Lagos being already in a fair way to completion. If the numerous
difficulties they will have to face are successfully negotiated, the
ultimate result can hardly fail to be that of transferring the
considerable palm kernel crushing industry from the banks of the
Rhine to those of the Niger, besides creating a new export trade in
oil cake from the Niger to England and the Continent.
 CHAPTER III
THE FOREST BELT

Beyond the deltaic region proper lies the vast belt of primeval and
secondary forest of luxurious growth, giant trees, tangled vines and
creepers, glorious flowering bushes, gaudy butterflies, moist
atmosphere, and suffocating heat. Beyond the forest belt again lies,
with recurrent stretches of forest, the more open hilly country, the
beginning of the uplands of the North. When an authority on forestry
recently wrote that “British Columbia is the last great forest reserve
left,” he forgot West Africa. That is what West Africa has continually
suffered from—forgetfulness. The resources of the Nigerian forest
belt are as yet far from being fully determined, but sufficient is now
known of them to show that they are enormously rich. Besides the oil
palm and the wine palm (which produces the piassava of commerce)
the forest belt contains large quantities of valuable mahoganies,
together with ebony, walnut, satin, rose, and pear woods, barwood,
and other dye-woods, several species of rubber, African oak, gums
(copal), kola, and numerous trees suitable to the manufacture of
wood-pulp. Oil-bearing plants abound in great quantities, as do also
fibres, several of which have been favourably reported upon by the
Imperial Institute. The shea-butter tree, to which I shall have
occasion again to refer, is an inhabitant of the dry zone.
 THE TROPICAL BUSH.

The soil of this forest region is wonderfully fertile, and forest

products apart, the possibilities of agricultural development are
considerable. The three articles under cultivation by the natives the
Administration has of late years done its best to popularize have
been cotton, cocoa, and maize. For several reasons maize is an
uncertain quantity. The land bears two crops a year, the larger crops
ripening in July, but a wet August will play havoc with harvesting and
storing arrangements, while the amount available for export must
always depend upon local food requirements and available labour.
The cultivation of cocoa, for which the humid atmosphere, rich
alluvial soil, and abundant shade of the forest region seem peculiarly
suitable, has, on the other hand, steadily, if slowly, increased since it
was started fifteen years ago. In 1900 the quantity of cocoa exported
was valued at £8,622. It had risen in 1910 to £101,151. The efforts
made within the last few years by the British Cotton Growing
Association, supplemented by those of the Administration, to revive
on a large scale the export trade in raw cotton started by the
Manchester manufacturer, Mr. Clegg, at the time of the American
Civil War, has so far been partially, but only partially, successful. The
industry has progressed, but far less rapidly than its promoters
hoped.[4] Things do not move quickly in West Africa. In all these
questions several factors have to be taken into account, for which
sufficient allowance is not made in Europe. For one thing, the really
immense amount of labour which the Nigerian population is already
required to put forth in order to feed itself and to sustain the existing
export trade is not appreciated.
The idea that the native has merely to scratch the earth or watch
the fruit ripening on the trees in order to sustain himself and his
family is, speaking generally, as grotesque an illusion as that he is a
helpless, plastic creature with no will of his own. The native is on the
whole an active, hard-working individual, the ramifications of whose
domestic and social needs involve him in constant journeyings which
absorb much time, and if his soil is prolific in the bearing of crops, it
is equally so in invading vegetation, which has constantly to be
checked. He is also a keen business man and a born trader, as any
European merchant who has dealings with him will bear witness, and
he will turn his attention to producing what pays him best. In that
respect he differs not at all from other sections of the human race
amongst whom the economic sense has been developed, and he
cannot be fairly expected to devote his attention to raising one
particular raw material which a certain home industry may desire, if
he can make larger profits in another direction. The opening up of
the country, the increasing dearness of food supplies in the
neighbourhood of all the great centres, the intensifying commercial
activity and economic pressure so visible on every side, the growth
of population, and the enlargement of the horizon of ideas must
necessarily lead to a steady development in all branches of
production. But the native must be given time, and the country is one
which cannot be rushed either economically or politically.
No sketch, however brief, of the potentialities of the Nigerian forest
belt would be complete without a reference to the labours of the
Forestry Department, which owes its initiation to the foresight and
statesmanship of the late Sir Ralph Moor. Such reference is the
more necessary since the work of the department crystallizes, so to
speak, the conception of its duties towards the native population
which guides the Administration’s policy. No other department of the
Administration reveals so clearly by its whole programme and its
daily practice what the fundamental object of British policy in Nigeria
really is, and in view of the increasing assaults upon that policy by
company promoters at home, on the one hand, and the obstacles to
which its complete realization is subjected in Africa on the other, it is
absolutely essential that public opinion in Britain should become
acquainted with the facts and be in a position to support the Colonial
Office and the Administration in combining equity with
commonsense.
Briefly stated, the Forestry Department is designed to conserve
forest resources for the benefit of the State—the State meaning, in
practice, the native communities owning the land and their
descendants, and the Administration charged with their
guardianship, and while encouraging any legitimate private
enterprise, whether European or native, to oppose the wholesale
exploitation of those resources for the benefit of individuals, white or
black. It aims at impressing the native with the economic value of his
forests as a source of present and continual revenue for himself and
his children; at inducing native communities to give the force of
native law to its regulations and by their assistance in applying them,
to prevent destruction through indiscriminate farming operations and
bush fires, to prevent the felling of immature trees, to replant and to
start communal plantations. It aims at the setting aside, with the
consent of the native owners, of Government reserves and native
reserves, and at furthering industrial development by private
enterprise under conditions which shall not interfere with the general
welfare of the country. In a word, the Forestry Department seeks to
associate the native communities with the expanding values of the
land in which they dwell, so that for them the future will mean
increasing prosperity and wealth, the essence of the policy being
that these communities are not only by law and equity entitled to
such treatment, but that any other would be unworthy of British
traditions. It is what some persons call maudlin sentiment, the sort of
“maudlin sentiment” which stands in the way of the Nigerian native
being expropriated and reduced to the position of a hired labourer on
the properties of concessionnaires under whose patriotic activities
the Nigerian forest would be exploited until it had disappeared from
the face of the earth like the forests of Wisconsin, Michigan,
Minnesota, and Eastern Canada.
Apart from the question of safeguarding the rights of the people of
the land, our wards, the necessity of forest conservation in the
interest of the public weal has been taught by bitter experience, and
experience has also shown that scientific forestry can only be
profitably undertaken by the Government or by bodies whose first
obligation is the interest and protection of the community. The
Forestry Department of Southern Nigeria, short as its existence has
been, is already a revenue-making Department, for in the last ten
years it has either planted, or induced the natives to plant, trees
(some of which, like the rubber trees in Benin, are now beginning to
bear) whose present estimated value is £287,526, and has thus
added over a quarter of a million to the value of the capital stock of
the forests without taking into account the indirect effects of the
steps taken to help their natural regeneration. The Department has
many local difficulties to contend with, especially in the Western
province, which I shall have occasion to discuss in connection with
the general administrative problem facing the administration in that
section of the Protectorate.
 The character of its work necessitates that, in addition to scientific
training in forest lore, those responsible for its direction shall be
possessed of knowledge of native customs and of considerable tact
in conducting negotiations with native authorities, always suspicious
of European interference in anything which touches the question of
tenure and use of land. The Administration is fortunate in possessing
in the Conservator and Deputy-Conservator two men who combine
in a rare degree these dual qualifications. It is but the barest
statement of fact to say that Mr. H. N. Thompson, the Conservator
who went to Southern Nigeria after many years in Burma, enjoys an
international reputation. As an expert in tropical forestry he stands
second to none in the world. His colleague, Mr. R. E. Dennett, has
contributed more than any other European living to our knowledge of
Nigerian folklore, and he understands the native mind as few men of
his generation do. In view of its immense importance to the future of
the country it is very regrettable to have to state that the Forestry
Department is greatly undermanned and its labours curtailed in
many directions by the insufficiency of the funds at its disposal. No
wiser course could be taken by the administration than that of setting
aside a sum of borrowed money to be used, as in the case of the
railways, as capital expenditure on productive forestry work.
 CHAPTER IV
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES

In connection with the internal government of the Protectorate it

may be advisable to refer briefly to the House Rule Ordinance of
1901 which has recently given rise to some controversy. The House
Rule Ordinance is a measure designed by the late Sir Ralph Moor to
prevent social anarchy from ensuing when slavery was abolished by
the British Government. It gives force of Law to House Rule. House
Rule is, in reality, the native form of government, which has existed
in Southern Nigeria for many centuries. In recognizing the former the
Administration acknowledges the existence of the latter for which it
can provide no substitute. Native society, as already stated, is in the
patriarchal state. The foundation of it is the “Father,” whether of the
family, of the community, or of the tribe. The members of the House
are, in a measure, apprentices. Under native law there are
obligations on both sides. It is a transitional stage, and should be
regarded as such, and allowed to reform itself from within. The one
difficulty, in this respect, is lest the Ordinance should tend to prevent
a gradual internal evolution towards a higher state by sterilizing any
healthy influences making for modification. A much greater danger
would be any sudden change which would throw the whole country
into absolute confusion. In the Western Province and in the Bini
district, where native rule has developed more rapidly than in the
Eastern and Central, the Father of the House is subject to the Father
of the district, and he in turn is subject to the Paramount Chief of the
whole tribe—the Supreme Father. There is, therefore, a check upon
despotic abuses by the head of the House. In the bulk of the Central
Province and in the whole of the Eastern Province, the head of the
House is virtually the head of the community, the higher forms of
internal control not having evolved. Any hasty and violent
interference which domestic “slavery,” as it is termed, in a country
like the Central and Eastern Provinces should be strenuously
opposed. It would be an act of monstrous injustice, in the first place,
if unaccompanied by monetary compensation, and it would produce
social chaos. But there seems to be no reason why the House Rule
Ordinance should not be amended in the sense of substituting for
Paramount Chieftainship therein—which is virtually non-existent—
the District Commissioners, aided by the Native Councils, as a check
upon the now unfettered action of the heads of Houses. To destroy
the authority of the heads would be to create an army of wastrels
and ne’er-do-weels. Native society would fall to pieces, and endless
“punitive expeditions” would be the result.[5]
For purposes of administration Southern Nigeria is divided into
three Provinces, the Eastern (29,056 square miles), with
headquarters at Old Calabar; the Central (20,564 square miles) with
headquarters at Warri; and the Western (27,644 square miles), with
headquarters at Lagos, the seat of Government of the Protectorate.
To the Western Province is attached, as distinct from the
Protectorate, what is termed the “Colony of Lagos,” comprising the
capital and a small area on the mainland—Lagos itself is an island—
amounting altogether to 3,420 square miles. The supreme
government of the three Provinces is carried on from Lagos by the
Governor, assisted by an Executive Council and by a Legislative
Council composed of nine officials and six unofficial members
selected by the Governor and approved by the Secretary of State.
Each Province is in charge of a Provincial Commissioner, although in
the Western Province his duties are more nominal than real. In none
of the Provinces is there a Provincial Council. The Central and
Eastern Provinces are sub-divided into districts in charge of a District
Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner, who govern the country
through the recognized Chiefs and their councillors by the medium of
Native Councils which meet periodically and over which the District
Commissioner or his assistant presides. These Native Councils or
Courts constitute the real administrative machinery of the country.
They administer native law in civil and criminal cases between
natives. They may not, however, except by special provision, deal
with civil cases in which more than £200 is involved, or with criminal
cases of a nature which, under native law, would involve a fine
exceeding £100 or a sentence of imprisonment exceeding ten years
with or without hard labour, or a flogging exceeding fifteen strokes.